Ep. 335: Long Beard

I gotta bed to myself. It's weird that, like, you got your own bed, but then there's three of them in that bed. I might still be smelling bad man. That could have something to do with it. Seth, Is that that that that's car? That's that's a seemed frequent guest, Carl Malcolm. Seth is sitting on a little you call that thing now ottoman. Yeah, using the bed as a desk. And I'm one of those little hotel desks, which I can't bring myself to use generally. This is something kind

of depressing about him. I do it in bed, when I got it, when I'm in a hotel, I type in bed. She looked like it just looks like your office, I know, And I got this little coffee making you're breaking a big story. There's a beautiful Uh. I appreciate the pinon cone framed art on the wall over there. That's a nice touch for the Southwest. No, it is good.

It's got a Southwest vibe in here. We're coming off of a um, wonderful turkey hunt in the Helo Wilderness, which we're gonna dive into the significance of that wilderness and wilderness is in general. Um, first off, I got to talked about a couple of things. Uh, someone Chester how many tests my meat submissions came in? I heard that just that I checked that morning the podcast came out and we had Corey said we had test my

meat submissions. Is that true? Well, I don't get all of them, and I actually haven't had a chance to really go through all my emails yet, just because we're on the road. Um, but on the trail, on the trail, this is the hotel creamer, I'm not I don't know. I probably have fifteen, but I don't think Corey sending me all of them. Just and then you got, um, you got criticized by a Warner. What we're talking about is our our metiat or laboratories, which we started out Jesse.

You don't even know yet, buddy, I got a surprise for you. When you see your lab coat. That would be a good look for Chester. It is for some reason, I'm slightly afraid I went with the most appropriate Chester nickname. Oh you're gonna be very very happy. I wasn't gonna tell you, but I can't keep bit of secret most appropriate. That's good, Chester the Tester me eat your laboratoryes patch and chest of the tester embroidered on your life. Couldn't

I couldn't know. I'm not good. I couldn't keep the secret an longer. That's killing me. So we have a warm telling telling the machine we have Chester and what we've been doing with it. It's a Warner Bratsler sheer force machine. We do not have it in the hotel with us. Basically, keep it real simple, it is it. It's like a scale and it's got a blade, and the blade slices the meat or shears the meat, and that scale will give you the pounds of force that

it takes two slice through that. And there's this whole scale on tenderness, and we're getting a bunch of submissions in for wild game testing out how tender your wild game is. Some people are more interesting, how tough it is personally? Yeah, yeah, well here's the deal, dirt. It's a little tricky. So yeah, I'm gonna get there in one second. Like you bide into your buddy comes home and he's like, man, that elk I shot was tough. Hell,

let's role play. You tell me, Um, you do it to me, Steve, I shot at elk in New Mexico in the wilderness, and I got that thing back, and man, was it tough. Sit. It's not like that elk that I shot up in Montana. You want to see tough, you should taste some of my aw dad. Oh shit, If you want to see tough, man, you should test that twenty year old bear I shot. Well, you know what, let's send it to me either laboratories and find out who's is actually tough. Te my meat? What is it

you send it to send it to? No, Okay, let's keep the role play going. I'm gonna I'm gonna retort. Yeah, well, ship Chester, let's send it. Let's submit our proposal at meat eater at the meat eater dot com with the subject line all caps test my meat. I bet you mine is going to be tougher than yours, and Chester the tester will review your submission and decide if you should submit your sample or not. Yep, and then we're gonna give a prize to the toughest game meat that

we can get our hands on. It's gonna be a heck of a good time. Hopefully I don't. There's I'm already getting look at work on that one on the plane. Can you think of a better retort? It's gonna be a heck of a good time. There's uh, you should put that on his lap coat. There's already it's long, so down towards the bottom. I could say it's gonna be a heck. There's already people writing in like saying like we better do this right because there's so many variables.

Oh yeah, Jess has already been accused in the in keeping with the times, he's already been accused of spreading misinformation. But this isn't about COVID. This is about meat testing. Yeah, I mean, we tested a peep. How serious can it really be? But I can guarantee you guys, I'm gonna do my absolute best to make sure everything is as accurate as possible. There's gonna be some bribery sent your way there, chet, So what here's what they do. Here's

the conundrum, dirt. Then we'll move on just because just keep you posting. This is a very expensive machine. Okay, So we can't just do it once in dropics. That would be fiscally irresponsible. So we need to do it a whole bunch to justify having bought this damn thing very expensive. Um, here's the thing. Here's where you out

of conundrum. If you're doing it like for real. Um, Like you're like breeding cattle and trying to find like what cow, what attributes whatever, diet genetics, whatever yields the most tender blank t bone. You want great uniformity, So they always cook the meat to the same temperature, Let it cool overnight, cut the core, test the core, so and doing the game meat thing. Do you stick to that or do you do a thing where like, well, let's do it like how one would best prepare it.

And then and then to tell people that because these are two different interesting lines of inquiry. One is like, because this gives a numeric value to toughness. What's like super ass tough chester five five is superasst I mean, yeah, five is tough. Unacceptable. Yeah, in industry terms, it's unacceptable. What's acceptable in industry terms? Um, I think around like two point five? Like three. It's like, and I've seen some bulls that are if five at the top, I've

seen some sixes. Okay, yeah, so you you you get it, and you test all these different game needs and be like, yes, cooked to like labs SPACs. It's this. But there's an interesting line of inquiry where you let's say someone has a the toughest bull in the world or buck in the world. Okay, and you're like, let's suevied a steak and then reverse syrit and tests that result versus putting a cold, wet, half frozen steak on a five degree grill and and then be like, right, like what strategies

does one? Like what what might be the outcome once you have a tough ask bowl? Or we do this, you take the tough ask bowl. Let's say someone sends you around off a really tough bowl. We'll test it labs backs. Then we'd have like Kevin glaspie, cook it a handful of ways and test those and see, follow me, that's a good idea. Yeah that man, that's the worst case scenario, best case scenario, and in all these and then tell them how you already got in trouble telling

the guy. Do you want to talk about the guy that sent you a mean email? Real quick? Would you compare a bear then to an elk or would it be elk category? Here's what here's the beauty of the thing is. You could then say, yeah, you could take what do you gotta do, like, how do you you cook it to? What? Acording to labs backs, Well, it doesn't really matter. I mean, sure it does, but I was cooking it medium rare, so I just did that

one last time. But I think all of them will be cooked to what's medium rare temp typically on like a steak. I'm sorry, medium rare or I think over there, I think I think what we'll do is like suvit um to temp very similar size of meat and then quick reverse serum so they'll all be very consistent. And then you cut core samples. There's like a little mechanism where you cut course samples out. You're supposed to cut three cores. And here's the internet of thing we already

found out. Um, if you if it's rare in the middle and you cut a core, you know, have a core like imagine you have a cylinder. Let's say you have a cylinder. Like let's just imagine it's your finger. Okay, your middle knuckle is pink, let's say, and the ends are more brown where you sheer, you're getting different scores. Oh yeah, like that more cook shit is scoring to nose. So like taking a core sample out of that middle parallel with the grain, not perpendicular, because then yeah, there

you're cutting cross obviously. But yeah, some guy wrote in just I don't need to go into it, but he was just saying, like, it's very difficult to do accurate tests like this. Was he making a play to be the person that was he making a play to be Chester the Tester? No, he was just basically saying, like information. Someone wrote in, Um, this is interesting. He decided to google. He googled Chester the Tester, and I'm disappointed to find

in this will change over time. Disappointed. I'll disappoint to find that when you google Chest of the Tester, you do not find Chest of the tester. You find a ceramic figuring of a rotund, pudgy little chef testing licking a spoon that he has dipped into a vat called Heavenly Chocolate. The figuring in like a little I got to look it into it more. Chester is gonna we need to get one of them son's bitches. Chester. Um,

that's the logo Brandon Butler. Who. So, I'm gonna give a Brandon Butler update to remind you guys who Brandon Butler is one He's been on the podcast. Uh yeah, I need I have hunted turkeys for him. We would call him very much a friend to the show. Sometime back, some friends of his were raising money for him because he reported some poachers who then burned his cabin down. Whoa, the guy that burned his cabin down just went back to prison on a five year stint. But not for

the arson Brandon. This is a This is a this is a teaser because brand is gonna come back on the show to tell this whole sort of is a crazy story. It involves a five ft three pound guy named Tiny Round. Now listen, I was gonna give you I'm just gonna weet your appetites here for how if you're gonna commit a crime, America is the country to do it in, man America, Like, like, this is a great place to be a criminal. They just don't do anything to you here. So can we have murder in

this country? So none of this guy? This guy burns down his place. How do you know that he's not sleeping there? Burns down his place. He gets him on trail cam burning it down, and he's not even in jail for burning it down. Tiny's the arsonist or that he'll he'll tell the whole story. I just like that little detail. So he also broke into this other dude's cabin, was living in the cabin, left his pro left his parole papers in the cabin after stealing a four wheeler

and a generator. Okay, pleads guilty of to that, and that constitutes a Class C felon. But he's already fell anyway. But that constitutes a Class C felon. Burning Brandon's entire house down, on the other hand, is a Class D felony. Have they convicted him on both? He get to serve those things. Concurrently, great country to commit crimes in, Like, if you're gonna go do something bad, do too bad things because you just do it concurrently. Anyways, it's ridiculous. Yeah,

I'm gonna read like a pamphlet. You know, we're gonna do that book. Um, hunters making the cover for the book. The book is called right if we talked about four? But he's making the cover for the book. We're starting with the cover. It's the books called how could I Be Cold but my balls are balls are still sweaty? How could I be cold but my balls are still sweaty? The Untold Truth about Sleeping Bags? And this is gonna be how could I be cold when my balls are sweaty?

