Well, Steve, thanks for being on, man.
I appreciate the chance. Sorry it took so long and I was late and everything.
Man, I've been last night.
I was actually trying to put together, like, how would I if I were going to write a doctrinal statement on Steve Vanella? Like what what kind of thesis would I come up with? Because you're you're all over the place with so many projects, especially the last say three or four years. So many projects. Hm, So let me tell you.
What I was thinking.
You can't I need I'm going to write this down because I need this.
Well, you can't. You can't say. You can't say that at Steve's core is a hunter.
You can't really say that because if you if you run that out to its most logical conclusion, then some things don't make sense. You can't say, at Steve's core, he's like a a wild game enthusiast. You are, but it's not your or there's something else. And so you can't say that you're an outdoorsman at your core, because there's other things that, if it runs out to its most logical conclusion, don't make sense either. So I was thinking about it, and I think you could I mean,
it's used. You can crack me from the wrong but but I think at your core is a storyteller.
Mm yeah, I usually will say right, or an outdoorsman, but sure, I like storyteller. I don't know if that's the kind of thing you can say about yourself, though, you know, it's more like maybe something someone else has say.
Well, look, I think when I think about you, there was a there was a moment for me. And this might sound weird, but there was a moment on an airplane somewhere. It's probably three years ago, and I'm watching Meat Eater on my phone on the plane, and to bring in the scene, it's like, you know, a mountain scale ape and and time laps, clouds, fog, a rolling river turning over on itself. This like real melodic, droning
piano song, real pensive starts playing. And then and then the camera's on the ground and here comes you know, these boots walking by, and that's that's our hero walking by. And and who's he with. He's not, he's not with a celebrity to hunt with. He's with his brother. You know, me, coming coming from a family, I got two brothers. Here here he is with his brother. So I'm locked in on the scene, right, And I watched this the whole episode.
It's called Walking the Clouds. And you guys are you guys are doll sheep hunting, which is the hardest of the of the hunts in North America, right arguably. And you guys, you chase these sheep. Sometimes you see them, sometimes you don't. Sometimes you see a legal ram, but you can't get to them.
You run out of time that the show ends and you never got one.
Yeah, and I thought I watched the whole show and I was actually entertaining you.
Did you feel you didn't feel like you got ripped off?
No, that's the crazy thing I want to say. I didn't feel ripped off. I felt drawn into a story of a storyteller. This is how you ended it. This is what you said in the end. You get to a point where you just have to give up and go home. The land beat you or the sheep beat you just by running out the clock. Now, all you have is a long walk out and plenty of time to spend in your own head to think about how you'll get too old to do this. Eventually, getting back
into places like this could break your body. Knees give out, backs go bad, lungs, get tired and half useless. That's the painful thing to look ahead to. But it's not nearly as bad as to think about. Leaving this place breaks your body, the other breaks your heart.
Scene ends, show over.
That's a story till that's all sheep hunting right there.
That's incredible.
Oh, thanks, man, I appreciate that. I appreciate that. We used to worry when we started doing need Eater. We used to really worry about what would happen to you if you had unsuccessful episodes, But we didn't. You know, you put all that time into going and filming one, and you kind of map out your year, you know, and you're gonna go make let's say you're gonna go make eight episodes, and you go spend six seven days on something and you don't get anything.
When we started doing it, we didn't have any options, you know.
We had to figure out a way to to run with them. The impulse would have been that you'd bury it somehow, you know, we just didn't have It was funny because the decision was made for us.
We just didn't have a way to get the time back.
Yeah.
So we learned how to do them, and it was.
It was, yeah, when you're out, you're really pushing as hard as you can to be successful. Like I like, you know, I like to be successful, and you're pushing really hard to be successful. And when you're not, I never think to myself, oh great, we weren't successful. Now we can make a skunker episode. And that's what we would call him, is making skunkers. Yeah, but we just learned to, you know, we learned to deal with them.
And it was fun because it was one of the ways in which I kind of fell in love with the audience is because people, for the most part, were supportive of it.
I remember getting one email or in the early.
Days of making The Meat Eater, I remember getting an email from a guy and he had said, I have enough.
Failure and disappointment in my life. I don't need to get it from my TV.
That's a man trained, depressed, so depressed man.
He's just been trained by the mindless hunting shows that have come for decades that the whole trailer is the is the kill shot, and the animal falls and like and the music plays and and it's all leading to that, and then your show comes around and sometimes you don't get anything.
And for me, I'm like, yeah, sometimes we don't. Sometimes sometimes we didn't don't and uh, but man, it wasn't.
I'm promised and you do.
It wasn't because we weren't trying.
That's evident in the show Man. That's evident.
And and then your your storytelling though it's uh, I mean was it somebody Was it a producer or a manager, or was somebody like, hey, Steve, now we got to start writing books, we got to start getting your voice recorded for uh campfire stories. I mean, you took this, this whole this whole universe of your your world, your your brand has gotten it's so wrapped around the storytelling. And hunting has always been about the storytelling from the beginning of time.
It's always a it's never just about the kill. It's about the setup.
It's about the campfire before the hunt, and the campfire after and eating.
Of the animals. It's always been that. And this is you.
Is this somebody else's idea or were you the guy that was like, hey, let me tell the story.
No. I started out like I was a writer before anything, you know, when I was, when I was a kid, I wanted to be a even I mean beyond being kid. And from time I was ten to twenty two, I was really pushing to be a fur trapper and that was my main interest. And I became interested in writing. I went to graduate school for writing, so I'm like a trained writer, formally trained, and uh started doing magazine work. I did books before I ever did any kind of television.
