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. Joined today by Chef Extraordinaiy
Jesse Griffiths. But that's not what we're gonna talk about. First.
What are we gonna talk about first?
Steve Hi, Jesse Hi, thanks coming on the show. Jesse has a brand new book out. It's a follow up to the Hogbook. Was the Hogbook called the hog Book?
That's correct, the Hogbook? I got a right, Yeah, yeah, it's called the Turkey Book, The Turkey Book, Master of clever book names No, Well, it.
Just comes right out and says it. Yeah, the Hogbook. If you don't, if you're not already aware, the Hogbook's phenomenal. If you're a hogbook, if you're a wild hog namesayer, get the Hogbook. The Hogbook tells you everything you need to know. Talking to you Southerners tells you everything you need to know about judging, processing, preparing, dealing with hogs, wild hogs.
Correct.
And I've before, I've remarked that I called Jesse the hog apologist.
Yeah, yeah, I would love that, by the way, Yeah.
But a turkey requires no apology. They're just good to eat. But the Turkey Book is thick.
It is. It clocked in at almost as many pages as the Hogbook. I thought it was going to be a daintier book and it didn't turn out that way.
Yeah, it's elegant, it's thorough, it's beautifully put together. The Turkey Book. We're gonna dig in with Jesse and talk about the Turkey Book, but we're gonna cover some stuff first. You people joining us on YouTube. I'm holding a large I don't know what you call it.
I think you're menacing.
You're not holding it's supposed to be a bowie knife.
I think it lays right in between a knife and a sword.
Yeah, bowie knife. Apparently Cal put this in Seth's office. I came in and I'm like, the Hell's that? Seth said, That's what everybody says who comes in here. Since cal put it in there, and Seth pointed out that it's going to go in the auction house of oddities.
Yep.
Perfect for cutting up teal.
Now you know, if you lie a lot, you get in trouble with the Gambling Commission, the FTC or who does who regulates gambling, Like Barstool got in trouble because they had that. Like they had a sports bet called the Can't Lose, but you could lose real bad, but it was a joke. It was called the Can't Lose. They got all that trouble. Well, in the spirit of that, this is real gold yep. This is like is there grades of gold. This is the best gold.
It's a genuine.
Sas tech gold bluegill. This is from this is from King Tut's private stash. This gold.
Handmade it.
He he taught, handmade this.
And he even engraved the Ducks Unlimited ye logo in there that.
That actually wasn't that was his personal duck hunting sign adopted adopted by du.
And as will he wrote, Ducks un Limited can have this logo.
And Daniel Boone killed this stag. Daniel Boone killed this stag, and Jim Bowie as he went down fighting at the Alamo. Well, Crockett queer in the corner.
We got to do this again.
While Crockett quivered in the corner. Jim Bowie killed several Mexican generals with this blade.
Seen some ship.
Yeah, we got all the paperwork proven all this. I just got to write it up.
Available to you the price of your choosing.
And this will be in the auction house of bodities, King Tut's gold, Daniel Boone's stag horned thing, and Jim Bowie's actual Mexican general slaying steel. I'm thinking about pairing it with uh my black powder six shooter. That would sweeten the pot, which was gifted to me by the California Rifle and Pistol Association.
What are those people that uh reenact stuff called LARPs? Yeah, LARPs with your still on net that they're blade they could really.
That reminds me of Clay's illustration. Maybe he could, you know, should read.
That in the auction that what else is coming up in there? We haven't we haven't picked our dates yet, but we got like other good stuff.
You well, I know, like wyoming b h as uh bringing together some folks to provide like a real Wyoming adventure experience for the auction. For the auction house oddities, we typically provide some experiences which schedule wise, we got to come together on and figure that out sooner rather than later. What we can do so we don't get crazy overextended.
We're gonna put some of these furs behind.
Me in it.
We have an f HF chess rig that's fur lined. For the outer is a muskrat, which I think we we we might have talked about that being in the last one, but just one thing led to another and it's in this one.
So ye, lots of good stuff coming up. Oh we told you has like in your crin in your like little deal? Has have we already released the Jeff Foxworthy? Is Jeff Foxworthy interview already gone up? When these people are listening to this? Now? You know what Jeff Foxworth he told me before we start recording. That's of interest. Well, number of things that I don't want to share, but one thing he told me is I was making He made me a coffee and I said, do you got
any milk or anything? And he doesn't And he said, you know what, Because I liked the hunt a lot. I forced myself to learn to like black coffee really, because he says, you always wind up somewhere and there's like some coffee, but of course there's no cream or milk, and that's how he always drank it milk sugar trained himself.
Yeah, God almighty, think of the time we would get back in our lives from meat eater shoots if we don't have the half and a half.
Conversace pressure that would come off whoever shopped. Oh yeah, to be like no, no, no, get what you think is a lot and then double it. Yeah, especially if Clay, because Clay just drinks it, Yeah, like drinks glasses of it.
Clay Clay definitely does a glass of half and half and splash of coffee.
Yeah.
So he he flat out trained him, which I'm thinking about doing, as I say here drinking my cream and coffee. I'm thinking about quitting. I mean, I quit alcohol, I can quit cream.
I tried doing it for a while because uh, Evan Hayfer kind of shamed us that one time on that shoe. Yeah, and I was like, well, no, I don't care, but I was like, I'll try it. I just like it better with cream.
But it's it's a vulnerability, dude. When I think about the end of the world, the world ending, all humans dying, you can be able to find coffee. Yeah, you're gonna run out of cream.
I met a fella at the Western Hunt Expo Cafe Mule, a super nice dude. He gives away coffee and the boys he foothills off the back of some rescue mules. I know this guy, Yeah, just for other folks hiking around out there. But then he's got a coffee company by the same name. He's another retired Uh he's former military special forces dude.
Yeah, so you met him. Yeah, he's a nice guy.
Yeah, really nice guy. But he's like, yeah, do you want to a cup of coffee? I was like, yeah, it'd be great, and he's like half and a half.
I was like, no, try try to shame you.
No, I asked too. I was like, like, because he obviously had it sitting out for everybody, and he's like, I don't care.
Okay.
Yeah. If you're a fan of God's Country Podcast and you're listening, if you're listening right now, you can go, uh listen to luke Holm's episode of God's Country Podcast with Dan to read isbel that's live right now. Go check that out tomorrow, dude, you if you want to know, like an ongoing fight I have with credits this God, good lord, Okay times never mind.
Me mean tomorrow at the time of this record, like, yes, when people are listening to.
This, if you well know, if they're listening to this right now, like if they're there's a lot of moving parts at this company. Oh my god. Well no, it's just this is just this is the way.
If you're listening to this within minutes of it dropping, you can.
See why they ever came out with Live News.
M m hmmm.
They're like, we just can't handle the uh.
People.
Well, it's just that today this is airing on a Monday, and God's Country airs on Tuesday. And when this is out, the Luke Combs episode is on. God's Country is slated to come out the day after Tuesday.
Speaking of Live too, we're going back out on the road for me Eater Live starting.
April twenty third.
This is a soft announcement, right.
Yeah, I don't know if we're allowed to talk about it.
We are.
We're doing ten shows coming up this spring. And you know what I just did. I just lined up turkey hunt for one of them mornings, really, and I said, now there's gonna be other people wanting to get in on this turkey hunt. I'll start actually talking to Dave Smith. I'm like, there's other people are gonna want getting in on this turkey hunt. He says, I'm already shutting the door. But I'm happy to help him. I'm happy to get him in the right direction. But we're gonna have to
spread people out. Everybody on that bus is going on behind turkeys the day off. So listen, Dave, you better start. You start working the phone and get more spots lined. April twenty third.
Where in Mesa, Arizona. Okay, that's the first spot.
Then San Diego, Okay, then Anaheim, than Anaheim, which is kind of like it's like Disneyland.
It's like five blocks away from Disneyland.
Steve fest me, I already looked.
Then Sacramento like Disney lamb.
Oh hell yeah, man, oh, he's probably when you're hunting, like he's gonna probably go to That was.
One of the take of my kids. There is one of the worst things I ever did.
Oh, it's it's awful.
I love it.
The funniest thing that came off is we went there and we went to Lego Land, and uh so my kid like he liked Lego Lamb. And then one day I had a leg of lamb. If I told the story, no, we're eating legal lamb. Someone gave me a leg of lamb. So the whole time we're eating dinner like Lego lamb, legal lamb, Lego Lamb. After a while, my little boy he was quite bit. He's like three years younger and he is now five and after so what's going on with Lego Land? We're going back to no leg of Lamb,
no Lego Land. Uh then what happens Phil Sacramento in Salt Lake City, Sacramento. We gotta get Greg Fonce rolled into that. Keep going.
It's after Salt Lake Boise, Missoula.
Oh that's gonna be fun because you know what the Missoula show we're doing at the Wilma and my old girlfriend I used to almost like half live in the Wilma. My old girlfriend lived in the Wilma. Back then, they didn't have an elevator. They didn't have an elevator. You had to wake up a guy named Scoot and Newton there was the elevator, was that you couldn't operate the elevator if you wanted to get to your apartment. It
doesn't matter what time. You'd be coming home with a bar two in the morning, scoot and Newton would like sleep on his car. He lived in his little apartment for free on the term that he ran the elevator, and he'd always be in there at a pair of Chuck Taylor sleeping on the couch and he'd be like, let's go Newton. He'd jump up and then worked out like you couldn't operate the own elevator. And what's funny is the hydraulics were bad in that elevator, so when
you stopped it, it would sink. And Newton was so good you could tell that no matter when he woke them up. He'd like he knew the drop, so he'd overshoot the room, throw the lever and that sucker, settle back down. And you can tell me he'd like to land it as flushed as he could possibly land it, you know, So you'd be riding up, he start really paying attention. Drop down, he like level. But then they put in a regular elevator, so that's gonna be fun.