Truth about Sleeping Bags? But I think I should write a pamphlet like that, says UM. So you'd like to commit some crimes, it would be tips for criminals. Apparently if you do two really bad things, it doesn't matter because you only get to go to jail for one of them. Oh my god, man, Um, he's gonna come in and tell this is this story is great. Oh, just to titillate you a little more. Um. They also burned down a ranger station like a Forest Service ranger station.

Burned down a Forest Service ranger station. Same individual. They felt like they were being persecuted when they started looking into their poaching habitat and the just terrible people. And they didn't He didn't get in trouble for that. You know, he's in five years. If you back, I'll burning more ship down. Gosh, I would think, like destroying federal property, great country to commit crimes and it would be a bigger deal. What a jerk. Well, you know, we're cleaning

that turkey the other day and I had blood. I was plucking a turkey. I had blood in my hands and the feathers kept sticking in my hands. Yeah, you got me thinking about getting tired and feathered. Oh it would be a good let's bring that ship back. But I think cutting appendages and shipped off should come back. We talked about this in the car. For theft. Yeah, like for burning ship down, you should lose your your thumb that you strike that you roll the lighter with,

or maybe get a burn. Yeah, caught your thumbofs. You can't work a big light anymore. Burn your other figure tips. Uh. Yeah, I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm kind of hard on. I'm hard on. Uh, you know, like that kind of like potentially fate like burning people's houses. Now it feels bad, just old fashioned with on every everyone. Everyone should see

the same. Everyone should see that the same way you do. Well, it's it's personal to me too, because Um, he had so many cool like hunting and fishing artifacts and stuff in there that he lost, like really cool stuff in there. He built the place, but he built a place by hand. Man. Um, he's coming on top about that. Guy rode into This is interesting because I've I've noticed this a bunch, I haven't thought about it much. He um recently discovered, Um,

a raccoon latrine. Uh, I'm sure the group was gonna think of a bunch of animals that use communal latrines. Uh nil No, nil. Guy used communal latrines that are as big as a queen'size bed and actually forms a hill. Yep, what's that? Llamas? Yeah, but I was gonna stick to hunting animals. Um, Lamas do a communal latrine. Swamp bread, let's do a communal latrine, Otters do a communal latrine,

and raccoons do a communal latrine. Um, what else is the communal do you see when you're walking through the woods? You'll find a pile of growl ship. M do you ever see that? I'd like to have a growlse expert answer me that. I don't know if it's a latrine, but it's like that thing set there for a while. I often thought that it was in a bad snow storm. He was sitting there under the snow. Yeah, what do

you think, Carl? Well, the other place you'll see that oftentimes is on the back side of a drumming log where a male likes to hang out in the spring, strutting his stuff and you know, beating his wings to attract a female. They'll pile up a retty significant little heap of grouse droppings. Yeah, I've seen it where I felt like, I said, because are you ever going out? Um? We used to hunt grouse a lot in Michigan. If you had a bad snowstorm and you'd go grouse hunting,

you'd bust grouse where there's no tracks. Yeah, they just come busting right out of the snow. Was there when it snowed and stayed under the snow. You have out of the snow and there's no thing coming in, it's just exiting. Yeah, you'll have a hole and then you'll have the spot where both wings beat down on the side of the snow rocketing out of the snow pile.

So it's kind of tube with a yeah, but I've seen him, like you're saying, with dozens of dozens of pellets, well you get like a pile behind a drumming log and a quick cool aside. When it comes to trying to capture grouse like for research purposes, one of the most effective ways to get him is at those drumming

logs because they're very territorial. This has a nice link to talk in turkeys as well, um, because there we're going to kind of I know that there's nothing that a male grouse hates more than seeing another male grouse

somewhere near his drumming spot. And so the way you capture him is throw a little mirror up in the back of a trap where a grouse on the drumming log will see his own reflection, and by and large you're gonna have that that male grouse attack his reflection in the back of that trail off the drumming log. We were out hunting bears of clay one time and we made a mistake of camping at a drumming log and that thing all night long really is walking around

like through the sleeping bags. I'm that kidney man. I don't know if I've ever heard one drumming at night. It was going crazy. Then you guys there and remember that we were on that. Yeah, so he was going on like a little generator. When I was, before I was old enough the bowl hunt, I was sitting in my brother's tree stand around. My dad would set multiple tree stands up so you can sit. I'll send with

my brother. Before I was on the bow hunting. He's bow hunting and I'm hearing and I said to him at one point, I always mad, I said, that guy can't get that lawnmore started. So you know, we've we've been talking a little bit about u the sort of emerging turkey hunting opportunity up in the Upper Peninsula, back in our native state of Michigan. And this past spring um I spent a bunch of times stomping around up

there looking for looking for gobblers. And one of the super cool things about turkey hunting up there is at first light, right when it's like time to start hearing birds gobbling on the roost the rough grouse are going berserk as well, so you're they're listening for gobbles in the distance, and meanwhile you've got drumming grouse all around you. The geese are starting to head back north. So it's

just like this embodiment of spring reawakening. And this past spring a seriously and this past spring I was hearing so many drummers that it, you know, it was a great indication for what the fall hunting season was going to look like. And that's one of the ways, of course, that they evaluate grouse numbers on the landscapes to do

these spring drumming. But while Turkey hunting, you know, I was already starting to text my buddies, like, come mid October, we're gonna have some real good grouse hunting based on what I'm hearing out here in the Turkey Woods, and that that definitely turned out to be the case this past fall. I read once that with roughed grouse, a limiting factor can be the prevalence or absence of drumming logs. That's an interesting because they're so fussy about the height

and then visibility around it. Yeah, and that you could you could mechanically improve your grouse habitat by making appropriate drumming logs. If you don't have them, I don't know if you believe that or not. I'm so I will face my skepticism by saying that I'm not a rough grouse expert. But when I think about the things, you know, sort of driving reproductive success, typically it's it's limiting factors on the female side of the equation more than on

the male side. Um. Now that being said, one of the things I love doing when I was a kid, um up in leland Ock County, the northwest Lower Peninsula, Michigan in the spring, when i'd be out morale mushroom picking and just being in the woods, if i'd hear drumming roughies, I'd try to sneak in and see if I could see the mail. And so I've looked at a lot of drumming logs just out of my own

curiosity as a as a kid growing up. And there is a striking consistency in the characteristics of the places that those males like to show off their stuff, you know, in terms of height, in terms of having good visibility around them, and obviously you know, not unlike a gobbling turkey. They're making a heck of a lot of noise to try to show off for the females. And that's a very dangerous thing in a landscape where you've ut example, predators who will love nothing more than a plump rough

grouse to snack on in the spring. Um people, folks at home on what we're talking about. Yeah, that was that was actually a perfect replication, was it? Anyhow? This guy raccoon raccoon defecation piles, So he was renovating an old cab and and and discovered one. It was blown away by the smelling sight of the communal to trine. It's got him googling later that night, which led him to the CDC page on raccoon roundworm war. Family has

ever had any experience of raccoon roundworm? Seems to be extremely rare occurrence in humans, yet extremely common in our Midwest raccoon population. I haven't had, and I've never That's one of those many things I just choosing out to paying attention to. Like the list of diseases you can get from stuff is so we're gonna talk about a nerd disease in a a minute is so long that you just after a while, it just you know it sounds

gross though you don't want that ship. But now, I've never taken any precautions to avoid raccoon roundworm, and I have looked. You know, when you're trapping raccoons, you like. A great find is latrine, which usually identifies a den. Try ah aving influenzas hitting some wild turkeys in Billings, Montana um near our headquarters, not too terribly far away from my headquarters, some guy found a I was just reading an article about this guy finds a turkey dead

and things that got hit by a car. Just looking around and find six dead turkeys laying around his place. And they tested them. They tested three of them, and those those three turkeys that died Avian influenza. Jeez. So it has at least in that case, UM has moved into wild turkey populations as it spreads naturally through our bird populations. I texted the wild turkey doc Michael Chamberlain.

He said they're at University of Georgia. They are testing a lot of birds and and he he can speak to this if it changes, but this might be dated by the time you hear it. But he was saying it doesn't seem to impact wild turkeys quite like is in a and as devastating of a way as it seems to hit other bird species. But if covid' is any indication, you can probably expect someone to make turkey hunting illegal now because you could get avian influenza from it.

Let's hope that doesn't uh go on? Uh, well we have ea chat uh Chester and Seth Key give us a Wally tour update please yep um, I'm trying to give a cable news that was good. The continuing wally had been shows off. Chester. The tester and Seth we jet and I went out to St. Peter, Minnesota to the Illumincraft headquarters and picked up our boat which is from headquarters. Got a tour and everything quick tour um, real quick. It's a well can you back up, come

back up for a second. My comment about them making turkey hunting illegal. I want to point out that when the pandemic began, the state of Washington, which by and large is no friend of the American outdoorsman. Uh, the State of Washington banned the practice of fishing as part of their COVID response. Just remind people of this. This is not a thing to happen a long time ago.

