Ep. 168: Satan's Decoy

we're all haircater sister. Do you use the wall clippers? Yeah? Those are the those are the jam dude. I'm so jealous that haircut. Do you think I'm too thin on top to run that haircut? I don't think we'll know until you try. Nice thing about it is it grows out pretty in quick. But you know how you don't like when everyone has the same haircut. If I got that haircut, I think it's like military style because that's what I call it, more of just like a buzz cut.

I don't I don't even know what butch means. Butch to me has a different negative connotation for for you know what I'm talking. Let's tackle that for a minute. Okay, but um, I do want to get into that. I know folks referred to that style of haircut as a butcher cut. Dude, not growing up, butchut, that's a butcher cut. It's like they're there and there. You could have a

word mean two different things. Oh, you definitely could. Yeah, I just never heard it called a butcher cut, but not or a butch Yeah, that's a When I went on my first date. When I went on my first date with my wife, it was a four day date and I had just gotten one of because I used to get those, and she made me she doesn't like him as much, but I got one. And I remember on our first date, which spanned a number of days. Um,

three people asked if I was in the military. Yeah, you do get that, especially if you walk around like war Tex hoodie with a yeah, because you got a USA you got a US A match and a short haircut you got like you got a map of Faluja tattoo tattooed on your chest America. Are you at the point, Steve Stephen Ronnella where you are getting sunburned on the top of your head? No? No, And and I felt like I was standing out, but I feel like it's thickened back up again. That's not possible. Tell us about

what product you've been using. Nothing. I use a medicated champ I use. I have a skin condition on my scalp and the next on the sides of my nose, So I use a medicaid shampoo if it's bothering me. If not, I use whatever's in the shower. You know what I mean. Are you a daily shampoo er? No, I don't take a shower every day, dude. I take a shower like I take a shower every three days. And then do you shampoo? Oh? Yeah, if I get in there, I'm shampoo. Let's let's let's take a pull

on showers two to three days right now. But typical when I'm like up and running, when you're not crashing at a buddy's house. Yeah, I'm a shower every day a guy, Yeah, every day, But I I do if more to wake up, that's time. Even if I'm clean, you don't feel grimy like you don't feel like I could wake up when I wake up in the morning.

I typically I don't change my clothes. I don't unless i'm like coming down to the office, and I feel like I should I'll wear I'll wear my saying I wake up and put my same clothes back on, change my ownies, put my same clothes back on. I'll do that for a few days, even shirt. Sometimes I don't like to generate a lot of laundry, and I don't like to be getting in and out of the shower and having to dry off all the time. Would it be safe to say that you're just the general principle

is low maintenance. That's why you like the haircut. That's why I don't look a lot of laundry. I like that haircut. I don't like my kids leave the mono laundry. They generate a staggering Oh yeah, buddy, tell me about it. And it's frowned upon to throw your kids in the same clothes and send them back out to school. I do it whenever I can. Yeah. I had words my

mother in law not long ago about that. She was really upset that I did it, and I said, I've been doing that my entire life, and look at me, I'm fine. Um. The only time you have to say, look at me, I'm fine. It's been a game changer is I've taught my girls to when they take their clothes off, to turn them right side out and put them into the dirty laundry bin. So because I think when you're folding, you spend more time turning the closes right side out and you do actually fold them. That's true.

That helps. That's a good thing to teach your kids. Yeah, because I think parents of young kids, you can start to feel like all you do is laundry. Yeah, if I don't have meaningful the reason I don't engage. I handle the cooking in the house, and I handle a lot of the dishwashing and whatnot for the most part. But I don't engage in laundry outside of my own laundry because I don't have meaningful input. Meaningful input to me looks like, uh, what constitutes a dirty towel, what

constitutes dirty clothes? My definition is different than my wife's. So I would have them get up and put the same clothes back on again for several days if need be. And I don't believe in separating your colors heavens now no. So since since I'm like, I will do family laundry if if I can move the move the rules here a little bit in my direction. But since people are unwilling to move in my direction on a couple of key things, I don't engage. That sounds fair. It strikes

my involvement. It comes with full involvement. If you want this, you're getting the whole thing. Now, it strikes me that we all have You have zero kids, I have one Yoanni has two. You have three. So we have all levels. It's pretty much covered. We got it all covered. So we have every level of child rearing. So cal has no laundry to do. I have a small amount of amount, a larger amount for and then even a larger amount of infinite infinite laundry. Uh speaking all that, look at

this segue. Um, we're talking about cleanliness, right, what do you put in when you're doing laundry? What do you what do you put in there in a little receptacle up top laundry detergent? Well, yeah, but you could also sit call it guys sent in um better fat. Yeah, I gotta sending a bunch of soap that he makes some game fat. I like this guy, which is cool,

the dude, uh farmcare soaps. Now, obviously you run into a problem with like uh selling wild game parts, which I don't know the rules when you're making soap, like I don't. I don't know the rules on that. You can't sell the meat, right, you can sell you can sell a bear hide, you can't sell bear meat. I don't know where you're at if you're selling bear fat soap. But he plays it safe and doesn't sell the bear

fat soap, but people will. He has friends I gather who will bring him deer fat and bear fat and he'll make him up some soap he send his soap made out of this is bear grease or bear oil. And then what's interesting is there's a way that soap dudes, Um, there's the way that soap dudes like score soap. Well, the thing called I haven't read this is carefully as I wish I had read it. Uh, And he's got

this little breakdown here. He breaks down all the wild all the wild fat, like how salmon oil performs, how bear tallow. He's even got how rabbit tallow so like, rabbit fats attributes, goose fat attributes, regular pigs, mink oil attributes. And then the number which is called an I S I N S number, which I'm gonna have to look up the highest rancor the highest number is um dear tallow has the highest I N S value. Whatever the hell that is? Iodine and sap. I like this guy's uh,

he's covering all his bases with this one. Speaking of deer tallo, he's from Elkton, Maryland. He's got a picture of a secret deer and the ingredient is deer tallow. Yeah, got got her all covered. I think he's making a nod towards Maryland. There soap. He also makes a sap which I don't get and it doesn't excite me at all. Is Cabernet saviognan. Because you don't mean you're not a soap. You're a soap every three day. Have you a soap every day? Guy? You would understand that's a look how

it's smell it? Give it a give it a smell. This this honey and lemon is delicious. This one has the vague outline of the word soap on it, as if to say he's got a lot of other things laying around that looked like that. You scratched soap. Some companies will scratch the word dial do it. You just scratched the word soap into it because it could be in a chalk, could be in a race, or you don't know what that because this is like a This is a level of wild game that I haven't touched

on yet. But I think it's pretty damn interesting. I think it's very interesting, and I think everybody here probably feels the same way to a degree. When you turn a certain corner, you or at a level of commitment where your life allows for nothing else. Though, Like I feel like if all of a sudden I was in the soap making game in addition to canning, preserve, bang, yeah, the general putting up of meat, then it's like you gotta have somebody else with another four of income in

the household. Do you become the soap guy? Right? You do it so much like yeah, tim old Timy makes soap. That's like your person, that's your identity. At some point it's like, yeah, so you got to figure out all the way. I'm jealous of it, but I don't. I'm not gonna just to be in total Honestly, I'm not gonna start making my own soap for my wild game. But Yanni's wife wants to make some soap up the many reason. She wants me to kill a fall bear so it has a whole bunch of fat. Yeah, but

why not do it with the deer? Why not? I guess Yeah, we get trying. She just already have I took some of those out of the box. Have you been using it at home now that your hair still short and you scrub your head with bar soap? I haven't done that yet. We've just been using it as a hand soap in our downstairs bathroom because you know it's so nice and fancy you kind of want, you know, guests and everybody. No, I would say this is is

this artisan? As an overused word? Ship man? I think the me and lemon is what we've been Uh that artist and bread? You got, not artist and bread? Hey, taste moving on a dude. Uh, we're gonna talk about turkeys on turkeys. Uh, this is something we've have. We talked about this before. A guy wrote in his saying, like, man, you Fellers got it all wrong, saying um killed. I shouldn't say you killed a turkey, he said, you should say harvested it, because you're just playing into the anti

hunter's hands by saying he killed it. I I understand I do, But I feel like a big part of I feel like the game has been lost if we become so detached from the fact that meat in order to eat meat, death is associated with it. It doesn't have to be meat, mind you, whatever you eat your in it. Very true. But if a farmer told me I went out and harvest did that field of corn? I picture what he's talking about. If a farmer told me, you know what, I went out killed all that corn

in that field? What if he said I would think that he, uh put round up on it. I spent a lot of time. I spent a lot of time thinking about this. Why. I don't know, because it annoys me. The harvest thing annoys me. It's like, why are you watering? Why are you watering down the thing you're doing? Like, we'll just admit to what what you're doing. The need to have a word two cloak that we're killing a thing is an issue to me. Well, no, because it

implies using Now you kill the animal, you harvest the meat. Yeah, you're harvesting, like you're not. The thing that harvest doesn't get to is that you didn't put the animal there. You put the corn there. But you didn't put that. You didn't plant the animal and grow it there like that animal is there, happened to be where you were from from our standpoint, just by happenstance, good point. Harvest does imply, but accept it like farm animal, You're not

going to change the wording. You don't harvest of you don't harvest some beef. Yeah, listen to this though. Slaughter sure, or kill no, But that's what I'm saying. No farmers, no rancher would say, um, I killed the we killed the pig, slaughter to the pig, which to me has a connotation of just like it means killing farm animals. We're getting into some murky water because I do think like the lower the numbers, the more you would here kill like hey I had I went out and killed

lamb this morning. Yeah, but now listen to this. I just just thought of this because we talked about this um in a different way. But reap what you sow? The term reap right, that gets used all the time and like kind of maccab ways of killing people like the grim reaper. Yeah, a ridge reapers called the ridge

reapers reper camels. And when you when you technically or not technically when you some people call going behind the fan of a turkey and and and approaching a turkey, they call that reaping really because you're taking like a scythe and cutting it low, cutting it well, But that is like I went out and reaped the field today, right, Do you know where I'm going with this? No, not

at all. That's the literal definition of the y. And then the figurative would be if you return to like the return to the world harvest, like in the definition of the word harvest is crop. Right, the definition of crop is something that you produced yourself. You grew it, You harvested your crop. You did not grow that, dear, you did not. Even if you set up a you know, like our boy Mark Kenyon set up an environment where the deer likes to live and then sneak in there

and kill it, you didn't grow it there. People gave it a place to live. You kind of grew you kind of grew it, but you didn't grow. Then, if you're high fense situation where you're putting ear tags and things, and you're if you're breeding, if you're breeding a deer, maybe we can start to get having. Yeah, if you make them breed, the deer comes out and then you put it out in a little fence and kill it. Yeah, you probably did harvest Probably is a crop at that point.

Our new babysitter just came off of working on a do your operation in New Zealand where they harvest the velvet and harvesting the velvet, you know, get a couple of velvet, harvests off it, then they slaughter it. For me, I would I would agree with that. If you went out and picked the morrell Would you ever say I harvested some Morrell's, I'd say I reaped it. I've been just we can reap some morrels. You pick morrel's, You slaughter beef, you killed turkeys? Yeah, man, that's we should

have a shirt just like that that says that exact thing. Yeah. You know, everybody got all high on different words for like, a group of zebras is a what ynny that one? I don't know? Oh damnit, crash. It's a crash of zebras or something like that. It's a crash of rhinos

or something like that. It's a flamboyance of flamingos. Remember that you can't crash of rhinos dazzlezzle that everybody got all hip on that because someone came up with the thing, showed it all, and then everybody got all into like what words mean? What? A murder of crow of crows is a big one that Yeah, you can it might be a sweet shirt. It says pick next to it. What do you call it? Corn harvest and the turkey kill? What do you call a group of giraffes? I don't

know the tower. No there right, I just got back from the Texas Hill Country. Yeah, Ben, you're gonna have to suffice as it. I mean years spent in Texas, like three or four, so you're a Texas expert. Yeah. Thanks. I'm like, I'm like the Wikipedia version of saying Texas dudes are so sensitive they're gonna be particularly Yeah, they're gonna be like listening to this pouring over it. Uh. You were saying that we hunted on the Lano River, which can be Lano for Yano. I prefer Yanna. I

prefer Yana. But I was corrected many times. Yeah, it cannot be Yano. The Yano is in the Panhandle, I was told, and I said, yeah, anyway, we're hunting near Burnett, Texas. And he said it's Burnett. You can't even say that, right, Yeah, uh, real quick. Yano Esticado, which is in Texas, yes, and New Mexico. I believe Oklahoma is that because it's up in the Panhandle. The Yanno esticado is an entirely in Texas.

