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I T E dot com. I'm gonna start out by clearing the air around you falling out of a boat, and I want to like, here's the thing. We're at our Mediater Experiences event in uh Cypress Cove Marina in Venice, Louisiana, and we're on a day when we got a new group coming in today and an old group going so it's a day off. Yesterday, I was fishing with my group,
my assignees. One is in waste management, one is a butcher, and one was a lawyer, and I accidentally fell out of the boat, which which I haven't done in my adult life fallen out of a boat, and nobody else on this trip has either no one's fallen out of the boat. I have never like I've fallen out of boats that capsized, but you can't really help that. I've never fallen out of a fine boat I have as
an adult. I'm gonna tell what happened, and I'm gonna tell how I've how I dealt with it in the moment, and I'm gonna tell how I'm dealing with it now. So I caught a red fish that was outside of the slot limit, red drum, I'll point out. And everybody else that tells the story and laughs about it that was on the boat never mentions that it was the biggest fish of the day, never mentioned.
That it's not important the biggest fish.
Of the day.
And I was in the bow of the boat and it was kind of high up, and I took a photo of the fish and wanted to resuscitate it. I wanted to demonstrate responsible angling techniques, so I didn't want to go to.
The back of the boat.
Because you know the whole like keeping your fish wet. This fish is getting dried off at this point, Okay, So I'm like, I want to take took a photo of it, and I'm like, I know, it's like all naughty.
You're not supposed to take photos.
It's fine to impale them on the hook, but you're not supposed to detain them.
So no, I think that's only from trout. Oh really, I think these fish are hardy. These fish can like live in the bottom of the boat for a couple of minutes and then you put them back in and they're like thanks.
He sure thought so this fish. But my thing was I was going to do the resuscitation move. But I'm high up. The bow is at a little higher than other parts of the boat, and there's no rail. You follow me, it's a flat deck as I'm lean, and I have carpal tunnel syndrome, which this battle with this fish of exceptional size qualifiers. Were you in a wavy spot? No, okay, it's not waving, but it was windy. It was windy, but I had I had a not a tailwind. That
should have helped. The wind should have helped. So I'm sort of thinking about my my how I need to have the surgery on my wrist. The fish as well being the the height I was above the water.
Wait, you were thinking about your surgery.
It's bugging the hell out of me right now. It's related to composing on a computer. But the fish fight really bothered it because everything bothers it when it's inflamed. This is all on my mind, and I'm reaching, and I'm thinking to myself, my god, that water is far down as.
I'm are you are you crouded?
As it started to get really close.
Are you want a squat? Are you on your knees?
I can't recall I was not on my knees. I don't.
I just remember the last thought I had was how far the water was away. It was the last thought I had.
You thought you could die?
And then suddenly it was very close.
I was thinking like, wow, this is quite a reach to get this fish down where I need to get them.
And then I was just in the water head first.
How deep was But I kind of did like like a TJ. Hooker roll, like a before you guys time. I just kind of did. It was like a barrel roll. So you went like show as over teakettle? You call it ass over tea kettle?
How deep was the water?
We didn't hit the bottom.
I was out so fast my hat and sunglasses are still on. The first thing I said was I fell in the water.
In case there was any question, huh.
So the problem is I'm with all strangers. I'm with a fishing guy and three strangers. So how do you do?
You know what I mean?
Like save faith? Yeah, I just got right back to fishing, because what are you gonna do? Like, did anyone tell me out?
Everybody talked about it. It was commented on.
I commented on it, but I wasn't like I didn't I wasn't gonna I just got right back up and fished.
As gonna go sit down.
No, nothing was wrong.
Yeah, you would almost die they like stop and think about it.
I know, And I was trying to be like I didn't want to play it like something, so I was trying so hard. You know, like if you're going through customs and you haven't done anything wrong, and then you start tripping yourself up and you're starting to be like how would you act? You're like, I haven't done anything wrong, but I'm nervous. How would I act if I hadn't done anything wrong but I haven't done anything wrong?
Like what would you act like?
You know, like trying to come in and out of Mexico with guns? You're sort of like, I'm gonna act you know normal, Steve, after you did that, so back on boat, I'm trying to be like I don't want to act like I'm not.
I don't want to act like I'm.
Like this happens all the time, or.
I don't want to act like like I don't think it's on you. Yeah, I had a hard time. I tried. I was trying to get in the mind frame of what would I do if I always fell in off the boat. He's like a third time this week. But then I wouldn't want people to think I always fell It was just it was like, it's a very hard.
Moment to play.
How'd you feel the boat handled it? They did great, and they're all so old none of them thought to record it. That's not true, I tell you, buddy.
I was told, I don't think you understand the gravity of this situation.
I don't think there hasn't hit yet. No, no, no, there has.
Imagine like the most salacious like rumor, like the most juicy rumor out there, when Steve Ranella falls into the water off of a redfish boat trying to release that spreads in a way you can't imagine. It was like a wave of washing across the bayou of people who are like did you hear M Yeah.
No, I no, yeah, I saw this radio chatter and then it's probably on the Reddit channel, right.
I told my wife, and my wife immediately attributed it to aging, which is like, come on, come on, that's the worst thing to hear. Yeah, she's like, I'm gonna be mental pause and you're falling out of boats.
Yeah, there was a secret photo shown around. And I also had heard people debating whether or not the real issue here was your technique. I heard multip people say he shouldn't have tried to put in the water and resuscitate it. You're just supposed to torpedo the redfish.
That's the guys that I didn't even need to debate about that thrown in headfirst.
It was a technique problem, supposedly, Yeah, you're being too nice. How do you guys know I didn't fall in on. Purpose is to give people something to chat about. Achieve that Bonnie Rate song. Let's give him something to talk about. Yeah, talk about love. Half a finger wrote in to say this, Oh, introduce yourselves. That's in the notes.
