Welcome to Nice Ashes, I'm Mike. And I'm Nate. What are we smoking, Mike? It is a CAO Extreme. An Extreme Quad is what mine says. Extreme Quad. Yeah, it's a blended cigar, it's not single origin. It's got wrappers and fillers from different areas. A three country cocktail. Yeah, I saw that on the wrappers. Is the branding. I've had this one before, full disclosure. Okay. Multiple times actually, because I bought a box of these. And I've had different experiences each time.
So we'll find out later, I'll let you find it for you, Nate. Yeah, I topped off the old fuel and I've been keeping it in my pocket. So it's been warmer. It doesn't light from cold for some reason. But I am lit. Perfect. Initial puffs were I think a little sweeter than I was expecting. Or at least sweeter than the last one. It's sweet. It's not unpleasant. Oh no, I like it. Yeah, it's not a bad thing.
Today I'm going to pair this cigar with some Lugavallen and a homebrew whiskey sour that has no sugar. Nice. I am drinking a Simpler Times lager from Trader Joe's, which is like $6 for a 12 pack. We had some friends over for a little kind of shindig and I brought it out and they were like, oh, and one of the guests was, oh my God, you're drinking that. And I'm like, yeah, because it's $6 for a 12 pack, tastes decent and is 6.2%, which is not your typical lager.
$6 for a 12 pack is very reasonable. Why wouldn't I drink this? Yes, I would buy a pallet of it. Yeah. And it's from Trader Joe's. It's the Simpler Times. It is made by the same brewery that makes their Boson line. Oh, okay. Yeah, that stuff's good. That stuff's good and that's $5 for a six pack, but this stuff is like $6 for a 12 pack. So it's a little more than 50 cents a beer, I guess, when you break it down fully. Very reasonable.
It's kind of like some of the Kirkland alcohols that we have discussed off air. Yes. Very good value for money on a lot of that stuff. So today's topic is going to be my topic. Yes. It ties into the previous episode in some ways. We're going to talk about hunting. There we go. Which Nate has hunted before. He's no longer a hunter, from my understanding. I may return, I just haven't felt the overwhelming desire.
I would go bird hunting, pheasant hunting, grouse hunting, probably before I would go deer hunting just because I don't know, I enjoy nature. I don't know about sitting out in nature for 12 hours a day or whatever it ends up being, hoping something comes by. But it's fun if, and we used to deer hunt in a very sparsely populated deer area. So that probably has some to do with it too. There's other places that have a much higher deer population. Right.
I hunt deer with my family and I'm mostly interested in my nieces and nephews getting deer. I even, this season, past season, I let my nephew hunt out of my stand and he got a shot, didn't get it, but I'm not that concerned. I don't care if I ever shoot a deer again, they'll be honest with you. But I go deer hunting every year. I mean, I might get back into it at some point, but I have a lot of fun. Sure. For me it's mostly about the brunch that we have every day. Oh yeah.
It's about sitting in the stand, because Nate knows this, but I sit in the stand and I smoke cigars or read books and drink coffee. That's what I do. Do you have a fully enclosed stand or something? Yeah. Yep. So we always hunted with a, we had a tree seat with a rope and you would put it on the tree and cinch the rope up and then you'd sit down and you would just be there. Every movement would give you a way and every sound would give you a way.
And but my grandfather, when he would go deer hunting, he never hunted when I hunted, he was, you know, he had retired from hunting, but he would still come and be the camp cook, you know, but he used to, he would, he would shower in the morning and put on his English leather cologne and he would go out and sit by a campfire that he would start in the woods smoking a cigarette and he got some monster bucks, you know, like, so, you know, it kind
of makes you wonder about these, you know, you got a no-scent soap and no-scent in your clothes and, you know, be quiet and spray yourself with Fox urine or something. And I don't know how much credence I give to that.
When I was growing up, we filled out all of our tags and my grandfather would hunt all week and he would sit in the stand all day and he would bring out a case of beer and no food and a Folgers coffee can, the same one he used for his tackle and he would piss in the can and drink beer all day long and just throw the cans right on the ground, right underneath the stand and he would shoot all the deer and fill all of our tags because party hunting is legal where I'm at.
And that was kind of hunting, right? Cause we had extra bonus tags and all this sort of stuff. So we'd all get one as kids, you know, but my grandfather would just fill all the other tags out during the week cause he was retired. He would just sit out there and party basically and my dad allegedly would just sit in a truck that was the same color as the barn and leave it running and listen to the radio smoke cigarettes and shoot. Oh, okay.
See, if I had a fully enclosed stand where I could be reading a book and drinking coffee and out of the wind, you could probably get me back out hunting again. Right. Well, you're welcome here anytime. Perfect. But we're going to build a couple of new stands. Okay. So I was going to say, just going out trap shooting was fun. Like I like that. Or if we were, if we were just out with our, our deer rifles, you know, just target shooting or whatever, that'd be fun.
Yeah. We should definitely do that cause the range, I can go up to 200 yards pretty easy. Okay. And I haven't shot my rifle in quite a while. Okay. But that'd be fun. So I'm a big bird hunter. I prefer bird hunting. I actively wing shoot and I used to be a big waterfall hunter as well. I have a collection of shotguns to do all those different things cause I'm a spoiled brat when it comes to my hobbies for sure. I did want to give you a big shout out.
But I meant to do it last episode, but you made it one full episode without mentioning bowling last episode. So for those of you keeping track at home, that might be the first episode ever that might be bowling. So there we go. And we got two 300s in the family this year so far. Nice. So there we go. But back to hunting. Back to hunting. I wasn't really talking about our personal hunting necessarily, which I'm pro hunting. I think it's important.
And I think that personally, I think that as many people who can, should go out and hunt and enjoy the experience. It's mostly for enjoying the experience of hunting and being in the outdoors and to feel the experience of trying to kill an animal and feeling the grief that oftentimes comes with killing an animal. Yeah, it is real. I don't, I mean, I don't feel bad for killing birds really.
And it's not hunting, but there have been certain squirrels on or near our premises that have met their demise very recently. And I don't feel bad about that because they're like rodents and they destroy things and they're very destructive. And there's no natural predators here for them really. And I think in our modern, modern world, and the same is true with controlled burns and things because we suppress all of these acts of nature.
We don't want a forest fire, but those used to happen and they need to happen for new growth in the forest to survive because you can't have an old growth forest that lives because they choke out all other life. So some of these things are part of how nature is intended to function. And our modern society doesn't like those things because those things are smelly or messy or dirty or potentially dangerous if not managed. So we're kind of managing certain things into an unnatural state as it were.
And I think the same is true for hunting. I mean, we've got so many animals and you can say, well, they should just flourish and be happy. But that's not how it would be because normally they would have predators other than us. And there's lots of places where they don't have those predators anymore. But also the enjoyment of outdoors is important. And you can enjoy outdoors.