So I'm like very familiar with that with that building. And what's that Bob Dylan tune Tangled Up in Blue where he talks about inside this building the heat pipes just cough? Does that Tangle Up in Blue?
I don't know you're asking.
I don't think it's Infinity Goes Up on Trial? What's that song Inside the mus come on? Well, look on the internet, look it up.
It's so funny though, because like Dylan's thing from his critics is like, oh, he just throws out random an non connected strings of lyrics, and that's what you're trying to get us to Like which song was it for the random lyric?
You're like, wow, yeah, because you can't say it was about right, Yeah, inside the Museum. Infinity Goes Up on Trial is also in that song. And the heat pipes just cough. Anyways, you want to talk about some coffee heat pipes the Wilma it's fancy.
Now.
Then what happens phil Spokane, Washington on the lineup? Turkey Hunt there, I can tell you that.
And then Portland, Oregon, and then Takoma to come as the last stop.
Over in Fill's Neck of the Woods.
That's right West Coast, Best Coast, baby, did.
You ever see it? I think it's in the Wilma somewhere now. But when they had their there's a real fancy hotel that, like during our time, was not really operating. Then they kind of got it back up and they got some fancy restaurants in there. That was like down the block, one block from the Wilma, and then I think above the Wilma there were hotel rooms for rent originally.
But a big draw was fishing in the Clark Fork right there, and there's pictures of people who you know, stop on the railroad, come down to the Wilma and then fish in the Clark Fork and just really giant giant.
Trout probably bull trout back then too, bull.
Trout and huge cutthrow too.
I would think, yeah, dude, we used to go, oh man, I got something Missoula stories.
The Florence maybe Florence.
Yeah. We used to go in tube down that river, get out, like put in tube down, get out on Higgins, go up and get an ice cream. I remember one time laughing because we're coming back down. You can still see our wet footprints coming up the sidewalk and got out of the thing, and me my buddy one time went and spotted a big old hole in the ice underneath the bridge on Higgins and found all these comatose crayfish and as soon as they warmed up, like instantly
back to activity, and we cooked them up. But then took one crayfish and uh, it's gonna sound mean, but they regenerate their claws. And my roommate had a tank with one little crazy little frog and some kind of African white frog or something like a little teeny weird little frog that he liked a lot, so he dismembered that. Well, we took the crayfish claws off and let him go in the aquarium, and that some bitch eventually regenerates the
teensiest little claw. And my buddy comes home one day night fish is sitting on the bottom holding that dead frog.
Oh quick note on Bob Dylan. The inside the Museum's infinity goes up on trial. That is re rivisions of Joanna. That's the song.
So it's the heat pipes. Then it's a great tune. Anyway, We used to sit in that place listening to that on vinyl while the heat pipe's cough which always sticks to my mind. Shouldn't be talking about that because that wasn't my wife. Uh, live here is gonna be great. Cal's gonna be there for a bunch of them. He's got some stuff he can't do, but he's got some dates he can't do. Yine, He's gonna be there for a bunch of them. Spencer's gonna be there for a
bunch of them. We're gonna have a trivia component or even though it seems to be very unpopular, but people have to trust this that there's gonna be the survey show that everyone that people just generally hated the survey show.
Right, most people did not seem to like it. But again, the most vocal folks on the internet are the haters.
So and in my house, certainly in the morning, like people aren't raising their voice to like talk about how much they liked breakfast.
Survey what's survey shows or or you're saying the survey shows.
We did a survey so so Spencer tested out recently instead of trivia, he tested out a survey show where you survey a bunch of people, then ask people like, let's say you did like what percent of blank? What percent of blank population believes in Bigfoot and you got a guess. I told him. The problem with the survey show was that you need to have a type more
tightly defined demographic that you're surveying. H So at the live shows, we'll be able to do the survey game with audience involvement, where we're going to survey, seek, survey the audience and then quiz people about basically, quiz people about themselves. What percentage of people in the room tonight believe in Bigfoot?
More importantly the person sitting next to him, Right, Yeah, that's great.
So that's funny.
We're figuring out out it'll it'll be a right.
Did you do the version where you gotta bet you got points and then you gotta bet those points, wager those points on how certain you were of your answer?
No, if you got an ID She talked Spencer because I still don't understand how he scored it, and that seemed to be the main problem is.
Yeah, it was arbitrary number, like.
It was like, if you're five blow, you get four points. If you're four below you get three was the.
Answer, you would get less point?
Like you know, he needs to think through it.
Okay, one.
So that system.
Well, that was the weirdest thing about it is it wound up being that the better you are at trivia, the worse you are. The better you are at trivia, the worst you are at the survey show, because what happens in the survey show is when you asked me a survey question, I'm just gonna tell you what I like, I'm like, well, I don't, so I'm gonna put that no one does. And Krinn was more like thinking about what people think and not thinking about not bringing her
own baggage into it. Like you'd be like, have you what percentage of people have inherited a gun?
Right?
And you're like, oh, the shop, I've heard all kinds of guns. Oh everybody.
My dad sent me the deafine member. We had a question about inherit, you know, like, can you inherit someone something if someone's still alive? Was that you know you can? You can't by a definition? Yeah, he wanted you to know that.
Uh, thank you, mister Henderson, thanks for clearing that up. This is you know, I can believe this, This is this is dead true. I had a guy come up to me in Portland. We were at the Portland Live, the Sportsman show Pacific what's it called Pacific Northwest, Yeah, something like that show. The dude comes up to me and he says he's a trial he's explains he's a trial lawyer.
Mm hmm.
You're gonna think I'm lying. This is the truth?
Oh? Wait?
Does has Jesse heard the background of the bean saying?
No? But there's a saying I made up that's really getting a lot of traction. It is the saying, is this a fresh set of eyes will always find more beans? It alludes to pick and pole beans, right, you know what I'm saying. Sure, the trial lawyer comes up to me and now he didn't tell me what side of it he's on, but he said, I'm involved in a mountain lion poaching case. He didn't tell me, he didn't tell you, presumably, I don't know. Is he's maybe defending the mountain lion poacher. I don't know.
It'd be hilarious if he was the poacher.
I don't think so. But the way I did get out of the story that that wasn't the case. Anyways, he's involved in a mountain lion poaching case. And he said during jury questioning when he's talking to his jury pool. He did not want to with the other attorney involved. He did not want to introduce the idea that he's interested in who in this room hunts and who in this room might be familiar with certain hunting discussions and conversations. He asked the jury pool, are you familiar with the
saying a fresh set of eyes finds more beans? Six people raised their hand. That's a sneaky way, And he said, and then I had my hunters. Now what he didn't tell me is did he want them out of the room or in the room. He didn't give me any detail. Was he trying to get him out or keep them in? But he said he didn't want to introduce that, and he didn't want to introduce his thinking.
Thanks to those six individuals for.
Fresh set of eyes? Are you saying a fresh set eyes finds more beans?
That's that's sneaky?
Is it's also pretty interesting that this is going to trial. Yeah, it makes you really wonder what type of case this is? How egregious.
I feel like he was trying to get rid of people. Maybe I don't know, was he trying to get him in or get him out? I don't even know what side he was on. Here's what it cal's going. Oh no, And a radiologist said this, here's what radiologist said. He's been using it a lot in the medical field. Remember I said that would have implications for finance. Turns out has implications for medicine. A radiologist rites, in the first time I tried your proverb was on our breast imager.
When I was in high school. I got a buddy that saw a sign for a breast imager and thought it was a breast imaginer. I'm not joking.
I'm laughing not because of that, but because you think that you're saying you're made up saying has implications in the field of medicine.
Oh no, No, implications could be applied in the field of medicine. Yeah, applications, applications and applications and radiology. Radiologist says. The first time I tried your proverb was on our breast imager. We were discussing an upcoming difficult breast ultrasound guided biopsy. You following that we are having trouble with matching the MRI
findings with what the ultrasound was showing us. She told me, this is his colleague that she would repeat the ultrasound prior to biopsy, that perhaps she could find what I and the technologist couldn't find on the earlier study. I stated, Oh, yeah, that's a good idea. You know what they say, a fresh set of eyes always finds more pole beans. And she replied without pause, right.
At one of our poll beeing shirts.
Now this is this next bit we're gonna talk about, dedicated to caw because we're gonna return to Cal's favorite subject, canceling canceling Stellar.
Yeah, this is greatly abbreviated.
As we've reported widely, they're trying to cancel our our Stellar who named who was one of those old timey naturalists who had a tendency to name everything after himself. So he's like, hey, there's a sea lion, sea line. I don't call that Stellar's sea lion. Oh look at that cool looking jay. I'm gonna call that Stellar's j And now the Ornithological Society's trying to take anyone, any older, any old white dude who put his who has a name attached. They're trying to scrub them out of the
naming convention. And the guy wrote in to invite us to consider what an interesting fella Stellar was. In light of his impending elimination from the historic record, Stellar named a sea cow after himself, which is now extinct. In his The Beasts of the Sea by George Wilhelm Steller, he talks about a fun little joke they would play if they're cutting up doing explorations on a Stellar sea cow.
He says, if only a very slight aperture should be made with the point of a knife, the liquid excrement a ridiculous thing to behold, would squirt out violently, like blood from a ruptured vein, and not infrequently the face of the spectator would be drenched by this springing fountain.
Whenever someone opened a canal upon his neighbor opposite for a joke and describing the phallus and describing the penis of an animal, says, the penis of the male is thirty two inches long, and with it sheath is bound firmly in front of the abdomen and reaches clear to the navel. In a word, it is very of course, it is very coarse and obscene to look upon, very much like that of a horse, and ends with the same sort of a gland only larger, just trying to bring him to life.
He seems like a very interesting individual, German born nationalist, first European to Alaska.