Go ahead, go ahead, soeth makes a lot of sense. Anyway, we went to Alumincraft picked up our competitor F s X boat that we're gonna be fishing out for the tournament season, and brought it home and Chet and I have been working our asses off rigging it. Like, um, this is like when you guys get done. I think the military is gonna want this boat. Yeah, it's it's it's like a spaceship. We got no excuses, um, but we're learning a lot on how to Like I have

no not a ton of experience with like electrical work. Yeah, Chat and I have never rigged a boat before, and it has to be done in a way, a specific way so everything doesn't interfere with Yeah, all your electronics package for people, Well, we have three helix twelve screens, which is you know, kind of the main unit that you're looking at. We have a Mancoda Old Treks trolling motor that has a built in UM two D. So on, are you have that Hummingbird three Mega three sixty hook

to the trolling motor. We'll have a skimmer in the back. We'll have a side imaging down imaging in the back and then we'll have a mega live unit on the side and they'll all be talking to each other like what are they talking about? Dous feel like, I'm all for it? But do you feel like you're going to be right in line with your with the competition or you gonna be like outswinging them with the electronics. No, not outswinging them with electronics. Those dudes have that and

more on their boat. And is there a limit to what you can do? What do you mean? I mean? Yeah, like infficient, is there a limit to how much uh technology you can introduce? Not as of now, I don't put which is kind of crazy because you know, as to technology gets better and better, especially in tournament fishing.

Where's the where's the line? Right? Um? But man, it's sure fun to use that stuff, you know, like in the Olympics, you can't take a lot of drugs, right, So I could picture in the wall at tournament they might do something down the road about electronics. Yeah, you can't be open up your electronics. Yeah, we have all this stuff hooked up to some lithium batteries that at last minute we're supposed to get lithium batteries end up not getting them, but our friends up at Towns of

Marine last minute help us out big time. Thanks to those guys. Yeah, that was big. The reason why we're in such a hurry is because we went on this New Mexico trip. We get back, we have a few days and then we gotta head out to our first derby, first tournament out at Fort Pack. So right before we left, this is how we left the boat. And it's sitting in sets garage right now. So I've been thinking about it all weekends because I've been laying in my sleeping

bag thinking about hung I plant my garden? Really, what I'm gonna put where? Yeah? Yeah, that's why you're every time chatting and I got like a second together on this hunt. We're like, hey, what do you think about? What do you think about this distribution panel? Yeah, but so we this is how we left the boat. We got it the whole front of the boat rigged up

with the um Helix twelve screen. It was going to our battery, then to our distribution panel, then to all that stuff up, so it should have worked, should have turned on. So like we get it all set up, We're excited, you know, like rubbing our hands together, Like here we go, We're turning on the first unit, press the button. Nothing. You know, when they make a movie about this, that scene is gonna be a lot like in the Chevy Chase Christmas movie. Oh yeah, yeah, Christmas

lights and plugs that nothing comes on. That would be a great scene. And yeah, after after doing a bunch of troubleshooting, I determined that our fuse panel is faulty. Man, What does happen to casting and reeling? Man, We're gonna be doing a lot of that too. But no, I get you. Yeah, I mean you can only you can put a shipload electronics on your boat. At the end of the day, you gotta be a good fishing still

gotta work the j you gotta be. You gotta work Jay, gotta no where fish live, how fish react to stuff? How many episodes are you guys gonna make about this whole thing? For um only four? Yeah, it's just like a little test makes sense because it's like three tournaments and then and then yeah, the first one is us just kind of more self filming. The next three are gonna Chris gill is going to come along with us, so it'll be way higher quality great too, because he

likes to fish. Yea, yeah, and it's it's we're not we're not doing the traditional meat eat or like don't break the fourth wall deal. So Chris is gonna be like a character in it. It won't be fishing, but there'll be some banter. Uh, this is great, it's gonna be fun. You cannot fish. Just for everyone out there, there's people like a little bit like, oh, they're gonna have a third person in boat. We're gonna have cameras

rolling the whole time. So by all means, if you want to sit there and look at that little go Pro SD card for nine hours and watches watch watch Chris film us there you go like where you know? So you're so too, because somehow having a third person on the boat it might be interpreted as a way to cheat, I don't know, like he's got a wall

hidden in the camera. Competitive and well, you just have another person casting, right, That's why I'm gonna take But but you're gonna take a go pro position that so it's filming the whole boat and then there will be no interruption in the footage and you're gonna let it run all the way through and should someone ever want to say I want to know what happened on that boat, you would provide them with the entire day that they could analyze to see if there's breaks in the footage.

They could watch everything that happened on that boat for nine hours. You gotta be careful which direction you're peeing off that boat. Do you guys have a way you guys might want to think about? UM, I don't know if it works. You have to get a big satellite dish ship on that boat. But imagine if you were able to people that could just live stream during the whole tournament. That would be great. That would be great. There'd be a lot of a lot of electronics, a

lot more electronics. But yeah, there's no limited right you guys like that ship Instagram live? Yeah? Great? Uh. Let me have one more question for you guys. I'm real excited for you, but are you? UM, how would you rate going into the tournament season? How would you rate your cockiness? Mind? Mind? Very, I don't want I don't want to that's a that's Carl just introduced me to a new phrase, which value laden term. I don't want to use a valuated term. Um, cockiness, Like no one

wants to be cocky, Like are you would you? How would you like? Okay, let me say this if if I came, if I if I was a future seer, and in many respects I am. But if I was a future seer and I came to you and said, turns out Chester, at the end of all this um, you will have placed how many people? Roughly it could be a hundred. And let's say we knew in my thing, I was like I saw the future there were a hundred boats you placed forty. Would you be like, damn, dude,

that's great, better than I thought. Or would you be like, huh, I'd be real happy with some top twenties. Yeah, I think I think forty would be Like, because I know we don't have any experience fishing tournaments. You guys got a lot of experiences. We have a lot of experience catching while I we know how to catch them and we're gonna work. Yeah, we don't. We don't have the experience that some of the guys have on these lakes.

And like, yes, we could go to any of these lakes and catch a bag, but some dudes are gonna go and catch a bag of high twenties thirty because they just have it dialed and you guys are gonna roll in with five thirteens Like that could be a thing to happen. That could be a thing that happened. I think we'll do better than that, but I would. I think I think we have potential place in the like I think we can place in the top ten in one of these three tournaments. That's bold. The other two.

I know we can do it, but I don't. I mean, it's possible for sure. Are you at liberty to say where the three locations are? Yeah, it's uh Tiber Fresno and four Pecks and Montana. There's a fourth one, Kanyon Ferry. But on my wedding day, here's the thing, his home waters. He's skipping his home water day to get married. That's the stupidest thing in the world, especially when I found out that he doesn't need to be at his own wedding.

How's that because Montana lets your proxy marriage from the boat. Yeah, he could assigned, he could assigned met him and I just stend up there with his girlfriend. I'm just gonna stay silent on this one so I don't get myself support your decision. Just for the record, you would not bail. Let me tell you, Let me tell you a story. Let me tell you a story one time that that I don't want to say. I don't want to use names,

but a very famous author told me a story. He had a kid he was mentoring, okay, and it wound up that he got an assignment lined up for the kid he was mentoring for a very prestigious publication, and he's like, now is your chance. I can't because that's my family vacation weekend. That's a little different that mentorship ended that second, Oh totally. He's like, you don't want this the way you need to want it, And I would say, there's nothing more important. I would say, there's

a difference. There's a giant difference there. Happily ever after wallet fish, I love walleye fishing too, but I'm with you. I gotta tell the good. So here's a good story. Uh, if you hearken back, this is the sect. We don't normally do this. I don't like to do this this much, but so are our beloved friend Bubbly Doug was. He was allowed to do some follow up on on c w D after our episode with Ted Nugent. And then so we revisited the Nugent episode with Doug doing a

rebuttal uh. And now we're revisiting our Nugent episode again with the the really detail laden story from a guy. So when news were talking about how the news used to do whiplash bashes and and we had attended some whipple did you ever attend whiplash bash? I can't say that I have. But you were passed on the highway by Ted driving that zebra strike bris straight Bronco. That's down by Jackson, Michigan. That's that's as like important as

a whiplash bash when you're in high school. So guys like he was working backstage security for a Nugent concert up at the Castle in Charlotte. Boy, it's one of the rare occasions when Ted missed a shot on stage. Oh no. At the end of the show, Ted was as a security guard points out, Ted was so physically exhausted he needed help getting back to the dressing room. Was spent okay, um, the assistant said, I'm not supposed to do this, but I need to leave Ted's bow here.

