Ep. 256: When They Come To Burn Your House Down

our studio. Well that's not true. Cal's in the studio, Hello Cal, Hello, Stephen uh Brody is in the studio, Hello Brody. Hello. And Janice is in the studio. Hello, Jannae loved joined uh joined there by. I think Krin's in there, fills in there. I'm I'm quarantined at home. This is my fourth quarantine. This time I'm so quarantined that I'm out in my own guesthouse, like I'm not

allowed anywhere near even my own family. So I have to look out the window into my home to see my family going about their business, which is the saddest thing on the planet. But my kids are treating me like an underdog and they're watching out from my interests and have gotten very mad at my wife for talking rudely to me. So I'm manipulating that. I'm yea, they feel they feel very bad for me. And joined by Jim Heffelfinger from Arizona. Jim and our friend Brandon Butler,

who's down joining from Missouri. Correct Brandon, now, Brandon, this is like a short notice Brandon coming on here because the weirdest thing happened that I just found out about. Someone sent me a link to a go fund me. Uh that's being put on by Brandon's friend and Brandon he'll tell what happened. But his uh, someone burned his damn hunting camp down, and this hunt camp we recorded podcasts out of. So that's kind of like is the relevancy.

I don't know if people remember years ago, Yanni and I were out spring turkey hunting in Missouri and it was a time if you really stretch your memory back and we're paying attention to our show. Back then, Yanni had gotten a turkey and I actually found an old crippled turkey and got that. Like I jumped up a crippled up turkey and got it and tagged it, and we were staying at Brandon's house, and so I was quite alarmed this morning to see that someone had burnt

to damn camp down like full on Arson. Listen, Brandon, Yanni, you don't even know about this yet, Brandon, tell what happened. So yeah, that was. That was two thousand and eighteen when you and Janice came down and joined me and Parker Hall and Steve Jones. We had a great, great time and you guys hadn't you'd been there right when the cabin kind of started coming together. Called this place

Driftwood Acres. It's down in Shannon County, Missouri. It's a it's a rough part of the world, a very almost lawless part of the world. So I knew what I was getting into going down there as a professional conservationist, and uh yeah, it didn't play out so well. Back in two thousand and seventeen, a friend of mine was hunting a field just off my property when a little seven pointer white tail we call them seven pointers back

here in Missouri was out in this field. A road hunter shot it off the road, wounded it, it ran over onto my property. They drove out across my property, jumped it, up it ran for my buddy, who's wearing Blaze orange, stands up in the tree stand is waving at these people. They continue to fire at this deer,

wounding it more. It goes into a creek, and finally they confront my friend and tell him it was his fault for not putting orange at the entrance of this field at the road so they would know not to shoot from the road. At that time, I went up and and confronted these people. I was told to know my place. I talked to the law enforcement and he suggested just kind of letting this one ride. And man, that is just eight at me for years, like the fact that I didn't press charges. I just kind of

took it, moved on, tried to survive down there. This year, on Sunday of opening day a rifle season, at eight thirty at night, me and three of my friends Nathan Shags, McLeod paddle down Cranfeld and my cousin Derek Butler. We're sitting around a camp fire and the creek had flooded. And if you guys remember but this is just a couple of nights ago, well, no, I'm talking about deer season, so this would have been like November, having burned a couple of nights ago. Oh I got you, I got you.

So if you guys remember I had to bring in through the forest because the creek had flooded. That happens a lot, and we're on the back side of it. So the creek is flooded and we're thinking nobody's coming in for deer season. Well, this truck comes across the creek. Anyways, they stopped at the end of my driveway, maybe a hundred and fifty yards down from us. It's a long driveway. Look up at us having a fire go about two hundred yards further. Pull into this field, throw on the

light bars. I mean it would be like turning on the lights at a professional baseball stadium. Just lit this thing up like crazy, jump out and start unloading so close that we're watching the muzzle flashes as they poached these deer. So, without even thinking, I jumped into my side by side and took off after him. My cousin and friends start charging down the hill on foot to follow me up, thinking I'm I'm going after poacher's unarmed. They're obviously armed. They take off. I get the license

plate number, I call the license plate number. In this time, I'm pressing charges. There's no way I'm I'm never gonna live with that guilt again. I had no idea who it was. It turned out to be some locals. Uh. The threats started coming. I started being told I don't belong down there. All that uh starts coming through email, social media stuff like that, telling me that snitches end up in ditches. Um, good luck, good luck hanging out down here. And and then Monday night, at at twelve

twelve o'clock at night, my wife wakes me up. The neighbor called and said the cabins burning down right now. So I jumped up, grab a few guns, take off. It's a three and a half hour drive. Get down there about sunrise, says the final flames are still flickering. So you know it was it was just a building. But the possessions that I had in there were probably thirty taxidermy amounts of mine and families, my my my grandfather's Folds of Honor flag from World War Two after

he passed away, my my handmade great grandfather's bed. I mean, just the endless amount of like personal possessions that are just irreplaceable and thankfully that I had cameras all over. The person has not been apprehended yet, but they will be. And uh and yeah, so that's it. You know. It took a stand for conservation, stood up to these poachers and they burned my house down. God. Man, the pictures

are really upsetting to man. Yeah, it's it's still hard to like look at the pictures because every time I look at them, I noticed something else that Uh, that's there. If you look hard, you'll see. My friend Kevin Orthman bought me an antique book press and in that book press was the uh, the Meat Eater cookbook, uh, volume one, in volume two of the Tips and Tactics books. So

so even lost, even lost. That's the if if you go back to the episodes we did from there, I did the we I told a story about the steam breathing turkey and Steve you said that, man, that that was such a beautiful description. If I was a painter, I would paint that, and some dude did, and you guys used it as a tour poster on your your

first go around. You were You were kind enough to make me twenty copies of the Driftwood Acres version of that poster and you and Janas signed it and sent it to me, And it was in a frame next to the actual fan from the steam breathing Turkey that was centered between two bucks that I killed down there in two bucks that shags killed down there that were mounted. All that's gone. Every Turkey fan that I ever had is gone. Every European mount that I've ever had is gone.

Is the go fund me still up? Yeah? The go fund me just came up today, and your body you up yeah? And I'm I had insurance, I'm gainfully employed. I am not in in horrible need of money. So I'm I'm humbled by the outpouring of support and and the friendship and and all I can say is like whatever comes from the go fund me will not be used selfishly. I'll find a way to use this money

to h to further conservation and hunting and fishing. And you know, I had a full blown raft, you know, like a west I used to live in Montana and fish all the rivers you guys fish. And I had a fourteen hundred like a pack raft and outcast pack fourteen hundred that burned up on the trailer the water Skeeter I had when I lived out there, burned up

four kayaks, my kids kayaks, and man, that's the hardest part. Like, you know, my girls are teenagers, they're fourteen and fifteen years old, so sometimes dragging them down to this wilderness treat was a pain in the ass. Like I had to get the internet for them to even want to go down there, so I had like satellite internet. But they're crying, They're scared, like they're they're worried these people

might like actually come to our home. So like I'm leaving the house at twelve thirty in the morning with an a R fifteen in one hand, hugging my fifteen year old crying daughter with the other hand. And it took about an hour and a lot of Metallica songs

to realize like what I had done. You know, like I'm walking out of my house armed with like a military grade weapon, hugging a fifteen year old child that's crying, and I'm like the position that I've not only been putting myself, but then to react that way, like I'm I had to like sit her down and talk to her. And but you know, it's a scary situation. It's a scary place, and so why, like, why are the law why is the law enforcement so reluctant to deal with it?

I don't, I don't. I don't even get this, man, It's hard to explain. Man, I don't have the answers for that. I'm I'm friends with the game wardens down there. They're under source. Of course, they're underpaid. I'm counting on a sheriff's deputy who probably makes you know, in the thirties as far as money, And this guy's got to put his life on the line to go after, you know,

hardened criminals because my cabin burned down. Like that's a lot to ask of somebody to like go into this holler where there's no phones, no service, no internet, and try to apprehend somebody willing and able to do such a heinous crime for thirty grand a year. So then you know, there's also a huge national park there called the Ozark National Scenic Riverways, and they have law enforcement and and they have a hard time with getting the

prosecutions to go through. Um there's just a real clannish culture down there, and and trying to get people prosecuted and through the judicial system is hard as well. So it's you know, it's just a very strange part of the world, very Appalachia, Like it's the poorest county in Missouri. But something has to change. And I've got you know,