You know.
In fact, doing TV stuff came out of doing books, and then doing doing a podcast and other stuff came out of being a writer. So you know, I was born a writer. I'll die a writer in a lot of ways.
I you know, earlier were Joe, I'm not joking, but you were bringing up how to describe it, and I said that I I always tell you know, I was described like and I'm an author and outdoorsman or a writer and outdoorsman.
I feel like the very stuff I've been involved in is I look at it all from the perspective of being a writer, you know first and foremost, and then you know, doing the writing on the show is I kind of think of like, you know, I'm hosting it, you know, but I kind of more think of I'm like, I'm like writing it, you know.
That's that's how I picture in my.
Head, even if a camera wasn't there, you're writing. You're writing the story, whether you're just telling to your kids or telling to your friends, this is just who you are.
Yeah, I think that that's a little bit.
Yeah, I think that that's that way. But I should also admit that when I'm just out hunting around, you know, by my hunting with my bodies or hunting with my with my kids, I'm I'm pretty far away from I'm
pretty far away from thinking about narrative, you know. I mean, I guess I like, you know, we'll tell a lot of stories, and we relive a lot of stories around home, But I don't for me to sit down and make sense of it for somebody else, for me to sit down and like tell a story that would engage someone who wasn't there or doesn't share in the memory, I need to like to sit down and be very deliberate about that process, right, you know.
I think I even.
I spend so much time reliving recapturing experiences when I'm having the experiences, I'm not I'm not really in that space. Right. That's why if you think of like if you look at the Medeater show, there's a lot of what we call VO, right, it's VO heavy, and and we write like like I write the VO, so an editor will write like a scratch like an editor will make placeholders for VO, and then I come in and write the VO.
So one could look like if you look generally in production, the way you would generally view it is you would view that that VO is not good. So if you're watching nonfiction television and there's a lot of VO, you might look and be like it's emblematic of or a symptom of poor hosting because the host in the field didn't do the job. So then you're stuck filling in all these blanks and doing all this interstitial stuff and making all these connections because you screwed up in the
field and didn't give it to camera. So it's normally, like a lot of producers with regard doing vos, it's a big giant band aid for what didn't get done, for what didn't get.
Executed properly in the field.
But we came to it because I'm like writing an AMA writer and was first known writer. We came to it viewing it like like VO was an asset for us. It wasn't just a crutch, it was a strength. And so we would just we would kind of you could almost be a little bit lazier filming, knowing that you were going to build this this vo narrative that was
going to help you patch all this stuff together. And so you know, as we kind of like put the show together, that's just sort of what we fell into where we fell into it being like very reliant, very reliant on narration vo narration, right, And I've always enjoyed that man.
That me too, And I understand that critique, but I don't agree with that critique because I do the vo from meat Eater is what drew me in. And no one ever told that to Anthony Bourdain. His whole show was was successful because of that in its unique way, because of his writing and his vow work, and it would it would be a really shallow critique to say that's just because he wasn't very good in the field, he wasn't good on the fly.
Well, you know, the guys, the whole the people I started making meedatter with.
Were all Boordain crew.
Yeah, yeah, you know, so that was and it's funny. I'm just did a show, you know, the History Channel show we're launching right now. The show runner that I worked with on that show was the first camera guy that ever filmed all the first media up and then he became a He was a camera guy for Boordain and then became a producer for Boordain and he actually produced the Bourdain's last full show. They never cut it into an episode, but his last full show in Italy
was this same guy produced it. So you know, I wasn't buddies with him. I knew him, but we weren't like buddies at all Boordain, you know, I mean, like like I knew him, but we weren't pals.
But anyway, there was a lot of.
There was a lot of overlap in us both winding up with the same production place, winding up with a lot of the same crew, both coming from writing. You know, in some ways I think that maybe when when I started into that, there was a template that I walked into that had been established by him. You know, I didn't think about it at the time, but looking back from a more of a long term perspective, I kind of walked into his template because I walked into working
with guys who were used to that. Yeah, they were used to that, having a writer building story, you know, from a from a writerly perspective.
Right, yeah, man, it's a It's shawsh Ank Redemption. You know, it's Morgan Freeman, Andy, Andy Dufraye, you know, walked in and and I love that.
Your your show, your new show.
When I first read it, I read it as hunting history, and then I realized that I was reading it wrong, and as I researched, I was, no, it's hunting history.
Yeah. No, I think a lot of people that was that's a forgivable, forgivable mistake, considering the considering the host. I could one could be forgiven for making that mistake. Yeah, yeah, hunt down history like taking a hunter.
Un back down history?
Yeah yeah, whose idea was that? How did you get brought into that? Because that's I think it's a perfect match. I love history myself, but it's it's an somebody made a really interesting connection to put you in on this.
Yeah.
You know what though, it's like my first book.
I published my first book in twenty two thousand and four to somewhere around two thousand and three, two thousand and four, so quite a long time ago. My first book was called The Scavenger's Guide to Oak Cuisine, and it was a.
Book about a book.
It was a book about this crazy French cookbook that came out in nineteen oh three. So like that's like the year the Right Brothers did their first you know flight with a heavier than air vehicle, right, and this guy A. Scofier wrote this five thousand recipe compendium about French cuisine. And so my first book was about going hunting and fishing to catch all the stuff from that cookbook. My second book was about the history of the American buffalo,
the animal. Right, it was like the history of a species, had a lot of hunting in it. My first book, again was a history of It's like about like French food, but had a lot of hunting fishing in it. My buffalo book was the history of the animal, had a lot of hunting and fishing in it. As a magazine writer, I did like I wrote stuff about like the colonial French, you know, all kinds of things. So I'd always like.
