![Ep. 188: BEAR GREASE [RENDER] - Luke McFadden & American Wilderness - podcast episode cover](https://assets.metacast.app/images/episode/artwork/sOoX6Shl)
My name is Clay Neukleman.
This is a production of the bear Grease podcast called The bear Grease Render, where we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the scenes of the actual bear Grease podcast, presented by f h F Gear, American Maid, purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the place as we explore.
Nobody cares if I'm making any noise.
Your head.
You feel like what a fourth wheel?
No, no, Josh, wheel turns a tricycling No.
Josh, You're more like a spear.
Kind of like right on the back of the balls there and Brent falls off.
I just.
Man, So we're running. This is like, this is like a skeleton crew the bear Grease. We've got four folks here. We have maybe one of the best mystery guests of all time though on the bear Grease Render for real. So I got Brent here, I got Josh Landbridge spillmaker here, who sounds.
Like a hold on back, Well, it's not me, turn it.
You got it? Yeah?
Yeah, say something.
Now something now give us the snort. My nose is pretty big.
Pullet pullet out like this right there. Yeah, that's it's the first time I've ever done this.
Okay, let's hear your snort.
There's no way to get it anywhere. Sorry, feel I'm sorry.
You're like a like a mule, I have like the Britney spears circle mid to thousands like heads, you know what I mean, Brooks.
Right, So when I'm when I'm riding a mule, I have a mechanism that I can use, a physical mechanism I can use to tell how how worked up they are, how much physical energy they're exerting, and how close they are to their maximum output and haloton. Yeah, it's just probably a lot like your peloton nostral flare when you really I'll look at a mule's nose and if his nose is just kind of like slightly pulsating, it's like, oh, he's got a lot more put the spurs to it,
you know. Let's go up the mountain when they get to just like when when when the when the nostrils are flaring out, like getting like a half to three quarters of an inch bigger than the usual, and they're moving at like one inflation per second, like.
They've maxed out.
Maybe given break, maybe you're.
Hitting rev limit or on your mule.
Yeah yeah, that's like that's like pushing into like forty five hundred rpm. Yeah.
Yeah.
So mystery guests we have here today is the crabber himself, Luton McFadden.
He is a crabber.
He and I ain't no crab You ain't no crabber.
I ain't no mule skinner.
Well, you're more of a mule skinner than I'm a crabber, because you rode a mule yesterday for probably a nine miles.
Yeah, yes, had to go.
It was great, no problems with your first time. It was my first time riding any any animal. Oh yeah, yep.
Well I watched the video, thought it was he's pretty solid.
Yeah, yeah, he did good. Were you Were you nervous at all?
Not really, to be honest, because that's what why I think. I'm just maybe I'm a little too dumb to be nervous. It just looked about that situation. It just seemed, uh, they seemed nice enough, you know what I mean? Yeah, all right, I trust him.
You get thrown out of off a mule, all you gotta do is get up and get back on him. You get thrown out of a boat, then you got to swim. It's got a hold a whole lot.
Of Now we could we could get into a bait on the debate on like which one.
Would be worse.
I'm trying to give him his props. Man.
Yeah, yeah, well true story.
The I told Luke about a story of a young man that rode with me the other day that had like a zero, like if they're on the scale of one to ten of just knowledge of equine animals, like he would be like minus one, and.
Which end is the he was?
He?
Yeah, yeah, he was like shouldn't his feet be pointed outwards on his belly?
He he was.
So and I'm gonna use this word it's not derogatory towards him, but like almost naive.
He just jumped up on that mule and was like so relaxed.
And what I was trying to tell Luke is that an animal picks up on the energy. I don't care if you're a NEUROSCIENTI and uh and think this earth is just like natural physics. Man, there is there is something deep going on inside a horsemanship that that's very natural and there's a scientific explanation for it. But that animal is picking up what you're putting out if you're tense, fearful, it feels it, it knows it, and it translates to
that animal if you're just like totally relaxed. Because I put this young man on a mule that's usually pretty hopped up Izzy and Is he's a great mule, very much to a finished meal, thousands of miles, never done anything wrong, but she's hard to handle. Like, you wouldn't put Mema on Izzy, right, Uh, Izzy would just she wouldn't hurt her, but well she probably would she could because she might, you know, not buck her off, but just kind of get out of control a little bit.
And so I put him on there, and I was actually a little nervous about it, but he was a strapping young lady.
Well it all comes out.
This was before that, This was this was before that. And so I put him on there and and he was so he was so relaxed. Is he was relaxed, And I mean he just rode, We rode all over the place and totally fine.
That's what Luke teld me. He did. He was just like, Hey, this is no big deal.
So I didn't ignorance, is bliss.
When I did notice on the video when they got mid stream, there was a little bit of well is he tripped? Yeah, and and Luke's eyes got a little bigger, but that was the only expression that he had, and he just like, all right, we'll just keep going.
Was that when we were crossing the river? Yeah, yeah, she tripped and she tripped, and I thought, oh boy, that we got about to get our cold plunge in for the day.
Yeah, yeah, that would have been awesome.
Well, hey, before we get to start, I have something for you guys, For each of you, I've brought from Maryland. Uh. I also smuggled on the airplane. It was not quite as hard as the live crabs, but it was had its own different challenges, but they did make it here. I have one for each of you. I'll explain after I give it to you.
Here you go, Oh, I can't what, Brent, what's your guess?
I don't know. He's taking off his shoes.
Don't don't. Don't show it over here, but don't show.
It to what's my guess? It could be crap. Oh, I don't know.
I have no idea, like, not even a single idea. If this is ah, I know what it is. I know I felt it now.
If this is a dead fish wrapped up in newspaper, I know I'm a goner.
I know it is all right, so they're wrapped up in newspaper. But this is a Maryland tablecloth.
He this is real.
This is a this is a tell me what this is.
That's we call that a bluebell or blackhead duck decoy. You have a canvas back, Brent, Oh, listen, these are not any duck decoys, all right, these are so you you guys just did your book on market hunting deer right in America. Yes, so the Chesapeake Bay where I'm from had a long stretch of history where market hunting ducks was a huge part of culture and you know, industry. So these decoys and then you know, so that went from eighteen hundred to eighteen or nineteen eighteen was market
hunting when it was legal. Then nineteen eighteen they outlawed it. So then there was a culture of outlaw market gunning. So these decoys are actually from between nineteen eighteen, after nineteen eighteen, but before nineteen thirty. These are actual outlaw wow market gunning.
D Man.
Let me tell you my brother right now, Tim is he's doing a double backflip right now, and he don't know why because I'm holding this and to a duck guide.
Man, this right here is.
It's history man, and those are made right you know?
Do you think this is a hand carved?
Oh?
I know that.
I know that.
I could tell you. I I have done some research on both of these, and I can tell you who made that one. I don't know who made this one, but that they're from rock Hall, Maryland, which is right across the bay from me. It's a crab out of
rock Hall sometimes. And so that the camsback you have, Brent, is likely turned down on a gun lathe from like World War One or what I know, I don't know, not that great whatever, like an old period military gun lay that they would these guys would get ahold of so they would turn some decoy bodies like that one is likely turned on a lathe and then finished with a spec I don't know they were kind of using whatever, but that one.