Who took great interest in Native peoples in native life ways, and went out of his way to record those with respect and admiration. Brody, you ready to do your squirrel report? Yeah, don't lose hope, Jesse, We're gonna get.
I've been here before.
This isn't actually new news, but it's it's new to us. I'm surprised that we didn't hear about this earlier. So there's a black phase of gray squirrels, eastern gray squirrels, which most people have seen, right, like you guys have all seen them. And I think the conventional thinking for a long time was that those were just melanistic squirrels, you know, just a color phase.
Right, yeah, like like did I have often told people, have always told people that a gray squirrel will throw a black squirrel offspring, right. And I've noticed that just growing up in our yard. I've noticed that you'd like, there'd be years one you had mostly grays, mostly Eastern grays, and then it would be predominantly black phase grays. And I've always watched that. M hm, you know, come and go. It's very anecdotal, but yeah, like there was like this shift in and out, in and out.
Yeah, and you'd see I mean, we would have some areas where there's none and then some areas where there's like it was common to see them black.
You might shoot a limit of five and it would be like you wouldn't really think that much of it if you shot five black phase gray squirrels.
Yep, exactly.
You guys had more black face squirrels up north there, yeah, than we had.
Yeah, but here's the thing. We also have more fox squirrels than you had.
Down in the mountain, and we had always had a mix.
Yeah. And it turns out that the fox squirrel comes into play for why there are black face eastern gray squirrels. This is a study that came out like four years ago, and and I'll just start reading here. Despite differences in coloring, eastern gray squirrels and so called bla squirrels are actually members of the same species, which kind of goes with what we were saying. But they owe their distinctive appearance
to interbreeding between gray and fox squirrels. The fox squirrels carry a faulty pigment gene known to give some members of the predominantly reddish brown species, which fox squirrels gives them a darker fur. And this gene variant passed from fox squirrels to gray squirrels I via mating. So that's kind of surprising. I don't think you know, I've never heard that.
Yeah, this came up because we're working on a sportsman's atlas, Yeah, which would be like one hundred places around the country that every hundred anglers should know about. Ye, And it's all just kind of maps and like specific weird spots and maps and like every mammoth mass, every known mammoth masst on kill site, World record bass.
The weird story of Oneida traps.
Yeah, this weird, kind of crazy sex colonies used to make traps. And then we're doing a thing about distribution of pre squirrel distribution.
Yeah, like this what this art, this article is not saying that these these are like hybrid squirrels though. It's just a gene that gets passed into the gray squirrel population which then pops up.
Now and then.
Something I don't agree with in this article is I don't agree with any of this according to mental floss is. I don't know what mental flosses must be some probably like a publication, yeah, name like.
Floss is your brain out.
Black squirrels are black Eastern black gray squirrels are relatively relatively rare, constituting just one in ten thousand.
Oh bullshit, that's not something different. I don't believe any of this anymore. I wish you would need not done. No, because they have about that entire report.
No, the part of it is this like DNA study that they did and they identified this gene.
That's like, like it's real like that.
You better do a little more work on that. Brodie.
I'm just repeating the science, Steve, just repeating the science.
I remember I when I was in high school, we went up to Salamanca, New York. That was New York's right there on the border I think Turkey Young and every squirrel we saw it there was black.
Right right in ten thousand.
Well, I mean it's that's the that's the problem with science, the inconvenience of science. If they're actually if they're not looking for the visible trade, they're trying to find the genetic trade. It's not gonna necessarily jive with what you have. I was just I had learned a bunch about stone sheep and fan and sheep. What a bunch of bullshit that is?
Oh? Really?
Yeah?
They're like, well, how dark is the sheep?
Right?
It's like trying to find a black hair on a white sheep and then calling it a fan in sheep. I got you, I mean, boy, glad we got that taken care of science team.
No, I got you.
Yeah.
Cal's gonna talk about something that I only found out about yesterday. But first I want to talk about this. You know, I don't know. I don't know how many people out there actually listened, like, actually listened in the audience. Raise your hand. No, in this room, raise your hand if you actually listened to Tucker Carlson's Vladimir Putin interview. Okay, if you haven't, you're not allowed to comment on anything. I listened to the whole thing to the bitter end.
Me too.
The way it's been reported on in the news is so insanely inaccurate. Yes, but one thing Putin left off is this in Ukraine, there's this article that half a finger to sent us these archaeologists working in Ukraine. There was this nomadic group called the Scythians. Nomad they were like nomadic hunter gathers, and there's reference like their enemies would reference it, like watch out for the Scythians. They will make stuff out of your skin. And these archaeologists
were doing. They had they recovered in these different sites Scythian leather and it's a lot of like stuff you'd expect game animals and whatnot. They found a number of quivers made from human hide.
Hm hmm.
Wow.
Yeah, they would take their enemy make a quiver out of human hide. I'd take that leg skin, make a big long pouch, make a circle cut right right at the groin tubes, circle cut right below the knee, take that bugger off. Just one run seam down the side, one seaming along the bottom.
Look cool auction.
The Scythians were not people you'd want to mess with. Man, how long ago was these guys running around? They were finding this stuff in their burials south of Ukraine the Sidons.
Nine hundred BC to two hundred BC.
Well, it's a while back, Kay cal Uh, explain explain the explain this deal with with with grazing, with.
With oh wyoming right now, Yeah, with.
With hunters needing to be on the hook for the fact that elkie grass or like. Explain.
Yeah, so most Western states have some sort of a system to reimburse landowners for agricultural losses related to wildlife like crop damage, crop damage, yep, exactly. So there's there's two new things that came out of HB sixty in Wyoming, which is currently still in the House right now, so it's gone through committee, it's it's in the House. Next
step would be the Senate. Those two new things are adding pastururage, the loss of grass either on private land or state land, state grazing leases into the list of crop damage into the list of agricultural damage that can be reimbursed.
Okay, at what point tell me when I can go like that is so stupid.
And then the other part of this that is new would be raising the maximum allowable reimbursement from one hundred percent of fair market value to one hundred and fifty percent of fair market value. And the reason being that when you if you totally destroy a pasture, it's not going to magically come all the way back next year. So it's got more repercussions than just the year that
it's been assessed. The this is really coming out of the southeast Colorado where Wyoming, right, Oh, sorry, yes, Wyoming, but it's where all the Colorado people hunt. So Southeast Wyoming lots of private land, but it's a public wildlife, right, it's it's elk and limited access to these elk. And this is yeah, a big move saying that we want the Wyoming Game and Fish to immediately start knocking down these herds. So which Wyoming Game and Fish has been
on top of this situation? They're two years into you know, like an emergency five year management plan.
When you say knocked down the herd, do you mean like shop laders coming in? What do you mean like that damage hunts where they.
Yeah, they don't allow Nobody likes to talk about sharpshooters. Right, it's got a negative public perception. But they've had they've killed, Yeah, they've they've had two coals I think that have not killed like one hundred and forty eight cows that you know are are paid people who are going out there to eliminate elk, so non non hunters.
And across the road, some guy's paying three thousand dollars for a cole elcot Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, so the in most western state it's like the way to you can only apply for cash from damaged agriculture if you're allowing some sort of access. In Wyoming, it's defined as reasonable hunting access. But what is reasonable? Right? And I think when your quotes that I really enjoy is like, what is an objective herd size? Like, it's not my objective as an elk hunter, but these herds
are over objective by the elk management play on in Wyoming. Sure, which kind of you know is a ball that gets baddened back and forth between all these interest groups, primarily like the Wyoming Stock Growers Association would be one of the main main players here.
Yeah, if you're a hunter, I would generally be very suspicious when someone tells you that something's over objective, as though you're supposed to accept that as your reality or you're supposed to accept that as your objective.
Yeah, but this is also a place where, like wolves aren't knocking them down, hunters have very little access.
Correct, So I'll tell you one way to get rid of one way to scatter smelt with hunting after.
Them, right, That's what I'm saying.
They learned that very Yeah, they learned that very quickly, dude.
But you know, I'm like, I'm like, on everything, I'm a slippery slope guy, and I just don't like this is going like, Okay, I get it on crops, I've never even questioned it on crop damage, and I've never questioned it on depredation of livestock yep. Okay. In fact, when I'm buying my licenses in my home state, I always click the box to add like to round up and add money to depredation, to the to the depredation pool.
But as a slippery slope guy, to all of a sudden be that that wildlife eating grain grass that's not been planted like you know in real and when you're buying and selling houses there's like pre existing condition stuff. It's like, dude, I'm sorry, that's just a pre existing condition. The Good Lord's creatures are out there eating grass.
Yeah.
Like to have it be that, to have it be that you can now that you would be that you're going to have a state grazing lease and then come back to the state and be like, oh, by the way, your deer keep eating the grass, so pay me some money and come on.
There's a parallel story going on in Wyoming right now too, so that ties into what you just said perfectly right. There's a there's an isolated mountain range that Wild Cheap Foundation, a bunch of other folks want to reintroduce bighorn sheep to this isolated mountain range. And there's ranchers out there that are saying, hey, we don't want you to do this because we know that the reintroduction of wild sheep will affect our grazing leases if we were to want
to put out domestic sheep out there. This is like a known thing, right, So like National Wildlife Federation, Wild Cheap will go in and either at fair market value exchange domestic sheep for cattle and write out in agreement that when they do that exchange, you can never run sheep out here again in order to prevent disease transmission from domestic sheep to wild sheep. And I bring this up as a good example because here's a situation isolated
mountain range. For the lives of these livestock producers, there's never been domestic or wild sheep there. The introduction of those Wild Cheap will change how they have to operate their operations right. And this other example though, is there's been elk there for a really long time. Generations of people, those elk have grown, those operations have been around those
those elk essentially forever. It's not the same as somebody trying to now force something upon everyone and they have to change their whole economic exactly system around that introduction.
A constant.
It's been a constant.
