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a Canadian here from the Great White North. Repeat guests. Hunter chef Michael Hunter in from Toronto. How's it going, man, it's going well?
Thank you?
One word answer. Are you excited that we're gonna maybe invade your country?
Oh? That's such a hard one.
I can't. I can't. I'm gonna piss off a whole lot of people, can't, not one word.
No, no.
Any tips for a country wanting to invade Canada.
Should we hit from the east end? Should we come in? Is non existent compared to the American military. So it's not a marine landing up in the maritime provinces, just coming right up through the plane faceted approach would probably hit him where it hit them all over overwhelm them. And I think, Uh, in Red Dawn, didn't the Ruskies hit us down through the planes coming down through you?
Why did you guys stop them in Red don.
I never thought of that. You guys just let of Red Down is the place to go to brush up on your history.
Have you ever seen the movie Red don.
You know, it's been so long, and I don't. I have this wonderful ability to forget movies.
Well, they just kind of say that they came down through, but there was no mention to like a heroic resistance.
I saw August de have keep mine as we.
Prepared, as we prepared a hitch. You guys hard. You don't have like a little maginal line or anything built along there.
No, no, Uh.
He's got a new book out. We're going to talk about his new book.
We're going to talk about his background that I didn't know that he he This is the only person I've ever this is the closest I've ever been to someone that was on a the closest I've ever been.
To someone that was on a fox Hunt.
Yeah. Yeah, I grew up as a kid, you know,
riding riding a pony. My mom was on a horse and we would fox hunt on horseback, yeah, with little bugles and so yeah, the the man that trained the hounds, the huntsman, you know, he was from England and uh you know, yeah, he had a horn and would blow the horn and the hounds would you know, go left or go right or come back and kid, yeah it was you know, he probably had like thirty hounds out and then yeah, most of the time by you know, they would get on a chain and run, run a
cent for a while and then you know, I would say thirty percent of the time they'd actually kill a kill a.
Ca Yeah, you don't care.
No, like there's no no one's got a firearm, you know, I don't think anyway, not that I ever saw. It's also been quite a few years since I've done it. But most of the hunts would you know, wind up. We'd get on a chase right around for a few hours.
They'd pack them back up into the into the trailer, and then we'd go have they call it the hunt breakfast and then it'd be at you know, someone's farmhouse or back at the club There was a farm kind of clubhouse, and it would be like an early early late afternoon kind of dinner sort of thing.
They'd call it a breakfast.
Oh sorry, no, I was just I was saying it was just they call it the hunt breakfast.
But isn't it funny that that that type of hunting has generated as much angst? Yeah, as it has, because like by I can tell you, I can talk about some stuff.
If you think that's bad, I can tell you about some stuff to blow your mind.
Yeah, so you know, I know, And in England they banned it, and it's it's more like, you know, a cultural sort of historical you know a bit about hunting, but in England is actually banned, which is kind of sad. And it you know, it still does happen in Canada, and there's clubs in the US as well. Like I have a friend in Georgia. So the huntsman actually that that I grew up with, he now lives in I think it's Georgia Bear Creek Hunt Club or something something like that.
What was the last time you went.
I would have been like fourteen years old. I was a kid.
Yeah, yeah, it's old news.
But and then he was actually that the guy that took me hunting for turkey for like the very I'd never been hunting for food before. So I was in high school and I was I was working in restaurants as a teenager, and I had just seen the documentary Food Inc. And was interested in organic you know, vegetable
gardening at home and more organic food. And he took me hunting for turkey, and I was just absolutely blown away by the flavor of wild turkey compared to you know, the farm stuff i'd been you know, grows up eating and uh, and I just wanted to eat a more natural diet. So that's kind of how I started hunting.
Great.
Yeah, you can check out the tattoo on his arm.