It's a big landscape feature. It's a it's a it's a vast plateau that falls away on very steep edges around it. And once upon a time, the command she used to go up and vanish on top of that thing where it's very hard and hard to exist and lack of water, and sometimes they would hide out in the canyons where the Yanno Esticado breaks away. The Yanno esticado means steaked planes. So the Yanno River. How in the hell is the Lanto same same spelling, same spelling,

the same. And there's also the Lano Uplift, which is a is a big granite dome that's in the hill country that people always talk about is that the Yano Uplift. Is that the thing we were looking at, that rock is amazing And I don't know if that's a I don't think that was right. Uh, But but we're in full on Texas Hill country. Yeah, which is a term. I've been here in my whole life, but I don't know what it meant. Well, there's a lot of things

to me, A lot of things. It means to me, Like you think of the granite and limestone, like those big you know in the Lna River, those big cliff faces in the hill country and the sandstone. It's out there, um, but really it stretches. They say it's the border between the southeast and the southwest, so it stretches almost all the way over to the border of Mexico and up into East Texas, which is a big deal. So it's

a there's a lot of varying terrain. But we were in where I used to live and just south where we were as the gateway to the hill country. Dripping Springs. Dripping is one of the more pleasant town names. Yeah, where and there was like I'll move there. There was many dripping springs. It's only dripping. There's a lot of natural springs. There's a natural spring on one of the properties we were hunting on that Yanni and I got

to look at. Um. So we were in kind of the beginning of the hill country with stretches across Texas, which is very landscape. But I think of I think of those limestone and sandstone cliffs and stuff that you see when you're driving west. Why is the hill is the hill country more known for high fences and axotics running around than other parts of Texas? It just in you're and you're like superficial understanding of Texas, my superficial understanding.

I've seen it more there than I've seen in other places. Where we're hunting. We're hunting on a We hunted on a farm, not a farm, a former ranch, recreation, a recreational ranch turned recreational properties acres um not fenced, No, not high fence. There's fences pretty much all other properties that fenced all. And driving out of there, we ran into two Zebras Dazzle there was that a Dazzle Mini Dazzle Mini Dazzle too Zeebras to stand there, which is

like very disconcerting to see. And there's a lot of that the bad way. We're just like, wow, there's a lot of the first time I was, the first I think week that I was in Texas, we were driving through the hill country to go hike at some state park. And which is what you gotta hike on. I don't there because there's not a public ground to do it.

So we're driving out. We're driving down this high with a buddy and I look over and there's a bongo like standing on the side of the road, just not behind a fence, just standing on the the side the road eating grass. And he goes, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, they're around. What do you mean they're around. That's an East African jungle antelope. It's not what are you talking about saying, oh, yeah, yeah, you see those around. They must have got out of the high fence. And that is always what you here

down there. Oh yeah, there's a z brotherre's an elk. There's a We had a red deer run across the road. I mean I typically hunted by driving them out of the jungle into less dance jungle with buses guided by pygmies. And you're running dogs through the jungle and uh, you flush them into like zones of like twenty yard openings. Yeah, it's a big critter. That's like the second largest n African antelope I think behind the eland. It's a big critter. It's not a small I mean, it's like kind of

a bronzy orange color. So it's not something you see in this continent or this at least in the in the in the state. Yeah, it's it's we have coming up. We're doing an episode with the head of Texas Parks. It's Parks and Wildlife. Yes, Texas Parks and Wildlife. And I have a million questions for him. If you have a question, if there's other Northerners, other Yankees out there. Oh, I want to return to the word butch for a minute. Um, there's other Yankees out there who have questions, Like we're

just like, how could that possibly be? If you have a question for a Texan, you can email in and we'll we'll we'll collate the questions and then we can go ask the Texas Parks and Wildlife guy. My question is going to be, is it legal? Are you really allowed to just take any animal from anywhere and cut it loose on your property. I feel like the answer

is yes from all my experience answers. Yes. I would be interested to hear his take on it, Like if someone gave you a jaguar, mm hmm, could you be like I'm turning to the jaguar out on my property. They can't has to be regular. There's there's a regulations, but there's not for a zebra. So how right I'm dying to know? I mean, I can I can tell you. Like when we were talking about where we were in the Hill country in Atlanto or Yana or Lano, whatever

you please, We'll go Lana. Like the guys that the ranch we were hunting on, we're saying that that's used to be like South Texas, big tracks of land, big tracks are ranches like you know, Uh, it's pretty common in that area, the hill country where's kind of outside of Austin. There's they basically taking these large ranches and parceled them up and sold them through history. I don't

know the history of all that. But now you have a thousand, two thousand, five hundred six hundred acre properties and with a wholly different land use ideas on each one. And so when we were down there, you see offense, offense, offense, offense, another fence, another fence, because there's there is no twenty thousand acre untouched habitat down there like I've seen in South Texas. So it's challenging. You'll see, I mean, we saw black buck we saw red deer. We saw high

fence and then five strand very unwildlife friendly fencing. Yeah tough, but yeah yeah. Do you mean that the regular fence, not the high fence, but just the raider cattle fence. Yeah. Yeah. We found a picture, not found a picture. Ran into a deer that had gone to jump, had had gone to jump offence. This is like you see this often and like pictures like just picture of bar ware has has got a bunch of strands on it and it got its leg between So it shot a leg in

between the two top strands and enrolled the wire. My saying it in the way, it's clear rolled the wire. So then the wire began to braid, not braid, to twist and caught the deer's hoof there just on its ankle, and it looked like it'd been there quite a while for it expired. It was dead hanging there and I, uh, you can go look at the picture. I put it on Instagram. Um just like at Stephen Ronelle. If you

scroll back you'll find his deer I'm talking about. And the common threads kind of interesting to see, like people's perceptions of what they're looking at because the I didn't want to just put it up in some kind of sensationalist way. The image. Uh So, I explained in the air, like man, you know, white tails thrive around people. We plant crops, agricultural crops that they like to eat. We plant edible landscape and they like to eat. We create

endless amounts of edge habitats where they thrive. We displaced their predators. But it's like a double edged sword because the number one white the number one white tailed death, I think is getting hit by a car for human caused, right, not even hunting. I think people hit more with cars than hunters kill. That might be right, that might be wrong certain states, it's I've heard. I'm pretty sure this is true. I've heard that that's how kind of high

fences came to be in Texas. That the idea was these large ranges with lots and lots of white tailed deer, put a fence up. You don't have to worry about hit him with your truck. We're you know, really yeah. And then I think later they discovered the fringe benefits of it, being breeding and controlling genetics and things of that nature. I think it originally started obviously to keep people out of your property. But as far as wildlife is concerned, highway uh. And I've heard two of people

only fencing one side. I've been on two properties that have done this, fence one border of their property. If they if they're doing like deer management, and you have neighbors that are just just like you know, I'm not saying it's in a negative way. You have neighbors just like shoot box. Yep. Maybe they eat a lot of deer and they shoot, you know, they go out and don't care and they just shoot whatever buck they run into,

which is totally fine. But I've been on two Texas properties where they ranch a border, a single border, so they're not captive, They're not holding their dear captive. They just don't want to be having their big box so easily move on to a property of mugs that just shoot box. Yeah, it's still possible, but it's a deterrent. Yeah, it deters them from getting over. And in both of these places that I was on that did this, they

mentioned how these guys would set their blinds. They knew that this place was producing nice bucks, and they would set blinds and basically hunt the edge, which irritated the guys. Another guy, that happens everywhere that copensive border. Know where you set your blind on the neighbor's property is it's

just like a human tendency. It doesn't matter if your places ten acres or ten thousand, you're gonna hunt the freaking border because it's obviously better hunting on the other We had a guy right in recently proposed it it should be illegal. He thinks that he's noticed in his area that people will put corn feeders. Like, I can't remeber what state is that. He's in the state where it's illegal debate on public, but you can bate on private. And you noticed how the private guys always set corn

feeders right on the edge of the public. And he was saying it should be illegal to do this, which I understand his frustration perhaps, but that's like some crazy lawmaking. Yeah, that's not gonna go over real. Well, you proposed that in order to make it easier on this dude. He doesn't like that they're drawing off the blue. Yeah. And if that, I mean they find corn, they find high

calorie food. So if it's a hundred yards inside the private or two yards inside the private, odds are that deer is gonna find it just as easily as if it was ten yards inside the private Yeah. Yeah. Um. I never finished my thing about the fence is uh the comments, So I put the picture up in the comments the deer hung up fence. Yeah. So there's a deer that diet on a fence. And I said this double edged sword, right, because we like create, We kind

of like created the white tailed deer. The white tailed deers in some ways, not in every area like you get up in like main big woods, and but in some ways, like the white tail deer has become like a kind of synthetic animal, yeah, because it does so well around people, uh, much to its credit. Right crows, Canada geese. We talked about this a bunch of times, um, and I suppose double edged sword because then you know, like this deers hung up in this fence. That's all

the point I was trying to make. But you look at the comments. A lot of the comments they're cool, A lot of the comments like that's nature's way of sorting out the week, which struck me as really funny. Um, But a lot of comments in there about animal friendly fencing. Yeah, and feeling at that fence. We was a not animal friendly fence that I would totally agree and no agenda here, but yeah, there's a animal friendly fencing and all you

gotta do is look it up. UM. And now a lot of state agencies they have UM basically UM you know, state employees that are their sole job is to work with private landowners and and help them, if they have

interest to do so, UM manage for wildlife. UM. And one of the ways to do that is to UM use animal friendly fencing, which I think is if you have a four strand fence, the top strand onund as smooth wire, UM, and it dictates like the the top strand and bottom strand or smooth wire and I'm screwing this up, but um and then they're spacing between the wire two and then every so often you would have like one that's missing a top strand or something like that. Yeah. Uh,

you know, analope can jump. Like the minute you say they don't like to jump fences, like we're we're antelope or from the habitat to live in, It's like jumping wasn't necessary. They didn't need to jump stuff because they live out in flat, open country in a hundred years. I bet evolution will make we'll haven't jump anilop to jump fences all the time. I think that there's probably

in the select there's definitely a selective advantage. There are antalope that will jump a fence, and those antelope are probably much more likely to live long and have lots of babies. I've reaped and harvested a few antelope bucks as they danced back and forth on a fence trying to make up their mind on what to do with it. We've gotten them. We've gotten them before by hunting them

and good crossing areas. Yea. Yeah, so they don't like to jump, they will jump, and you'll people send him when you say that antelope don't jump, you'll get three videos of antelope jumping fences. So they will, but typically they don't like to jump. Now, they don't like to they don't know how they like to go under fences. So I know that people that are trying to do while they're friendly fencing in some areas, it's raising the bottom wire to make room for antelope to go under.

I know in some areas with sage grouse which collide with fences, there's like a lowering of the wire to to a certain high because they tend to cruise out a height where they often collide with the high wire on a barbed wire fence. And then some guys were mentioning other uses of paneling and things. Yeah, and you can put some visual aids on barbed wire as well, like little pin wheels and stuff. That's what they do

for sage grouse. I think that's what it was. Every couple, between every couple of posts, you put these reflectors so they read just through the presence of the wire. I wonder if there still I don't know this, but did you wonder there's something with all the pigs we saw in this place with with that kind of fencing wildlife safe fencing and pigs. Yeah, well, I I don't know,

because I've been in years past. I've been to places that have um an old high fence situation and they're like, you can't even count pigs as high fence pigs or free range pigs because that high fence means nothing to them, like they'll go under it somehow, some way, which I don't I don't know. That was what was interesting about a lot of the fence that we saw in Texas.