And I've often thought about going back out to the deer stand, but just with my camera and zoom lens and trying to get some cool wildlife photos. So you don't necessarily have to bring a gun if you don't want to kill something. But just to go spend some time in nature away from your phone and the internet and other people, you can get a lot of good thinking done out there. That's one thing I do kind of miss. Oh yeah.
I think an experience, I've had this experience, I think an experience we're having is getting lost in the woods and knowing that in this direction, if I continue to walk in this direction, we'll find a road. But at the present time you're lost. You have no idea where you are. You know the road is there, but you don't know where on the road you're going to come out at. And you don't know how far away you are. You just know that that direction is north.
And you know that north of where you're at on a map, there's a road. So you have to reorientate yourself and then you sit and you listen and the fairies come out, which are basically your own, it's your brain hearing the sounds of the forest and interpreting it in a borderline psychedelic way because you're lost. You have no idea and there's no cell phone or anything. The old stories of fairies in the woods starts to make a lot of sense before there were cell phones in roads.
And you couldn't really pick a direction and walk because if you were far enough off, even if your village or town was east, if you were far enough off, you would just walk forever. Right. Yeah. You're lost. It's very magical in a real sense. So it's a magical experience that everybody can have if they chose to do so. If you choose to go get lost in the woods. It's magical and you will thank us later for recommending you do that. Right. Why don't you bring a compass?
You don't go out with the intent of being lost, but whenever you're out in the woods, and I think this is important and this is what you're trying to say is, you don't just go out into the woods. If you got into the woods, and we would always do this, even when we were hunting in areas that we were mostly familiar with in the state forest, but if you shot a deer and had to track it, you could very easily get lost. Oh yes.
And so we would always, always before going out into the woods, say to one another, because we would hunt as a family, okay, if you lost in the woods, you head in this direction and you can find the road and then you can find your way back to the car from there. So you have to do a little bit of prep work. You can't just go out into the woods because you might die, but as long as you're moderately prepared, you should be fine.
Yep. Yeah. A lot of times I don't even take a hunting bag if I'm going out real deep. I do now that I'm older, but when I was younger, I didn't. I just went with water maybe. Yeah. Yeah. We always had a little like hunting pack. You know, it had, you know, a gutting pack, a little gutting kit, some waterproof matches, a compass, a whistle, some candy bars, because you know, you get hungry out there and some water. Moderate is like prepared. It's all, you know.
It's like hiking, but less organized. Yeah. Cause you're not really, you're not out there to cover distance. Right. I was more talking, now this is something that I think is important and is missing from our modern society. We have these factory farms and people go to McDonald's or whatever fast food restaurant of choice and you get a chicken sandwich or a burger. There's no connection to the death and the loss that goes into producing that food.
And you can taste that those ingredients are missing. Yeah, I think you can. Well, I mean, I said that kind of sarcastically, but you know, these mass produced things is similar to the mass produced lumber that you buy nowadays when it doesn't even compare to the lumber of like the fifties, you know, because It doesn't even compare to the rough sawn logs or the rough sawn lumber you can buy from a sawmill, you know, in a rural place like where I live.
There's guys, people that run sawmills still and they'll run logs through them and you can get rough sawn lumber that is however long the tree is. Yeah. You know? Yeah. I mean, you lose That's a different type of wood. You lose some things with modernization. For sure. And there's certain trade-offs. And I think it was important for us to kind of share a little bit about our personal hunting experiences for the listeners to know that we both are or have been hunters.
And that's where we're coming from. But yeah, to your point, I mean, these farms, if you've ever seen almost any documentary on modern food production, it kind of, it makes you want to disconnect from what happens there. Oh, for sure. I've been on, I've hunted feedlots for birds that are pretty good. The feedlots are not, they're nice. I mean, as far as a feedlot goes. Yeah. The cows aren't in a foot and a half of shit. They're like on grass and they clean it out with skid steers.
Yeah. They're trying to, they're selling premium graded beef at a lot of these places, you know? Yeah. So they try to make it nice for the cows. There's farms out there that are not good for the animals at all. Oh yeah. And obviously a wild animal doesn't experience that. No. And you know, I guess the wild animal argument maybe is that they experience different extremes. They're typically a lot leaner because they've not been fattened up artificially.
And they're usually kind of fighting for their lives out in the wild. I mean, you know, so you kind of get both camps where you're like, well, as a hunter, if you kill a deer, they don't have to struggle to survive through the winter, which is the hardest part of the year for deer. But the anti-hunting groups are like, well, you know, they would just flourish in the wild on their own.
And then you kind of have to ask these people, well, have you ever watched like a nature documentary because sometimes you're cheering for the deer and sometimes you're cheering for the wolf. It all depends on who the documentary filmmaker wants you to root for. You know, if the deer doesn't- Right. And the death of a wild is usually very violent. Yeah. A lot more violent than getting shot through the heart. Yeah. And if the deer dies, you know, they die.
And if it was a doe, maybe their fawns die and you know, there's fewer deer next year. But if the wolf doesn't get to kill the deer, then the wolf pups die. So you know, it's- Right. Cause and effect, I guess. More in the wild. Right. But carry on. I just wanted to toss a couple other, you know, I guess I'm playing devil's advocate a few episodes now. Vamping is part of it. We talked last episode about the softening of society just a little bit.
And I think people not killing the food that they eat is part of the reason why we're having the softening. Because there's a lot of these people that want to soften language when they don't have the heart to go out and shoot a deer and gut it and clean its bones and process the meat and eat it. Yeah. And it's a hard thing because it's exhilarating to shoot an animal, but it's also, sometimes you feel that inner pain or you feel bad because you just shot a deer.
It doesn't feel nice afterwards at all. You feel bad. And especially if they're still alive when you find them, you know, and they can't do anything. They can't go anywhere. If you hear elite in pain, it is not good. Nope. It's not a good feeling. I mean, it's a whole experience and it is even disturbing. Just listening. Yeah. Listening to us talk about it doesn't do it justice. It's something that's very, very personal and everybody experiences it differently.
Absolutely. Even if Mike and I have similar experiences with it, it was still about deeply profound and personal to us because you're there alone with the animal. You know? Right. You know, you've got a lot of deer through the woods that have been shot and are running, you know, by kids. And it's not very nice to catch up to a deer that's wounded. Yeah. And you have to shoot it again. Yeah. But it's the right thing to do.
Yeah. And I would also say, I think a lot of these people that want the big push of people that want the cage free organic, like eggs, right? Right. Or the people that want the grass fed beef or whatever. And they think that somehow that makes them not die. You know?
