This is the meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listeningcast. You can't predict anything. The meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by First Light. Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting for el First Light has performance apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check it out at first light dot com. F I R S T L I T E dot com. All Right, everybody, but we
got something really special for you. One, we have a outdoor podcast, meaning our podcast, today's podcast was recorded outdoors. It's the only podcast you can get where someone gets a hog in the podcast, So stay tuned for that.
And then there's something even more special at the end of this very special podcast, because we're gonna be releasing for free a chapter of me Eater's American history, The Long Hunters, which covers that little slice of American history that occurred between seventeen sixty one and seventeen seventy five when fellas like the famed Daniel Boone were making their living hunting for white tailed deerskins in the First Far West. So the chapter we're going to stick in is called
gearing up. It's about the blade tools, firearms, and other implements employed by the famed Long Hunters. So enjoy the show and at the end again listen to chapter seven of Meat Eater's American history The Long Hunters. If you like it, and you will, then you can head over to Audible or Apple Books or wherever you get your books and pick it up. It's an audio original, not available in print, only available to listen to enjoy. All right, everybody,
welcome to the show. It's a little different because we have to keep it at a very low volume, which is gonna make it hard if I get fired up. You know. The comedian Mitch Hadberg observed that he didn't like camping because when he got in a fight with his girlfriend, it was hard to express his anger because he couldn't slam the door and he had to just try to zip the tent real hard. It's like, fuck you, this.
Guy like hanging up on smartphone.
Now, yeah, you can't slam it.
No, I just can't throw it.
In the old days, you'd be like, well okay then, mom, I'm coming home right now. You can't do that anymore now, And so if I get fired up, you won't know. The listener won't know, because here's the problem. We're actually hunting right now. We've done shows ice fishing and you can talk all you want, but this is a hunting episode. We're hunting hogs in Texas. You could say, yeah, it's in Texas. Everything's always open, so you know, when they
say you could probably think of other examples. Chris Gill, when Boardin's Kitchen Confidential came out, they said, a rare glimpse into kitchen culture. And I'm trying to think of other documentaries or whatever books a rare glimpse. You can't think of any examples. I mean almost any documentary, a rare glimpse into you know, a rare peak behind the curtain. Yeah, this is a rare peak into a Texas hog hunt or deer hunt. Because we're in Texas, we're about the
South Texas as you can get. We're on what you just do not I'm just looking at levels here you mess it is, don't pass the cod where's it way? Oh yeah? Yeah? And Karn, remember that you got it. This this rare, this rare glimpse into a hog hunt involves a rifle borrowed rifle that we've determined. Uh, you can't adjust the scope. No, it's maxed out. It's maxed out. So you gotta you gotta, you gotta a little high, a little of the left on close pigs, Oh, sorry,
low and right on close pick it hits high left. Uh. We're about of South Texas. You can get. The nearest major town is Brownsville, which is a crossing. There's a crossing into Matamorris, Mexico. We're closer to Raymondville. We're on a chunk of Eeteria, which is a very old, very large ranch that has been you know, Eeteria is portioned into different owner.
It says on this chair eighteen fifty eight. Yeah, we're sitting in the Uteria chairs from eighteen fifty eight.
And I'm I'm buddies with a gentleman that whose family owns this part of this ranch that we're on. And we've been down here. This is a third time I've come down for the White Tail Rut. So it's a big, big place. A lot of it's a big place. A lot of Texas properties are managed for deer. This place. You wouldn't really say that. So there's no feed. They don't they don't do any kind of feeding. They don't have any deer feeders out, they don't have any kind
of deer blinds. It's not fenced, ah, but it gets hunted a bit, but it's just real, you know, they run cattle on it. But it's a real chill, relaxed, very cool property. And we've come down here a few times right before Christmas, which is when the peak rought down here is going on, and we've had extraordinary success rattling bucks down here during this week, great success rattling bucks the week before Christmas. This year, we mix it up a little bit because we brought down a DSD.
Listeners will know Dave Smith decoys because Dave Smith was on the podcast. We brought down a DSD deer dy So it's like a fight postured buck, and over the course of three days we rattled in over thirty bucks.
There's a little uh lizard eating some sort of caterpillar right here on this.
Oh right there.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
He's no, he's not always different.
Shot up.
I just wanted to meet some sort of caterpillar seasons probably in I.
Know it's Texas.
Was I saying, sorry, how many bucks you ruddled?
Oh, rattled in a lot of bucks. But this year we used this decoy. We actually had two bucks come in and level the decoy, come in and attack the decoy, and all those bucks come in virtually probably every one of those bucks came in and bristled his hair up and like postured, and whether or not they got nervous and laughed or whatever, but in some way or another acknowledged engaged with a decoy, which is pretty fascinating, and
got a coat pigs. And now we're recording the show, and so we came out to we're out in a big pasture and we came out to a spot where we're in like a corner of brush. This is real brush country. We're in a brushy little corner and some mesquite looking out over an open pasture. There's a bunch of cattle out there. There's some horses somewhere around here. I can't see him right now, and a lot of hogs. We picked this corner because a lot of hogs come
through this corner. We've noticed, and we got our DSD buck decoy out there. Even though we're not really actively buck hunting right now, the pigs are are they rapping around there about around the corner. Oh shit, So just to give you a flavor, Seth's gonna go ahead hit a little rattles. Seth's gonna take a couple actual horns. So we got a couple. When I'm holding here, our
two horns off a four point buck. So I'm two horns off of Michigan eight, and we bone sawed the eye guards brow tis off it to make it more comfortable gripping and se It's going to do a quick little rattle session here, just so you can get the flavor for what's going on. H. Did you bring your grunt to? No, you don't have the grunt to. No, Okay, that's the rattle sash, Now, Seth give your formula. How you think about it.
I just rattle for a bit like that. Every once in a while I give a couple of grounds. But typically, like if they're within earshot, they're they're in like shooting range within seconds.
Yeah. Like, so as long as you just heard him rattle, Well, we'll get to an area and we'll creep into an area and get set up and like park creep into an area and get set up, and usually I would see half of the half of the bucks that show up show up before you've completed. Oh yeah, you're first rattle session, yep, And they run in and then they like, well, pump the brakes, maybe forty yards anywhere from ten to fifty yards from where the noise is, Yeah, to try
to get a read out the situation. It got to the point where like when Bucks didn't show up, we were like, what's wrong? Yeah, it was.
It was weird when we had nothing show up.
So I do that.
Depending on the setup, but typically three different times I'll rattle, I'll have a break for about a minute, and I'll rattle again. And I would say, I don't know, twenty five percent of the time, Bucks would come in on the second one, and then I would take another break and then rattle for like a third sequence. And I don't think we ever had Box come in on the third sequence.
No, a typical sash. We probably don't sit in twelve minutes. Yeah, it's like something still might happen, but it's like I'd rather just go to a new spot.
Yeah, that last session yesterday, the third rattle worked, I think.
Yeah, oh that was that was the crazy. Yeah, but okay it did. You're right, but what's funny is one also came in within seconds. Yeah, you know, that was just pure chaos. At dusk last night we had a rattle set. We had our best rattle session at dusk last night and called in four bucks. Now these are not big bucks. They're like nice bucks, but they're not a huge box. We called in four bucks last night and Seth got one with some stickers on him. So
he was a ten point turned thirteen. Yeah, like a Michigan ten that had three kickers, a genuine thirteen pointer.
There's a cold deer, yeah, super cold here.
Then this morning we went out rattled again and I arrowed one. I errowed the seventh buck that came in this morning. Yeah, I'm anywhere else.
That's like, it's insane, it's just crazy.
How many sets do we have this morning? Was it this morning? Yeah? Was it four? I'll tell you. I'll pull up my stats three or four. So here's my stats. On day one we did nine sets.
Four.
On day one we did nine sets, We did nine rattle sessions.
Oh yeah, there are two bigs right.
And rattled in seven bucks. On day two we did fourteen. We were being turned and burned and burned we did fourteen setups and rattled in sew thirty six. Yeah, we rattled in twenty one bucks due way better. We were cranking that day everything from four ki's four keys still a little basket.
Tends and and changed the strategy as far.
As got it figured out. I'll talk about that in one second. Then today we killed a buck on the seventh setup, which was seven setups, and killed the seventh buck on the seventh setup seven seven nice today today. Yeah, we tried a bunch of different ways of going about this. Uh, this a little strategy talk. If you want to try this, we would set up together, okay, so the rattle guy
and the bow guy next to each other. The problem you'd have is is you know animals like you know when people say with turkeys that when you're calling to a turkey, that turkey knows what tree you're under. Yeah, and he knows when he hears it from two hundred yards away, he knows what tree it is and what
side of that tree you're on. I read a good line and Little Big Man where a guy was talking about how good someone is at tracking, and he said, when he looks at the ground, he can tell what birds flew overhead, so they know where that noise is coming from. So when you rattle and the buck comes busting in, he knows exactly where to look. He knows exactly where he's looking, and he might see the decoy, but he's looking from the decoy to where the noises
from the decoy to where his noises. He sees the buck, the decoy buck, but he also is like, well, where is the thing that was fighting? So then we started trying to spread out by a bit. What happened? I was just a big fat black hawk right our outer cles, right there, all right there at the tree edge. That's I don't know. Can you get a shot? I don't know. Oh you know, you mean the other side of the thing or our.