Yeah, the turkey, Well, the turkey wing there you go. Yeah, yeah, the tip of mine. Well, if I got a tattooh, you know what I want to get a tattoo of is their day. I was making a comment that I was talking about, Uh, I don't want this tattoo, but someone should get it. I was making a comment about them cutting this. This applies to both of us because we share the Great Lakes, are two great nations. Them cutting all kinds of positions that work on lamp ray control on our end.
I saw that, yeah, yeah, and.
I was saying that the guy's making those cuts wouldn't know a lamprey if he was latched their scrolled them, that'd be a sweet tattoo.
I don't want it.
I don't want that tattoo, but it would be a sweet tattoo. I mean, gnarly where on chester Chester already has that little.
But would the would.
He already has a scroll.
Different versions of scrow tattoo on chester.
Chester already has a scroll.
Just what does he think? It is a salmon fly?
It's a fishing hook, right.
He's got to scroll them. I'm gonna put some little the little hair marks on it, mm hmm. And then I'm gonna we're gonna have to like put him under I got We're gonna give him a rufy to rufim and then I'm gonna tattoo a lamprey latched onto it.
Going. I thought you might tattoo the lamprey onto someone's.
Yeah, and then you could have the tail kind of hangings when they're out running.
So much better going to see that tattoo. But if you go at the beach in your shorts, a lamp r coming out to hem, I.
Feel like that's sing right now, is having a tattoo that goes down your thigh and people think, what's that?
You know, what's that hook to?
Yeah, somebody who's listening may go get it and then email the Meat Eater or radio at the Meat Eater podcast and we can cover that off in tattoos. I regret.
I don't know, because that dude that got Hugh Glass tattooed on him Holy Ship got tore up. But he had his little nipple. He had his little nipple become like a part of the bear. His little nipple was the bear's ear.
I think it's great the shading and listen.
To people tore that got a new one. I felt bad for the sun again, terrible for him. We got so many letters. So the last couple.
Here, here's the here's the deal man, Phil.
I wish we had like a like a rant theme song, but you used heavy metal on Cow's.
Rant I did.
Yeah, I can do something more confessional.
There are plenty of metal options.
Can you do something like to Seeger, like something maybe like to night Moves?
Oh of course, yeah, I would love to.
Because look, I mean the end of night Moves when he gets like, have I explained night.
Moves to you.
I remember a Night Moves rant from years ago, but you can do it again. It's been a while.
People think that night. Here's what Night Moves is about. You've explained this to me.
Yeah, we all know I'm not explaining it.
We all know what it's about.
I'm not explaining again. Yeah, something like that. But the end, the end. I woke last night to the sound of thunder. That part of Night Moves.
Yeah, a little more contemplative.
Yeah.
So, but so we got boat. Look like I can't even keep track of all the letters we've gotten on the subject of because the last few, the last but two of the last three episodes, we've gotten into like all the hot headed, like all the stuff going on
at the federal level. We had the president and CEO of Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership on talking about the we do an annual conservation State of the Union thing, and he was talking about what the next four years is going to look like in dealing with the new administration. After that, after we recorded that before it aired, we had all these layoffs of the federal land management agencies talked about that.
It's been a quick moving thing.
In fact, so quick moving that we keep changing the release cadence of our episodes because things are happening so fast. We got a I think partly maybe because of my comment about laying off about people making cuts to lamprey after lamprey control efforts. If you're not aware, like lamprey is our noxious species there. They're an invasive exotic. They're in the Great Lakes, and when they came into the Great Lakes, they just decimated I mean decimated Great Lakes fisheries,
including really wiping out native fish. I mean they just brutalized lake trout and the Great Lakes fishery. There's a commercial component to the Great Lakes fishery. There's a huge so so food for people right through tribal fisheries, a huge recreational driver. I mean, it is, it is, It is of paramount recreational fisheries are of paramount importance to
economies in the Great Lakes. So by some some city kid, tech kid going in DC and sniffing around and feeling like he's being a hero by making all these cuts that he has no idea what he's talking about, meaning he wouldn't know a lamprey, I feels latch to his scrotum. Uh, isn't productive like it's it's it's it's not saving money, right, it's costing money because in the case of something like this, controlling lamp rayses cost tons of money. Destroying the fisheries
and the Great Lakes cost a ton of money. So I was pointing out, I can't view this as I can't view that as following into into some like American America first doctrine. Maybe they're doing it to bone Canada stretched that. Maybe they're like, I know it's gonna sink American fisheries, but this is really gonna put the herd out them in Canada too. I don't know, I don't know. Uh, we got so many.