Like those are the people that the sustainability people kind of, you know, because they, that's what they say, like, oh, you know, the farming has to be sustainable and it's got to be, you know, grass fed and they have to have free range and they shouldn't be in cages. And it's like, well, okay, but they still, they still die. And maybe you should go kill one and then come back and talk to me about sustainability. You know, let's, let's have that conversation after that.
And I'm not saying they're wrong because, you know, like you said, the cows, some farms are really great and some are not. And I don't think there's a reason why all of them couldn't be great. There's economic forces that cause them to be that way. Yes. I understand that. If your reason B for McDonald's, bottom line's bottom line. You're not going to take the extra effort because you're selling it for nothing. Yeah. That's your goal. This production. Yeah. It all depends on what you're doing.
But like I say, a lot of these people have never killed an animal and never will. Like you said, killing a bird is a lot different than killing a deer or a moose or something large. Yeah. Was a charismatic mega fauna, right? It's definitely can be disturbing psychologically, especially the first time, especially if you're a child like I was. I'm sure you were too. I was a child. You know?
Yeah. And contrary to what some generations believe is killing your first deer does not propel you into manhood or adulthood. No, not really. I mean, I was thinking about this, I don't know, just this past week or two weeks, within two weeks, just the whole concept of the loss of innocence. When did I stop being the naive child? Or was there an event that gave me that, what do you call it? The adult cynicism or something? You know, I don't know.
That's a whole different topic, but it wasn't killing a deer, I don't think. No, not for me either. I don't think there was a singular event. And probably not. But it is something that if you have an experience that you don't really know. Right. There's definitely negative aspects, but there's goodness. I mean, I still go hunting even though I know. Yeah. I remember as a kid, I had the old trusty Red Ryder BB gun.
And I was determined to kill a bird, like a little songbird, out by the, we had a pond and I was determined to kill one because I was like, hey, then I'm a hunter, you know? And I'd plink away and those things, they're not terribly accurate and they don't really have any range on them. And so I tried for, I don't know how long, like the whole summer. And I finally like killed one and it was, you know, whatever, just a little sparrow or something.
It was just, you know, it was one of those brown ones. It wasn't a goldfinch or anything or a chicken or anything like that. But I felt really bad about the whole thing. And then I stopped trying to shoot little birds with my BB gun. It was just something that, you know, I thought would be cool to do and it turned out it wasn't, you know? I think the chase is more exciting than the catch. Yeah. For sure. So, I guess we both established that there's downsides to this endeavor.
Yeah, but they're not, I think to your point though, it's like... It's important. It's important to understand what you're doing. Yeah, because not everything is all good or all bad. And you're going to have conflicted feelings about a lot of things in life. Like even me going to work every day, like I have conflicted feelings about that, you know? Right. Oh, for sure. But, you know, and we're talking about the softening of society or the softening of language or what have you.
And if you don't understand the processes involved, it's very hard to sound intelligent when you're trying to talk about it. Oh, for sure. You know, like there's a big difference between going to Chick-fil-A and getting a chicken sandwich and raising chickens at your house and showing chickens at the county fair and then butchering the chickens at the end of the season. That's a totally different process. Or even keeping chickens just for eggs, for egg production.
That's a whole thing in and of itself. And you don't even have to kill the chickens. Right. But it's still, you know, like you're taking their eggs that they think are going to be chicks, you know? Right. And it's dirty. Chickens are dirty. They're dirty. They're wild. I became a chicken when I was younger. I do not recommend keeping chickens. They are dirty and it's a full-time job. Yeah. You definitely can't go on vacation. And you got to keep all the foxes and other things out of the pen.
Yep. Keep your dog out of the pen. You got to take care of the mess. Yep. It's a lot of work. So yeah, I mean, it's not necessarily just hunting, but a lot of the food production cycle, you know, a lot of people don't understand the whole concept of it. Right. Well, it's like combining a field kills a lot of animals. Yeah. So even if you're a vegan, a lot of animals had to die to produce that food on a farm, a factory farm.
Yes. Unless you're growing it in your garden at home, there are animals dying to do that for certain. That's fine. That's the way that life is. Life eats life. It's the cycle, right? Well, in the words of Qui-Gon Jinn, there's always a bigger fish. Right. Uh-oh. So I kind of wanted to get into, now we've kind of established our personal positions on hunting. Yeah, I'm not trying to derail you. No, no, no, no, no. We're not derailing. We're vamping, of course. That's how it rolls.
We're just bullshitting anyway. Are you sure vamping isn't a cultural appropriation of vampires? Yeah, maybe. Maybe. We'll get back to you on that one. I'm not the southeastern European. We'll check the etymology. Right. It seems like once or twice a year, every year, there's a controversy surrounding hunting. And usually it's big game hunting and usually it's not in America. Are you talking about the Minnesota dentist who killed Cecil the Lion? Yeah, that was a while back. Yeah, yeah.
Stuff like that. But it happens a couple of times a year. There's a beautiful blonde woman that shoots a rhinoceros. Or like you said, the dentist that shot a fucking lion that had a name on a game preserve. And people don't understand the economy when it comes to big game hunting, especially. I know there's a lot of resistance against bear hunting, but that's a lot of money. And that money goes to pay for those animals.
So when you talk about like Cecil the Lion, Cecil the Lion paid for all the other lions to live. And without the money that came from those people paying to hunt, the lions would go extinct because they turn it all into farmland and there would be no wildlife as they know it there. Because wildlife doesn't make money and the world is about making money. So the plains of Africa would be plowed just like the plains of America.
And there'd be a genocide of animals just like there was on this continent. There are no bison herds that roam the continent as there was 150 years ago. No, yeah. And think about the deforestation of the rainforest. You know, for lumber and how many animals have been.
And I think that's the tough thing to kind of understand and to swallow is a lot of hunters talk about preserving the animal that they're hunting, which doesn't seem to make any sense because why would you kill what you're trying to preserve? That like you said, you know, at least here in Minnesota and a lot of other states, you have to buy the hunting license, which funds the DNR, which manages the land and the herd size and issues the licenses.
And they only issue or they should only be issuing. That doesn't mean that they're infallible, but they should only be issuing the licenses for deer that can be killed and removed to keep the herd healthy. And the same with bear. I mean, the bear system, at least in Wisconsin, is kind of a lottery you pay every year to put in for a bear. And if you don't get it, you get additional points to go into next year's kind of lottery, you know, and it's a weighted lottery or something.
But all that money is being given or goes to the DNR to help manage these lands and these herds and these animals. And you can't have, I mean, people won't do that for free because if they would, we wouldn't have a DNR and we just have people managing it for free and there would be no hunting and everybody would just be happy in life, I guess. But that's not how people are. People are lazy inherently. Right, the hard fact is that nobody gives a shit about the wild animals.