Side, our side?
How many yards he's walking out?
I'm bad at estimating.
He's like at the tree line over there here. Let me give you a range finder. Just poke out and range him. This place is crawling with pigs right now, like you wouldn't believe.
It.
Measure twice. Karn's gonna go get a range on him. I flipp it the other way. There you go. So what we eventually hit on was if there's any appreciable wind, like we would want to go here here. When we first started doing this, we would always think, Okay, you're gonna approach the area with the wind in your face, of course, and then you're gonna rattle like like just
like setting up with a predator call. When you set with the predtor call, you want to win in your face and you're looking into the wind or crossways knowing that that kyote is gonna come and want to get down wind of you, but you're looking up when because when he gets down windy, it's gonna be too late. You're trying to catch him work in his way to get down wind.
It's like between one thirty and.
Okay, that's pretty far. I mean for for our iron, it's pretty far. So get shot them shooting iron so uh ah. But that so we eventually hit on was when those bocks come into that what's wrong? Oh right here? Oh shit, crin, How do I plug my ears? My eyd bones on easy easy rest Undernea's kate up up chamber the round chamber of the round she did.
He's definitely keyed up, but he's not going anywhere.
Oh ship. That's the first time trends ran off.
Are you sure that that might be the first time there's ever been a big Hunter in podcast?
That might be that just might be.
You might have to Did you see what kind of hits she got on? I couldn't tell.
He didn't go down. It was a oh, yeah, we might have to do a little interimation.
All right, we're at the pause for a se.
Don't ask me. I got no idea what they can and can't do. That's why this, this shot has been fun because we've just been seeing so many bucks doing buck stuff.
Yeah, doing buck stuff, doing doing stuff that you rarely get.
Just oh, second shot. I wasn't ready for that.
Yeah, don't.
Yeah, that's a second shot. Assuming that's the same pig, potentially a different pig.
I'd say it's dead now.
Yeah, I think we're probably pretty Probably should send an email to Phil, yeah, letting them know, Hey, Phil got to chop about Trucually not much longer here, we're gonna come back, folks, I tell you chuckle that podcast feel that it's probably not usable, Like what is al Michael's Do you know if they can't go to commercial and there's like a player down or something, they got to just talk you know what I mean.
Game, So they like start talking about stats and stuff and whatnot. Yeah, you got any stats on hand? Well the impressive stats. Oh, here's Steve. Steve's come back. Steve said, already box old Steve. Here, Steve just picked up a nice bullet casing here they come.
Sure they have a story, So do we have a dead pig or what's gonna tell?
Tell your hunting story, Krent nice Corinne, Yeah, well we'll get to it. I'm curious about that second shot because me and Seth we're not ready for it.
That makes three of us. Every day I vowed to like start getting real serious about hearing protection. And I'm like, I'm in the middle of being like, okay, you know, get a good that's the experience that I that the other day. I'm giving her like a motivational speech.
Where's the pig there?
It's it's uh, we just left land for now. Yeah, we'll go get in a minute. Okay, tell your hunting story, crin Well we got the first part.
Move your mic closer, as anyone who's observing on YouTube could tell that I had just abandoned my seat.
If you're not watching on YouTube, you should pause this, and yeah you should.
You should hit a computer.
Wait till you get home and watch on YouTube. Don't say that, finish this and then rewatch there you go.
There It is as I was ranging two or three different pigs, one just was like way too close and then I just kinda couldn't.
Help it and I threw a bead.
I didn't I didn't make the best shot, even though it was really really close.
It would have died.
I mean, it's I guess part of Yeah.
She's far back. We found it standing back in there. We went in there, dirt, found a little blood, and we went back in there and was standing there, and then I was trying to explain Krin where the head wasn't She apparently already knew I hadn't put my hearing protection in yet.
And that second.
Gave me a nice muscle break to the to my mostly impaired.
Earlsive I knew, I knew it was a head off to the.
Yeah.
I feel like if you if you're at the point where you're telling Krin like what she needs to be doing, she already knows.
She's already she's already doing it. Yeah, I think, Yeah, I'm going to graduate her in my mind up to that position and not like I'm not like I'm talking to my son. Yeah, I learned that real quick the other day.
And I was like, all right, when he steps out, all right, you stepped out enough for her.
This this is like a pig.
It's so much nicer the other one.
I mean, you think I think every time we come through here, there's pig.
Do you think there? They could more could come through now after post guarantee.
It nice so that even though I said, I'm not like a great uh judge of pigs, you know, I said, it look like a little bore. It's not big Old South, but it's like yesterday the one I got, I got the coveted uh pregnant sow, which is when they get body fat. Well you don't want one is nursing because they know that. And that's a stop. That's that feels like the of the three we've butchered, that feels like
the best one. This one here, that feels to me like oh yeah, like and feeling it's this is some lean country here, like I said, there's no there's no feeders here or anything. It's just lean country. And uh, the pigs here are just bones. You know, my boy got a couple one time. Man, they were just hard to like really get anything off.
But should we get the shooting iron handy? If we go? If you're trying to get.
A second, I'm good on pigs. Do you need? Do you want?
I'm good.
You got on pigs green? Yeah, we're good on pigs. Pigs old, Okay, it's a success.
Yeah, now we can do the puck.
Oh yeah, where was I? Where was I talking about? Oh? Our setups? So this is our findings so far on rattling, which we've put in a fair bit of attention to at this point. So let me recap. I got a little rattled.
Yeah, sorry, you still hear that ring?
No, not that kind of rattle. Well, I was explaining that we would at a time set up together, but they were two keyed in, so then we would try to get a little distance between the rattle and get
a little distance between the rattling and the spot. And our thinking was our thinking was we were kind of wanting to look into the wind because you were looking at areas that you hadn't already put odor to, thinking that, you know, if the ones that are behind that are down when aren't coming, so you'd look up, you know, and we're approaching into the wind too. So we're approaching
into the wind. Imagine we've disturbed what's behind us. We're now calling to things that we haven't walked through and to things that haven't gotten our odor. And so we would set up like that. What we kept finding is it's thick enough country that they're playing that wind from a little way out, and they're showing up consistently downwind, making their kind of like almost like running into a down wind position. And then they stop. Often they stop
when they see that decoy. They pump the brakes on, which is good because if you don't have the decoys, sometimes you find they just run through it, never stop. So we eventually hit on this idea where the rattler sets up down wind from the rattler. The rattler sets up up wind from the decoy. So the rattler is forty thirty forty would you say, thirty yards twenty.
Yards apparently set up, Yeah, theyware from I would say fifteen yards to thirty.
Yards, yep. The rattler is fifteen to thirty yards from the decoy, and the rattler is the decoys down wind to the rattler, and then the archer wants to set up fifteen to thirty down from the decoy, which when that buck comes in and he's and he's staring at that When that buck comes in and he's staring at that location where that rattling is or registers the decoy, he's in your zone, you know, and it sticks, so you can't you know, you can't see everything. You kind
of got to pick your lanes. But he's likely to come in and stop ten yards fifteen yards from where you're at. What's funny is you'd think, well, what happens when the buck stops between the archer and the rattler, which is exactly what we did today. I actually had to take my shot before I wanted to, because if he took another step or two, I would have shot Seth with my bow. Yeah, it would have already be
a bloody arrow. I'm glad you didn't do that. Yeah, it would have gone through the deer and then into Seth, which whatever, you know.
No big deal, a second pass through just would have went through the guts, all right.
Yeah, So but it worked beautifully. I think that that is the system for rattling in thick country, running, running and gunning, rattling in thick country. And you know what it winds up being. It's you know what, it's so similar to It's so similar to Jason phelps elk hunting strategy. The way he likes to hunt bulls is hell. If he finds a bull betted or finds a midday bowl, he likes to sneak into like where that thing is not, where that thing can't ignore it, where it can't ignore
a bugle yep. Like he's not going to go three hundred yards to check out a bugle. He's just not. He might bugle and return, but he's not gonna get up and go, and he's not gonna get out of his bed necessarily and walk. But when when you rip a bugle fifty yards, he's gonna get up. Yeah, you're in his face. And for like running and gunning rattling, all you're really trying, Like what you're doing is you're standing those bucks up and they're bounding in. I don't
know what they're coming from one hundred yards. It's an interesting strategy in any situation where if you knew you had deer, you knew you had a buck betted anywhere, Illinois, Michigan, whatever. Yep. If you knew you had a buck betted, that you might approach like that. Get in there with a buddy, get in there and be like when I rattle, get ready yeah, because we're in his zone. Yeah, and he might be like, what in the world's going on?