While I helped him back to his dressing room. Can you keep an eye on it until I come back and grab it? Well, of course, I said yes and he left. He sare's a lot of activity going on as people were leaving and bray can things down the venue, so it's very hectic backstage. At one point, a guy walks by the table and just nonchalantly grabs nuggets bow. Security guard goes up to him and says, what are you doing? He said, I'm supposed to bring this back

to Ted. About that time, Ted's assistant walks up and asked what's going on. The security guard said, this guy is trying to take Ted's boat, and it was revealed that this person is in fact trying to steal Ted's bow and has no connection to Ted. The security guard summons the police officer, who then escorts the man off property. The police officer thanked him for stopping the crime. The assistant explains that that boat is never supposed to leave

Ted's site and they made a mistake. Now she Ted gets word of this whole thing, comes out of his dressing room and gives him the broken arrow that broke upon Ted's miss on stage. He says, Ted walked up, shook my hand, said thanks for helping out tonight and handed me half of the broken arrow, which he had signed he's offered donated to the Land Access Initiative auction House of Oodities. I texted Ted to be like, did this ring a bell? He said, I remember everything, but

I don't remember that. Oh, but I'm gonna email him the thing and see if it. If it feels legitimate, we will UM be adding that to the Auction House of Oodities for our land Access initiative. Another thing I want to point out about the Land Access Initiative, And we've got one more thing to top on the We're ben get into the turkeys in the healer UM. We recently got a note from the family of a guy

named John Pennewit. His wife wrote in UM and she said, I was just a face in the crowd at one of your live shows in Houston, and she was pointing, and she gave us the news that I'm not sure what happened, but her husband, John Pennewit, who was a big fan of the show UM, had passed away young with kids, and they had in lieu of any kind of flowers or anything they had requested that UM family and friends make a donation to our land Access Initiative.

This is John Pennewit from down in Texas, his family, and I had heard that a lot of donations to the Land Access Initiative are flooding in on behalf of John Pennewit. So I don't know what happened there, man, but really, uh um, sorry for the loss and thank you for the support. Though it seems like I'm not ideal scenario. Um, the corner crossing dudes and whylming we've been covering is real. Heavily found not guilty mm hmm.

But here's the weird part. There's a civil case. You remember, like when O j Uh killed his wife and in a waiter, Um, he was found not guilty for the criminal thing like he didn't do it right, but then was found guilty and civil like when the family does a civil thing. So apparently the landowner is going after these dudes in a civil court case. See how that shakes out. Think about that. I'm looking at you, Carl, I feel like you'd be interested in this whole thing.

I am interested in it. And two thoughts that come to mind. One is you know you kicked off talking about um America being a good place to do a crime, and this sort of flies in the face of that, right, the idea that you could be tried while so just from the standpoint of being um facing a court and being tried criminally and then being tried again in a civil suit for the same allegations, right, so sort of a you know, like the Jews didn't murder them criminally,

but he murdered them civilly. I will refrain from commenting on the o J case. The other thought is, you know,

the public access the corner crossing thing um. As an outdoors man myself who spends a lot of time stomping around in public ground, that's an issue that that I am very interested in and care a lot about, and also one you know, as an employee for a federal agency that you know, in a forum like this, my opinions and thoughts on it are probably best kept to myself because it's something that affects the agency I work for.

But I can tell you, you know, there's a lot of times I've been looking at a chunk of ground and thinking to myself, man, would be great to great across this, you know, this fence intersection and hunt that other stuff, and I've gone so far in New Mexico is to call a number of wardens to ask that question, to find out and you know, essentially gotten answers that were sufficiently um murky that I was uncomfortable doing that.

And I can be more specific, like one one warden here said, from the state game and fish perspective, we wouldn't we wouldn't come after you for that, but I can't guarantee you that the local sheriff would feel the same way about it. Dave Wilms, who's our resident expert on this uh situation, notified me about the verdict, but then said, please do not think that this somehow overturns and you understanding, this doesn't change anything about corner crossing

writ large. It's like these individuals, this instant, we're found not guilty. This is not like a Supreme Court case that like throws out or re established a precedent. It's just like these people. If someone got found not guilty of something, that doesn't mean that what they were charged with ceases to be a thing. So folks need to know that, all right, Carl, tell me, tell me like made me, make me like um, made me like wilderness areas.

Man make you like wildern I think I just did already. Actually, I think you already did love him after it hit me, after this week hit me with him about the HeLa. Well, you know, I spent about ten years getting to know

the heal of wilderness. And when I you know, when when my wife and I made the decision to move from the Midwest to the Southwest, one of the things that really drew me to this part of the country was the history of this landscape, these landscapes and helping shape sort of the trajectory of conservation in America and globally.

And then also the fact that you know today this ratio of population to public land in a place like New Mexico is so small that ratio, there's so many places you can go and get off the beaten path and really, you know, be away from the masses, and the HeLa is one of those spots where, if you're willing to put the miles in, you can get into a little corner of the universe where you're very unlikely

to have a lot of other folks around. And you know, I anticipate as we're talking about this particular chunk of country people are going to be wondering, like, why, you know, why are we advertising how great the hell is um and then simultaneously saying it's a great place to find solitude. Right if you're if you're throwing out a banner saying the hell is an awesome place to visit, doesn't that kind of undermine the opportunity to get away from folks?

And I would point out the heal of wilderness has over fifty different trailheads, sixty thousand acres um and all the travels by primitive means either walking in there on your own legs or pack stock, and so by all means, I want people to come around and poke around that landscape and get to know it and also understand the story of how the HeLa helped really shape the wilderness

movement globally. Because we're coming up on the hundred the anniversary of the administrative designation of the HeLa in as the first UM officially recognized wild land anywhere on the planet. What do they call wilderness back then when there hadn't been the Wilderness Act UM. There's an article that So we'll talk a little bit about Aldo Leopold. I'm sure he was one of the you know, he was arguably the greatest champion for that that sort of formal recognition

of wild lands. There were other players as well, a guy named Arthur Carr, for example, making a case for not developing a lake up in Colorado called Trappers Lake, and he and Leopold were going back and forth talking about the right balance between developing federal lands, you know,

bringing in roads and trails and cabins. But then also like where's that line where do we where do we say, Okay, we've got enough development, Let's set some places aside where the highest and best use might be retaining there sort of primeval characteristics um a recognition and a sense of humility that we're not going to make these places any

better through through our own management. And so, you know, the HeLa Um that was a place that Leopold pointed to as sufficiently unique and wild and like a last best chance in New Mexico to have a place that could be a two week pack string um into the wilderness. So the the language that he used in the nineteen article for Outdoor Life magazine was a plea for wilderness hunting grounds. That was the language as opposed to a

designated wilderness area. He wrote about a plea for wilderness hunting grounds and part of the definition he used was a landscape large enough to contain a two week pack trip free of rhods. Really, yeah, that's what he's looking at. That's what he's looking at. Yep. And he preceded that article, Um, you know, Outdoor Life magazine was a great place to

kind of reach the masses. But I think from a professional standpoint, and even more important point in the timeline was in ninete he wrote an article for the Journal of Forestry in their November issue and the title that article was the Wilderness and its Place in forest Recreational Policy, which sounds a little bit wonky the titles like, okay, but it's really important because what he did in this article, he's talking to all of his fellow professional foresters. Right.

This is like the the pre eminent outlet for the forestry profession globally, the Journal of Forestry. And Leopold was one of the first students from the Yale School of Forestry, which was established by Gifford pin Show, the first chief of the Forest Services Forestry as in chopping trees down sel Yeah, yeah, this idea of and and you know, Gifford pin Show is one of the one of the giants of the conservation history of our country as well the first chief of the Forest Service. He established the

Yale School of Forestry. He was a great thinker around conservation, and he he had this idea of sustainable use, wise use and the language the greatest good for the greatest number over the long run. And for a society like ours to manage these public resource is in a way where we're maximizing their value. And so when we talk about multiple use on our public land system, we're trying to balance a variety of needs and harvest a variety

of renewable resources. So we're talking about forest products, we're talking about range land, we're talking about water, we're talking about recreational opportunity, we're talking about habitat for fish and wildlife, all these different uses. And it's not a matter of just rollback for something there because when you say forest, probably talking about like timber, Yeah, absolutely, um, minerals, yep,

minerals are part of it as well. So these water I mean like pulling water that like like wilderness areas. National forest land often is the top of the sort of food chain on water like these are headwaters, so water, clean water coming off these places that are utilized as

drinking water for people and utilized to water to eargate. Absolutely, and in fact, when the when the when the forest reserves were initially being established by our country, um that recognition that advantageous flows of cleaning abundant water from these forests. That was one of the key drivers of the establishment of the forest reserves. That in timber production early on,

those were the things that really were focused on. And you know, later on Congress passed the Multiple Use Sustained Yield Act, which brought in those five that I gave you in total. So we're talking timber, water, recreation, fish and wildlife habitat and forage for range, you know, livestock. And it put that that act, the Multiple You Sustained Yield Act put those five on equal footing. And so one of the challenges for a multiplicce agency like the