And the only ones who do care are the ones who are interacting with the wildlife. And that means hunters. Yeah. And the only reason why we have large game on this continent at all are because of hunters. The greater Canadian geese or the greater Canadian goose was saved from extinction by hunters while turkeys were saved from extinction by hunters. Elk were saved from extinction by hunters. Well the greater Canadian goose is a Wisconsin story. I'm sure you know it. I don't. I hate those things.
Oh, so the greater Canadian goose. I don't really hate them. Right, I do. They're fucking nasty. Yeah, I hate them too then. Yeah, they're nasty. But yeah, the greater Canadian goose was considered extinct until they found a single flock of geese in Wisconsin. And they used funds from hunting licenses to breed them and spread them. And now there's a half a million of them that live in the state of North Dakota year round.
There's a half a million of them that live at the park just down the road from us. Oh, in Minneapolis, working in Minneapolis, in the little ponds on the four-leaf clovers, those geese are mean. They'll attack you. If you break down on the side of the road, the geese will attack you. They're aggressive. But there's several stories of conservation. And that's, they call it conservative and conservationists are all tied together. Yeah. And it's all tied together by hunting dollars in this country.
No money goes towards protecting animals that isn't hunting money. Yeah. The bison was mostly, was it fur trappers that killed them all? No, I don't know. They were like big bison runs. They'd take the railroad, but shoot them all. Yeah, because they were derailing trains. But I know the fur trapping industry, they would kill a whole bunch of animals just for their hides. And they'd just leave them. And they still do. Just typically hunters, unless you're trophy hunting.
So let's put that little caveat there. Most hunters kill the game that they'll be able to eat. Right. So when we would shoot deer, it would be like, great, we don't have to buy meat for X number of months because we got a deer. One deer will feed, I don't know what it is, but you know. It goes a long way. For a year, maybe two. I know for one calendar year, because I marked the dates. I ate nothing meat wise other than what I caught myself.
I either caught the fish or I shot the animal myself and processed it myself and cooked it myself. And that's all money that doesn't go to these large industrial farm complexes. Right. And all that money went into ammunition and guns and licenses. There's a tax on all the hunting clothes you buy. Yeah. All the ammunition, every round of ammunition that gets sold in the United States gets taxed.
But yeah, what I'm trying to get at is if you're concerned about these big industrial complexes that de-beak chickens so that they can pack them in tighter without them pecking one another to death and all these inhumane living conditions that these animals have to live in at these big industrial complexes, then you should 100% be for hunting because every deer shot will feed a family.
And that's maybe not for a full year, it depends on the size of your family, but that is taking money out of those big industrial kill farms pockets. Right. Well, the controversy only ever happens when somebody shoots a buck with like 28 points and they take the picture and they're really proud of it. Yeah. And usually that happens on farms where they farm deer and they shoot them over feeders and people get upset.
The thing that people don't realize is that that's part of an industry that keeps all the animals alive. Right. All the other deer that live, live because of the hunting industry. Yeah. And a lot of those bigger bucks, at least for the deer, like their genes or they're too old to breed or they're, you know, like it's getting to the point where they're detrimental to the herd because if they keep staying on top of the herd, there's going to be inbreeding, of course, and other things too.
So it's not necessarily in the herd's best interest for that big trophy buck to live and to keep on. They only live six game years anyway. Well, yes. That buck would die in the winter, potentially. Yeah. But I mean, that's the other thing to consider is, you know, some of these trophy bucks, like they need to be gotten rid of for the benefit of the herd almost. Right.
Because it's- There was a hunt a couple of years ago in Africa where they shot a endangered rhino and they auctioned it off and somebody spent a lot of money to shoot this rhino. Yeah. And people got very upset because, oh, the blah, blah, blah rhino is going extinct. But they didn't even take into consideration is that this huge land preserve had to kill the rhino no matter what because it started to go wild or insane and started killing the other rhinos. So they had to kill it.
Yeah. So instead of killing it and not getting any money, they made how many ever dollars for somebody to come in and shoot it for them. Yeah. You know, it's all about, it's part of the ugly side of it to where the only animals that survive are the ones that people want to shoot more or less or want to look at or spend money on. Yeah. Nobody cares when an animal goes extinct and nobody likes it. You know what I mean?
Yeah. Well, and there's no reason, I mean, I guess like realistically, there's no reason you couldn't, some of these preserves couldn't auction off an animal to not be hunted. You know what I mean? Right. Like, try that and then we'll have the data say- Well, we know that's not going to work. No, you and I know that. I'm just saying like, if they said, okay, this extinct rhino that needs to be killed, well, let's auction off it to live then and see how many people auction or bid on that.
And my guess is not very many, you know, and they would have to kill it anyway. Or maybe they said, oh, we want to build like the separate pen for it so it can just live out its natural life there and be insane. And you almost get to the point where you get into these, what is it, like assisted suicides for terminal illness patients and things. Why can't they just go if they're ready? Like if they're suffering so much, why can't they make the decision, you know, and say, just end it?
And some places it's legal and some places it's not. And that's a whole big, I mean, that's a whole big discussion. Well, I'm firmly on the side of assisted suicide, but not that I'm for Soylent Green. I'm against Soylent Green, grow assisted suicide. Yeah. I mean, you do what you want. I just don't want to have to eat you on Wednesdays. Right. Exactly. I don't want to find out that Soylent Green is people. I'm okay.
Label it and then I'll know and I'll go hunt my own people because I don't want farm processed people. I want wild people. Exactly. So, I think that's interesting. I think it is controversial. Yeah. I do think though that the Cecil, the lion thing, skirted some big, I don't know, laws or they did a couple no-nos. So I don't think that is, should be held up. There was a bit of confusion.
The guy that shot it thought that he was shooting a lion that he was approved to shoot and the guide fucked it up somehow. Yeah. I mean, there's something with that that makes that not a good example of this is how it should go. There was something that was off about it, but it wasn't necessarily the fault of the hunter. It was more of a miscommunication. I mean, I think. I think. Nobody shoots a lion to eat it. No. There's not a lot of criticism of going out and going fishing for pan fish.
But when somebody catches a 56 inch musky, now they have a little bit of heat on them. But somebody catching a 56 inch musky gets a lot of guys out there buying lures and fishing licenses and that pays to support that wildlife. It's not bad press necessarily. No. And just real quick, going back to the Cecil thing, I'm not going to keep harping on it.
It was a big, big story here and a lot of people were very upset in Minneapolis because it was very close to Minneapolis where this dentist's office was. But when you say it's not the hunter's fault that he shot something he shouldn't have shot, Alec Baldwin would agree with you on that. Oh my God. I think, and that's part of what I, and maybe it's just because I was told this so many times as a kid, if you're not sure, don't shoot it. Oh yeah.