Letters in some guy.
Uh, there's been a lot of this going on, and people like with how much stuff is happening right now on conservation, how much stuff is happening right now on cutting conservation spending in the US. There's this whole thing of like, well, that's what you that's what you people should have expected. What do you think was gonna happen? And I had a guy being like, you voted for him, and here's the thing, And I pointed this out to him I have never ever said I've never said who
I've voted for. In fact, I've not said who I voted for, because when I vote, i'm voting for I like on this show. My promise to audience has always been on this show that I try to it's hard, as Brody brought up, Brodie sitting right here. Brody recently brought up the point that we always talk about conservation stuff in a bubble, right, Like you take conservation issues and you try to you try to pull them out
of their broader political context. And that's what we have historically always done on the show because we try to talk about issues the impact hunters, like primarily issues of importance to impact hunters and anglers, and so we leave off like stuff about you know, how one might feel about supporting Israel or number of other things, like you always try to leave it off. If I'm voting, I'm voting with other factors in mind besides just what benefits
hunters and anglers. So in my discussions about conservation issues, i'd never talk about like I never on this show go and say who I voted for, and I never endorse. I never explicitly endorse candidates because the same way, because people in their personal lives and in their daily lives and professional lives cannot trim their world down to just what impacts hunting and angling. Even though the show might have the aspiration of just talking about what impacts hunters
and anglers, all of our lives are more complicated. So for me to go into talking about who I voted for and endorsing certain candidates, which I always avoid doing. I avoid endorsing candidates. I do that because when you vote for a specific person, you're voting for a whole pile of policies. And I might have a personal feeling about Israel, for instance, and that might influence how I vote. But that is going above and beyond the brand promise
here of just talking about hunting and angling issues. So it's funny to have somebody like, well, you he said you voted for Trump for because his free speech issues.
I said, hey, point out where I've.
Ever said that. I said, I support straying away from the brand promise. This is gonna be the last time I stray away from the brand promise. I like, I like what Trump has to say about freedom of speech. I don't like social media platforms being becoming a political arm and needing to bow to political press about what they cover. Okay, don't like it. I also don't like them the current White House kicking the ap out of White House press briefings because they refuse to say golf
of America. That is also like a like a weird contradiction, because that is an attack on freedom of speech in a weird way. So all this stuff cuts both ways. I've never said who I voted for, but I'll tell you this. I'm gonna like, I'm gonna I'm gonna this is as much as I'm gonna say about it. I have not voted for a major party presidential candidate in sixteen years. Okay, I've in sixteen years. I have not
voted for a Democrat or Republican presidential candidate. Why. The biggest reason why is no matter what you do, you get boned. This is the point I was recently making on I tried to make this point on an Instagram post where I'll staying Hunter's and angers. You always gotta be paranoid because someone's gonna come get you. You go look like, why do you always get boned by a major party? Okay, go to Colorado, where Colorado has like democrats,
like firmly in control of Colorado. Colorado's become kind of like the the the hot spot of attacks on hunters. Washington, Washington State. These are like Western states. There's other examples elsewhere. Washington State, big time Democrat, big time assault on hunters and anglers all the time. This is the state that like banned fishing during COVID. You could go into your yard during COVID and hit a golf ball into a pond and be legal, but you this is I'm not
this is the truth. You couldn't go in your yard and cast a rapala into a pond.
During the pandemic.
Like that is the sort of that is the sort of attitude that's just like a small issue, but it's like an attitude they have about it. They are reflectively low on tag allocations. They are reflexively.
You're talking about Washington, Yeah, like.