Dealt heavily in history.
We did. We have a thing me eaters American history, these audio originals we do about history. So I've always been a player in history, and it's always been very interested in history, and I've always been very.
Interested in hunting.
So for me to do a history show, people that are familiar with my TV show Me Eater might look at it like it like it being different than what I would normally be engaged in. But if anyone who was accustomed to what I wrote, the stuff I've written, you know, it's my stuff's always been very heavily informed by by history and then, and so in that way, it just felt more that way, it felt more like a like a continuation of what I've already been up to.
The difference here being is that in some of the cases, rather than really long deep dives into subjects, doing an hour long show where you tackle a whole subject in an hour, it's kind of like more fun and cursory than it is to do like book length explorations of subjects. Right, it's breeze.
It's breezy and entertaining.
You know, that's a good way to look at it. Yeah, And I saw I saw in the episodes last night, and.
It's it's it's breezy, it's it moves quicker even that even than mediator in a lot of ways, it moves quicker. We don't have depensive piano, uh you know on the History Channel with this Uh, but it's it's still super cool and it's it's it's such an extension of your brand that works so well. I also listened to that that audio, what did you call.
It, Media's American History?
Yeah? That that that was so that was so engaging. It's good.
Did you listen to the one about the Long Hunters did and the Long Hunters? Yeah?
Yeah, yeah, because you know, I'm sitting here looking at this and like, yeah, he's getting got the new show on the History Channel, Hunting History. But then I started realizing, but that's I mean, that's what's new right now. But I mean there's some of that stuff. Was the the Mountain Men, I mean that was like last year you put that out, So there's a lot of recent things.
Yeah, yeah, the Long Yeah, so we're gonna do we're actually working on this series of things. Like you know, as an outdoorsman, you'll you'll kind of appreciate these names that pop up, like you know, you know Daniel Boone, Yeah, he's some of a household name. Jim Bridge or John Colt. So we're doing as we're breaking up American history into these chunks and looking at market hunters from these different eras.
So people know Daniel Boone, Not many people know that like what he actually did, like what his actual job was. Daniel Boone was a deer skin hunter. Like he hunted deer for the skins, and these skins were exported to Europe and turned into leather. If you see those old paintings like kings from the seventeen Hunters and they got those white pants on those white breeches, those are probably American buckskin.
Wow.
So that's what Boone did for living. He did other stuff too, He hunted for.
Bear grease, you know, oil made from bears, but he mostly hunted deer skins. And we kind of break up American history where we look at the deer skin trade from seventeen sixty three to seventeen seventy five, and we sort of argue why seventeen sixty three there was the end of a frontier war, and so these hunters could kind of push into Kentucky and it wasn't as risky for them to go there. They hunted from sixty three seventy five everybody knows seventeen seventy five what comes next.
Seventeen seventy six the American Revolution and the frontier got untenable again. The frontier got very bloody after the Revolution began. So we look at like these these guys and we know them now as well. They were actually known in their time. They were known as long hunters, and it had to do with the length of their trips, you know,
they were going very long hunts, hunting deerskins. The next one we're jumping into is eighteen oh six, eighteen forty and it's the beaver skin trade, and that's called me Eaters American History of the Mountain Men, and it covers figures like Jed Smith, John Colter, Jim Bridger, who were all just rocky mountain beaver trappers. And then when the beaver market collapsed, all the attention moved to the buffalo hide hunters. And so the next one will do is
the buffalo hide hunters will probably run that. Eighteen sixty five to eighteen eighty two, a big herd was shout out the winner of eighty two and eighteen sixty five was the end of the Civil War, and a lot of guys were coming out of that war going west to hunt Buffalo. So it's all these really detailed examinations of sort of the economy and life ways and skill sets of these like American archetypes, you know, but also what drove the economy to be that way? You know.
And again they're really they're they're they're like.
Deep dives into these things.
But it's fun to do because I feel like that is you know, I've read about that for my whole life, and so it's fun to get it down, you know, to get the work down.
And I love this about you. But what is the affinity for North America for you? Are you concentrate everything? I mean, I love that, but what what is it? What is it about you?
I don't know. I always tell people when people are talking about other stuff, I always tell them I'm just like way to American to understand. I just feel like, I'm so like completely American, dude, I can't.
Even like I have a hard time.
I like to read about geopolitics, but I just have a hard time understanding and know. One thing I'll joke about with people is like, you know, if you're in America, where you be if I'm in America and I see a dude walking down the road. You know what I mean, I be like, that guy looks like he said the work. That guy looks like his truck broke down and he's in trouble. That guy looks like whatever, you know what I mean, Like, I just can't tell what's going on.
And when you're in another country and you see someone walking down the road, You're like, I have no idea what that dude's doing walking down the road.
I agree, that's the way.
I got to stick to the place where I just feel like I know what's going on.
Okay, I mean there's more to it. But also, yes, I agree, I hear you. But you have a love. You have an American love. Yeah, yeah, the contain.
Of America love like the country for sure. But also I guess, yeah, you know, every man, It's funny.
I got a buddy who he had this guy that worked for him.
He had a ranch manager that worked for him, and he once went to get the ranch manager a talk, you know, like about kind of expanding his role in the ranch manager and said to him, you know, every man's got his limits, and just I kind of have my limits, like like I'm very into.
I don't care how far back you.