Go ahead, we're here, Seth Morris Williams and me on our on our day off at Meat Eater experiences. Not though we just said goodbye to a group, we got another group coming in in like three hours and we're podcasting.
In the hospitality industry, they called the turnover day.
That's right.
Uh okay, Before you guys see the answer, I want to go around the room. Pry on or pre on mark.
M hm, Prian seth on on.
Prion, just to make it even both.
It comes from it's hot. Everybody uses something different.
I was asking someone what you're supposed to say, and I'll point out one of my favorite stories. As I was getting my hearing check. This is another old thing, like the older you get, the more you get tonitis. My doctor said tenadus and I said, is that how you say it? And he goes, I don't know how you say it. Uh. Heffelfinger said, here we have a
very definite answer. Stanley Preussinger discovered the agent that causes CWD scrapie c JD, which is kreutz felt Yak disease koru okay, and he published about it in nineteen eighty two. He suggested the word prion to describe this newly discovered cause of neurological disease. They gave him a Nobel Prize for his paper. In it, he the guy that invented the word clarified that he pronounces it prion. I hard argue with that. Puts that to bed. Speaking of Preon's where's this thing? Durkin?
Dirkin just got scolded by Uncle Ted Nugent. Oh boy, wow.
Durkin wrote an article, Uh, Pat Dirkin the last of the Uh. He's many things, but one of the hats he wears He's He's a part of a dying breed of regional outdoor columness. Someone I was lamenting the America's loss of regional outdoor columnists, and someone reminded me of who mine was as a kid that I always read and he would every you know, he'd ice fishing reports, Miskegan Chronicle, the Outdoor section. He'd be like, Hey, the
walleye bite is hot. You know, the deer numbers are up, deer numbers are down.
Whatever. Bob Butts I.
Think was his name, tough one, tough one, not as tough as the one I saw the other day.
Is that fellow by the last.
Name of Schmuck?
Yikes?
Great guy?
Though Uh, I didn't bring that up.
What did Pat get scolded?
For Oh yeah, Pat wrote an article he pulled up. Pat wrote an article it's not for all to talk about this Leon Musk character. This Uh oh no, it's working now Leon. I'll only say that because I just read that the art. I couldn't find any example. I just read. There was an article like now that Biden
dropped out. There's a lot of focus on Trump's age, like Trump sort of inherited the like like when Biden was like really old and cognitively failing, all of the attention of age was there, and now people are like, oh.
Wow, that guy is elderly too.
So someone I was just reading article the other day and it's and someone was commenting that he recently referred to Eon Musk as Leon Musk. I thought I was hilarious, but then I couldn't but I couldn't find it. It's Elondon, you know what I'm talking about aging. I thought it was funny, so I was like, that's really funny, Leon Musk, And so then I typed in Trump saying Leon Musk
and could find no reference for it. I didn't spend a ton of time on it, but I don't know if it's like a fake news thing, but I thought that was funny, Leon Musk, and I told myself from now on, that's what I'm going to say. But it worked. Starlink loaded the page fast, not as fast as won
My life, but it loaded the page. So Durkins article with the headline Wisconsin DNR still ignores cwd's elephant in the room, and Durkin is lamenting the fact that a DNR press release on September twelfth came out from Wisconsin's DNR kind of like kicking off the season and kind of kicking off the season, and he's saying, why are they not mentioning the fact the DNR release failed to mention CWD, despite the fact that it's now in forty
six of the state's seventy two counties. Durkin said, four of the past five dear my daughter and I have shot have all tested positive, including all three bucks I've shot aged three point five, three point five and one point five. He finally got a dole that was clean, but his daughter's two point five year old dough tested positive. Last fault Nugent says, we can't believe anyone is still falling for the CWD scam that has never hurt a deer herd anywhere at any time, Pat Dirk, and what
happened to you? Did he tweet that? No, I don't really put it in his comments, it's respectfully put it in the comments section. What we're looking at here is two different views of it. There's a view of it of man. Cwd's super scary. I hope no one catches it and I hope it doesn't kill off deer herds, and a view being cwd's been around now since the seventies. No one's caught CWD and there's no demons. There's like
hints of but so far no demonstrative evidence. Hints of evidence, but no like real demonstrative proof that it that it has impacted deer heard, I mean, wouldn't Doug say otherwise? Doug would say otherwise? But a thing that you and this piss is Doug off. But you find that there are are areas that have CWD. There's a bunch of deer.
Doug was recently telling me about his spot of property. He just went to tour pretty big property. I forget eighty eighty acres down there somewhere not too far from him, and amazing oak regeneration that had actually called him to talk about that, and he had the story to start
off with, and the two weren't related. And a lot of young seedlings and no brows the heart and center of like the CWD heat map, so very very low deer herd, and the oaks are just like so there is a plus for cw D. It's gonna be oak regeneral.
Low deer herd from c low deer heard from because there is some yeah, there is scattered evidence suggesting lower deer numbers. Well, I think that what I think that people that track and monitor chronic waste and disease, what I think would be very interesting to do is make a timeline and put two lines on it boone and Crockett entries and c w D prevalence.
Per county.
And see because that is a thing that would speak to like if if you're not afraid to eat in CWD infected deer meat, and many people have never got sick, and you think that CWD die offs pale in comparison to EHD and blue tongue, which is true.
Like a friend of mine in Michigan they.
Just lost fifty there's piles of twenty and thirty dead deer fifty percent of their deer herd by blue tongue and EHD. So there are wildlife diseases. No one likes to see them, But there are wildlife diseases that are that are like cataclysmic for deer populations. This is a new one. This is mysterious. And and and I'll, as I always do, to have the conversation. I primarily I primarily point out that I have a fear about human transmission.
