Ep. 423: Spittin' and Struttin’

sadamn long. It's like I've met everybody in the state back to back, heard all the problems I've been like, I've been on a man, I've gotten an earful. It's like two weeks, I've gotten an earful for what. Oh, just all the like all the issues in Florida. Oh, you've heard all the issues in Florida. Yeah. I've been on a whirlwind tour, talking to talking to many different sportsmen.

The most surprising thing to me down here is how unpopular, how unpopular among the folk I've met, How unpopular the panthers are in one way, okay, like people think they're gonna get their dogs and just from hunts. From a hunting standpoint, it's remarkably similar. It's like it's such a parallel. John, Am I boring you? No, not at all. Just gotta just taking care of a little loose ender right here

seems to be important. Listen it uh okay, the parallels, the parallels between what the parallels between the wolf debate in the Northern Rockies soon to be in the Southern the debate that's being relocated to the Southern Rockies. But the wolf debate in the Northern Rockies and the panther issue in Florida, even though we're talking about far fewer numbers of the actual animals on the ground, is remarkably si similar. Down to the point. Now I listen, I'm

not I'm gonna what I'm doing right now. I'm I'm trying to be like a journalist right now. I'm not saying what this This is not me saying what I think is. Oh, I'm gonna preface. This is saying something joined today by Richard Martinez. Hey, Steve, most interesting job on the planet. Can you tell people what you do

for work? I'm an art handler, That's my profession. I help manage an art handling company in West Pond Beach and Uh yeah, I handle fine art, any kind of fine art, logistics, moving, packing, shipping, installation, protection of fine arts, storage, you know. Uh. Me and Ridge ponder, we think we found in this very house the original Live Love Laugh sign. And we were thinking, well, we were thinking about stealing it and hiring you to move it back up to

where we live. This is a this is live Love laugh A long how a long first one was like this one. But what does it look like? Nineteen fifty three role played how we thought it came about. We thought it came about where there's a guy saying there, you know, he's like, and I thought to myself, what do I really care about? Laugh? And he said, well, I like to be alive, because you know, if you ain't alive, you're dead. And he thought, what else do I like? I like the laugh? Yeah, that's pretty good.

And then his wife walked in. I like my wife. He had named her yet, and he got guilty feeling. He's like, and yeah, I love my wife. That's what's important to me. Check laugh check. And that's where that came from, and it spread like wildfire until today we found yesterday we found the original. It's a little plaque. What was I saying, oh, well, before you go on, mine would be live laugh turkeys, not no, no turkeys, yeah,

live love turkeys. Careful there. So, uh, We're down here hunting with Richard Martinez and that's just one of the main things I've done in Florida. But the minute I got here, Chester's also here and Seth Morris, so I'm not too that Garrett Smith and thanks so just for my dad. Stay tuned for that part, folks. The minute I met Richard, we well, no, because we met at

a live show. We did a live show in Boise, Yes, and you said, you guys should apply for a turkey tag at one of the apply for a turkey tag at one of the wildlife management areas in Florida. And and how many years did it take? Four took a while to draw. Yeah, four years, because we're like non resins with no points or whatever. We've been starting from scratch, starting from scratch. Is it easier for resident to draw that?

You'd have to fact check me. But what I've been told is that there's a ten percent cap for non residents on the quota. Gotcha, That's why it took me and Yana's so long to draw. So the minute I met Richard for the second time. So I met him the first time, I had a live show. And do you remember why we liked him? I can't remember why I liked him. I mean, I like him all over again, but can't remember why I originally like, he's we got a lot of people offer us a calm, cool and collective. Yeah,

well something structure. My first impressions. First thing when I met him, he tells me about his friend who hates me, And I'm like, what do you mean he hates me?

And he's talking about his friend hates me. This is the perils of of doing journalism like I'm about ready to do on the panther issue, because the reason he hates me is we had a We had a a us GS biology so you will United States Geological Service biologist on talking about the Burmese python and this biologist who's working on the Burmese python problem, he's talking about his friend hates me for something. The biologist said, who's working on the Burmese python problem? And I was like, oh,

so he loves pythons. Oh no, no, he hates pythons too, but he didn't like a thing that the individual said about pythons, right, is this your snake biologist, buddy? No, no, no, no, So he didn't like that. The guy said that numerically, python hunters aren't having a meaningful impact on pythons. That was this guy's take. Can I ask the side question to Richard on that, Yeah, if you really want to get into it. But I'm trying to get somewhere else.

But go ahead, Yeah, but just watch in my head, Um, what's the chances of one of those big pythons being on the property we were, we're hunting some more probably low. I think they're more prolific as you move further southeast. So we saw what seemed to be a snake track going across the road. Well, we've got a lot of snakes here, but it looked big. Didn't didn't look big. Yeah, but I don't think it was like python, big gator. No,

it was. It was a snake. When you say, well, I yeah, I asked some other dudes and they said no. They said they'd heard of it, but they haven't seen one that That snake track struck me as a big snake, like a chester or eating size. Anyway, go ahead, So that's been weighing on my mind, and it's weighing on my mind as I waded into this, because I realized, you know, that's saying uh uh you know in the West waters for drinking no whiskeys, for drinking waters, for

fighting about water rights issues. I've been thinking about what since I've been here, I've been thinking, Florida's for fighting well made up mostly of water, Florida's for fighting. We're fighting over water, yeah, every every and these are like honest like these are like hard work and honest to goodness out outdoors people and man. Just a lot of contentious issues in Florida around pythons, panthers, three peas by pans,

panthers and people people. Oh that is a three piece pythons, panthers, people in water, which is a w and man like a contentious environment. Absolutely, But the point I was getting as how contentious the panthers are, and it has parallels to the wolf issue in the Northern Rockies, right down to the idea that the panther here now isn't the panther that was here before, to the point that I'll meet hunters. I've met hunters who say deer numbers have collapsed.

Now I'm just reporting what people I've been getting yearful from everybody on different things. Deer numbers have collapsed in many of these areas. Okay, they've collapsed because of the introduction of panthers. And I'll say, but when you say introduction, that doesn't make sense because it was not even a reintroduction, like the Florida panther was always on the landscape. Admittedly, it got down to very few, it got down to

less than fifty. At the point that it was left less than fifty, they brought in seven or eight females from Texas to supplement the population because they were seeing some inbreeding issues, so they brought in some females from Texas, which, in and of itself, even among panther people, people got to fight about that because they had fallen in love with the Some folks had fallen in love with the idea that the Florida panther was not like everybody else's panther. Yea,

Now it's all puma con color. It's all the same species. So whether you're talking about a cougar in California, mountain lion in Montana, someone hits one on the road in Connecticut. You're in southwest Florida. Okay, it's all the same species. A lot of people think panther, and they think black panther. Yep, it's the beast of many names, um mountain, lion, cougar, painter, catamount, there's more. All the same crater, all the same crater,

and the Florida panther. Like Florida made the same steak with their black bears, which we'll get to in a minute here, and we've got some more stuff to cover off, made the same mistake with their black bears by declaring that it's the Florida black bear and not just like the same like the black bear that used to exist everywhere from the from California to New York, from Yukon to South Florida, like the black bear, the panther versus American versus American the black The panther was at a

time the most wide like of any It had the most widespread distribution of any large mammal in the New World. WHOA, I didn't know that. Meaning they've turned up in the Mackenzie Delta. Okay, so where the Mackenzie River flows into the Arctic Ocean. They've turned up from the Mackenzie Delta too. Was it Tierra del Fuego, Chile to the southern tip of Chili, Chile to the southern tip of Patagonia. That's how widespread coast to coast, top to bottom in the

Western hemisphere. Two continents, two continents. That's cool. Well, it got eliminated through poisoning and other things, and it would have been patches. So at some point Florida is like it's the Florida panther. Not like that. It's just a little stronghold of the regular old cougar, mountain, lion, painter, catamount panther that exists all across the continent. Numbers got down and they brought in some from Texas, and the way I've been like the people, the folk I've just

been talking to, like various hunters are like that. Now it's a super cougar that lives in Florida. The same way when you're in the northern Rockies. They talk about the reintroduction. It was a ninety six or ninety seven six, I believe, when they did the wolf reintroduction. There's a widespread belief they brought down the meanest, nastiest super wolves like the meanest. We even heard a guy. We even met a guy one time in British Columbia who's saying that.

He was like, oh, yeah, my buddy worked on getting those wolves and they'd poke them all with the stick and get the meanest, nastiest one. Yeah, they had thirty or forty of them in a big old pen, and then they they weeded out the ones that had growling

the most. He said, they'd poke them with a stick and whatever wolves got most riled up there like sena, Yes, stupid Americans, here you go super wolves, and there's the idea that by bringing in these seven or eight can you do you mind looking up how many females they brought in? Check me on app from and look up

where in Texas they came from. That's the first time they'd introduced they supplemented or supplemented the native they supplemented, so they had probably less than fifty okay, less than fifty Florida panthers and Osman getting to something a minute ago. Why were people mad about that? They were mad about that because they felt that the panther, and the Florida panther was like special and unique, and people were like oh no, if you bring in these Texas panthers, you're

gonna like mess up the Florida panther. And most conservation biologists were like, listen, man, you can have a you're gonna have no panthers, or you can have a hybridized panther. But the way you're going right now, it's choosing between those two things. They're either gonna blip out or you're gonna you're gonna supplement with genetics from Texas. And it really wasn't going to be a hybridized one because pumicon color. Yeah. Anyhow, they did this and it was very effective. That a

bunch of their protections. It was very effective. And now with they got less than three hundred. Yeah, that's debatable. Debatable depends on who you ask. The same thing. I'm same thing with wolves. Yeah, same thing with wolves in the northern Rockies and so y ask yeah, right, But it's it's it is from It is a widely held

belief under the among the deer hunters. I've spoken to that um that that has caused a impact cratering of deer populations in southwest Florida, which, like you're saying, up north, people would say, well, some people would say wolves are doing that, yeah, which is like, that's it's not a debate that it's an objective reality. It's objective. It's not

a debt point. It's an objective reality that bringing wolves, like introducing wolves, reintroducing wolves on a landscape has a profound immediate impact on ELK numbers, Like you can't that doesn't mean that that doesn't need to mean to everybody that they're bad. But it is nonsense. It is nonsense to sit and act like that's not true. It's it's like infuriating when people want to act like introducing wolves to a landscape doesn't have a dramatic impact on ELK numbers.