You know, it'd be fun to try that in other places than here, Like then.
It's not gonna be as good. It's not gonna be as good as here because there's so many deer and the buck to do this seems like there's more bucks than dose. Yeah, there's not.
It's probably equal, but there's just definitely seen more bucks and it's like prime time all that.
But it could, it would be. It would be something that I would try in other in other situations. You know, it's something I would try in other situations. Is running, gun running, gun rattling. I'm gonna trademark that turning burn rattling turning burn. Yeah.
What's also cool being on the ground that close to him, You know, it's different than being up in a tree. Being up in a tree is cool too, but there's just something about being on eye level with them. When they come in, it's pretty it's pretty cool.
You didn't see every hair that's standing up. Yeah, yeah, that's That's one of the most surprising things is if you look at the Dave Smith decoy deer decoy, it's meant to look like bristled and he it's got a really interesting texture to it. But when those deer come in and they see that decoy, it's just like they can picture a turkey coming in and seeing a strutter decoy. What's he gonna do? He's gonna yeah, he comes in.
He's like, right, he comes in at first like picture of Tom coming in where he's like, sure, hope no one tries to kill me, Sure hope, no one tries to kill me. And then all of a sudden he sees a decon and he's like, oh yeah, you know, forgets everything. Feathers pop out. Like these bucks come in, they see that decoy and they they go into full strut. Yeah. Oh it's wild, and they have such a strange They cock their ears back, they start tipping their head. Two
of them started kicking dirt even works. Two of them works scrapes or made a scrape. They're like drooling. Yeah, licking their lips man a lot, and then they like they look like my kids going into McDonald's.
They they go from like a normal a normal deer like walking in so like stop see the decoy.
And then it's like slow motion all the way in, all his hair standing out and they shiver it tay jammed down between their legs like a G string. The second time I used that, second time I use recently.
Yeah, not every day.
No, I go months of I'll talk about a G string. And I've had two occasions in the last hour. Was it related guitar? One of them one just the joke, the joke, not my joke, but a joke I heard. I was trying to I was messing with a guitar and remembered a person a former podcast guests who will not identify, saying that the only instrument I've learned how to play was ah and I was telling that, sharing that,
and then use it again. Out his tail tucked in like a G string, hair puffed out, shaking, head cocked in, a lot of lip licking, yeah, and coming at it from all angles. And here's another thing from the surprise, Like you picture two bucks fighting that they're gonna hit heads right, Well, if you have a decoy that's stationary, you see what the buck would prefer to do because the decoy can't turn to face it. So the buck kind of gets like, are you really honestly gonna let
me do this? And the buck pulls up alongside both bucks that attack the decoy because it's not turning to meet them right in the ribs. Yeah, like he's trying to stab it. Yeah, he's like, if you're really gonna let me do this, I'm going to give you all eight of my times into your rib cage. Is what both those bucks did. It's like that.
It's like the buck knows where it needs to hit the other buck to kill it.
Yep.
It's like if you just let the deer do its thing.
It's like they're like just trying to kill each other. Yeah, but no buck on his right mind and his right mind is going to actually let another buck do it. So you think they always meet head to head, But he pulls up alongside, and and they pull up alongside, and they stare and one got his head really close. But then they when they charge, there's no announcement like when they snap and go for it. It's out of the blue.
I feel like that first one kind of pulled up and almost looked the decoy in the eye for that kind of turned and like eyed eye with him and then went for it.
I think our decoy eventually started to smell too much like seth from Carry Carry when they started to get suspicious, and then we took Uh. A guy that uses the DSD deer decoys is telling me, when you kill a buck, take the tarsal glands off that buck and rub it into your decoy and then just stole the tarsal glands under the decoy. So we got some buck glands, then the dog stole them.
That would have been cool to see that reaction, like pre rubbing it and post rubbing it.
More. Yeah, there there was one buck today that would look like it was going to mix it up with that decoy. And Uh, my take on his body language is he was not buying that smell. Yeah, I agree. He got close and put his nose out and got his nose maybe three feet from that thing, and his hair just flattened out. Yeah, and then he walked off like he lost all his.
Yeah, it's it's it's tough to get that thing odorless just because you're it's like.
You really got a bear hug it to move around.
It's not that easy to carry around just because it's like a full sized deer decoy. And I would most of the time just like throw it over my shoulder because I was also carrying other stuff, rattling antlers and whatnot. But yeah, I think it if maybe if we had like some sort of spray to like spray it down real good, yep, and then rub it down with the uh with the tarsal glands.
Yeah, I think if you took a bottle of rubbing alcohol and gave it a little rub down and then tarsal glanded it, it'd be bad ass. Do they bottle that tarsal glen scent they make? They made sense, yeah, but I kind of it's just much more bad ass to rub it with your own deer man.
Yeah, it's a good if you're in a spot where you can get a doll or you like an earn a buck state or something, you know, like get the well, the dolls don't have the tarsal glands though, huh.
No stinky ones and those bucks. Oh we you know, we should clarify because you don't come on the show enough. Chris Gills here, Hi everybody, and Dirts here and Karn of course, seth. Uh did you notice how many of those bucks stank? Yeah, like when a buck comes through and then he leaves, it's his it lingers, Yeah, it lingers in the air man and that buck that I had kind of to scare because I thought I was
gonna hit us to smell it. The whole time he got close, I was like, Bud, you gotta take a bath. Just a stinky buck. Yeah.
I smelled the drop tinme buck that we were after today. I smelled him real good.
He was sanky. A lot of different personalities though, yeah, a lot of different a lot of different responses. It felt we didn't have enough a huge sample size. But it felt like bigger bucks were less likely to commit suicide. Yep, you know makes sense. More likely to check stuff out. Yeah, more likely to check stuff out, seth. You remember you're familiar with Saint Anthony to find something right, Okay, check
this story out. So when we just did the live tour, a guy told me the story that I met at the live show, and then he emailed the story because I said, email me that story because it's a great story. We're talking about what explained Saint Anthony. I had never heard of this. I honestly don't know what Saint Anthony.
He's the saying of lost items.
See, that's what it is.
I always growing up, if I lost something, my grandmother would always say, you gotta say, Saint Anthony, say anthy, police come around. Something's been lost and cannot be found. And if you say that, it's like a little prayer type thing.
Oh mokw something.
And if you say that, you'll you'll find whatever you're looking for.
Well, let me back you up on that. This guy uh long, it's kind of the convoluted story.
But the.
Quick of it is, they were out checking trail camps a couple hours from home, lose the truck keys. Oh so this guy and his body loser truck keys. And they look and look and look and look for the truck keys, trying to call someone. And you're proposing to their buddies that like you, how about you make a four hour drive.
Oh it's a tough sell.
Yeah. Anyways, they go all the way back to the where the trail camp was and the tree stand was. He says, real thick grass and vegetation back and forth. Can't find it, and he does the the Anthony prayer. The guy that didn't lose the guy accompanying the guy that lost his keys, that's who's telling me the story. He's accompanying his buddy. His buddy's lost his keys. He does his Saint Anthony prayer. They're looking, and all of
a sudden, the guy's phone rings. The guy that lost his keys phone rings, so he stops to converse on the phone, and while he's conversing on the phone, realizes that there's his keys. Now, who do you think it was that called the man his buddy Anthony? Exactly? Man, God is good? Exactly? Oh man, is that? I heard you? Exactly? And I know hold honor that buddy? Ye something about oh yeah, something about that. At the end of this episode,
you are going to hear chapter seven for free. You're gonna hear chapter seven of me Eater's American History, The Long Hunters.
I'm very excited about this.
Oh you should be.
Oh, I'm like, from what I've heard, very excited.
It's perhaps one of the things I used to tell people. The thing I'm most proud of that I made My best work was my Buffalo book because I was at the height of my powers as a writer, because I didn't have any other thing going on in my life. That's all I was doing is just for two years, I just worked on that book. My life was really simple, no kids, wasn't married. It was just different back then. A big old bull go out and grab hold of big old bold that.
I actually thought that those were the utters.
That's just one. He's like, he's only got one utter. So uh so, oh it does got to Yeah, he's got to know. Damn, he's posting for us. Yeah, so uh got's a stout looking critter in this thorn country where so long hunters. Uh. It's pretty. It's really good. It's really good. I believe it. It's narrated. It's audio only, so it's not that you people shold understand. It's not a print book. It's an audio original narrated by myself and Clay Newcombe, exhaustively researched by doctor Randall.
I'm also excited that you and Clay are narrating it because when you hear like audiobooks or whatever, and somebody else is reading it. You talked about that one more it's like it just kind of it can be a real good or bad thing for the story.