And then people would say, like, oh, yeah, but how can you say you care about wildlife if you if you don't, if you're not troubled by animals dying of disease. I am, But I mostly the thing that really scares the hell out of me is human transmission. I had such a complicated sentence, go, I can't rememb where else had it with it.
That's a age thing.
I think you just made a good point.
I could just wrap it up. People might forget what I was going to get at. Oh No, what I'm gonna get at is this there are You might not be bothered by eating CWD infected meat, right, and you might not be bothered by just the act the fact that some deer will die of this disease, because you might look and be like, deer die of all kinds of stuff, including arrows, bullets, cars, EHD, blue tongue, whatever, they get chopped up by combines, they just die. So
that doesn't bother me. But if you saw that, if you saw a timeline with prevalence rates and boone and crocket submissions, and you saw that as the prevalence line goes up in many states, in many counties across the country, that the prevalence line goes up and the boone and crocket submission line goes down, then you might find a new class of individual who is concerned about CWD.
H I don't know. I'm surprised no.
One's done this.
What about those areas where there's high CWD don't they oftentimes allocate way more tags?
Yeah, you would have to tease that.
So your deer numbers could be down because people are just shooting a lot more deer, Yeah, it'd be, But.
They aren't though that at least from what I hear anecdotally, is that like people we've covered this where they're begging people to shoot dos and no one's shooting deer.
Correct.
So I don't know if that, if that's actually happened.
Yeah, last year Michigan's Apartment of Natural Resources sent out a letter saying, we like basically throwing it kind of had this tone of the director throwing his hands up in the air, saying, we have done everything we can think of to incentivize dough harvest. And it's not even a CWD issues, just like habitat quality other issues. We've done everything we can think of to incentivize dough harvest. It continues to go down.
Interesting, Yeah, we had a god, I'm gonna get the wrong number. It was either a eleven or twenty percent reduced take in our last so last year, our last season, so deer harvest. Harvest continues to go down, but population continues to go up. And then yeah, it's a problem. They came out again this year and all sorts of news clips and stuff saying please please take take more, Dear.
They've started to tweak regulations. They're trying to find ways to incentivize does even more and more, like our youth season. Starting next year, the youth season no longer will be buck or dough only does as well as there's there's always been an early antlers season. There's going to be a new.
Oh gosh, really works, but nobody likes it.
It was debated, there was that was one of the options that was discussed with the Commission this year, which I wouldn't be surprised if it comes up again. There's been options of extending seasons and this will be the case next year, extending seasons into January. More and more counties, so they're doing what they can, but it's really hard to get people to do it.
And then people continue to report harder time finding hunting spots, so you have like fewer people hunting, killing fewer deer. It's just like the amount of space that each hunter takes up has grown so much. And if I look at like when I grew up, we hunted two family farms. Each family's last name started with a Z oddly not related, and it was like it was kind of like everybody from church hunted these farms. Not really, but it was there was. It was just a lot of people had permission.
And then it was funny because you watch and then another generation comes up that wasn't in the strict farming business, you know, because these the patriarchs at the time when I was a kid did dairy, raised corn, did alfalfa, had zero interest in hunting. But it's like a smaller farm that isn't going to support many families working on it, so they would have, you know, four or five kids, those four or five kids, there's not room to be
a farmer like on the farm, the dassel farming. So they go and they go into other industries outside of agg and they like to hunt deer, and over time it becomes that it's you know, you watch this this thing happen. I watch it happened in multiple places at times becomes like a deer property and a big ladder stands right pop up here and there, and all of a sudden, it's kind of like us. It just it
doesn't have that feel anymore. Like that permission, that property, that access became very coveted, and it was happening, you know, in the nineties. It just became like coveted, and it's like fewer people are on per patch of ground from back when it's like people don't really care, right.
We attribute that partially to urban sprawl and things like that, just less land out there, less huntable land. But really what we've done, we're in a big time trophy hunting face. You know, it's cyclical and right now the method is get your hands on something exclusive, raise deer, name them, protect them. And those people generally, and I'm kind of stereotyping here, but they're not going to be like I'm killing a shitload of doughs.
Off my property.
The priority is bucks first, and so you don't have you just don't have that take anymore. So the people who would be more inclined to shoot does little bucks just go out on a weekend or whatever. Those people, their experience is declining because they're pushed on to public. You know, there's the guys we saw in Oklahoma and they don't have They're not the ones out there in
October killing some does. And that's a big problem we have right now because there's still a lot of land out there, but it's a lot of it is tied up because of the sort of the dial that we're really adopting as white till hunt.
Oh yeah, let's be clear, we are all part of that.
You've got private land, you own, you do the same thing giannis as private land, he hunts, I have stuff.
So we're not all part of it.
I don't do that.
I have a I have a fish shack, but a lot of people fish out of that shit.
Yeah, So I mean I think it's not it's a basic supplying demand thing. It is what it is. But it's rather than demonizing someone who hunts private land, who's demonizing anybody. I don't think we're demonizing.
I'm saying it's like a it's a are you Are you contesting that what we're saying is accurate. No, I'm not. I'm saying the less like serious, very serious deer hunters who are very focused use more space. It's like more acreage per hunter is used now than it was in the late eighties.
Early nineties for sure.
For sure, when it used to have a can I hunt your place only on one condition you kill them all? Would be like what a farmer would say to you in the nineties, So the early nine My point is like, yes, this is like a basic fact of reality now. And so I just see a lot of people that love to complain about it. Yes, that's my I'm gonna have it. So I have a big diet tribe. I'm going to go on.
Before the complaining, I would just say it's more useful rather than bitch about the white tail industrial complex, to say instead like, Okay, this is where things are headed. How can we take advantage of rather than bemoaning it, Let's look at how we can flip it and make.
It a positive.