Was it wasn't just a four or five strand barbed wire that was it was like the normal four or five strand, and then underneath that there was a you know, just gaped by three or four inches, there was another three or four strands where a pig I mean a pig let could get through, but you know, anything over forty pounds probably couldn't get through that ar have to hop through the next gap up. Do you remember hunting that crazy place in Florida? What they did? Did they

bury fence or what they do? They had it's a cattle ranch, working cattle ranch, right, yea, And they had they boarded up to a nature wild bird sanctuary. And the wild bird sanctuary does some hog control work, but not nearly enough, I gather according to some surrounding landowners. So this guy had hogproof fencing between his cattle ranch and the bird the wild bird sanctuary, the wild bird sanctuary.

It is funny because you're like out in the cattle ranches like open so it like like what do they call it hammocks? Hammocks like savannah. Well, the hammocks are just what they call a chunk of palm trees. Yeah, but the rest is like savannah like grasslands. And then you will come up and look like you'd walked into Guatemala when you hit that fence. Freaking jungle in the birst sanctuary because they weren't running cattle on it the constant over the years grazing. So he had hard proof fencing.

But what he would do is he went and built in all these little dogie doors in the hogproof fencing. What yes, propped open with a stick. And he's got hogg doug, he's got hog chasing dogs. So one night he cut we're a turkey hunting and we get to shooting the ship and he's like, if you boys want to go out hunting hogs a night, come along, and we agree to do this. The first step on his hog hunt, before you start hunting hogs, he goes down that fence and closes all the doggy doors. Step one,

close all the doggy doors. Step two, start hunting. Yes, and guess where you catch pigs at the dog door? Is the dog you doors? And these guys do you're here? Everything called Bard like v Bard? No, not Shakespeare. Uh is somebody using the right word borrowed? I think it was just bar bar hog. Yeah, we caught two hogs that night. One is, we recaught a hog that they had caught previously. And when they catch a board, they castrated because it does two things. One stops him from

reproducing and make it more pigs. Two, as he put it to us, it takes his mind off ass and puts it on grass and they get fat. But it also limits the testosterone flow. Right, it makes it makes the taste better from fast times at Ridgemont didn't say that, he made it up. He didn't say that. Anyways, we caught two picks. One was castrated. Oh you know what, Remember how this morning I was telling you about making

my own sausage casings. That was from that pig. Oh so you was from the one we caught that had been either by them or other hog hunters had been caught before and cast right, we called another pig that was intact a boar. That pig they castrated and turned back out again. Yeah, this is I've done this a couple of times. Ridley's rode along like you guys did, and it is it is gnarly. So you're you're catching them with dogs. I'm going there and grabbing them by

the hind legs in the not cast rated hog. Um, the not cast rated hog gouged a dog pretty good, And I can't do you remember the Do you remember the my observation about does the vet think about you bringing in dogs all the time that are hard up? Was that? Was that a lion hunter that said that line to us that I like so much? Or was that a hog hunter that said that line to us that like so much? You were talking with it with that dude is we were riding on top of his

giant swam buggy, all right. I said to him, what's your vet think about you bringing in dogs all the time that are gouaged up from wild pigs, which one could argue is avoidable. And he's then said, that's why you got to find a vet who likes the hogs. Give you a discount. Here's a good question for you. You go in there and you grab a critter by the hind legs? Is that a harvest or a kill? Are you killing the big? Are you harvesting the pig?

You're harvesting? It's nuts. Haven't haven't seen that occur? I would not put I would not take a word, and I've seen it occur in a lot of places. I would not apply such a delicate word as harvest to what happens when you catch a pig with dosh. Yeah, it is the most it's like, it's probably the most chaotic scene you can imagine. It's kill with a capital k. It is. I almost got chased up, chased up a tree by a big old hog that just had his nuts removed postcastration. My mom got chased up a tree

by wild pig with my dad. Yeah, I got chased. He wasn't really didn't chase me up the tree, but I felt the need to get up the tree. The way he was looking at me, and he was coming towards me, like, yeah, you better get up that tree. We're gonna we're gonna tussle. Son took his mind off ass and put it up Betty's Steve. Where would because your folks were in Michigan, right, Yeah, they were northern tier, But so did they? Did your dad travel and hunt?

Oh yeah? Really? Yeah, he would go down south to hunt. They'd go down there with their recurves and hunt pigs. Oh, no way, he would travel. He'd go up in Canada and they'd catch suckers. They'd hand grab sockers and phil sacks full of sockers and hang the suckers on the edge of creeks. Fresh bags of fresh suckers and gunny sacks hang along creeks, and they'd hunt bears like bears. Yeah, he taught about the first bear he ever got. He thought he was sitting so close to his soccer sack.

He said, when that bear reached his arm up to rip our part the soccer sackles in the spring, he said he could see his ribs spread apart, and he was five yards away, and he said he could he could put his arrow right between the spread out ribs. He'd like to tell that story, might be he got lucky. Does your mom like tell the pig story? No, she doesn't shy away from it. Not a fond memory. Though. She had gone off to get his arrow, his arrows, because they were they had a pig that they wound

and were chasing around. He ran out of arrows, and she went to get an arrow. He sent her to get it, fetch his arrows that he shot, and she got an arrow, and then a pig got onto her, and she climbed up in a tree and had to throw my dad an arrow to shoot the pig. Man. Yeah, but she wasn't a big hunter or anything, you know, but she had somehow gotten your wife do that for you.

My wife would not do that for me. Well, I think if you're up in the tree with the arrow and it was a pig, she would never be near the tree. Quick fence anecdote. It happened this weekend and it was a good learning lesson. Andrew Whitney and I had just parked and getting ready to hop a fence going to some private we had access to and go hunting and landings right across the street and we're just like, you know, saying, hey, what's up. You know what's going on?

He says, you know, there's a gate, you know, down at both corners. He doesn't drive down to the gate and uh, and he's like, hey, it's cool. We can just you know, your fence is so tightly strong, we can just hop the fence and use it like a ladder.

No big deal, like kind of saying thank you for offering the gate, but you know, we're young and able and what it is hot the fence and guys like and then it just clicked right at that moment, I'm like, I'm like, sir, would you prefer that we used the gate? And he's like, yeah, that's like a brand new fence. It's nice and tight, and I don't want you guys to stretch it out. So I wonder about that. Yeah,

it was. It was very you know, I didn't had never put those two things together that like, you're hopping fences all the time and you're just eventually stretching them out. I'm sure a couple hundreds aren't really going to do that to a fence, but in the eyes of a landowner, you know, it's a nice way to show us some respect. So then the bottom strand was just like two ft off the ground. So we're like, oh, well, what does

duck under? And of course he goes in his house as we duck under the fence and he comes back out and he was getting groceries or something that we're both on the other side of the fence, and he kind of looks sad us and he didn't say anything. He just went back to doing his stuff. And I'm sure he's like if you just got a new house,

You're like, guys, just a new house thing. And there's footprints and there that's a story where you're like, yeah, well you said have permission, we have mission on this guy under his fence and he thought we climbed it all right back. So what we're doing turkey hunting Lano the Lano River during a super bloom in the Texas hill country where holy ship the flowers, the primary our being the blue bonnet looping, which people in Texas are

real proud of. It is a looping, right yeah, kind of looks has a pedal, not not the flower pedal, but has a leaf. The body of the plant reminds me of Columbine. Yeah, very similar. It wasn't in bloom. A fella could be excused for thinking he was looking at Columbine. Um, you don't agree with that, your wife's a botanist, or you do agree with that? Uh, hunting Texas still country kind of the tail end what people were describing as the tail end of the Turkey rutt.

People don't say turkey rutty, don't they tail end of the turkey rut? And uh got out there and we were guests before you get away from that. Do you agree? Do you guys agree that that was the case or is that just the assumption of a few of the locals that you're hanging well. I from living there and hunt it. I think in then in the zone of texts, I want to say we're in the North zones, or we were, the season had already been going for It's just a week, not long at all. Maybe that's just

what they were saying. I was telling Yanni before he went down there. I feel like in the South Zone it's usually mid March. It starts at the perfect time, like you get birds fired up. They're coming off the roots fired up and they're not end up yet. Usually when you get there, when you get up into the Northern zone where we were, it's just a week or so, ten days too late, so you start the opening day is kind of when that. I feel opening days like

the back half of the Turkey rut. And so when we get there a week after that we are, my feeling is on the tail end of it. And that's what I felt going down there. And the challenge would be that we would have to pull. We would have to either find Tom's that we're running solo, or get real slick on the ones that weren't. I know, I know, I said it, but it's like I feel like it's just hard to understand. With turkeys, there is a beginning, right,

Turkey spend their winter in large winter flocks. Okay, if you go out hunting. Just talking to Matt the other day, some of his buddies are just out in a certain area and my brother was telling me how his bodies went. They got some birds, but it was super tough because the birds were still grouped up in groups of one or more. So when I hear that, that's like, not, that's not the rut, that's winter flock. You're on one

side of it. Yeah, So there's there's something that precedes the beginning, and then you get into where later where you have groups of males very casually hanging out, not fighting, not pursuing females. The females have poulse the run around with their pulse, and there's like the end within that. I don't think it's like this real. I don't know that everyone's on the same schedule and it's this real timeline. I think it's kind of this. It's it's white tails

are similar. I mean, you could be in a place where you're not seeing a whole lot of action and then you turn around there's a buck chasing a dough. You know that it's similar with turkeys in my mind that you can run into you be hunting on all week and run into one bird. That makes it seem easy. However you run into them, or on Monday it's unbelievable. Then Tuesday it's like nothing's happening. Wednesday it's unbelievable again. Uh, we show up this spot. We were the guy. We

were down there because the guy's Uh. We worked closely with Eddie and the guy and Ben used to work real close with Eddie. Ye Um. We were guests to go hunting down on the hunting down there with those guys.

And the thing that happens to me turkey hunting all the time in new spots, and I cannot stand it is when you get to a spot you never hunted before, and it's dark, so you arrive in the dark, and you go out in the dark in the morning and you're hearing a bird gobble, but you've never seen the place and you have no idea what anything looks like. I can't tell if I'd like that or hate it.

I kind of hate that, you know, I kind of the turkeys is not bad just because they're on the roof and the first morning me and Cower stand there like they were hammering on the roost down by where you guys arey the river at least or between the two where our zones were. It's cool to just be in a place where like I don't know where that is, but I know there's a turkey over there, because you don't get that. You get that with elk in other place, but you don't get that white tails or anything else

in Texas. That's for sure. You can't stand there and be like, turkey's over there, I don't know where that is, just walking in the dog because it's novel because the next morning, it's not gonna be like that. The next morning, like you know that one spot, which is why ranch every other year, you know, because I like going to

see some new country. Yeah, but sitting there in the dark and there's a bird hammering, and you're like, like, if you go to the spot, you know, well, like Doug Dug can sit on his front porch, your bird gob will probably tell you what tree it's in, you know, just familiarity, or if you're in the woods and you hear a turkey gobbling on the ground when you know in the area real well, he's like, I know what he's doing. I bet he's And they know that little lane.

How does like the wide spot and they like the strutting air. He's probably there, so we should sneak around. Right when you're in a new spot, you hear it and you don't know what you don't You don't know like how you should move over, what you should do, and how you should get over there. And the sun comes up and there's like a big down dead tree right there where you're like, no bird in the history of turkeys would ever jump over the top of that call.

I end up doing that with a set of railroad tracks. We didn't know the railroad tracks there. But you end up and hunts like this where you don't know what you're doing. Really, you just kind of have the landscape in front of you're just kind of poking and prodding at it. You know, when you know the landscape, you just charge over it gets to a spot where you need to be done. I spent two mornings listening to turkeys gobble that I only later realized weren't even on

the property. We are on yeah, cal and I yeah, And I crawled up five birds and hit him and they were just strutting on another side. Offense. We had to then check oh onyx maps, that is not where are we cannot the It takes a lot of mental capacity too, because like we're like, okay, there's the birds, get set up. Here we go and I was like, wait a minute, if only they would come over this eighteen strand fence strong with dead deer. Uh So yeah, that first one we set up. We went out and

set up. It was funny because this is the first guy's ever had to me. We were with a photographer, nice kid, nice guy, and we old texts. I hesitate to even say this. We set up in a spot. Texas have a great affinity for the blue bonnet flower. Apparently it's like a rite of passage that when you have a kid, you take the kid out in the spring and have him dance around. This is the Texas thing. You take your kid out in spring and make him like dance around in the blue bonnets, are laying them

all cute and take pictures of him. They love the damn flowers. So did they do that for you? We photographer hesitate to say this, I has sit say this is deeply embarrassing. It doesn't this. I'm just gonna tell it though, picking up because this is a safe space. We set up in a spot because of the presence of blue blonet blue bonnet flowers. That's embarrassing. That was

the site selection for our setup to try to call birds. Also, a ship load of gobblers nearby wasn't a bad spot, but I would I feel like it's necessary for me to say that. The photographer was like, since there's a number of spots that one could set up, I think it would be really cool if we could set up with all these blue bonnets, because imagine to get a big gobbler, to get photos of a big gobbler like

a small cute child strolling through the blue bonnets. As long as you didn't have to be the small cute child in the scenario, that's that's fine, And that is how we set up. And I think that it was cosmic. It was cosmic retribution that we did not call a rooster in off the tree the goblin. I think that the lord, not a rooster goblin roosted the Lord of the hunt, the Goddess of the hunt, Diana's her name,

The goddess of the hunt said, I will punt. I will not punish these men for having the presence of blue bonnet flowers. Uh inform or dictate to them where they should set up to best kill this turkey, and I will not let that turkey go in their direction.