All the tons of opposition around any kind of predator management, right, limiting people's access to natural resources. Colorado coming out like you have a governor whose husband is like an active animal rights activist and they're pushing a ban on bobcat and lion hunting in Colorado. Now Colorado has this bill coming forward to change the language of what the Fishing Game Agency's mandate is to say, Like instead of saying shall use hunting and fishing.
They want to change it to may.
Use hunting and fishing. Okay, a little minor switch to sort of tone, like to sort of de emphasize the role of hunters and anglers and wildlife management.
And it takes power away from Colorado Parks and wildlife.
Yeah, and color And they had they had they put it to a vote to do a wolf to do a wolf reintroduction on a timeline that was not in fitting with the state Department of Wildlife's timeline. So usurping the state's management agency, right that their management protocols. That's how you get boned, like by Democrats. And and they'll
always bone you. They'll bone you on gun issues. Republicans are gonna usually, as we're seen right now, Republicans are going to bone you on conservation issues generally, not always, but generally. We had an economist right in He's like, first he lays out all his bona fides, randle your man letters. Do you say bona fides, bona fides? I've tried bona fides a couple of times. No, he just feels doesn't roll off the tongue.
I think you have to tilt your head back so you talk out of your.
Not correct. It seems like a French film director. Now I'm thinking about a part.
Bona No.
I think it is right, bonafides.
I've heard it both ways, but it's not very common.
But here's what threw me off. Rourt Denver. He's a Navy seal.
He used to.
Officer lacrosse player, man of letters lacrosse players. Well, he said, bona fides. So then I thought, maybe I've been doing it wrong.
My whole life isn't there like, uh, where the how pronunciation works?
I'm going back to.
I don't know how that. I can't read that. What's what's you know? What I mean when you have like the the little hats on top of the vowels, how diacritical marks? Thank you?
I don't even know if that's the right term.
So, okay, there's probably.
A right way.
He's got it pulled up with the internet.
Pronounce yeah, good luck, dude.
Fit I think they put this sum it is it is he does.
Yeah, But I'm gonna say, bona fides. What do you, Michael?
I have never heard bona fides, so I would think it was bona fides. I'm sticking with it. He lays out all of his economic he's a, he's a. He lays out all his economic bona fides, credentials, credentials. Just skip the whole thing altogether, or maybe different do you roll? They are credentials circles the back of the thrount lays out his credentials.
Uh yeah, just we're good credentials.
A message from our sponsor. No free ads plant.
Here's a problem talking about here's the problem talking about the cuts. There's a ton of problems in Tombo.
The cuts.
The way they're kind of framing it, they're kind of if you talk about the sort of ham handed conservation cuts that are going to wind up costing us money in a long time. The pro cut crowd, of which I'm kind of a part of, in some of these areas, the pro cut crowd will then act like, what you're saying is you want to spend money on you want to spend money on, you know, funding certain plays for children in Panama. It's like, oh, if you want to point out some really stupid things Doze is doing.
That must mean that you support.
Spending taxpayer dollars on putting on plays and Panama. I'm like, no, no, I don't equate putting on plays in Panama or whatever the hell it was. I don't equate that with letting the lamp ray get re established and destroying Great Lakes fisheries. And it's not the same thing. It's not the same thing. So you're like, they try to bucket you and like yet another person unhappy with what's going on in general.
It's like, no, I'm not an unhappy in general. I'm unhappy with some of these things that are happening that are really stupid. And I think that if you let, like you, if you need, if you need, to make cuts to conservation spending, that's painful, but at least that you'd bring in new agency heads, let them fill out their agencies, and then give them ninety days, one hundred
and twenty days, whatever the hell it is. And trust me, ninety days is not going to make a big difference here, one hundred and twenty days whatever, and say, come to me with the ten percent reduction, and at least let someone who would know a lamprey was latched down to their scrotum decide what things ought to go. It's just the way they're doing it. Like the way they're doing
it is reckless. And I'm talking about issues that are in America, the impact Americans like public lands and public land like public lands are definitionally American because any American can go on them, right. It's like, you can't take these kind of cuts and act like this is part of this America first doctrine.