I'm friends with the Lieutenant governor of our state. I've got to call into his office, talked to a lot of law enforcement people, you know, if I have to be the martyr for this too, finally raise awareness that there's almost a lawless society existing within our state, and the fact that good people cannot go down there and build a home and enjoy the outdoors and increase the economy or anything that needs to be done to make this a more civilized society than you know, what's it

gonna take. So I'm I'm really hopeful that this is a turning point in the history of this county, in the history of the Ozarks, because it's one of the most naturally beautiful parts of the country. Man. I wish we could get into the parts of this that we can't quite get into yet. But it's just like kind of a heartbreaking story. Man. It's so maddening and heartening. Man. But well, like I want to revisit it later on

down the road. But one of the things about the go fund me, I know you were saying, oh, you know,

it doesn't really matter and you had insurance. But I'll come out and say that you've been real good about sharing that place with people and being generous with it and instead of having a little chunk of ground that you that you lock up for yourself, trying to have like a place where you invite people in and and encourage conversations and try to use it as like, uh, something that's positive and to get people to relate and

interact around conservation issues. Um. And I think it was it's like it's a cool spot and what you were doing there is cool, man. And I hope that people go and check out your go fund me because, uh, you didn't lose a ton of stuff, and it wasn't like a selfish project you had going on. It was something you were trying to do to be a good dude, you know. So I feel like you should tell people about the God On Me and people can come in and try to lend some support for someone that that

for turning in. Some deer poachers had all their memories and something that they care a great deal about burned to the ground. Well, thank you very much. The outpouring of support has been humbling. Man. When I saw my phone go off today with your name popping up, I was like, man, this is getting around, you know. So I really appreciate you guys, all of you. And you know, Clay Nucomb has been to the cabin a few times,

Hal Herring has been there, and Russell Graves out of Texas. Like, I was trying to make it something special that would hopefully bring some awareness to that area as well. I was trying to do good things for the people down there and and show that this is an incredible natural resource area of our country. But yeah, I don't I don't know, man. Uh. The go fund me, whatever money comes from that, I'm going to use it for good, for conservation, for figuring out how to get more people

involved in the outdoor, taking more people fishing and hunting. Um. I lost my raft that I wrote a lot of people down the river in that raft. Um. So it's on the Driftwood Outdoors Facebook page. I think the go fund me is called Brandon Butler's Cabin Burned by poachers. You can look it up, but the best way probably to find it is just to go to Driftwood Outdoors

on on Facebook. But what like, like I said, you know, like this money will be used in a way that will let these people know that they didn't win that you know, we're going to continue to take a stand for conservation. You know that. I've been asked that too, Like, man, I bet you wish you wouldn't have turned him in.

I'm like, absolutely not. I'll do it again tomorrow. Like, and I've had a bunch of people reach out and like my favorite thing is like a few folks have been like, dude, this is like the Pearl Harbor of Shannon County. Like they don't know what they just woke up. Like we're gonna get after it. So yeah, don't let some piece of ship with a pointless life drive you out. Man. Right, that's the absolute truth. So we're just gonna keep moving forward. It's all you can do in life, right, Like, my

family is safe and healthy. Thankfully nobody was there. Uh you know, the important stuff is still intact. Yeah, Brandon, I know it hurts to lose all those material possessions, but it sounds like you've got the right attitude about it. And uh, you know, thankfully, no humans got hurt and uh, what that song bitch can't take away from us are those great memories, man, And I've got some incredible memories from that place. And I can attest to what you're

saying about it's natural beauty. It's absolutely incredible. You wouldn't think that, uh, southern Missouri would have water that flows of that color until you go and see it, and I urge everybody to do it. It's absolutely stunning. Um. But yeah, the memory we have, it's burning my mind, is that opening morning a Turkey season when I snuck in there and call that old gobbler over to me and I shot him, and in my head, I could just see you and Steve up there on the other

side of the ridge going was that Yanni? Could that could have been Yanni? They can't take that away from us. Yeah, you know, the feeling of knowing people are jealous of you, No one could take. Yeah, I'm trying to I'm trying to hunt with Steve, you know, and I want to, of course show you guys a good hunt and a good time. And you know, it was like we we said it was like Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, like Steve and I didn't hear anything. It was like wildlife had

become the void. And then we show up and Jannice is like, oh yeah, so easy killed one in thirty minutes. But me and Parker we had a good hunt too. We got three turkeys out of four and we should have had four. So it was yeah, man, that stean breath and turkey will live on forever. That's right, that's right. Well, we'll get you. We'll get you to replace with the parts of it that we can help replace, like the books and the steam breathing turkey poster. We'll get that

sorted out. I appreciate you all right. Thanks for calling in on short notice or joining in on short notice. Man, when I saw that, I knew I wanted to have you on to talk about it because I was pretty upsetting. Well, I really appreciate it. You guys are the best. Thank you very much and look forward to talking to you soon. Yeah. I hope some dudes come in and kick down on that. Go fund me and help you out. Man. Thanks a lot,

all right, take care of yourself well. When you want to come out when everything goes back to normal, we'd love to have you out in the studio. I'd love to do it. Thank you, all right, dude, talk to you soon, all right? Thanks? Oh yeah, So, Yanni, tell me now what's going on with your dog and a mountain lion and everything? Two mountain lions to be exact.

But mingus and I spent some time walking tracks and and chasing lines is past week while you were in pencils talking and uh we were with Jake Gribb, who you know as well, buddy of ours. Oh yeah, we were. You were you there? And he got that Bobcat recently. No, I haven't been in on a bobcat uh kill yet,

but that guy is amazing. Man. I don't even know how much we should really be like talking about how much how good he is online, because he's gonna start He's gonna be like that uh, that other Jake that we know from Wisconsin people stalking because he knows we're all the sturgeon are under the y you know, and I'm afraid we'll put too much attention on him. But anyways, um, I actually had a neighbor called me who had found a track, so we we It was a day old by the time we got to it, but we went

and ran it. Anyways, eventually got on the on the cat. This was I think Monday morning on How did he find the track? How did he find the track? Yeah, I just I knew that he He lives just right across the drainage from me, and I had told him just to keep an eye out. And he was, you know, a couple hundred yards behind his house, just doing a little walk about with some family members, and uh and stumbled into it. And uh so we we put the cat up eventually, Um, it's late in the day by then,

it's like one or two pm. And uh, Mingus had gotten had gotten to smell the We had eventually found the fresher track that was the day of and he had been on that track and smelled it a little bit. Um and he took he took off down the track. But five minutes later he came back. Jake's dog stayed on it. He came back like, hey, guys, what's going on? You know, like he just he doesn't have it quite there to stay on it yet. Well, we get to

the tree. Jake's dogs are there treeing, barking up a storm, and Mingus is like kind of joining in on the barking. But more because he's like, hey, everybody else is barking. I'll bark a few times too, write, but he just can't.

Like their cats kind of high, like I don't know, twenty ft maybe twenty five and it's kind of a pretty thick dug for a lot of branches in there, and you just can't get a good view, like I'm only seeing like you know, part of the tale, and like if you just get right angle, you can see his face, um, and you just like, he just can't put two. He at that point, he couldn't put two and two together. That what he was smelling on the

track equal this cat up in this tree. Right, So no matter what I did, We're like, I'm trying to take his head and pointed up into the tree and Jake's looked at me like, dude, I've tried that a thousand times. It just doesn't work. And so we spent whatever half an hour there and uh, we took off. So it was a little bit of a bummer because I was like, man, we had invested, like you know, I don't know. We started at five o'clock in the morning.

We walked out of there too. You know, it's a long day and I didn't really feel that my dog was any better for it, you know, It's just kind of like, well, I guess we had to go do it again. So two or three days later we went to run another track, and this one was very fresh, like like, you know, hours prior to Jake finding it. It was laid in there. So we get on it, and Jake he's got a young dog that he's on a train well too, so Mingus kind of gets second pick.

And I was telling my girls. The best way to understand it is like Mingus is probably a kindergartener as far as like his level of understanding of this game. Jake's eight months old is probably in like fourth fifth grade, and then he's got like a two year old that's like, you know, towards the end of high school, and he's got one more that's a full on professional. So when his eighth month old is running a fresh track, he wants her to only be seeing what the other dogs

with more experience are doing. And he doesn't want a dog like mine, who was a kindergartener, just run around in circles half the time playing grab bass, you know, ruining a good thing. So his dogs go first it's ah, and I'm basically behind with Mingus on a leash and just making sure that Mingus is literally taking every track, every footstep of that line, putting his nose into it

and just walking. And it was great to watch because you can actually see sometimes he'd get excited and he veer off where the dog tracks went, but it wouldn't take but five or six feet and he would jump back to the actual line track. Well, I've been on a few long ones, you and I have been on a few long ones together. This one was like abnormally short, like from the time we cut Jake's dogs loose, I don't think, and the actual three minutes went by until

you heard the boo boo, boo boo, the constant bark. Serious, yeah, I mean it was fast. So we come over the ridge and I look back at Jake. I'm like, are they treating He's like, oh, yeah, this tree. So we we walked down to Mingus and I follow the track all the way to maybe fifty ft of the tree. Now let go the leash and just let him run in there, and you can see the cap plane his day. This time, it's not quite as high. It's only fifteen feet up or so ah. Same thing with his dogs.