Forest Services just balancing all those competing demands. But the brilliance of what Leopold did in this article is, you know, to his colleague who are all deeply immersed in this thinking around the greatest good for the greatest number over

the long run. He made the case that there's a point where additional development starts to compromise that goal, because as you think about all these different potential uses of the national forests, um having some fraction of that landscape managed in a way that it provides the unique kind of opportunities that we've experienced this last week, that needs

to be part of the equation. And so there's a point where additional development undermines the ability to deliver the greatest good for the greatest number over the long run. So he kind of used the logic and the training that he had received this Gifford Pinchot mindset to argue his case very eloquently for why places like the HeLa. You know, we we walked by some timber out there that you know, some of these ponderos of pine trees that are over a hundred feet tall, a couple hundred

years old, straight as an arrow. I mean, they'd be they'd be beautiful lumber if they were milled. You could, you know, you could look at some of those stands and calculate a value of the forest products that are not being harvested in that landscape. But you're balancing that against values that are much more difficult to put a price tag on, like what would be the value of the experience we had this past week in dollars and cents. It gets a lot more difficult to calculate than board

feet of lumber. Right. But Leopold's point was, if you're trying to think about managing these multiple uses, um, it makes sense for us while we have the opportunity in the early nineteen twenties to start recognizing we're not making more of this stuff, and if we if we go down the path of develop uping it, it's virtually impossible that we're ever going to undevelop it. Right, We're not gonna we're not gonna rewild these places if we go

down that path. So we have this opportunity, we have this this this door is open now in the early nineties to say a place like the HeLa. Yeah, there's other values that we could potentially extract there, but the highest and best use of this place would be preserving it in its primitive condition, not trying to make it better, not trying to open it up for extractive uses, retain it for its wildness. And that was a very radical

idea in his professional circles. But he argued it on this logic that everyone was steeped in the pin show idea of the greatest good for the greatest number over the long run. Uh, how could it have been that right, Like, it couldn't have been that radical because they got it done. You wouldn't be able to get it done. Now I think that's true. I think you wouldn't be able to

get it done. Wade no um and it one. It had like by the time they got around like doing the wilderness, like codifying the Wilderness Act and what sixty eight was it sixty four, So it was a full forty years between the administrative designation of the HeLa and then the National Wilderness Act, which was signed by lb J in nineteen sixty four, and that was overwhelmingly popular.

It was overwhelmingly popular. That's right. Just to get people sense we're talking about so we we we debated the statistic there day two point seven percent of the land area in the lower forty eight two point seven percent of the land areas designated wilderness. So when people were like griping that they can't ride their bikes on designated wilderness, it's like you could ride your bikes on the other ninety seven point three percent of the country. Is it

really that big of a deal. Yeah, right, you have of the country to ride bikes on. And when you're thinking about managing these different recreational opportunities, UM, you know there's always going to be those those points of conflict. But having some places where you know you don't have the mechanical advantage to cover ground, um, you know. I think again it comes back to this idea of just trying to provide opportunities for the different user groups that

strike a balance. And it's you know, one thing I've come to recognize in my career in natural resources at this point is, UM, you're never going to be in a place where everybody's just like high five and then saying yeah, this is perfect because you know, because people don't see eye to eye. But at the core of it, you have a lot of different angles of passion coming in around this resource that lots and lots of people care about the public land system and how we're managing it.

So when we're getting that that friction around an issue like bikes and wilderness, for example, UM, rather than lamenting the fact that you're always caught in this tension. As a natural resources professional, I like to remind myself the reason that tension exists is because so many different people care about this shared resource for so many different reasons. And I you know that that brings me a lot

of optimism because people are engaged. And if people weren't engaged, if people didn't care, I think that would be, you know, a much less fortunate place for us to be. So mentally, as a natural source professional, I like to try to stand that, stand that in an optimistic place when things are really tense and frictions arising, just remember people care, people are engaged. That's a good thing, um when you're wrestling with like why would you tell people about a

place like the HeLa right? Another thing to consider, I think is that we have so many acres in this country that are in limbo as potential future wilderness area mhm. There's a lot of land that's like wilderness. What they call wilderness are wilderness study areas where it's currently undeveloped.

There's sort of like temporary restrictions on certain practices, and at some point, um there will be decisions that we made about how that those areas are gonna roll yep, that they're going to sort it out there in limbo right now. Some undoubtedly some of these wilderness study areas we'll get wilderness designation and some will lose their protections.

Right and as those debates happen, I think that the more wilderness advocates you have are gonna land, are going to help more of that stuff land under permanent protection rather than temporary protection. Yes, I think there's truth to that. And you know, another aspect of this, you know, sort of trade off between highlighting how cool a place like the HeLa is versus keeping you know, keeping things on the d l um. The HeLa is not unique in providing opportunities to do the kind of things that we

were just doing. The Heel is one place of many where folks can go out and whether it's turkey hunting or you know, looking for spruce grouse or going after a mule deer or trying to catch a cutthroat trout. Um, Yeah, the Heel is one amazing place. And take some time to educate yourself about where your local opportunities are. Two, work your tail off to get into a place where you're leaving a lot of you know, the the other folks behind at the trailhead who might not be as

willing to go as deep as you want to go. Um. I mentioned to you this week, Steve, I've hunted wild turkeys in wilderness on all five National forests in New Mexico. So the Carson, the Santa Fe, the Cbola, the Lincoln, the HeLa, they all have wilderness areas with turkeys in them, and I've hunted turkeys in all those places. So I want to point out real quick that we're not talking

about turkey hunting where you're like, oh, there's twenty of them. Yeah, yeah, well yeah, yeah, it's not any many square miles of what would be that would strike you as phenomenal turkey habitat with no turkeys or with with scattered turkeys. I'm saying, there's a lot of square miles. Yeah, that look good. There's Okay, you go out. Let me put it this way. Okay, you go out to bubbly dogs play, yep. Okay, find me a square mile of turkey habitat without a turkey

on it. Yeah, I can't do it, yeah, Okay, but I could go out and damn sure if someone went out to the HeLa, yeah and made me a square. You could you could square mile square. I could find place to put that square, and then they could like stop time and have people comment and they would be like, there is categorically wild turkey. I agree. I agree with

your assessment on this square mile of turkey. It is it is absolutely a conscious decision to go past many, many turkeys to get to the edge of the Helo wilderness and then opt in on working like physically working much much harder to find and hunt Gobbler's physically working. Yeah, give some of the mileages, Like, give some of mileages you put in this week. I don't want it. I don't want to sound like, you know, like a blow harder, like I'm making stuff up. But you guys had a

track function. You had a track function on I did not, And I'll be honest, like who had the track functions? I think? Yeah, Okay, you guys did You guys did in one day. I don't know why everybody's also acting like they don't know what I'm talking about. You guys in one day, you guys did well. No, you're rounding up, wasn't it fourteen point nine two? You did a fourteen point nine too mile loop and heard how many gobblers three and kill poly two to three? I would say,

and killed how many zero? Fourteen point nine two? And we were joking like this idea of like we're going into the secret spot deep in the wilderness. You could share every way point tell we could you know, post it on mediator dot com, and very few people would actually go, I'll tell you, like, like here's a good story along these lines. Um. So April, it was like right at the right at the peak of you know, the pandemic, everybody, you know, the world was in turmoil.

And I thought to myself, you know this length that the language of social distancing was just starting to kind of be used. And I've been toying with the idea of doing a backpack like a solo HeLa backpack turkey hunt, and you know, I was sort of joking with my wife. I'm like, this is gonna be social distancing to the extreme because the closest person will probably be, you know,

fifteen miles from me. And I packed back in and you know, it's fortunate enough to to shoot two gobblers and I plucked them and had them hanging from my backpack,

and they're both you know, both long beards. So I had I had used my shotguns sling over the back of my neck, and I had a gobbler hanging from each end of my sling by the feet, and then I had these plucked birds with their beards dangling, plus my my big backpack, and I hiked out, you know, in one trip out and I was just getting back to the trailhead and I ran into another group of guys coming in there like they were they were real excited about they were well, I don't know exactly what

their plans were. They had pretty good packs on um, but they were excited to see a successful hunter coming out with two long beards. And so, you know, we started having a little conversation and I said, I'll tell you guys exactly where I was. And I pulled out my map and pointed to him on the map where I was going. And the looks on their faces because they'd come in, you know, I'm like, so we're here,

and I shot these birds. Is over here, well some of them, some of them may not even believe you, but believe me when Carl tells you he was like, way the heck over there, he was probably there. And then he went even farther. So I'm not condoning the idea of putting coordinates on on the Mediator website people to go out there and if you know, figure it out.