Go in North America, Like I don't care if you go back twenty thousand years. I remained comfortable in North America talking about North America twenty thousand years ago, but I wouldn't be comfortable talking about Europe today. I don't have any subject matter expertise, you know. So it's just like I like the American story, the American characters. It's huge, it's a big subject. I just I will you know, earlier I talked about writing a book about French food.
But when I wrote a book about French food, I talked about French food as understood in America.
Sure, has there been a place that you've traveled in North America that has surprised you or that you continually think of as like the pinnacle of this is where Steve has to go this one area.
Yeah, the thing that most has blown me away is now, Like I don't go a day in my household without saying to my kids or my wife, I'm like, you know, the Cajuns.
When I started hanging out, like, I don't know what takes me so long? Louisiana was the last Louisiana.
Was the it was the last state. It was the state I've never been to. So I've been to all forty nine out of fifty states. Like an I count like spending the night, not just on the airport, but spending the night, okay, and had been there two the first time I was going there.
We had made it as far as like we're going from Memphis to.
Louisiana, made it as far as the delta in Mississippi close, and they're like Adams, the big hurricane coming and we sort of thought about it, decided not to go to New Orleans and it was Hurricane Katrina. The guy. Then we made another trip to go down there and had another hurricane happen and didn't go, and it eventually made it and and kind of fell in with hanging out with Cajun dudes, and I mean guys that like they don't even know that they don't know the names for
ducks that we use. Like they still use the French names for their ducks, right, they used the French names for their fit inshore fish, you know, and they when they're cooking stuff, they got a word. You're like, what you know, I can't like all the French words for the food, French words for the ingredients like that. How just impressive that culture is in the level of like culture continuity and cultural identity, that that that the Cajuns held on to.
And I say, the Accagians, you know, you know it probably sound like some kind of uh like a like an idiot.
Saying, like the occasions there's like this monolithic thing called the Caagents, but it just it blew my mind, you know that like the food, the language, the customs, and man. I yeah, uh, if I had found out about that world when I was eighteen, I probably would have tried to like perfect a French accent and I would have gone and tried to like slip in you know, we'll join in, right.
I Mean, I love all of our Louisian listeners right now, but I did not think that's where you're going up there at that question anywhere in North Americaia.
Yea. That yeah, that like blew my mind, man, Like I always heard about it, but like that's the thing that's really shocked me, is uh just my love of that of that little corner, you know, that corner of the world.
Man.
And I've always been a northern guy. I've always lived in the northern tier states, Montana, Michigan, like I've always lived up North Washington, always touching Canada. You know.
I just want to tell everybody that's listening right now, all the Louisiana people, this is a man who's been dull shee putting, you know, at the top of Alaska where you could see the whole world, and he's saying, I like Louis Louisiana.
I like the Cajuns. Oh that's iggressive.
That's like you all that.
Food they got and all the words they got for their ducks.
I love it. Man. Yeah, that's one of the coolest things about talking to the Cajuns. I'll leave.
I won't talk about this all the time, I promise you.
But what's funny is like like having all the words for knowing, all the French words for ducks, and the French words for all the inshore fish, you know. And what's funny is like if you get to the offshore fish like in the golf, okay, you get out, you can got wahoo, yellow tail, all these offshore fish, and that'd be like, well, what's the French word for right, like yellowfin? Tuna, Like what's the French word yellowfintuna And they don't have any of those words.
And one of my buddies pointed.
Out to me, is like at that time, no one knew that stuff was out there, Like twenty miles into the golf you might have been on another You might as well have been on another planet.
Oh yeah, that's true.
Like people were in it, Like people weren't aware that twenty miles out there in the blue water were like.
Wow, and oh yeah, you know what I mean.
They were like redfish, trout right whatever. And it was so so they never incorporated as close as it seems now, as close as it seems now, it was never like no one had a way to get out there.
You know, you were rowing, you were.
Paddling out there, so they don't have names. Yeah, it was like it was.
Just it was there, but it wasn't there. It was there, but like I said, it might as well have been on another planet.
That's that's wild.
Well, I hope that you've heard already about EEE Festival that is May ninth and tenth. You could come see me and all the gang at the farm. We've got all kinds of crazy things that are gonna be happening. It's good for the whole family. I really really think you'll love it. So go to ye ye dot com for more info. If you like the content in this podcast, hey consider sharing it with a friend, subscribing to this podcast, giving it a good review if you want, and commenting
on the YouTube page. These are all things that help this podcast reach more people. If you want to get a hold of me personally, you go to cameo dot com slash granger Smith. I can make you a video message for anything that you want. It could be happy birthday, happy anniversary, maybe just a word of encouragement. Go to cameo dot com slash granger Smith. Your dad he got you into hunting? Could you say that?
Yep?
Dad is your dad? Shall around my dad?
Oh no, see no, see my dad he had me in My dad would be one hundred one years old. He had me in nineteen twenty four, Earth not had me? What am I saying? He was born in nineteen twenty four, fought World War Two, enlisted at seventeen.
Font World War Two.
It came home and was just a big hunter and fishermen. So I was always brought up around hunting, fishing, and uh, and you know he didn't trap.
He didn't he didn't trap, but I.
Got into trapping and he was very supportive of trapping, and uh and.
He I got lucky with those guys.
I got lucky, like with my mom and dad in a lot of ways. But one of the ways I got lucky with them is they didn't you know, my dad didn't finish high school right formally.
So for them, you know, when you meet people like I've met a lot of.
People like this in my life, who's who they they get a lot of family pressure to go into things that maybe they don't want to go into, you know, occupationally. And and I have kids, and we pressure our kids. We don't pressure about what they do, but we pressure them about their performance in school, right, We pressure them.