And mostly that was for pheasant hunting because if you didn't know it was a rooster, you couldn't shoot it because it's not legal unless you're at a game farm where you can shoot whatever they put in the air. And if you had a buck only tag in the antlers, they had to be, I think, three inches for it to be legally considered a buck. So if it was nubs and you weren't sure they were three inches, then you don't shoot that because that could be illegal. And that was just ingrained into me.
So if, but I mean, if the guide is telling you, go ahead and shoot it, then it's on the guide because that's why you're paying the guide. When you go to Alaska to hunt grizzly bears or brown bears, the guide tells you which ones you can and can't shoot. I mean, they're the experts are supposed to be. So I mean, in that instance, there's some sort of, I've never hunted a bear, never shot bear.
I know that's controversial too, because people think that bears are cuddly and they're not, they're vicious animals. And a lot of the bigger bears start cannibalizing the younger bears. So it is good to get the big bears out of the gene pool. Well my dad went with a buddy and they went up to Alaska and hunted grizzly bears and he, well brown bears. I'm not entirely certain the difference between brown and grizzly. And then there's also Kodiak bears, but they shot brown bears.
And I guess it's very intense because you're in waders and you're going up and down these like trout streams or salmon streams where the bears go to feed. And apparently the bears can count. So if you can sound like more than one person or more than one bear and it's only one bear, you can kind of outbluff them, but they're still going to be gnarling and gnashing their teeth at you.
But then my only experience with, I've never hunted bear, but I came home to visit from college one day or from, I think it was out of college, but I came back to my dad's house and he had just shot earlier in the day, a black bear and he couldn't find it. And so I got there and it was pitch black because it was, I think it was this time of year where it gets dark all day and then all night.
And he's like, we got to go out and find this black bear that's potentially wounded in this thick patch of brush. And I'm like, well, I need a gun. And it's my understanding that when you're out to search for a downed animal outside of hunting hours, it's not legal to carry a gun to go search for this downed animal. But that's one of those things where common sense must prevail.
And you don't want to get yourself mauled because even though black bears typically will run away from a human, a wounded black bear, if it's unable to run, will fight. And I don't know about you, but the last time I checked, I cannot physically take down a black bear hand to hand combat. But we found it and it was dead. So that was good. We didn't have to have a shootout with a black bear in the middle of the night.
But that was pretty intense going out, knowing you're going to look for a black bear that had been shot. Right. That's more intense than looking after a buck. And a buck will attack you. No questions asked, they'll attack. If they're wounded. That's part of the reason why I got that. I have a shoulder holster and a 357. You shot the 357. And it's because we have to brush whack a lot and it's like, ah, I'm not going out there without something, you know? Yeah, for sure.
It's got to have something. And sometimes you can't take a shotgun. And then even where we used to deer hunt, there was, they weren't super common, but there were were wolves in the area. So even though you're supposed to unload at closing time, we were a couple miles back in the state forest in like the thick swamp. And I never unloaded until we got back to the car or the four wheeler if we took the four wheeler out, you know, just as a safety protocol.
I mean, normally a wolf's not going to attack you, but if you have a downed deer and a gut pile, I mean, who knows? So some of the stuff is just common sense.
And those are some of the things that people that haven't been out in the woods, because if you've shot a deer and you've gutted it and it's dark now and you're in a thick swamp where it gets dark half an hour before it gets dark anywhere else and you're waiting for your dad to go back to the car, a two mile hike, drive back the 15, 20 minutes to the cabin to get the four wheeler on a trailer, come back the 15, 20 minutes back, drive the
two miles out and you're sitting there in the dark for an hour and a half in the pitch black. I don't care how many guns you have on you, you're going to start thinking like, what's out there coming to get me. Oh, the fairies. The fairies come out. Yeah, exactly. That's what I'm talking about. The fairies come out. You know, I mean, that's, I mean, it's humbling, you know, it's, you know, you feel safe most of the time.
But you, you know, you quickly realize you're not in your own domain anymore. You know, you're part of something bigger. So I mean, that, I mean, that, and at the time, like I was nervous and scared, but like looking back, I'm like, that's kind of like the more magical moments, I guess.
It didn't feel like it at the time, but like looking back, you know, like being back in the deep woods with like nobody, it's like, yep, one of us has to go back and get the, get the four wheeler to get this thing out. Cause we can't drag it. You physically can't drag it two miles through the woods. Well, you could, but it'd be, it'd be better off cutting it up and putting it on your back. Yeah. And that was before like the remote tagging stuff.
Like cause you can, cause now, right, you can like just log it on your phone and tag it or something. Cause we always had to bring it. I don't know. I still get a paper, a paper license. We had to bring it back to this, it was called Musky Jacks. And this guy was like the grossest guy you could ever possibly think to run this little like bar diner place. He was a Jack Spine Savage. Of course. And you know, if you ever seen, have you ever seen a Good Burger?
No. Okay. So they run a fast food restaurant that makes burgers, but the cook, the head cook is, his name is Spatch, you know, for spatula. And there's a scene where there's a fly flying around. It lands on his forehead. He slaps it with his spatula, licks the fly off of the spatula and then flips the burger patty. So it's pretty much that guy, but with more tattoos and body hair. And you'd have to go in there and he'd waddle out, you know, there I am.
Let me see it, you know, and he'd look and he'd be the one that would register it with the DNR, you know, whatever. But I think now, like when you shoot one, you don't have to bring it in. You can either like take a picture or like somehow log it on the DNR site. So it's a lot more technological, but long story short, we couldn't cut it up because you couldn't do anything to it outside of gut it before getting it tagged. Sure. Okay. But that's really not here nor there.
It's just for the purposes of the story, one of us had to be there with the carcass in the woods. And if you were the one that shot it, you were the one that was staying there with it. Right. Yeah, because your tags on it. At that point, party hunting is over. Yeah. Your tags on it, you have to be with the body.
Yes. And then of course, that's when you start thinking about wolf packs and all the movies that you've seen where the wolves are vicious and come after humans and all these other animals that you don't think are real, but suddenly are very, very real. Right. And then you hear the coyotes yelp. Yeah. And then you're rustling in the woods. Exactly. Yeah. So. Yeah. Like I say, it's an important experience that our ancestors almost universally had and so few people now experience.
And it's humbling. It's, I guess, it's a mixture of emotions. And there's a lot of judgment when these big stories pop up and all these people from lives where they're eating their chicken sandwiches or they go into their sushi bar. Yeah. And they're casting judgment. And usually it's a pretty ridiculous thing. Yeah. Not going to lie. But I took a picture this season where there was a group of hunters and all the birds that we shot.
And if that were ever to go on the internet, I'm sure that they would be upset because there's all these birds on this huge rock and there's all these hunters and their guns and their birds and their dogs and blah, blah, blah. Yeah. And it's like, well, it's part of the cycle of life. It's part of the experience. Yeah. And I think in human history, you know, let's go just go back like a hundred years even.