I think bass would.
Yeah, I know that's common these days. I don't couldn't tell you what these are made out of.
It's a heavy wood.
Yeah, So that one that you have is likely hatchet carved and then finished with a draw knife. They would take a block and they would carve it with a hatchet.
Wow.
And then they.
Yeah, you could have given this to the people that would.
Appreciate it more.
And that see, there is going in the museum. There's a part of me that hates to take history from where it's originated. It's lived its entire life, you know, in within ten miles of where I live at, you know, forever, and there's a lot of history with these two things. But I know that you guys, if anybody will appreciate it and take care of it, you know it's going to be you, guys. What a gift dude, and I have.
This is like, this is about as good a spot on a gift as could be given.
I would suggest not eating those paint chips though.
So there's a little lead in those paint hips.
Those I'm sure you know what those are, but those are brass shotgun shelves, and.
So those describe what it looks like.
It looks like a twelve gage shell, but it's just made.
It looks like a twelve It looks like a spent twelve gage casing, but it's brass.
Yeah, the whole thing's brass. And so the exact section of one inch brass pipe. Those are earlier than the decoys. So those are from somewhere between nineteen hundred and nineteen ten. Those are from allegedly from the guy got them from and the research I've done. And those were very, very common with the market gunners because they could reload them and shells were expensive, so they would use these brass shells.
That they could.
They used to call them Saint Louis too's the shoot number two shot at them when they would head rake them, you know across the bay.
Yeah.
Boy, they used to hunt these things with punt guns. You know, that would really be a cool thing. You know, these like ten foot long shotguns where they would pour like two pounds a shot and then they stolling boat and take out the whole flock and a roost.
That man, Wow, that's incredible.
You could see the knife cuts on that on that cavat.
So it's a blue belt.
Now bluebell is like a duck that people want to kill up there.
Oh yeah, yeah. Canvas backs are kind of the king of the Chesapeake, you know, been known for that. But the blue bills, I mean, that's what you know, that's like number two. Really there's a lot of the round so that is awesome. It's likely that these have been reheaded since then, but I mean they would that once kind of got a cracked head, you know, they they would carve the bodies. They put twenty heads on them
in their life because they would just break off. There's actually even I was looking them over and there's a couple of spots where they're shot in these decoys, which I think, I think, you know, like and I know they don't look.
Like much, but there's a shoe right in that One's a no, dude, that's gonna hang in the museum.
I'm gonna these things have seen things that I hope that we will see again, but it's unlikely.
You know.
Just cool, Okay.
I have a gift for you, And this is not a retaliate, retaliatory gift. This is not I was gonna do this before I knew these were here, and in a way it's a gift from me, Josh and Brent oh Man.
These things are getting scarce, man.
Yes, this is a genuine plot Hound treed Ozark Mountain Killed custom one size fits all raccoon hat made by Josh Lambridge spilmmaker, that's a that's a so my my good dog, Fern Treed that coon. The last guy gave one to Well, I gave one to Cam Haynes. Cameron Haynes, and he asked me if I killed it, and I said probably. And the reason it was probably is because there was probably three or four kids over each that year that may have shot it. But that is a genuine Arkansas trash hound.
Treed treasure hat.
Well, thank you so much. That is awesome.
You might you might need a fur hat up there.
Oh yeah, no I might. I think I'm just gonna wear it to the airport, you know.
Man Like, Hey, if t s A tries to take that from you, call.
Us, I know. No, I appreciate that.
That is.
That is amazing. Thank you so much.
Hey, it's the Duck decoys. Incredible. So if you don't know Luke, all you gotta do is just look up Luke.
L into your search, into your Instagram search.
Just say.
Here he goes Luke McFadden, Luke Skywalker's second Luke Skywalker, Luke uh Luca, donna check he might come up. NBA guy scored sixty points. He ain't no grabber no, so, uh, Luke has a big TikTok. You kind of got TikTok was like your thing there for a while.
Yeah.
Yeah, definitely started on TikTok and it kind of spread across all plans form, So now you know TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube. Yeah, that's what I've been putting a lot of time into. You're a grabber, Yeah, yep, it's it's what I do full time grabber.
And so you just give me like a like a short overview of your business, like you're catching crabs and then you're selling them direct people.
Yeah, yep. So I'm twenty seven. I started when I was eighteen on my own boat and everything, and I sold to wholesale you know, middlemen for the first seven years, and then I tried to get into you know, retail, which is kind of how I got into the social media stuff. I was trying to figure out, you know, find a market for my product really, you know what I mean, just kind of figure out a way to
market it better and whatever else. So end up selling a direct customer and so I've been doing that for the past two years and it's growing, you know, which is a great problem to have. But yeah, no, I'm a full time waterman on the bay and you.
Tell us about smuggling those live crabs. So, like two days before he came down here, we're at Arkansas at the Global headquarters.
I was like, hey, could you bring some crab down here?
I mean, if if I was going somewhere, I could see somebody saying, hey, would you bring some bear grease or some bear me and I would be like.
Yeah, just my bear grease is a little bit harder to.
Come by, but I would I'd be like sure. And so I texted Luke and I said, Hey, what are the chances you could bring some crab? And he said, like like frozen crab or like live crabs. And I was like, well, I don't even know what I'm asking for, you tell me, but live crabs sound pretty good. And it went something like that, and so what did you do?
Well, I like a challenge, you know, so I uh, and I'm in the you know, I make videos. So I was like, you know, what would be an awesome thing, whether it went really well or really bad, is if I tried to get like live crabs you guys on the airplane and not like check them, like carry them on the airplane with me, and I was like, I don't know if you can do that. They won't let you bring a bottle of shampoo. But I was like, then it be funny either way, you know what I mean?
Like, did you go ahead?
Keep going?
And I was doing this stuff before I even started social media. I'm the kind of guy will go the extra mile for a laugh for me or somebody else. So I was like, I just thought it would be, you know, an interesting thing to try anyway, So I, uh, yeah, No, I got like a Duffel bag and I built a cooler inside the Duffel bag, put the crabs in there, and then carried them on the airplane. So I have some pictures of me and my crabs on the.
Crabs through the scanner. Did no one just say like, uh, can you open that up for me?
Surprisingly no, I put them through the you know, the X ray machine.
But they'll they'll stop a pair of fingernail clippers.
Yeah, exactly exactly, but they I seen it go through and then it stopped. In my heart, I was like, oh no, and then it went back and then it went through, and I seen the lady like pull the screen a little closer to her face, and it was like four thirty in the morning. So I was like, I was like, there's either chance they're gonna be really grumpy and they're gonna give you a hard time, or they're gonna be like it's too early for this. It was just mariling things like whatever, just like and then
it went the third time and it went through. I was like, oh, we're good, and so I got them behind security and then the only issues I did have was trying to carry them on the actual airplane. They were gonna try to make me check them there for.
That was a size that was a size issue.
They didn't even know what was.
In it, you know what I mean, Like they told them, hey, that bag's too big, and then what Yeah, so she gave me a hard time.
She gave me real hard time. And I was like, you know, I can't check it, you know, I can't. You can't, just like it's got to stay upright, and and she's like why. I was like, well, you know, there's like it's full of seafoods. She's like okay. I was like, like live seafoods.