Here's what we found in working on it is that's not a close I feel we should get predator call out and bring it in here. So that's a good point. That's I wouldn't worry about that yet.
Tell what was I saying?
Oh uh, you know books, A book that's meant to that's written to be read, is best read. It's best that you read it. Something that you're listening to is just different. So when we made the Long Hunters, like media's of American history is meant to be presented, it's meant to be read, it's meant to be it's meant to be listened to. It was like built specifically to be listened to, which kind of makes it special. And we do all the narration on it. It's really good.
So we're gonna put chapter seven, which is called Gearing Up. It's about the equipment used by the Long Hunters at the end of this episode to further titillate you and prompt you to go and wherever you buy your books and pick your copy up, download your copy for listening. Cats and Schizophrenia.
This is not a This wasn't ready for that. That was not kind of like that gunshot.
An academic study just came out, I.
Felt when I saw this article, I really thought it was meant for Steve's eyeballs.
Cat Are you ready for this? You cat man?
No? Very far from a cat man?
You catman?
Dog man?
No cat man here I have, Well, my wife has a cat. You're a cat man. I'm certainly not a cat man.
You come around.
Yeah, he's a cat man. I don't touch the cat. Well, seth, you might be curious to hear this, or not curious. You might be alarmed to hear this. As a cat what happened? As a cat man, I had a cat named the cat. We had a cat named Maud when I was a kid, and Maud had its babies and my dad's boot and ate them all. Oh, we had a cat named Fig and I was like, tell the story that my dad we tamed a stray cat. My dad tamed it by leaving fish heads out for it,
cleaning fish and leave the heads out. And he loved this cat. I don't know wise only cat. Well, he liked that cat mad too, But he brought Fig over to his buddy who is a hog farmer, and this hog farmer has castrated thousands of hogs. He bought fig over so that that guy could castraight fig. And they put they cut a little hole in a gunny sack, put fig in that gunnysack and snaked his little berries out of the hole in that gunny sack. Well, the
cat fought him off. They he's castraight on hundreds of hogs. Couldn't castraight that cat. That cat got out of there were just a little nick and his scrub him and never got fixed because there's no way there. My desk just spend money on that. If his body couldn't do it, it wasn't so that cat just like won the battle and pro creation. And that cat would leave for sometimes he'd go on like a ten day hiatus. Oh yeah, and then he'd come right down the stairs come back home.
I had I had an old barn cat named wild Bill, and he would do the same thing. He'd go on like two week walkabouts gone, he'd be gone, he'd come back. One time I caught him in a foothold by accident in the fox set.
Oh, I caught my own cat one time.
I let him out, didn't phase him. He'd still go on walkabouts with a little limp.
We caught our own cat, and we caught our own cat trapping. Was that in a possum set on a foot trap? Possum set? Caught our own cat in a possum set. Let him out and he just followed us around. He's like, what you guys are gonna show up? Let him out there? He just tag along with the oction. Uh oh, anyways, listen to this thing. Cat ownership and schizophrennier related disorders in psychotic like experiences correlate, correlate to cat ownership. Why it doesn't surprise me? Why you ask?
Because of something that you may have learned about listening to this very podcast, the Meat Eater podcast. We did an episode on cat scratch fever. Yeah, because we had a guy on. Danny Bolton came on. Was that shit called again?
That's why pregnant ladies shouldn't clean litter boxes? Right when they say that if you're pregnant, don't you.
Have a cat cox ol Danny Bolton got toxoplasmosis from eating raw I can't remember if it was goat or lamb. It was goat. Goat, raw goat. And so there's a ton of feral cats in Hawaii, so that cat shit had somehow gotten on whatever and he ate it. And toxoplasmosis has been linked to jackals. No, what is it jackals? Oh? Or is it what's that other wild ass looking dog? In Africa hyena hyenas Hyenas that have toxoplasmosis are more
likely to be killed by lions. There's risky yet, people that you're more likely to die in an automobile accident. If you've had toxoplasmosis. It removes your fear, but it also apparently removes your ability to not can impact your psychological state, and toxoplasmosis can link to schizophrenia related outcomes. So when you hear it, when New Jersey cat ladies come to mess with you, oh.
There's a reason why they're by.
So this is after you're ready through the conclusions. This is after they recover from it. Our findings support and association between cat exposure and an increased risk of broadly defined schizophrenia related disorders. However, the findings related to pl e as an outcome or mixed. There is need for more high qualities. Just never mind all that. I like to stick with the narrative. I don't want to read all the disclaimers because I want to paint a damning
portrait of cat ownership. It's like mainstream media. But in all fairness, they say there is a need for more high quality studies in this field because there's some uncertainty. But still, do you.
Do you know how cats get like because not every cat has toxic plasmosis or you don't get so like, what is it?
Outdoor cats are more I would imagine that cats that have more of a chance to interact with cats.
Yeah.
Yeah, if you nabbed a cat out of a you know, right out of the womb and never let it see another cat, it's probably had a little likelihood of get in toxle plasmos. Yeah. I'm a big fan of the book You want to see another herd change? Yeah, I'm a big fan of the book Life and Death at the Mouth of the Muscle Shell. Oh love that book.
And in an area that now sits underneath the water because of an impoundment, but it was a journal of a guy who spent time at the mouth of the where the muscleshell flows into the Missouri but like I said, now it's flooded lays at the bottom of Fort Peck Reservoir. And I had talked on the podcast before about the amount of just bloodshed in that book. Well, a guy read it, and he made a guy an audience member, read it and built a spreadsheet where he could track
all the killings. Mm hm you want to hear some totals. Yeah, when you read Life and Death at the Mouse of the Muscle Shell, you will read about one thousand, four hundred and seventy four dead wolves s wolf because in that book, they're always going out and lace and buffalo carcasses with strychnine yep, wolfing, and they'll be like, we went to Bob's bait and had twenty four one day. I can't remember what tribe it was. One day, one of the planes tribes comes into the fort and they
are mighty pissed because their dogs all got killed. M oh yeah yeah, and they're like, stop putting that poison out, killed all their dogs. Four hundred and seventy four wolves, four hundred and sixty eight analope one hundred and twenty eight buffalo one hundred and twenty one Indians thirty four whites, among many other things. That are the deaths of which are described in Life and Death of the Mouth of the Muscleshell. So that's the number of deaths that occur
in his time in his journal. Wow, they did. Yeah, and they'd be like we got onto three and everybody shot a bunch and couldn't find anything. Yeah, they killed a lot of ground. Six got to.
What uh what years does that take place during that journal?
Uh, he's there in the late in the early eighteen seventies.
It's something on the Muscleshell is hunting this fall up there, and it's that kind of like more north of Great Falls. It's like kind of you know, sage brushy gumbo type landscape, big old griz print in the bottom of.
This grizz track. Yeah, hunter, Yeah, show you the picture. It's kind of freaky, really, Yeah, to be there. He notices too that some you can tell some stuff about migrations back then in uh so a real spike and antelope. There's an in November eighteen seventy one, so one hundred and three years before I was born. They killed two hundred and twenty three antelope out of that Fort November. Wow, I remember that part of the book, and it was
a big deal. Everybody's going up and killing all the antelope. Thousands of antelope hanging out by the fort. Thank you Craig for sending that in. Yeah, that's cool. Now here's another little stats thing, a lot of stats today. We had our buck Ratland stats. Those stats. This kind of blew my mind. So there's a deal. In Wisconsin they have a DNR website the tracks dogs killed by wolves. Okay, this is this is pretty crazy. So it starts. It must be when they start being able to have the
running season starting in July eight. So, for instance, July eight, twenty three, Burnett County, one hunting dog killed seven year old female blue tick trailing hound. Okay, that's July eight. July twenty Clark County, one hunting dog killed and one hunting dog injured. Walker trailing hounds. That was July twenty. July twenty one, Lincoln County, one hunting dog killed six
year old female redbone trailing hound. The next day, July twenty two, Bayfield County, two hunting dogs killed a four year old male walker trailing hound and an eight year old female red bone trailing hound. Seven days later, Burnett County. One hunting dog killed five year old male blue tick trailing hound. Four days later, August third, one hunting dog killed three year old plot trailing hound. Why are they getting killed in the summer because it's wolves killing dogs running bears.
Oh, that's the bare season.
Now. I don't know if this is true, but someone's pointing out cutting the hazard of cutting your hounds loose near bait piles that wolves hitting are hinting and frequenting those bait piles. And you're cutting your hounds loose near bait piles, and it meant that thing starts cutting out, baying or trailing. Yeah, those wolves are pounding it so up. So this thing, I'm looking at tracks up till this thing. I'm looking at tracks up till December. Okay. Now the
running tally so in Wisconsin in these counties. In Wisconsin, twenty five bear killed and seven bare hounds injured between July and October twenty twenty three in northern Wisconsin. Wow, jeez, and that's something. Yeah, that's that's yeah. That's a number, man, that's a big number. That's just surprising every couple of days all and it peaks like in that September October and then trails off obviously in December, pounding on them trailing dogs. Dang, I don't even know what I think
about that. Yeah, I don't know. Trying to think of what I think about that. I can see people saying, if you like your dog's lot, I wouldn't turn them out on numbars. And I could see someone saying a lot of wolves. Yeah, I don't even know if I want to get back into this thing about the bird name it now?