And so the positive could be the example of what we're doing in southern Michigan with the Back forty and with volunteers in the National Deer Association, where there's a bunch of people who own private land or have leases but recognize as a thing and also are realizing there are people who do want to kill these doughs, but
they don't have the access. And we've found creative ways to connect those people, and there's a lot more private land landowners or leaseholders who are willing to invite these people out to come and be a part of it
and to help us with these dough harvest goals. So I think rather than bemoaning and saying like these people who have private land are the enemy, like it's a problem caused by them, it's hey, you've got great access, and let's let's just invite more people out there to kill these dos.
And so that's what we're doing. We've got great, big dough deer camps, and that's what Bubby Dog does exactly does.
It's just like a kill floor over there, man.
But I think it can be a good thing because you have situation. Not I'm not saying that. If we could, sure, i'd reverse it back to thirty years ago. But we are where we are.
We can't turn back time. So rather than.
Yeah, so let's let's say what's spicy he got here? Well, you're you're dogging on I'm kidding, Mark.
He's not dog on it. He's just saying it's a fact.
And I'm kidding about the dogging thing he is. I agree it's a.
Fact, Mark.
I agree with you, But I also think that it's not that scalable to be like just have a bunch of private landowners jump in on this. I think there's programs you could do that. But part of the reason we are where we're at is because of this message of like, the best way to kill a big one is to lock it up.
Like a lot of guys aren't going to.
It one day a month right when the winds blow out south southeast with a little bit of more south right.
And I think the bitterness doesn't come from So if we look at this and we go, well, we'll have a weekend and we invite a bunch of people out to killdose, that's great, Like I think people should do that. But that's also like my wife looks at hunting. If I go bow hunting in the suburbs by my house and I'm listening to traffic the whole time and it's not I'm on twenty acres and I'm scared to shoot one unless it's perfect because it might run into somebody's backyard.
That experience is not the same thing as the farms I grew up in southeastern Minnesota, where I can walk in with a stand on my back and I'm I have land to work with. They're not the same activity, even though they are the same activity. Yeah, And I look at that and I go, it's nice to hand some people some charity does and be like, go sit this alfalfa field or whatever. But I think where the kind of the where the jaded nature of you know, the people who are bitching about this comes from, is
because they want to go hunting. They just don't have the standards that you know, the private land guy who wants to grow the big bucks does and he's like, I'm getting kicked out of this experience of me going and hunting for myself. I don't want somebody to just be like, come out for two days and we'll put you in the box blind and you can shoot a bunch, because it's like, not the same hunt. And I think that's where some of it comes from.
You know where I think the jadedness comes from. To a large degree, I think it's a it's a reflection of and I'm not just saying this. I fell out of a boat. It's a reflection of age. And I'll tell you a little bit why why I think that. We one time had an entomologist on named Justin Schmidt, and he is the inventor of the Schmidt pain index, which is an index scale insect bites. He observed. He
said this about scientists. He said, the reason young scientists make all the groundbreaking discoveries is that old scientists spend
all their time defending their now wrong ideas. So as you're coming in and you're developing your outlook, you're like, oh, wow, look at this and look at this how novel, And then later you'll watch it'll start to your ideal become aged people, the new generation of people will start chipping away at it, and you're the human response is to then go defend your set of idea, and now you're not at the cutting edge anymore. Right. My fourteen year old works at the meat Eater flagship store in Bozeman
day or two a week. He was working a lot more in the summer, but now he's got school and all that. Him and his other kid. So he's fourteen. There's another kid that works down at the store who has a driver's license. Okay, I'm out of town, and he's like, can I go? Can we go hunting? On the open day of duck season? Him and the other kid he's going to drive. I give him like ten talkings to about gun handling and all that kind of stuff and send them on their way. And he said,
I said, where are you going? And he sends me a pond, a public land pond, And I'm thinking to myself, good luck with that, because it's like they saw a bunch of ducks on a pond. So sure enough, he sends me a text later someone's already in the spot, which I knew what happened.
Well.
Later I talked to him. He had the best time of his life. Went to a spot someone was there, went down to the drove up and down the river. They found like a little slew that had a beaver damn on it, got out, put their decoys up and killed a hen gadwall. Ecstatic, ecstatic.
Yeah, they did it on their own.
And I've taken him out to my buddies, managed duck property for duck hunting a fair bit. He has a good time, but not as good of a time as one like me and him will go sit under a bridge when the Goldenezer migrating through the last day or two of the season, right, and he went out and had like the he's still on cloud nine about like the proudest accomplishment you ever had. Now, you take a forty year old or a fifty year old who goes to the pond and someone else's there, what is their
demeanor about it? It's like that you'll always get beat by young dudes who everything's still fun, it's still exciting. They welcome the challenge, and you'll turn into an old generally, like I'm trying to be aware of this. Generally, what happened is you'll turn into an old bitchy man, and you'll forget that. You'll forget what it was like when you were in your twenties and you scrounged and scrounged
and scrounged. We sufficient spot on the sue Edison Damn, and old men would always get to the spot before us because they could just get up earlier, and we did. We would leave the bar and go to the spot and sleep at the spot because you couldn't beat him fair, right, Like, that was the level we were willing to go to to steal people's spots. And then you get old and you just bitch. We had this great we got this
great email from this guy in Michigan. He signed it a piste off Michigan Hunter, and he was saying that he was saying stuff this is like categorically untrue. He's like, by the time the Big Hunt, yeah he called it the Big Hunt. By the time the Big Hunt happens, all of the bucks are dead because of the youth hunt in the bowl hunt, and they ruined the Big Hunt. It's like, is there any statistic to back that up? That all, there's quite a bit of bucks are dead.
There's quite a bit of data to prove that's wrong. How many fourteen year olds do you know are gonna not go out because all the big bucks are dead. It's just like you get old and you get bitchy and you fall out of boats, and like you get it's just how its go.