About how they treat their elders whatever. Like we pressure them.
But but for when I said, oh, yeah, I'm going to be a trapper, it was kind of like, oh, that's great. It's a good idea. And I'm like, oh, I'm gonna be a writer. That's a great idea. Like never had any sort of pushing in a in a different direction. And for me, like because my dad was a big outdoorsman. When I started getting a little success writing about hunting and writing about fishing and writing about the outdoors, he just thought that was great, you know.
He thought that was a great move. And the fact that you had to live for many years below the poverty level. I always point out to people that, like, if you don't have if you're not married, you don't have kids, there's no such thing as being poor. You're broke, but you're not poor like poor is later, you know.
So I just lived for a long time without any real serious income, but in like my parents' minds, I was like very successful because I had chased something kind of weird and did it, you know, and so it was cool like that, like that that with my dad, as much as he enjoyed that hunting and fishing to see for him to see his kid kind of make away in that, he like, he liked that a lot. He died right after the it was right after the
terror attacks. No, it was either right before or right after the terror attacks.
Before almost I think he.
Died that December. I think maybe it was that December.
He died, So that was before most of the world knew of you and meat eater, and oh.
Yeah, I was like, oh yeah, there was nothing like that. I mean, he died before I published my first book, but I was I was a magazine writer. I was a magazine writer. And and I remember, like I wrote a couple of things, you know, I did some stuff in field and stream and did some stuff and outside. And I remember the last time I hung out with
him before he got real sick. We were down in Floorida fishing and we were going to buy shrimp, you know, and he's like, uh, you know, you can tell he's like waiting for someone to He's like, you don't know who this is, you know, he's like waiting for someone like recognize me, because written a field.
That's a good dad.
That's a good dad. Yeah, not realizing that no one reads who wrote the articles they're reading in magazine. No one looks at the author's name.
That's amazing, man. I love I love that. I love that hilarious.
So you your kids, you said you you put pressure on them. Oh yeah, and yeah you didn't necessarily get that pressure from your dad.
But it's also just a different Oh no.
We had a no, no, we had a we had a pressure for sure, but not like it wasn't directional. It was just like a pressure to perform, you know, like it wasn't It wasn't like a pressure to to following dad steps and become an orthodonist. You know. It was a yeah, right, It was like you couldn't you couldn't be a screw off for sure, and you had to you had to work hard, you're going to be in trouble. But there was no, it wasn't hyper directional, I should say.
And now it is, you're saying, is it directional pressure you put on your kids?
No? No, I just had this conversation this morning. Maybe me and my wife were talking to a friend of ours this morning, and I was my wife's much more inclined to get after him about grades. You know, she's pretty demanding on grades. And I was trying to explain to a friend of mine that I didn't have that relationship with school. I did a lot of schooling, but I didn't have that relationship with school.
And and I don't look at it like I don't look at.
It as the sort of sole opportunity that I don't look at like academic performance as being the kind of like where you make or that that that that's your chance to make or break yourself. Or I don't look at like the quality the quality of a kid's formal education really like casts their die and sets their destiny. You know, I look at it like it's a part.
It's a it's a part, it's important, it's a part of a much broader collection of things that go on in one's life that will sort of determine where they had right.
Within that. You know, if our kids screw off in school.
And they get bad grades, they're gonna lose privileges.
Yeah, yeah, So what does cast the die? Oh man? Or is that too broad to ask?
No? No, It's very funny that we're on this because because we were like having this, we were having this very question earlier, and a friend of mine was pointing out my friend of mine was taking the other perspective here, and she was saying, you guys, meaning our family, She's like, you guys are really engaged.
You like know a lot of people, you have.
You know a lot of connections, you have a lot of opportunity, you have a lot of passions. If you take some kids and strip away where they have like not a great home life, they don't have engage parents. It might be that that is their chance, like shining in school without people backing them up, and without people backing them up at home and supporting them at home, and like creating chances for them, right, sacrificing for them.
She's like some people if.
She was, she's a she was her family during the Iranian Revolution. They fled to Iran, right and can't do America with nothing. She's like, dude, for me, for us, if we didn't make it in school, you were going to make it because that was your chance, Like that was your chance to shine, and that was like your spot. You're going to do it academic because there wasn't another way you were going to do it. And I was like, yeah, that's kind of true because but I point out, like
I'd be thrilled if my kids joined the military. I'd be thrilled if my kid went up and became you know, got a job guiding, uh, you know, became a sheep guy in Alaska, Like I'd be thrilled for him. You know, it doesn't I don't have Uh, there's just I think there's a lot of paths. You know, when is your die? When is your die?
Cast?
Uh?
That's a great question. We have a ten year old, a twelve year old, fourteen year old. I don't know at what point you feel like you're out of the woods. Last night, the cab driver I drove with from the airport, we are talking about this subject a little bit, and he said he when his kids were, when his youngest one was kind of finished in college, he all of a sudden said, I felt like I had done it. M you know, He's like, I felt like I could
look and be like, you did it. Yeah, you did it, You did a good job, you got it.
You know, my kids are the same as my oldest is thirteen though, yeah right there, and yeah.
We don't we don't wait at fourteen.
I can tell you one thing we're not doing is we're not kicking back saying we did it, because there's still a lot of there's still a lot of rose.
To ho No, man, do you guys, is there a you guys have a faith in your family?
No?
You know, we were.
Brought up well, yeah, it's it's it's present because we were both brought up very much in the in the Christian tradition, and our kids have observant. Our kids have observant family members observing observant grandparents on each side.