Oh god, I can see a quick tidbit the well, I'm curious about it now that you mentioned it. What do you mean now that you mentioned you did this bird naming thing?
And did you listen to the show?
Not this one?
This one?
Which episode is it?
Recently?
You and cal and and I was on your side.
The Ornithological Society in the US has moved to rename seventy bird species. Now they will periodically rename a bird. For instance, as I pointed out, everyone knows there's a blue grouse, but the Ornithological Society determined that blue grouse was capturing actually two distinct species of grouse. So there became out of blue became dusky and sooty. Yeah, makes sense. Everyone knows that the old squaw duck, that's a derogatory term,
and many people find that term offensive. So the Ornithological Society came in and surgically took that duck and renamed the long tail duck. Now they can't tell you what the hell to call the dog, but it's just their take on it. It's not you know, they're not like the God of birds. But the Ornithological Society moved to form try to formally rename the old squaw to the long tail, therefore moving it away. Just like I don't know, seven or eight squaw peaks, seven or eight, I don't know.
Is that probably more squaw creeks right got new names? And I used to live in Missoula, Montana. One of the primary peaks you'd see looking mostly west would be Squaw Peak, and I remember, maybe as in the late nineties early two thousands, it became Sacagawea Peak. There's a Squaw Creek near where I live now that became storm Castle, which seems like something from the Simpsons.
Storm Castle.
I remember he had storm King was his snowplow.
Oh those plow king, Like he was mister plow, and then Barney got into it and he was the plow. He was the competitor at home.
Yeah, like storm Castle. It seems like if you if you've got one of those really bad realtors, you know those realtors it does when they do a subdivision and then name it for what it replaced. So if there used to be like a bunch of elk meadows, you'd mow that ship down, pave it over, build a bunch of houses, and be like, I'm gonna call this subdivision
olk Meadows. I'm gonna call this subdivision cattle Country. So yeah, storm Castle, which seems like a like a make believe white castle, like little cheeseburger, like a place that has a name like we used to hunt an area called Froze to Death. I'm like, that's a legit name. You can tell that some that area is Frozen Death, Hanging Woman Creek. Guess, let me guess storm Castle.
I mean there's no castles your storming.
I got friends that just can't I got friends that can't stomach it, and they just and they can't call it that.
Yeah, uh, where was I.
I felt that this?
Oh?
So they now have done the big play and they're like, no more surgical renaming of things. We're gonna just rename seventy birds. Any bird named after like any bird named after a white European, regardless of what that person stood for or did, gets a new name. And I felt, and still feel that one it's a publicity grab. Two it's a lot. It's not surgical. It's just it's blunt.
It's like it just it just reeks to me of it reeks to me of a pr someone pointed out, and ornithologists pointed out that where this movement is getting some resistance is the international ornithology community, who feels that this is a distinctly American idea.
Yeah, do you have an example of a bird?
No, just go listen to the episode, Chris.
I will, and the listeners should too if they haven't heard it already. So I like that pitch.
I'm sure there's birds out there named after. To give you an example, the Stellar's J will no longer be according to these guys, the Stellar's J will cease to be the Stellar's J. They'll probably like the iridescent purple J. But when which is great, they should have named it that. I wish they were named that from the start. Yeah, but at this point it's there.
They probably named it Stellar's Jake because some dude named Stellar still last name.
Because these dudes used to run around name and everything after themselves. Stellar did a j he did a sea lion, he did an eagle. He doesn't named anything after himself. Was Was he a bad dude? I don't know. It's just fallen out of favor now, like no one names a new bird their own name, But it was the practice in the eighteen hundreds that was a common practice that you would name that. If you scientifically described a species,
you would name it. Now the rationale I said, I wasn't going to revisit this whole thing, and here I am. The rationale is they feel that new birders, new birders who aren't of who are not of European descent, who aren't a male of western European descent, that new aspiring birders would be turned off to birding when they saw this crazy, beautiful purple bird feeding on white mark pine cones, white marked pine nuts in the rocky mountains, and they
might be like, good gracious, what a gorgeous bird. I'm so happy to learn about that bird. And they look and be like Stellar's jail jay, I'm getting out of this birding. I think the I'm done burden. I think the people that and I don't buy that are.
Behind this and using all this energy to go through and change the names of seventy some birds just because they're named after dudes or people. If they took that energy and put that into preserving habitat for these birds to live in, we would all be living in a better world.
That's my two cents on it. I yeah, I just I was with them, and now I just think it's yeah, I'm not with them. I do no, no, no, I understood the surgical, occasional renaming. I just think that, like the seventy thing, I just felt like felt like a publicity.
So yeah, if it's named after something that's like offensive to someone, obviously.
I think that. I think that's that that was the premise that there are certain people who might or do find.
Offended just by the fact of offended by the ethnicity of someone that named a bird.
That's that's very possible because I don't know for myself the full you know, seventy that have been that had been listed.
That's what they're saying. They're saying that not that you're offended by a specific thing that you'd look and be like, it's offensive to me that that individual's distant relatives hailed from Western Europe.
If that's that, that's kind of the definition of reverse racism in my opinion.
Yeah, you wanna know more something about birds? Sure? Now, every boy dreams of being uh making his uh not every boy, mini boys dream of one day growing up and being like a trapper commercial you know, hunter commercial fishermen like you make your living out hunt. Yep. Well, these fellas in Montana got in that business all the wrong way. Uh. They got into the golden and bald eagle. Oh I right about this business?
Oh yeah, right, bro, these dudes did some It was an orchestrated thing.
Yeah, they were big time.
Over a number of years.
Right. Yeah, So they were selling on the black market at pretty good prices, like surprisingly good prices. Speaking of birds, Uh to you guys, I don't need I don't want to give their name. I mean you can find their name they're in Montana, but you know, I don't want to get their name. Uh. Three thousand, six hundred is the number that they're indicted on killing for the mark commercial market three thousand, six hundred golden and bald eagles.
Now social media. I remember one time we were in Missouri, No, we were in Kentucky and I met a game warden in the game. We were talking about being out in the field, and I remember he was one of the first people that ever expressed to me any unease about suppressors. And he was talking about man that, uh you know, I was actually talking to new handful of game wardens. I can't remember which one said what, but one of these game wardens was saying, I really rely on that
crack of a rifle. He said, I'll be out in my tree stand and off in the distance, and he'd be like something about that ain't right, and he said I'll be down out of my tree heading over there and catching poachers. And so he's like with suppressors, I worry about losing that tool. And a game ward and said, I don't need to go into the field anymore. I have Facebook.
So he gains more time in his tree stand though, yeah, he can Facebook in his trees.
So this guy had made This guy had tex so this is not social media, but he had text messages people. Uh, he had text message to a guy, you know, like basically, what are you doing? I'm out here committing felonies?
Oh yeah, yeah, they're texted them but they knew it man.
And another message she said he was out on a killing spree. They illegally sold the on the black market the United States and elsewhere. They ran their scheme from January twenty fifteenth through March twenty twenty one. They sold wings and tails.
Does it say how they got busted? Was it like a sting? M?
I can't remember now?
What are people doing with the wings and tails?
Just three hundred and fifty bucks a pop? They were making up to three hundred and fifty dollars. Oh my god, that's per bird.
That sounds low, a little low, no knowing a like committing a felony and you're selling it for three point fifty with inflate.
Yeah, but you could probably, Yeah, they're probably. I mean I don't I'd have to spend more time on it. But I mean if you got on the if you got on the right deer carcass or two, if if you sit down and shoot a thousand bucks or the eagles, Yeah, and all you're doing is like for processing. You're taking the tail, the wings off. It's dude, Uh, that strikes me as real easy money.
Well, yeah, he could probably go set a bunch of legholds around the carcass and have a thousand bucks where the eagles sitting there egles to check it, you know.
I mean, and I don't want to say I don't when people taking the wrong way. But if that guy set up shop Southeast Alaska, Oh, he'd buy a private plane yep, on.
A dumpster in southeast Alaska. He didn't even have to.
So from April thirty, twenty twenty through March thirteenth, twenty one, that's a long time, okay, they sold or offered to sell the parts of whole birds, the parts or whole birds from two bald eagles and eleven golden eagles. One of these guys would travel from the state of Washington out to an Indian reservation in Montana to shoot in and around a reservation area.
For whatever reason, I think one of the guys lived on the reservation.