Your stories don't track.
Your stories don't track. You forget what you were talking about. You bitch about the spots you had, and you forget that when you found that spot, someone else's hunting and you got there earlier than they did, right, And they drove off bitching and you stole the spot, and then it became your spot.
And then later some kids shows up and you just like.
You know everything. Shit duck dynasty, you know what I mean? Like Tommy Edison wrote in The Blue Collar Scholar, you guys good.
On moving on.
Tommy wants to know why do you criticize folks who wear cowboy hats? I wear one, and often I could make the argument that I'm more entitled to do so than a random driver in a Bozeman airport. I grew up with horses, own a steak and some cows, and even still ride most Tuesday evenings. And he does, and he does rodeo competition.
He criticized.
I think he's it's like he's laying out.
He's like he has I'll be right, No, I listen.
Yeah. If I let's say I all of a sudden started dressing up like a cop, what's that going.
To do to society? Chaos?
Yeah, so when people dress up like cowboys, why is it okay?
If I dressed up.
Like a cop.
It's just a general anti costume principle.
If I all of a sudden was like.
A badge and a police hat, and I started running around and I got like a belt with some hand cuffings, it'd be like.
A little But I don't think it's going to disrupt society.
If I dressed like a cop, yeah.
We would like sort of and then we would go fishing with the cop.
I mean the real problem is you'd begin to think you wear that badge long enough, then you think you have the power in two which I think there's a similar thing happening with the cowboy hat.
Yeah.
I've just been noticing that this guy, I feel like it's getting a little loose. Who has a cowboy hair? Yes, it's gotten a little. This been going on for maybe it's probably it's a it's a gradient, no doubt, right, But I feel like lately it's just gotten a little.
Loose, right like it used to.
Like for a while, it might not be that it was you had proximity to livestock, or you had proximity to live stock, you had friends in that world, you held a certain worldview, perhaps you had certain political leanings. It's now there's not even you could have a cowboy hat and have zero proximity to live stock, be like mega left wing. Do you know what I mean?
It's just like never ridden a horse.
Yeah, and and and I.
Feel like it's getting a little it'skinna. It's like if I had a police uniform. Do you think some of it is the law enforce the Yellowstone effect.
I was just gonna say, like in Bozeman, you're just seeing it so much because it's become the costume of choice for out of towners coming to visit Yellowstone the show.
Sure, yes, And I told.
You how comfortable to COVID boots are. I've been breaking in getting ready for the tailgate tour.
That's good.
I haven't been winning a hat to match.
I I did find a man. Tommy agrees with me on one thing. I recently saw him in the airport through security with spurs. I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding through security with spurs and his work gloves tucked into his belt and he was legit.
No, oh it was a costume.
And you know that a judgment.
I just like you can just smell it on him.
You's like, uh, it's kind of I hesitate to say, because people you're gonna scoff. I have a phil broke the fourth wall. I don't want you to think I'm bragging. I don't want you to think I'm bragging. I won't because it doesn't ever do anything that benefits me. I have a like a a future seeing clairvoyance, but only
on things that have nothing to do with me. Example like, for instance, I could beat someone in a are and they would say I just moved into the new roommate, and I also know that in a week that roommate won't be in that house anymore?
Are these.
Another example, the dude in the airport who's LARPing being a cowboy.
What was it? Is there like something that trips your intuition where you're like.
There's sixth cent it's probably because all this ship looks new new. Yeah, where's like, because you know, is a company that sells that buys gloves from actual farmers and ranchers. There's companies that would sell Yeah, they buy gloves from farmers and ranchers used, and they're called ranch worn gloves. So you can get gloves that seems like you work. Wow, did he have those? It's again engage with him. That's the vibe I was getting. Is part of this because
what's that company called ranch worn gloves? I think is what's called someone looking up?
It's part of this because you look at that person and you're like, there's no way a real ranch hand would be advertising that in the airport.
I just don't know why he'd have spurs on.
I feel like he'd have slipped out of his spurs right over the time. Yeah.
I don't think a real ranch hand or guy working cattle is going to actually wear that shit to the airport.
Let's do a survey. Let's call everyone you know. We'll all call everyone we know that works in livestock and will say, do you wear spurs to the airport? Dude? I think you'll get an overwhelming no.
I feel like Garrett Long might wear spurs to an airport.
The way I just never he grew up in a ranch family and rides and still doesn't wear spurs.
Anyways, Tommy agrees that you shouldn't wear spurs the airport.
I don't understand the impulse to go somewhere and then dress up in a regional costume. Yeah, Like if I go to a city, I don't put on like a business suit and carry a briefcase around. That's a good point, you know, Like I was trying to think of other examples where.
You'd get where you'd go to the town and dress like you're from the like you're from that time, right, Like this is fun.
I don't know, like if you were in like a real fishy location and then you had like a sun shirt and shorts.
But there's like a practical you know, the merse with your flag ear in it. Yeah, the slave pack, man, you're still stuck on a sling the slave pa.
I know what it is.
I gotta move on.
You should call it the sleave pack though. That's way cooler.
Guy wrote in I was saying, how some names this is another that's just this just strikes me as funny. I can't prove this scientifically. Some names you can just tell the family has a lot of money. Who we were talking about, Oh, the guy that died in the the guy that died in the Titan, and the Stocked and Rush like Carnegie like money. Just call like if your name is Stocked and Rush, it's like, no kidding, right. Well, a guy rode in and he said his name's Wolf von Mueller the Third and he says he.
Is not rich.
I was gonna say any name that starts with the band category. Yeah, so I was gonna start going by Stephen von Rinella. But just see if money rolled my way.
Position.