Maybe a little bit longer than that, but hunting wasn't really, I mean, so hunting, I mean, like fox hunting has been a sport for a long time and it's been a sport for a long time. But if you go back far enough, hunting was solely about the survival of your family. And if you didn't kill an animal to feed your family for the winter, you would have to pay a lot of money or you'd have to figure out some other barter system trade to feed your family. I mean, it was your family's survival or not.
So maybe a lot of the other older generations, I don't know, would you even, would guilt even come into your consciousness for killing an animal if it meant you got to live another winter? You know, like I think that's part of the, part of the thing that people forget too is it, it, it originated out of survival, out of necessity. I mean, hunter gatherer. That's I definitely felt that like, uh, I don't want to sound like a spiritual, but that bond between myself and the animal that I harvested.
You know what I mean? Oh, it's like, say the glory of the hunt or anything like that. No, but there is a bond. There is a bond. Yeah. And it's like, this is going to sustain me. Uh, and I'm not like slapping, like you always see these videos, guys being disrespectful to these animals that they hunt and there's idiots everywhere, you know? Oh yeah. We're not, I mean, and that's, I don't think that's what you're saying. I mean, not every hunter is respectful or not.
Every hunter goes into it with the right mindset or not every, you know, as the same with farmers or the same with vegans, you know, like there's people who have variety anxiousness. Yeah. And some people are just dicks. I do think anybody who does eat meat, who has never killed an animal should go out and kill an animal at least one time. Yeah. Then a large animal, not just a bird and not just catching a fish. Anybody can get a fishing license.
Yeah. I would, uh, and it is different catching a fish and cleaning it yourself and cooking it. It sucks. The whole thing sucks. It sucks. Especially if it's an eel pulp. Yeah. Which are delicious. Uh, but it's horrifying. Bordelette. Horrifying to catch an eel pulp and to clean it. It's terrible, but they're wonderful to eat. Very, uh, I catch eel pulp on purpose because it's so good to eat, but it is horrifying to catch them. Yeah. I don't really like eating.
Um, I don't know if I've mentioned this on the podcast before. I'm not a huge fan of fish or seafood. Um, Oh, so you're never going to come out paddle fishing with me. I'll go paddle fishing. Um, I don't, I don't mind the fishing part, you know, like catching them is fun. I like the camaraderie like on the boat or, um, you know, with the group and doing the things I just, I don't like to eat the fish so much. Sure. Paddle fishing sucks. Uh, but it's a lot of fun because there's the camaraderie.
And the suckiness of doing it is part of the payoff of getting the fish and bringing it home and cleaning it up. Um, so, uh, but to be fair though, I'll, I'll eat. Uh, so when I was in Maine, I ate lobster and crab because I was in Maine and it was caught fresh, like right off the coast, right there, you know, I'll do that. And then when we were in St. Louis, we went to a Creole place and I had a, some kind of, I don't know, some kind of like a shrimp gumbo or something.
And I ordered it specifically off the menu and everybody else with me ordered like spaghetti. And I'm like, we came to this Creole place and their specialty is preparing Creole food and you're ordering spaghetti. You know, so I mean, so I'm not opposed to eating it or trying it. I just don't really seek it out. But if I'm in some place where that's their specialty or it's fresh or it's right there, like I'll try it for sure. Um, and I eat sushi. Um, I prefer like the crab sushi.
Like I, I found, I prefer crab over lobster. Um, sure. But you know, that's just personal. It's more of like a texture thing with the fish. Like I don't know. It's just a weird weird. I know one of the things with Sarah moving up here, she doesn't like to eat fish. And that really disappointed my family because it's obviously we, everybody goes fishing all summer long and she doesn't like to eat fish. People had a very hard time understanding that.
Yeah. But yeah, no, I think, I think, you know, uh, even fishing, like if, if you eat a fish and sushi and stuff, you should catch and clean a fish at least once. Um, it's a whole process and chicken, uh, I've never, I don't think I've ever killed a chicken or cleaned a chicken. Uh, but you know, I've killed and cleaned plenty of grouse and pheasant and it's similar process.
Like it sucks, you know, it's, uh, no, no, it's way worse with chickens because, uh, we raised chickens when I was younger and I showed chickens and I had my favorite chickens, you know, and I named them. Okay. At the end of the year in the fall time, when it came time to slaughter, I had to hold the motherfuckers and my dad cut their head off with a knife. Okay. Yeah. And, uh, fortunately my mom never labeled the bags, the names of the chickens.
She could have, you know, Now it would have been pretty, uh, pretty metal. Oh, it's very metal. I, uh, we were killing, uh, one of the chickens I won a prize for and I didn't have the heart for it. And I let the chicken go and my dad cut his hand and he got so mad. Oh, he got so mad. That's, you know, whatever. Time has passed. But yeah, every scar is a story. It's one of those things.
And I think all of these people that are like, uh, don't want to eat vegetarian meals, which I eat vegetarian meals pretty much all the time. Yeah. Uh, routinely, they just don't appreciate the death that's involved with eating chicken nuggets. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, sure. Sure. It's cute and it looks like a dinosaur, but it's still a chicken that died. Right. Like eat a fucking burrito with some vegetables on it. You know what I mean? Eat some brown, uh, brown bean burritos.
There's some really good vegetarian meals. Um, and even, uh, this is something I never thought I would say just based on the household that we were kind of like raised in. But, uh, my brother, I don't know if he still is, but he was, uh, vegan. And so they ate, you know, a lot of tofu and stuff. And they're telling me that there's different, um, firmnesses of tofu, which I never, you know, I never really looked into tofu because tofu has just got a bad rap, you know?
Um, a lot of people that aren't vegan or vegetarian, they've never tried tofu. There's like, oh yeah, that's a Latinist like tofu, whatever. But tofu is actually pretty good. If you know what you're doing with it and know how to prepare it, you know, it's a whole separate thing. Scramble tofu and I'm a big fan of miso soup, which has fish in it because you're using fish flakes to make the base. But uh, yeah, that's tofu in the right context.
We grew up and we had a lot of chicken a la king and, um, I still like to make it every once in a while. And then my brother came to visit and he was vegan. And so we did a tofu a la king. We just subbed the chicken for tofu. And then instead of chicken stock, we use vegetable stock, that sort of thing. Um, and it was tasty. It was really good. And um, Oh, here's another thing people don't know is a lot of wine.
If you're vegan, uh, you, and you are committed to the cause, there's actually vegan wine. And now you might know this mic because you're knowledgeable in all sorts of areas, but the way that they filter a lot of wine is they use fish stones. They used to use, uh, ox blood, but I guess the stones from certain fishes, throats or whatever, um, clean the impurities out of the wine much better than ox blood. So the process for making a lot of this wine is not vegan.