You know, if you turn turned seafood over, it pours out that's right right.
I was like, I don't want to be you know, carrying this. That was my first leg of the journey. I was like, I don't want to have be carried. That was in Baltimore, actually that I was, you know, having the having the hard time getting on the airplane. So you know, after some heated discussion, uh and some other things, I finally did get it on the airplane with me and into the overhead compartment. They made them here and only two crabs died. I couldn't believe it.
You think, I think we had about three dozen dozen. I was expecting for to, you know, hope. I was hoping to get about, you know, at least fifty percent here alive and well. But I tell you what, man complimentary drinks. You know, on the plane, the crabs were good, you know, give them some snacks. They were just fine.
You know.
Yeah, yeah they do, yeah they do. Level window seat. I do have a picture of me and my crab seeing the world together. These crabs have seen things other crabs could never drink.
Did do you have somebody sitting by you when you pulled that one out?
I did, and it was it was awkward. It was like but the guy kind of just like.
It was just okay.
There's multiple kind of interactions that you have with someone that sister be on a plane. Yeah, there's like the no look, you know, there's like multiple options. There's the no look, no look, no talk. It's just like imaginary wall ignorance is bliss, like, let's not do this, We're just and then and then there's the kind of the southern like nice guy, like anybody you set with you need to greet them, and and where were you at on this.
Uh, you know in Baltimore. That's not really it's more the you know, I'm I'm.
The Baltimore stank guy.
Yeah, I'm upset that you have to be even on the same airplane, even if you cure cancer, like that kind of metality.
So you didn't talk to this person. No, I didn't say anything.
It's kind of just best to uh, you know, I just kind of went about my business and well, you know what, I'm some there's there's days were you're that guy, you know, and these are becoming more and more frequent with my life, oddly enough. But I was just that guy, that guy that had a crab.
So you pulled a crab out the guy beside you acknowledged it.
He kind of just I think that he's he saw it. You know, he looked and he was just kind of like I he kind of acknowledged that he saw it, because I saw his demeanor change and then he just kind of like looked back forward and closed his eyes. I was like, I wonder, it's like it's so early in the morning. Maybe this guy thinks like, there's no way I just saw this crab on. Yeah, And then I wonder.
If he thought it was like cooked seafood and he was like.
Oh wow, or like a guy beside me he's cracking crabs, right.
See. That would have been funny to bring crab, you know, cook crabs and ate him on you eat him on the airplane on the way home. That would have well.
So when he got him here, Josh, we did a big crab boil.
We had steam.
Oh some hate mail in Maryland. The most tragic thing about the whole scene, though, is that Clay made his famous regionally famous coast law.
You know, can you confirm to them that it's regionally famous.
It's got saliv every ca It's going to show up every wedding on the newcom.
Farments even hand chopped the cabbage after Yeah, it's a long story. I put it in the refrigerator to chill. Yeah, you do that with Josh, don't give me a.
Chilling.
And so we then we go steam our crab and we have this huge meal and we leave the coast law in.
The fridge.
Some of Clay's famous coast law on the render before we end today.
I'm kidding, that's a joke, but he got excited. So we started. Tell us how you get how steam crab?
We just put him in a you know, in a pot probably like like a canning pot or something. Yeah, whatever, we use what we got, you know what I mean, and put some water and vinegar in the bottom.
And what's the vinegar do?
The vinegar actually makes them easier to pick, so it keeps the meat from sticking to the shell so bad.
Interesting.
Yeah, So like if you use like I've heard of guys using like sea water, not chesbeake bay water, but like seawater to steam seafood and stuff. We're putting seasoning with salt in it in the water and that seems like a great concept, but it makes the meat stick to the shell work, So if you put a little white vinegar in there, maybe like one third part white vinegar, you know, it'll it'll just water.
And how they figured it out.
I was about to say something.
Okay, give me that diesel. Yeah yeah, how about some w forty No, it didn't work either. What we got left here's some white vinegar.
It's like the same guy that figured out you could eat a crab.
And who was the guy that decided that it didn't stick to the shell?
Bad?
I mean probably the guy selling vinegar.
Yeah, yeah, because the stuff we cooked in vinegar, I'd say the meat stuck.
To the shell last night. I mean when we ate it.
Yeah, it's kind of what happens.
Yeah, it does a little bit. But I'm telling you it can be like there's a lot of times where you're trying to get it and it's like it's like the meat stuck to itself. That's like stuck to the It's hard to describe, but I gave you too. You could probably pick I don't know, we may have to drive.
These are blue crabs, and ironically these actually probably came from Louisiana.
Yeah, Maryland blue crab season is closed right.
Now, so you you but they shipped them live from Louisiana to Maryland, and then you brought them from Maryland to Arkansas.
Well traveled.
These are blue crabs.
What's the scientific name of them calling next is sapitus. And so the males are how big males?
I mean the i'll get up to I mean I've caught like the biggest one I've caught probably is like nine inches point to point across the carapas, which is a giant I mean, that's a massive crab. Usually when they get that mount I didn't, but I have seen mounted crabs, but I don't have amount of crab that would be pretty cool though I sold it, you know. But uh yeah, So you know, they get that big and usually the thing that gets them is either a waterman or they you know, they die a shell rot.
They get so big they can't shit. They don't have the energy shed their show anymore, like males will in theory just keep growing and growing and growing. Oh really, females once they shed from an immature female to a mature female, they never That crab never sheds again.
Interesting, I'm surprised that in.
Like water folklore, there's not a giant crab somewhere like.
A whale or a squid. Six foot crab, well, I mean no, like a twenty foot crab. Oh like there could be.
I mean the thing is, you know, I use crab pots instead of like an alternative method to catching crabs and Maryland be like a trout line where the crab is just holding onto a piece of bait and then you're driving a boat along the line and you put like you have a hook over the side. You put the line over the hook and you're just driving along it and the crabs will hold onto the bait till you get to the surface and then you dip them off the line with a net.
Oh wow.
So in a crab pot you can only catch a crab that will fit through them, so they catch some real giants. You know. Trout lining because it's anything that can hold, you just don't catch as many. Well, there's just different areas you can go. And you know, I mean when you're doing on a really large scale like what I'm doing, you know, you're fishing up to fourteen
hundred crab pots when I'm have two license. Sometimes, you know, crab potton is kind of the way that you would go, you know, to do it on a really big scale.
I see, so Luke.
When I was a boy, I grew up on the Gulf, we used to go crabbing.
Uh huh.
We had my uncle had two crab pots and then we just take the lines where we put the meat through and we'd pitch them out there and we'd catch blue blue crabs there near to Alveston.
Yeah, just to.
They're all over the East Coast the so blue crabs are Are they all over the world or just.
I mean America.
I know they have them in South America and Central America.
Same same species, I believe.
So I've never been there to witness it, but I do think they do. I hear they don't get as big. But you know with East Coast going through, there's a lot of ecological change kind of going on in the northeast, you know, of the East Coast. So, I mean they're even finding blue crabs in Maine, you know, I know, guys that lobster and that.
It doesn't sound like I figured they were already there. They're not.
They're not, No, they're not, but they're starting to show up.
It's a southern Chesapeake Bay is the northern range of the blue.