And they didn't, and we then hunted around. It was like like every I feel like every time you like, I need to start writing down what happens when people turkey hunt, because you somehow carry with in your head, you carry the best days of turkey hunting in your

head as normal. And I need to make like a sticker or something that I keep, or a little note card that I keep my turkey best that says, like, in the morning, before it gets light out, you will hear many gobbles and then the next line will be uh after when they get sunny out or the daylight comes, the birds will will not gobble as much as normal.

And then this is normal. And then as the morning progresses, you, if you're lucky, well here scattered gobbles, because that's like how every but every time you're like, you're in the it's dark, gotta go. And then they stopped gobby, like what happened? They shut down? They hit the ground and never made it the other peep, And I, like, I I re suffer that realization every single time I go turkey hunting, as though I'm experiencing something not like what happened.

They hit the ground and shut right up. How many times have I said that in my life? That never happens. It's like that is normal. So they hit the ground and didn't gobble a lot, and I started entering, Oh, it's post rut. It's like something weird happened. And then you just start hunting and then it plays out like how it plays out. And the other thing is that the other turkey mistake. As we start hunting around me

encountered the Lano River. We're hunting on the Lano River, and I guess a few years ago this was like a very lush river bottom a lot of vegetation. But they had this historic flood, like a hundred of your flood or you know, people are just throwing around hunding

your flood, a ripping national news flood. And it not only did it scour the river channel of vegetation, but it depot posited like full on beach sand where this thing looks like the Mojave Desert from bank to bank, it looks like the most inhospitable turkey thing in the world.

And we start talking about turkeys like that live on the like we're like, there's turkeys on the other side of the river, as though they're in another realm, that they exist in another dimension is our The river seems so severe and wide and un turkey friendly, you know

what I'm saying. And so you start dividing the world up and there's like the turkeys that live over here, and there's the turkeys that live over there, and the turkeys that live over there are we can hear those turkeys and see them, but they're not are but they weren't in our They weren't in our world. Yeah, Kalin, I did not have that experience. You didn't feel that well that I'm not being the Yeah, well, I'm not

being the reality. But that was my like perception of it, to see turkeys over there and like, ha, you know, grand it's too bad that they're over there and we're over here, because what turkey his right mind would ever walk across that. And we hunt around all morning and have some here scattered gobbles and all of sudden. Look, and here's two times that had in the middle of the day flown across the river. And everybody knows turkeys don't fly, they don't like to fly, and they don't

cross water. They don't fly across the rivers. They flew across the river just for whatever, because we're over there, I'd like to think of because we were calling near the bank of the river, flew across the river and then we're walking across the Mojave in such a way that we had all the time in the world to go set up, uh, to go set up where they were gonna hit our bank, because this is the rivers, the property line. The other thing messing with my head

is there's the dead deer hanging there. We're like right by the dead deer and the impenetrable fence. And then I got like, oh, sure they'd crossed the river, but they'll definitely hang up. But did that fence half of lower tight strands they had low? Yeah, you couldn't crawl under this fence. Was that look that you were on later the next day with Danielle Daniell, same fence? Yeah, Yeah, that was that was had a low wire. You couldn't

get under it. You had to scour around for a way to get to get to get under the fence. And we always had to go over that fence. It had a low wire. And then I mean it's in my head that like, somehow the turkeys will not like that fence. But we get set up as being the photographer, We get set up to call, and I've already got my gutt knife out because like two times no hands

coming across that thing. And like I said, I I feel as though I'd like to think it was related to the fact that we were working this little road down there calling. I like to feel it's all They're like, oh, there's a lot of action over there. We're gonna go

check it out. So we get set up and um, I'm and and and I put out a decoy in the road, not knowing the would ended right next to me, because I'm thinking, as the turkey's coming, if they can get over the fence, they'll look down the road and see the dcoin and come down the road and guess, like it all set up, I'm aim in that direction. And then instead of the fence somehow stopping the turkeys.

The next time they gobbled there like already on the other side of the fence, like they didn't even register the presence of the fence, jumped it. I don't know what they did. I didn't care about the river, didn't care about the fence, didn't see the decoy, and they wind up right next to us. Out of you. Uh, drumming, God, I love that sound. Do you feel though, that those birds were responding to you? They were just kind of doing anything you could turn them. It was like throwing

a light switch. You just make them gobble. At this point, they're hot and hot, but they were just like it's like yep, yep, yep every time out of reach, the out of sight when when you hear it's not really true when you can hear them drumming, they're close. But I just but like last weekend we heard some drumming. It was not close. Really heard him drums from just well out of shotgun range. Oh yeah, if you know what to the sound is and what you're listening for,

you can hear him at sub a hundred. You always need to say, I feel like I hear one drumming. Are they just like expanding their diaphragms, like they're vibrating the fathers and holding them tight. You ever, when you kill a bird, uh, when you kill turkey, harvest him, you ever knows how his feathers are all warned, his primaries are worn down because they also like walk around and like leave those little scratch marks. That's a great way to tell if you're in a good area. Marks. Yeah,

But when he's drumming, he's just going. It's similar to a rough growls and roads man liked so many times. Probably just put that on your list of turkey reassurances. It's like, you know, you may not want to leave the road. Turkeys they can't help themselves. No, they'd like to see what's going on around him. They'd like to get out in the road. They're like the walk roads, like the strutting roads. I mean, he's not gonna strutting a briar patch. He likes to get out and display.

But he's drumming, Yanni, do your drum noise. See I go like this just spitting a little back. He spit, you know, and it's like the most that that is. If I could have just one part of turkey hunting. A lot of people would be like the gobble spring thunder. It's a powerful noise. It's a powerful noise. If I could have one part of turkey hunting in pill form, that I could just take the pill and get the feeling.

It would be the feeling of when he's goblin and goblin and he stops gobbling and you wonder what happened, and you like he spooked something and then all of a sudden. If you could get that in a pill, I would be addicted to that pill. Did you should sneak up behind me in the office, guys? That's the spring thunder. I told you about that ranch. Uh, it's actually here in Montana. The first time, Uh, I went

out there, there were so many turkeys. I just got up early, got up on this little ridge, you know, and it's like a series of small hills and ridges eastern Montana, and he hit diaphragm call and then it was like whoa, and then that would que the next ridge and the next ridge and the next ridge, and it was that was the way it was in my mind. That's rolling. That's that's my other favorite thing. When you hit like you hit a crow call or something and you get a shock able and then other girls too.

I'm the man, I'm a man. Uh. So they're drumming right next to us, and I got this photographer with me. So nice guy, real excited, like he likes to hunt. That's how I knew I was gonna like him right away, because he was like out there to hunt turkeys. He was like you could tell if you said to him you could have hunting or taking pictures, he'd probably go hunt.

He'd go with hunting. It's my feeling. Um. The turkeys circle around, drum and drum and drumming, and all of a sudden they're in the photographer's lap and I have to change my position and I'm not able, like I'm real nervous about what kind of shot I'm gonna have until these turkeys because they're circling the calling trying to figure out where's the hand, wears the hand, and they're in his lap, and all of a sudden, you hear

the noise that no turkey hunter likes to hear. Ah, And that's his way of saying something is not right. That's like huh huh, what what what huh? He starts doing that business, and then he gets faster when he gets faster, and if his head was blue or white, like he's excited, all of a sudden, it's red. He's got his head up. He wrecked his snood changes. The color change is an amazing to witness. One of the craziest things in the outdoors in my opinion. Yeah, yeah,

it's the greatest thing in the world. Changes. Color goes red. It's trouble, he goes And then I got interrupted, just follow ups that he's been doing a little bit. Yeah, I was gonna say, I've been thinking about that word drumming and spitting. Everything I'm reading is saying that the the spit which comes first is actually from his mouth um, and then the drum is actually him forcing air up through from his diaphragm. No, it's not him doing his wings really, and a lot of people say that that,

you know, obviously it's his tracting hands. What are you looking at the truth about turkeys? Or is this a legit website. I've been before from dot com to a state agency website. His his his is is air. He's forcing No, yeah, he's not doing that with his wings. You mean you mean he's not doing like a rough grouse when he's dragging him. No, he's not the ground, he's not the rough grouse. So I gotta point out

is the same way, ma'am. They're built. They have the little wattle up there, a little pocket rough crouse drums, he's drumming, he's beating his wings, and it sounds like someone trying to get a lawnmower started. Yeah, but there's gotta be somemar involved in that too, right, Yeah, he puffs up. Yeah, and he's a Spellings married. I'd be willing to wager because when you find him, they have

that throat, sack is puffed up to it. When you hear way off in the distance someone trying to get a lawnmore started con degenerator because what it always was to me like doing he's on his log. He's on his drumming log. Do you know that they feel that that's a limiting factor in rough grouse populations. Suitable drumming log. He's got to have a drumming log, see whatever, he's gotta have a like to have a rough grouse set up a spot, to have a mail set up shop.

He needs to have a drumming log at a specific height, and he needs to have a specific diameter, a perimeter of visible ground around it, and absent that like you can you can manipulate rough grouse numbers in an area by creating suitable drumming logs. That's awesome. He needs to find where he can get the right height and see around him and make sure it's safe around him to then get up there and start going. Yes, I feel like I should do an album of all the animal

noises that I know how to do. You know, you can sell it as like a sleep aid, like a white noise generator, and me going to remember that you would just be a very and now rough and now um not a monkey, and now a dazzle of zebras. So oh, I thought, tell my hunting story and don't want to get around to the word that we need to revisit. And then I want to hear your hunting stories. So he's like, and I think a lot of turkey hunters if you were a super moral turkey hunter, I

feel that you would not shoot the turkey. Like do you think Parker Hall would shoot a turkey that had started to put? Oh my gosh, yes, if he was in range, Ah you do? Oh yeah, he thinks it's im moral to shoot a turkey using a decoy. Yeah, but you think he thinks it's moral to shoot a turkey that's putting just because he's busted you, Parker Hall thinks it's im moral to shoot a turkey. He thinks there's a special place to Hell for people who use

turkey decoys. Well, we're all here from Georgie about turkey decoys. And his answer was, I don't want to go to Hell. Now, he's from a state with a rich, deep turkey hunting history. Yeah, I'm not hunting a lot of them states. I've never heard that. It's like he puts it. Man, does he call to him, like, shouldn't it be the same, He wouldn't. No, I mean it's not anywhere near the same, because, like he points it too, It's like, when there were no decoys, you had to be a damn fine turkey hunter and

a damn fine caller to kill turkeys. Decoys came out in every Joe Schmo out there was starting to killing birds. Yeah, and I'm sorry, I like, I totally I agree with them. I use decoys. I'm trying a bunch of different kinds of decoys this season so I can speak to it from experience? Do they give me an incredible advantage? Yes, I just don't know what I got too so far. No, they've seen what the ones I'm talking about never saw

the decoy your Texas hunt. You're the one the all sweet talking, all sweet talking is using a fan like the next level, like a real like the one that you made. That's if you're If Hell has solitary confinement, that's where you're at. What happens in Hell's that they're able to calculate the temperature of Hell because the description of Hell talks about a brimstone in a certain state, and so I think you can tell, like very precisely

how hot Hell is. That's good. That'd be good to know because that's apparently where we're going for Yeah, I think that using a Turkey fan, even though I do it, I feel that if this is true, if Parker Hall is correct, I feel that that's that's you go to Hell and then into solitary confinement, not allowed to be with the other people in Hell, like Parker Hall is

kind of. I was like, listen, man, I drive a car, like it's way easier to get to town nowadays in a car, are you driving a horse and buggy Like as time goes on, we're as humans. We take the advantages that we're given technology. What if I told you here, take this here corn, stirred up with this here sedative and sprinkle that out and in the morning go out and pick up your turkeys. Would you be like, oh, yeah, it's like driving a car to work. Starting to sound

like you kill a turkey with a drone. Well you're yeah, you're talking about stuff that I know you don't believe. Maybe maybe you got me I think about it more. I'm coming at you later. Maybe the future get defense right and you hot wire super high voltage so that every animal that hits the fence dies and go out

in the morning pick them all up. Because if we just wanted to version baits, bait the ditch, bait the ditch, wait till all average, we could we had four tags each, wait till four times are in the ditch eating that bait, and then sit. I'm talking about you know, I'm talking about a subtle change taking into the extreme. I'm talking about a subtle change in the approach to turkey hunting and or a subtle change the process. It's an efficacy

question or excusely what you're talking about. You're talking about some old timey business that people aren't going to know about. Oh yeah, you can read about it in uh in UH tenth Legion tenth Legion uh Tom Kelly's book. He talks about colonel Colonel Tom Kelly. One of the ways that they shot out turkeys is when pop hunters meet hunters, I think he calls them, would bait. They dig a ditch.