But um, I think it. Actually, I'm just saying like for most part have at it, have had it, and those spots that we hunted that we're Yeah, turkey densities are not super high, but those are like my best spots that I took took this group into. And you know that was that was after trying over a dozen different trailheads. Um hiking, I'm sure hundreds of miles. I mean we we totaled it up. I think somewhere over seventy miles this week is what we put on. Well,

you you did a marathon one day. I did close to marathon. Yeah, that's another important thing to point out to people. Yeah, that is an important point. Go ahead when it's hot. It's during the daytime. So let's say you wander eight nine miles into the wilderness and kill it turkey. Yeah, I guess what your ass is doing going back to the truck to drop the turkey off. It's not like it's not like red meat, it's not like big legs of deer that are pretty durable. Yeah,

it's poultry. It's not durable. Um, it doesn't hold up and heat. So you then got to turn around. It's not like you're gonna have like a butt pole strong with turkeys after a week hunting. Once you get when you got all of his ass back, like within twenty four hours. Yeah, yeah, your timing was fortuitous because you got to send your bird back with me. So yeah, there's a there's another seventeen miles. I think that. Yeah, that day helped me out with the numbers. You guys

have a better sense. But that morning Garrett, Garrett and Chester and I hunted the morning and you figured that was around eight miles. And then we came back to our camp. I loaded up with the two birds, eight dead batteries because we we've been filming and wanted to get a bunch of those batteries out. Batteries sound each, So filled up my pack, hiked back to the trailhead. We're saying it's six and then back to camp twelve plus eight and then we and then we relocated camp

that night another how far back in four? Three or four? Yeah, we're thinking four in the bottom so whatever, that is eight plus twelve plus four, so twenty four miles that day to get the birds out. And you were bummed we weren't camped deeper in yea when Yeah, I told you guys to know, we gotta be careful about using place names. But I told you guys, like, go to this, go to this point on the map, and the last mile to get there is it's a rugged it's a

rugged drop down through this canyon. And I've been back in there before, so I was getting myself all pumped up for that final mile, and you know, I'm just like, all right, I only got a mile to go. I'm gonna beat the darkness and get back to where these guys are. And then I round the bend and there's a tent sitting there in this little meadow. I was like, oh, it's such a such a left down man, Because I

was I was all to get that least. But then when Steve came back that evening, Yeah, there was really good news. Yeah, you almost shout a bad back to you give people sense of what it's like hunt here. Like a lot of the traveling, not all, but a lot of the traveling is down in canyon bottoms. Um, and in what year is that big fire? That was the white Water Baldy Complex fire. So it obliterated a lot of the trail system. And you might be like, how does it obliterate the trail system when you get

a big fire. Bunch of things happened. Uh. One, it's all the trees fall over, so the trees are laying on everything. And then also a lot of rock moves, like a surprising amount of rock moves when trees die, so you lose the you lose the vegetation, and then all this kind of like glue holding the rocks together, so rocks just start falling everywhere, um, and you lose a lot soil. Soil comes because everything runs off because

the vegetation is not protecting it. So in the bottom of these canyons there's all this like relatively new rock all over the place and trees down and just obliterates trail systems. Still, you're traveling in canyon bottoms, and a weird thing from a turkey hunting perspective is when you're in some of these canyon bottoms, it's like lizards and ship running around. You're just getting baked by the sun.

It's all rock, everything's burnt. You're like, like, this is the there's no way a turkey goes back in here. But you climb out of these canyons and you have these sort of you almost want to think of them as like these like islands and this whole network of canyons. You have these like islands of pines that were like big enough and rugged enough to withstand the fire. And you have these little green oases, not in the bottoms

flat tops, but in the tops. And if you go look at enough of these, you'll find one where there's maybe like a gobbler, yea who will gobble once in a while. We had some cooperatives did, but it was like you know, we did we got turkeys. But there's also like you could also see that to go explore it without years of your own explorations to add on to it could be like you have to you'd have to like walking and listening. And it's not like a

going in there and blast no way of turkeys. No, this is a This is a form of turkey hunting for a fraction of the folks that like to go turkey hunting. I think it's not for the faint of heart. And you know, again you drive by a lot of turkeys just to get to the trailhead where where you'd start hiking. I mean, the surrounding hell And National Forest is fantastic. Turkey hunt you have to go to the wilderness.

But if you decide to go to the wilderness, you know, you have to be thinking about turkeys as a small piece of a much bigger set of experiences. When I heard that we were going turkey hunting in New Mexico, I knew we were going in the back country, but I was not mentally prepped for what we actually did. Like, I knew we were going in the back country, but it wasn't what I expected. How So, because because of the little problem you developed the HeLa monster. That's not

worry about that. The miles. I mean, I knew there probably well, I guess I didn't really know what to expect for bird numbers. I think I heard somebody say they were you know, you had to they were a little more sparse and you had to work for him. But I didn't know We're gonna, uh, you know, start the day by climbing up an eight hundred ft cliff. It was it was closer. In my opinion, it was closer to and a backcountry elk hunt than it was like a turkey hunt that I'm used to. And I'm

not comparing turkeys to elk. People get fired up, but we just you're packing a lot of shoot on your back camp food for multiple days, You're hiking a lot of miles and you're yeah, you're hunting out of a backpack, deep in the wilderness, and a lot of what you're doing is dictated by water availability, which I trying to find water that changed dramatically since the last time we

were in there. Yeah, yeah, you know, we we were talking logistics before this trip and I was, you know, telling you guys, oh yeah, great water, No, don't worry about water at all. And we did fine. But you know, like our first camping spot, the last time I hunted that in, I was filling up my filtration bag from a waterfall, and this year we were like skimming. We were skimming rocks, not out of our nalgene bottles, from a little puddle. It was it was like a totally

different canyon. And um, you know, to Steve's point, I think you mentioned the water kind of bringing life to the landscape, the turkey sign that we saw around those limited water sources, the place where you got your second bird, that was a beautiful little spring and meadow. UM. And we had that really great encounter with the fans of the bear family that had been splashing around near our one little you know, mud puddle of drinking water that

we had at our first camp. So you know, those little points of water on the landscape become epicenters for all manner of wildlife, including the turkeys. I was surprised on how many mountain lion and bobcat. Yeah, I've never I've never seen so many lion and bobcat tracks as we did. And you know, we've been theorizing what might have resulted in the lower turkey numbers, because while we did find birds, I would say somewhere in like the two thirds of what I'm used to seeing range of birds,

so pretty significant UM declined from past hunts. And it could be any number of factors. But there's no shortage of predators on that landscape. UM. Lots of mountain lions, UH, lots of bobcats obviously, coyotes, UM, Mexican wolves are in the area. UM, no shortage of critters, mean, black bears, no shortage of critters that would be more than happy to to eat a turkey. And I think that might have something to do with their you know, they're willingness

to vocalize as well. Potentially, Yeah, that that was my pet theory is that you're just average. You're you're you know, you're advertising your location to like a host of things that would love to know where you're at. Uh. One of the things that was consistent from turkeys everywhere that I found is that there conscious to them or not. They're like attitude changes so much from one day to

the next. That would be like if someday, if you can imagine like that you die, right and you get some glimpse into like all like you get a glimpse into the answers of the universe, right, like it's all revealed to you. The first thing I'd be like, is, what, like, what's the turkeys us? One question? What happens in the

turkey's brain from Monday to Tuesday. I think of a turkey in particular, we get to like a camp spot and we go to a known one of Carl's known turkey hangouts, and we're just doing a listening post in the evening and there's a bird. I wouldn't say he's hammering, but he's definitely gobbling at dark. Okay. And if a bird gobbles, this is my ratio. If a bird gobbles once at dust, he's gonna gobbel ten times in the morning, meaning way more apt to gobble in the pre dawn

moments than the evening. Gobbles his ass off for a nighttime gobble. Go back in the morning and some bits never gobbles once from the tree, hits the ground we're calling to it, hits the ground, gobbles twice, and then never gobbles again the rest of the day, as far as I can tell. We go back that night to listen for him to God to find out where he's gonna hold up for the night. Never gobbles once that night. Zip go back in the morning. He gobbles what a

hundred times? We kill him? What happened? Like? He gobbles a hundred times across a little canyon, flies down, gobls, a bunch crosses the canyon, comes up to us, and Steve kills gobling his ass off. What was going on today? There was not going on yesterday. In your little walnut, you can see see a hen with him at all? Did we never heard of him? No Jake's either, right, Ja Jakes don't exist there. They all get killed by bob kids because they're born. They're born long beers. They're

born long beers, and they drink dirt. I think, I think what happened that morning is, you know, this week we had Venus and Jupiter really close to a lining, and that morning it was those planets, the planetary proximity that he just couldn't take it. He had to hammer away on the roosts when he saw those planets lined up. I would love to understand. And then our last morning hunting, yeah, we that was a great morning man. Seth, bionic Seth was his purpose in life is here in Gobbls. Seth

has Seth has great ears. He alerts to here's a gobbler, and we decided to go and find that gobbler. And a morning and we go up. Gobbles is ass off from the tree and I think his body gobbled once or twice. We start calling to him, not really replying. Hissed the ground and shuts up, or so we think. Later the day we track it down. Here he is gobbling again and there's two gobblers just kind of wandering around,

one of them gobbling, no hands, no hands. We're calling to them, and it's like it's like zero interested and you'd be like, what exactly are you doing in life? Just browing out like what like keeping the predators? What are you doing keeping the predators? Guessing? Why are you gobbling now? And then? But you have zero interests and anything like what is your day's plan? When you woke up this morning, you thought, what man trying to get in ahead of a turkey? Like you don't want to

do I'm gonna walk around and gobble. It could have been if I hear a hand, I'm gonna go the other way. They're just sick of that. Well, here here's the theory. I mean the day so, the day before, the morning before, twenty four hours prior to what you just laid out. Ah, you had shot a gobbler in that vicinity who made the mistake of coming to the call. And I'm you know, I'm certainly not. I'm not going to give more or less credit to a turkey's brain

than a turkey deserves. I just don't know. But there was something that happened the day before out of the ordinary on that ridge and ways away, but ways away. And you know, if a hen really needs some male companionship, she's going to be motivated to get over there and

get to those gobblers. And I think the way that we set up as turkey hunters, um, you know, it kind of flies in the face of that, Like we we are never just like aggressively calling and trying to get to that tom the way a hen would be. You know, when when she is ready to be bred, she is just as motivated to get to that gobbler as any gobbler would be to get to a hen. Right,

She's going to find that tom. And so this idea that you know, we're always trying to pull him off, like trying to get out in front of him, pull him off the ridge, get him to come to us. If we were an actual hen needing to be fertilized, we're gonna be getting our butts over there. And those two gobblers were doing plenty for a hen to meet them halfway, shall we say, or even a percent of

the way. And you know, we spend all this time trying to get into the mind of a of a tom, right, trying to think about what we can do to convince the gobbler to come to us. But it's interesting to think from the standpoint of a female turkey, if she has that urge, if she's at that point where she needs to have her eggs fertilized, I would suppose she is very, very motivated to get to that gobbling tom mm hmm. Did you guys try a gobble that more in?