Crab historically, as you know, yeah, like Chesapea Bay, Delaware Bay. You know, I know they have some in New York and all, but it was kind of like from what I understand, you know, that was kind of as far north, like you know, there's not a fishery for them in New York. Well there, I think maybe there.
Is just a little caveat if if the Arkansas Game and Fish finds some blue crab in the Arkansas River, it didn't.
Have anything to do with us, right right, So yeah, like I guess there is a fishery for blue crabs in New York. I don't know a ton about it, but you know, that was kind of like as far north really find them.
But so when you eat these things, there was you said something when we started, you said, blue crabs are the only thing you could starve while eating. Yeah, it's a surprising, surprisingly small amount of meat on a pretty big looking crab.
Would you have said that, Joha?
But but once you get into it, you realize it's the it's the it's the social aspect, and the meat is very very good and you have to work for it. So it's kind of it's fun.
Generally you supplement the crab with coleslaw.
Yeah, so just quickly tell me how you'd break down crab like to eat it.
So if you just had to describe it to somebody in like a minute.
Yeah, break the claws off, you get into the claws, eat that pretty pain free. Then pick the apron off the bat, flip it over.
It's like the hood.
Yeah, yep, uh yeah.
The bonnet is the bonnet something that's just reproductive.
One of my don't let this this might indicate my socioeconomic status, but one of my biggest interactions with seafoods has been Captain D's and that Captain D's when you get when you get the seafood platter, it actually has a real crab shell stuffed with like you know, crabs and crabs.
It's probably a real crab shell stuffed with like imitation crab.
Yeah. Yeah, I wonder if that was a blue crab.
Possibly it was.
About it's about the size of it as big as a mango.
Yeah, probably a blue crab something like that from our mango tree in the yard.
Carry on, Okay, so you take you take the the top big part of the shell off.
Yep, yeah, you'll pull you'll pull the uh, you know, the carapace off, and then you'll be left with the body. You'll see the lungs and then kind of like the guts in the center. You pull the guts out, looks like ramen noodles. You know, you don't want to eat the forbidden ramen noodles can, but I don't suggest it necessarily. And then they have lungs on either side.
You'll pull that like gills, like fish gills, gills.
There's some kind of thing about it because they live. Yeah, they look like gills. Pull them off. You don't really want to eat them. And then I take the body, break it in two pieces. You know, it'll split into two even pieces, and then uh, you know, I usually flip it over and you'll be able to see the lines down the you know, the underside of the crab. I'll kind of take my two thumbs and break them along those lines, and then you can kind of crack the top and then pull the meat out of all
the little compartments. You know. I like to keep it still attached to the legs. It just gives you, you know, for dipping and whatever else. There's a lot of times we'll dip it.
But now that you're describing it and I've done it, now it helps me to think about it like this. The muscles. There are muscles attached to things that have to move. Yeah, and there's a muscle attached to every leg. So it's a it has eight legs, right, yeah, eight legs and two pinchers something or maybe six. I don't think it's eight legs, six legs, six legs.
It's got a lot.
I think he's got three legs, a swim fin, and a pincher on each side, I believe.
Okay, so that's four appendages. You ain't no craber, Yeah, I ain't no crab. But like every leg has a little tuft of meat, like a tiny little bit of meat, and so you're basically cracking off that leg and pulling it out so that meat kind of comes out with it, and then you have this little little crab whole hand, you know, handle of the leg, and then you dip that in some mouth of butter, touch it into a little little bit of a little seasoning that you have,
and then you eat it. And so you do that with all the legs, and then you've cracked the claws, which not all of them had claws.
Yeah, well sometimes a lot of times the claws fall off when you're steaming them, and all you know, they're in there fighting, you know whatever. They don't go out without a fight. You know, like in a restaurant when you get crabs, a lot of times.
They like, can you turn up the heat of freezing? Right?
In a restaurant, they would either shock the crabs, electrocute them, or ice them. You really like flash ice them. Usually they electrocute them. Wow, right right, the merchant of crustacean death.
Uh.
But that's so that so when they see them, so they don't fight in the pot animal ethics, well, I mean maybe I don't know what I mean. I know in the industry it's like so that because you know, if you're if you're serving crabs at a restaurant, people will complain sometimes they don't have all the claws even if they're like there, they want a crab with all the tendency.
So so you you say, I'm on, you shock them.
It's kind of like a gladiator fight when you throw them all on that pot and the lid on.
Oh yeah, we put the lid on and we had some potatoes and corn on the top, and uh, I think missus you said something about like it's moving.
There was.
The lid starts kind of moving a little bit. I was like, yeah, it's it's just just we'll check.
In on them.
Like what I learned is that it's like extremely like Luke said, it's a it's a full full contact sport. Like you know, we had crabs everywhere. It's like you have a huge pileist stuff. But at first, when I was watching him do it, I was like, holy cow, this is gonna be wild because he was like, don't eat this, don't eat the lungs. There's there's what he called the mustard in him, which is the fat which
just looks like this like pasty yell. I mean, it'd be like you'd think, don't eat that, but it kind of gets on everything and it's actually really good. So there was nothing that I put in my mouth from that crab it didn't taste incredible. So I kind of got it. I was like, Oh, you don't have to be afraid of anything. You just like go to town and it was a it was great.
Full contact sport eating crabs for sure.
Yeah, yeah, like eat like a big crawfish ball on steroids.
YEA, yeah, I can see. I can see how if you really do what you were doing.
I mean, you just if you try not to make a messrab how I'm outside or in the bathtub, because that's you're gonna get it everywhere.
Luke, what's your record of eating crabs? How many crabs have you eaten?
I mean, you know, in one sitting at the I don't know. I mean usually by the time i've you know, if I really get it, you know, the tunnel vision on eating the crabs, it's kind of like everything else just kind of you know, so it's kind of like you just kind of wake up in the zone covered in old bay or ko seasoning.
And I can't remember what happened.
In Arkansas.
I remember bringing these on the plane.
Okay, if I'm going to do a crab boil for family and friends, how many how many that's I'm sorry, crab steam.
You don't do any crab family and friends.
How many crabs do I need to factor in per person?
I mean you could count on, like, you know, if you're if if you're if your friends are from Maryland, I would count on ten crabs man per person. Per person. Oh wow, depending on the size. The size of the crab makes all the difference. Of course, we didn't have any giant extra jumbos because I was trying to can only bring so many on the plane. I was trying to get a little more in case some died.
I sent a picture of that to Michael Rose when they were all let out on the table, you know, his wife from Maryland, and she said, what's everybody else going to eat?
Yeah? I would say if I'm eating like large crabs, which are like my largest are six to six and a half inches across the top, you know, I could count on eating between ten and twelve myself. But I'm a I'm a very efficient crab eater. You know, I don't. I actually don't eat crabs that often. You know what I mean. It's that's like Biggie Small's breaking his eighth crack commandment. Man, you can't get high on your own supply. You know what I meant it.
That reference will play with a lot of bear grease.
All right, that's good. It was so good.
I was gonna say four crabs.
Okay.
After four crabs, I was like, can I just pay corbage? I mean, true story.
I ain't no crabber.