He did. In one instance, on March thirteenth, twenty twenty one, the two men quote returned to a previously killed deer lure in eagles. All right, So they'd killed deer lure in eagles facing up to eighteen years behind bars, one of them eighteen years and one of them facing up to fifteen years behind bars. Good surprise, that's it. Yeah, but you know what I meant. It would be a lot worse if they hadn't been delisted.
Because oh yeah, yeah, yeah, oh.
Do you know what I'm saying? If they had done it in the seventies, if they had done in the seventies, it'd be So it's not a federal offense.
It's probably multiple felonies. Right, It's probably felony to kill it, and then felony to sell it, and then there's probably you know, if you're going international, there's probably thousands.
That's a good question. Are they in federal or not federal?
How many felonies? Seems like there's a lot of felonies, A lot of felonies. When I think of a felony, I think of a lot more time than that.
Yeah, where are they indicted? O? Man depends on a felony.
A couple of them deer coming in felt like they're coming into sting.
Seemed like yeah, like coming on and be like no it's federal. So they're in a federal It's it's a federal deal. You know why it's federal because it'd be Lazy Act, right, because it'd be federal anyways, because they're crossing the state lines to commit a crime automatical nation. Well,
because of it, seems like you should be federal. Yeah, well it would be picked up as federal because when you commit a state wildlife crime, when you cross state lines to break a state's wildlife law, it becomes federal. Like if you kidnap someone and drive them across if you were to kidnap someone in Texas and drive into Oklahoma, you're now that's a federal charge. It ceases to be
state and goes federal. So because of the Lacey Act, they're moving wildlife parts across state lines and it became a federal US District court. One of them was a shooter and one of them was a shipper. One of them was from the Yeah, one of them lived on the Flathead Indian Reservation. Hmm.
I wonder if they thought they'd get around it somehow by being on the reservation.
I had to read more. If he's a tribal member, they might have thought they were covered by something and don't. I don't really know why they're not. Yeah, we'll do a better job reporting on this next time we're out, next time we're out hog hunting.
Yeah, I haven't seen any other things come in your ears?
Everyone there like the way. Yeah, and then they're all they're all out left over there a couple hundred yards.
Recent news story about the schizophrenia, cat ownership and skirts of schizophrenia we recently covered a we found out. I've been real interested in people dropping stuff into toilet vaults and then getting going in there and getting stuck in there, like National Forest Spots, fishing access site, magnet.
Oh, that's where the most have happened.
So I'm gonna say this. I'm gonna say to you, Chris. I'm gonna say, did you listen to the episode where we had the guys on who rescued someone from a vault toilet? And you're gonna say, well, no, not that one.
I had not listened to. I don't do a lot of podcasting, So I got a fresh baby that might have preceded her though no.
It did so again, uh uh, there's a there's a high pro a case of international significance where someone got stuck in a vault toilet and got rescued. Then later a woman got stuck in a vault toilet trying to fetch her watch out of there, and they couldn't figure out how to get her out because they were trying to take her up through the toilet seat. Oh but one of the responding officers had listened to the podcast, so he knew. He's like, hey, I listened to a
podcast about this. You can actually remove the pedestal and fish the person right out of the hole beneath the pedestal. Oh, yeah, saved the day. We've saved. I don't know how many liyes? Can I keep expecting presidential commendation? Dude, Metal of Freedom. Someday I'm gonna be down there at the State of the Union to dress and like Trump's gonna be like tonight we're honoring, going to be It's gonna be us about TURNI quits and how to get people out of
vault toilets. So there's then there's like a rash of these vault toilet tragedies near tragedies. Uh, so we're going to close because oh, back to this, so we realize some I don't know who found this guy. There's a guy that sings the news. He takes news stories and to write songs so you don't have to read the news. You can just listen to his songs where he covers the news with piano accompaniments.
Yeah, piano news.
Reads piano news. So he writes the song about the news story, puts the news story up on social media on one screen, and the the other half is him performing his song about the news. So he did the news on this vault toilet issue. And he says it starts with him saying if I dropped my watch into some public excretion, I say that's it for me. Dog Uh. And he has done one and we're gonna close with it.
Uh.
Our license on the very controversial ride On by Christopher Denny has expired, and KRINN rather than renewing our rather than forking over our few thousand bucks that it caused us to have Chris Denny's right on for a year, we're gonna switch to only using music that our listeners write and perform.
We've gotten a ton of submissions already.
Chester the Midwester we use some dog dirt and dirt send one over.
Dirt, and if you're not all musical, you could do like spoken word poetry too.
The music is I do like I started listening to that day, Henry rollins, I take that back, everybody.
We need the music, so for twenty so for twenty twenty four, we're only using listener sourced music to close the show. And we're not going to tell you who's doing it every time, but every time you'll find it the show liner notes and we're only telling you who's doing Knox, We're kicking the whole thing off. This is the first one right mention this. We commissioned it. We sent him, Hey, you like singing about the news, why don't you sing about cats and schizophrenia? So he composed
original music. If you don't like to read, you know though, you already heard the story, so we just talked about it. Let's just say you hadn't, or you skip that part here. Now you can hear the news saying to you, oh.
But he riffs off it, and you know Signamese cats are involved in this.
Yeah, oh wow, yeah, schizophrenia, Siamese cats. You see what this is going on? So, uh dig in, We're gonna go gut Krin's Hog.
And stick around for the chapter Oh.
And after the song? Yeah, Oh, shoot man, how many people are we gonna lose because they're gonna hear the end of music and turn it off and not already told them about it.
Yeah, just stick around, you gotta stick around. The Hunter thing is gonna be good.
Man. Do Read's Piano music, and then stay tuned for chapter seven of me Eater's American History, The Long Hunters seventeen sixty one to seventeen seventy five, and remind you what comes after seventeen seventy five, The Revolution seventeen seventy six. Yeah, So if you're wondering, like why those age brackets, you will find out when you listen that. Why what did Daniel Boone and the boys who kind of deer? Why did their era end with the Revolution? You don't know.
I have no Chris damn sure don't know what I found out about him today, But I'm not gonna tell because I don't know if his mom listens, Does she listen more than you, because if not, she's not going to hear it.
I don't know if she knows what a podcast is.
She's like, I didn't listen to that episode. Alright, stay tuned for reads. What's it called? Reads?
Pianos Reads?
Piano news? Chapter seven, Long Hunters, Thank you guys, got some? He ain't got a twin thinks now hearing voices, this can't say to breathe? And who's that other guy in my house watching me? Maybe I can't do ball?
The last time I think I fought in North am I going in sade?
This really?
Is this a fantasy?
How come I bought that cat? Now there's me my hear cat owners saying, I think I'm lost my bad Based the pony studies, I think they're probably right Saturdays.
If I don't, If I don't, please, I'm gonna need some pett and balls.
It's their paint.
Forty five cat came on, thinking, bye, are you okay?
The straight jacket's only come in light? Chapter seven? Gearing up. Becoming a successful long hunter required more than steely nerves, the hunger for adventure, and an intimate knowledge of the land, escape, and wildlife of the first Far West. Without the right tools, you were not gonna last long. In seventeen sixty nine, a large party of long hunters, some twenty or more, assembled in the frontier settlements along the New River in
western Virginia. The men had plans to hunt the Cumberland River drainage on the far side of the Cumberland Gap. You'll recognize some of their names, Casper Mansker, the Bledsoe brothers, and John Baker. Two years earlier, Baker had been on that ill fated trip to New Orleans where his party boded their hides down the Mississippi, sold them off, and got robbed of their cash on the way home. Despite
the obvious risks, the call of opportunity prevailed. Setting out in June, this newly assembled party took the Warriors Path across the headwaters of the Tennis River, moving through the Cumberland Gap to the Cumberland River. They then traveled downstream to where Meadow Creek flowed in. That's where they'd set up their station camp in a spot known as Price's Meadow. If you're looking for that place today, it's on the
south side of the Cumberland River. You can just look for a historical marker near Rubbing Bucks Barbecue.
The party broke up into groups of three or four hunters, and they got after it. Every five weeks, the groups planned to return to their station camp with their harvests of hides loaded on their horses. The hunt was successful. Within a few months, the party hit amassed some five hundred white tailed deerskins, but one day a group of twenty five Cherokees discovered their camp while the men were out hunting. The cherokees stole the long hunter's cash and
some of their gunpowder. They also took off with some clothing, pots and kettles.
With what little gunpowder the long hunters had left, continuing to hunt would have been feudle, so Isaac bledsoel rowed back to the settlements with some of the men to resupply. Upon their return, the hunt resumed. The men hunted until April of seventeen seventy, when half the party hauled a pack train of deerskins and furs back east.