It's just not. I'm I and I refuse to act like that.
By saying that you don't want to, that you don't want to gut conservation funding and public lands management is somehow like an implicit approval of us wasting our money on foreign escapades. It's totally different. This economy, this economist rights and the entire federal workforce only makes up four point four percent of the federal budget. Their incomes are also spent in the economy, which has a positive ripple
effect known as the money multiplier. Trying to achieve a federal budget surplus by cutting workforce jobs is like trying to dig a ten acre farm pond with a hand trowel. So what is the real objective with DOGE if it's not to achieve a federal budget surplus? I don't know. Did I say I was reading a letter. Yes, I'm reading a letter a while ago. Back to reading a letter. The letter goes on, so what's the real objective with DOGE if it's not to achieve a federal budget surplus?
I don't know, this is the letter. What I do know for certain is that a lot of necessary federal employees and many of our public lands are going to get punished for something they shouldn't involve that shouldn't involve them. I also know that even if DOGE gets everything they want, they still won't even come close to making up for the additional expenses that Trump's economic policies promised to add to the national debt.
And we've gotten a million of these letters.
I was there day talking to I was there day talking to a federal researcher who works on salmon projects in Alaska. So here you have in Alaska, like salmon is a huge part of the economy. Remember earlier I was talking about with wildlife like like fisheries in the
Great Lakes. Fisheries in the Great Lakes have a small commercial commercial component and a huge small com commercial keeps saying commercional, small commercial component, huge recreational component in Alaska, like if you take the commercial impact of salmon, it's enormous, and then there's recreational and then they have a third category of management strategy, Like Alaska fishing game looks at sort of three things when they look at allocation of
a resource. Top of the pile. First consideration for Alaska's subsistence meaning if you look, they break out, They break out people that are that are going to extract wildlife resources and put them into three buckets. Assistance sits on top, subsistence priorities. Subsistence takes priority, meaning people in remote Alaska who rely on fishing game resources as their protein source.
Subsistence is top. Then comes commercial recreational. They're tiered out right, and there's always like a little bit of fighting between them. But here salmon drive all three layers of the stack. Salmon drives subsistence life ways for many, many people along river systems and along the coast. It's like the primary protein source. Huge in terms of commercial fishery, huge in
terms of recreational fishery. Of paramount importance. So these geniuses that are gutting conservation spending have gone in and you keep staff in place, but you freeze their credit cards. That's like the move right now, you put a dollar limit on credit cards. So you have people that are gearing up right now during the salmon runs to begin in all their work monitoring salmon runs, describing salmon runs, habitat improvements right and you say, oh, no, we're still
gonna pay you. Your credit cards are frozen, so you can't do any of your work. That seems like a great way to save money. They'd be like if at this company I came in and said no, no, no, everybody, I'm freezing your credit cards. But you're like, but today, because I'm already getting paid a salary, I was gonna spend a few bucks to drive down the road to do my work. No, no, don't do that. Just sit tight. We're saving money. Really you're not.
It's like you're not.
Oh I was getting back into like not voting for major part Oh yeah, I said, not voting for major party can because they always bone you. They always bone you, And I've never voted for Like talking about voting, I've never voted for into a third party that I actually liked. I just vote for third parties in order to embolden third party prospects. See how far that's, how good that's gone in the last sixteen years. Like Ross pro no one's top Ross pro Right, he's the prime example, I think.
So you can see how effective my campaign is. Clearly we got third party candidate's coming through the roof. It's not working. My plan to embolden my my one man's plan to uh, my one man's plan to embold in and prop up third party options in America is failing.
Is this leading the news cycle in Canada to or is it? Is it? Where is it Land?