Interestingly enough, two of them, the more experienced and the and the pro or all over the tree. They know what's in the tree. They're barking up a storm. The young this one is sort of like going around the tree doing a lot of barking, like she knows that that's what she's supposed to do, and that's where the scent ends. And it was interesting to watch two. You could tell when the thermals would come down just right and that cat scent would come straight down to her nose,

she'd she'd light up, you know, mingus again. To three minutes into being at this tree, he's kind of like losing interest. He wants to run back on the track because that's where it was exciting what he was smelling. And he just can't put two and two together still. And I know Jake that had he had told me, like it's been, you can't do it. I've tried a thousand times, but this time the cats like more wide

in the open. It's not as high. The hill is so steep that you only had to take like five six seven steps back from the tree and you're almost eye leveled this cat. So we're about in that. Help what's that? Because I gotta understand when he says you can't do it, he means you can't make a dog look into a tree and see a cat. Yes, exactly, because that's what you want to do. Like it's right there, just like point his head in that direction. How could you miss it? Can the dots? Yeah? And I think it.

He's he's smelling it. He just doesn't know what he's smelling. Again, I was trying to explain to my daughters. I'm like, if you were smelling an apple pie but had never seen one and never tasted one, you don't you don't have an image for what you're smelling. You know. Um, even though this might smell good, it might be pleasurable, I don't know what it looks like. Well, I had

to try it again. So I grabbed that dog's head and I pointed at that, at that lion, and I'm kind of like looking at him looking at the lion, and man, it was like it was almost like that his head kind of quivered and shook just for a second, and then it just locked. And then the next thing was I mean just blew my ear drum out and just went berzerko. He was just like, holy sh it,

that's what said. That's what I've been smelling, that I got it, and just he's like, everybody, look, everybody looks lying in the tree exactly, and don't ever believe what I found. You want to talk about one track mine. At that point, we were just, you know, we're just

Jake and I are milling around. His youngest is kind he doesn't know for sure, but kind of a tree climber, so he's keeping a real eye on her to make sure that she doesn't get too high up into this tree because it had some low, pretty stout low branches, so she was making it up six seven feet pretty quickly. Of course he doesn't want her to do that, but we're just milling around and talking and enjoying the situation.

Is so funny because every time I get between mingus and that tree, he'd get real annoyed and like had to jump to the side to be like, no, man, I'm like, I got I gotta see this thing, em bark at it, so don't get in my line of sight, you know. Um, But yeah, very uh. It was just a very awesome feeling as a dog owner, you know, to see something like that click and to see it, see it go down and see the dog get excited. Um,

that was sweet. The cool thing is you got him from the pound and you yeah, yeah, he's a full on Livingston Montana shelter dog. Yeah. Do you all? Is there any a thing that you can't like? Like, can that dog be a coon hound and a lion hound or has you gotta like pick his pick his path in life? No, I think that the the owner and the handler has to uh do that. I think they're they're they're probably only limited by how much their owner trains them, I think is what I've been getting from most.

I mean, I'm sure there's some people out there that tell you that will be better if they're just a one one, one trick pony when it comes to that. But I mean, certainly Jake's dogs do bob cats and lions, and I know they're both cats. But I think that if you just spend time with them, Um, they can do it all. You know, they can figure out when they're you know, supposed to be chasing one and supposed to be chasing another. Yeah, are you gonna bring go ahead?

Don't doesn't Cowboy Cody's dogs down Colorado. They run anything like pigs and cattle and that's the run. Yeah, they run lions and cattle man, he said, they'll run whatever he tells them to be interested in. Now, are you bringing that dog when we go to Arkansas coon hunting with Clay? Are you bringing that dog down? Yes? Sir? How are you getting it there? Alane? You drug it and fly it? Okay, Yeah, that's what I was planning on. I don't know. Maybe I should drive. I don't care

road trip. I was looking for you do to you drugging it and flying it in the bottom of the airplane. But whatever. You don't even have to drug them unless you know you have to draw into I guess I thought you need to drag them a little bit when

they're kind of wild dogs like that. There's some some folks that think that, and a lot of other folks that I've talked to you that are like, no, the dog as long as the dogs comfortable and a kettle a plane is the same as the back your track gives the like they're just going, yeah, but you haven't seen the honest dog. And have you seen the honest's dog in the back of a truck. No, I don't know what you're getting what I've had them in the back of my track. I guess it's a loud it's

a big, loudass dog that makes a lot of noise. Man, he can't be you'd hear him if you were in the plane. They're trying to sleep. You're not gonna sleep on the airplane. If that dogs underneath there, that would be a fun airplane experience because you gotta think of how a few people understand what that is the baying of a hound. Now, luckily I think that he's not. He doesn't seem to have any sort of like separation anxiety or you know, he doesn't seem to like how

ball mark whatever when we're not home. Um, So I don't know. I don't I don't expect that. I wouldn't expect that to happen. I've only flown a dog once and we didn't drug her. M I'm looking forward to that trip, man. Oh yeah, me too, me too. You know we already got a title for the episode, right, No, please tell me A dog in the Fight. Oh that's a good title. Now. I'm looking forward to making that episode. Man. The only reason I didn't want to make it as

I don't know what we'd call it. I don't know, go ahead, go ahead. I was just saying, I don't know if I'm gonna talk about this about about hunting the squirrels or the cones. Um. That's good news. I'm glad. I like tracking the progress of mingus the dog um. I want to move. Can we move down to this this thing about how not to how not to damage your scroll on a horse? Please? After that, I'm out of where you going. I'm kidding. Oh, this dude wrote in This is one of the more interesting guys that's

ever written in he Um. We had a podcast episode. It was during the COVID pandemic. I remember that. I think it was early pandemic. We had on our beloved friend, Kevin Murphy, world's greatest small game hunter, who had recently returned from Mongolia, and he had been doing some falconry uh in Mongolia, and we talked about that, and we got to talk about riding horses, and I got talking about how hard it is to ride a horse without

damaging up your scroll. Um and for me at least, and he rode in and he's this guy rode in, and he's the most interesting guy I've heard from in a while. He's a blacksmith and a horse trainer. Him and his wife teach people to ride wrote and jump on horseback. And he says that we're also naturist. And I feel like I've heard this term because remember that

guy that rode in it was a naturist elk hunter. Yes, yeah, he he bow hunts elk naked and was saying how he could read the wind real good, like like he never wonders what way. Yeah, like he never wonders what way the winds on. It's like you just feel it naked. So this guy's a this guy has a lot of insight and riding and not hurting your your scroll. And he goes on to say with a lot of other people rode in to say about how if you're if it's taken a beaten, you're like your seat is wrong.

You gotta sit the horse properly in a western saddle. Your ass is tucked under you, you're pressed back into the seat, your upright, you're not leaning forward your knees or bent your heels down. He says that you can, you can if you're sitting right, you can ride comfortably with pants or no pants. But he says, this is where it gets interested. He says, I still prefer a pair of bike shorts or something that's underwear, because when I am wearing clothes, my scroll them just kind of

relaxes and expects support. Then he goes on to say, this is it's something that's never occurred to me before. He spends enough time nude around the farm and around the woods that he claims that his testicles have retained the natural ability, which I didn't know is like that that you lose it, But he he retains the natural ability to retract and firm up in times of physical activity, like when running or chopping wood or hunting a stretching routine.

It's like hold on limber am tighten up. So he's saying that most fellows like us, who run around like suckers wearing their clothes all the time, that you're losing your ability two retract and firm up. But that he has retained the ability to retract and firm up. And then that has nothing to do with the fact that his nuts are cold. He's like, I retain the ability to firm up in cold water. So my advice is, he says, Dude, dude, I'm not even half Joe. I

like this guy a bunch. I don't want to seem like in any way in any way that I'm like like I would go hang out with this guy. My advice is, unless you're gonna spend a lot of time nude and exercising the muscles that retract your boys up into your pelvis like a samurai, where something for support, and learn to sit properly in the saddles. So he's saying, there's a binary decision to be made here, go neude enough that the boys learn where to ride on their

own or sit right. So I have I'm at a decision. I'm at a a pivot point as a rider this and I'm suggests that, Uh, the overwhelming majority of people have learned to sit right and skip the nunity party with virtually virtually everyone that I see riding nowadays has taken these second choice. But when we go down to hunt coons with Clay, we're gonna be riding around on mules and Yan, I just don't want you to be surprised if you see some things you maybe don't want

to see. Oh, I'm fine, Well, yeah, do what you gotta do. Man, I just think of all the like pasty white, transparent, old rancher skim that has never seen the light of day, really reinforces the people just learned how to sit right. Yeah, sure, Cal, you know you know what I want to do. I want to move into something for that Cal is gonna talk about, but

I want to break up Jim Heffelfingers responsibilities. Jim, do you mind um telling everybody what you were telling me about about the ocelot and the jaguar and all that, And are you gonna be able to share those images

so people can go see them. The images are actually embedded into scientific paper and I would just sent this morning this paper and it was just a short note and it has a series of photos nighttime photos from a trail cam that's next to a water catchment in northern Guatemala where there's ocelots and jaguars both and they had images of a jaguar coming into the water, taking a drink and then going back off into the darkness.