It just does. Yeh, take it or leave it like applause it or not, but it does, right, And acting like they like eat nuts and berries is ridiculous. And it's not just that it's not just like them physically eating things. Is it causes a dramatic shift in behavior.

And it's like they, I'm out of it. But when it hits, when it hits, like when if they do it in Florida or sorry, when they reintroduce wolves into Colorado and the numbers they're talking about they are going to see a massive decline milk numbers in those places. It'll it'll crater and it'll creep back up. It won't get as high as it was. It like, it'll it'll drop fast, it'll climb up. This is my prediction. This

is my l crystal ball. It'll drop fast, it'll slowly climb up, and it won't get as high as it was, because how could it. Yeah, there's predators. It's like you're you're putting up. You're like, take there's a there's a there's a niche that isn't currently occupied and it'll be occupied and they eat seven pounds of me today. It's like,

you can't get around this. UM. I had. I had no idea the way I had no idea that that the that that increase of from sub fifty to two fifty three hundred more than three hundred panthers is a treat to a point where I was taw a new guy and he was talking about the absence UM. Not for Turkey hundred, but in part of my wanderings, we were down by the Everglades National Park and he's talking

about an absence of UM midsize mammals. Okay, so that raccoons basically, you know, raccoon's basically gone, grinner's possums basically gone. Armadillo's basically gone no, no no. And I said, oh, man, I thought that was uh. I thought that was the whole deal with the whole pythons. Like, I thought that was attributed to the pythons. He's like, he thinks that the pythons are like a scapegoat. This is just a dude.

But listen, this is a dude. This is like, this is a guy that has spent his whole life out on the land, his father, his grandfather. That's like all they've done. Yeah right, they're like self identified gladesman. That's all they've done. And he's not a pessimist. He still gets very excited about turkey hunting, very excited about squirrel hunting. But and he's you know, he's not like a conspiracy theorist.

He's like, man, that's an impact. In my view, it's like a scapegoat because you can go to the dry areas that just aren't even suitable habitat, and instead of those dry areas that aren't suitable habitat becoming like a refugia for all this stuff fleeing the pythons. They're still in pash it's not there, yea. But our experience today would would say that those are the refugia because we were in country that U don't doesn't suppose he doesn't have or hasn't been has pythons haven't been seen, and

we saw all those critters. That's a good point in a short period of time. Yep. Today we went over on to a like. Ah, so we hunted two days on the WMA, which, holy cow, is just a beautiful man. I got the hand it to like the like and talk about all the contention in Florida. Um, the state does a beautiful job on those WMAs. Man. I thought it just gorgeous, gorgeous and very diverse. Just yeah, yeah,

like gorgeous. Yeah, a big country to walk around in, which is not something I expect when I leave the West. Right you can go where your where are your feet out if you want? Yep, And like a pretty good and I found too, like a pretty good blend of walking hunting. But still some road, you know what I mean. We never ran across another hunter, now that we're talking, we definitely did, but we didn't. I mean in the field, we saw other people on the road. But yeah, it's

not in the woods, not in no woods. Uh. Yeah, I really liked it, So hats off on that. Oh would you find Chester? So in nineteen eighty six, three females from Texas, I couldn't find it exactly where they're from. We're brought to Florida. In nineteen eighty eight, seven wild caught mountain lions captured in West Texas. We're released in

Florida super super cougars and m let's see. In nineteen ninety three, nineteen mountain lions, eleven females and eight sterile males, both captive raised as well as wild caught, are introduced into the local panther population. Really and then why sterile males? I don't know. And then in probably just for study purposes, in nineteen ninety five, eight wild caught females. Oh, we're are captured and released in effort. Yeah, so what's the source? So a total of how many I had some Okay,

see you get for just listening to people. I had someone there to day telling me all about where they came from. And it was like seven females and that was like the extent of it. Okay, those were thirty seven. Those were the most recent that really caused that spike. So it was like, prior to that it wasn't happening. It could have been where the success began. Was that last and this source is the Mountain Lion Foundation. Okay, so West Texas super cougars and people are pissed. Man Like,

I thought it was like widely. I didn't know there was the same I didn't know there's the same element. But what surprised me. What surprised me is the idea that it wasn't like a saving existing population, that the perception it wasn't like saving the Florida panther. It was sort of like they made they created a predator and

let it loose upon the landscape. Yeah, something needed to occupy that space of what the Florida panther was occupying for various different reasons, and the degree to which not happy no, and also that some people are like they just don't want them. It's like my whole tape like in the Northern Rockets. I think like generally with the wolf issue, generally among my peer group, which is broad,

I was gonna make a consensus. The consensus would be people welcome wolves on the landscape, but they want to see them managed right heavily. Yeah. Well, but but it's not like if you went to most people, like like you went to most people you hang out with and said, hey, I'm gonna give you a magic wand if you wave the magic wand wolves are gone from the lower forty eight. Uh, the vast, vast majority of people hang out with would not touch that Wand there's a happy medium. Do you

know what? Maybe people that would wave the Wand one guy's pretty tight with us wood, is that right? Oh? But does he have does he have like mixed up? Because I know, I don't know what because he's got lion hounds? Oh no, oh, just speaking of the good old days of elk hunting. Oh, I got it. Okay, that's all I hear about that. Like, we know it's good the way you have it right now, and you're enjoying your elk hunting. But if you had been here to see how great it was before those wolves showed up,

you would want them gone too. Yeah. I gotta say. I started hunting in Montana the year the wolves showed up, right, which was the good old day. It was good. Well, it could be a pressure issue too. There's different factors. Well, no, I mean like most those population I want to talk about Florida. I want to talk about things besides Florida. But mos those I mean you saw like generally you see two thirds declines. I got a question with the Florida with the Florida impact of the panther boost to

the population. Was that aligned with because during the pandemic, Florida's population boomed, right, a lot of people moved. Yeah, and that is definitely a factor to this dear population. Now this gold before you. Yeah, I just carefu. I had a um, I had a girlier day telling me that I like that this is hard to measure. She said, Florida is the free estate. Oh, I was like pretty freezing free Ever, the first time I was ever like

rated like freedom level. This isn't a fact. Yeah, like freedom levels that's pretty in Arizona, They're like damn it. Oh yeah, I would think that there'd be some Texans. Yeah, Texas. She's like Florida's free estate. How big is the Florida panther range in Florida? Uh, well that's debatable. You ask Yeah, people when you ask questions, so easily learned by just looking it up. Looked that up Chester from Yeah, all you listeners out there, just look it up. No Chester

Chesters of Today's researcher Man. That's a fast chat. That's contentious, meaning there's well I don't believe it is because like with I mean, lord, Florida's got a lot of trail cams in it, Holy smokes. I just feel like there's not many panthers and aren't getting photographed. Yeah. Well, there's also been a question of are they roving mails that are going north or are their actual breeding population moving north?

So I think there may be sightings or there may be people who feel like they have them in certain places and that some people attribute that to a roving mail or other people's attribute that to an establish population. But how would anyone expect anything else to happen than that they would move north. You have an expanding population, you have unexploited prey base to the north, panther populated like mountain, lion, cougar, whatever you want to call it.

Their populations are expanding all across the country. Why would they not move north? Especially as the population girls it's an animal that doesn't like to be crowded. No, ship, they're not gonna go south. Nope, there's more. It's it's denser population north though, right, there's more urban in pockets. Yeah, and that's That's another thing I appreciate about Florida is that there is somewhat of a corridor that's still intact.

So they're travel yeah, yeah, I mean rarely do they get farther north of Orlando, Like, there's barely any it's a picture. Oh yeah, halfway up. Man, we're in the pocket right now though, dude, Yeah that map. Have you seen panthers out hunting? Yeah? Me and Clay caught two tracks here to day really, um okay, I gotta put that on hold from it. Oh, Chester's got big news, but no, it's it's news has no relevance to anybody. What are you looking at me? Like? He's excited for

the two musicians. Musicians worldwide need to pay attention to. Wrong, I say, because I found the pathway to riches for musicians. Chester's gonna open for trample by turtles. Yeah, check this out again. Yeah, he's gonna open for tramp by turtles. And you know what the date that they got Chester booked for is booked up, sold out out. Chester's show

sold out. The other shows haven't sold out. So if you're a musician and you want to sell out some shows, good old Chester, you need to get Chester because that's how you sell tickets. Nice damn Chester show. We get on a list maybe for like France. How do we get it? I don't even know Chesters show has sold out? What's going? What's the past sold out? When's the tour? Uh, it's not a tour, it's just when when you Florida? Ya, dude, I don't know. Man, One step at a time, you know?

Oh yeah, man? Were they were talking about what Chester's all strung out on? Heroin? Your career has kind of been like one giant leap at a time. Oh yeah, man, oh yeah. I kind of wish it were not wish but I'm very happy and excited and I'm learning very quickly. But sometimes I wish it were just maybe a scoch slower. What do you mean, man? You got you got like a big show coming up now now you're trying to dance. Well, guess it's already sold out, so it doesn't matter what

you say. There's a lot of pressure though, right, I mean, I just mean like I feel. Nah, I don't know what I'm saying. I'm I'm excited, yeah, super excited. But I wish I were a little better at my guitar. Mhmm. You got an angel of it? I'm working on it or voice of an angel though too good originals. Yeah, So I wouldn't do a service announcement and say that buy tickets now to see Chester open for trample by Turtles but sold out. Maybe find a scalper at some

resale at the door. Yeah, and and other musicians. If you want to get serious about making money and selling tickets, book Chester. Yeah, Luke Cole, sure you and I gotta do a show? Yeah we do Yeah, yeah, yeah, wonderful Luke's listening. I think he sells the shows out. Well, you know, if that star stopped burning so bright, I know how what he can do to fix things up? Old chaticoll Here here's a good to already put this

on Instagram. So a guy a guy writes in from Michigan and uh, a couple of years back he had to move to another So he's from Michigan, but he had to move to another state for job opportunity. He's living in a hotel and living in a hotel where he's at where he's moving to. He's trying to buy a house, but he has to come back to Michigan to gather up his stuff out of his house, his

old house. He all of a sudden remembers he had He had a tree stand he left out on state land down the road, so he's like, shoot, he runs out to get his tree stand. He says, when I got to the stand, I noticed a piece of paper at the base, but didn't pay any mind until I climbed the stand and was eye level. Was something I didn't expect, A fresh pair of deer nuts sitting in the seat of my stand. Sends a picture of it. I got a picture of the note and the buck nuts.