Casper Mansker and the remainder of the long hunters stayed behind. They decided to build two boats and two trapping canoes, which would have been made from bark sown over a frame of lashed saplings. They also made use of a third boat that had been abandoned on site, perhaps by French hunters or traders. The hunters loaded up their hides and meet and gear, and started to head down river to the colonial settlement of Natchez on the Mississippi. This
was an incredible journey of hundreds of river miles. The men would have canoed down the Cumberland River to the Ohio, down the Ohio to the Mississippi, and down the Mississippi to Natchez. At French Lick, the present day site of Nashville, Tennessee, they saw what was, by all accounts, the largest number of buffalo and wild game they had ever encountered in
any one place. After killing a few of the animals and using their hides to cover their open boats, they continued downriver until they reached the mouth of the Cumberland.
At this point, the men were dealing with some spoilage in the bear meat that they'd harvested back in the Cumberland River country, not surprising given the length of their journey and this being the warmer months of the year, so they decided to convert some of the bear meat into bear greece. To do this, they would have discarded the lean red meat and retained just the fat. They then simmer the fat in kettles to separate the oil
or grease from the solids. The valuable grease would have likely been sewn into sacks made of deer, elk, or buffalo hide. During this process of rendering bear grease, they get robbed again. A war party at Chickasaws makes off with their guns and ammunition. At this point, you'd be justified in assuming that this long hunting party would come to an end. I mean enough bad luck is enough, right,
But it does not come to an end. The Chickasaws didn't take the white men's oils or furs, so the hunters continue downstream, and they eventually are able to sell their skins and bear grease in Natches. After the sale, some of the men commence their journey homeward, but Casper Mansker stays a while in Natches, likely because he seems to have gotten sick. Upon recovering, he too sets out for home, traveling upriver in a boat with John Baker.
The two men events actually join up with a party of horse traders who are heading over land to Georgia. Mansker and Baker then break off from the horse traders and cut north through East Tennessee and then finally onto the New River, likely arriving in late summer or early autumn after more than a year away from home. Now that is what you would call a long hunt.
There's a lot to take in about that story. One of the main things that might have surprised you was the way the Native American hunters took some supplies from the hunting party that they saw as trespassers, but they didn't take everything from them. In the following chapter, we'll be talking about why something like that might happen. But what we're gonna dive into here is the critical nature of those supplies and equipment used by the long hunters,
from guns and ammunition to knives and hatchets. We're going to cover the gear that allowed them to do what they did.
We'll begin with one of the most iconic pieces of the long hunter's kit, the Kentucky Rifle, also known as the Kentucky Long Rifle. Not only is it central to their adventures, it remains one of the most legendary guns in American history. The rifles weren't just renowned for their function and aesthetic. These were the first uniquely American firearms. We're gonna get into some finer details about these guns, but let's first cover the very basics the long hunters
hunted with flintlock muzzleloading rifles. We'll get to the flintlock part in a few minutes, but let's first look at what specifically a muzzleloader is by talking about what it is not. If you look at your standard rifle or shotgun that you're gonna use for this year's deer or duck season, you'll see that the shell is loaded into the breach of the gun, meaning it's loaded into the end of the barrel that you're standing at, not the end where the bullet comes out. Well, that's the defining
feature of a muzzleloader. A muzzle loader is loaded from the muzzle end or the front opening of the barrel, and these guns weren't loaded with complete cartridges that combined primer gunpowder and a lead projectile in a brass casing. Instead, the load, or shell as we call it, was assembled by the hunter inside the barrel. First, a hunter would pour a charge of loose gunpowder down the barrel. They could measure it out or just take a good guess
and free pour it. Then they'd take the bullet, which was a simple lead ball, and wrap it in a patch, a greased piece of fabric or thin leather that cradled the ball like how a Hershey's kiss is cradled in its wrapping of aluminum foil. That package of ball and patch would be shoved down the barrel with a ramrod. It was a pretty tight fit. Now, it's important to keep in mind that all Kentucky long rifles were muzzleloaders,
but not all muzzleloaders were Kentucky long rifles. And it's also important to note that the long hunters journeying into Kentucky wouldn't have said they were carrying Kentucky long rifles. That name didn't take hold until later in the seventeen eighties, and in fact it was something of a misnomer then, as the rifles would be more accurately associated with Pennsylvania,
where they took on their defining characteristics. You'll actually see them referred to as Pennsylvania rifles here and there in the historical record.
So this can all be a bit confusing whether you call them Kentucky rifles or Pennsylvania rifles. These iconic weapons derived from a pres that assessor weapon that arrived in North America with distinctly European roots. That early gun, the Jaeger, was shaped by a combination of two key design features. One was German and it's called rifling. Now, we mentioned this word a minute ago, and it's important, as rifling
is where the word rifle comes from. Rifling refers to the spiral grooves that are cut into the inside or bore of a rifle's barrel. Historians disagree on how this innovation came to be, but regardless, rifling is what gives a slug or projectile it's spin.
Just like a good spiral pass with a football.
A spinning projectile is stable in flight and thus much more accurate. We just explained how a musloading rifle is loaded with the fully assembled load of powder, patch and ball crammed down the end of the barrel. Well, the only thing left to do in order to make that gun go boom is somehow ignite the gunpowder. That's where the term flintlock comes into play. The flintlock ignition system was a design tradition that came from the French, or rather it exploded out of Paris.
With much enthusiasm.
This ignition system replaced earlier cruder mechanisms designed for the same purpose. The flintlock system featured a spring loaded hammer that was fitted with a small chunk of flint held in place by a clamp. Pull the rifle's trigger, and the hammer crashed down on a hinged piece of steel that flung open to reveal a small pan of gunpowder. In a synchronized bit of wonderment, the flint hitting the steel created a flash of sparks that landed right into
the now exposed pan of powder, igniting it. The flames from this ignition would jump through a touch hole in the side of the barrel and ignite the much bigger load of gunpowder. Within bang, a rather boom out comes the lead ball spin smooth and fast thanks to the rifling. As an aside, when you hear somebody say a flash in the pan to describe something short lived or less than promised, that's where the same comes from, a little blast of powder that failed to ignite the main charge.
When German gunsmiths, the pioneers of rifling, adopted the French flintlock, the result was this rifle known as a yagger. Now, for you connoisseurs of yagermeister, that's German for hunter. So how do we get a uniquely American gun. From this European lineage, well Yaggers came to North America in the seventeen hundreds with the German immigrants who would settle in
the Lancaster Valley of Pennsylvania. Lancaster became the largest western town in Colonial America, and as it grew and as folks migrated from there down through the Shanandoah Valley, those gunsmithing traditions spread. Now, keep in mind these guns. Back then, these muzzleloaders were entirely handmade. Every spring and screw and piece of metal, no matter how small, was built by
the hands of an individual gunsmith. There are an infinite number of little details we could get into about this process, but here's just one. The barrel started out as flat pieces of metal, basically long flat bars that were actually hammered into cylinders. The hole in the middle of one of these cylinders would be smoothed, polished, and rifled. Will explain that in a minute too, with nothing but crude
hand tools. The making of these rifles was an intricate expression of the finest craftsmanship, and these designs evolved not in a board room or in the R and D lab of some company, but in the hands of individual gunsmiths working on individuals guns informed by the feedback of individual customers.
Two further innovations took place that would turn the Jaeger into the Kentucky rifle, and they both happened in the New World. One was the lengthening of the barrel, which would typically be forty to forty eight inches long. The iconic long barrel gave the charge of powder more time to full ignite, increasing the SHOT's velocity, and the longer trajectory out of the barrel also increased accuracy by stabilizing
the projectile's path. The second innovation that defined the Kentucky rifle was a shrinking of the bore size, which meant the gun fired a smaller projectile. European guns at the time traditionally shot larger projectiles up to seventy five caliber or more, meaning a sphere of lead about three quarters
of an inch wide. For a long hunter in particular, there was an obvious advantage to the smaller It helped reduce the amount of powder and lead they needed to carry with them into the back country.
Back in those days, they weren't talking in the same caliber nomenclatures used today. Their common unit of measurement for bore diameter was how many balls for a particular rifle could be produced from a single pound of lead, which would translate roughly to how many deer could be killed with a single pound of lead. Think of a modern day conversation about fuel economy and cars. Someone might say
my car gets twenty five miles to the gallon of gas. Well, a long hunter might note that his gun got forty eight shots to the pound of lead. One source described Pennsylvania rifles in general as firing quote a ball no larger than thirty six to the pound, which would be a fifty three caliber meaning a bore diameter of zero point five to three inches, so just barely over a
half inch wide. For comparison's sake, a roughly forty five caliber rifle, which was preferred by most long hunters, would get about forty to forty eight balls per pound of lead. I'll point out that this ball's per pound of lead measurement is actually where our contemporary shotgun gauge system that we use today comes from. When you hear a shotgun described as a twelve gage or twenty gauge that's a reference to how many lead balls of a particular diameter
you can make out of a pound of lead. Meaning, if you cast twelve spherical lead balls with the diameter matching the diameter of the barrel of your twelve gage shotgun, they would add up to one pound. Likewise, if you divide a single pound of lead into twenty equal spheres, those spheres would be the bore diameter of your twenty gage shotgun.