And then what's funny too is if you go and look like the other pausing part about it is if you want to scroll through real estate listenings, real estate listenings are mighty quick to celebrate the elk.
Yes, yeah, in the health outpha, there'll be a picture of the herd in the And.
So this hunter's paradise.
To make this agricultural claim that, oh, we hate these elk, we purchase this property specifically to raise cattle, you'd have to say, like, well, why did you choose to do it in an area where elk herds are eleven thousand animals over objective? That'd be pretty tough. Did your operation plan when you went to the bank include a shipload of high fence to keep these animals out right? It's
like Noah is the answer. But the nuts and bolts of this thing and why everybody should be concerned even if you're not an elk hunter or a rancher in this area that's trying to graze cattle or grow any sort of cash crop. The way Wyoming is built is this fund doesn't get tapped out, meaning that the depredation
fund once the money's out of it. And right now, as I understand, if there's only one funding mechanism for that depredation fund, which of course comes out of resident and non resident license fees, like, so there's money that is earmarked from those purchases that goes into the depredation fund. Once that's tapped out, it can eat into the next operational budget and the next.
Operational budget within fishing game.
Within fishing game. So this brand new ask to fund this other huge part of agriculture, grazing and the increased fees are going to affect people who like to fish in the state, people who like to go to state recreation areas, people who like to you know, enjoy like the public access on private ground programs that are all
administered by Wyoming Fishing Game. So is it right for this like fight against elk in this specific area to inhibit the ability for the state to manage all other aspects of fishing games.
There's a interesting I think maybe it's an irony. It feels like an irony, and it be like, hey, hunters and anglers, you know those elk that no one will let you go get at, Well, I need you to pay for what they're doing. Is that'll want you going in there and chasing them off and hunting them.
Yeah?
Yeah, and the reasonable access thing, right, it's like, well how much. I haven't seen a scale of how they pay this out. It's like, oh, if you're open to the public in like a type one block management system that we have here in Montana, then you're eligible for this amount of damage cash.
Got it.
I haven't seen that. I haven't seen the scale of how they're going to determine all these mixed grass ecosystems for this fifteen percent. So if there's fifteen percent damage, you get one hundred and fifty percent of fair market value of the of the past year. Like how they're gonna determine that, you know, across the board, there's just a lot of a lot of question marks, but it's it's uh, I was talking to Hal Herring today and
it was pretty funny. He goes, you know what seems to me and Wyoming ever since the end of the Johnson County War, they've been trying to figure out how to get state money back to private landowners.
An editored, a long time editored Outdoor Life once said to me privately, I asked him if his farm is enrolled in black Man. This is a hot tip for people that got elk problems. I asked him if his ranch was in Low enrolled in black management, and he said, no, black management up here is a biological desert. Little hot tip. You got the elk problem?
Well, oh yeah, well yeah, you'd be running some some elk around and yeah, unfortunately I don't think. Well, just yeah, block Management's pretty pretty awesome program.
Yeah, I'm not hacking it. I'm telling you quoting someone.
Right, you want to move some animals off your property.
Is there something like this that's happening in other states like Montana? Would Texans ever have this?
Jesse Texans got way ahead of it. They made elk, which is a native species, a non native species.
Is becoming honorary natives. They made elk an honorary non native. They stripped them of their native status.
There's a real surgeon elk counting out West, but it's all it's all private. Yeah.
Yeah, they wanted like Texans, God.
Bless them, I mean West Texas.
Texans wanted to be like they want to be, like, hey man, I want to be able to raise out and do whatever I want to them, but I can't because it's like native wildlife and everything. So can you just make them that? They're like, can we just say they're not native wildlife so we can do whatever we want? And they're like sure, Yeah.
To put a bow on the HB sixty thing in Wyoming, I think the best thing right because I am simple, very sympathetic to some of these agricultural wines and I want like the family ranch to stick around.
Absolutely absolutely is just.
Like table this thing. It is not well thought out, it's not well structured. The state mechanism for funding this is way behind the ability for this thing to function in everyone's best interest.
Here's why. Okay, you're right, I'm pro farm, I'm pro ranch. I'm a cow's nott con those kind of guy. From a conservation perspective.
I'd vote for you right now. If that was your stump, go ahead.
I'm a cow's not condo's guy. But I said I'm a slippery slope guy too. If if publicly owned if like if publicly owned wildlife, if if people that own land need to be compensated for publicly owned wildlife eating natural resources and organisms that have been there for thousands of years. It's like, do you say, hey, uh something, squirrels are something ate a lot of my acorns. I need some money or get these squirrels out of here. It's just like it's like where do how does this go?
Yeah?
Well, okay, you remember a lot of time ago, or like you.
Hear like a trout fisherman and you own a big stretch of river. You know what, who's mink? Are these the states? I need some money?
Well?
Slip side of it too, is like there's plenty of cows eating the grass that elk eat on public land, and the elks should bill them. Well, I mean they're paying for a lease, but is it a fair compensation for the elk food that the cows are eating?
You know?
That's that's I'm saying. It's just it's so weird.
Do you remember your example of like if you wanted to start a perscudo operation in Montana and he decided like the Rocky Mountain slope would be the best place to hang a bunch of preshudo out in the open air.
Mm hm.
With the state then come in and compensate you for grizzly bears.
We haven't even dipped into hog damage, like, I mean two billion dollars a year in Texas and hog damage agriculturally. I don't think I don't think we have the budget to compensate for that.
No, no, but I think that they would be able to hopefully they'd be able to say that's not our animals fishing game. Yeah, and elk they'd be like, no, they've got taken away from you, all right, turkeys?
Turkeys?
Yeah?
Man?
How long? Uh? How long you've been working on the book? I've been hearing about it for quite some time because I know how long books take.
Well, I mean, well that's interesting because we we wrapped this less than a year ago. So uh it it actually start to finish? Was pretty quick, was it? Yeah?
No.
I set out I wanted to do another book post hog Book, and you know, I thought, first off of just replicate that with something that I was really interested in, that being turkeys.
Well, yeah, tell me why you didn't do the deer book.
A lot of information out there about Uh well, first it's a shitty deer hunter.
Uh, but deer cleaner.
Yeah. I well, thank you. You've you've criticized me lightly on my dear cleaning. I'll leave the Remember I leave that. You the hide on the Achilles tendon.
Yeah, I don't like the way it looks.
I know. It's an aesthetic argument we had one day.
No, you don't cut the tendon, do you No, that makes me want to kill people.
No. No, the reason I leave the anyway, I leave the hot on there, so I don't cut the tendon like it.
That's like people when you're cleaning squirrels of people when they leave that little ring of hair around the wrists and stuff. I hate that. Or on rabbits, you know that little growth that has the long hairs that little mole. Squirrels have it too, when you're cleaning squirrels in the sink. After you clean rabbits or squirrels and someone leaves that little hairy mole, I hate that anyhow. Turkeys, so you're not a good dear cleaner.
I am a clean I'm a very I mean, I'm very yeah, you know, I'm fast. I think I'm very thorough. I love turkey hunting and it's something I grew to love, but it's something that I'm not I would I would say I'm very, very far from it expert. I spent start to finished about eleven years on The Hogbook, and then we completed this and yeah, I mean there's some
photos in there that were that were taken. Yeah, but did you know, Okay, I knew at the time we were taking those that my next project would be able.
So for so for eleven years, you're like, somethday, I'm gonna do a book on hogs.
In that okay, Yeah, And then kind of rapidly decided that that I wanted to focus on turkeys and was like, you know, I'm just going to kind of use the The Hogbook as a template, and then really quickly realized for a lot of reasons, most of it is that there's a lot of really good literature out there, I mean, just good writing about turkey obviously. I mean I can't really name a lot of uh books about fair hogs.
I mean no, there's no like, there's no like Tom Kelly or Jack O'Connor of hogs hemingwaight at home them right.
And so then that became apparent to me that it's like, it's don't don't try to do that. And so the course I decided to take instead is more of a journal and just document start to finish in one season, what you know, just go on four hunts, try to get the most geographically different spots lined up. Which was great for me too because I'm not much of a
traveling hunter. I spend almost all my time in Texas, and then in between I was just going to experiment and see what's stuck as far as cooking, and just cooked all these different ways. And so it's not a definitive book on hunting turkeys. It's not a definitive cookbook on turkeys. It's just new ideas, new concepts and things that I came up with. I mean, there's some old classics.
You know, there's fried turkey in there. You know, it's like the flagship recipe, but it's really just a slice of one season.
When you say fried turkey, what do you mean?
Slices of breast? Brian and uh, not like a deep fried turkey.
So you're joking around yesterday and I said, man, like, it's like four hundred page book. That's a lot of pages to tell somebody how to fry a turkey. Jesus Like, it's the very first recipe.
On purpose, I put that as the very first recipe. I wanted to acknowledge that because I think a lot of people, you know, that's that's their go too, and that's what they enjoy the most. And I always want to honor that and make people feel comfortable about the way they cook.
You don't want to fry shame people.
No, No, we've talked about that for years. You know, fried fish, you know, objectively the best and so yeah, so I kick it off with fried turkey, you know. I mean it's my recipe for fried turkey, which I think is is good.
What makes your fried turkey recipe different than everybody else's fried turkey recipe? To everybody else? But what differentiates how do you like, let me just put it this way, that's aggressive. How do you think fried turkey?
I like to I like to brin it. Okay, I think that's pretty common. Uh So there's a brine, Uh, there's there's a couple of secrets in the uh, in the dredge and the flour that you're gonna dust it in afterwards.
You know, what the hell out of him?
You know, you should have asked him.
You should have said, wet, dryer, dry Brian. That's his pet peete, is it.
I just think it's a youth business. Yeah, I mean a dry Brian is a is a rub. We've established that.
Loaded.