And while it or a taper comes by and drinks out of the water, and the jaguar don't leaves it alone. Taper leaves, and then a little as lot comes in, starts drinking, and the jaguar pounces out of the darkness, kills the jag kills the ocelot, and then drags the ocelot off, And the scientific paper has the images embedded in the paper itself. But then there's some note that I haven't followed yet that says that there's supplemental information,

which usually means there's more information somewhere online. But a lot of times those scientific papers are are you've got to subscribe to the journals to get into. It's not always open access. So I haven't checked yet whether those images are available. I can send you the paper and we can see if that's available in the public. Why do you think he would kill um? Why would he

not kill the tape here, but he would kill the ocelot. Yeah, those the tapers are kind of big, but that's part of their that's part of their diet down there in the jungle. Why he would kill an azla? That's what makes it so bizarre, That's what makes it so noteworthy to show up in a scientific paper as a note.

It's just it's not really a competitor, so it's strange. Well, and I don't think we know for sure just from those pictures if the thing disappeared into the darkness, that it was necessarily just sitting there that whole time period, and maybe it was out for a walk about while the tape here was there just happened to be back

when the oslats showed up. I mean, is there like any evidence that they do the same thing that wolves do with coyotes and just kill him to kill them like they're just I don't think there's a lot of evidence of cats doing that because they're more solitary animals, just living in the jungle, kind of doing their own things. So it's pretty strange. Hey, do you think, Jim, right now, at this like very second, do you think there are is a jaguar in the US right now? Do they know?

I don't. I don't know. We normally have had one, it's not always the same one. We've normally had one, But I haven't heard since before we talked last time. It has been a year since I've heard any fresh information, So I don't really know. Yeah, so there might not be. Yeah, I can't remember. Do you root for jaguars root against jaguars? So have we had that conversation. I root for the same thing you do, that they continue to be able to come up and visit and hang out in these

mountain islands in southeastern Arizona. There was some talk and there still is, of putting them the crates and moving them to the Pondrosa Pine high elevation forest in central Arizona. And that doesn't make any sense to me. Oh yeah, why not? Why doesn't it make any sense? Oh? There that was that was really beyond the range of um

the core of jaguar habitats. So there's like there's hundreds of over a hundred thousand jaguars throughout the range in Central America, and the Amazon is the epicenter of jaguars. And they came up, and they came out and visited Arizona, New Mexico. They came up, being a little farther than

that in prehistoric times like the places the scene. But this Arizona, New Mexico is a northern fringe of their habitat, and they should be able to do what what animals do with the northern fringe, come up and visit and

colonize and stay. But this really isn't the core of their habitat, and to take them from other populations like northern Mexico and then putting them up into what is really not good jaguar habits had a real dry ponderos of pine forest is not ideal jaguar habitat, even though a two hundred years ago we have some evidence of

them moving through there. So it's like trying to re They would be trying to re establish a population in a place where you feel it would be dubious at best to say that they were that they had a

breeding population there. Yeah, we know a lot about what kind of habitat jaguar do really well on, and they do the best in those more tropical habitats, and then they do okay in in areas like northern Mexico and the mountains and the sky Islands in southeastern Arizona and central Arizona were just really areas where they moved through.

And like we talked about last time, but if you look at the Native American cultures in the southwestern Arizona, New Mexico, the jaguar wasn't part of their their culture. They don't have motif they didn't revere the jaguar and that's really the case in Central America where they were really common and writing center of their distribution. Oh man, I, I mean, you know, we've talked about this for I

love those things. I think it would be you know, it'd be pretty great to be walking through the woods and there's one standing there. Now. I did send you that book Borderland Jaguars. Did you go, yeah, yeah, yeah, I like that book. I like that book. That's got a good documentation of these jaguars in this northern end of their habitat. Yep, all right, cal uh, We're gonna touch on this a little bit because this dude rode

in Um. It's kind of interesting. A guy wrote in about possession limits and he's not the first person to write in about possession limits, and just some people understand what we're talking about. We talk about possession limits to be in hunting, you'll you'll quite often see that you'll encounter a species where you have a what's called the daily bag limit. And this goes for fishing, this goes for hunting. For our case here, let's say that we're

talking about fishing. Let's say you go somewhere and they have a daily bag limit of five walleye. Okay, that means in a day, in a given day, you're allowed to catch and retain five walleye. You'll often see tack down to that, a possession limit would be Typically, it's very common to see a possession limit be two daily

bag limits. What that would mean is, let's say you're camping out and you're you gotta fish camp set up, you're at the river access, you got your camp or trader there, um, you've been there for a couple of days. They're saying that you could have in your cooler or in your camp two bag limits. That doesn't mean that out in your boat, in your live will you have to bag limits. But like you went out caught five on Saturday, you went out and caught five on Sunday.

They're cool with you having Saturday and Sunday's daily bag limits in your possession. And this this system starts to get really complicated for people because a lot of times it winds up being like, Okay, does that mean that I can have it in my freezer at home? What if I have it where I've already turned it into a jerky or sausage, does that count as my limit?

This guy that wrote in, brought up a really interesting twist on this question of how possession limits work, where he says he it is dude from Illinois, writes in. He says, for example, Illinois has an early goose season in September, but there are two zones with different limits. The North zone has a five goose daily limit and a fifteen goose possession limits, so there you can have three daily bag limits. The South zone has a two

goose daily limit and a six goose possession limit. He then goes down to ask, let's say I live in the South zone but hunt for three days in the North zone and bring home eight geese. Am I breaking the law since I am two over the possession limit? Or another scenario, I live in the North zone and have twelve geese in my freezer from the early season. Then in October the regular water fall season starts and the possession limit changes to nine. Am I then violating

the law? Cal take this one away. So this is a great, great topic, and um it, it really doesn't get confusing as long as you keep in mind that hunting is a management tool and fishing is a management tool, and your bag limits and possession limits change by state, by zone, by region, uh, and by and by fishery and fly away um, such as the North South zone

uh that this fellow rode in with. And in Montana, all right, we have a Pacific flyway and a Central flyway that you can hunt without leaving the state and UM it gets really interesting when you start looking at fisheries as well. A great example, right is your your bucket biology examples of taking let's say, perch and uh dumping them in to new ponds. So there's an example here in the state of Montana where uh you can have uh two bodies of water on the same highway.

One has a daily possession limit or I'm sorry, daily bag limit. You know, your daily take of perch. The possession limit is three times the daily take it. Possession in Montana is your possession of that species in total. So it means what you have on you, what you have at your camp, whatever that camp maybe, and whatever you have at your home. Uh. It doesn't say the example that the uh dude rode in with is hilarious because he threw on something that I hadn't even thought of.

When she's like, well, what if I have a mounted bird on my wall? It's like it's a bird. A great question. I hadn't thought of it. UM. And in the state of Montana, it doesn't say anything about taxidermy. UM. It does in the fact that if you're going to transfer a bird to a taxidermist, the state that it needs to be in. UM. But possession limit is anything cammed smoked. It implies whatever state that meat is in, if it is the species in question, it pertains to

your possession limit. So to finish with this example, if you go further down the same highway into a new drainage where they have somebody has transplanted those perch illegally into this other fishery where they do not want the perch. There is no daily limit on perch, and there is

no daily possession limit on perch. So what the hell does a game warden do then, especially if Steve's fishing at the reservoir where there is a daily limit and a possession limit, and I want to stop in and see Steve on my way home, which would make sense because it's on the same highway, right, But I have a cooler full of fish that are totally illegal. I just happened to be passing through a zone where had I been fishing and catching fish in that zone, it

would then be illegal. Um. I I had to call a game warden on this add you know they they laugh typically because the what ifs can really run rampant, but UM, you know it always comes down to a game warden's discretion. UM. And those possession limits, the definition of possession is different in every state. So I was looking at an example. Uh, this couple of guys in Texas got caught with boy I can't even remember now, like seven times the daily uh or seven times the

possession limit. The legal possession limit for croppy A ton of croppy. UM, very illegal. But if you read the law in Texas the way the possession limit is written in Texas, if you have a permanent camp as in a real deal cabin that you live at and can get mail at, your possession Anything that you store at

that place does not count towards your possession limit. But if your buddy is right right next to your cabin where you get your mail, and they're in a camper trailer that they do not get their mail at, the fish that they bring back to their camper trailer counts against their possession limit. So to me, that's almost like an odd sort of you're kind of getting into the

halves and have not there where. It's like, well, if you can afford to have a house on the lake, not a house two blocks from the lake, you're more than likely to be able to retain a hell of a lot more fish just because you don't have to spend time and travel to get the fish to the place where they don't count against your possession limit. Um,