He wonders about this, climbs down and goes and finds the scrap of paper, and the scrap of paper says, this creep he tore it. It's like a scrap of paper written by a Bye bye A presuma be a gentleman. Creeping on other people's stands. I'm sorry, creeping on other people's trees stand is immoral and how you end up with nutsacks on your stand. Creeping on other people's tree stand is immoral? And how you end up with nutsacks

on your stand, I bet you never shot deer. Dang hmm. Wow, it's getting out of control, creeping on other people's trees stands. What's really funny is that, well one I'm trying to there's a guy we're trying to get on the show that as a like, instead of just reading about it, there's a there's a story of a of a public land tree stand spot dispute that spuns so wildly out

of control. I'm trying to get the guy to come on the podcast just as a guest, to be on the show for the whole show, to tell the story. Not hairsy, but it'll curl your hair. I had a guy recently. I saw an email the guy standing recently and he he blames so we covered We've been covering a lot of these like public land debates, people stand

my spot. He says it's all a result of this public landowner movement because he sees the public landowner t shirts and he's like, it's these people that think they own the land. Hey got a side note, A Michigan factul it please. The dog with the longest tongue ever was a Michigan dog. It was like eighteen inches long. How do you know? How do you know? I heard it on the radio station back home. Wow, if I don't got my phone check, could you check that the

longest tongue of a dog, it's a Michigan dog. Okay, here's here's a news alert. Chess will fact check that. Here's a news alert. Um, this is this is. I wish I understood Michigan or Wisconsin law a little bit better, like how laws get made. So how many years of me and Yanni you've been applying for our sturgeon spearing permit in Skannie? I don't know, but I feel like I didn't. I didn't put in the last year or two. I don't just know way you wouldn't have put it in.

I've only got two points. How many are you up to? I thought you took care of it. Did we fall off the board on spearing permit? I don't know. I checked my points the other day and I was like, what, Well, if you've been putting, if we got you should only have to Okay, Well, maybe that's right, though, three either way. Lay that out for people. Okay, Um, in Wisconsin and Lake Winnebago, it's kind of like a big party fest and people go in party party. It's a party burning sturgeon,

drinking festa. Party. You don't have to drink, you don't have to party. You can just spear lake sturgeon through the ice. And uh, you go out there. You caught a big hole in the ice with a chainsaw. You back your ice shanny up over the top of it, throw a decoy down if you want, and wait and wait and wait for a sturgeon to swim under the hole. However, there's these upper lakes in the Winnebago system and you have to put in. Tell people about this because I mean, yeah,

you're putting in. There's just a better chance for you to spear sturgeon. No, I just wanted you to explain as much as you explained. Now, explain to me this. How could it be that you can spear sturgeon through the ice but you can't spear a northy through the ice, well, because it's illegal. Um, it blows my I could when I read this theory. Could there's a thing I'm getting to a news blip. Yeah, I know about that. How when the hell I had no idea. Who couldn't spear

northern through the ice and Wisconsin? No, but I've wanted to for a long time. It seems like it would be like the this target speed because there's a spearing culture there. Yep. Shocked me. Maybe they just think too many people will do it. Yeah, they're like Wisconsin people are too apt to do it. You know, how to practice for sturgeon spearing? Down to your local gas station

and you get a six pack of light beer. Then you come home and you open up the closet, bring a chair in there with you, shut the lights off, and shut the door, and you can't come out of the closet until all six of those light beers are

So there's a citizens resolution. Well, okay. During the past year, we've progressed our citizen resolution through multiple Wisconsin DNR committees, and it will finally now be up for a statewide vote online during our spring hearings April tenth to thirteenth, in order to legalize the spearing of northeast oh Nice,

by which I mean Northern Pike. I wonder how that's polling. Yeah, I don't know, I think it would be pulling good, but like you know, pro spearing, but I don't know for sure, man, I really really My recommendation to people that live in Scanning, Wisconsin is to go how I don't understand this though, Like you can vote online. I wish I understood this better. So on April tenth to April thirteenth, if you live in Wisconsin, apparently you can go online and vote to give you guys a Northern

pike spearing season. I know what I'd be doing between the tenth and think. There's a lot of fishermen, regular old roden reelers that don't like the idea of throwing spears at fish. If God didn't want you to spear pike, you wouldn't made pike spears. You know. The funny thing is, though, like people in Wisconsin they keep fish man and they

fry him up. M so yeah, but they like to keep them when they catch them on their rod and real they're not spear and steelhead, they're not spearing wally dogs. It's like, here's spearing northern Here's my advice to people that are spirit I think we should have a spearing season, and I think there should be maybe kind of doesn't have to be. No, we don't have to have a slot limit, but just use your best judgment and not be killing If you want Northeast in your lake, don't

be killing those big, big females. Yeah, but you can't expect. Let's just say you got to write the law. Because you can't expect. You can't make a law. You know. The reason they put specificity to fishing regulations is because you can't just like make general recommendations to people. Yeah, I know if you can on a podcast when a

bunch of people are are listening. No, you can't. But I'm saying, like I would like if it comes down to that, you have no pike spearing, yes, and you're like, well, we can't have If we allow people to spear pike, they'll spear all the pike. Okay, then why don't you make it that they won't spear all the pike by having a Okay, I don't know if you're that scared of it that you're allowed. You know, what was the daily bang lim But on northern in Wisconsin, I'm not sure.

I think it's lake dependent. Okay. What would be a what would be a reasonable number five. Yeah, probably Okay, So right now a guy with tipops can kill five. Make it that the spear guy. I'm not recommending this, but I'm just saying, make it that the pike spear has a little bit fewer bag limit, different season structure.

Now I'm playing Devil's advocate from what I heard when I did my little ice fish and tour there and chat out with people about spear and stuff, and a lot of people feel like you're gonna spear not non target species bike kitch and then and then you know you're any musky waters. The biggest thing is I think muski, you know, because you can tell the difference between a largemouth bass and a pike. But I wouldn't leave it to people to tell a musky from a northern No,

so musky waters, don't don't let them. You can't spear in musky waters. Why couldn't you use an example of like a state like Montana where you can spear pike and you can't spear in wait. I don't know if that's true in Montana, but I know in North was it North Dakota or South Dakota? North Dakota you cannot

spear in musky waters. But okay, if you're talking about if you're talking about in Wisconsin spearing and like, first off, I would be that I would limit it to like native musky waters and not these experimental populations of hybrid hybridized muskies like takers. Yeah, like native musky waters. I could see some legitimacy and saying you can't spear, that you can't spear northerns. I haven't sorted it all out in my head, but I can tell you what I have sorted out. You should be a lot of spear

pike in Wisconsin. Yeah, it's a blast. I don't care what Jhanna says. Uh, yeah you do. Note from a listener and our recent episode, oh snot. Okay, So we recently had an episode called Snarge and the episode was about a the profession of keeping animals off runways. Hope you guys saw it afterward? Did you see that picture I had on Instagram? Dude, that's where the actions as I did hitting that dude as Stephen Ronella. One of the pictures was I don't shy away from the gruesome.

But since I'm older, I don't do like multiple pictures and stuff on there. I don't set it to music right, just clean old style on Instagram, you know, pictures worth a thousand words. Yeah, I don't put like the media it says up top like you know ac DC. I

don't do any of that. Just a clean picture. Um. After that show, a guy rode in also from Michigan where he wrote in where his old man ran over a deer on a runway with a plane, and he said it cut the deer in three equal pieces, which I didn't get based on that post because I know what you're talking about. I'll say I had a deer the wade ninety pounds, yeah, and I cut it into three thirty pound pieces. You'd say that I cut it into three equal pieces. No, but why did the airplane

do that? Like it got three circulations? Probably right? Or did it when it hit it with the tire tire in the wing left side? Yeah, yeah, I have a picture of how it was a raid, but I didn't put it on there, not because I was chicken. I just put I thought the plane picture was another plane was cool, bloodied up airplane? Yeah. Um. Anyway, on that thing I was saying, I was talking about if you go to control, so so just if people didn't listen

to the episode, remember what the miracle on the Hudson Suley. Yeah, right, he hit his plane hit a fox strike. Okay. And part of the work of like mitigate or trying to reduce airline strikes against wildlife is you'll need to go Obviously it's a bigger footprint than just the airport. And they've been talked about they've had people that where people are like feeding grained ducks nearby, and they've had to be like, try to approach them about curtailing those activities

that are creating potential hazards for airplanes. Okay. And I was saying, I wonder at what points and most airplane collisions with wildlife happened below a thousand feet And I was saying, well, how like how fire around. You gotta get to get that in a pilot road And he said, on my flight today, I tested this theory. What airport's agl oh above ground level? Uh? Is that right? Yeah? Yeah, we learned that. Yeah. Uh it's less than a quarter

mile in year thousand feet you know, so fairly small space. Yeah. Tight. Well, being in Florida, they got they gotta do some of that management for the rockets. I bet imagine a rocket smoking a bird. Yeah, um, vaporize. On another episode we recently covered uh. We covered a guy that was out shed hunting looking for antlers and found uh, um found a skull, human skull older like hair on you still old? Oh? And uh and then our our frequent guesting contributor um

half a finger since then found one. No kidding this spring jammed in. What are you doing that situation? He didn't even touch it? Yeah? Wow, what was the story you know, hunting hunting halflin with his old man? Yeah, with the story on the person doesn't know. He didn't just call it in. He didn't want He said that, he didn't even roll it over. He went, I'm called in. He didn't want to get involved and haven't been that he messed with it or right any idea of the age.