There was maybe a photo or eighteen inches deep. They bait it with corn for a while, and then on the day that they wanted to reap harvest turkeys not reaping. That's where you take a fan and walk up on him with a pistol. They would sit at the end of the ditch, maybe five ten yards off it, looking down the ditch, so that once all the turkeys were in their feeding and you can make one call, all of them would lift up their heads and with one shot you could rake across all of their heads and

then fill a gunstack phone walk home. Very efficient, it's very efficient. No, no, let's go, let's go. So well, I'm talking about a subtle that's like using a decoy, is a subtle change in turkey hunting tactics. It's a subtle like it's it's a it's a move forward, so subtle you could do without. Though, yeah, it's a it's it's a slight move forward in turkey hunting tactics because you're not it's not filling a ditch with corn much

in the same way. I'm getting this analogy much in the same way that using a horse and buggy to get to get to town is a whole lot different than using a car to get to town. To subtle change in the way that inveyance. So there's my analogy now here. Well, here's what I was saying the other day, because I I there day not on you were with me. Now totally with you, because I'm gonna come in and say that I'm gonna come in out. I'm gonna come toward you on this. They're not the turkey I'm trying

to talk about. I remember that story is left where he's going and there's a photographer standing next to him. Um, last weekend, I got a turkey using a fan. I couldn't move a turkey. He was with a whole horde of hands and he was not gonna but he was at the time of his life. He was in the Turkey. He was in a situation that Turkey's dream about being in this Turkey was not gonna move and they were

moving away. And I took a Turkey fan from the Turkey that I'm trying to tell the story about which I took the fan off, and the photographer showed me a phenomenal trick of how to the fan off so that it becomes like an actual fan that you can fold up and spread out and fold up and spread out. Dude, it was the would normally do it. Yeah, it is. There's an other joint. Normally, when you cut it off, you cut it off at the Roman nose. Cut it off at not the Roman nos. You cut it off

at the pope's nose. He's like, no, you If you go above the pope's nose, there's like he's got eighteen tail feathers, there's like eighteen. It looks like when you're separating the ribs on a deer, not sawing through him, but popping the joints. There's like eighteen little teeny joints above the pope's nose and you cut there and then when you mount your fan. I used some I mounted my fan. Okay, you know Ronnie Bam, Yeah, I had a tremendous impact on my life. Ronnie Bam fixes old company,

Yeah he has it. If Ronnie Bam affected me, and he affects the bottom line of Miller. So Ronnie Baam gets frustrated by shitty coolers like Coleman coolers, because what always fails on a Coleman cooler hinges. And yeah, Ronnie Bam is a mill right by trade, so he deals a lot of conveyor material. Convey material turns out is wonderful for repairing things. So Ronnie Bam always calls around hunks a conveyor and when his cooler fails, he makes a hinge out of conveyor belt material. You just put

the lid on how you want it. Take the conveyor belt material and screw or bolt it to the lid into the body of the cooler. And I don't care if World War three happens on top of that cooler, that hinge will still be there. The cooler might be melted, the hinge will be there, intact and fine. It's indestructible. I had a hunk of conveyor belt material laying around. But I switched away from shitty coolers, so now I

just have a conveyor belt material and YETI coolers. So I took my fan and cut it the way the photographer Austin showed me. How What the hell is his name, Austin Stapleton? Like that guy, I cut it the way Austin Stapleton showed me, and then drilled a hole and mounted it on a conveyor belt handle, which has a very natural flop to it, and it's very limber and looks super realistic when you twist it, and it's ultra light.

It's an ultra light Turkey fan, and I collapses. So I can take my fan and go fold it up. And then when I get ready, and I tightened it. I tightened it up just right with a screw. Where when I get ready, I opened it like a lady in a Western opening her fan up a floozy in a Western, and opened the fan up and it stays open. Man, I can't borrow that, sure, thank you? Where was I? So here's here's the here's the thing. Here's the thing, and I'm gonna be done well. I gotta tell my

story real quick and I gotta talk about thing. I'll keep on talk about the day I'm sneaking up with this fan on a turkey that won't budge, and I'm just using the fan to block my view and he's actually posturing toward my fan. And I eventually snaked my shotgun barrel literally through the feathers of the fan and wait for the hens to get clear. I couldn't shoo because he had all his hands. Eventually the hands got clear, and I shot turkey. And I'm feeling guilty about it.

But then I'm like, you're using an actual like what could be pure? You're using the feathers from a turkey two go after a turkey. It's not plastic, it's not rubber. You made it yourself, you devised your own. You're using bio like, you're using like bio mimicry. How is that not pure? But it's pure. It's like purer to have some rubber factory produced turkey ac simile on a steel

stake driven into the ground. But it's it's less pure to like take the bird's own feathers and use it in fashion a device by which you can go get another bringing into this whole purity scale. I haven't said anything about that. I'm more taught just talking about this fight up efficacy. Yeah, I'm just rastling with the whole thing, is all Yanni. Okay, Well, I think you know, because there's some people that think any sort of blind hunting

is unethical. There's people, but not people have been doing that for thousands of years. It's not I keep using ethics. Ethics. I was gonna say, it's not quite personal. How I like, I would not want to. I have never and would not want to unless I was with my kids shoot a turkey out of a pop up blind. I've never done it. Yeah, I would only do it with my kids.

But if we're being honest, like hunting right now is just a lot of different forms of how we prefer to hunt, it's preference versus ethics, Like it's an ethics when I think about turkey, any ethics go too? Am I using a bow or a shotgun? I'm using a shotgun every single time I possibly can, because I feel like it's ethically a better way to get the job done.

Wound lost with severe be on turkey sovera. I've seen some of the best archers that we know in modern hunting times wound turkeys three or four of them in one hunt. So I know some really good bowl hunters that did a lot of turkey bow hunting. Eventuallys were like, it's just I switched back to Actually I've two or three years straight just hunt with a bow. And I'm like, no, no, there's no unless it's archery only season and the birds are fired up, I'm staying home. I just it's got

to be a shotgun for me. That's ethical. But the preference, so I'm like, you hunting a blind, like being out in the springtime turkey hunting, you want to like have your full senses, your full set of senses. It's like the woods are alive for the first time in a long time. I want my full set of senses. I don't want to be sitting in a tent, sitting over a plastic Yeah, that's what it feels like to me,

like just sitting against a tree. I don't see. Yeah, and that's what And there's no again, It's like, there's where the preference in the ethics thing. Ohs, I prefer not to hunt with a bow because with a bow he should probably be in a blind or it's better to be in a blind. Ethically, I don't want with a bow because it's it's a less effective killing tool. So both of those things are happening simultaneously. For me, comes to turkeys, it's yeah, it's like it's so much

like I use a shotgun, which is easy. It's easy to kill a turkey's shotgun. Uh. I like to sit in trees or like like lean against the tree because I don't like that feeling of being in a blind, and then I'd move around a lot turkey on. So I don't want to drag the blind around. But if I saw a guy in a pop up blind with a bow, two things I don't do, do I feel like, oh, he's not all be like, no, he just has different

personal preference. There's nothing to do with like like I keep saying moral because of my own I'm always saying moral because like the own feeling I get if I

call a turkey in like a turkey like purity. The thing that they're gonna be most proud of is that there's no decoy and you hear a gobble way off two in the afternoon or no, it would be this, it's two in the afternoon, there's no decoy, and you shock gobble up a turkey yet two in the afternoon, and then you gradually coax him into shotgun range and he comes in and he's strutting. That is the pinnacle

of turkey hunting, sprinkled with a few gobbles. A few gobbles, you get him hot, you get him like that to me is like wow, well there's some every version that's less than that. It's not as it's it's not as exciting to me. There's a perfect combination of the amount of time he's allowed to strutt within your sight and then shooting him like if he if he comes rolling in behind a tree like a turkey, boom, shoot him.

It's not the same level of purity is if he comes in, spits, drums, struts back and forth, is looking around you stay still and give the bird that um I definitely had. Can you hold off because you're not it's not your turn to tell your hunt story. I want to hear the whole thing, Okay, but it's gotta finish two quick things up. Yeah, I'll start with a description of Stephen Rinella as prowess in the woods. However you want to do it, Uh, so the bird putts and I have to actually wait for the bird to

move away from the photographers. So the purity score is going down because who the hell hons with the photographer? Well, I do all the time. But that's like I can imagine Diana, the goddess of honey, being like wanting to hit me with lightning. So the birds moving away, he gets clear the photographer. Then I'm like, man, kind of dicey shot, but I get a nice shooting gap, like

shoot turkey and he did piled up. Yes, yeah, I mean yeah, I don't know, man, those I've had a lot of flopping birds as in My first instinct after pulling the trigger is like get to your feet as fast as humanly possible and sprint to that bird. They will get up and leave. Yes, that's like the turkey hunting, but that's like the thing you see. The trope is like you kill it and you run over immediately drop your gun to run over there. But I'll tell you, man,

those turkey loads are dude for freekish. We'll get it to my story too. But I mean dropping turkeys and not even a twitch was your bird like that? I mean didn't even know he well, I got injured by him. Oh when I say piled up me, he wasn't going anywhere, but I got. I ran over there and I got. He was still scratched my eye on his wing when he's beating his wing. Um, But yeah, it is good. I don't know, man. The one you guys are speaking of, I'm assuming is the federal T S S, t s S,

tungs and supershots. You guys are shooting the seventh seventh and it used to be like because the way it used to work is and I think some states still do. You're still not allowed to use sevens in some states, or you're not allowed to use nines. No, I think it was when we I think who were we talking to? Was it going to Do or the Sportsman's Alliance guys, they both might have been working on that issue. Like the law was the rules the rules antiquated like they

because they were. They had rules around shot like pellet size and for efficacy. But with the new like super fast like high velocity, high density tungsten shot, you can just put a bunch more pellets. So TSS the tungstens in the word right, tungsten supershotungs supershot, so you can use sevens nines hands, which we haven't tried yet, but I've definitely shot turkeys with the sevens and the nines.

And another thing that you get from you going smaller shot size is you just get so many more pellets downrange. So we opened up some twenty gauge that was a mix of five six sevens and pour it out on some that was called third degree, yeah, and then right next to it opened up a nine with nines, and I mean you can just see it. It's just I mean, you're doubling, maybe tripling the amount of pellets going down

range to one pellet to kill a bird. You know, I used to use third degree and liked it, but not I like that other stuff because you get really really dense patterns with that many pellets, and those things are zipping, yeah, and there's they're spending. You know a lot of people are gonna say, oh, man, that sucks

too expensive for me. And look, man, if you're the guy that just rolls around his ranch and you know you're not gonna actually be turkey hunting, but if you see a turkey, can jump out and shoot him and then you can keep going about your work. You know, that's like the ranch Montana rancher type of a hunt right where you're just efficient as possible and spending money.