The long hunters in their contemporaries thought of rifles and ammunition in this way balls per pound, because they weren't carrying the set quantity of round balls or bullets into the back country. They were casting these projectiles themselves out of bars of lead. This was the most efficient means of transporting all of the ammunition they'd need in the first far West. They hauled their lead in bars that
weighed several pounds each. Then to form bullets, they would cast that lead into round projectiles over a campfire by pouring molten lead into a cast. Achieving some level of consistency was important. Bullets needed to be smooth and relatively clean of creases, seams, and pitting. We can only imagine that casting bullets must have been a frequent activity at the station camps where the long hunters deposited their skins
and stored their supplies. Stores of lead and melting ladles which they'd used to melt and pour their lead were communal gear that was left at camp, but each individual hunter would have had a bullet cast that matched his own rifle. Keep in mind these weapons were all handmade by individual gunsmiths, and each had their own unique irregularities and specifications.
Another chore required to keep their guns running would have been napping or shaping flint from fist sized pieces of suitable rock chirt or obsidian, the same types of rock that Native Americans used to make arrowheads. This flint, when
struck against steel, was what produced the spark. Although we don't have any sort of detailed insight on this point through lime and draper or our other sources, we can only imagine that the long hunters would keep in camp a store of chirt or other toolstone that they could shape into flints if they did run out. This was one supply that would have been relatively easy for them to source out in the field.
Gunpowder with something else long hunters might have known how to produce on their own. In a pinch, it could be made from a concoction of batguano, sulfur, wood, ash, and the dowsing of their own urine, But all available evidence suggests they simply purchased powder back in the settlements.
Outside of the most dire circumstances, high quality gunpowder imported from Great Britain and her other colonies was readily available, and it was cheap, so cheap that domestic manufacture of gunpowder in the colonies that became the United States was not economically viable. There were exceptions in periods when trade was interrupted or when Great Britain was in a state of war and restricted the supply of gunpowder going outside of its borders, but generally, gunpowder in the colonies came
from overseas and it was abundant. The counts frequently mentioned that the long hunters set out with large supplies of lead and powder. They'd transport this powder and store it in their station camps and larger containers, probably small kegs, but individual hunters would carry their powder in the field in a powder horn, another essential piece of gear made
from the horn of a cow or buffalo. It would be fitted with a stopper at the pointy end and used to pour a charge of powder down the muzzle of the gun.
As we saw at the top of this chapter, those supplies, along with the rifles themselves, were sometimes seized by Native Americans when they ran into parties of white men hunting on their land. The long hunter's rifles made an attractive prize because they were way better than the type of guns the Soul called trade guns that were in wide
circulation among Native people. These trade guns were smooth bore guns or muskets that were produced use relatively cheaply in Europe and were frequently traded with the Native Americans by the colonial deer skin traders in exchange for deer hides. Smooth bore guns had smooth bores, so none of the rifling or spiraling grooves that gave the Kentucky rifle its accuracy by forcing bullets to spin as they exited the barrel. But smooth bore guns could be loaded more quickly, and
again could be produced more cheaply. You could outfit an army with smooth bore guns for less money, so they were around. But when Native Americans ran into parties of long hunters on their traditional hunting grounds, they would often take the opportunity to, let's say, exchange those smooth boar guns for the long hunter's Kentucky rifles. We'll be hearing more about this interesting dynamic of theft and trade in the following chapter. There's a lot more to say.
To get back to the elements that comprise the long hunter's kit. Other than their rifles and necessary paraphernalia, the cutting tools carried by long hunters with the most essential pieces of gear they had. Many would have carried what was then called a clasp or folder knife, what we would today just call a pocket knife or a jackknife. They also carried larger fixed blade knives, commonly described in the historic record as butcher knives or sometimes scalping knives,
six to ten inches long. They were used for all manner of purposes, eating, scanning, fighting, whittling, carving, and yes, at times, removing human scalps. Most blades were imported from Europe, typically without handles, the owner would fashion and attach their own. Some surviving examples from this period have handles made from
deer antlers. These would have been in ready supply given the occupation of the long hunters, and if you hear of a stag handle knife, that's what they were talking about.
The antler handle.
Modern blade steels are much stronger than what they had around then, and our knives hold a sharper edge than could be expected of the blades carried by long hunters. This meant they would frequently need to sharpen their knives, quite likely with stones found nearby. A smooth and wet river cobble would have been an adequate tool to sharpen the soft steel that was in use back then.
As ubiquitous as these knives were, a small axe was just as critical to the long hunter's kit. Some folks might use the words hatchets, belt axes, and tomahawks interchangeably today, but to the long hunters there were key distinctions. Long hunters like Boone would have carried a belt axe. These were hung from the belt or carried on a shoulder strap and secured beneath the belt. They were smaller than what you might be picturing, maybe twelve inches or so
overall and weighing less than a pound. The head of the axe had a squarish appearance. The pole the end opposite the bit or cutting surface was flat and rectangular, and could be used as a hammer for any number of tasks. The eye, or the opening in which the handle was seated, was a tapered, oblong shape. As they would with a knife. The owner of a belt axe would commonly need to haft it or put a handle on it themselves.
These belt axes were different from a round poled, round eyed trade axe that sleek distinctive profile we would most commonly call it tomahawk, and from the long axes these men would have carried on their horses for use in
shelter building or other big projects. We can certainly imagine that when Casper Mansker and its contingent decided to build canoes for that long ride down river to Natchez, they would have used belt axes to pill away the sheaves of elmbark used for the hulls of the boats, for butchering bison and elk, setting traps, shaping and pounding stakes for shelter, and any number of other tasks in which long hunters had to reshape some part of their environment
to better suit their needs. The belt axe was indispensable.
When it came to equipment. Long hunters needed practical, utilitarian items that served multiple purposes and that they could repair themselves. They had to shoe horses, do leather work, and build all manner of items necessary to the hunt, such as canoes, shelters, and fur and hide handling equipment like fleshing beams and stretching boards. Steel traps cost six to eight dollars a piece back then, making them one of the most significant
costs of a long hunt. Tuning and repairing traps required the skill set of a blacksmith, as they often needed to fabricate trap parts, including pans and triggers. Gunsmithing skills were ass essential. Boon and likely other long hunters could skillfully restock a rifle, repair and replace parts, nap flints for the ignition system, and generally troubles you any issues
that arolls with a rifle while on the hunt. Among the tools they would bring were files, bellows to heat up the fire for metal working purposes, and what they called a hand vice.
Also known as a gunsmith's vice or a clockmaker's device. A hand vice was used to hold small objects being worked on.
Picture a large.
Pair of tweezers with wider jaws, or the type of pliers you'd use for putting seams in sheet metal. The jaws were spring loaded and tightened with a wing nut and screw. Long hunters also traveled with what's called a screw plate, a plate of iron with different sized threadholes cut into it, forcing a piece of metal through the holes that would impart an external thread to a screw's surface.
If you've done some basic machining, you're probably familiar with what it looks like to tap a hole using a cutting implement to create or clean up internal threads. This is a bit like the inverse of that process, and they would have used it to fashion replacement hardware for their rifles or traps. It's remarkable to consider that the long hunters and other travelers in the back country were actually fabricating metal parts. Today you might bring along a
multi tool on a long back country hunt. These guys were bringing along complete miniature workshops alls.
Which were tools used to punch holes in leather, where another vital piece of equipment often mentioned in the sources. These would sometimes fold out from the backside of a clasp knife. The reason that all was so indispensable is quite simple. In addition to being metal workers, occasional gunsmiths and woodworkers. The long hunters were also hobblers, and that's because one item that would have been in constant need of repair or replacement was their footwear, the moccasins they
fashioned from elk and buffalo hides. You'll recall that these elk and buffalo hides were thicker and heavier than the deer skins that were the long hunter's primary target. These thicker skins made for more durable footwear, but they still required constant maintenance. A pair of moccasins might only take a long hunter a few hours to make, but repairing them was probably a task that required near daily attention.
We do know that anyone spending time outdoors in this time was very much aware of the risks of getting cold. One source describes hunters in the late seventeen hundreds as apprehensive of rheumatism, a term then used to describe rheumatoid arthritis. They blamed rheumatism on cold feet and slept in their half faced shelters with their feet to the fire in
hopes of warming them and drying out their moccasins. It's probably safe to assume that many of them had circulation issues and numbness from wearing wet moccasins year round, but every mile in wet moccasins and every cold night was endured with a single objective in mind.
Henry Skaggs, Daniel Boone, Casper Mansker and their companions weren't simply equipping themselves to survive the First Far West, although that in and of itself was not an easy task. Their tools were all a means to an end. They had a very specific, labor intensive purpose to their travels, producing deer skins in large volume for the commercial market. But of course they were not the only hunters on the landscape of the First Far West.