I don't know. I haven't followed up with him. He was like, he didn't want to, you know, He's like, well, it seem to me that there's a high likelihood that I'm at a crime scene and I don't want to move anything around. What was he like down in New Mexico in some remote area border country Arizona, So it could have been someone it's coming across the border. Yeah, let's think about no country for old man. If you came across buttload of money and at school, might put

all that money walk away little suitcase. Uh you got I don't know if you've heard about this. So they just coming out of the perma frost. There's pictures of it. Um in Siberia. A three thousand and five hundred year old brown bear just melted out of the perma frost. Astonishingly good condition, nice fully furred, still had his brain tissue, still has his brain in it. You know, he'd eaten, he'd eaten. His stomach was packed full of bird feathers

and uh, bird feathers and plant matter. What kind of what kind of critter? Brown bear? It's like one of the first thous and five. I mean, that's not that old, you know, I mean, wouldn't be any different than today's brown bear. But it's cool. Yeah, it's cool. Three thousand, five hundred year old brown bear out of the perm rust. One of the first times they've been able to like

test some brain tissue of something that old too. See what he was thinking, how's a beard smoke A get a bird that would that would seem pretty tricky ground nesters probably or just dead. Oh yeah, crap, you left laying around or picking up ground nesting birds wouldn't surprise me. Yeah. I mean one of my favorite stories, alec tell is when I was calling turkeys and called in a black bear that was like, oh yeah, breathing behind me. I mean he was coming to get a bird. Uh, that's interesting.

He had still had You can still see the yellow fat when they dissected it. Well, it had a spinal injury. I have a lanche to breathe or something. I don't know. That would be my island. Nope, um callahan. And recently, speaking of stuff and stuff, stomach callahan, they recently cut open uh cougar cut open up Texas mountain lion. See that Texas mountain lion. Think about him where he's got me pissed because he's a man. I could have been brought down in Florida. Oh hot, kinds of lonely women

down there. They got shot in Texas. They opened his gut up, and he's cal sent me a picture had eight pounds that chewed up cal Sas mule deer meat. How does he know? Oh? That's good. Maybe it was a bunch of mule deer hair. And with Colombo down here, that's probably that's probably right man. Yeah, eight pounds of

muled your meat. Wow, it looked like I told cal to save it because looked like something I could put right under my tron Like I could put it right under my trompo, no problem, just like minced up remarrinated, minced up meat. Um Karn, who's not with us today, she's been, uh really spend a lot of time reading

about how the news covers turkeys. Turkey attacks, um, turkeys driving people out of their homes, like like very aggressive turkeys, mailmen right attack and mailmenil mailmen carrying pistols and pepper sprayed to pepper sprayed turkeys. Oh yeah, like turkeys. Yeah, there's a turkey hundred things and turkeys one way and suburban nights thick of turkeys another way. There's an Instagram account that Seth pointed me on too, and some of

those turkeys were carrying like swords and a little shield. Well, like you said, young, with that oustio, the birds you got, those are some sharp spurs down here. Oh yeah, listen to what his neighborhood. Okay, listen to what this woman went through. This is I think this is reported in the Washington Post. The line is a turkey settled near her Minnesota home. Now she carries weapons. This is this is unbelievable. I'd read that story. She lives in Coon Rapids, Minnesota.

Around two twenty one summer twenty twenty one, a turkey drip from her roofs and forced her to the ground. The turkey ripped her jacket, scattered her bag of eggs, coffee, and other Groser's on her front lawn. Downright. Assaulted by a turkey from above. Build the eggs. Damn it. Okay. She calls and says that she calls her fishing game agency and says she wants the turkey relocated. They say they don't do that. You'll relocate turkeys. Good for them. Gross.

This is the woman's name. Her last name is Gross. Gross forty one said the turkey has placed her in her neighbors lives and turmoil. She now wears safety goggles when she stepped outside, and carries a broom, a golf club, and a water bottle for self defense. I'm pretty stressed out and pretty anxious all the time. Gross told the Washington Post, I can't even have peace. The turkey appeared at a Rolla home park with seven others in the summer twenty twenty one. Girls said when the pack departed

a few weeks later, this turkey remained. Okay, I'm paraphrasing and reading. The turkey became attached to Gross, following her on drives to Chipotle where she worked. No, following her on drives when she went to get food at Chipotle. Now might be wise follower, Yeah, I wonder how far Chipotle is from her house, I don't know. And following her and she works at a nursing home and the turkey and follower there. Bad journalism here, it's here twenty

four seven. Okay, because did the journalist ever ask are you feeding? Or did you ever feed? The turkey? Hear me out? This is it's gonna emerge, okay. Gross said she called emergency services and Minnesota's Department of Natural Resources. Experts advise her to remove bird feeders across the neighborhood because the turkey would flee without a food supply, It

would flee. They can't help themselves, man, journalists, journalists ready about wild life can't help themselfs the turkey would fleet if it didn't have food, but Gross said she sees corn strewn around the mobile home park where she lives. She believes someone's feeding the turkey. Soon after the first attack, Gross said the turkey pecked at her feet and left a scar. Around that same time, the turkey attacked another resident. Since the turkey settled near her home, Gros said neighbors

have blamed her for entering their neighborhood. The turkey sleeps on her roof or on a tree outside her home. The turkey gobbles through out the night. When she opens the blinds on her kitchen window in the morning, the turkey glares at her. No way, listen, man, This is a true story. Gross at first named the turkey Gladys, but as it grew, she came to believe it was Mail changed its name to Reggie. There's a picture of it. It very definitely is. Though she hasn't confirmed the tight,

the turkey's gender or age. Gross says she has applied every precaution from wildlife experts, doesn't keep any food outside of her home, doesn't play loud music of the fear it would attract the turkey hasn't grilled outside in two years. Yeah, she would not be able to buy our new outdoor cooking cookbook. Would be irrelevant in her life. She bought a horn to scare of the turkey, but it just provoked the bird. She got shot gobbles out of it. She sprayed water on it and that scared the turkey

away for two weeks. October twenty one, Okay, the whole neighborhood canceled the Halloween trick or treating because of the turkey. She now has to walk neighborhood children to the bus stop to protect them. Where's this kid? Sticks Minnesota? She says. The turkey so aggressively attacks her cars tires that she has to refill the tires with air weekly, speaking scapegoat. When family members come to visit, they can't because they're scared to enter to approach her home. I'm so exhausted,

she said. I hope this gets a solution and someone comes to help Yanni. She wants to have a peaceful summer with her kids and grandkids and actually have a barbecue and just be able to relax. Now, why don't they relocate it? When a turkey's rounded up after wounding people. That turkey is youthanized and served as food to someone who needs it. That's what the article says. And this woman doesn't mount the turkey to be hurt. Oh jeez, man,

it's probably driving down the property value around there. She recently walked out of her house and jumped when a bird flew because she thought it was a turkey coming for it. Oh, Reggie causing them all sorts of trouble. The other day when he was talking to it, she was talking new journalists and she said, quote, he's out there pecking at my tires, uh, quicking on her head

on Turkey News, which is really interesting. So this is an old study from the nineteen sixties where they were trying to find out sexual arousal in turkeys, okay, And they began taking a male turkey and trying to find out what on a female turkey is the male turkey attracted to. Okay. So they start out with a turkey model and they start removing parts from it to see at what point the turkey wants to stop These are domestics, at what point the turkey wants to stop breeding it.

This is a government survey or like university researchers. This is like a decoy that they're putting out in like a farm um doctor Pennsylvania State, if Seth, you'll appreciate this penn State who. They began with a taxidermically preferred female turkey model and a penn of active males in order to learn what specifically gets the turkey visually interested in making more turkeys aka making love. The two that's my input. The two men slowly removed parts of the

turkey model. One by one. They detached the feet, the wings, and eventually the entire body the taxidermy turkey until the stick mounted head and neck held like a puppet remained. The paper is called stimuli eliciting sexual behavior. Mail Turkeys presented a body without the head, okay, follow me, Maile Turkeys presented a body with no head would display, but they wouldn't mount it. If you presented the head alone and held it upright, they would go try to copulate

the air behind the head. Can we mention what your theory about what happened yesterday? Say we have a side note story about turkey sexual arousal Okay, I finished this real quick. Yeah, that's what I was going to get through afterwards. They're thinking. This is academic thinking. They're thinking, is I don't want to get into how they all did it, but like why would that matter? They're thinking,

is that one turkey? Okay, picture your male turkey when you're um, you know, right aroused a little bit, when you're when you're making love with a female turkey. They're saying, well, he can't see nothing but her head neck anyway, that's what she says. It is paper. Oh my gosh, this is contemporary. That's what the sixties. Oh okay, it goes on and on. Well it is from the sixties, you said, yeah, that goes on and on. People just thought different back then.

I mean, I could read this for days and I wouldn't be done one last thing. So I'm gonna bring it back and so check and see how this has flowed. Okay, we got into turkeys with Florida. We got into turkeys. Now we're gonna get into Florida turkeys tracking huge. Just the other day, a couple of days ago, Florida's Fishing Wildlife Commission. Have you heard about this giant turkey poaching bust. No,

they just released just a couple days ago. Huh No, I have not charges filed against a feller by the name of them Sydney brent Hurst born in eighty five thirty seven mm hmm good math um charge with the following taking over the season bag limited Turkey's taking over the season season bag limited, deer, scheming to defraud, arm trust, pass, unuseful use, unlawful use of two way communication device, and cheating. So this is this is an interesting thing about I

might spend more time with us. Did you guys listen to Clay's Did you guys listen to Beargrease podcast episode about the serial Turkey poachers in Ohio, oh? Where it was like part of the I think so, yes, it's Clays. I want to Clay his masterpiece. Yeah, yeah, I do remember that hiding the guns right, No, no no, no, no, no different one like he's got to. Clay has two Bear Grease podcasts, two masterpieces. There's a series on the original Outlaws that's the one I'm taking out. And then

he's got a series on the undercover Game Warden. Oh, okay. In this series on the Undercover Game, Warden focuses very heavily on a Turkey on him inserting himself in an undercover sense, like moving to their town, becoming friends with spending years undercover with turkey poachers yea, And reading it you might think to yourself, how is that? Like, how does the juice warrant the squeeze all that effort? This guy a paid undercover No, no discredit to the guy,