But in our household, no, it's like they we've never been. We're like we're observing in the.
Tradition like so many people are where we acknowledge holidays, but we're just not we're not church going.
We're not church going people, even to the point where our kids have expressed and.
We'll go with their grandparents, you know, like they've taken into they're interested, but it's just something that for us, it's something that we were grounded in, based in and then just got like just drifted in some way.
You know, does that Does that feeling change when you're on top of a mountain alone or or yeah?
Because you know, I feel like a like a spiritual connection to nature, and I feel a sort of like I don't know, like a.
Spiritual connection to.
My friends and my fellow man, Like like I never have this feeling of being that it's pointless or being that we're just like drifting in outer space, no broader meaning things, you know what I mean?
I feel like very grounded in a order.
Where there's a where there's a higher order, and there's a there's a thing that we need to pay homage to and there's something that we're indebted to. Right, So those feels there's something that you owe back to, right. We try to raise our kids with that awareness. But what I wouldn't say that we're observing you know.
Okay, that's interesting, So what uh, what would you owe? For the second conversation, I'd have to.
Think about I'd have to think about why I feel that way. I don't know, like I'd have to think about why I feel that way. Uh.
And that's a thought you you would have on the top of a mountain in Alaska. You would have that feeling like I feel, I feel like I owe something like yeah.
Like a sense of like a like a sense of it, like a sense of indebtedness. That's a great question. I can't really answer why I have that. You know, It's like I never dug back. I never dug back more layers on it to really think about why I had that feeling of of you know, being in a like like existing in a sort of sense, existing in a world where there's where there's like a continuity and a
broader meaning to it all. I just I've never fallen into I've never had a sort of despairing, feeling of of it all being empty or at all being pointless. I've never felt that way, you know, even in the absence of organized religion, I've never felt that.
Perhaps it was from being raised in that tradition, you know.
Right, which is that emptiness you're kind of elluding that that emptiness is typically what drives people into searching for a deeper understanding.
Probably, Yeah, you'll hear people say like, could this really be it? And I never I never have that feeling of.
It could really be it. I think that that's one of the things of one of the big strengths of One of the reasons I like like parenting and and I'm serious about parenting and find a lot of value in parenting is I think it.
Creates a.
There's this term I used in a different context before, but I use this term like an arena, an arena of consequence, meaning I've said that one of the reasons I like exposing my kids to the outdoors is you're in an arena of consequence, Like you can get into situations. You know, you're out in big water in a small boat, right, You're in an arena of consequence. Man Like screwing up has there's a real thing that happens when you screw up, and if you're not paying attention, there's a real thing
that happens. And I feel that I've found so much more clarity in life as a parent because it makes the whole thing an arena of consequence. I remember my buddy earlier, I was talking about the guy that used to work for Boordain on the Boardain stuff, and he's
the showrunner on the History Channel show. We were talking about this and he described to me like once he had kids, when he woke up in the morning, he felt like he was in one of those old movies where you put your hat on and go out the door in the morning, you know, racing to work with the newspaper under your arm, you know, like raising to work. He just felt like it was he loved it. All of a sudden, there was like a mission, you know, yea your family, it gives you a mission.
And I think that's one of the.
Things that the reason I have like found such a greater happiness as a parent that I did prior to being a parent is the huge sense of purpose. So when I talk about the continuity thing is all of a sudden, you're like, you're.
Kind of like, oh, I get it.
If I can take the things that I've learned and things where I find value and being a good person to the people around you whatever, trying hard, and I put that into my kids and that grows in them, and then and then they move on and do that as well. You know, it kind of makes like, uh,
it makes things have a lot of sense. And it wound up being really really psychologically mentally for mental health and stuff for I would say for both speaking for my wife who's not in the room right now, but if she was here, I would say the same thing. It helped us a lot, like like like mentally it did. Having kids and being parents did a lot for us, a lot for us in a way that's taken me years to realize.
Did you struggle at any point before that with mental health?
Yeah? I did. I did. Yeah, I had like, yeah, I drank too much, Like we don't. I don't drink it all now.
I'm not down on it, but we just don't have time to.
I don't know, drank too much. Uh yeah, I just not like not great.
You know, move moved a lot of things over you know, I talked.
A lot about my parents. I talked a lot about my dad that was not always a very like a completely harmonious relationship. He had had terrible experiences in the war, and and yeah, it was just you know, uh, my net, my net overall happiness. Just I kind of found it with family, right, I found it with family. And and I wouldn't even even have It wouldn't have occurred to me to even have said that until I was well into the job of being a parent. You know.
Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. I have to think more about that, that becoming a parent fulfills something in you that.
Yeah, that's that's fascinating stuff.
I feel like, Yeah, it gave you, it gave it gave everything a shape. I feel like I think it gave everything in life a shape.
Yeah.
As I sit here, I do realize and it's not lost on me that I'm in a position that millions of American men probably worldwide, would want to be. And that is get I get to talk to Steve one on one and ask him anything I want.
So this is a huge privilege and I appreciate the time.
I do want to ask a few questions though, to you know, for the rest of the men out there. One gun, one rifle, and that's all. That's the only when you get the rest of your life for any hunt, what are you taking?
This is my fourtunen year old's favorite game.
That says a lot about my brain. I think, right, yeah, no.
No, I'm right there with If we had to do okay, if it was the one gun, the one gun, me and my boy.
Both decided there would be a twelve gage and we would just become slog hunters for big game.
Interesting.
I like it because we hunt everything man Like we hunt rabbits, squirrels.