Wolf von Mueller the Thirds pointed out that he's broke. And we had a guy named Rich who wrote in and said I'm not rich. And this guy wrote in a different guy, his wife's pregnant with the third child. Uh, part of the agreement he made with his wife around having a third child. This strikes home with me because I'm really regretting not having a fourth child. But uh, it's really hitting me lately. His wife wanted a third child.
He said, sure, that's fine, but I get to name it and you can't veto my names.
And she was cool with that. They they struck a deal.
Guess what. Guess what this guy's name.
Is that rode in the guy or the name he gave it.
He's not named it yet. He's looking for advice. His name is Jonathan mcgiver Buck. Whoa Jonathan mcguiver buck mhm, winding. And he's kicking around for.
A boy Bridger Boon or buck, which would be.
A girl.
He's kicking around fawn oh man.
Or buck or he's really taking the you can't veto this name and running with it.
Yeah, leaning into that, right, I'll see what I could get away with.
Ill.
I hope he doesn't name his daughter buck. Great name is daughter buck.
I'll tell you the two names I'm sitting on right now.
To name this girl fond.
Boy.
That makes a lot more sense than buck.
Buck.
Oh, so it would be his name. I thought he's got options. Oh he's thinking about Bridger boone. Okay, Now I still I like the letter. I like it even more now. Bridger boone Buck is a bit much fon dough buck is a bit much.
Yeah, agreed.
I think it's restrained. I think it's tasteful, very subtle.
He's not going far enough.
Yeah, I've had so I've had a vast aectomy, and and me and the missus been to got a long time. We're not going to have any more kids. But the two names I'm sitting on are.
If I did.
I was telling her this the other day. I said, if you know, I wish we did have another baby, and if we did, I would want to name it. I would like to name If I had a girl, I would name it. I'm just telling you these names are for grabs anybody having kids. My dad was named frank, so if I had a girl, I would name her Frankie. And if I had a boy, I'd name him Earl. So you can use those names. Why Earl because someone mentioned the last name.
He likes to fry a lot of fish and Earl.
Guy.
I grew up around.
Earl. Is that Earl hot yet?
All right, that's the end of my notes.
Hey, we never talked about our trail camera We go, Yeah, there's something I want to talk about.
Start with that.
Yeah, go ahead, tell me about your trail cameras. I forgot about that.
Well, we were all just kind of lamenting the fact that just happened to be that when we've got this super fun trip. Is also the time when all of us are kicking off many of our white tail seasons, and these days we've all got pictures popping in on our phones letting us.
Know what's going on. Yep.
Uh, So I, for example, there's a deer that I'm hunting on a four acre piece that yeah has uh has shown up three times in daylight since I've been here on four acres. Yeah, I should, I should clarify it's not four acres. The whole property is sixty, but all of it butt four acres is the standing cornfield.
So all to hunt is a little four acre sliver on as long as he runs out of the cornfield.
Yeah, but he's running around feeling safe now that I'm in Louisiana the third and open season.
Yeah, so marked by that ration Michigan, if you if you were in a tree stand, a little tree stand, you'd be like, I'm hunting this buck on two square feet.
You're right, that would not be the right way to describe it.
He hasn't daylighted yet on this two square feet.
Yeah.
So sixty four acre parcel, fifty six acres, fifty six acre parcel, And then how has Does he have a name? No, he's a tall he's got really really tall brows. How about if I would refer to him, we practice that tall brow buck. My kids call him tall brow.
I guess that's good.
And that's the deer you're gonna try to get.
That's one of the deer i'd be after. He's the one that I'm most excited about. Yeah, he is a cool buck, and it's a it's fun to have a deer like that on a little place where you wouldn't normally think, you know, it'd be Uhland.
Just a local farmer. I got permission. Frohm, it's gonna take me a hot second here to find it. Sorry, Okay, Yannie, what's your what's your trail cameraport for over there in Scannie?
I haven't had a mature buck show up on any of my two dozen cameras in like three weeks now. Uh really, they all went into a whole.
I don't know. They're probably just hanging out in the court and in the standing corn. I'm guessing. I don't know.
We're just not traveling much. But h so I'm not missing I thought this it was pretty good timing. Honestly, because September is for the elk and then November is for the deer in my opinion, so I'd love to do some fishing.
For the red fish.
Yeah, that's cool one, isn't it?
Yanni? Were you getting pictures around.
This brow times as tall as the rest of his time?
I know, crazy, But again I told you that I have bad service down by the fields, so I don't really have any cameras set up on.
The food I got.
So Yanny's gotten off here.
That's a dandy mark.
And then, uh, Tony, what do you got going on? Notice I skip Randall?
Yeah I did notice that.
Actually, yeah, I thought maybe we were doing first row and then second row at the end.
I have.
I've had some deer show up this week that made me a little bit thinking that should be home with my daughters. I had a couple over in Wisconsin, but I the last week of September in the first week of October. I often have that happen, and I think it's because even though where we're where those cameras are that I'm talking about. Baiting got banned last year there over a cwdpop on one of the game farms in a neighboring county, so baiting was legal, it's not now.
I know that some of my neighbors are for sure. So I think what happens there is we get a prevalence of baiting right around the opener, and people get bored with it into the season a little bit. So it's it's my deer disappear right away, and then they start trickling back in. And then once people are getting excited about gun season, my dear will start to disappear again because they're back out on the bait right right.
And so the entire time I've been hunting over there, which is quite a while now, it's a very consistent pattern where I'll have deer all summer long, not a lot of deer because it's low deer density place, but they will vanish around the opener, and then they'll start
trickling back in. So I actually do way better hunting over there, even you know, on the public land over there, by hitting that kind of window when a lot of people are sort of the excitement over the opener's gone, the anticipation of the rot hunt or the rifle hunt isn't there yet, and everybody's just kind of backing off, and I think it's correlated to just the bait piles in the woods.
So and so that's what's boning Yanni two.