But if you're gonna travel let's say more than an hour to go turkey hunting, and you're like worrying about whether you want to spend a dollar or fifty cents on a turkey shell versus the five or six bucks um or even higher for the tss IT ranges I'm looking at, and I think it's a new point. You could spend up to forty five bucks for a box, for a box of five nine bucks and you touch that trigger. Yeah, but how much is your turkey take and how much does your traveling on? How many actually use?

I've shot two shots and killed two turkeys this year. They come in boxes of five. If you're using more than five in a year, you're having a good year. If once you pattern patterns, that's that That is where I would say it is expanded. You have a five shot pattern, that's uh. But I don't know, man. But with the tungsten, the confidence that I have right now shooting my set up jamming them, Yeah, yeah, I'm competent,

far farther than I should be. I'm limiting myself because of like the new set up where it's like I don't need to shoot as far as I think I could with those loads. And you think like denser, right, denser than traditional lead or traditional heavy shot. And so if you're getting less, you pull the trigger. They got these setback forces. You're getting less, you know, deformed pellets, and that's what causes flyers. So you have less flyers, a denser pattern, and we all pull axe turkeys like

drop him on it, like on the spot. You know what's interesting is when I went over there after we got the bird tagged up, we're walking back and I realized there was a tree I didn't even register in my mind that had about a two and a half inch diameter and that tree looks like an absorbed half that load, but the other half went through. And yeah, now was my turkey hunt. Now, what did you want

to say about my haircut? Oh? The word butch. Just the interesting thing from childhood that I didn't pay much attention to there was I grew up down the beach from a gay woman who would fish with my father and his friends. And she was elderly, and it's just the weirdest thing, and like troubles me and puzzles me now because I didn't even know what it meant at the time. They would call her, and she would call herself butcher. And my father and his friends were you know,

World War two guys. I I do not think they would have Unfortunately, I do not think they would have been as accepting of a gay man that they hunted with, that they fished with. Probably not, but they were. They would walk with in the morning, walk dogs with, and fish with butch, but call her butch, which is a derogatory term for a gay woman. So it's a it's

like a derogatory lesbian term. And I just like I would love to go back if I could go back on my brain now to understand like what that dynamic was, how she perceived the word, how it came to be that she would go by that nickname and ask those guys like what, because it was just so matter of fact,

it was like, oh, yeah, the gay woman. I would imagine now that's still within the community, and again imagining that with amongst you still might call each other butch, yourself butch, but it's not something that someone outside of the community would call. Yeah, she was like like a buddy, like buddies with these guys, and so I don't know like what they're under just like you know, how words are used changed so much, like I don't know what

they're understanding of. It was that they were they like, oh I shouldn't or they just like that's just a matter of fact. I have no idea. She was like accepted in that group and that's there. That's their acceptance of her was to call her that right, like, hey, butch,

you're probably one of us now. But I imagine with all these types of terms in twenty nineteen as a less accepted Oh, if I could be if I was probably yeah, Like now, if I could go back in time, I would go down and knock on the door and and be like, you know, uh, I'd like to discuss something with you because there's a thing that we all do that I want to understand better. She might say, well, I feel like I feel like that's one of the ways I can get accepted, and like if that's what

I gotta go through to get accepted, that's fine. Maybe we had a what we talked about. I never retouched on this. But when we were down in Mexico, you guys are all there. No, I think you had you take you had to take off. Maybe we talked. A woman wrote in and she were talking about finding hunting partners. And a woman wrote in and she said, I'm a woman and I'm gay, and it makes it very hard

for me to find people to hunt with. And I talked about that letter and we got I don't know how a dozen plus people writing in being like, I'll hunt with her anytime she wants to give her my email address, and not one person wrote in to be like screw that lady. It was like, dude, send her by way, We'll hunt with her. That's awesome. Yeah, now you're saying about how good Steve is in the woods.

Oh I didn't say good, phenomenal phenomenal one Uh yeah, that would we want to talk to start this one with a conversation about zones, what zones mean, and how your turkey became a conversation of zones. Well, it just became a place that we all got to meet up at. Really. Yeah. It was kind of like I'm seeing you a while, Yeah, what are you doing over there? Um? Like yeah, we can, we can get that. But Ben and I had been hunting all morning. Steve been hunting all morning. You guys

stayed in your own zone. Yeah, And eventually we heard a shot as we were walking back in, and we kind of discussed not hunting for the midday and I'm going to get some awesome barbecue. Um. And eventually it kept hearing the bird gobble from kind of the little ranch compound there. It's like, all right, this is yds away, throw them a gearback on started walking down the road into my zone, in this Steve zone, and then here can you enter my zone? Then here comes Steve and

gung ho to go hunt. And it's helpful to have a caller and a shooter. Uh, I would I would say most times turkey hunting and um. So uh Steve and I um headed headed back into the woods. Um. And then there was some discussion as to oh, wait, I just told Yanni and dan Yelle that I was leaving and now we're coming back into this zone. So Yanni and Danielle and made me working into what had

previously just been Steve zone. UM. And that took some some time to kind of figure that out and communicate by a cell phone with some like spotty coverage phone and dropping and still lead to hurt feelings. I'm not sure how hurt the feelings really work. Yanni. Listen, I've been a tremendous amount of time with him that was as upset as he gets. That's ten yes, with my kids, that is as upset as he gets. Um, were you feeling like you were with your kids at that point

when Yanni sulks, just disappointed. When he sulks, that's his upset. Now, I've seen him actually flip out on people, so that he that wasn't because I've seen him flip out a couple of times. Um, But he was sulking. He was in the eight. He was in the eight sulk go ahead. So while that's getting figured out, we're waiting for this bird to call, and we're doing some kind of aggressive calling, and then finally we hear gobble and we set up move a very short distance, set up call a little bit.

At Steve's doing the calling, I'm just hanging out the bird gobbles again, and we get a very clear impression that the bird is not going to move closer because of um, just just the topography of the landscape. So we get back on the road again. Don't leave the road, and then it will move like seventy five yards and then the road cuts back and basically makes more or less within a few degrees a straight line to the turkey.

And at that point we set up again. Um. I set up in a beautiful turkey killing spot which I didn't like, which Steve did not like. So then he repositions the turkey, almost blocking the entire shooting land. If you're not gonna sit where I want, I couldn't lose. Put the decoy where I want, yes, um, And it was a nice little blind corner situation and turned into about a thirty yard shot probably doably. Could I tell

what my concern was? Please do? There was a Texas fence, not a high one but but stiffy yep, And I couldn't tell what side of the fence he was on me neither, And so I was worried that that I wanted you to be in a position where should he come up the fence line. You had good a good view through the fence, yeah, and you might have felt that you did. But that's what that's what. But it's

just tired to communicate. That's what I was getting at, was like, what if he I don't know, but what if he Definitely the road was definitely plan A plan B. I had, uh you know about it, two and a half foot gap, had he come up the other side of the fence and had things worked perfectly. Um, but yeah, so one call and you know, it was one of the called gobbles back where you're like, oh, oh boy,

this this bird is very committed. You're feeling your tonsils and will more than likely not make it past this scenario. And yeah, I mean seconds seconds later, his head comes around the blind corner and I really could have shot him right then. And then part of my brains like, because there was a Jake decoy his register, he registered that decoy in a visceral way, yes, And part of me was like, oh, we'll hold off and let and let's see what this bird does with the Jake decoy.

I really want to see that interaction just for future. And then the other part of my brain was like, you're an idiot. Kill that bird rain So I did, but it comes when he sees that thing he's got like a hold on a minute. Yeah, it was great, It was great, but yeah, that that thing was just deader than a way ug man. Just yeah, I like, I have rarely seen turkeys flop over that thing that did not move after that. Meanwhile, you honest is doing everything, and that's power to try to get a gobble out

of that bird. I was also we see there the fact that I was maybe even three yards away from you guys also in the zone, also hearing me that gobble, trying to determine if I should go over there or not, and knowing probably not. So I just sat there because I was going. I was trying to get out of the zone on foot because I was very I was challenged by your like I'm going hunting. I'm like, well,

if he's going hunting, I'm going on. So I was took off to go back to our earlier zone and on my way to the zone, which was bird rich, which is bird rich. On my way over to that zone, I heard a gobble. So I sat down and I called a few times, and I was like, it's probably not polite. So I just sat there and heard us. Then you heard us harvested, and I heard you harvest it the bird rich zone. Uh. That Ben was going

off too, and then got distracted from. Is important to note because that is the exact same zone that NA returned to later on. Yes, it is important to note. But yeah, I was last the last I felt. I felt. You didn't intentionally chide me, but I felt chided into like, am I gonna go sit here and wait for lunch or I'm gonna go like cal and valently trudge back into the forest to hunt the wild turkey. So I was like, I'm off, and I went off to skip

your afternoon shower hunting. Yeah, yeah, skip. My Ben has a very stringent showering routine in the state of Texas. Yeah, it's morning, midday, and evening shower, I believe pretty much every Yeah, if if I could do it every hour on the hour, showing more than once a day, yeah, you know I was doing twice a day while we were there, because I had lived there and I know all the ship that's crawling on me. I went off, oh,

you were doing like tick and jigger work. And so I get in there rather than just like walking around in my underwear picking. I figured getting in the shower is a nice way that I was periodically checking my scroll. Yeah, because I started having like you know, when you start thinking about it, there's a chigger. That's a chigger. That's gotta be a chicker. I did come up with one chigger bite right on my waistline, but one which is

just I felt. Yeah, it was just like the weird curveball the state of Texas through me because it is that experience down there that week was so completely different than every other Texas Texas experiment experience that I've had, between chiggers and cactus and everything else. My wife. My wife said, how's the trip. I said, well, the turkey hunting was so so, but I didn't get I didn't see a rattlesnake, I didn't get a chicker bite. I didn't get a tick on me, so I win. So

I'm still working a storm in my knee, Yeah, that's it. Yeah, I think I had a cat storm too and in my in my behind. But other than that, I'm good and in going to Texas. If you get out safely without any kind of alpha gal syndrome or any long lasting effects, you're good. Yeah, lime disease, any other court of ailments viruses. I just I just got a note that at the end of that trip, and we did the fundraiser for a wild cheap at the end at

the Yetti flagship store in Austin. They pulled, uh six thousand, five hundred bucks at night. That's great because Cal was auctioning awkward auction. Yeah, he wasn't doing that. He wasn't going, hey, hey guys, listen, listen man, I'm not here to bullshit you people. You got money, I got I got something, I got stuff to sell it. Let's hear another quick

turkey story. I'll give you a quick one. Um, this is what the next day, correct, we had We had a couple of buddies who had a property at lease property close to yea relatively close similar area to also in the Lanta River down River aways, and Yanni and I decided to hunt that virgin property at least to us with with two buddies of ours that own archery country there in Austin, Tyler and Brennan and I had hunted last year before. I had hunted that property, but

Yanni had never never hunted it. But I felt like, you can tell me if I'm wrong. At it's a pretty good turkey spot. Yeah, as things go, Yeah, nice rang YEA heads up, heads up, to the river. So we headed over there in the morning, got up early, made the drives like forty five minutes, headed over there, and struck off in the morning. I went with h I went with Tyler, and Brendan and Yanni went off together. They had a bunch of fired up gobblers in one

spot on this property today before. So we struck off and headed over there after those birds and see if we can strike them up. We struck up a couple of birds across the river, which I was dumb enough to think we'll find some other turkeys. It was the Yan. Yeah, this is from us. And we were in a spot where you know, you want to talk a hundred of your floods. I mean, there was full boats, there was docks, there was I mean it looked like the water was

fifty ft above normal. I mean it was unbelievable, like stuff deposited on the banks. Yeah, I mean just to breathe everywhere. I mean it was. It was kind of a waste land there at that stretch of the river. So we walked the river called a little bit, struck up a couple of birds across the river. But I was dumb enough to think, oh, we're gonna hunt these birds that are on our side. I don't want to mess with these things. We should probably have we struck

up some some birds out were fired up. Probably should have stayed there and got him to fly across as as you guys did at the other spot. Anyhow, we went up the hill set up where we knew these turkeys were at, started calling and we basically complete silence once birds hit the ground, And it was how could this happen? How could this never happen? This never never, never experienced this in my life. So yes, we we're

basically screwed. Oh, Yanni did the Yanni Turkey Marathon. He walked from the other side of the entire property all the way to where we were, and I heard this fing and he said he had his track function on yea on on X. Brendan did because hunt with him from Was he using one of those stupid watches that always tells you the wrong everyone those watches, Dude, I walked eight miles today. My watch told me so often they cannot be We gotta give Brandon. Brendan Hansen is

a multiple time gold medal Olympic swimmer. For whatever that's worth, For whatever that's worth. So he's been there anyways. He says, you guys watched seventeen miles looking for turkeys. Yeah, and that was after I did. That was a person as long as it doesn't I don't accept any data from one of those I watches. I don't know how far it was. I am nine thirty when I hooked up with you guys. I was already like, God, I heard this. That was a freaking walk about. I just did what

I'm talking about. There's a lot of fit bit fit bit like whenever someone was you know, fit bit people. We got one from my kid. He wanted one real bad. He wakes up, he's wake for five minutes or his shows. He's gone like three thousand, three thousand yards. Did come downstairs eighteen flights of stairs today? Now? We I was. I remember hearing the faint crow call in the distance, and I thought, well, that's the direction that Yanni's in.