Yeah, dear, we're like man.
If we could have any shell we wanted, we would go at the twelve gage.
For for rifles, I shoot like.
Uh, for rifles, my main like all around guns. I shoot a three hundred win mag. Okay, but see, but you know, I hope you know I like to hunt moose and stuff, man, you know, and uh, And I know there's a lot of advances, and you know, bullets are getting so good, and a lot of stuff's changed, and you can get away with much lower calibers on stuff.
But I've never been bothered by recoiling.
And I enjoy shooting a three hundred win mag so if I was picking a rifle. You know my younger bodies. Everything now is like smaller, faster, you know.
But uh yeah, I.
Shoot three hundred win Man the one gun deal for sure, Man twelve gage showy.
You can even get a bird with that. You can get a dove with that. I like it. That's a good answer.
Oh no, we hunt turkeys, we hunt dogs.
Yeah, you just do everything man.
Top five game meets in order.
I know that woul probably chan and so today in your current mood right now from your hotel room.
A lot of We eat a lot of mule deer. My family, We've always eaten a lot of meal deer. People tend to like what they know. You know, when people talk about something tasting strong, it's because it's unusual to them. We eat a ton of mule deer. My kids first deer, you know, all mualder. That's what we hunt. So that's the favorite. Uh uh. We like to eat a lot of halbit and salmon, like cottontail rabbits. Interesting, Yeah, cottontail rabbits, we can get.
Them cotton top three interesting.
But no, you know now that you put it that way, Oh, black cot, I'd put black cottable fish. I like a lot of stuff.
That's a that's why that could change tomorrow. That's a tough question.
Well, that's the thing is. I'm like I always joke like I got way too many. I'm like, I always talk about that's my favorite food, and I'm like, well I do like that other thing too.
Yeah, yeah, I get it.
Give me again, dear me like like it No, But seriously, Uh, if I had to I'll tell you this way. If I had to just eat one if I had to eat one thing, okay, one, just one thing, and I had to access to one thing, it would be like I would want like deer bodies, deer, okay, white tailed deer, meal, the whole thing.
I want the whole tongue deer.
Everything. I want just deer.
Okay, even even an eyeball. You ate an eyeball one time, didn't you.
Yep, I want the whole deer.
If I didn't pick one thing, I'd be like, it has to be the whole deer.
Yeah. What's a what's a hunt?
One hunt that just You've had so many you look back in your life, is there one that just pops out and knocked your socks off.
Yeah, you kind of hit it on the head talking about talking about hunting doll sheep. I've been real fortunate.
Like in Alaska, you can't hunt sheep.
Without a guide unless you have a relative that lives there. It could be your cousin. They called degree kindred. My brother has been in Alaska for twenty five years or something, so periodically I'll be able to go sheep, hunt them. We just go. I can just go with him, you know. And and man, that's like it's the just the epitome of mountain hunting, the epitome of mountain hunting. Another favor for me would be like hunt milder during the rut.
You know, hunt milder in late November is just a blast, just a blast. Love it.
Yeah, it's great. One more thing.
And I'm not going to push you on this because it's contentious, but uh cwd.
Oh the don't think is contentious. Well, it's contentious, but it doesn't bother me talking.
About Okay, Well, I mean here in Texas, a lot of these ranch owners are especially the ones raising deer, are actually pretty scared. There's there's guys that have based their whole life, their whole income, everything is based around deer, and now the government has authority to come and just wipe out the whole heard with a twenty four hour notice.
Yep.
Is there is there anything nefarious that you think could be happening here? Is this a ploy in any way, especially after we saw what happened with COVID, If there's more to this as we see these CWD cases popping up randomly, is it naturally occurring? Have you seen any way to eradicate it that's effective. These are all tons of questions.
I have no no, Well, you're opening up a bunch, but I'll give you, like if you don't mind, I'll give you sort of a general perspectively. Yeah, it was first identified in the seventies. Some people feel as though it was always there and we weren't finding it. We have a lot of testing in place now all around the country, and we have areas now where you can test test to and you don't find it, and then you can test test tests and you begin to find it. I do believe, I do believe that it is a
somewhat novel, meaning new. I do believe it is a somewhat new disease, and I think that it's expanding its range. I think it's spreading from deer to deer to deer in areas. I do not believe there's any stopping it. I the primary thing that I worry about with CWD is that it would I am very concerned about the ramifications of it if it would jump into humans.
There's no evidence that there's no evidence.
That it will. It has not.
I've been I've had people.
Challenging me on this. I think that there are hundreds of thousands of hunters, hundreds of thousands of Americans who've eaten CWD positive meat. No one's gotten sick. There's been groups of people that we can track over time that we knew eight infected meat, you know whatever, fifteen sixteen years ago. They routinely, you know, check up with them. There's no evidence that it's happened. However, other preon diseases, there have been other preon diseases, mad cow for one.
There's been other preon diseases in time that have jumped.
And infected humans. So it can't happen.
You go to England and it's happened where mad cow has infected people in a couple of handful of cases. So as a prion disease and it's not you know, you have like mad cow in cattle, there's a preon disease scrapy and sheep. There's a preon disease CWD that hits members of the deer family. So you have these different kinds of creatures and they have different preon diseases. You have a prion disease that hits humans Yakub kreutz felt or you know, I think it's Yakub Kreutz disease
or chrous felt Yakub disease. That's a preon disease that occurs in humans. So yeah, I believe that there's a preon disease that occurs in servants, not only looks, servants and deer in the deer family. There's a rub here that that even when people have tried to slow the spread or to eradicate the disease in certain areas by killing tons of deer, they haven't successfully done it. There's no there's no place where you can go look and see that any human efforts have done anything to get
rid of it. When people land at a spot that it's just people that have landed at a spot that let's say someone someone out there accepts, like I believe the CWD is a disease that that can kill deer or that does kill deer. I believe that that's true, and.