It was like, can you imagine steaming a deer hole a deer, live deer eating with yours jumping out on the table, don't give Yeah.
Great idea.
We'll be doing that next man.
I hate to change the topic from crabbing, but we got some serious conversation to have here about a podcast that I've been working on and excited about for probably over a year.
Like the sequence of the way these things happen when I do.
A series is you It's not always a year, but usually I'm reading a book or doing something that's connected to something that i'll will materialize much later. I think last summer, maybe last spring, I started reading Roderick Nash's book.
Wilderness in the American mind. That book, this book was written. Let me see what the copyright date is.
It's gonna blow your mind. This book first edition published in nineteen sixty seven.
Oh wow.
This book is considered the quote unquote book of genesis of.
Let's see I'm looking for.
This book is a mandatory prelude to any modern treatment of conservation problems. Here's another one when Roderck Gash, when Roderick Nash's Wilderness in the American Mind first appeared in nineteen sixty seven. It was justly praised as the first real idea book and environmental history. Indeed, a classic study and greatly influenced. And that's not what I'm looking for. This is the book of genesis of American wilderness. This guy, this guy was a was a like getting his PhD
in nineteen sixty seven, wrote this book. When I read this book, I cannot fathom what a human would have to go through to gather the information he did and cover it in such an incredible way. This is a top five book for me in the world. Oh wow, Yeah, like massively influential because it unveiled for me things that were happening inside of me that I didn't know why. And that's something I'm very interested in all areas of life.
I popped out of the womb.
In nineteen seventy nine in Arkansas, and I have this view of the world, these ideas about different things. How much of that did I come up with on my own? How much of it I came up because of my individual family. How much did I come up with it because of the culture that I'm raised in. How much did I come of it, come up with it because I am an American, Like where does this stuff come from?
And to me, that's all real important because you will live a life of deception if you think, I mean this whole idea of being like a freethinker and like we're these independent people that just came up with all this stuff on our own.
And nobody tells me what to do.
I'm it's like, dude, you're a product of your culture because your culture valued that. Your culture valued you saying that you're the only one who ever thought of this, and you're this autonomous man, and I love that. But what I'm saying is that came from somewhere. This whole idea of like rugged individualism of the American is.
You're influenced by everything is an influence, either positive or negative.
Well, and and a whole lot of the way that we think.
That unless you're ste.
Well, we're gonna get to that.
No.
I I when when Rodert Nash started talking about wilderness, I was like, yeah, yeah, And I had no idea he was talking about all this deep history about Oh.
I mean this was way different than like the Donnie Baker story.
I mean, like radically like if an alien came down and analyzed this podcast, they.
Would be like two different people must.
Have made that for for for because it's like very different, which I like. I like that it went from this very perersonal, very personal story to something I don't view it as academic, but it is philosophical, and philosophy not being to me, philosophy is really functional because to have an understanding of who you are, you have to kind of know why. And I've always loved the idea of wilderness but also wilderness with the capitol W.
But so this.
Book just specs it out and so much I got to give Roderick Nash credit. So much of what I talked about in this first episode came came from this book. And I tried to get Roderick Nash, who's still alive, he's in his eighties. Tried to get him on this year podcast and he wouldn't. He wouldn't do it.
And I'm not afraid to say that because it's just the truth.
But good.
I have a lot of respect for what he wrote. But but holy smokes, did I have a cast of characters though? Uh, Doctor Dan Flores, incredible guy. Uh just came up with a new book called Wild New World. He wrote kyot America. He wrote American Serengetti, which if you haven't read American Serengetti, you ain't no crabber.
And there's not pictures, and I ain't read it most crabbers probably.
American Serengetti is basically about the plis to Scene North America. Just it's it's it. It's just mind boggling Britos. We're gonna I had Koby Morehead came over here the other day and told me how to make that battery pack stop beeping, and I forgot what he said, so every time it beats.
In this podcast, we're giving one of the listeners that Coonskin had not true.
American Serengetti talks about Plice to Scene North America and basically that we had more charismatic megafauna than even Africa.
What we looked at.
You know, we had we had the bison, We had like multiple giant cats. We had horses, we had ground two thousand pound giant groundsloth. We had cave bears, we had dire wolves. I mean, it was it was like a it was like Jurassic Park here. Anyway, Dan Floores wrote a book on that.
He's number one.
Number two is doctor Sarah Dant. It's it's Dan's wife. I think that's a I think the world knows that what.
Their dinner table conversation has probably got a.
Little they're like the most interesting people time.
So she she's a professor at Weaber University in Utah, and she wrote this book called Losing Eden, which is an environmental history of the West. It is like so so much packed with deep human history on the landscape of North America. Kind of mind blowing book too, And so she's on there. And then Steve Ardella, who I'm interested to see what y'all's take on the Steve Ardelli section was. Steve's always great to have on He's He's yeah great. And then one of my favorites, Hal Harry,
who Hal Harry and is a character. If you don't know how then you ain't no crabber. But Hal Harry and great guy.
Where to start?
I mean, I don't you know you said that the last the Donnie Baker This really aren't related, but I mean it kind of is, though. I mean, you can't tell me even though Donnie Bakery what he did, I mean, he I guarante you know, he shared all the same interests in the wild and the that we do, you know, and that everybody else did. So really it's kind of almost the origin story of the whole thing. You know.
It's like, yeah, starting you just had the Franks before the beans little bit, you know what I'm saying.
Yeah, yeah, well, I don't think it's very.
It's not that unrelated. It's like, you know, his desire to be out in the wilderness and take to ear and do whatever else, even though it went a little sideways there for a minute. Yeah, you know, probably ideas.
So he he was.
Going to an area that had unmolested animals that were easy to hunt.
Yeah, exactly me.
That was the most interesting thing. One of the most interesting things in the podcast is.
That this what we now view as a love.
Of wilderness, and that's like federally preserving wilderness areas goes back deep into our epigenetics, as Dan Flora has said, when we loved places that were absent of humans because we could go there and be successful hunting because the animals were undisturbed.
I mean, that's like wildly fascinating.
I feel like this podcast made me more contemplative about it than I've ever been because I think I think when you say the word wilderness, it does evoke an emotional response to a lot of people. And I thought, I thought, what is what is wilderness really? You know,
beyond the definition? What does it mean to me? Because you know, we've we've traveled a lot with our kids to national parks and whatnot, and you know, you see the capital W wilderness and you kind of go out there and you see the paved parking lot and you see all the trails, and you know the signs that say.
That wouldn't be Capital W wilderness, that would be a national park.
Well national park, but we have seen wilderness areas and it just you're like, that doesn't it is? I mean if you can.
Drive it, yeah, so well you're talking about national parks.
Yeah, yeah, But but the the idea of wilderness is to me is captivating with a side of terrifying, because I thought.
You were going to say captivating with a capital C.
No, captivating like like I'm I'm I'm I am just bewildered by it and I'm drawn to it. But at the same time, there is that that aspect of of like it's it's wild. I mean it is like it's it's unpredictable. And uh, going back to what I talked about this before. If we're going to talk about wilderness, you can't talk about it without the movie The Wilderness Family.
And but you know, I think about that, that idea of being dropped off in the middle of nowhere and being forced to make something of it, and uh, there there there are certain things like we talked about about unmolested animals, but also at the same time, there is a raw wildness about it. I thought that. I thought the etymology of your your word there was fascinating.