I well that when That's why I asked him if he had deer around the opener, because if you, I mean, you talk to a CEO and they'll say a lot of times the complaints they get that lead debating citations are because people are like I had these deer every day, and all of a sudden, they all started disappearing, and I know my neighbor's kind of sketchy or whatever, and
they'll go in there. It's so I wondered if yours disappeared before the season or right around the opener and they haven't come back yet.
Could be one of our customers. The guests that was with us this week lives not far from our place, and he said he were chatting about it, and he said that we're probably one of the few places that doesn't bait, even though it's illegal to bait in our county.
Yeah, he was describing a situation that surprised me. Where it's illegal debate, but baiting is done openly.
Mhm.
Where where I'm at, it's crazy. I mean, I do a lot of grouse and woodcock hunting up there too. It's big woods kind of stuff. The amount of bait piles I find out on public land just roaman, you know, and it's it'll be ladderstand bait piles, el camera, you know, lather, rinse, repeat, and they're not supposed to be there.
Yeah. So the so the agency just doesn't have but they're just it's just not on there. They don't really care about it.
I don't know.
I mean, I know in Minnesota for a while, I did a I did a seminar one time, and there was a conservation officer there who did it. He spoke as well, and I was talking to him and he said this was quite a few years back, but he said that they had busted during the gun season. The previous season. They had busted six different people who had two guns with him, and one was like an old shitty lever action that they didn't care to lose, and
one was their nice deer rifle. So if they saw a conservation officer walking in, they knew that gun was going to get confiscated, so they'd leave the good rifle up in the box blind or wherever. Try to stash it, and they had an older rifle they didn't want to lose.
Six different times they encountered.
That, right, So if you think if that, if it's true, I have no reason to believe he was lying to us.
That's crazy.
Yeah.
Crazy.
Now.
I will also say this, if they're walking in on like gun opener on somebody, they've probably been paying attention to that person for a while. That person might be the kind who has some citations in their past.
You know.
It's not like a random encounter with somebody who might be baiting somewhere and they're like, oh, they have two rifles. It's like we're going, we're working these people, you know.
So something Tony and I were talking about in the drive here the other day, and I don't know if you guys have debated this on some previous episode, but has there ever been a discussion around the cost I don't know if it's a cost benefit analysis or an obligation thought process here, but the idea of basically ratting out a neighbor who you know bates, do you turn that into the CEO because it's the right thing to do, knowing though there could be significant blowback to you in
the neighborhood if it gets back on you as being the person that did that, and.
I'm going to give you a totally honest answer. Okay, it would depend a lot on the neighbor, my relationship with the neighbor, and my understanding of what the neighbors sort of I would there would be so many things it being a neighbor, h what their kind of experiences have been, you know, like I know that when my old man was near dying, he would scatter corn for turkeys and then sit there and call. Yep. Did I call and turn my dad in? Though?
That's my dad?
All right?
So now if we just kind of be like, oh.
My god, all right, what was our attitude toward us? I feel like ourtitude was like really dad, but.
That that stuff can go south if you call. If you I have a really good buddy of mine who has forty acres and somebody bought the ten acres next to him, and that guy was baiting deerhart illegally in Minnesota, and my buddy called him in. He was very guy was very gratuitous about it. So the conservation officer staked him out of my buddy's land, built the case busted the guy. Guy had several citations previously, and the guy
fought it in court. And when the state turned over whatever evidence they had and reports, and they they left my buddy's name on there instead of having it was supposed to be anonymous. So then his neighbor found out
he was the one who turned him in. And now when my buddy walks out back to go hunt with his kids, that guy, if he sees him, which because they're pretty visible, he'll go down there with his ar fifteen on the fence line, shoot all night long, shot their cat, shot his daughter's cat in their yard.
It's a bad deal.
So that's what I'm talking about.
Man.
It's like it would just depend on something.
It could be a situation where it's just I'm just trying to be honest. There's certain violations where I categorically absolutely would, but like some i'd just be I'd have to kind of weigh out. I'd have to kind of weigh out, like, is it sort of an old habit of an old man and they're not gonna be doing this for decades because they're kind of in the autumn of their life and they don't know any different. They don't kill anything anyway, I don't know. I just i'd had to look at it, you know.
So the thing that I wrestle with, but this year specifically, is I know, I know some of my neighbors are doing it, and I go, okay, well, I'm an auto stater. I don't live there, so there that, you know, like that's part of the calculus, like should I should I
call them in or not? And but on the opposite side, I look at this and I go, I only get a couple of weekends help with my daughters, and those guys are pulling all the deer away, and of course they don't care about the four ki's and the six pointers that my daughters want to shoot all day long.
And so I look at it and go, am I being smart by just being like whatever, let it go, it'll it'll work itself out, like I don't want to get into that, or am I being kind of a coward because in a way, these people are stealing deer from my kids or opportunities, And so I like, I wrestle with that dilemma because I know my daughters would have more productive hunts if that wasn't happening.
But you could also go down the line and say, well, what if they find out it was.
Me who turned them in? Turn them in, and then they come back and make our lives miserable.
Like your buddy, right.
Well that's that's a big part of the calculus for me because I don't live there, and I think I think if they got called in anonymously, they'd be like, I know.
Who, Yeah, you know what to be the move. And this is something I learned. I learned this the hard way when I was in high school. I just like reflecting on this now. I lived close to a unit boundary for water trapping or for like the state was divided into three those zone zones one, two three. I lived near a zone boundary, so there was a November one water trapping opener, and then there was a I can't remember to tell that stagger, you know, like a
week later or something. One time I'm scouting and I pull over. You know what's crazy is uh their dad went to check. I went to I was visiting my mom not too long ago and actually went over and checked under that bridge for tracks, just because I was feeling nostalgic. But I said I was scouting and checked under a bridge for coon and mink tracks and there's a trap set there but it wasn't open yet.