I definitely, we definitely hear a lot about American politics, and especially now with the you know, the tariff, you know,
stuff that's going on. It's definitely more more prevalent. You know, politically, Canada's has been more of a boring place, and you know, since COVID, I think they're they're taking a page from from I don't know if it's American politics or who's really fueling the the divide, but there's definitely more of a divide now between left and right and Canada that than I remember, you know, in the last ten years, and we do. Yeah, we do get a lot of
American news. Yeah, they can do whatever they want with the tariff. I'm staying out of it. It's stupid.
It's stupid. I'm stay out of it.
Yeah, it's not worth even talking about.
Me and Yannie ran for president one time, and we ran under better Hunting and Fishing, Better Hunting and Fishing for America.
You ran in a bubble.
Yeah, we.
Ran in a bubble. Uh. But my god, the only thing I can hope I put a thing on Instagram where it was like, I don't mean I never met the kid, some kid that works in North Carolina for the Forest Service. Uh, who's like the only biologist in some you know, hundreds or thousands of square miles of national forest got brought back on. I don't know if there's gonna be if this is all like gonna start making more sense and we're gonna start like reprioritizing public
lands and wildlife resources. But this, again, I think is coming from people that just don't care, they don't know. I don't think these kind of kids, these kind of kids that are doing this like they just don't seem to me like real hunting fishing kids, and they're dabbling in a world that they just don't understand the implications of it. They don't understand what's going on in the last one hundred years in this country around wildlife conservation
and what it means economically. And to come in and be like that, there's that they're owning the libs by gutting and wildlife habitat, wildlife habitat protections in this country. It's like it just doesn't make any sense. Man, what else.
We're doing in next year's calendar on old.
Trucks A certain kind of good pivot.
Yeah, so we've done this is a I'm soliciting.
Well.
Krint even had a little note in our we had like we have new stuff in a document and Krinn has a little joke, make some make a joke about tariffs.
What did you have?
What did you have in mind? Krinn?
No, that's how that's how you kind of open things.
No, No, I talked about US invade and Canada.
That was my joke to.
Have tariff jokes. I thought you'd be if I put it up top, you'd have a thing off the top of your head. We talked about this at dinner last night.
Good Tariff jokes his books going to be more expensive.
Yeah, I don't know, because.
We have the same publisher. There's Canadian and American Penguin Random.
House, so hopefully they'll figure out.
I think that it's going to be equal.
But I hate to say this, but your book is beautiful and full of photographs, and I got a feeling it ain't printed in either of our country. No, it's not, because that's hard to get down. It's one of those things. It's one of those things, is like, don't It's one of those things that, Yeah, it's funny when you get
exposed to different industries. It's one of those things that just that that America Canada to not tooled up for in a weird way, like if a book a book that goes into a book that winds up being like a bunch of photographs colored in it. It's just like we got out of the biz. Yeah, we got out of the biz.
It's so weird.
It's like certain things like like sewing certain kinds of clothes and stuff and waterproof lambs and stuff like us like got out of the business.
Yeah, it's kind of shame.
Yeah, what kind of trucks you're going to feature in this one? I hope they are going to be trucks that can still start and be driven.
Mm hmmmm, yea, the parameters. Let me lay it out.
In the past, we've done we did a calendar.
The first one was U Fucked Up Old deer Stands, and we had some of our own fucked up old deer stand photos, and then we got we crowdsourced fucked up old deer stand photos. Then we did fucked up old tax Durremy again some of our own, we got something from people, and then we.
Did took a break from that series for one year.
Yeah, and then did fucked up old shitters, had some of our own and had other people's old shiitters. This year we're doing fucked Up old trucks hunting trucks.
But we want to I don't want to call. Yeah, there's too many words for the calendar.
But you know what I'm saying.
But I think the point.
I'm not done laying it all out, all right, Just give you a second, go ahead, hold your point. I'm trying to lay the base the base here because there's certain things that are different I'm right here.
What's the email address.
Uh, fucked up old trucks at the medeater dot com.
Okay, the calendar is fucked up old Trucks. It's the twenty twenty six calendar.
If you send it.