I got chills listening to that yesterday in the truck coming coming home from squirrel hunting.
So a stringer squirrels in the back truck.
I love it.
But I'm excited about I'm excited about hearing more about it because it is it is a it is a thing that is unique. I'd never thought about wilderness being something that when you lose it, you don't get it back, right, I'm not. It's hard to wrap your mind around let it come back. Yeah, it's it's done. So we have we have a potentially extinctible resource that really does need to be cared for, and so I appreciate the deep dive.
Well, I think it's important to understand like this broader scale of humanity, humans as a species coming out of being hunter gatherers, moving towards civilization, which civilization would be defined by agriculture and domestic animals and congregation of people which would have increased birth rates, produced a lot of
more security. As people were coming out of wilderness into that there was there was this this very long standing human idea that wilderness was bad, even though we were drawn to it as hunter gatherers to go into places that were unexploited. When all of a sudden there was
a new option, we were very interested in becoming. And again, civilized is a politically incorrect term that I'm going to use because we just have to to understand what we're talking about, you know, because when you say civilized, it insinuates that there are humans that live uncivilized lives, and
so that's politically incorrect, but you understand what I'm saying. So, when all of a sudden the security of civilization was here, there was like, let's say, ninety nine percent of people were very interested in getting to that so that they didn't die when they were eighteen years old from starvation or from a wooly man.
With tusk in the butt.
You know, you'll have that.
Took it right in.
The tables shifted as civilization then became dominated the face of the earth, and then all of a sudden, there's this artifact where we woke up in the eighteen hundred's, the Romantic era, and all of a sudden it became cool to love wilderness. So I mean, it's like this, like this sloshing from one side to the other. Wilderness is our enemy. We have to get to civilization. And then it became civilization is the enemy. That's what Threau and Emerson and mirror, and we have to get back
to wilderness. And then today we live in a world that's so lopsided in civilization.
There's those of us who.
Are scrapping and wanting to interact with and go to a place that's so such an anomaly across the face of the earth, where we could go and experience a place that people don't live.
That is a way, you know, that's interesting.
You think about you think about I'm sorry, well, you just think about the you talked about the romanticism of it, and in our realm where we work here, the majority of the products that we sell, that we offer for sale, that we use, are all geared to make going into.
The wilderness easier. Yeah, you know, I mean that's how we make a living.
Boots and water and backpacks and being lighter weight and being able to carry more stuff with you that you need to survive at a time out there. When back in those days it was hard, you know, you had to. It was just a bigger struggle when and we're doing it now not for survival, but for pleasure, for fun, to feel that need that we have that we wake up that we long to get away from everything that's around us, all these light bulbs and stuff. You know,
we all the time I'm here, we're working, we're hunting. Yesterday, I'm answering text messages and emails while I'm on the back of that mule. And we get out there when there's none of that. It's a whole different way to look at a sunrise, or or the way to look at riding down the road or walking down the road when you're so far removed from it. I had the thought that in there where. He said that it's in
our nature to long for those places to go. And I may be I'm obviously paraphrasing what he said, but what I got out of what he was talking about was it's in our DNA and our genetic code to want to go to the wild place. My wife thinks if she's if we're in a town that doesn't have a target, that's about as wilderness as he gets.
That's a wilderness there.
She don't want any part of that.
She wants to go to the opposite direction, so, you know, but she wouldn't like to go to in the middle of living, in the middle of Baltimore, or even even in the middle of Little Rock that shit, that's too congestion. She wants somewhere in the happy medium that still got the security that you can go here and here and there with very little trouble. Me, on the other hand, give me a color lamp and a pocket full of shelves and a shotgun and I'm gonna be fine just where I could get away from people.
So there, at some point, you know, it was a pendulum.
At some point, some folks still still followed that, yeah, that that want or that need to do something, and some folks didn't. I mean, they stopped at the edge. You know, this is far enough, but there's still others that want to go further out. And it had to be that way, or this country wouldn't have wouldn't be where it is now. Yeah, you know, with exploration, that was just something that I thought about.
Luke, what do you think, you know, I just kind of had a thought about kind of the irity of like you were talking about, you know, human's desire to preserve,
recognize and preserve wilderness and wild places. And it's kind of the same theme here is where everything is going so full circle, where like, in an effort to do that, we have places like Yellowstone, which I to me is the least wild wilderness that you could experience, you know what I mean, right right exactly, Like so it's sort of like it It's just I think it's just one of the common denominators of human nature, you know what I mean, the same thing that drives people like us
to go experience places where there is no one else the same you know. That's that's what the people that discovered new continents and you know, Americas and whatever else had in them you know what I mean. But there's always you know, I think it's getting kind of bred out of us, you know what I mean. It used to be one in ten people. Now it's one in a million people that want to go have that desire to like go out and see that. But you know, I don't know my thought.
You said something about scarcity earlier about how do you remember you said scarcity is the humans always gravit towards cavitite, towards what's scarce, and.
So I kind of just won't what you can't have. I mean, nature is kind of like that.
When we were forging a living out of the wilderness, we wanted more security. Then now that we're forging a living out of civilization, we want to reach back to something more wild.
It's it's just I think humans desire to to to really just kind of want what is scarce and want what they kind of can't have. You know. It's like it's one of the downfalls of man. You know, it's one of the things that sets us apart animal.
Which is in a sense the antithesis of wilderness, because the only way to keep wilderness wilderness is a bunch of.
People out of it, you know what I mean.
Yeah, so it's like, well, you have these people who want it, but how many people being there makes it not wilderness?
Right right?
That's why I would saying, where is the line?
Will you guys are totally rooting episode two? I wasn't even going to bring it up.
No.
Yeah, there's there's a major philosophical problem with wilderness. Yeah, is that wilderness is a wilderness because nobody's.
There because you're not there exactly, So one as you go there, then is it still wilderness? And Okay, even though we have this natural desire just baked into us to experience you just.
Listened to episode.
Let's just now, let's go right to the next render.
No that that we get into that pretty extensively about these issues with wilderness. And there's another big issue that I'm not gonna bring up just yet unless one of you all leaks it out on ACT.
I have this desire in me to do that drives me to do what I do for a living. You know, this is crab And it's like this kind of desire to be where people aren't, you know, where there's like an an like an even playing field between you and nature in a way, you know what I mean, where like you know your your rules and you know, kind of man's societal boundaries don't apply to you know, like like the crabs, fish the bay where I'm at. It doesn't nothing, none of that matters, you know what I mean.
That is all off the table. It's between you and you know and nature. You know what I mean. It's a wild place and I'm drawn to it just for no It's just it's in me, you know what I mean. And so you know, I live in this in just blow like Baltimore City. I mean, there's ton people are nuts to butts there, you know, it's just we're jammed up.
But I have this desire to get to the closest place I can and spend the most amount of time there, even if it's a hundred times more work, you know, just because I have this thing baked into me for like this longing for wild things in wild places and lake. So I think it just kind of it's different for everybody.
Of it because it's not a legacy thing with him, right right, He's like a first gen generation crabber in his family.
So there's something there somewhere. Yeah.