I don't think, let me yes, go ahead. I want I want to throw another wrinkle into this, and I know we're like that maybe you have a final hopefully you have like an answer, because we're like it's like a question with a question, because these are all things that I ought to be curious that you have. Jim

speak to this too. I feel like these are things that are are well meaning laws that are so confusing that it's like setting people up for failure because you can't figure out how to be compliant, Like you cal you brought up. Let's say you go get a bunch of geese and you make sausage. Yeah, I mean so now you have a bunch of goose sausage sticks. Uh, how do you figure out like you still you save one bag of goose sausage sticks and then the next

goose season starts up. How do you go like, Okay, I need to account for this, being like what is this portions of five geese? Is this like a goose

is worth? I feel like you're putting people into a situation where you're kind of like and it's probably why you don't read about people getting busted for this stuff unless they're like big time poachers, because you can't roll into someone's house dismantled their freezer and start trying to reconstruct their last year of activities and and that that is the answer, though, is documentation. And in this day

and age that it's so easy to to document. Um, so you know, you just got to label your stuff and you do need to be accountable for it. Um. But yeah, you're exactly right, Like a bag of jerky, I turned a lot of meat into jerky last year, Um it was it was big game, so it's easy

to take keep track of. But um yeah, if if game wardens came into the house and grabbed that bag of jerky and decided to start doing uh DNA analysis on it, you know they're gonna have a single bag that has an elk from Idaho, a mule deer from Idaho, a cuse deer from Mexico, you know, and or coots and yeah, and and that. You know, all that testing costs money, So what's what's the end result gonna be? Right? So? Um? In waterfowl terms, you know, Canada geese and Montana right

now are like a plague. I've never seen so many birds in my entire life. It is unbelievable. Um. But you know, if if you know, big goose spreads, lots of decoys are big investment. And I just started kind of doing the math on if you really wanted to get involved in goose hunting and have all the decoys

and be compliant with the law as it's written. In order for you to just go and hunt Saturday and Sunday and shoot limits of geese, you have to, I mean, every licensed hunter in your household has to eat six Canada geese per week during during Monday through Friday, you have to eat six candidate if you want to keep at it. Yeah, I'm sorry, Tim, right, so yeah, tan tan Canada geese per week per licensed hunter if you want to keep at it um and then we can

have beyond that. So we one time asked the UH state trooper in Alaska, you don't have game wardens or troopers, but we asked the trooper, we're trying to understand possession limits and how it works there. And let's say you have UH Let's say you happen to have a fish shack, and at this fish shack you have a freezer, and you're curious. Okay, if a haliban possession limit is two daily bag limits, that means you're allowed to have four

haliban in your possession. The way when when we were trying to get clarity on how this worked, we spoke to troopers who said that the men it it's processed for consumption, it no longer is in your possession limit, Meaning if you go, if you get to haliban and you take them home, and you filly those haliban and portion them and vaccine limb and freeze them, they're no

longer in your possession. Then it's just a matter of that your daily bag limits don't exceed how many days you've been at your cabin, meaning if you're at your cabin five days, you could theoretically freeze ten haliban, but you better not have twelve because you haven't been there that many days to have accumulated them. And when we talked about okay, like what about something that you're not cleaning,

Like let's say you're talking about shrimp. Okay, you catch shrimp and you just freeze the tails and you can be on the water with just shrimp tail because you allowed three quarts of shrimp tails. So I haven't done it. I haven't processed it. All I did is freeze it. And they said, if that's how you process it, if that's how you freeze it for later consumption, we would regard that as being processed. So when I just throw my whole poach deer straight into that baild freezer, I got,

I'm good to go. If that's how you like to eat it later. Yes, I saved the guts that way. Um. So you're like, this is how I cook, this is how I cook them. Here's another wrinkle, right, Um, my girlfriend shot four geese and brought four geese home. She doesn't put the geese and her freezer. She puts them in my freezer. So those four geese are labeled with her information. Um, and but they're they're at my residence. I get my mail with my geese that because of

the overlap, I have labeled with my information as well. Right, and this is like paranoia basically, like very few, but I feel like that would. I feel like a warden would respect that system. They I think they would as long as they were, uh, you know, not looking to find something else. I guess I think you know, as most of these wardens that you talk with, Right, it's like, um, we uh, I have no reason to doubt you until

we do. And then if we're gonna make a case, we're gonna um make sure that we make the whole case essentially. Yeah, you know a good way to look at Oh sorry, go ahead, Yeah, go ahead. I was gonna point out. I was gonna point out a helpful way to look at this kind of stuff. Uh. We have a friend cow and your friendly with him too, who used to he's a lawyer and he used to represent the Wyoming He used to represent Wyoming as their

head attorney, the Fishing Game Department. And he we were talking about all these arcane or these like little known rules and ways that seems like you could get in trouble. And we got on the subject of of bartering and selling wild game. Okay, it's illegal to barter in trade with wild game, like you can't use it like currency, right, so it would be illegal for someone to you to go to the guy that changes your oil and he's like, oh yeah, don't worry about it, man um, happy to

do it. Just make sure to drop me by a couple of walife lays next weekend. You're technically breaking the

law because you're bartering and trading with wild game. But this attorney invited me to go and look at what, he goes, Go look at where you actually see that and forcement tool applied to people, he said, Only you'll only find it get applied in places where you have someone who is in a real, real bad position, and you'll find that Awarden will then add on every possible thing he can add on, so that when you start pleaing down, you have a mountainous ship to plea through.

And he goes, that's he goes, that's the only situations where I see like this bartering and trading thing coming up when it's someone who's done like some really bad stuff and they're going through and they're being like, Okay, three counts of this. We're gonna add counts of this.

We're gonna add counts to that, and it just winds up being, um, it winds up being a way to just lay it on heavy when someone really has it coming and and they kind of need to write because a lot of these you look at so many wildlife violations, uh, spread all over all the news sources, and inevitably, UM, people who are in the know and people who are just being exposed to this stuff for the first time come the same conclusion. Right, It's like, that is a

reprehensible crime. I can't believe they got away so easy. But the reality is a lot of times that that is exactly what the law provides for. It's like, well that if you look at it, that is a maximum allowable fine of you know, five d a thousand dollars, two fifty dollars. And it's like, so that's why, um, when it's time to nail somebody, it's like stack them up because mhmm. If they get out of some of it, it's just it's not almost not even worth our time

type of thing. So it's I called it. I called the warden the other day because we're having a hard time. We're arguing a lot about the law that we couldn't figure out what it meant. And I got to the point where I decided it wasn't just me, like, like I felt that it didn't make sense. And when I got him on the phone and I invited him to go read it, he read it. And it was kind of funny because he read it and he's kind of like, huh, yeah, you know, but then was able to solve it for me,

like he saw something that I didn't see. But it was just it was an interesting interaction to have with someone to be confused about the law. Call up. They're really glad that you called. They respect the fact that you're trying to sort it out. And then it wasn't like you dumbass, It was like, oh, I see where you're confused here, let's look through it. Uh, consider this.

And that's a way better interaction to have than to wait till later and get in trouble and then be like, but it is confusing, because at that point it's like you probably should have cleared up, cleared up the confusion. Great,

great example, right. I called the Region three Montana Fishing Game Office the other day talking about accessing, um, some ground that would fall within the this late c w D hunt that we have going on, chronic wasting disease mitigation deal um, and Warden was super helpful and and um we're talking. He's like, now, remember, Montana stream access law does not provide for big game hunting. It provides for recreation and fishing. So if you want to access that spot, you better float to it or drag a

canoe with you. So I could legally drag the canoe upstream, paddle the canoe upstream, and have the situation where I've got a boat with me, so I haven't exactly just walked the high water mark line. Am Uh, that would make it more legal. And I said. I was like, yeah, yeah, I'm familiar with this. I understand it. Um, but you know this just is not right. This like law is designed to make your life a living hell. Right And

he said, well, how so? And I said, well, because in the state of Montana, no matter what season it is, hunting season or not, it's one legal two carry a firearm anywhere I want on public land under the high water mark. So how can it be legal to hike in under the high water mark with a rifle. Ah, I could be wearing orange or not and just say like, well, I don't have the intention to hunt game. I know other people are out here, so I'm wearing orange to be safe, and I like having my rifle with me.

And then I had to change your mind and decided to hunt. You know. It's just that may work on the way in, but not on the way out with it. Yeah, but you want to go to court dragging your boat and what's recreation? Yeah, Like it seems pretty obvious what you're trying to accomplish. So like the fact that you're like, oh, but I have a boat with me. I mean, I know the game wardens saying that's the way to cover your ass, but it doesn't seem right. You could have. Yeah,

it's just it's a odd, odd thing. But there's a lot of that out there, and it's like, do you want to take the Montana stream access law to court um and try to get a specific provision put in for big game hunting where you could possibly uh, you know, they're screwing it up for everybody somehow, someway they tried to make laws black and white, but the reality is there's just a whole bunch of gray in between. Oh yeah,

and that's the fun parts to pick at. Man. I had another interaction we'll move on after this, but another interaction with a warden where I was looking at a spot on a map and I was like, I, it's it occurred to me that a fellow would be able to go do a certain activity there that just seemed like he shouldn't be able to. And I said, I said, man, I keep looking at this and it just seems to me like you'd be able to do X there. And he was inviting me to He's like, why does it

seem not right to you? Like was asking wanted me to entertain this to myself and see if there was something there or not right. Other than being like, ah, I found a secret, you know, he was kind of like inviting to use some discretion and not try to view it like can I get away with something that maybe feels a little funny, you know, but it's not enforcement? Yanni.