Okay, they were on.
The they this was on This was south of that border, so it was a later opener. But if you'd gone a few miles of the our direction, it was open. Anyways, I'm pissed because I always set that bridge and someone's already trapping the bridge and it's not the season.
I call and report the person. Okay.
Then I get a call from the fur buyer who just lays into me about why in the world one it was another young trapper, he made a mistake, and why in the world would you not have left a note or pulled his trap tag and called him? Why in the world would that have been your solution? M right, and ripped into me for like selling out another trapper. So as I'm thinking about this, you could go and say, man,
can can we sit and talk for a minute. I want, I need to talked about something, right, you know another But.
I mean, I think it's a good idea. But that does then eliminate your option to ever turn him in, because.
If someone else, if someone else turns him in, and I don't know these people it's another it's.
Not I didn't know that. I didn't know. I should have probably said that. I didn't even check their trap tag. I just called the game warden. Someone's trapping leag onto the bridge, right, I don't know man, that one and I would have gotten the same result if I had done what what the fur buyer said I should have done, the same result would happened, right well, Tricky, thanks for joining folks, Tricky, Tricky.
I got elk on my trail cameras and one.
Black tail in Alaska. Oh yeah, that's got giant elkin trail. Real quick, let's do this before we wrap up. Impressions of of our first uh, our first round.
Karen's over there doing this. That means you have to I go out fishing.
I'm doing that right now. Impressions of the first round.
Yas, Oh yeah, I've been having a great time. Yeah.
By the time i'll leave here, I'll probably be able to get hired on as a deckhand. I think on one of these offshore boats, I'm getting a little crusty, you know. H it's been drinking like they come in styrofoam cups when they make a cocktail around here.
About yeah, BIG's about three of them in there, so you only need one per evening. But you know one of those every day about five. You're to sleep by eight and you get up at four and just would you say, lather, rinse, repeat, keep fishing. Yeah, fish again. No, it's been great.
Unfortunately, the weather, this hurricane is about to hit Florida is making for crazy seas.
So we didn't get offshore this week.
Oh it's hard to complain about it when you know what's about to happen in a couple of days. But yeah, it's we haven't fished offshore.
But we fished in But everybody's been having a great time. I've caught more red fish this week than I have in my whole life.
So yeah, if that when.
We're out yesterday when I fell off the boat, our problem was everything was over the slot. We had six we had six uh reds that were over the slot over.
Which they call bull from here.
And this is like in a couple of feet of water. Man, they're impressive fish. When that tail comes out of the water and you see that your line's going into the water in one area and then way away the tail comes out of the water. You know, that's a big fish. So fun.
Yeah, and we've caught a few of those black drum have been in that, maybe even bigger than the biggest bull red drum that we've.
Caught, right, yeah, yeah, we've caught bull those bull black drum or whatever they call yeah yeah, right, yeah.
So how we been doing it? We meet, we have breakfast at six, head out at seven because we're fishing inshore fish till I don't know noon or so, clean fish, vaccial fish. We got a freezer truck part down here, so everybody, all of our guests, they get all their fish cleaned up. We vaccialed all their fish with them, their fish going to their little storage bin. And then they left today and they take all their fish boxes.
Yeah, did you guys see any of the fish boxes going out? Did anybody have a full on fifty pound box?
I carried several of them this morning.
There were fifty pound boxes. That's awesome.
Well, I don't know if they were fifty pounds, but they were pretty heavy. I mean the boxes that I carried this morning.
Were not light. There was a lot of fish.
In there, and that's inshore fish, right.
Well, I would I would just say this about this experience. The second day that we fish. I've spent a lot of time fishing in my life. I don't know if I've ever seen so many fish come into the boat in one like half day. We were fishing this trout hole and it was like a double dropper, so it was two swim baits, you know, two feet apart whatever. You dropped them to the bottom. And there were four of us fishing in that boat. And there were like multiple times where we all we had eight fish, all
doubles in the boat at the same time. And you think about how quickly you can you can rack up some numbers, catch eight fish at a time.
It was crazy.
Yeah, you guys were over one hundred trout that day, right.
We went over Yeah, because there were specs in there was the silvers or white.
There's no limit on white trous No.
No, we went over that with the graph and it was a wall of fish in like a like a nineteen foot hole, and each the guide showed it to me on the graph and I was like, holy cow. And then we started dropping down and the competition down there. There was a guy on this trip named Andy who was He made me feel inferior as a fisherman. That
guy could catch fish like he didn't even try. And I looked at him at one point and he was I could tell he had a fish biting, and he's like, I can tell that's a little one, so I'm gonna let it swimm around ntil it spits it in. A big one usually hits it after. And I was like, this guy's sorting fish on the bottom of the bayou before he brings him in.
Yeah.
I was fishing with Andy yesterday and he was.
Did he make you feel like less of a man?
Yeah?
And then I was spending a few hours talking with him here at dinner in the evening and realized that the man fishes a lot.
He's the guy we gave the Hot Stick Award to.
Yeah.
So it's not because he's got a lucky horseshoe of his butt. He actually has skills.
Yeah.
Yeah, he's good. He's good at trivia to yeah. Yeah, smart fella.
No.
Yeah. We had a great crew down here. Everybody laughed a lot. I thought it was fun. Yeah, it was a great time, good time. And in a little bit we got some got another crew coming. Yeah, for a couple of hours.
Yeah, within twelve hours, I'll be catching another redfish. Really yeah, probably all right, yeah eighteen yeah, late night.
It's got the early shift tomorrow eighteen hours.
Everybody, thanks for joining, see you soon.
It will never go right.
No, that's a visit.
If you got to see it, that would write SI kids. Gay people fight on the liver several ways falls.
They'll put them together.
Because now no go.
It never know.
No h my gout
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