Yeah, it's it is a wet Brian meaning Brian otherwise known as Brian Brian. Yeah, and then it's dredged in flour, and I'm I don't want to give it away. You know, there's a couple of things in there that Okay.
Well don't you damn but you can still I'll give it away. Well, no, you don't need to like get into like the little measurements and stuff.
Cell receipts. Yeah, that's a that is a that's a secret taught to me about the colonel, not not Tom Kelly, colonel. Yeah. Yeah, that's a that's a key coming in there.
You know, when we were on Live Tour, we had this bus driver named John. I'm trying to hope we get lined up for our next live tour. John the bus driver, and like, I didn't really think about it, but he looks like Colonel Sanders. Oh, and he's saying. One time he comes down his bus and someone's just like, you know, like there's all kinds of on a tour for musicians. There's always people coming and going all the time.
One times he comes down to the bus and there's someone laying there he doesn't recognize, sleeping, and they wake up and they go, oh, I love the chicken. And he said, those kids, if what the hell kind of They leave and he's like they've bothered him for days. The event, she told his wife, like the hell does that even mean? She goes, you look like Colonel Sanders.
I'm gonna I'm gonna help you out on not feeling like you're giving away the book giving people reasons not to buy flipping through this thing. It's a very similar to like the Outdoor Cookbook that we're coming out with. Like the worst worst part about like the marketing of this is like it's gonna live in just a cookbook category mm hmmm. Whereas like you could give this book to anybody and there's a lot of really good reading
in there. There's a lot of good photography. There's a lot of reasons to enjoy this.
Thing, almost like a coffee table book.
Yeah, before you would ever get to cooking anything.
Yeah, Eve, you new all damn recipes just to look at.
Yeah.
But okay, because let me tell you something, no one's gonna not buy your books. You told you how you like to fry turkeys. I know you like to brind it. I do, so you cut it up or Brian, the whole big chunks.
I cut it up into strips. I think you know that that there's a certain thickness you know about, you know, like fingers kids ordering restaurants. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a that's a good size. I like to clean the silver out of the breast. I'm gonna think you get a little bit less chewing. It's pretty easy to clean out. And then yeah, Brian, that maybe going a little acidic, something like a buttermilk yogurt whatever you got. It also
helps the dredge stick. And then you dredge it in flour, a little bit of celery seeds and some other things, pepper.
You like the fryer at three fifty.
Hot, and then you know, I'm always I like to fry and beef fat a lot, sure, man, beef fat or lard, but definitely the preference would be beef fat.
If you could only fry at one temperature for the rest of your life fifty see, man, I was brought up with three seventy five.
Man, what does that difference?
When I was a kid, my old man make you go to the garage where he kept his fryer and you he'd make you turn it on, but you had to stay there till the light blinked out and then go down and notify it.
Yeah.
So if he told you the goal turn the fry on, You're like, there's eighteen minutes of my life, you know, you get to turn it on and then click it's on.
He got me. I don't know. I'm gonna I'm gonna recant. I'm I'm gonna go back to that because I think about potatoes and things like that, And you're right, it's it's probably it's a it's three seventy five.
What do you like to do a catfish?
At? Uh?
You do?
Yeah? Oh yeah, well, I like catfish to be very thinly sliced fine corn meal.
We've stopped to cook to cook the mud out of it.
Well, we bleed our catfish and bleed them and throw them into an ice bath, and uh, and that that makes worlds and worlds of difference. So immediately we mostly trotline in these days, pull them off, cut the gills, wring their tail, throw them a in a in a cooler full of ice and water. They're dead in a couple of minutes and the bloodline disappears. And then we fill them and then slice them on the bias against the grain and fry that. And that is phenomenal.
My Alaska mentor he used to when he's bleeding hell, but he'd always cut their tail. And we used to tease them like he's got like vapor lock or something like there's like a vacuum in there that you like relieve. See when you cut in the tail. I never understood nothing comes out of there.
Oh I've seen I've seen like blood come out of a catfish tail.
Oh right, what do you think is like like it's like it's like putting your finger over the end of a straw. Unless you cut the tail that it can finally like fall out, you know. Uh, when you're frying like that turkey or whatever, let's say, turkey, catfish, anything. Are you do? You have you gotten where you watch the bubbles?
Like?
The bubbles mean a lot to me?
Yeah, definitely, yeah, definitely as much noise you mean.
No like picture you put it in and you think for a minute, how your fryer is going to overflow?
Yeah?
Now if you left it in there an hour and come back, there ain't no bubbles coming out there. That's moisture coming out.
Yeah, it slowly.
So how do you like what in your book? For instance, when you're saying how do you tell folks? Do you tell them let it fry for blank minutes? Or do you tell them let them fry till the bubbles seem to have slowed down?
I don't give a bubble reference in the book. It's more of a time reference. And if you cut it to a certain size and then you give a frying temperature, it's it's easier to you know, assign a time to that. But also it's gonna start to float, you know, you know what I mean. Fully floating is probably gonna be fairly dry, yep, but you know, start to like float and kind of swim around, and yeah, small bubbles, it's just like when you're when you're rendering fats. Yeah, you look.
I always tell people it should look like a like a light beer. You know, it should be like a pale straw color with tiny bubbles. And that's when you know you got all the moisture cooked out. You don't have those big uh you know, the moisture coming out in those big, like kind of bulbous bubbles. Instead, you've got those little pin point bubbles, and you got that pale straw color. And that's when you know you've got it totally rendered.
Yeah. You put that celery seed on there, uh, sprinkled on, and you don't mix it. You don't mix it into your cormeal.
Dude, good for turkeys, that's and it goes into flour, not cormeal. Yeah, no, all purpose.
You don't put it on the meat. You put it in the flower.
In the flower. Yeah. So black pepper celery goes on there, fried, you know, and then you maybe your gravy, your mashed potatoes, your greens, you know, hot sauce.
Uh what what there? How do you tell people in there how to cook a whole turkey?
Oh? Man, it's can of worms right there. So I tell people not to And that's my opinion.
You don't throw them with single bone. You don't throw them one because there's certain let me tell you something. You can't stop people from want and to try it, So why not help them out?
Right? That's right away.
You talk about how to power the turkey out?
Yeah, and I mean there's a there's a whole section in there. How to piece a breast out into three three distinct parts, you know, an upper low bottom lobe and then the tenderloin, and all of those I think have really distinct uses too. You can and each one feed you know, two to four people, and so they and they have very specific uses.
You can also cook a breast whole. My opinion, you need to. It's too late to edit that boat. Yeah, you're into treacherous territory using netword lobe.
Why is that?
Well, because we went into this deep one time. If you get into the poultry business, a breast, there's.
Two, two lobes, right right.
A lobe. If you tell a poultry man a chicken breast, that poultry man is he's got two lobes, and he tells someone a human breast, they don't think there's two. They think of one, if you tell them a chicken breast that's comprised of two lobes. So with you introducing upper lobe and lower lobe, you're gonna get yourself in trouble with poultry men.
A risk I can take, I think, Yeah, yeah, I agree.
Yeah, you're gonna face him down.
Yeah all right, yeah me beau Pilgrim coming after my ass. Fine, whatever, Back to the whole turkey. I mean it really, it really comes down to what I wanted to put in here as far as recipes, and I I address that and and I and I've seen your recipe for a whole turkey. And I have a dear friend who swears by cooking a whole turkey. And he's so funny because he always makes this motion. He's like, no, you got to put the stuffing in hot. And then it's like
he's and he makes this insertion movement. People just listening. Yes, it's just like into the cavity, which I hope is the right term of the bird. He's like, no, you got to put the stuffing in hot. And I'm and I'm like, my my job, I think, is to tell people how to achieve the best results in the easiest way. And I think that that you're you're you're playing with fire a bit and trying to cook turkey's hole.
But you can't stop people from wanting to cook a hole.
I don't tell them not to. I give them alternatives I have. There's there's a chapter in here on breast, there's a chapter on next wings, o fal and skin, there's a chapter on leg quarters, and there's a chapter called celebrations. So the celebrations addresses that issue. So what it is is, I'm not trying to stop people from cooking the whole bird, because what they want to do is they want to celebrate that whole bird. They want to I mean, cooking a whole turkey, you're serving a bunch of people.
But it's it's like one of the worst ways to introduce someone who's never eaten wild turkey to wild turkey like this.
Let's say you have a tea. Let's you have a teenager and you're like, Chastity's the best, Chassi is the best. I'm like, but let's what if, though I don't even want to talk about it, Chastity is the best, Chastity is safest. Yeah, but what no Chassey.
I'm not telling.
The wants.
That is wonderful. This is not the only cookbook for turkeys right here.
It is not well I think I think people get used to cooking domestic turkeys hole, yeah, and they want to go and do it to a wild turkey.
It's a completely different beasts.
Completely different. I present them options for cooking a whole bird, parted out or in more impressive ways, you know, like a turkey, this turkey Wellington where you like you have the tender loin, the liver and the shredded leg meat in cased in five pastry and then or or you make a Sunday where you're you uh, you take the legs and you slow cook them, and then you you take the breast and you make brajole out of those.
You roll them with some parme left. It's a it's a rolled, it's a it's easierly a pounded out piece of meat that's rolled. What was the bole?
Oh okay, I think it's okay, yeah, I.
Am not not to be not brezila b R A C I O l em with you. Uh. And then it's usually stuff with parsley, parmesan, garlic, things like that and so, and then you can take some slices off the breast and do that. So at this point, you can take a wing, you can take a leg, you can take a little bit of the breast, and you can cook it, and you can present it in this, you know, impressive way, and you can be like, hey, look I cooked the whole bird. But it's reducing their risk.
Uh Thanksgiving screw well, yeah, screwing over cooking the breast, under cooking the legs.
I want to clarify a point here. I don't do it. I used to be very I used to want to do it all the time, but not only that. At Thanksgiving, I don't make turkey. Yeah you know. I mean maybe i'd have a turkey dish, but I just make whatever I think it's the best thing in my freezer. Yeah, which I think is actually more in keeping with oh that tradition.