You here's the thing I wanted to mention to you, and it's interesting you two cal I think, is Yanni you guys have you guys actually you guys have had babies at your house, right correct too. And then the human babies like like birthing babies. Yeah, not just like baby party. Did you use did you burn them into the water? Um, I'm trying to think now, both times we had uh we're looking at an image here of a the blow up bathtub that babies are burthen too.

Sometimes both times we had those setups. But I believe it. No, I want to say, baltim, we're just on the bed um. I think that my wife actually found it too relaxing, and it took her out of that mode of get baby out and took her into more chill mode and and and yeah, so it didn't happen in the water. Yeah,

well that's interesting. This dude wrote in that his wife was having a baby at home and they had a little kiddie pool they filled up with water, and he took his Suvie circulator out of his kitchen and set the Suvie circulator in there to keep it at the right til very good thing, which is which is genius man,

like a suvied baby. I might just I mean, next time, I don't take baths often, but next time, my you, I mean, the aren't we have like a porcelain claw footer, you know, and uh, boy, you start off nice and cozy and then and then you know, you read a half a chapter and it's kind of a kind of a tepid bath and it's not so much fun anymore. So this might be a thing, a little mini whirlpool. Oh yeah, man, you take you set that suvie thing at like one o two and jump in there. It

would be like great. Man. Uh, this other guy a real quick. This other guy wrote in he he got the new survival book, the wind n Skills and Survival Book, and he went on his trip, uh and the Great Smoky National Park with his girlfriend, five day backpacking track and they ran in all these weather problems and the weather got all bad and everybody got all cold, and it was it turned into kind of an unexpected survival situation. And he wrote in to say that he used he

actually burned the book and it worked great. He but he said, he leankfully. He already read all the pages. It was all wet on the rim, but he found dry in the middle and burned the book and save the day. I feel like that dude deserves and no, he deserves a new book. I think man, definitely I like his little description too, when he says, uh, later that evening, after he's all wet. He said it began

to rain, didn't stop raining for thirty hours. And not only was it raining, the air seemed to be so thick with moisture I could almost drink and breathe at the same time. That line caught my eye too. Man, he's got a he's like a he's a word smith. He's like a little bit of a writer. He's pouring it on heavy. I'll admit I was getting skeptical after a while. Then I saw the picture of the book, and I believe him. Oh no, that that books, that book's been through hell man, But I feel like we should.

I gotta try to figure it out and remember to send his dude named Dylan out of Omaha, Nebraska, to send his dude a new book to replace the book he had to burn up. It's nice to know when your books come in handy, you know what I mean? Yeah, Well, the and this is exactly what that book was it for, exactly what this guy ran into like just out for kind of a I don't want to say mundane, but like just a little regular outing, not some crazy, big adventure.

It was a three hour tour. All right, there's another thing I want to get into, and then we're gonna have Dn Jim Hefelfinger is gonna swing back in for us. Uh. Chris, Chris gilt Ridge Pounder is he's he's been on. He comes on the show quite a bit. He's working on a fine art project, oh where he's been taking pictures of funked up old deer stands. And we've been talking about how we want to do a coffee table book, a fine art coffee table book called fucked Up Old

deer Stands. It's gonna be We created an email. It's like he's only got like he's got six or seven that are bookworthy. But to really do a good book that we can sell next Christmas. To really do a good book, we need like fifty great photos. So we're gonna start a crowd source. Chris Skills. Rich Pounder is the photo editor, so he's gonna do primary photography. He'll

probably have more pictures than anybody else. But if you do a picture and see you the listener, send your pictures in, your pictures might make the fine art coffee table book. So we made an email it's fucked up old deer stands at the meat eater dot com. Send in your pictures. Cryst'll get him. We'll contact you for

permissions and everything. And you gotta find the oldest, jan kiest Like we're talking about the kind of old stands that like look real hazardous to get into in a long like fifty years ago someone nailed to tarp up and it's just blue fray blown in the wind, like the worst old deer stand you know about. It could be a tree stand, ground blind, whatever. Send a picture, and Chris might need to advise you on how to get the right picture, because you remember, this is not

this isn't dear camp humor. This isn't like a hat that says, you know, I didn't wake up grumpy this morning. I let her sleep. It's not like that kind of stuff. It's like fine art. It's fine art photos, No people, fine art photographs of funked up old deer stands. So send your if you're thinking about getting this done with your brand new iPhone twelve pro, don't bother you. No, maybe you can, I don't know, maybe they're maybe Yep. The email is set up. Fucked up old deer stands

at the media dot Com. Send him in. Eventually Cris will start digging around in there. We'll notify you and we're gonna make a book, and we're gonna have it be for next Christmas where you'll be able to buy um a fine art coffee table book under that title. That's the title of the book. It's already been decided, so run out, go ahead. I was just gonna ask, do you have I feel like we're going to be inundated. It's gonna be a thick book. Then yeah, I'm thinking

there's gonna be way more than fifty pictures. Uh. I mean Chris alone, just on the little chunk of property that he and I hunted together this year in Wisconsin. I think he got to take pictures of six different very fucked up old deer stands, and well, I think that's the six he's talking about, and he got he got another one, might have two very funked up old

deer stands to narrow it down. And I know if he got another, I know if too that we didn't even walk by that, I think there would be you know, very you know, high contenders um for the book. We he took we found just a section of ladder in Pennsylvania, a section of a ladder stand where the stand was gone, but it had snowed a lot, and so it's just kind of like this low It looked like a real metaphor, like half of a ladder standing out in the woods.

And he took a picture of that, says he wasn't really feeling it, but you know, it could make the book. I don't think it's the cover photo, but it couldn't make the book. It could be the back cover. And we're gonna caption, We're gonna write captions for all the

fine art photography. For me, if there's an interesting thing that goes on with these old deer stands, because when they're only like kind of old, like someone just sat at him in the last five years, and you look at it and you can tell that it's been retired. You look at and you're like, ha, I wish someone would take that thing down. It's such an eye store. But then like another ten years, fifteen years goes by, they become art. Yeah, you walk by and you have

like a little nostalgia for for he's past. Yeah. Man, the last time I was in Pennsylvania, looked at my old wood stand. It was just like part of the earth that was sad, you know that men used for you. There's a there's a genre of old man type hunting camp painting where it's like an old deer stand, a funked up old deer stand, and there's a big buck standing by it. That's like a genre of art and you're supposed to look at and be like, oh man, you know that Will Kajer is probably dead now and

here's a giant buck by his deer stand. So help out there if you can, folks, and we'll keep you posting on how it goes, and and Ridge Pounder will eventually get in there and reach out, and he might have advice about how to make it more fine art if it's if it's not, if it's not fine art and it's more like kitch, he'll probably help you steer it into fine art. So keep your eyes peeled. That's one of those projects where you get the title and

then you have to do it. Oh yeah, well, our original title was Chris wanted to call it old funked up old deer stands, but then we cut one of the old We cut one of the olds out just to simplify the title a little bit, all right, Uh, okay, Jim, tell everybody about why we What you sent in the I thought was so interesting that I wanted you to

come on and tell us more about it. Yeah. I wrote an article for Dear Deer Hunting magazine last year on specifically UM human health and lead bullet fragments and and shot pellets in in game meat. And I started getting interested in that because I felt like there were a lot of peer reviewed scientific paper, a lot of magazine articles, a lot of banter about um the dangers of using lead bullets and and lead shot to human

health specifically. And the more I looked into it, the more into the science itself, the more confusing it was. It doesn't look like that the science was there to support some of the statements that that I had seen. And so UM, there's there's a lot of reasons why you might want to switch to uh, non lead bullets, for sure. I mean there's there there's impacts just individuals. We're getting individual raptors and and bird sick um populations.

There could be some population effects. Certainly, Condor is absolutely a population level effect because they're an endangered species, and and lead is really a serious conservation issue with their recovery. But also you can think about what about hunter image when someone's showing this bald eagle that's getting sick from um some bullet fragments that got in a in a gut pile. And some people talk about the threat of litigation.

If hunters don't take charge of this issue um of switching to non lead bullets, there's gonna be litigation that's gonna force it, and and not on their terms. And so there's a lot of reasons why we can talk about the value of lead bullets and non lead bullets, but one of those topics or sub topics is human health. And and I think there's this is a case where scientists always trying to keep their advocacy out of science and just report their science and just do good, solid research.

But it's difficult in some cases that it seemed to me like someone's advocacy for switching having hunters switched from lead bullets to non lead bullets was really kind of driving some of their research results. And so it's there's nothing wrong with advocacy, but we should have science driving the advocacy. We should have good science, and then we

should advocate for what's right. Isn't that refreshing when it would be when you when you read when you see that the biologist paper, that is like, here are the facts and there is no there's no bias that you can perceive, there's no advocacy. Um. It is so so refreshing. Um. Yeah, And and there's a great good science and you can advocate for for what's right. But a lot of times people have this endgame and that advocacy paints their science.