He's doing his job. You send in a paid undercover guy to like move into a town, assume a false identity, and live for years to get some turkey poachers, to bust some turkey poachers, it just seems like it seems it strikes me as weirdly asymmetrical. Oh, it shows how much value we put on in a wildlife. Sure it does. But in the end, like normally, when you picture someone an undercover agent spending years with someone, you picture that people are going away to jail for a long long time,

like organized crime or something. You don't picture someone's gonna do like thirty days in the local slammer and have a revocation of hunting privileges for five years. It's just you know what I mean, It's like you think of like it's like, oh, they must be trafficking and narcotics and murdering people. I don't know, you know, Like I said, like I don't mean to discredit, but like the thing that I enjoyed it thoroughly. I get the work. I

support the work. It just felt asymmetrical, like the effort from the agency, the effort and in the way I mean, like change these people's lives right for the relatively light the relatively light punishment that goes that that that goes to those offenses. Um, maybe the punishment should be worse. I don't know, but here's what's crazy. So they they started investigating this guy in twenty twenty. Okay, no, no

undercover guys. But they start investigating this guy in twenty twenty, and it just started with so Florida fish and wildlife. It starts when they get a guy where they realize that a guy and his young son had both taken over the season bagged them into wild turkeys, which is two two okay, And they start looking into him. They realize this guy killed between fifteen to twenty wild turkeys in a season spring twenty Spring twenty twenty, fifteen to

twenty wild turkeys. Okay, I'm reading from this piece right here, my FWC. Okay, so as reported by the state. Given the extent of the violations uncovered during the twenty twenty season, and the necessity to ensure hersh would be held accountable for all his actions, the decision was made to extend and widen the investigation to gather any and all information regarding his poaching activities. So here you got a guy

he already know he killed fifty to twenty birds. Maybe they didn't have good admissible evidence, right whatever, and they're like, let's let him keep at it for another season and see what he does in the next season. During spring twenty twenty one, did a bunch more so, what did he do in the twenty twenty one twenty twenty one spring season? Thirty? Yeah, now the criminal trestpass thing, armed criminal trestpasses. He's trespassing on four different properties with a

gun and killing birds. Off trespassing to kill birds, thirty turkeys during the spring season. I guess how many bucks he killed during twenty the two twenty two twenty one general gun season fourteen shot twenty bucks. Jesus, what's he doing is he's selling like mounts and stuff into it.

It doesn't get into it because remember that they then here's here's this is where I'd like I'd like talk to I'm going involved in this investigation, So Krian, when you you should find someone to talk about this, just to help explain it. From from Florida fishing game. They then extend the investigation into the spring twenty two season, killed fifteen turkeys that season, numbers dropped. Eventually they go

and do a search warrant. Oh yeah, when they searched his place, they executed a search warrant one hundred and fifty six pairs of turkey spurs, one hundred and fifty five turkey beards, twenty one buck antlers, buck racks. He's a collector, cheez man, got a screw loose. Yeah, uh, a lot of turkeys. Man. I wonder how he did it. I don't know. It doesn't get into that. So those

are all, you know, call ins or shooting him with rifles. Well, that's what I'm saying, because like, on one hand, you're like, if he's calling that me birds in, he'd be like, yeah, I mean like the guy, but I just got a feeling that ain't the case. Yeah, yeah, maybe, I mean if he is to help, I mean, like whatever, if that's like, you know, two things can be true at once, right, Yeah,

like horrible person, hell of a turkey hunter. Yeah, woman, if they were all males gobblers spurs, Well, they confiscated one hundred and fifty five stats of spurs. You remember, Steve, there was that big poacher and the seely swan. M hm, he got some serious prison time. Yeah. I don't know what they do down here, but that was like, that was when I was I was at a I was at a thing one time. I was at an event one time, and I met we we should get this

guy on the show too. There was a warden presenting out a thing about super poachers. Yeah, and his take is that you have that that ten percent you know, they old like ten percent of the the blank you know, ten percent of the fisherman catch ninety percent of the fish,

ten percent of the poachers poach ninety percent of the game. Yeah, and he was he was a specialist in psychological profiles of super poachers, and um he was kind of like the gist of his deal was that fishing game agents would be better suited to learn to recognize the patterns of super poachers and focus on super poachers. UM put more energy into recognizing when that's what you're dealing with and catching those individuals who will poach massive amounts of

stuff over an entire lifetime. Yeah, Um, he didn't. I don't think he meant like instead of but like in addition to the normal patrolling you do on a day to day basis, like ah, you didn't buy your license, you know, it'd be like this is a thing to be taken seriously, like these these chronic superpoachers. And in the work he did on super poachers, he's like, they are they're sociopaths. Yeah, they're like the same level of sociopath that that you might be a sociopath and become

a murder. There's a form of sociopath sociopathy that becomes that. But he felt that it's driven by these same things that it is. It's like sociopathic behavior and it's and that's what you are. But for whatever reason, some sociopaths go in in that direction to become like habitual chronic illegal killers of wildlife. This dude seems like Florida dude

definitely keeping all that. And there is a collection, there's a there's a collection aspect and what he got into is like a thing that drives them is that they're smarter than everybody else. They're getting away with it. They're smarter than everybody else, and that's like a common that's common in that behavior type. What the like you're proving how smart you are? Yeah, you know what. The Florida

guy get sentenced if they found all that shit. I'm sure he's been charged, right or no that they haven't sorted all that out yet. Judicial proceedings are pending. Sociopath m okay, Yannie, what do you think about hunting aasi old the turkeys? Hmmm, he only got one, I got thirty? Well what did What did you want to say about the intererest thing about the well by the turkeys having mating and having sex. Yeah, well we saw some interesting

mating activity during my turkey hunt. Yeah, which we'll get to. Yeah, we'll hit on it when it comes out. Top level. What I find interesting about them, um, very fickle turkeys around when they want a gobble silent bobs. Man, it's not just a high pressure low pressure thing, which seems to be most places we hunt. You know, you don't mean an atmospheric pressure. Yeah, Oh, I'm sorry when you say pressure. Oh yeah, obviously hunting pressure messes with them too.

But you know, it seems like most places we hunt, if it's high pressure, you feel like you're gonna hear more gobbles, and low pressure you'll hear hear less. But here the clouds and the fog and how much sun they can see in the morning really seem to affect them. First morning we're out, you know, amazing gobbling, amazing scout. We're scouting, scouting the day before season, right right, sunny morning.

Sound like a gunfight out there. I kept talking. Maybe it's directly related to how many Skeeter bites you get. That was the worst Skeeter morning. Yeah, the worst Skeeter morning. It was unbelievable. The mosquitoes are bad, the goblin's good. And that was a scout day. It was not a hunt day. No one hunted those birds in the next day. Silent Bob, that was that a no? That was his beak zipping shot, not a go on. Honest, you know, I'm I was already a super slam holder. You were,

so there's no sense me. You know everybody knows. Everybody knows. Uh, yes, I'm some kind of slam holder. Now that I got my asciol of I don't know which one Grand Slam, Grand Slam, Super Slam was. When I go get my golds, right, they're da. I became a two times Super Slam Older's first I've heard of this two times Superlam holder, right, which I could easily catch up to you if tomorrow morning, No,

you'd become a two time Grand Slam holder. Well, I know, but then in a year's time when I go to Mexico, Mexico is two bird kind of a hunt. It might all be dead by that. I don't know. Well, how about this, Yanni, this is your opportunity to be the first one to be a single Slam, single season Slam holder. Oh that's right. I could hold that over Steve for a long time. Steve's expressions he doesn't like there's a

prospect of this interview the old turkey. I'm not here to have a big old, not here to have a big old. You started it measuring mead measuring contest here man, big snood swinging contest. I'm gonna face Steve up my feet right on killee. Look how big those feet are. I'll also remind you, Steve that on this trip Yanni had the bird with the biggest beard, m m M. Steve's bird. We went to put it into the check station and the guy that checked the burden, he said masculated.

He said, uh, just a little guy. It was a long beard. Thought listen. I didn't shoot when when he was coming, I was like, it was too early in the hunt for Jake. I got nothing against shooting Jake's and shooting Jake's legal in Florida. I saw his head coming through the grass and I was like, I want if that's a long beard. You said legal, right, it's no. I'm sorry, it's permissible to shoot at Jake in Florida. I am not above shooting Jake's. I'll shoot Jake's um

like a last day Jake. Great by me. Are you are you posed to Uh? It's complicated, Okay. My first bird was a Jake, So I wouldn't I wouldn't say I'm completely opposed to it. But I feel like, once you're into turkeys, I don't know why you'd shoot a Jake. You everything about trimming your beard down, so it's just so it's just a big turkey long beard. If you take about three quarters of that beard got a Jake going on. Now, so you did it once, someone't do

it again. Yeah. Yeah, I'm just like, you know, you know, here's the check of the box. But but let me bring that back. That's at home, right, Like maybe if I was out traveling and I had like a trip, that's like, oh I got three days, I got four days. On the fourth day of turkeys in front of me, things, might I might think differently. Yeah, so I'm like, no, Jake's at home. Well, here's a weird thing people do. Like,

this is a weird logic thing people do. People that are opposed to killing Jake's for you listeners at home, they don't have an idy what we're talking about. We're talking about an adolescent or one year old turkey. So you hunt turkey's in the spring. Jake is a male bird that was born the spring before he's one year old. He'll have a beard, you know, one two three inches long, um, and he don't have any spurs. He's got little nubb ands.

He's got a little warts where his spurs will eventually develop. People that don't like it, don't the people that are opposed to shooting Jake's so like, well, you're shooting the bird that will become a long beard spike. Okay. Well, I'm like, well, you know, a really good way of getting rid of a long beard is to kill him. It's like to be like, oh no, in another year, if it's still alive, it will have turned into a long beard. It's like, well, the long beard is a

long beard right now. If you want more long beards, don't shoot the long beard. That's a great way to have more long beards. There's also the argument that like a jake's stupid, right, or stupider than the gobbler. Yeah, so it's like it's easy. I don't have listened. I don't. I'm all for if I if I had my pick, like I said, I said, I remember, I was like, I'm not above it, but I wasn't ready yet. I wanted to make sure it had a beard. I saw I had a long beard. But tomorrow see what happens.

We got we have two turkey takes. We have a turkey tag that's good for we have like a turkey tag that was good for a wildlife a state wildlife management area. It's like a public land turkey tag. And then we have a turkey take that's good for a private land turkey. Take if tomorrow I was presented with an opportunity on a jake, I would take the jake because I like eating turkeys. I got a question. I wouldn't give you a hard time. Jake can breed, right, Yeah. Anyways,

I shot a long beard. He had bigne spurs, and we checked it in. The person tried to emasculate me and said it was little. It's fine, it's fine if you're one er. The osti Ola turkey ranges, like the biggest one the WMA checked in was twenty point five pounds, which was an exceptional burden because you had Will looked to me like a very respectable burden. He was, what eighteen? Right? Did you the low end? Was there anything? Steves? He definitely thought mine was on the low end at thirteen.