Even though the fish stones don't stay in the wine, you're not necessarily drinking fish. You know what I mean? Right. But a fish died to make that, to make that wine. So if you're truly living the vegan, um, tenant, uh, then you can't partake, but they do make plenty of wine. That's a, that is vegan. Interesting. I did not know that about wine. I knew it about white sugar, beet sugar. Okay. I knew it about, uh, Guinness.
They use, uh, animal parts in processing Guinness and in processing white sugar. Okay. No, I did not know that about wine though. Interesting. Yeah. I, the only reason I know is, um, when I went for my internship in London, I was, uh, letting a room from, uh, this, uh, I think they were Danish or Dutch or something. Um, but they were vegan and they were telling me about their, their food. Cause I was curious and asking questions. Cause they're the first vegans that I kind of interacted with.
Cause this was kind of before the, I don't know if it's necessarily, um, a fad or trend, but this was before veganism kind of rose in America. And they were talking about the wine. The vegans that we think of because vegans have been around for a long time. No, I know it's been around for a long time. The social vegans or the virtue signaling vegans. Um, but, uh, they were telling me about the wine. And so I wanted to get them a little, you know, a bottle of wine or something.
It's just kind of a thank you after I left, you know, I paid for the room and everything, but kind of like as a tip or whatever, what have you, a nice gesture because they were super friendly and everything and really nice.
And uh, so I, I had a, and I looked and I looked and I looked at the, uh, the, the wine place, which I think was just the supermarket because you know, they're not as backwards as we are with some of our liquor laws in some states, but, uh, you know, I made sure to pick out a vegan wine. So sure. But otherwise I would never know. And I still probably wouldn't know to this day because I don't drink a whole lot of wine. Now I'm not a wine guy myself. Serious.
I do like the, uh, the Syrah and I know the, uh, there's a Syrah and a Shiraz and it's the same grape, but the, I think the Syrah is the Californian grape and the Shiraz is the Australian grape. Oh, oh, there we go. But it's a, it's a dry red. So I quite like that one. Interesting. Yeah. I don't like the vegans who are better than thou. Because they don't acknowledge like the tofu, for example, a lot of animals die to produce tofu. Yeah. You're killing rabbits.
You're killing all these ground dwelling animals to produce this stuff. And they use fertilizers and monocropping and all this stuff. And none of it's good for the environment. Nothing that we do is good for the environment. Except hunting. Uh, the natural environment, you know, you have to modify it with chemicals, whether those chemicals are quote unquote natural or not. Well, to produce at the levels modern society demands. Right.
I mean, the guy, it's the farmers that I live around, they still spread shit on the field, like actual shit. Yeah. And we have a lot of organic farms in this area. The ground is poor, a lot of rock. And it's off of the Mississippi River, which floods even way up north here. The little stream, the trick of the Mississippi is still floods. And they get good water and good nutrients, but they still have to add to it. And most farmers don't add around here at least.
They don't add the crazy chemicals they use on the huge farms. They just spread shit on it. Yeah. But even that's a mechanical process. You know, there's a big machine sprayer heads. Yeah. But you're still, you're, you're murdering animals, quote unquote, murdering animals doing that for sure. Yeah. Mice and whatever's out there. Well, unrelated to, well, maybe possibly related to farming. The the puff I just took and I've got maybe two inches left was incredibly sour. Really?
So I let mine go out. Yeah. I just had to relight it a bit. I mean, you know, it's a little windy and they're really late. Every relay is sour. Okay. Mine's not sour. I got a couple of sour puffs and then it goes back to being pretty mellow. Okay. I'll have to puff again then. This is my, I don't know. I kind of like evened the burnout kind of halfway through, but it wasn't a full relight. And this one was kind of a full relight. So I'll have to see.
I was curious to see because I know some of the, well, those weren't, those weren't CAOs though. Those were the nubs. Sorry. I was confused suddenly. But this CO Extreme in the past, I've had a couple of these cause I have whole blocks. They get sour. Okay. They're inconsistent. Yeah. Let's put it that way. And it's not the cigar that's inconsistent. It's they get sour at the end for sure. Okay. Yeah. They're good though, up until the point at which they're not good anymore.
Yeah. Not necessarily remarkable. No, I was going to say like, it's good. I, you know, I'd rather smoke a flathead, I guess. Oh, I'd rather smoke oligaric Ibane. I'd rather smoke many of the nubs. I'd rather smoke a lot of other cigars. It's good though. It's good. It's not a Ben cigar, but it's not, it's not quite, I wouldn't suggest that somebody gets one from a cigar shop. If you're at a cigar shop and you're going to buy a cigar, I would not suggest buying this cigar.
Yeah, it's a, I'd rather smoke the, the, the Fuma. Oh, I had a Fuma in the stand. Oh, okay. And it was wonderful. Yeah. Truly wonderful. I'm just thinking like, this one's like, oh yeah, it's a, it's a three country cocktail. Well that's like the guy that pumped a bunch of air into his soap and was like, well it's less soap, but oh, hey, it floats now. Right. It's just marketing. You know, it's a three country cocktail, enjoy it. And it's like, well, right. It's fine.
Right. It's like the, uh, Roccat Patel vintage seconds, which we had. Yeah. Those are way better. Like way better. Those are very good cigars. Really? Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, this is, it's fine. I'd smoke it on, I've smoked them Molen Lawn. Oh yeah. I'm not saying it's- It's not a bad stick. It's not a bad stick, but it's not, there's nothing I'm going to write home about. No. And sometimes you just need a, a decent stick.
You know, it's, uh, and we've talked about that before, you know, like sometimes the cigars, it's like, well, I'd rather smoke this, that, and the other thing. And it's like, yeah, but you know, if you've got a bunch of them and it's not a bad stick, you know, sometimes you just, you want to smoke three quarters of a cigar and then put it out. You know, it's not a big deal. It's better than a Dark Shark. But- I don't know. I kind of like the Dark Shark. It's not bad. It's just not remarkable.
Yeah. It's not overly remarkable. It's a perfectly serviceable cigar. Yeah. And the price on those was, was so good that, you know, maybe that colored a bit of the, uh, the thing. I liked my second one better than the first one. The first one, the first Dark Shark I smoked, I was not overly thrilled with. So I don't know if you smoked a second one yet or not. No, I'm saving them. Uh, wipe down with a little bit of tequila or something, you know.
Oh, you should try just, you should try a second one straight, just as is, and see if you have a different, different opinion about it. Um, cause the first time I smoked it, I was like, fuck what, like this is, and then the second one on the, on the show I smoked, I liked it better. Okay. So I don't know if it's like an acquired taste or, uh, if we were just, or if I was just overly harsh the first time I smoked it or I had different expectations. I, you know, I don't know.