So the right of scientific paper, they'll have the results of what the results found, and then the last part of the paper is generally like discussion or management implications, and there they have a little more latitude. And I was seeing um papers where people would talk about lead being dangerous to human health, and it certainly is, We've known that for for thousands of years. But they cite medical literature that talks about lead in um elevated blood

lead levels, but from other sources. People aren't talking about actual how dangerous is it to take bullet fragments in and adjust bullet fragments once in a while, or lead pellets. Are talking about paint chips and they're talking about lead gasoline, and they're saying, you know, we got to let out of paint, we got to let out of gasoline. Um, why wouldn't we get to let out of bullets. But what's really important, the distinction is really important is that

there's different forms of lead. And the metallic lead that we use for bullets is different than the lead that you find in in paint and the lead that you find in gasoline, and they lead you find a lot of other things. The metallic lead actually is is not very easily absorbed in your digestive system or through your skin. But there's a whole bunch of other uh lead, some soluble organic lead compounds that do absorb through your skin rapidly.

They do absorb through your lung tissues if it's an aerosol or if you ingest that they go into your blood stream pretty quick. But those are different than lead bullets, lead, metallic lead, and those organic lead compounds are found in in like dryers for varnish. There use sometimes in plastic molds to to kind of help set the mold. There in um clutch pads and brake pads we we in In two thousand nine, there was seven hundred thousand metric tons of lead. Mind in the US alone, we use

a lot of lead for a lot of things. Ammunition batteries are big things, but there's a whole bunch of of uh also organic lead compounds which are used in all kinds of different things um and as chemicals. And it's those organic compounds are really easily absorbed in the skin, and so that's the lead that we need to make sure we reduce our exposure to. The metallic lead. It's really not that easy to get your blood levels elevated just from adjusting metallic lead. And that's why is a

really big difference. But why, okay, what is the difference between a condor who is getting it from metallic lead and a human? Like, why does it affect him and it doesn't affect us? Yeah, that's a bird and mammal difference. So mammals, it's not really an issue. You don't you don't see, you don't hear about lead poisoning so much in in wildlife and mammals and our our wild creatures. But birds have a gizzard, and so birds and birds also will take little pieces of grit and sand and

swallow it with their food. With their seeds, and then that muscular gizzard grinds and grinds and grinds, and so when they adjust lead pellets or lead fragments from a bullet, that grinding really agitates that and and kind of grind some of the metallic out. So the bird digestis system is different than the mammal digestive system. And there's also there's also differences in species too, because the condor is really susceptible lead poisoning. The turkey vulture, they almost can't

kill it with lead poisoning. They've taken captive turkey vultures and just fed it lead constantly, and after like six months they killed them and did a necropsy and and don't see any evidence of problems with lead poisoning. So there's also species differences within similar species, but the big differences the bird digestive system and the mammal digestive system

is way different. Humans will pass the meal through their whole digestive system in twenty four to seventy two hours, and it only spends four or five hours in the stomach, in the acidic stomach. So when you think about ingesting a little piece of metallic lead, which is not very soluble and and doesn't go into the bud stream very easily. And it's sitting for five hours in the stomach and it's out of the digestive system in a day or two. That's not a lot of time for that that metal

to actually be absorbed to the tissues. Can you walk can you walk people through? Um? You know, I know you weren't involved as from a policy standpoint, but but can you walk people through how it came to be that waterfowl hunting made the switch? Like I believe in the in the late seventies early eighties, Like, like, did they were they addressing a real problem in your view? When when they banned lead from waterfowl? And how are

the ducks getting hurt by it? Yeah, lead poison showed up in waterfowl and I wasn't involved in that at all, But but from what I've read and talking to other people, there's some people I know that were involved in all

of that. Um, the ducks were showing up with lead poisoning, and of course it takes a couple of weeks to kill bird, and so it's a long um, it's a long process where they suffer, but it's my understanding that it was litigation um anchored to the ball Legal Act and in protection of ball legals that were on the endangered species list at the time, And there was litigation because these ball legals were showing up after eating ducks, showing up with lead poison. So it wasn't a duck

population issue. There's a small percentage of the duck population that was affected. It was I think this nexus with the endangered species acting bald eagles. That's why I understand it from those people that were involved in that. Yeah, you know, I have a couple of times in my life. Um, it was in Wyoming when I happened most recently, actually did find steel shot in a duck s gizzard where that duck and picking up grit, had managed to pick up and consume uh steel shot, which is totally safe

for the bird. But in the old days that would have been you know lead can can you walk? Can you walk people through the difference when you're saying like that it leads to bird mortality and then population level like like talk about that distinction, right, And that's the that's the big thing people talk about, um, the effects of lead on wild life and they tend to just put it all in this big cauldron and kind of

talk about it. But it's a really complex issue. You need to talk separately about um about individual birds dying. And we know that that eagles and hawks and and um and condors will get lead bullet fragments and they will they will die from lead poison. And so certainly we know the effects on individuals. But then people have said, well, is this really a population level effect? And I myself used to say, well, it's not a population level effect.

So we're talking about individuals, but we don't really know if it was a population if we were having population level effect on things like golden eagles. We don't do annual surveys. We don't We don't really have a lot of good data to know how lead might be affecting golden eagles. I suspect there might be some valley where a lot of people rabbit hunt or a lot of people coil hunt, and golden eagles might be picking up some lead, and it might be a local issue in

some places. But I've stopped saying it's not a population level effect simply because I don't think we have enough to make a blanket statement like that, But I will frequently say, is this, um Is this such an issue with raptors and wild birds that every hunter needs a switch in short order to non lead bullets? Is this? Is this a conservation issue that's serious enough that requires our intervention to to right some wrong? And I think that's I think that's a good question, and a lot

of people aren't talking specifically about that. But I like to separate the effects of the individual, which no, we know absolutely they die if they get too much lead, the effects of population. Is this really a conservation level issue that people in in our profession need to be fixing um? Or is it more of a local thing that happens at a low level and it's just kind of absorbed into the natural mortality. I mean, I always get hit by cars all the time, howls once in

a while, pick up some lead and die. So this is this of great importance that we need to actually act and and get people to switch. And and I'm not an advocate of of not switching, and I'm not an advocate of switching within the next couple of years. I I have my family. We've switched about ten years ago. And I shoot nothing but all all copper, all copper rifle bullets with all of our rifle hunting. And I

do that because I like the clean wound channel. If you get off and you hit into a muscle group you've got with a copper bullet, you've got a hole through the muscle group. Um. And and I like the accuracy, and I like the how clean it shoots, and and it's really kind of a meat loss issue with me

using copper bullets. But everybody really has to make their up their own mind if they're if they're concerned that their bullet might might kill a raptor on their property or somewhere out there, they may choose a switch that may be enough for them. UM. But I think the conversation has a center around impacts the individuals, impact to populations to the level that uh, professional need to take

action and fix something that that's broken. Um. When you talk about human health separately, but we also need to talk about the impact the hunter image. That's a real issue that we should talk about. And then some people claim that litigations coming down the road if we don't do something. So it's such a it's such a multifaceted topic that when you throw it all in together, it gets it gets really confusing. Yeah, it's funny because it's it's sorry calibhood. Well, I would like to see just

more data. You know. The big game is an interesting one and and this is a topic that it's it's a really good topic. It's so especially when you want to have that individual versus population effect and then you can kind of bring it together at the California condor where it's like, well enough, individual loss on such a small population is a population level effect and you could get to this point where and individual affects the population,

you know. So it's a it's a great topic. My myself like having not like seriously pursued upland birds for a long time. This year, I mean I saw more wounded animals than I have in the last fifteen years this year, and they were all upland birds, you know, like wild roosters getting shot and we just could not

find the things. UM hunting South Dakota. We hunted, uh, you know, probably a good three and a half four hour walk on you know, big chunk of public access ground and I found three dead roosters out there, you know, on different levels of decomposition. UM but just you know, the range of hungarian partridge with one little leg leg hanging as they fly a mile off into the distance, UM, and just not being able to recover those animals. That

is where the you know. And and just like early in Montana, you can hit like those raptor migrations through October, and there are so many raptors around And for me, I just I knew there were other predators out there with their eyes on that crippled bird at some point, you know. And and sure, and the mammals you don't need to worry about, but those raptors, especially when you get a migration coming through, if there's a lot of wounded birds in an area, they're certainly picking those up

and they're they're going to get sick from that. It's all about the nuance. It's all about, well, really, how many of those uh animals are out and available for raptors to see them and and actually get consumed, how many raptors are in the area, what percent of the

raptor population is being affected. They've they've just in the course of doing different research projects on on hawks and eagles, they've drawn blood samples every time they capture an eagle and then analyze those for blood to see if they're picking it up. And they've documented that during the hunting season, that that raptor blood levels, that the lead level in the blood go up during the hunting season and then

they drop off after the hunting season. They've shown hunted areas and non hunted areas and showing differences in lead exposure, and so there's no doubt that raptors are getting birded just exactly that way and their blood lead levels are elevated. The conversation I think should center around um it is

that causing morbidity or mortality. Is that impacting them in such a way that it's um It's such a serious issue that that something, you know, dramatic needs to be done when we talk about advocating all hunters switching to non let animal, For me, it matters because I want to know what I'm killing um and that the population level argument kind of goes out the window because I just want to know what I killed. And so then I'm thinking, like, okay, one lead bullet through an ELK carcass.