Yours only was at thirteen? Was it fifteen or thirteen thirteen? Yeah? Wow, that's quite interesting that there's a five pound difference, and that was with the guts in it. Yeah, mine was on gutted to eighteen and a half five No, no, mine was sixteen. Let me take that back, but still five pounds range. You know, it's interesting. And this bird had developed sharp spurs. Inches. No, he no, richards were inch. Remember he measured inch yeah, um, I think he said

three quarter inch when he measured mine. I can't remember. Well John's one was inch, one was three quarter Yeah. Well he had a weird one of his spurs was weird. It looked like a head broke at some point or something. It was like kind of even turned. So their fickle on the fickle on goblin smaller than mid like midwestern eastern and uh man, you know people are gonna say, oh no, it's just whatever. You might even disagree here,

but the gobble is definitely different. In between that, the the humidity i'd like and the weather, not only what they sound like, but what my own calls sound like and how far they travel avel and it took me. Maybe I'm still figuring out, Like it's hard to say exactly how far those birds were. Now I'm thinking the first morning, I think I overran one because I was looking back to my listening spots where I ended up,

and I'm like, I'm twelve hundred yards awake. There's no way I was here in this Turkey m You got a good point about that. Vegetation has a huge impact on that here, Yeah, because you could be like a bird could be inside a hammock and you could be three hundred yards away and not here. Tell people what a hammock is, Richard, hammock is, it's basically an ecology of higher elevation that like supports oak trees, cabbage palms. It's just a drier environment where basically it's it's dry

all year round. So it changes depending on like the hydro periods, Like what kind of ecology pine island a hammock or a prairie or whatnot. So hammock is basically like our so vegetation comes very dense, a lot of tree cover and squirrels. Squirrels, yep, and it does. It's not like necessary hill it could. It's like it's that that's I mean, that's sort of like what defines uh, Southern Florida is just like it's not a you know, ecology doesn't change in thousands of feet, it changes in inches,

like complete change. You can't see the elevation change anyway, you know, it's there is different. Sure, look at the different plants and like, yeah, that's a foot lower. So so if he's if he's out overlooking a prairie or in some thin pines, you could hear him from a mile away, especially if he's like on the edge of a big prairie. That whole prairie just works like an

echo chamber and it just projects that gobble. But like I said, inside a hammock, I mean, you could be standing right outside that and you're like that go was like I mean I and the cypress domes as well. They kind of act in the same manner. Eats the gobble. Yeah, it eats the gobble up unless he's on the edge of it over the water. But if he's inside that dome, it's like, you know, I've had I've had one bird

that I hear that guy. I'm like, man, that's far away, and I call him again, and all of a sudden, the next guy was I'm like, oh no, like sit down,

you know, and it's just eats up that sound. So it's it's very like you have to like kind of gauge not only distance, but like what they're in, Like what are you looking out across, you know, and you can say, like there's this hammock there, and like we had that one situation where we heard that bird way off, and from where we were at, we're like, man, is

that across the prairie or on our side? Like you couldn't even tell till you got around the island we were on, Like once we had the island behind us, then we were like, oh, it's all the way across the prairie, which then we tried to cross the prairie and yeah, that's a good point. That's a lot of times listening to critters, I feel like it's that way.

You had to get close enough to then source it m to go, oh yeah, okay, now I know no, but that's not always the case here because, like like I said, with like those thin pines, if if if what everything in front of you is those thin pines, you can also gauge that differently, Like I've I've put pins on birds that I've heard from way off and it's three quarter of a mile and I get there and he's right there at three quarter of a mile. You know, it's just like it just changes relative to

the to the habitat and ecology. So and it must. I mean I think that the humidity in the air and how far and the wind right right wind's going at your back be harder to hear them, because that's one of the things I think we might have missed

out on. Like yesterday morning, we didn't we didn't really look at which direction the wind was going in, and like where we had set up was basically not in favor of where the birds were, So there could have been more that we weren't hearing because the wind at our back behind us. I haven't been hearing any birds roosted in air. Everything was in front of us, so and you know, I didn't even think that morning to take a look at that. So but it has an impact.

You guys did good, Yeah, I mean, oh, Richard put us on him. You guys did really good. I've been out here the last five weekends before season, and three of which I camped. So I was here, you know, Saturday, Friday through Sunday. So how hard would you if if if you weren't hosting US, you just still scouted. Would you wouldn't have scouted? Camped? Yeah? I probably just do like one day a weekend, So I probably would have just hit it on a Saturday day and then hit

a different area on a Sunday. But I basically, you know, Saturday and Sunday, I called took us off. Man, Well, I wasn't scouting for one person, scouting for three people. So I called him up before we did this, and I said, it's like, how are you feeling about it? What are the chances? You know we're gonna get some birds? And he was like, well, I basically kill a turkey every opening weekend. But I'm worried about four people, you know, the film. He was real worried about having four people

in there with with us fallen. You know, I told me the quiet, professionals is it's I mean, as you guys found out, you know, very thick vegetation, a lot of noise, like a lot of things can make too much noise, especially you multiply that times four. Yeah, it's uh yeah yeah, but it wasn't a different than what

we've encountered. Yeah, fast No. And I after having spent this week with all you guys, like I realized that you know, you guys all knew, like you're all aware of that, and my fears and my anxiety that I'd spoken to you about before. It's just my I've never filmed a hunt, right, I've I've taken people out who are like new to hunting or you know, they're like, hey, you know, I'm trying to figure this out, like yeah,

let's go scout whatever. And you know, I take them out and it's through the water and crack stepping on palm trees, you know. And so that's just in my head of like my experience of you know, being with people, because I spend most of my time alone out there.

So but it was, you know, it was really nice to hunt, you know, to be with you guys, to be with guys who like are that conscious or like that present of like sound and like movement and like, you know, all of that, because I'm usually the guy like stop, you know, and it was it was nice to be in that company. Well you still had to give us some tips on how to walk through the water. Oh yeah, it really helped tip. Coincidentally or not coincidentally,

we're approaching a bird, getting closer. We had been calling at him at probably four hundred yards. He was answering. We decided he was on the other side of a slew. We were like, well, let's get closer anyways, and just you know, get on top of him. As closer we can't see what we can make happen. And we got to that whatever it was one hundred and fifty yards and had to go through some water to get there, and he never gobbled again, like big old gator coming. Yeah.

What's the tip if we're all your foot Yeah, don't don't like any kind of foot slapping noise on the water. Yeah, if you step down on the water, you're just gonna clap it, you know, just clap, clap as your foot's coming down on the water. So when you're walking through the water, you gotta you know, hit with the heel and just roll and even like I'll even go as far as like do it on an angle, so my foot my feet will almost be like turned in and just kind of like you know, walking like that and

like you know, yeah, yeah. The loudest noise is then the water coming off your boot and hitting back down on the water, which is probably as close as you're gonna get to a deer walking through the water. So and we could hear the turkeys walking through water as a big indicator, which we would be way louder than that. You guys heard turkeys walking through the water. First morning, we had a hand go through the puddle that was on the road that we'd set up on we could hear,

so go on with to tell to everybody about what happened. Uh, just my whole hunting story here, because yours is better than ours. We just we killed a couple of silent bobs. M No, my honest silent bob too. You get to watch them do all kinds of cool stuff. Yeah. Well, and what's really cool about it? You got you saw some love making. Well yeah, and I think probably the most the coolest part about it is that I was

able to use some turkey woodsman ship. And even though I knew, you know, Richard had given me the scouting morning we had heard a bird in this area, didn't go after him, didn't get any closer, just had heard him gobble a few times. And then the first morning a hunting we ended up just doing a loop out into this zone. And we get out into the Giant prairie. It's late in the day. It's like eleven eleven thirty

Giant prairie. We're walking down a road on the edge of the prairie and it's hot, I mean, coming on, it's eighty plus. We're thinking about hitting the pool. We're enjoying the breeze that's now in the opening. After we just had walked through a hammock for a quarter mile or a half mile or whatever, and I'm looking at the ground like man, bunch of turkey tracks. You know, I wasn't a good enough woodsman at that moment to

be like slow dawn and start looking for turkeys. And we took five more steps and like, don't get down, and we didn't bump them hard. But when I peeked back up over the grass, I didn't like I could see him mosey and off. You know, they saw it just enough to mosey them off. But mark the location. Mark at the time of day, and I said, okay, well tomorrow, if it's eleven thirty, now I'll be here by ten. And now I'm just gonna be hanging out waiting if you guys like to do this thing daily.

And the other thing I liked about that spot was we hadn't seen boot tracks. We'd seen boot tracks of other places, but that place no boot tracks, no trail cameras, so it seemed like it was a little untouched. Next day we have kind of what I just described. We chased some birds in the morning. They gobbled all right, but they were across the slow couldn't get on them. And then we make the move over there we get to where I want to set up. And Richard didn't

quite like it. In this gap was too sunny, didn't really have a lot of shade to hide. Yeah, that was that's a hot tip of his. He don't like that tracks he wants because here he got so much good stuff to hide him. Yeah, you don't want to get picked off. Get into the dank, you know, like you have fabrics of your clothes will just shine. That's anywhere you always want to set up in the shape. But I'm saying, I know, but here you really can hunker in. Yeah, I mean, like you know, if you're

hunting grasslands studded with ponderosa pines. Yeah, there's no place to hide out there. You know. It's like it's just different than here. I mean, you can you can nestle in, you know, you can. You can nestle in too much, you can't see anything. And you can always just cut one maybe two of those salt palmetto branches, I don't know what you call them, salt palmettos. Yeah, and and just they're perfect. They gotta if you cut it at an angle a little state. Yeah, it just right, and

I mean boom. You got ground blinds somewhat like a like I don't know, like a palm frond frond. Yeah, that's that. We can make a quick little blind out of palm fronds. Yeah. And uh so you kind of move around a corner. It's a smaller prairie that's connected to a bigger, bigger prairie by the thirty yard gap of hammocky trees. And then there's kind of a road parallel in the both of them. So we come in on the side road and finally we find one spot.