We sure did and no response. Didn't didn't get any kind of response from that. Yeah, we're laughing. Did uh? He wanted to try the gobble, and I was like, if we get shot after doing this, I'm gonna be very surprised. Yeah. Man, the heel is one of those places where, Yeah, I'm not big on using like gobble calls on public ground in the Midwest or places where there's high hunting pressure, but yeah, if some dude, if some dude came strolling into the sound of my gobbl call,

I would be absolutely shot. Now that I'm hunting turkeys with my kids, I made a you have to like make rules, you know, so you avoid all these like case by case by case things like in terms of social media, just like made rules about our kids in social media. Uh, and that way you're not every day being like, wow, we you know about this. We just like made up rule and then we lived by the rule. Um. I said to myself, I will never gobble with my kid next to me. I think that's sensible. And even

yesterday I thought about it. I was like, would I violate my no gobble with my kid next to me rule? And I was like, no, I wouldn't violate my no gobble. It's good to have a rule and stick to it. I know you're a fan of the slippery slope arguments. Well, if I get peppered with it, that's me. But if, oh man, if I gobbled my kid got shot, dude one, I'd never hear the end of it from my wife too,

I feel bad as well. Yeah. Well, we talked about, you know, the use of fans a little bit and how effective and also how dangerous that strategy is in some states. Going go in the direction of outlining it, and you use use the verb fanning, which I wasn't familiar with, but i'd heard the term reaping. Yeah, that seems more like a heavy metal term to me. Yeah, I don't know, it seems like a heavy metal band. Yeah, yeah, and reaping do they mean like like like like reaping

the harvest, reaping the wheat. Maybe there's like a grim reaper tie. I don't know, I don't get it what we're talking about. Why just get people that don't turkey good idea? Um, there's been a sort of arms race in decoy quality, and then at some point some brilliant person realized that the thing that looks most like a turkey is a turkey. So some guys like you want to look like a turkey, haven't been a turkey. So you take a turkey's fan. Um, and and I've done it,

and you've done it. You can take a turkey's fan and mounting out a handle and dry it so the fans open. And when you get a couple of gobblers that are out strutting around and all carried away, or all gobbler, all strutting around, all carried away, you can slink along like a worm, holding the fan out in front of you, and then when you're get in range, you just slip the shotgun barrel between feathers on the fan. Yeah, that is if they don't just come running from three

hundred yards away when they see that fan. They't like running at you. It's like when they there's something about that eradescence of feathers that like, like you know how we see whatever, like we see neon colors. There's something about the they see it. They just don't they know what they're looking at. The like they're looking at a turkey. Who's who's your buddy? Who glues on? Down in South Carolina, Robert Abernew the buys a shitty bought a shitty foam

turkey decoy and then took a hot glue gun. I made one as well. Took a hot glue gun and glued all the feathers from a turkey back onto the turkey decoy for that air desk. I lost track when it was up in the sixties. He showed, He showed that. He said, they're at one time it was in the thirties, and it was in the sixties that sixty gobblers had laid eyes on that decoy, and it was fifty nine

came within two of it. Yeah, very effective. But this this fanning thing and then he remember these one guys and they got annihilated on social media, but they took to they took to making little hats for themselves. Dude, they took to making little hats. It's a great idea. And if you had like a private farm with electrified fence around it, I would absolutely do it. Like if you could somehow say like no human being could be

anywhere near here, tire red bandana around your face. So they were a little They wear a little hat, a turkey fan hat, and they slink through the bushes. Their slink up usually crawling across egg fields. That turkey hat ain't making turkey sounds. Turkey sounds and then you can get right up on turkeys. But here's the thing, man, like in in in UH. In some states, like in Wyoming, you can hunt spring gobblers with a rifle. It's just a recipe for disaster. And here's a turkey fan slinking

through the slinking through the grass. You see where it's gonna lead. So states have uh. I think Michigan, like Michigan clarified it. And there's two mallards down in the hotel swimming pool. There is If you look at my instant story, you'll get a closer look at them. I don't need to I can look at the mallards in the swim pool. That signs underscore West so, uh was

it a time about Oh? So Michigan made it the You can still use real feather decoys, but they have to be out of the however they word it, and I took interest in how they worded it, but I forgot. They can't be attached to your head. You can't move him. Yeah, you can't use it moving. It has to be stationary. So you can, like I use a decoy. I use a Dave Smith, a d S D. David Smith Decoy's decoy. He makes that. It comes with a fan, a fake fan, or you just take your own turkey fan and screw

it on there. And so you can't You can have the fan with you and you can place it on a decoy, but you can't move the fan around. I have even and I've killed turkeys this way. I have even been where I'm calling to a tom and he won't close the distance or won't come over the hill or whatever, and I can just see his top of thing. You just take the fan and hold it up in the air. If he's fired up enough, take the fan and wave it in the air and then lower it down.

And oftentimes that's enough to get that to come. But it's also a good way to get shot. And if you revisit the episode we do with Press and Pittman, he's been shot twice. That's so crazy from Goblin. Yeah, shot twice from gobling. You know what I thinking you

were talking about. The hands usually will go to the gobbler, but the rope draggers that you shot did that was a limb hanger or lim hanger lim hanging rope drag But he did the same thing, like once he saw that the the decoy wasn't coming his way, he just kept cruising. Yeah, I think that was a situation where the decoy didn't do me any favors, but he was

like we talked about this a little bit. And and then the other one on the last day when we were in deep it seemed like that gobler he was like, yeah, I'm here, but he just kept moving too. So that seems like that holds up. Maybe it look kind of like that the bird, the bird that we got, it did seem like he kind of cruised through. There's no way he'd missed seeing the decoy, Like he came within fifty rds of the decoy and just strutted on by, like come on, baby, let's let's head on out of here.

We've been making a lot of noise. Let's uh, let's mosey on down to this ridge. So it some love quietly quietly down here. But he didn't pause in that area. He was just he was strutted by. He's like here, I am, let's roll. And you know, I had a situation with that bird where um he was. He was sort of just above the crest of the hill where I could barely see his white head. At that point, he had the full on white head going through the grass and I had to sit up and I didn't

have a very good shot. And just before that bird was going to be gone with that drive by the decoy, um, I thought to myself, I'm gonna give a couple of yelps and if he picks his head up, I'm gonna shoot. And if he doesn't pick his head up, he's gone. Because he he was like two ft from being out of sight. And I yelped a couple of times and he gobbled and picked his head up, and I was able to shoot him at that point just before he

disappeared out of sight. But and I was the only limb hanger you ever saw come out of that area. That that is the only like legit limb hanger Miriams that I've ever seen in my life in person. I mean I've shot a lot of birds that have you know, like the triangular spurs of like a two year old gobbler. Um, this one had like the just dark black hooks with sharp sharp points on the tips. Yeah, I mean that was That was a sweet gobbler and a lot of weight too. You know, I've I've not seen I don't.

I think that the first bird you got and the one I got were two of the heaviest Miriams I've ever seen. I mean those were meaty birds and oftentimes you know, grown up hunting Easterns in the Midwest. When I first got out here and got my hands on Miriam's turkeys, I was like, God, these things are like half as big. But the two that we got, we're just dandies. What's your real quick uh, what's your take on turkey hunting with a red dot site? Um, it's kind of like wall is a little bit like Walleye

fishing with fifty million. Yeah, I would say system set up. No, Joe, it's not that bad. Just like so so here here, here's a couple of here's a couple of things I'll say about that. I'd never used one before. Um, Yanni was kind enough to set me up with a shotgun that he recommended I test out, and so I had a loner shotgun for this trip. And I think if I had my druthers, I would have just had a bead on there. Um not like not like an iron sight, No,

just a like. So, so the gun I typically shoot has a vent rib with a bead on the end and then a little bead like halfway down the barrel, so you can can line those up, get tight to your shoulder, get your cheek down, and I I haven't

had issues with missing turkeys. Um. Now that being said, I've got a twenty gauge pump youth shotgun that my wife shoots, and I did put a red dot on that because we've had a couple of very close encounters where you know, I feel like she's she's at you know, she's at an awkward angle or just trying to line the shot up. And if you have a bird that's super close in your shot pattern is very very tight, you know, it's much easier to miss a bird at ten yards than it is to miss one at twenty

five yards. And you know, I think for her, she's more comfortable being able to just see that dot at whatever angle her head is and not have to worry about lining up the beads. So I think there's there's an element to it of um, you know, having an advantage.