But there's no way in this short amount of time that he's covered all this distance to get to where we are, because we left him on the other side of the property. Almost I hear this faint crow call, give it to me Ali in the distance. What did it sounds like do away off, do a way of you the part I don't like the end part, just a little something extra for the lady. We're just having fun. So there is was he in your zone? Did he

violate your own kind of kind of? But it's not that we didn't really establish his ownes at that point. We just thought, well, Yanny so far away, there's no way he'll trudge because he had to go through what eight gates to get what do you mean? Kind of? I was in touch with the freaking lease and I was like, can I come down there? Because where you guys sent me is obviously the first girl I've ever been put in You thought you thought you were girls.

It's called the lat being creep yep, coming into your own. I was like, that man has big strides, made it all the way over here. But I heard a faint stretching fences from one end of the rag plushing gates over I heard his faint crow call, and I thought that sounds like a Yanni crow call, not that it didn't sound good because there's not a lot of crows there. Yeah, there's not. You don't hear there's some, but there's there's

not something you don't hear that three note crow call? Uh. And then I heard I heard a yelp, and I'm like, that's a Yanni. That's a Yanni yelp and it has like two stages. It's got, it's got, it's two staged six notes and it's two stages. Um when those notes, so I knew that was Yanni. Well, Yanni came over and met up with us, and there was it was quiet. You hadn't heard a gobel to that point, at super quiet um to the point where it was getting a

little bit depressing. So we endeavored to to go and grab some sandwiches or We're gonna go. Reset, got in the truck, rolled down to this little creek bottom where I had heard birds goblin before. I'm like, let's just get out and hammer him. Um. We got out and almost as soon as we got out of the truck, right, Yanni, Yeah, we blew the crow call and he answered and he was boom answered. Now this is and what we didn't

say about either your two birds. You know, to Steve Reno, I was doing my best in version of it, but I'm sure it wasn't Steve. Steve believes his crow calling is his Olympic in nature, like it's gold medal. There's something like particularly shocking to a turkey when I crow call piercing it. Now, I gotta say, when I pull that crow call out, I watched them they take two or three steps backward to get behind to get behind

me before I do it. So you you I didn't see that though in our short time together there was no shocks. Uh, but I believe you. But Yanni shocked him up and they were just kind of like what yards away? This bird was put down in this little little creek bottoms, beautiful little um dry bottom. It was hot, man. So yeah, we knew we we we need to find some shade. It's not that day. My friends and um,

so there's four of us. We're like, we'll all four go down there and see if we call us burden, which is generally not prescribed it we've been heavy, Yeah, we went in't heavy, and it was it was decided that I would shoot this turkey. Yanni had his fan and we went down into the bottom. What do you call your fan, Yannie? Slim shady, Yeah, slim jimsickings, slim pickens. I think it is what you tea we got slim Pickings out. We went down there and hit it. Not

not sooner did we did? We say slim because it's only a fan with like a turkey head. You might as to talk about it. Yeah, give people his turkey decoy's head off. Yeah, it's a premost chicken on a steak, which is sweet decoy. I like what I like about it has the steak, has like a handle, even has a little you where you can drop your shotgun into it, so you can be holding the fan and you're that's

that's way. That's like a coat hanger. No, no, no, you can you can fan with it, or you can just stick it into the ground and use it as a decoy. But I wanted it to be a little bit more poor, a little bit more running gun friendly, and so I basically whacked off three quarters of the decoy body so it was just the head left, and you know, did a little tweaking and basically attached that

to the stake handle and the fan. And so because he's so slim and two dimensional, slim shady, slim, shady, slim pickings, Well, slim, that's your favorite actor, Slim shady, slim, slim Pickings, I did like eight miles, tell you what. I never saw that, but he's in that movie Happy People. Yeah, he's pretty good, and that's pretty good. He's no slim pickings. Yeah, no, I doesn't have depths and body of work of doctor Strange Love. This is the greatest movies ever made. This

is why podcast exist. Go on. You just need one role or you get a ride an a bomb, and that's kind of that's you. That's your one shining moment. Uh So we all flour judge down to this bottom. This turkey's he's pretty fired up for a midday bird, and it's hot. It was pretty hot. Um. I didn't have a lot of confidence because he seemed a little he seemed like he was in his strut zone. He didn't really want to break. Is that is that how

you see it? Yanni? Yes, I would say so. So we all, I, Yanni and I kind of got up against some trees and we knew he had a There was a fence in between us. Was one of those six Strand fences that we were talking about, and we're thinking, this dude's gonna have to come across that unless we you know, unless we jump it. But if we jump it were too close. He comes, he starts gobbling, We sit down. He's not really he wasn't cutting any distance. For for five to ten minutes, Yanni was hitting him hard.

I got got the old box box call out, but we decided to skip closer and split up. And then and then both of us calls sounded like a whole fuck, whole raft. He was fired up, and he was answering every time, and he was he was thundering, but he just wasn't. He was in his zone and he didn't didn't feel the need to come over because they I think that they enjoy that. Yeah, I think that, like you think that there's unfel like when he's not you're calling and he's goblin and you feel that there's this

thing that needs to happen now. I think that they sometimes revel in that. I think so too, And I think this is a perfect example of what how it goes. So we're calling. It was ten minutes of calling. I bet and I get out the call. Him and I are both gone. We're hitting it together. At some point you could just tell that he was committed, like at some point he was he was We were cutting him off both cutting him off. He was getting a little

more jacked up, a little more excited. He's like, I'm gonna make love double, and he had a he had a triple, guy will be making love soon. And I'm I'm maybe ten yards away from Johnny. And I turned to him at one point and he goes, let's just stay quiet. Let's let's just shut up for a while. See what happens. We shut up and not it was coincidence that up, And then I think he was coming already. I thought I knew he was coming for sure when

we shut up and quit Goblin. Like thirty seconds later, he just hits one and he's way closer than he was. And I turned to our other two companions. I'm like, he's coming, like get ready. So we've got me on the left, Yahni on the right, Yahni got old slim pickings just just giving into the sweet turn, that sweet music where there's just tails. Had to come. He had to come investigate, because silence, that little tail fan just

just going across. Yeah, we could see way up this shady creek bottom that we couldn't see what the turkey was. But he came across the thick stuff and popped out ards. I called him coming through the thick stuff and I'm like, oh dude, that's all. And he comes out into the open creek bottom and we're all, there's four dudes just I mean, we're not covered up at all. I'm like,

he might this might not go well. There's the thing of beauty though, because he kind of came out of the shade and right into a sunny spot and then he just full came out, full strut and just glowed and just and it was it was like one of those like the avenues in the creek bottom. It's like that avenue in the creek bottom where he got trees on both sides. You got a bunch of brush and there's just just like lane and he didn't get he

wasn't like walking the edge of lane. He came right out in the open and walked in the middle of it. And it's like painting. You see that famous painting by that famous painter of Daniel Boone coming through the Cumberland Gape. Just it's like he just parted the seat and he was just coming through and he was just like, oh man,

he was and he was strutting. He was hit the strut and he would go back down and look around like yeah, yeah yeah, coming in and it hit it up and he kits I did not like I wanted to. I wanted him to come in and put on the show because once I saw him turning the corner, I'm like, unless he unless one of us does something stupid, this

is over. But he took. He took this sweet old time coming up the lane and then got to the fence which was roughly twenty five yards away and just hit it and just was he was going back and forth, he was trying to find a way through the fence, and he was spitting drumming like every noise a turkey can make. He was making um. And so the other two guys were with Tyler and Brennan hadn't really turkey on very much or like almost never maybe one time in the woods. So they got the show of shows.

I mean, he spit drumming. Just you hear a lot of guys say that I want to see the show. I want to get the show when I kill a turkey, and that means that means get to watch him come shutting gobbling. He would, yeah, he would, he started and gobble his whole way in and once he got to shooting range, he was just going back and forth on the fence, just hitting it because I mean just spitting the drum as low as I've heard. Didn't gobbler very much once he got in close. But they don't do that,

So the show sounds kind of perverse. You'd want to see that and then shoot the turkey. But everybody who sits around sits down to Thanksgiving turkey, what was the show they got? It? Shows up in the back of it. Nothing shows up. Cram to do a truck hundred dollar organic turkey with thirty thousand other turkeys cram to a truck and they dragged it out by its feet and run through a slaughter line. I had much rather eat a turkey that showed up like that. Dude, I've been

on I just showed up. I just got back from vacations, so I haven't eaten any part of turkey. But when I do, I will be thinking of him coming down that lane. You'll be picturing one of those sad trailers for the white turkeys going down the high off the back of a giant bim big cryo back bam, like yeah, and I will admit to having made a bit of

a mistake here when I killed the turkey. He was looking try to get through the fence and he was putting his head up trying to and he looked to get through the fence and figured out he couldn't get through it, and I feel I'm gonna kill him now. Yeah, he kind of he kind of came out of strut and put his head close to the fence. So he really wanted through that fence. He wanted through a bad he was. He was seeing another Golers strut in twenty five yards away. Man, he wanted to like get up

in the kicking nuts on it. He was, so he kind of he came out of a couple of times where he'd be like showy, showy, showy, and then he kind of going to three quarters strut. He could see his head looking at the fence. He'd walk a little bit and then let's go back. I was thinking if we let him and let him keep put on the show, he might have backed up and flown over the fence, which would have been out a shot as soon as

he landed. Just just had a principle, but it he he came at broke strut and was like looking through the fence, looking and I thought I could shoot him right now. I'm gonna blow his head off easy. And they went back into strut and started walking towards Joanni a bit away from me, and I thought, well, it's time to go. So I shot him when he was in full strut and just wrecked him. I mean, just I've never I mean, I took he didn't twitch, did he,

I mean, he just down folded. And it turns out that I hit him pretty hard like both And you were saying you thought maybe it was a butchering mistake. I'm oh, I'm sure. I'm sure it wasn't because I've done a lot of them. But it could have been. But when I pulled his his both his legs back to cut his thighs off and his both of his I guess it would be his his femer bone and snapped in half. Like when when that payload hit him, he just felt so fast that the force of it

broke both his legs. I still don't understand. I mean, I understand, like the I'm not saying I understand either, but that's what that's what I encounter when I broke him open and he drops the damn fast. I remember carrying him out like later, throw him back the truckolate could have been tail. That would have been a good way to play. I think we would have seen bruising had we had he gone through some sort of trauma like that, right, Yeah, No, there was no bruising the legs.