It's two covered up in poison ivy. So we moved down the road a little bit, find another spot again. Getting late in the day, everybody's kind of losing their edge, and we get in there, break some branches, do some things set up. We got Seth and Garrett with us and snack bar time, have some snacks, some water. I kept telling Garrett, just like, let me know when you're all tucked in and ready, because we're gonna give a couple of calls and we gotta be like ready to

not move when it's go time. You know, we're gonna give it an hour here and see what happens. And he says he's ready. Seth's ready. We're all set up. And I don't even get through the first set of clucks and a hand starts clucking back at me. Close and what pot call are using right now? That was the uh I was using that new Morgan Stern green slate over teak? Is that what it's called green slate over teak? Something like that? Phelps made, Oh know what

you're talking about? Yeah, sounds good. And uh Immediately she's uh clucking back at me, and I'm like, Garret, he's here, and he's just like, yeah, they're coming down the road. I'm like, holy shit, you know, I mean we must have just snuck in ahead of him. Yeah, I mean bicecke like a little bit later. You just spooked him. Yeah, Or had we not just decided to sit there and gone fifty more yards down that road, you know, we probably would have bumped into him. So here come the

first couple of hands. One hand kind of eyeballs us. We're not that far off the road, ten fifteen yards at the closest five yards. She makes it by us, and as soon as one makes it bias. The day four I had seen, Oh so when I when we bumped that group, it was a strutter and six or so, I thought, six to eight hands. Maybe she makes it by us, and I'm thinking perfect. As long as the lead hands by us, everybody else is eventually gonna follow her and filter by. So it takes a while here

come more, but it doesn't take too long. And we can hear somewhere off in the jungle. Yeah, it was more like, oh man, you can hear it. You could hear it so well too. Yeah, it doesn't sound like a wet fart, just like I just like that. So so you're spitting a stream at tobacco yet and uh so we know there's a strutter in the bunch and it's just a matter of time. We just gotta sit still in on which years Richard, that was a good one. That was good A well, I don't know where to

speed up the story a little bit. There's multiple hands, a lost count, but it was probably getting upwards of double digits, and really so giant pilot yea all around us. We have hands going behind us in the hammock, and before we've even seen the gobbler I think now set to Garrett were on my left. They saw him long before. Had I been in Garrett's sitting spot, I would have shot the turkey at least twenty minutes before I did, maybe thirty. They got to sit there and watch the

show forever. I could just see a you know, tip of the fan and the flash of the white head here and there they got the show, which is ed him out with the butt of my shotgun and boom he goes down out of my waye. Yeah, that time, probably would have just sat there and been like, whoa's that poor guy? People are fighting, one's unconscious, and uh, we have a hand behind us. They all out of nowhere.

She jumps up and flies and almost I mean I only she actually cleared, went over the tree that we were on, but right next to the cabbage palm that we're sitting on. Just flies and then lands five six seven yards to do like a micro adjustment. Yeah, She's like, I'm done feeding here, I'm just gonna pop back out to the road over us. Just chopped us, and uh that was cool. But she landed so close and I was looking left, I didn't I couldn't even look right, you know, I just had to stay up your head.

So all this is going on, Sath and uh and uh Garret are getting the show. By the show, I mean gobblers in their strut his tail off. At one point, I think, boy, if I just kind of lean out, I had some small salt palmettos on my left. I thought, if I just lean out around those, you know, I get on him, I can probably take the shot. But he still had a couple of hands around him. I'm like, yeah,

it seems like I'm gonna push it. There was a Jake in that group too, and at one point that Jake popped into full strut and that's what brought him the closest he came. Because that Jake popped into full strut and it pissed him off. He like went racing over towards about that. Yeah, that's what brought that turkey the furthest towards us, towards us that he got. Yeah, so what also happened, Well, we could hear but couldn't see.

This is Richard and I listening. Is we could hear every now and then like a like a wing flap. I could hear him but Seth and Garrett could watch him masturbating. They had never seen it, I guess. But all we could hear was, I don't know if you're hearing that, it'd be like a clap or two. I'm like, man, it sounds like there might be like a turkey beating another turkey with his wings or something. And then later they're like, yeah, we saw him there and it looked

like Seth actually thought you thought it was mating. Yeah. So when I first saw it, I could only see he was like kind of behind a tree, and I could only see like the right side. He was facing directly away from me. I could only see like the right side of his body, and I could see him doing like the little wing flap thing. You know when they when they mount a hen and breeder. Yeah, they

do that little like wing flap thing. I could see him doing that, and I could hear him doing it, and I actually leaned over to Garrett and I said, he's breeding a hen. Was Garrett was Garrett like, turkey, you're fighting, but he wasn't on top of a but and then he did it again in the wide open in front of me, and he was not on a hand. He was just doing it for funzies or was he like yeah, I mean Jake and the Gobbler did it at the same did Jake started doing it and the

gobblers started doing it? Right, He's like like this and the Hans didn't want anything to do with the strutter. He was trying, but they weren't. Yeah, they were like they were like gross. Yeah, they were ready, I guess. Yeah. Anyways, the last two birds I think are the I never even saw where the jake went because we never got

pushed back. Yeah, so when that jake went into full strut he came around That's when he came the furthest um to from our left to right and then work that jake back around the prairie there to where he eventually disappeared. So yeah, hen to me, it almost looks like she spooks and goes back down the road and the gobbler follows her. I'm like, oh, that's it, it's over. But then we could keep hearing them drumming and spitting,

and I'm like, seth, what they do? He said they went out into the prairie, and we're talking this prairie is it's a wet spot, but no big trees on it. It's about a hundred yards. It's like a big dish wide. Well, yeah, it's not. It does it's not holding water though, maybe right in the middle clarify, Yeah, the middle of it gets a little deep. So the vegetation right in the middle is really tall, so it's not like something like you could see across, so that that center of it

is blocking our view from the turkey. So it's like a reverse you know, like almost like a donut. But yeah, we can just hear him, and he keeps drumming and spinning, drumming and spinning, and finally, Richard, it's like, man, I think he might pop out right here in front of us, but at a distance, because he's going around the long the backside of this prairie, and uh, all of sudden Richard sees him. I can see him. I can't see him, but then there's there's his fan, and I'm like, all right,

I'm on him. He's and he's I think he's actually coming to us at that point, just a little bit, maybe a little on an angle. The first thing I saw was the white head through the grass. And as soon as I saw that flash of white just kind of bobbing through the grass. I was like, I see him, and I think you said something like where or where or where? And then his fan went up and you're like, oh there, because you were calling intermittently as well, No,

we had I didn't. I didn't call until he was he was in this gap and we were about to lose sight of him again, and he was about midway through the gap, and I did, I ask you should I call him? Like heck yo? So I hit him with the you know what what what? What? In his head? Just yeah, he did the periscope of a periscopes. I mean you could barely see his head on the tops of that vegetation when he periscoped. I mean it looked like there was a solid foot he was on the

head and neck. Yeah. Yeah, maybe he did stretch up his legs. He was all the way up. But then you said shoot him and I'm looking at him. I'm like, I think he's out of range. And then Richard said something like, well, you pattern that gun, didn't you. And I took that to mean like, dude, shoot him and it was a poke he's or did we even did we talk about how far the distance was? Yeah, before I shot. Yeah, I said, I feel like it's the fifties. Yeah, I'm like, sounds good to me. So I touched off

and roll him. But I took off after him, and he even though he was flopping, he had that kind of flop that wasn't crazy erratic. It was when you got near him, he was trying to inch away from you. So even though he doesn't even have his neck with him anymore, he's got something enough in his head where he's like, I'm trying to get away from that big thing. It's towering over me right now. Man. So those number

nine's at sixty did some work. Rolled him hard. I mean I still had to, you know, choke him out, but more of that breast can be full of the pellets. We're gonna know here, surely. But yeah, yeah, we arranged it from where I finally stopped. When I got on his neck. It was sixty six back to the cabbage palm. But I think he had flopped solid five six yards. Yeah, he almost chased it a little bit. That's a little poke, and it's a megapoke, mega poke. But I don't know.

We probably could have let him eat. He's out of that prairie. We knew where he was going, and then we probably could have made another approach, but we would have gone full bushwhack style after that. We would have been barely crawling in on him. Yeah, him and him

and his I felt good though. It was like that periscope, the way his head was like so high up like that, there was like just so much neck there, right, That's why I felt like I felt confident about that, you know, And you've got that red dot on there, like it was like, I don't know, I didn't in that moment. I didn't. I didn't see you a question in it. Yeah. No, I had patterned it at fifty and it had patterned great. Yeah. Had I arranged him and it was at sixty, I

probably would let him go. But you know, it's hard to tell fifty additions between fifty and sixty is super hard to tell. So totally anyways, dead bird. Yeah, he's in the fridge. That's the end of my assie old And at that moment I became a grand slam turkey holder. You know what quote I heard the other day? Nope, roost it ain't roasted. Nope, No, not your first time here in that one? Had you heard that before many a time. I like that. You didn't you've never heard,

you know. I just wrote a quote earlier today. I like this. It's called I was criticizing these boys fishing in the river down here. I said, you're fishing the way you wish the world was, not the way it is, which means we're targeting large mount bash and not throwing crawls and not sinking chicken legs down there for a

big catfish. Yeah, I see, ye're in Florida. You gotta you gotta try and catch it down there, trying to catch a trent ten pound northern on and these like ten inch large mount as, not norther sorry, large mouth, fullmouth bass, bucket mouth, trying to catch a big bucket mouth and they come back with nothing. And I'm like, I tell you one thing, if I was down on that dock, I'd catch a fish because I'd put a crawl arounder a bob or and I'd find out just

what was living there. And he motivated that to happen. Chris went down there and caught it himself a couple to lappy while we've been state record baby, Yeah, he thinks he has a state record, which great so I went to Lapia. We're gonna end the show, but I'll end on this. Um. I went to Lapia. Bow fish in the yard night Nokchobe and they dig a bed. You've seen it, Yanny, because you meet bow fish before. They'd dig a bed the lakes of which I have never seen. It's amazing. I mean it looks like a

bomb went off under water. Not only is it the side like you know what someone says, the size of a bushel basket you want when I when my kids get older, i'd tell something being like a bushel basket. They're probably can know what I'm talking about. Yeah, it's not off. It's barely relevant now to most people I know, But I grew up, man, you'd go buy tomatoes, you'd buy like a pack, a bushel basket or a pack.