Absolutely.
They were like you know the top of this hundred times historians don't even think they were eating turkey.
Yeah, talk about that.
So like I get it. I don't I know anymore now not to do it, but I respect the process. Like I said, not dogging on you.
But I'm not no, no, no, I'm not gonna hold turkey shame anybody. But like I said, there's there's other ways to go about it. And it's the same thing with plucking and skinning. You know. It's like I know a lot of people want to skin their bird. They've always skinned a bird. They don't want to take the time to pluck a bird. And so I present both methods and then go over what are the benefits in the in the in the drawbacks from doing either.
Walk walk me through what you say in there.
Okay, Well, if you're gonna if you're gonna take the breasts and pound them out into cutlets pyards, which is like a basically a very thinly sliced uh slice of breast that you grill very quickly. It's wonderful like and there's and there's some I think some very good methods for grilling turkey thin sliced turkey breasts in there, real trick to it. And and or breaded and fried turkey breast not not like fried turkey strips, but like a
thin cutlet less schnitzel. Yep, if you're gonna do that, and then you're gonna maybe just slow cooking shred your legs. Then I think that there is a case to be made for skin in your bird. You know, expedients heat things like that.
Yeah, if you're making schnittle, that skin is not gonna.
No, no, not at all. And if that's the way you've always done it. Yeah, And so I in the in the first chapter when we go over you know, you got a dead bird on the ground. Are you
skinning it? Are you plucking it? And then we actually came up with a Venn diagram of everybody that I hunted with, and we tried to we tried to integrate whether they had beards, because there was almost a connection there if they if they always skinned their turkeys and always pluck their turkeys, and if they had a beard. If that makes any sense, cow walking out of the woods with a plucked turkey, you have to get them, get them done right away.
Yeah, if for people who are intimidated plucking a bird of any kind, turkey is the easiest bird to pluck by far and away. I can pluck a turkey twice as fast as a mallard if.
You got a few of them to pluck. To do you get do you get into this in your book? If you got a few of them to pluck, get that jug of hot water.
Going, oh scalding.
Oh my god, it's so nice. Man, they look so good.
Does that affect the skin?
Does it just ever so slightly puckers the skin up, like tightens the skin up. But it has no It's like I would never do it. For one, because by the time you know everything, just by the time you heat all the damn water up, you could have plucked turkey. But if you have like a couple of guys and you get it, you get a few birds and you get that jug of water going. One, clean up is nice because a wet feather they don't blow anywhere. All
those feathers are going in the trash. And two it's just they just come out beautiful, beautiful.
Yeah, did you this is around the topic of skin. You and I were talking like around fourth of July. I was making turkey wings, which is a thing I experiment with every other year.
Probably where you're at right now on.
It still back to the drawing board. I'm like making like because they're a giant, giant wing. They're super fun at outdoor barbecues and stuff to see people chewing on them and kids think they're super awesome and everything.
But the well, yeah I had some, Yeah, I remember, Yeah.
It's the the skin. So that's my question is like, did you did you nail turkey skin, wild turkey skin on.
The wings or just by itself?
Just by itself, like being able to eat wild turkey skin in an enjoyable way.
I got one recipe in there for just taking it cutting into strips, and there's a there's a Spanish disc called Papa Spravas and it's basically French fries and served with a chili sauce and some mayonnaise and then it's sprinkled in there with fried turkey skin and then coarse salt giving that skin up. Uh, the slicing it real thin into little strips and.
Little pieces don't have salmon skin, yes, yes, yes.
No, I mean it got a little chewy for sure, you know, but I kind of enjoyed it, especially in contrast with a you know, a tender potato.
What size strip?
Oh, let's say like a thick match stick.
You know. The chef Jack Peppin.
Well, here's a here's a funny story. So when you go to Connecticut for the last hunt in this book, okay, and uh, I killed a turkey on the first day.
Uh.
And the next day, our hosts Dan Miser is a chef up there. Miser he's he's a wonderful human being and they call him the mayor because everybody, I mean, he just you know, he walks in anywhere and they're like, hey, he's like he owns a couple of like five restaurants up there. Really cool guy. And we're kind of winding down for our season. We're we're done, you know, I've kind of I've gotten a turkey in every one of the spots Georgia, Texas, Oregon, and now Connecticut, and it's
time for kind of a wind down celebratory dinner. And he's like, yeah, some neighbors are coming over and you're cooking. I'm cooking dinner. I'm I'm on deck for cooking dinner that night. And he's like, jacqu'es coming over, and by Jacques he means Jack peppin shock Papan is coming over for dinner, which is horrifying. I cannot begin to tell you the amount.
Of stress be intimidated by.
Uh. I mean, I don't know who, I mean, I don't know. There's you could probably think of someone else, but this is the man. This man was Charles de Gaulle's personal chef. This man turned down being JFK's chef. This man's father was in the French Resistance. He co hosted a show with Julia Child for twenty something year. I mean he is, I mean one of the most impressive humans.
I stole his turkey gallantee.
Yeah, I cooked inner for him. Uh and it was I mean, I think it came out well. He was kind, his his poodle Guston in his lap the whole time. Tell me, no, no, no, no, it was it was. I just it's not and he.
This gallum getting on. It was his gallant first class. She's got two first class seats and one of the first class seats, he's got a dog box buckled into the seat.
Oh just a case, she's this. This worked, This absolutely worked. He was the kindest, sweetest First.
What was he doing you said he was?
He would feed the little bit.
He fed the dog your food. What what there?
What you expect from a world class French Not like he's not gonna be waving a machete around like you.
There was a was also some I'm gonna pick it back up again. He fed your food to a dog in his lap? Jack, what happened?
This is? This is going in a way different directions than his shd It's it's There was also a little bit of like grilled boar that I brought up and he like a little scrap of that. He's like he gave it to.
He's sitting there even with a dog in his lap. It's Jock the ban man.
He was like the Dolls personal chef.
Do you expect him to have better table manners?
This? It worked. I don't care. I was cooking. Nobody cared Jock. I mean it was, it was. It was beautiful, It was wonderful. It was on brand and it was and I did the the wellington for it.
Did he have anything to say about your meal?
Oh? He was?
The dog seems like it. Jesse open shirt did as he laughed. Boy, dog liked it.
He was. He was very complimentary and kind. And I sat there and board wine for them all night and sat right next and we talked about chicken, because you know, he's from Breast in France and they're famous for their chickens, and we we talked about every part of the chicken and killing chickens the best way to kill a chicken.
And it was the best way to kill a chicken.
Oh yeah, there was some Oh gosh it was there was I.
Was deep into the little brain.
Yep, that was it him. Yeah, well this was a knife. Uh think roof of the mouth if I remember right, Yeah, that would have worked. It was. It was amazing. So yes, so uh an interesting uh way to to loop that back is that you know Jacpa pen actually was that the final meal? Uh that present in the book.
Why did they bring up Jack?
I just think it's hilarious how it was just kind of like dropped in your lap, right, like you weren't cooking for him or the dog. He just showed up.
Well, yeah, there was. I mean there was a little bit of notice, enough enough to just, uh, you know, instigate a lot of anxiety.
And why did I bring up Jack Peppin?
I don't know we're talking about we're talking about turkey skin. I want to know if you there's other stuff the one.
He's the one that turned me on to cooking salmon skin. But and this this is something I was going to bring up with you earlier. One salmon skin is good when it's fresh coming out of a freezer. Like salmon, skin does not like a freezer.
It probably rancid fish.
Yeah, it hates the freezer. But nice fresh salmon. If you ever get if you ever for you listeners out there, if you're fresh salmon, take the skin and cut it into little French fish strips and just do them in olive oil. Damn it's good. Well did you ever gag salmon? It's spend in your freezer six months? It's not good. And I was the was gonna bring up. If you're cooking skanky fish, remember talking with the bubble factor. The skankier the fish is longer, you leave it in a friar.
If you look like frying primo good fresh fish, you can leave it in longer. But when you fry it long, your fry in the skank out of it. You know what I'm talking about?
Do you agree? Yes? I'm sorry, I just got hung up on that last sentute.
Did you ever try to alibit skim?
Yeah?
I did try. Hels is good. Yeah, fresh halbert skim, helbt skin, sea lice, all stuff to it.
Yeah.
So yeah, you take your late knife like the backside of your flay knife and just scrape that slime off of her. And then you try that and put coarse salt on it and then put that on like a Caesar salad.
Holy ship, don't do that with hell that that's been the freezing.
Oh no, I don't. Why don't I quit freezing. I don't freeze. I don't get fish anymore, man, because it just it's scammon, it's skin them if I'm gonna freeze, Well, no that's not true. No, you're right. But I eat them when I come home, when I come home from Alaska. Yeah, I eat them and give them away. And I don't like, I don't. You don't want it in there, like in a multitude, salmon's gone, Yeah, salmon in the month two I've given it away or I've eaten it.
Yep.
I just found a couple of flays that I just through freezer mismanagement. I smoked them. Yeah, I smoked him skin on, smoked him skin on. But cal you're thinking about scraping. You look at a halbit. It looks so beautiful and shining and everything, and you run the back of your over and it comes off like.
The nastiest like oil, like black slime.
It's hard to get off stuff. Then you're like, damn the fact that I've been like freezing that junk without Now we just scraped the dickens out of them and they still look pretty. Yeah.
So any what about like skin on like a turkey thigh and being able to bite through that skin.
Yeah, it's gonna require a decent amount of cooking. You know, cold feet is a really good math where you're gonna dry Brian.
It first lay this one out for me.