It was just literally both his legs were I don't know. I mean, that's the best ex plane so hard, like he broke his own size like he dropped. I mean, I've never seen a turkey. Yeah, I've never seen turkey drop faster than that and not move like did not. I've definitely seen him fold like that with a zero flopping, but not even I mean, what else would cause that? He didn't walk in there with those two legs broken like that. I can tell you that cleaning there, that's

what you were sat. I didn't like make the same air. I don't know how you'd clean it so hard as a breaking I'm telling well, I got you're using the truck skins that turkey. I put a golf ball up its ass, uh No, I j t V and Will standing there and I flopped him open to pull his breasts off in his thighs and legs, and he said, holy ship, because when you just flop them open, you can see it. Um. So that's that's my big takeaway, the payload from the old tss put a hurting on

that turkey. Yeah. And if you, if you, um, you could tell one turkey story, Do you want to tell the story of Daniells first turkey? It's certainly more interesting. You're right, because I got to get in on a couple of turkey kills, um call, and I gotta help me double up on the last day. It was fourth quarter. That's it. That's one of my favorite hunting things that happens when it dudes like, man, I'm just gonna run out real quick before we leave, because Yanni never says die, no,

I'm gonna run out quick before we leave. It was too close for me though, I don't I didn't like the pressure of that hunt. It was like you gotta you gotta push the repeatedly because you're like, well, I do not get fun because you're just in the back of your head. You're constantly like, well, I wonder if we can leave a little bit later. I wonder if they're gonna be piste off if we get there at three instead of two, because it was about one when

we killed. Any who, Yeah, I got to hunt with Danielle for for her first what she considered her first real in air quotes Turkey Hunch and wild Game chef Daniel Pru. Yeah, Danielle Prue wild in the home. Um and uh, we had a similar morning to what you guys described, but I went back out. The only one thing I'll add to the little story, but we can't really go off on a tangent here, but bringing back up Cal's bird story, we were working that same bird.

You guys are obviously much closer to that burden we were, but you know, it was late in the day. It was nude, one pm something like that. We've been out, daniell have been on a turkey tour. My Onyx had said, like six or six and a half miles. At that point, I could see it she starting to drag a little bit. But now we're like set up, got a pretty hot bird. You know, he's working and and we could hear your calls a little bit. I think she even mentioned it.

But AnyWho, man, that shot goes off and you could just see her shoulders slumped down. She said to me, I didn't I feel like someone burst my balloon out delay. I know these boys got lost. AnyWho, we got back out it maybe we were lost, we were in our zone. We got back at three or so, and uh man, it was amazing. What was interesting about that country is that if you got on a high point at all,

you could hear a gobble a long ways away. I'm talking like stuff you can measure in uh quarters and halves, maybe even three quarters of a mile. Um. Because the one thing we'd eventually getting on, I'm thinking, he's for sure on our side of the river. And as we get closer, I'm like, yep, on our side, but definitely down at the river. Where we show up at the river, that bugger's three hundred yards on the other side of the river. And um, yeah, they just they that it

just whatever. It was topography and the and the floor that really let those gobbles travel far. Anyho on the other side of the river. And although I had no I knew that Steve had some birds that came across the river. Um. I was thinking, man, this is a

long shot. Daniel Tha was such a long shot that she was kind of in her head thinks she didn't tell me, But in her head she's thinking, how long are we gonna sit here and just listen to this turkey gobble on the other side of the river that we can't even see, Like this is a stupid idea. We're wasting our time. We should be doing something else. But he was hot, and he was, you know, pretty much goblin almost every call. So I kept at and kept at, and eventually I could tell he moved down

the bank a little bit and he popped out. I was like, oh, well, he at least moved out of it. If it was a struct zone. It was weird because he was like it sounds like he was coming from between two sort of like what I would call like machine shed, not the bar and more like metal side and machine shed looking buildings, like he was strutting like in the park a lot like like tractor and mower storage. Yeah,

more of a garage and the barn. Anyway, he pops out and it looks like he's sort of angling our way, you know, still doing the strutton and and you know, zig zagging, and eventually the zig zags get smaller and smaller and smaller than zig zag turns into a straight line going towards the river bank, and like vally'd be better get ready and take the situation seriously, you know, And uh he gets He actually goes up on one of those bluffs that you described and does a few

circles up there, and I'm thinking, man, you know, if he pitches, it's on, you know, but there's also a really good chance that he's gonna do a few circles and just sitting there and gobble at us for the next hour and then go back up to that machine shop, and you know that would be at the end of

the story. Well, lucky for us, he pitches and lands on the Mojave Desert Sandy Beach don't like to fly two or three hundred yards away, and uh goes into full strut for a second, drops full strut, and then just starts be lining it towards us. And uh yeah, definitely one of the more incredible and more interesting wild calling I've been in, uh part of to see one fly across the river and they walk across the Sandy Beach to me, Um, you got you got all this

on your phone video? That's right, that's right. I made a little Instagram story as they call it, and I saved it in my Highlights, which I learned about recently, and it's like, it's a pretty happy you can go check it out. Fine, just at Janie Poodles. That's right, it's actually yeah Janice Underscore, who tell us so proud of your Instagram? J Underscore? No j A N I s underscore p U T E L I s Yeah, And under Highlights, wasn't it? It was twitched it okay,

snake it easier. He's like, I am a Latvian, I am a hunter, but his name is that all I am. It's if you go on Instagram you want to see the deer hung up in the fence, go at Steven Ronella and then we're not. When you're there, go to follow. I guess I got into a weird place of like being like the whole cute Instagram handle thing and you know what I mean. So anyways, I went playing simple be an old Calori. So this bird come nothing right to the grassy bank, and I thought he was gonna come.

He's sort of. At some point he went perpendicular to us a little bit to get on the bank, which at first I was nervous about because I thought he was gonna we're gonna lose sight of him, and then he was going to get into the thick stuff and then actually maybe even circle us and come through the thick stuff and pop out it, you know, five or ten yards. But instead he gets just he just wanted to get up on our level. And uh he started

coming right at us. And the whole time we're you know, just basically sitting there with his fan in front of us, and uh turn it back and forth, moving it up and down a little bit. And uh, yeah, he gobbled and strutted and all the way to thirty yards and then I made a couple of calls and got him to stretch his neck out. Yeah, Danielle was all over him. And then she turned to you and said, holy sh it, but yeah, yeah, did I think about hunt with Danny, Like a lot of times you hunt with people and

they get something, and I have this thing. I started worrying about the meat. YEP. I'm like, you know, are they gonna You're worried about what's gonna happen to it? Are they gonna put in the freezer and freezer burn it? And never forget and forget about it and throw it out, but nicely the hunt with like a wild game, like a real serious wild game coad, you never have to have that concern. Yeah, she tried to render the turkey fat out of its sponge. So did it work. She

made a broth out of it out of the damn sponge. Yeah, which he's saying. The broth is good, not much fat, but the rendering liquid was good. That's interesting. Now that's next level wild game. You know how most of us

has the big box or the turkeys coming in. We have these visions of Grandeur that I like to call him, which means in my head, I'm like already I'm not purposely thinking this, but my brain, my little subconscious ego, does this where somehow I drift off to like the time when I'm gonna be back at the tailgate with Cal and Ben Steve and we'll be looking at the spurs and high five and having a beer or maybe like thinking about what the European Mount is gonna look

like on the wall. You know, it's it's so weird that the brain does that, but it does because it's not like I don't I'm not sitting there going oh yeah, you know, I can I just drift away, But Danielle was instead of her visions of Grande were more like tacos out of the thighs, and then this is gonna need the breast, and then I got this idea about the Pope snows that I'm gonna do, and she was yeah, the point being that, yeah, she had a big plan

for every single do I gotta worry about it. That's I don't like that feeling of worrying about what someone's gonna do with what they just got. And in the minute they're like, like, do you want mine? Just take it? Because I'm like, if that's what you're I'm gonna take it because I'll make sure it's something. I'll get it in the right hands. And I don't trust you anymore. She uh, yeah, she made some incredible Uh would she call him tequila line? I believe mine tequila tacos out

of the thigh mostly. I think Turkey on especially. I don't know if it's more than other, but most people you run into are talking about the breasts and the breast only like not this crew, but most people in my experience that run into were talking about that way. There's a there's this like a slight expansion to legs and thighs, but taking it a little further like Yannie does. Gizzard's hearts, livers and things like that. Sponge I think

is his critical man. It's oh, you know what I'm doing this year, and I'll be reporting back here in a while. But I've saved every single uh turkey foot or I guess what's what's below the drumstick stock. I'm gonna try making stock, yeah, because a lot of chefs make they consider the best stock out of chicken feet exactly. Yeah. Now, I take the spurs and cut each side of the spur you taught you taught me that trick. So it's just a spur and a little bit of the leg bone.

Drill a hole in it. And I got a thing that I used to pull the lights onto my garage, and I string him on that string. It's real nice. Someday someone's gonna come and steal that string from you. I'm gonna hunt them down and kill him. I've adopted, starting with this dark scenario halls uh way of um or. Yeah, his system of keeping tally or keeping uh you know, mementos from turkey hunts, which is one spur from each

turkey and it goes onto a string, just one. You know what my other pool cord is, do you write something on the Spanish mackerel's jaw And the other pool cord is turkey spurs. Turn the turkey spur light down? But cut your hand? Am I? Uh downgraded because I don't. I kill a lot of turkeys, but I don't save I mean, I have some fans and stuff in my freezer, but I don't anything. And I've mentioned the thousand million times, but I had the spur earrings made for my wife. Yeah,

I don't. Yeah, I just don't. Have never struck me that I had to save him. That's good for any like. Yeah, I look down on um. Good checking in on that. So fourth quarter hunt cat, we we have to go. Some folks have to go to the airport. Some folks have to go to UM the Stars in the sky, UH doc viewing, UH slash fundraiser at the Yeady store all the way back in Austin. So we have a

couple hours to hunt. Uh Janis and I decided to hop in the little rand trig the side by side and UH try to hit this general zone that really hadn't been uh touched since opening since our opening morning, and that's where the birds. Ben and I found the birds and they were strutting on the other side of the fence, and um, that was we had stopped several times to try to locate and get a response. We finally get to this point and we get a far off gobble on the other side of the property of

our property. But it's like where you gotta put all your eggs in one basket at some point in the ticking clock scenario. It was worth a try, right, Yeah, So we went up there and set up on him twice just to kind of know, just to cut the distance. You know, you never know exactly how far he is until he's pretty much within shotgun range. And uh, the fence was a problem, but he started parallel in the fence and then luckily for us, we get to a

point where the fence it takes a hard right. So, yeah, there's a ninety degree turn on the fence, and so you can imagine if two folks are paralleling a straight line and then there's a ninety degree turn, all of a sudden, you're basically face to face faced beak Man fences played a big role in You just gonna say the same thing. I'm like, it's the story of fences, man, the whole story of fences. I like that. Yeah, rap

ro running along. We uh we saw three gobblers. What we thought we were chasing was one ended up being three, and uh, cal put that. We had to creep around that little corner and cow put the fan up. At some point I called I don't know what I called for. I do remember they all three of them simultaneously. Gob They saw the fan and you could see the wheels turned for a few seconds, and then they pretty much

charged in. This was my first experience watching the fan in action, and you could just see like everybody was strapped and then they were like first one gets her, like everybody relaxes and just starts straight line. And so I shot one and then uh, the other ones jumped on his dead buddy and it's pecking and spurn him and whatnot. And then I realized that we had four tags. And I'm like, couch, she didn't know that one. He's like, if you want the meat, yeah, we'll have to touch

on that next time. We're talking about turkeys, which probably won't be long. Is uh a, Turkey's proclivity to one his buddy is harvested too when his buddy gets killed to then spur to attack Peck and spur his buddy. This is next level kicking a man when he's down. Yeah, they turn on each other real quick, assholes. And he's like, I've been watching you and now with my chance and

not gonna spur you. And or if they walk away feeling like they killed him, Yeah, maybe if he's later like you know that one I was with, I killed him? He sure, he tripped and fell and I killed and I killed him. That took advantage of that, That's what he tells people later A lot. There was a loud noise. There was a loud noise. I don't know what it was.

It caused him to trip and fall. He tripped and fell, and then I killed him with my beacon spurs, Steve, should we preview the thing that we filmed down there speaking of all this? Are we're going to keep that top top secret? Should be? Well? Yeah, we filmed the thing that explains a lot about Turkey. Is probably the best instructional Turkey piece ever made, the pre eminent uh

in the in the descape of Turkey instructional videos. I've never read the book, but you could say we basically just like transcribed the book Seventh Legion Legion, Colonel this is more like Seventh Legion into a visual format that everybody can understand. Yeah, one of us is the Poet Laureate, the new Poet Laureate of Turkey Hunting. It's a it's a big deal. What are you nodding that before, Johnnie, because you look like you're about to wrap it up.

I'm wrapping her up. You like do it. I'm wrapping her up. Thanks for joining