You know. So yeah, it's barely relevant now. But for you old timers who grew up going with your mom down and picking ship picking pay produce places, it's a bushel basket in diameter, and they dig that sun bitch half a bushel basket deep for their eggs or oh yeah, and they clean it out. Are they trying to get

through the muck? To get some. They clean it down and they clean it out, and even at night when you're going along, it's like they just stand out and you might look at the night we are out, you might look at eight or nine empty ones. I think a lot of those the fish already skidded out because it's just surrounded by dense vegetation. So when they slide out, they like slide out. You might you might catch a little movement where he's hitting the weeds, you know, but

he's gone. But every whatever, eight nine, ten of those beds, he's just sitting on there. And if you're not right over the top of them with your bow, it's fun. Man is the tlopia? What's it related to? It's a cyclid cicklid? Is that right? Oh? Man Chester, looked that up. My phone's over there. I got you, I got you. It's a cyclid. I think it's a sicklid ci ci c h l I D. They are native I know this is their native to the Middle East and North Africa.

They've been exported all over the world as an aquaculture species. One of the things they do with them, and I saw this in the Philippines for rotational farming in rice patties. You'll like get a crop or whatever number of crops of rice, have a rice patty. You'll then flood that patty, put tilappi in it, harvest the tlappie out. But then it also like they you know, they fertilize, so you run a cycle of tlappie in there, raise those up to eating size, eat the tilapia, and then put the

rice patty back into rotation. So I saw that a long time ago. But they've escaped all over and here the big ones are the blue telapia. Incredible abundance of them. Non native. It's illegal to have a live one in your possession really, you know, because they take the other water. Can't like throw them in a bucket and be like, oh, I'm just bringing them home fresh. If you when he's in your possession, he's gotta be dead. And we went out both fishing. We were not We were just kind

of a fly by night deal. We're just fly by night and it we didn't have the right lights and everything. We're just shooting off headlamps. But tell you what, man, if you're fishing, if you want to go gate or hunting or fishing in Okachobee or he does a lot of bass fishing, a lot of bass guiding, bass fishing. Captain Bobby Stafford. Hell of a nice guy. We we we were doing a different I don't want to get into what we were actually doing. We're doing a whole

different project. But it got to go both fishing with that guy for a night. Yeah, Craig, if you're in this area and you want to have a hell of a good time and and go gator hunting. He does gator trips for trophy gators, like trophy gators being ten plus gators. Large mouth, does a lot of that. When I was with him, he booked a client for large mouth. Um does a lot of large mouth fishing. And I don't know what. I don't even know what all the

hell he does. He's got regular boats, does croppie fishing, he's got regular boats, he's got airboats. Um, if you ask him real nice, maybe he'll take you out for Tilapia. It's not a normal deal. We just happened to go for Telapia. Captain Bobby Stafford, Bob Stafford. Everybody calls him. Yeah, Bob Stafford, you were right. It is a cyclid cicklid delicious grilled. Listen, man, I thought it pretty good. It was all right, but not as good as it would have been if you'd have fried it. And if you

get it to lapping, you want to eat it. Get the blue, get the red muscle off it, trim it nice, and fry that sucker until there's no bubbles coming out of your almost so there's no bubbles coming out of your deep fryer m heavy fry, and that heavy fry firms it up, firms it up, and it gets rid of that ever so slight muddy taste. And apparently I was reading. When I was reading up on these your dad, I gave hi an extensive read up. I don't know how.

When in the aqua culture facilities, Oh, I'll tell you a little fact, they'll lit'll you won't little surprise you'll you'll you'll you won't be wondering why you listen to this show after you hear this, because you learn all this. The fourth most consumed fish by pounds consumed per person in the United States of America. However, they do a broad grouping shrimp as part of that shrimp's number one. Yeah, and lord knows how many species of shrimp, but there's

multiple species of tilapia. So like shrimp, tuna, salmon, tilapia pounds consume per person per year in the US of A. That'd be a good trivia question. Oh dude, I know I blew it. Maybe you can still use it, all right, Everyboddy. If you're listening to game on Sockers and that comes up, you'll know where that came from. Hey, wait, I did I have one follow up? That dog's tongue was seventeen inches long? But Gene Simmons was it Jean Simmons dog?

What state? Was it from? Michigan? That's what I thought you'd be interested. There's a boxer seventeen inches long, Richard. Anything we missed that you want to add about your beautiful little part of the United State? It's of America.

You got down here? Well, I heard once, Steve you said on a podcast that was you were reflecting on your your last experience hunting down here turkeys, and you had been I believed private land like pasture type land, and that that property boarded up to WMA, and you had said that side of the fence it was a lot different than the side of the fence we were on and you wanted to know what was that on

that side? That wasn't a WMA. That was aha. It was like some kind of like not a refuge system refuge. It was some kind of like locally administered waiting bird refuge. Okay, ye, not a WMA, so not cattle grazed. I'm glad I got to take you over the side. Yeah, you took me to their side of the fence. Yeah, I like the better cool. That was great, man, awesome. I love tons of wildlife, tons of birds, super well managed. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like a lot of clothes, Like I like

all those closed roads you gotta walk around. Like when you think about wild places and it's it's easy to look at something like the Grand Canyon and like the scale of that and like, you know, be impressed, right this grand, big, big stuff and like here everything we have is on a micro level, and it's like spending two three days you start to zoom in and see all those little things and kind of see like how many layers there are. I'm like how compounded the wildlife

here is and that scale it's completely different. Like once you tap into that, you're like wow, you know, yeah, but pounds of life per unit of space is high in the water especially, Oh yeah, very high. We didn't even get it all, you know, my whole thing, like Florida's for fighting, dude, we didn't even get into all the fighting. That's yeah, that's like another two hours. I want to do a preview of the Do you ever

see that movie Warriors? This movie from the side of the late seventies or early eighties, and it's about these all these gangs in New York, like and one of them is like the Clown Gang, one of them the Warriors. They all have like have these different themes, right, and the Warrior Gang they get into some trouble and and they got to make it back and it's just like you know this, how do they get back to Coney Island?

Like just kind of like all these different gangs like all after each other and all that, And that's like kind of like where we're at. Oh my god. Yeah,

there's little like I find I could be wrong. I found there like very like like in my brief experience talking to people in a wide variety of places, a wide variety of people in Southwest Florida, I was surprised by the factionalism, surprised by the factualism, even right down to like you have like people who are trying to do stuff to clean up the estuaries and improve the fisheries. But then the people that live inland are mad at those people because their prescription of how the water should

be handled is not good for deer hunting. And so you know, I hate them, and I hate them, I hate The problem is the system is so fractured that putting it back together is not simple. And also putting it back together also means that you can't you can't put it back to the way it was, Like it's not it's not ever going to go back to the way it was. So what it's going to be in the future is something different, something resembling what it was, but like a completely new thing. Like what I think

about is like post wilderness. So the problem with that is that that also involves like a vision of like what that thing is, and there's a lot of different folks like fighting for their version of that vision, you know, And I think that's what makes it so hard, because in honest, most of those folks, each one of them care for various reasons, each for each one of those their their intentions are because of their passion or their love for a place right, But like those values conflict

sometimes and there's no like there's not a good place where they all kind of like can come together. And like it's a shame because there was a time, you know, back in the seventies where we almost lost like a

very large part of this place. And it was only because those types of groups, groups that wouldn't normally get along, had to because if they didn't, there'd be, you know, there'd be no toys for anybody to play with, you know, that whole thing that like, well, if you guys are arguing, I'm gonna take your toy, both your toys away, you know, and like how can we get back there? You know,

how do we get back there? When I first was trying to describe the fact the factionalism that I had been hearing about, I told Richard it was like when the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan and all the warlords head a jockey. Yeah, and it's it's politicals who has money, who has influenced conservation groups shit talking other conservation groups values of like what the land should be used for is big if we had more time and I and I wasn't wrapping her up. You know what I don't

want to talk about too. How you guys are gonna get your bear season back? Yeah, well you only had one. It's how you're going to get a bear concluded. It's included in the management plan. The only problem is quote of zero. So it just has to be voted back into in some way or another. I know I was gonna wrap it up. But Florida did a bear hunt and they really underestimated hunter efficacy. They had a quota that was two hundred somewhere on there. Yeah I think

so too. But they issued five thousand tags and they had a forty eight hours shut off. I think they shut it off once they hit the quota and that was two days. But so they were looking to do two hundred. People were already all the animal rights people on New Jersey, cat ladies were already all they were already pissed. They were at the check stations already. They turned at hunt on and they got too many, had

too many tags and that they couldn't fit. They this wildly underestimated hunter efficacy, and man, they opened it up. They couldn't shut it off fast enough. They blew up to three thirty or something like that before they could turn it off day and then that little blunder, basically, that little blunder basically like eliminated any prospect for that.

I would have said, like, wow, next time, we should let fewer tags out, but the Florida public said, wow, Hanna, Well that's also Yeah, it also had a huge impact. That two was just who showed up to those commissioned meetings, and unfortunately they showed up more than the hunters did. I don't want to get into it too much, but I'm met a person who I was very surprised that he was opposed. I've met a person of influence. I was very surprised to learning he opposed that bear hunt. Yeah,

it was heartbreaking. It was very painful for a lot of sportsmen down here. They had. He had a perspective that was interesting. He's like, man, we can hunt everything in Florida. No one messes with us. You do this, they're gonna mess with you right now. No one messes with us. We do whatever we want. But you mess with that animal and you're gonna invite a lot of attention. I told him, I said, I said, I don't agree with that. All right, y'all, thanks for joining Richard, thank you, yeah,

oh yeah, thank you man. Noah, it's a long time coming. You did, You did real well by us though. Yeah. Let's go out in good guiding now, it's fun. We'll about jump in the pool. Yeah, I gotch go catching fish. Yeah all right, thanks everybody. Oh see you Graan Sean like silvering the sun, right right on, right right on a ride on, sweetheart. We're done, beat this damn horse to death, to take it the new one and ride We're done, beat this damn horse to death, So take your new one and ride on.