Uh A coffee is an excellent way to do that. So you're gonna you're gonna season it real well with salt, and I have a little seasoning mix and there's gonna be salt and some sort of some kind of citrus essed little garlic, a pinch of sugar. You season it kind of cured a little bit, and then you cook it very slowly in fat. That could be a whole drummy a whole I would say, a whole leg quarter, so thigh drumming connected. And then you can you cook
that until it's tender. And a very common method for doing all kinds of things. You know, you cold feed rabbit, you can cold feed beef ribs. You can cold feed famously duck legs, and then you would take that out and and apply heat to it, just like we did yesterday with the with the pig leg You know, you can throw it on the grill, you can put it in a hot oven. You can even deep fry it, you know, I mean if you want to just kind
of go over the top. But basically you can render that skin out, but it's gonna require a lot of low and slow, gentle cooking on there, and you still might have a little bit of chew. When I was doing the testing, I had some good results. So the whole approach I took for the what I call the holiday turkey is I cold and feed the legs in that way. And it was a jake. It was a young bird skin on, and then I cooked those slowly and then brought those back in the oven. Got the
skin browned on. That came out beautifully, and then roasted the breast separately, got it and that came best of the best. It came out great. And simultaneously making a sauce a gravy with the liquid in the pot with the breast skin side up, so the skin's getting brown and then the liquid underneath it is just getting all the flavor from the breast, and then you just puree that instead of thickening it. So it's got the vegetables and it came out great, and it was It's just
like another way to approach the whole turkey. I mean, it is a hyper Thanksgiving style meal right there. You've got, you know, all these flavors of celery and sage, things like that that you that you associate with love them. They just loved rosemary in every garden. And and then you get the legs cooked nicely too. But the legs took way longer, you know. But but yeah, I had some luck with it. But honestly, I am mostly skinning birds.
The for what I'm gonna do a lot of cutlets, a lot of the pyards, the grilled cutlets, and a lot of fried and then I like to generate broth and shredded meat off of legs a lot. So I will crockpot that shred the meat, take that broth, use that for whatever purposes I need that for, and have that shredded meat set aside. I don't really need the skin at that point. Also, mostly hunting in Texas it's hot, really easy to just get in there and zip that
bird and just get it and get it done. And I'll go in and I'll and I'll skin the wings out. And that is a pain in the ass. It's tough. And I and I came to the realization it's like plucking and skin it. There's no easy route around those I'm sorry, the wings. The wings. Yeah, yeah, around the wings. It's like it's hard either.
Skinning the wings is like skinning a squirrel. It's like tough.
Yeah, well yeah yeah. And then plucking them is you know, requires some some force as well. But you go in and do that.
I even know when you give them a dun't. Yeah, I mean, nice wing, man, it looks pretty given dun't, you can pluck it out to the bitter end.
Yeah.
Are you thinking about what you're gonna do with the bird differently? If you shoot a jake versus a sure big old.
Share limb hangar, yeah, you you would. You could orient more towards like a whole leg, quarters, whole roasted breasts. Honestly, the best success. I mean, I kind of I want to finish out at your question now, but yeah, just it's more tender, you know, And so I think like the same thing with the haw. The younger the animal, the smaller the animal, the bigger the cut, you know, and so you can do more roasts and things like
that big old bird. And I killed a twenty five pound tom and a rio in Texas and no Wow waited on digital scale monster for Texas. Yeah, I don't.
Know what he was hanging out nearby? Was corn?
That weight was it was corn.
It wasn't near corn feed, I mean like real clothes. He was a he was a big old boy. Yeah. I shot a bandit turkey one time. The biologist told me it was either five and a half or six and a half years kid.
Yeah, that's crazy.
Yeah, it was bust out the old crockpopp Well, I mean it was not to go off on a tangent whatever. It took me forever to call this bird in. I killed him. Actually my misfired had to load another shell killed the bird and it was just like ecstatic walked over there and saw a big old metal leg band on him and it was just like what a friend of mine's game ward And I called him up and I'm like, guess what he's like that's cool.
I got to talk how far away was attagged?
Three quarters of a mile.
Five and a half years.
He didn't make that far yeah, no, no, he was in a county that doesn't have huge Turkey population, Southeast Austin.
Gun missfired. I'm you sure it wasn't User air.
Oh, it's hundred pc user air. Yeah I didn't.
Oh yeah, that turkey might have just said I've been around so long after.
A lot of my yeah, I've had I've had a lot of misfires. I've had a lot of mispires about being like that. I didn't do something.
Oh no, no, no, no, that was all my fault. Yeah, I didn't. I didn't let the bolt just drive it home, and didn't.
You try to be quiet?
Yeah?
Do you want me? Turkeys have not been killed by people trying to be quiet because you're like you ease that slide forward, you know, or you're like you're you're you're you're hunt with the pump.
You kind of go, no, I'll never make that mistake.
Yeah, you don't load the pin. I've had that happen so many times. You just don't take yet, you just don't when you're hunt with a semi just washing. Yeah, or you'll try to do it quiet and then you like fidget with it, trying to get it to do that final.
Little that final little Now that that that scarred me. And then I got to talk to two different biologists and they they they said that when he was tagged, he was either two and a half or three and a half and it was three years prior.
Well they tagged him as an adult. Yeah, that's cool. What were they what were they working on?
I don't know it was in it, Yes, probably just population out there because it's one of Texas only has a few one Gobbler counties. It's like a April season only, and that was in one of those counties, and so I would assume just you know, just population status.
I wanted something interest about tagging. You used to go out butcher to soft shell out of the soft shell turtle out of the Yellowstone and had a tag on it pinched into its shell. I could never find showed it around, asked around, never found who the hell. It was like a picture like a I can't describe it, like a staple.
Did you call the grade schools?
No? But it's real official looking. It didn't look like someone just said, I hang this whatever on the turtle. You know, it was like pinched into its shell and it just had like a couple numbers. And I don't know, did you call that thing?
Came from Fish and Wildlife Service? Yeah, it was federal.
No, I showed people from the state. Try. So you ever seen a tag like that? That's weird? Yeah, I could never find it.
You know what's been kind of fun is because I'm basing this off of observation and past, i'd say a partial criticism of yours regarding our guest Jesse here where because we he and I haven't hunted.
I criticized him in the past.
Yes, he and I haven't hunted together. But you're you're, like I said, like more observation, soft criticism is Jesse has no fun hunting, right, Like on the hogs, It's like Jesse's here to get the hog and then like get to work.
Right, I'll take that skinning hogs is fun.
But like all of his turkey stories, is very plain to see that he has a lot of fun hunting turkeys.
Well, you enjoy the pursuit.
I do, I do, And I think that's I mean a lot of you know, by the end of the book, I've tried to make that apparent. You know, it's like it's done. It's taught me a lot about patients and why, and you know the motivation. Also, I got to go to some beautiful places, you know, and I got to travel. I'm like, I'm I am typically stuck in Texas, not not for any reason beyond my own fault. I just don't travel to hunt a lot. And this this got me,
you know, into very different locations. Eastern Oregon there was three feet of snow on the ground, uh, you know, the swamps of Georgia, and then Connecticut, which was incredible because you're hunting twelve acre property here, nine acre property there, and then you're.
Rolling twelve billion ticks.
Oh. We were twenty miles from Lime, which was disturbing. All the actual line ye the city and or on on just this vast amount of public land. We had this weird poacher running up there. I had a guy come and shoot a turkey that I was like thirty seconds away from. Just some weird, weird stuff.
I mean, but go into that.
What happened, Like you were calling a burden and another guy shot it.
Yeah, it was it was really weird. So we were You have to have permission on a daily permission to hunt anywhere in Connecticut from the landowner on a different piece of paper. It's very very regulated. So if you're going to hunt three differ properties, you got to have three different permission slips per day. Even if it's like you're you're the guy.
Like like if a farmer says, yeah, go ahead.
Yeah, you got to fill out this little permission slip.
Really, but even his nephew does.
As far as I know, that's what we were doing. Yeah, we were. We were every morning paperwork time, and so we were.
He was enrolled in the public access program.
No, no, no, this is regular be on private on private land. Yeah, yeah, we were.
Our host people are going to write in about this, Oh.
I'm sure I called, yeah the comment section. I look forward to it.
Uh, well, there's you can post your property says this is by written permission only. Yeah, and if you get call on there with that written permission, you're trespassing.
Even our hosts asked we were filling out permission slips daily to hunt with him. We we were that day. We were rolling around and we were kind of alternating between public land, and we rolled to this big area of public land, and right off the trail there's a bunch of feathers or like stuck into the ground. Turkey feathers stuck into the ground like a arraid. It was. It was like kind of witchy, like real weird.
Little kitty, little kiddy, what do you mean little kids do stuff like that? And it seems like witches did it.
Somebody killed a turkey and and was like, hey, I killed a turkey that was on public We get to the boundary of that and we have permission to hunt the orchard beyond that boundary, and immediately we start hearing gobblers. There's three monsters just in this field. Oh, just doing that. Not budgeting, not budget at all. We split up, and he was going to go around to the other side of this field in case, yeah yeah, or if they moved off that way and I stayed on one side.
I had a big open area between me and that field.
You're trying to bushwhack them.
I tried to bushwhack there's a one pine tree. I belly crawled about two hundred yards, you know, the whole time, like lime and belly crawled, and I got up on them, and those birds just they had some hens on them and they just theyre not moving, and they went quiet, and I would I would yelp every twenty minutes, and they just totally went quiet and they moved off into the brush. And then after about an hour or so, they fire back up, and the three of them in
unison are every time they do it, that's it. Thank you. I'm what a point and you're gonna make that sound.
I'm gonna try to do it. I'm gonna do it where it's three of them doing it.
Yeah. So I would yelp and and they would and they would hammer back, and they're in this hollow and this noise it's just reverberating to this little valet. But we're on private at this point, and we're bordered on one side by a land trust. No hunting allowed there.
M hm.