Well, and and your example is relevant to all of us, is that the idea of wilderness you can experience anywhere, like you and the Chesapeake Bay, which is not federal wilderness, with the Capitol w which is not wilderness by many definitions, but you're having that experience of like what hal Harry said, He said, wilderness is a feeling where you enter into a place that's no longer governed by the laws of men. You're governed by ancient laws and in it, boy, I mean that's for real.
Like I ain't read that book, I promise, Well, but how Harry and said that on the podcast.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And.
That's that is another critique of wilderness, Josh, is that.
Dan Flora has talked about how we've sacralized.
He said, a lot of different groups have sacralized wilderness to the point that you might get the idea that that tree out in your yard is not nature too.
Did you see what I'm saying?
Like you minimize, you minimize something that's wilderness. On my property right here, I could experience that feeling of wilderness.
I mean it's kind of funny, right. I have a small piece of.
Land and when I go to particular parts of it, it's the wildest part of the land that I have, which is not wilderness by any definition, but it feels I have that feeling of this is this is a special place.
This is furthest from my I.
Mean, I feel I feel that way when I'm on the river, like I'm in a spot where not everybody can get to, you know, when I'm in my boat and I'm you know, cruising down there, that I have that feeling like of there is something wild and connects me to nature inside of it. That's just mine in the moment.
Yeah, I can experience, you know, I have been out crabbing and I am experiencing, you know, that same thing. Well, there's a million dollar yacht going by me fifty feet away, you know what I mean. So We're in the same place, doing the same thing. But I'm experiencing, you know, my idea of wilderness and this guy's probably just drinking michelob ultras at nine am, you know what I mean. So it's like you can it's just such a weird thing.
It's like a totally separate you know, the feeling I guess of wilderness and then you know actual wilderness too. I would guess probably two different podcasts.
Really, well, you may have tapped into episode three there.
I didn't mean.
To now, No, No, I'm kidding.
I think that that. I think that the the spiritualizing of wilderness. Really it's true. You know, I think we've all experienced it. If you've been somewhere remote and you've seen a breathtaking mountain scape with a sunrise that just blows your mind, how the creator could have made that
for you to see that morning. I think a big aspect to it is the the removal of noise from your mind, from your life, from your agenda that makes that thing that much more intense and gives you that that experience.
Yeah, what's what's unique about that is no people have different words to describe it.
That there's no humans that denied that that happens. Yeah, like there's you know, you use the term creator.
There would be people that would not use that term. The one thing that's for certain is that people, whether they believe in a god or don't believe in a god, have a spiritual And you know, people might have different definitions of what a spiritual experience would be, but nobody is arguing that when you stand on top of some beautiful summit and see a sunrise, that there is a sublime feeling like the Guy Burke he popularized that word. The sublime is like the overlap of the natural and
the spiritual. And that is what is not up for debate, is that something happens that's bigger than just normal human stuff. Which I think that's incredible. Yeah, that we're not arguing about this thing that happens. And it would make sense maybe even biologically that it doesn't make sense that that would happen unless we were coded to respond to these things, which I think we are.
Yeah.
They you know, they talked about people gravitating toward art paintings and stuff that was in Yeah, that was the trees were just limbs or whatever. We're just laden with fruit that hadn't been picked.
Animals that were that were didn't look scared.
Do you remember the guy go ahead, Well, I.
Was just you're and I experience in Canada and in Saskatchewan when when the bears were the famous bear that poked his head in the in the blind on us and all the bears that were walking around us, they had no.
Fear of us.
They didn't they they were actually they were absolutely unmolested and they had no knowledge that that was one of my top experiences ever.
Yeah, they just weren't afraid of us.
They weren't afraid.
Do you remember the guy had on from I even I don't even remember which bear grease it was, but one of the bear greases where a guy told us that people respond to landscape art with humans that are that are in cover. Like so if you had if you had a picture of a group of people like out in the middle of a field, that you would that that that you you would you would be more drawn to a picture of people that were close to a.
Bluff because there's a vulnerability.
Yeah, yeah, it's kind of the same thing, it's different, it's yeah. Yeah.
Dan Flores was talking about how we respond to unmolested scenes of calm animals, fruit trees that hadn't been picked, like stuff like that. But but there's there's like deeper, there's stuff so coded into us that like we want to be close to cover. Anyway, I just thought human response to landscape art is a.
Photograph of a bison goring a National Park visitor.
Yeah, I myself. You get what you pay for.
Well, then do you think the coating is just a desire for food, water, and shelter. Well, I mean it's if it's the same kind of response, it's no doubt.
Yeah, yeah, I mean it's there are things built inside of us that help us survive. But I don't think that exclude that that comes at the exclusion of what Josh said. I do believe that the beauty and intricacy and architecture of the natural world what it does for me, and I think I speak for a lot of people, it does draw me to a creator like I. You know, there's the old thing about if you if you walked out into a field and you found a watch.
Land and the field Josh, okay, you pick it up and you know what time it was. You would know what time it was, but you would go who put this watch here?
Yeah?
Who made this watch?
Or a stone point?
And you walk out to nature and we see something that's far more complex, far more designed, far more intricate, far more intelligent than the making of a watch, and we we say, well, should the question be who made this?
Right?
So to me, that like a sunrise, evokes inside of me a connection, a desire for a connection to my creator that is not exclusive to it's also deeply biological and epigenetics like my my biophilia.
EO.
Wilson wrote a book called Biophilia, which means that we have Phelia means like an obsession with We have an obsession with life.
We're the only species.
On planet Earth that has an obsession with other animals lives other than like a prey, like.
A predator and a prey or whatever.
But like we want to domesticate animals were interested and that is been the biological thing that's made us so successful, is this love of life, and it's like that's deeply coated inside of us. I think that's also a big part of what makes us human and has this consciousness. But what I'm saying is is that you can have this spiritual thing happening and the natural thing at the same time.
What we're we gonna say, Luke.
So I was just thinking this is maybe jumping ahead or whatever, but it was just episode four that was the Ranella thing I was thinking about. So he's talking about, what was it the North Slope of Alaska, the Boks the most wild. Yeah, well, what if he's sitting there glassing and he sees a goat with a collar on it, you know what I mean? Does that make it less wild to him? Does that take away? Is it no longer wild because that animal has been molested by man?
You know what I mean? Like, I mean, what what's that scenario? Like, where's I guess I don't know if that goes into where the line is. I'd be curious to say to I'd be curious to hear what he has to say about something like that.
He's he's addressed that before. He said he would run it for him, really because another human has already touched that.
You know, I kind of have the same I sort of have the same kind of thought. I was just thinking about it, like, you know, that's the most wild place you can think. But what if that's what he you know, saw there? Yeah, Like what would you have to say about There's.
A lot of paradoxes inside it today because because of the scarcety of wilderness, you know, the question is is there really even wilderness left?
I mean on the coach man's you know, trying to preserve wilderness, you know what I mean, that Steve makes it less wild? It's just like.
I mean, there are some places on Earth that are untouched I mean there's some places where I think things exist that we don't. I mean, definitely in the sea, you know what I mean, we have we have places where humans have never even seen.
Crabbers, only only crabbers.
But he said humans.