It's, uh, it's weird, but I'd recommend smoking a second one straight and then yeah, tequila for sure. Oh, I think that'd be phenomenal with tequila on it. This one would probably, uh, probably be really popping. Oh yeah. And this one we should do, we should do some of those. Season two, season two. I think that, uh, the listeners by now I've learned that we are both fans of putting tequila on cigars. We're fans of putting tequila on a lot of things. Yeah, I guess so.
Not a fan of drinking tequila really. No. But putting it on stuff, I guess. Yeah. I mean, you know, if, if, uh, Elizabeth shoe was there and pouring tequila over her naked body and I was Nick cage and a raging alcoholic, uh, I would probably look at offer as well. So a little leaving Las Vegas reference for, yeah, I did not get the reference. I'm not going to lie.
I know you didn't, um, which is why I said, but, uh, one of, I don't, I don't know if I'd say a restrained Nick cage performance, but it's a Nick cage movie where he's not, um, absolutely batshit insane Nick cage. So very kind of depressing movie, uh, basically he goes to Vegas to drink himself to death. That actually sounds like a Nick cage movie that I would like. And Elizabeth shoes, a prostitute that he somehow befriends in his drunken stupor.
So it's not a movie for the faint of heart, but if you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. Very interesting. Uh, uh, shitty movies a while ago. Yeah. Have you seen the new, uh, cowboy beep up the live action? I have not. I have heard bad things about it though. You know, I heard bad things and then I heard a couple of good things and I'm maybe two or three episodes in and I think it's pretty good. I have criticisms. Don't get me wrong.
I know absolutely nothing about, I know nothing about that. Uh, that IP. So have you not watched the original? Nope. I have no exposure to how I be bop whatsoever. Interesting. Okay. So I could, I could watch it and I would have no idea other than, uh, strictly and solely on, you know, script writing, storytelling and moviemaking. Like I would have a lot of it's copying the original if it was true to the, true to the source material or not, I'd have no idea.
A lot of it's just copying outright the original source, which is not a bad thing. But now I'd never seen the original 21 jump street and I quite enjoyed the first one, the movie, you know, 21 jump street. I didn't like the second one as much, the movie, but, uh, I never watched the second one. The first one I did and I never watched the original either. And I thought it was perfectly adequate. Yeah. I mean, it was fine for what it was. Right. It's just popcorn bullshit. And that's fine.
I am impressed though. Like I say, I, I, I, uh, I also consume the negative press about cowboy bebop and I'm watching it myself. It's, it's good. It is. They did have a lot of the original themes. They did rehash a lot of the original storylines. They did, uh, um, three or four episodes in and they don't have all the original characters in it yet. I'm not sure if they will, but, uh, I don't know. It's not as bad as what the reviews were for sure.
Yeah. Well, and nowadays it's very difficult because it's hard to tell who the reviewers are. Right. You know, and why they're reviewing it the way they are. So it's kind of tough. Um, I haven't, I haven't watched any of the rings of power yet, but I watched, um, a few more of the, uh, the critical drinker.
He's been kind of going through it and he was initially very concerned about the, the race and genders that they're kind of tossing in there for, you know, the message or the, uh, the reflecting of the world as it is today, that kind of stuff. And surprisingly, most of his, uh, more recent reviews really have nothing to do with race or gender and just shitty storytelling.
But my brother who has read a lot of the middle earth books outside of the Lord of the rings and the hobbit, uh, says that he quite enjoys it so far. So I don't know. He doesn't have the same filmmaking background, uh, as I do and certainly doesn't watch the same shitty movies that I do. Um, so I don't know. My brother recommended it to me. He thought it was really good, but he's never read Lord of the rings. He just watched the films.
And I, I don't, I'm not going to watch it unless we do it for the show. I'm not going to watch it. Yeah. I haven't, I haven't felt overly drawn to watching it. Um, mostly because of what I've seen about some of the character arcs and not even necessarily in relation to the Tolkien stuff. Just, just that the writing maybe isn't very good. So I'm not overly enthralled with watching yet another kind of bastardization of, of an intellectual property being destroyed by people that can't write. Right.
I have no interest in watching a political message. Yeah, I get that at work. I think I said it on the show before. I'm not sure, but I was really interested in hearing the story of Kelliborne and Gilgallad and those guys. This is, should be their story. Yep. And it's not. No. And, uh, they even killed off Kelliborne, which is fucking ridiculous. Yeah. And, uh, I'm just not interested. Yeah, I'm not hugely interested in it.
But I am interested in rereading The Hobbit and The Lore of the Rings because I haven't done that since probably college. And then I want to try The Similarion again. I tried that once and I couldn't really get through it, but I was a lot younger and it's a much different read than any of the other Middle Earth books that are more popular. So Sarah and I did that last year. In preparation for Rings of Power, we went through The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
And she was really pissed off because she had never read them. And she actually got pretty upset about how they treated the hobbits in the movies. Oh, okay. Yeah. She wasn't a fan. She was like, well, these hobbits are like super competent people. And I'm like, yeah, The Lord of the Rings is a story about competent people doing things in a fantastic manner at times. But mostly it's just competent people trying to do their best and failing. And yeah, powering through.
Kind of like a war story because it is a war story. For sure. My cigar is actually cached. About an inch and a quarter left. It went dead and I'm not going to revive it. Yep. I just tossed or flicked mine into my ashtray because I'm done. And mine went out too. So there we go. There we go. Not a bad cigar. Not bad. It's a good stick as far as if you can get them on the cheap and you want to add bulk cigars that are better than a bin.
Yeah. Although I feel though maybe that this one tasted better at the beginning and I feel maybe the Dark Shark is a little more consistent all the way through. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yep. I would agree with that. So I don't know. It just kind of depends. It's kind of like the Churchill style cigar. Starts off really good, it gets worse throughout. Yeah. Well, I mean, it was good. It was really good. Even a little past the halfway point. You know, I liked it. It was good. Yeah. It's not a bad cigar.
It's just not something that I would recommend somebody buy at a shop. Yeah. If you're going to buy a CEO cigar, I would not buy the Xtree. Yeah. If you're going to buy a CEO, boy, do we have some other recommendations for you. Yes, we do. And also go hunting. Yes. Or fishing. Or hunting. Because of the system, those of our listeners who do not have a permit to hunt, take the class. Learn about guns. Hunting safety is important. I think everybody should do it. I think it's very important.
I can't believe that they don't do it in schools. But yeah, go up there and- Take part in whatever production chain that you're not familiar with, but the product you consume. Right. I think we both agreed that it's beautiful and ugly to eat meat. So it goes. So it goes. Thanks for listening. Have fun. Be safe.