But the other thing is just being in the being in the hinterlands with another electronic device where you know you might break something like I'm I'm I'm pretty hard on my year and around the way we are, and so it's always kind of weighing in the back of my mind, am I gonna scratch this thing up? Am I gonna knock it off kilter? Whereas with a with a shotgun barrel that's got a couple of beads on, it just doesn't seem like there's a heck of a lot that could go wrong. So the short answer is

I see the advantage. Personally, I think I'd prefer the lower tech option. What I'd like to do. I can see having a one on a quick detached mount. Yeah. I wonder about how consistently you could like reattach it and have it beat Oh, that's what. That's the whole point of quick attach. You'd have a you could you could have a rifle's zero tards and take on and off a quick detatch mount. It goes right back to zero. Yeah. I guess I would just stick by my statement for

for me personally, give me a bead. He did make a good shot with that, though, I appreciate. Yeah, I mean it worked out great. No complaints, um lower text by me. Let me tell you something. This isn't about red dots. Okay. If there's two things I like in life, it's about wallet boat. It's just two things I like in life. It's federally designated wilderness and turkeys. Okay. If

there's three, it's my family. I was he's not necessarily giving him order turkeys, No, federally designated wilderness, my children. That's saying something. So I'm gonna focus on the two were here. I'm not I'm not agreeing. I'm not agreeing with Steve, but I'll say this, Steve has had an appreciation for turkeys and federally designated wilderness longer it predates my children. Yeah, it's like a longer romance dates them. Yeah, there's something to say, for years under your belt with

those first two. So I'm just I'm sticking to my guns here predates them and just they don't listen to the show. So I can I can get away with hell the truth here? What word you it wasn't love? What was it? Federally designated wilderness. If there's two things I love, two things I love, I love, So what about hunting turkeys in federally designated That's what I want to say. Okay, I'll feeling the So. Uh, we can

hunt turkeys and states everywhere but Alaska. In in the US at the time of European contact, there were turkeys. They were probably turkeys, and what is now thirty nine states. Okay, so there are ten states running around out there that have turkeys that didn't. I happen to live in one of them. Uh, California probably did not have turkeys. Montana not have turkeys. I Hadaho did not have turkey is Washington did not have turkeys. Hawaii did not have turkeys.

Oregon did not have turkeys. Okay, but but but the Heila damn sure did. Um it's big enough if you have like a romance with the wild turkey. Yeah. Uh, in the wild turkey hasn't to to some degree, has the romance with us. I mean that the turkeys are one of the are kind of one of the winners of civilization, right, they like crops, Okay, one of the things in Montana, like one of the things that allows turkeys to exist in Montana's agriculture. Right, Why were there

not turkeys there? Why did turkeys not spread up from areas of like come up from Colorado or come over from the eastern Dakota's into Montana. Too severe? Yeah, too severe? Uh, not enough food? Too severe? Why are there there now? They're there now because agriculture. They they most if you're shooting, if you're in southeast Montana, whatever you're shooting at a turkey, that turkey probably almost certainly spend its winter picking grain out of cow ship. Yeah. I love those turkeys to

death more than my kids. Uh but right. But but to go so to be able to go into a wilderness area, yeah, and hunt turkeys that have no reliance on, no relationship to folks, gives you kind of a glimpse back to I mean, there was you know, gives you a glimpse back to a time when so much of the landscape hadn't been kind of influenced interrupted manipulated by humans. A like you're watching you're you're looking at native turkeys living on a native landscape, and you're going, like, so

that's kind of what they did. Yes, it might even be like that's kind of the density in which they occur where you know, it's not like, what's so hard about hunting turkeys. My grandma's got a hundred in her yard right now. She lives next to the cemetery. You know, it's like, yeah, but that's not one of the turkeys I'm talking about. I don't love the I like my kids mordinals, turkeys, um. But to see that like like this is probably what it seemed like. There's scatterings of this,

their scatterings of that. Here and there there's a turkey. It's really the educational and they I think you're painting a great picture. And the birds at that at that point become in my mind, the embodiment of the landscape. It's like an integral part of what makes that landscape what it is, and there is no artificiality about it. There's no supplemental support. You know, those birds are out

there existing the way they have for thousands of years. Um, they'd be there with or without people doing what they're doing, strutting and gobbling and reproducing and eating and go into those little water supplies. And you know, I think there's places where we're calling birds that have never heard an artificial call before you know they're hearing they're hearing a

man made turkey call for the first time. UM. But it gives you a chance to experience the place in a very speaking evaluate in terms of very pure sort of way. And I love, you know, I of hunting turkeys in places where there there is you know, an agricultural presence and supplemental calories on the landscape. UM. And it's worth pointing out that you know, historically turkey habitat it's always been widely variable in terms of the productivity

of the land. So there would have been more Easterns that more Easterns, let's say, in Wisconsin, a higher density than there would have been Miriams in New Mexico, just given the productivity of the lands. But once you start layering on the human presence, UM, it's it's a different kind of experience, and it's it's it's it's a different

kind of connection to a different kind of place. And again, the word in my mind that keeps keeps coming around is this idea of just a pure representation of a wild landscape and an interaction with an animal that embodies a very very cool place. And every you know, everybody of these turkeys that we're eating, um, those are calories that have come in the form of crickets and grasshoppers

and gamble oak acorns. You know, it's like this litany of food resources that are sparsely distributed on the landscape, but also embodiments of that place where humans are not the predominant factor. It's just the land doing what the land has always done. It's good stuff, man, other good stuff. I love it too, man. Uh you know how, I let's say I got two final things to say about you. Okay, when I was going to introduce you, you know how, we were talking about a thing yesterday where I was

saying that that I've been all around the country. Everywhere you go. Everywhere you go, Alaska, Florida, New York, California, every ago, you'll find two outdoorsman, two types of outdoorsman. There's the one where everything's all funked up now, fishing game ruined it. There's too many people now, the wolves got it all whatever, Right, there's that guy always there,

lost his spot. Everything's used to be good, right, And then there's always the guy that when he wakes up in the morning, he can't get to it all because he's in Eden. Totally right. We were talking about that, and I didn't point out one of the things that I respected admire about you is you're the ladder. I've known you in a lot of places, and you're the guy that's like, you just can't get to it all right, and you're gonna carry that with you no matter where

you go. Thanks man, And that that makes that that that makes you like a good outdoorsman. Right. The same thing that I was gonna say is like, I U having a life working for a federal agency. I don't. I hope that someday you don't get UM. I hope your enthusiasms hold out. I guarantee they will, UM, because just the criticism and stuff could just drag you down. Man, well man, to having your work, to having your work

like misinterpreted, you know what I mean? That ship is gonna I hope that doesn't ruin you, it's not going to UM. And in part it's because I feel sincerely privileged and fortunate to be making a living in a line of work where the things that we're the things that we're thinking about and talking about and trying to work through um go far beyond a job or collecting

a paycheck. You know, both of us, probably all of us here in this room, have had a lot of jobs where you're just like, I gotta make some money to be able to feed myself and pay my rent. But to be in a line of work where every single day there's a connection between the things that you're working on and places and animals and relationships between people and land that matter to you in a deeply personal way.

What percentage of the global population has the privilege to make a living in a way like that, where there their personal identity and passion and value set are so closely aligned with the way that they get to earn their keep. And I give you my word, I will never get to a point where I am jaded. You will never hear me complain about what I'm doing or the challenges of the job, because this work is supremely important.

We're talking about literally the places and the resources and the questions that define our prosperity as human beings in this country in my opinion. M hm. And it is a privilege to be in that line of work. Thank you, man, I appreciate it. Next time someone's like those assholes that the Forest Service and be like you mean, like Carl, Carl,

it's not so bad, oy. One other thing I want to say, man, you know that that idea of um, the two different kinds of outdoors people and the folks who like to you know, sort of see the negative, and then the folks who there aren't enough hours in

the day to soak it all up. It um just getting a chance to stomp stomp around in the hills with this group of friends and colleagues, you know, like every single person in this room, and you know, the folks who are affiliated with the work that you guys all are doing, I think are wise enough to recognize that there aren't enough hours in the day, There aren't enough days in the week, there aren't enough weeks in the year to get to it all. And I don't

care where you are in the United States. If you look around where you live, there is some fantastic and likely untapped outdoor opportunity for you to capitalize upon if you're creative and open minded about it. Whether you're in a big city or whether you're in New Mexico or wherever the heck you might be, the opportunity abounds. And that is not the case in many other countries around the planet today, like the context of America. More broadly,

we are in the land of plenty. And if you're whining about a lack of opportunity, you are missing the boat, man, So get out there and enjoy it. Land of milk and honey, Grand of milk and honey, gratitude of expectations, gratitude, gratitude above expectations. Man, there's a lot, a lot of good stuff to do out there, Land of milk and walls that might be an electronics, that might be need to name that boat. That's even the name of our movie. Yeah, when we make a movie later on A bought you guys,

Matt Dame is gonna play Chester. Can you see that, Jester, Matt Dame. Look, Matt Damon is not handsome enough. Seth would be uh so funny if Josh he retired, is Josh Broland was a lot younger at Josh Broland to play Seth. Yeah, he needs a haircut, but I was just watching the Josh Broland movie where he had long hair like Seth American Gangster. I tried to get Steve to telling me that he didn't like my hair, and he didn't do it, so I think he likes it. I like it Seth. A lot of people like, yeah,

I want dog on one dog on a close friend. No, I never right, don't do that. Everybody thanks to join him