Let's say you hit it a little bit back and there's a bunch of lead fragments in in the paunch and that's what's left out there. What's the effect of that? Like, how much are you killing with that versus a season of upland bird hunting and you have, you know, these smaller meals out there that are probably more likely to contain lead than a well placed shot in my opinion on on a big game animal. Um. And that stuff just was constantly going through my head head this season.

But if you walk four strand barbed wire fence long enough, you're gonna see raptor deaths on that four strand barbedwire fence, wheel lines, power lines. Um. These birds are are are definitely dying from a lot of man made stuff out there, and we still have them around. Yeah. This this is where it gets. This is where the subject gets like

hard for me to sort out. Is that on one hand, I see places where people within the industry get really uneasy when people start having a conversation that we're having right now, because they would they would prefer that no one talked about it because uh, you know, um, it's sort of like a taboo subject because you're pointing out some kind of problem with how everybody does things better. Just shut up about it. We're gonna get regulations that

we don't want. Like you hear that from people. On the other hand, UM and I and I, and that gets my hackles up a little bit, like this sort of idea that you need to censor um, real conversations about trying to find out information and put a plan together and have an open discussion about something like I think that's important to do that. On the other hand, lead works really well. Let us inexpensive lead is widely available. Uh, A lot of a lot of non lead ammunition is

is like limited in abundance. It can be very expensive. It's like, I don't want to see that level like that kind of onerous. Um. I don't want to see that kind of onerous regulations put in on people and have everybody need to spend more money, have ammunition be more limited. But I also realized that we're gonna have to probably talk about this stuff and figure out things we can do in order to head off getting forced into a place where you're gonna wind up in just

that situation like you did in certain areas well. I think now pretty soon all of California where's just like you're not allowed to use lad Man, California, July from July twenty nine, and all of California is not let So we're we're gonna have to, like as a community, start talking about it and start thinking it and hopefully land somewhere where we're in the driver's seat and how we're gonna proceed less like you're saying, Um, we lose our seat at the table and and and land in

a place where we could have done a lot better had we been a little more proactive about it. Yeah, I don't, I don't know. I don't know the answer, man. My opinion about all these complex about this whole complex topic, my opinions are kind of all over the map. I'm because I see all of like you're just saying, I i'd see all of the pros and the cons and and I'm not on one side or the other when it comes specifically to human health. That I wrote the

article about human health. Um, I think there's people using human health as a hammer because that there and I've heard people tell me that's very effective. One person told me at the wild of Society and Albuquerque had a m a symposium on wildlife and and lead and one

guy at the break tell me. Sometimes, he says, what's most effective is we show up to the check stations, the deer check stations, especially if there's a wife or a girlfriend there, we start talking to her about how do you know that your your husband, your boyfriend's poisoning you with lead, you know, meat, and they and they were laughing, saying that that is really the most effective way, because I guarantee that guy is not using lead next year.

And so you see the human health um as a as an exaggeration for the true risk that it provides the humans. That's what I really have a problem with, this other stuff about the individual versus population and pending litigation and the image of hunters. I just I see all of that stuff, and I haven't worked through it all myself and where I stand and all that. Oh yeah, Jim, you know, I know exactly what we're talking about, and I I know we drifted from it a little bit. But sure, man,

I've seen that. I've seen people like I've seen raptor people um switch and and want to talk about human health because they're driving at something with raptors. I think one of the most like weirdest versions I've seen of this is there's this group that's always been opposed to wildlife markets. They're having a heyday with COVID where they're acting like we always knew. They used to oppose wildlife markets because they're trading an endangered species. Now they've switched

their hotelality. Wildlife markets are bad because of the disease issue, and it's like, well, you're using the disease issue to get where you want it to land before. You're using this as a new tool to to to win your old war. I don't like to see that either, man, Like I don't like when I don't like when people do that. It's like, be intellectually honest, you know. And I've looked at it, to man, and I've and I've always been a little suspicious of the human health thing.

I first got interested in it when I had high lead levels in my garden and that led me to reading about you know, how to lead get there? How does it? How does it move? What? How does what impacts does it have on people? And I've often, uh looked at that and thought about that these like chunks of bullet lead passing through your system, it's just not the same thing. Is some of these ways in which

people are getting led from inhalation and other issues. Yeah, and that's what the title of my article was, Great toxin or red herring. And that's what a red herring is is when you're you're you're arguing one thing, but that's not really what you're interested in. You may be arguing about human health, but you're really interested in rapt

or mortality. I don't know if you've ever talked about talk to your wife about something and you're disagreeing, and you suddenly realize that what you're arguing about isn't really what she's was with the problem is it's really something else, and you end up arguing about something else. And so I think people find what's the what's going to be the most effective message, and they they gravitate to that. And and my message is just let's be honest, let's

talk about all these different facets of this topic. And when we talk about human health, let's talk about lead fragments and and um and shot and how that really can translate to problems with human health because that connection, the connection is not very strong. There's there are some cases where people there's a guy in in that living

in the bush in New Zealand, I think. And he was eating meat bush meat that he was shooting with lead bullets, and he was eating every day, so he basically had lead in his digestive system every day of the year. And they tested his blood and it was it was skyrocketed with lead levels. And then there was a case of the Inuit community up in Greenland that was that was eating a lot of sea ducks that

were shot with with lead pellets. And so they asked how often do you eat sea ducks because they had a lot of lead pellets in them, And those that eight sea ducks once a week or less were below the center for these control um limit for for a danger zone. And those that as they approached one sea duck approached daily consumption of sea ducks, they're lead levels. We're tend to seventeen above that CDC level of ten

ten to seventeen um. So, and so there are cases where people basically have are eating lead every day or pretty close to every day and it's always in their system. You can definitely have your blood lead levels up to unhealthy levels for sure. The indiscriminate killing argument, right is the one that kills me Like I'm like there's just nothing. I guess you could argue that you just randomly decided that, yeah, I'm gonna shoot that buck, but that's not the way I see it. For or, I do a lot of

looking looking over animals before I pull the trigger. And uh, I'm just like a long way past uh sitting out and going through a brick of two m oh shooting ground squirrels just don't do that anymore, having a long long time, And so that's why I'm always like, oh shit, that bird that's sailing off with one leg hanging down? Is that a dead raptor? Like did I just kill

something that I didn't intend to kill? Like I'm okay with the little bit of wound loss over the course of a season, Like I've mentally set myself up for that, uh, for these birds, but I'm not quite mentally set up to say, yep, that is a prairie falcon or something else that is just badass that's out there. So if you started shooting your upland birds with steel, I finally got ahold of some bismuth. It took me a long time to get get ahold of bismus. But I mean,

and that's exactly what you're talking about, Steve. That bismuth is expansive. Stuff makes you think about pulling the trigger. My god, has that stuff work though? Man, it doesn't work. I just bought some. I bought some Federal Premium TSS for turkey hunting because it's so amazingly effective, and I just I just spent on five shot gun hills. That's that tungsten t SS. You gotta line up, you gotta line up their heads, make sure you're getting getting miss

turkey the first time. And so it costs me thirty eight dollars for him to shoot a turkey when he had a second thing. You know, it's nice to you'll see Jim with those ts s. I don't know if you already hunted it with them, uh last season, but you know, if they're so dense and so heavy that even if you your patterns a little bit low and you hit that breast, they tend to just whistle through that whole bird and you don't end up having, you know,

shot stuck in the breast. Yeah up. I shot my Gould's last year with TSS about forty yards and the pattern was pretty dense. I actually messed up the tail fan because there's just so much. I'm using sevens and nine together and kind of messed up the tail fan. But my son killed a Miriam last year at at sixty yards laser range finders sixty yards with a twelve games with TSS. It's amazing. Oh man, No, I'm getting

all worked up for turkey hunting. I've been trying to not think about turkey season alright, Jim dude, thanks a lot for coming on. Sorry you couldn't be like normal where you come up in the studio. But we gotta get through this, Uh, get through this pandemic. It's killing me. Yeah, I mean not literally killing me, it's literally killing some people. Um. You gotta get those vaccines rolling out. Get everybody back together, um,

Mr Jim, thank you, appreciate you coming on. Cal Yanni, Brody Crane, Phil, thanks a lot, Thank you, easy, good luck, stay well, we'll see each other later. Take are like