But there's some places in Africa that are that are pretty that they don't think they're so adverse to.
Where are you getting this information about Africa?
I was reading about It's been years since I read about this, but there they think there are creatures in there that humans haven't seen.
Right deep in the jungle. But on a landscape level, I don't think Africa is like the place to think about.
I'm not arguing. Yeah, I see your point, but I think.
The bigger, the bigger unmolested landscapes in in the world are in the in the closer to the north, the poles, I mean antarticle.
Obviously, it's probably the would.
Would be more more abundant in places that are more harsh, like harsh climates.
Yeah, because humans are wanting to live in places that are favorable, comfortable, and so.
That's why there's no wilderness in Kansas, right.
It's it's all very profitable.
What we're going to talk about too, in in episode two Here We Go, is that there's a thing called the rock and ice wildernesses. The wildernesses that we have today are preservation of places that were unusable, and so that's the reason we don't have very many prairie wildernesses. Imagine having a section of prairie in Kansas that Britos are ready giving away our second coonskin cap. Imagine having a four million acre wilderness.
And what do you think?
You know, you say the word wilderness and I immediately think of mountain, mountain trees.
I mean, you have been marketed to your whole life. Oh, that that's what wilderness is.
Yeah, yeah, you just the afropet kind of a funny thing is like if you were to ask a lot of people like the most wild thing you can think of or wild place, like, so many people would probably say something like Mount Everest.
You know, yeah, it's mountains there is just because of.
The people and you know whatever else it's.
Just lines of people. Yeah. No, And it was interesting. So we're building a case that.
Not not not that it's better or worse, but that the American worldview on wilderness is different than the rest of the world. And I think by the end of this that we're going to quantify that to a pretty heavy degree.
You're trying to tell me that Canadians don't care about wilderness.
Well that's what That's what Steve Nill was trying to tell us. No, and his his point.
Was I left that in there, honestly just because it was entertaining.
When I was having this conversation with.
Steve, I was like, this is working out like I thought it would, and then uh, but I felt like it was valuable because I want to include it because.
He's right, like, we're not.
I don't want this to be like, Wow, look how great Americans are. We're superior to the rest of the world because we've preserved wilderness. But at the same time, America was the food America pioneered for I.
Believe this to be true.
And I don't say this with arrogance, and we have international listeners.
Don't get your feelings hurt.
America pioneered modern ideas on conservation wilderness for a lot of the world to follow. I mean, we were the first place that had designated wilderness areas. We're the first place that had public lands that were open for people to hunt, trap fish, recreate like nobody else was doing that.
We also have the in America, we had the luxury to do that.
It's yes, you know what I mean, Yes, Like that's it's not just from the merit of our own soul.
It's like we exactly.
You know, I just know from from dealing with all the things that you know, I'm kind of dealing with the with the bay right now. It's like when I really think about it and you think, you know the whole you know, we're dealing with issues in the bay, but you know they're dealing with issues a thousand times
worse all over the world. And you're like, if you're going to stop the pollution or this or that, like you got to fix it in China, and well, you know, being able to have the luxury of caring about the wilderness and the animals that live there is a very you know, it's a privilege, you know what I mean.
It's a First world product of economic Yeah, economic.
Having it, having economics, having money, prosperity.
Yeah, because in a lot of the world, luxury in a lot of the world, they they've exploited massive amounts of what they have just because they could, and and and we're not exempt either. Part of America's success on preservation of wilderness was simply that we had.
A huge continent, you know, uh, filled.
With resource, yes, and they use the resource there to like become kind of it's like we just barely you know what I mean, on a graph, just barely crossed right before it was too late, exactly Like we came here basically, you know, took from the land as much as we could, but it put us in a position where we were now we you know, we have the luxury of caring about the land that we had left, you know, saving this last little bit took nine percent to get there. To be able to have that luxury.
In reality, I think.
Yeah, that's great, that's great.
Then we were able to take that we you know, we had the privilege of taking that five percent and preserving it.
You know.
So it's like I think America just barely saved it, you know what I mean, like a lot.
I was I was surprised to learn that five percent of America is federal capital w wilderness.
Five that's a lot.
Where the where are the other like bulks of that in different areas.
Alaska, If you had listened to the podcast, you would have heard that, uh oh, that they're eight hundred and six I'm kidding, Josh, eight hundred.
And six federal wilderness.
Right.
The bulk of the the big chunks and volume are in Alaska. Like here's huge wilderness in Alaska, and then the Bob Marshall is a huge wilderness that's in Montana.
The Cellway.
There's somebody's gonna tell me I'm crazy. The Bob Marshall. How big is the Bob Marshall. Somebody look up how big the Bob Marshall is. It is a massive chunk of land. We have a lot of wildernesses in the East that are very small, like under ten thousand acres, which are extremely valuable, but out I mean, you could fit all of Georgia's wilderness, every one of them into like a teeny tiny corner of the Bob Marshall.
More than a million and one point five million acres one.
Point five marshall.
Yeah.
Look up some of the other wildernesses in Alaska, like the biggest Alaska wilderness with the capitol.
W I would argue that the reason those places are still so wild is because it was not easy to get there and profit off of the land. You know, that is that's true?
Yeah?
Yeah, there's no giant cities in Alaska that sprawl across the half the place, you know, because it's just hard to get there, and it's not probitable, you know.
And it's it's it's wilderness is extremely controversial.
It's and it's controversial today.
Fifty seven and a half million acres of designated wilderness in Alaska. Wow, out of two hundred and twenty two million federal acres.
Canada is is that? I mean, well, Canada is not like ninety percent probably, I mean, but there they.
Don't have federal designation. Well, I don't know, I don't know.
I mean the Tree Queensland up there, our Kingsland now Crown called Crown Land.
Yeah, whatever it is.
Uh yeah, I don't know if Canada probably has some type of wilderness, but I wouldn't know what it's called. It's not the same as ours. I mean, it's not We're not counting their land in ours, you know. I mean, even though is basically the fifty first state. We all know that.
You're not making any friends right now.
Canada.
I love you.
I love you so much, I really do. I love Canada. It's a lot of time in Canada.
The geese are excellent.
Well, for fear that we're going to spoil the rest of these episodes, this has been a good It's been a great start.
Yeah. I love this topic.
I'm serious, I love it, and I do think that even if I would hope that people that are human, the attention span is so small as possible, someone could be like, I'm not interested in wilderness and not listening to this podcast. I would hope if they did, they be drawn in and be like I should be I should at least have an understanding this because we're gonna see how much this idea is tied into American identity really with the frontier thesis, Frederick Jackson Turner, You're gonna
hear about it, but this is a good place to start. Luke, thanks for coming down, man.
Thank you much for having me. I really appreciate it. It's uh, it's pretty wild. I thought i'd ever be here doing this, truly, so I'm truly grateful that you guys are allow me to come down here.
And if you come back, bring more crab don't come right.
A technology we can make it happen.
Yeah, we know how to get we know.
Now, let's I have a little watch list.
Now this could be, but just have them drop shipped here when you come.
Now, if one day my dream is that one day every t s A board in America will have a picture of a blue crab a circle with an X across, I'll be like Luke would.
Be my my mark on society.
No, no live blue crabs on the plane. All right, guys, thanks so much,