They get far enough up into the woods that I am able to extra kate where they can't see me, and I and I do a wide loop and I try to come up on the side of them, and so I do, and then I get about one hundred and fifty yards and I start talking to them and they're every time they're they're really every time not moving. But they're in this little hollow and there's this rock wall. If you've ever been to Connecticut.
Walls, every the poet Laurie Robert Frost has the whole poem boat. It's like an old stone savage.
So I eventually I just I get on the opposite side of this rock wall and start creeping up on them. And I'm calling and they're calling back the whole time, but not budging.
You're thinking you're just gonna snake your barrel over the top of that rock.
Yeah, And you know, I'm I've been and I'm like, this is gonna happen. And two of these guys are big. I mean, the third one is not a jake. I mean there, but they're they're great looking birds. I we okay, granted, I also I was speaking, you know, just like I'm by myself. I got a photographer with me, you know, Jody's with me. We're creeping up along this rock wall. We're probably not forty fifty yards from the point where
we're going to poke over and seal this deal. And a shotgun fires up the hill and hits a tree about thirty yards in front of us. The pattern hits up. This somebody shot up and I Am like, what just happened. So the other guy that's hunting with us, that had circled around, but I've been texting with him and he was he had since left to chase another gobbler that he had heard, so he wasn't in the area. But
I'm like, well, that's him. He just did that. I'm a little pissed that he didn't communicate where he was, and also that he shot at us. So I start calling his name and I hear nothing, and I'm like, hey, hey, hey, and I hear and I'm like, oh, well, let's turkey flapping. It wasn't it was a person running away away, no shit, what? And so I never saw the person.
It's this, did he kill the turkey?
Honestly? I left. I just got out of there. I couldn't see. I like poked over and I looked down into that hall. There was no dead bird that I could see. I couldn't hear my friend, the guy that was with us, I didn't know where he was. And I was like, and somebody just shot at us, basically,
And I was like, I'm leaving. I'm out of here, and we left and we went back and we met the guy at the boundary of the of public and private that we were we had the access to, and he he was like, absolutely, that is a land trust. There's no hunting. Somebody was over there heard these birds hammering, I mean for an hour.
And it was just more than they could stand.
It was more than they could Did you ever hear that that guy call it all?
No, but if you ever heard me call you know it's not a hint.
The guy I'm saying, the guy that shot, he never.
He was just he was slipping into good to be true.
But you're saying, had he heard you, he would have known there was another person.
He was either brazen or an idiot or both. This story idiot. I want to just clarify, every part of this story is one hundred percent like this, and.
I was hearing any part there's no story is another kind of story where I'm like, Dad's not true.
And then a friend of this guy by the guy that was hunting with the local calls him in a little while later and said that a couple that was walking at the land trust saw a guy with a shotgun. They called the cops. I came and arrested some dude and he was in there and he had a bag, but we don't know if he had his camera. I never got any follow up.
Why don't you get some following an appendix?
It was very mysterious, very strange. It ended really weird, and you know, as that was like mid day, and I was just like, I don't even know where to go from here, you know. And it's also I'm coming from Texas, you now, and it's just like there's private land. I don't even there's very little public land turkey hunting
in Texas. I mean, it's minuscule. And then for these these boundaries and all this stuff to exist, and I'm I'm I'm very out of my element and just like also just confounded by all all these things that have happened that there's like public land, no hunting, private land, yes, hunting with permission, public yes, yes, with with weird display of turkey. And then and then you know this mysterious person that just dropped in and tried you write about
in your book. It's all in there. Oh cool? Yeah nice?
Did you include that he got with resting?
Yeah, well supposedly, I mean, that's that's you know that's the third hand that that that's what happened.
To hire a researcher to find out what happened to that guy.
I would love to know. Yeah, but I mean it was it was very interesting. And we also had somebody fair and square scooped us in Oregon, you know, like we were you know, we moved off of a place that we thought that a bird would be where you know, we had seen one the day before, and we called and never heard anything, and then we moved off and that bird was on his way the whole time. Some kid and his girlfriend, I mean like teens, Like I
mean's kid's probably sixteen. He rolled in right after us started like calling to this.
Bird, slammed the car door.
Yeah, you got a really bad crow call. I was like, what is that? You know, if I'm if I am judging and calling, it's bad.
Yeah, but when you're trying to shot gobble, doesn't matter what it's on.
Yeah, and uh and then we're and so then we start like calling and he's answering both of us, and then it's just boom, And I was like, he got it. He throws that bird on his back when we were just walked out and we had to walk out the same road, him and his girlfriend. He's got this bird on his back, doesn't even turn around, just throws his hand up and waves, just like yes, sir, yes, sir.
And I'm pretty sure she shot it. And I was just like you little sob bitch, like you're having a good day, man, very well done, you.
Know, said I got some ideas. I can cook that bird.
Yeah, yeah, hey, yeah, don't hold cook it. Yeah, it's stung in the moment, but it it feels a lot better now.
I'm willing to let him have that. But you know, just like the spectrum of experiences between you know, private and we started off in private in Texas and then massive public stretches in Oregon, and then you know, a weird mix of both in Connecticut and having these interactions that were you know, fair too scary. Yeah out there too, but I mean it was it's interesting. But I yeah, I mean to circle back in a long fashion. I
love it, you know, I just love it. It's it's spraying, it's beautiful, it's it's fun and I but I love eating them the most. I mean, that's really what drives it for me. To your point, the cow I just love, you know, my birthdays in May. I share a birthday with colonel Colonel Tom Kelly. Yeah, and uh that's my uh fried turkey every every birthday, Fried turkey and do berry cobbler. That's my thing.
Dang, what do you gotta get for a big, old, shiny book like this?
It's that's fifty fifty just like the Hog Book, one hundred and fifteen recipes, three hundred and seventy odd pages, telling exciting stories.
It's like thirty three cents of recipe.
That's a good math, alright.
You can get at the Meat Eater website.
So there's another interesting observation with their guest here is when you're asking about hogs, he's like real sheepish about the hogs that he prefers to shoot. He's like he's trying to select for pregnant sows. Yeah, And it's like if that's just packaged meat and labeled as something in the grocery store, that's just what people want. There's no other thought put into it, right, like yeah, easter lamb.
Yeah you know, yeah. Yeah.
It's called The Turkey Book. A Chef's Journey of Hunting and Cooking, America's bird, Jesse Griffiths. Photography by Jody Horton and Sam Everett, And.
We had two photographers on this one. It's pretty fun.
And on the back, I see you got it's cool because you got a little thing that's gonna puzzle most people. There's a gobbler working a decoy.
Yeah, and yeah, didn't shoot a single over decoy. Oh last spring.
And it's got a cloth cover. It's beautiful.
Thank you.
It's like a gift. It'd be a great gift book because it's so beautiful.
Yeah, it's very very well done, thank you, very tasteful.
It's very elegant.
Jesse and I we're talking Sam Averrette, who you know, Steve, my good buddy, has some phenomenal stuff in there.
Yeah, there's I mean there's there's a couple of photos in there where he got i mean hunters and birds, which is so so difficult. I have a lot of respect for, especially in the people in the video realm that are able to capture that. And then he was he was able to position himself just as being such a great hunter. I mean she grew up. You know, he's big mule deer hunter and a really wonderful guy. And also just really killed it on the food photography
that he did. He was with us in Georgia and and Oregon, and then Jodie, who was the photographer for my first two books, did Texas and also went to Connecticut, and then all the the interim food photography. Uh, we did in his studio, all the all the other recipes, but a lot.
Of tattoos in yours.
It's heavy on photography. It's beautiful.
What's that call when people make noises and people listen to it? Yeah, listen to listen to this. It's really funny. Listen to this cover. Dude, you're getting that film.
Oh, that's really good.
Nice cloth.
Turn up a little bit and.
Listen.
Listen to that.
Almost a Wes Anderson field to.
The cloth cover. Beautiful, No it is, you've thrown through it and it's it's gorgeous. Man. It's a great celebration of a great celebration of a great bird. All kinds of beautiful recipes, very very clear descriptions, how to do stuff, winning recipes, how to use all of your bird. Yeah, man, it's beautiful.
Congratulations, Thank youss.
The hogbook such a work of art. It's cool to do this one.
I appreciate that.
Where I challenge you to do a book this big on Woodcocks. Oh yeah, the Woodcock Book.
We've got a great uh we've got a bundle going with n WTF right now too. You can get a year membership and the book for at a twenty dollars savings.
Oh goodness.
So even if you have a membership, it'll renew it automatically for a year. And so they've been really supportive, which has been great, and you know, being able to try a little bit of membership to them and help them out, I mean help them out. They do so much. I mean, we've really appreciated there.
Was for them. You wouldn't be writing no books about turkey.
That's right, that's absolutely you'd be right.
And he'd be like writing a book about a Dodo if it wasn't for them. Uh yeah. And you can go buy the book at the meat eater dot com. Correct, yep. Beautiful book. Such a nice gift if you know someone likes the hunt turkeys. I don't know, Father's Day whatever. It's just a gorgeous, gorgeous work of arts. So check out the Turkey Book. A chef's journy of Hunting and Cooking America's Bird by Jesse Griffiths, who is just such a nice guy, wonderful chef, generous dude, loves wildlife, great
guy of support. The turkey buck get it now, I'm Gobble the school common Gommam the steward.
Common gomlem on the sto Gobble on the steward.
I'm a gangster bird. I was thakful the streets, I say, true spurs, I ain't I see the police, no cat now you sure of course I'm out on the lamb. But this turkey is just too real to wind up. I got ham Gobble, gobble Macker, Steward. What you're gonna do now? I'm the king of these streets. Then I'm running this town.
Call me Turkey, leave because I'm just.
Too strong trying to throw me any of it.
I'm gonna go off, Turks, not up unless rane Turkey Lee's throwing hands.
If you're looking for a fight, The