I believe it's just out there.
I don't believe it's going to infect humans, and I don't believe that us trying to do a bunch of measures to control it are going to be successful. I could see a person landing at that in that position quite logically, I could see someone landing there. For me, Like, what I support, What I would like to do is I would like to continue us hunter's anglers, not angers,
you know, well outdoorsmen, livestock producers, whoever. I think that we should continue to explore research and continue to fund research and try to get somehow It's very hard, but try to get like.
Really unbiased.
Information from someone who's not pushing an agenda, not pushing a pre existing agenda, or trying to use CWD to get something they were already after anyway. Yeah, right, but like like straight shooters, honest straight shooters, continuing.
To explore, like what is this thing?
What are the risks? Right?
Like I welcome all of that information, and.
It sounds like there's almost a race to who gets there first, because that the hunters need to get to that need to get to the solution before the nefarious side that says, hey, we're going to use this for something we already wanted to wanted to accomplish.
Yeah, it's it's and like and I've I've seen that man, and I and I understand people's frustrations where like, like I'm coming from a perspective of a guy that's that's that's concerned, very concerned about CWD. I'm also concerned about some researchers just some research that came out of Wisconsin suggesting that CWD in areas of Wisconsin has far surpassed.
Humans as the leading cause of death for deer.
So some people feel that at a certain rate, when you get up, when you get CW the infection rates thirty forty percent, that it's gonna you're gonna lower your deer numbers, your deer herd is gonna go down. And here's the other thing is like cwd's always fatal. It's right, Like, when a deer gets CWD, it's usually dead within two years.
So if take six years.
Five years, six years to grow a mature trophy whitetail. And you have infection rates at forty percent or fifty percent, it's always fatal within a couple of years.
You do wonder.
About our ability in areas that have a lot of infection. Are we gonna have the ability to like produce big bucks. Now, A lot of people outside of hunters are going to look and be like, well, who cares about producing the bucks? But you care? I care? I care about that. I don't care. I don't care. I care about that a lot.
I care about deer meat more. And if it wound up being that like I had be that, if it wound up being that some that it did jump and we started being a higher rate of preon diseases in humans that were like consuming a bunch of deer meat. Right, we haven't seen this yet, there's no evidence of it at all. Hopefully that never will be. But if we did see that down the road, I would pee. I would The first thing I would think is like, man, I wish that we had paid more attention this early early on.
But but again, on the other hand of this, what burns a lot of guys is what burns.
A lot of guys is without all this information, trying to set regulations and trying to take preventive measures that aren't really showing to be effective, but that work against the interests of hunters. Meaning there's some county that gets CWD and they come up with the idea, well, let's go kill every deer in that county everything, and then why is it being.
It doesn't do anything. The deer come back and you still have CW.
So it's like, why do we just kill all the deer in the whole damn county.
Yeah, I was in I was in Montana just a few months ago. A game warding friend of mine comes in, Sorry, I'm late for dinner. Oh, we've just been killing deer all day, last two days, just killing deer because of one CWD case.
Yeah, there's an idea. There's an idea that picture that you had picture. There's a cold going around town, right, and you might be like, well, how's the cold spread?
Well, it spreads from person to person.
Okay, let's get rid of half the people and see if we have half as many people with the cold.
Yeah, yeah, that makes no sense.
I see a new show coming one day Steve Vanilla and CWD.
But man, I don't want listen. I don't want you to think. Here, here's the one thing I don't want you to think. I don't want you to think that I am not claiming to know all the answers. Yeah I'm not, but I'm telling you flat out.
I'm telling you flat out I think it's something we should pay attention to.
Hopefully in ten years it'll be like, well, look at CWD the way we uh now look at COVID, where we're like, hey, you know something that happened.
We got some things right, we got a lot of things wrong.
You know, there's a lot of things we did we didn't need to do, and now we can kind of coexist. Right, it's around, it's around. Sure, it's brown, like EHD is around. All these other deer diseases are around. I hope we landed. I'm not rooting for I'm not rooting for wildlife disease, but I don't think that we should. I don't think that we should view it differently than we would view
any other wildlife disease. Like we we like research. We want to research wildlife diseases and understand what their capabilities are yeah right, No, I want information, man, Yeah, I want information.
You know that's good.
Hey, bro, thank you so much for taking the time being on here hunting history from the heart of a of a storyteller. I appreciate you so much, man. And it's a it's a great new show that you guys have.
Well, I appreciate you saying all that nice stuff, man, And and I appreciate you bringing up and having bringing up talking about talking about chronic waste and disease because you know, it's a it's a real frustrating mystery, and it's kind of dividing some hunters, and and and I yeah, and I just hope the guys that have a vested interest in deer continue to read up on it and follow what's going on and have opinions, but you know, have informed opinions, right, like get try to try to
draw some information from a variety of sources and weigh it out in your head and see what you think.
It's good to talk about it.
I agree, yeah, one percent.
Well, thank you, brother, sure appreciate your time. Yeah, man, take care, Yeah you too.
Thanks for joining me on the Grangersmith podcast. I appreciate all of you guys, you could help me out by rating this podcast on iTunes. If you're on YouTube, subscribe to this channel, Hit that little like button and notification spe so that you never miss anytime I upload a video.