So here's the deal. We're partnering on this year's calendar with UH Backcountry Hunters and Anglers. The reason we're partnering with BHA on this year's calendar is because I think they're not. I think it's kind of like there are a lot of public lands fights just a brewing right now.
And as we talked about in our conservation State of the Union conservation piece, one of the things I liked about again, one of the things one of the things I liked about Trump one point zero Trump's first administration is they didn't he campaigned on not wanting to sell off public lands and stay true to it. There's a tenor shift right now. There are a bunch of public lands fights bruined state level, federal level. It's gonna get hot.
So we're gonna partner with BHA on the calendar. If one of your photos get selected for If one of your photos gets selected for the calendar, we're gonna send you what do you get a five hundred dollars gift card?
I think we're doing two fifty gift card.
You'll get a free BHA membership in a swag bag.
In a swag bag, so.
We'll send you a gift card.
It's good for first light, FHF, gear, phelps, game calls, DSD, decoys.
Anything at the store.
You'll get a year long BHA membership and BHA is putting together swag bags of other kind of goods. Yeah.
And I think it's also important to note that a portion of the sale of every calendar will be donated to BHA.
Yeah, so we got to do it all. But for every calendar we sell, two or three bucks will go to directly to b h A yep. I think we're gonna peel like our end. We're gonna kick in a couple and then we're gonna maybe raise the calendar another buck. Is that is that kind of know the price is gonna stay the same oay, So for every calendar sold, we'll we'll we'll figure I just got we got to talk to the eggheads. The guys are the sharp pencils. But for every calendar sold, it will be like a
literal like calendar sold. It will be whatever, like two or three dollars goes directly over Okay, just like direct transfer over to BHA when you get the calendar. It's fucked up well trucks, But what we mean is fucked double hunting rigs. Now, Johanni, go ahead, I.
Sure hope these fuck that bowet hunting rigs will still start and be able to be Yeah, I don't think.
We don't want twelve photos of just burning like burned up hulk.
You do you have to pick all those burning? What are you talking about?
I just think, like I'm reading about the Battle of Manila.
We're looking for something with character, not just that it's been really fucked up.
It's like in terms of like mold and rod and old blood and like fish skins.
Yeah, that's what we're looking for. But here's the deal. Have you ever thumbed through one of the calendars. Yeah, okay, it's great breadth. Yeah, and shitters and shitters. We had a poorly built shitter that the wind had blown down into a gullie okay, And then we had a shipter that someone had carved out of a giant He was some.
Kind of seedar carved a.
Gnome shitter out of a giant seedar with a chainsaw where you actually walked into a hollow tree so you can have a It's not like it's gonna be Yeah, it's not like people are gonna buy the calendar. It's gonna be twelve burned up trucks.
I'm just saying, like in the event, in the in the event that a guy has like an old hunting rig that the doors have fallen off and the floors rusted out, but he also has a photo of a truck that he wrapped around a telephone pole, We're looking for the former rather than the ladder, right, Like we want character in the in the fucked up in there.
But you're you're you're thinking that you're thinking that your average dude out there can go out and go left and find a burned out, fucked up old hunting trick and then go right.
It's like, how many do they have access to?
I would think I'm just saying we don't want just just to pretty much watch your use of wee.
I I am only suggesting that we're not looking for fucked up as a measure of and how bad of shape it's in.
It's it's got to have some. You can walk down to.
The junkyard by the airport you find twenty fucked up old trucks. Like he's more than that.
Yeah, but everybody knows what we mean.
No, No, I don't. I think you should just okay, in your mind, just paint me a picture.
Yeah, this is all.
Fucked up old hunting rig that you would be like, that's a good one. I'm gonna put that one in February.
He's gonna post one the Ateria. Yeah, the suburban cut off some Sfari truck.
I ain't fucked up, Brad.
Last time I was down there, it is, you know, I told Brad last time down there, I said, like, Brad, one of two things needs to happen. You need to fix the power steering box on this or widen the road. He's like, funny you mention that, think about widening the road. Uh, yes, it is, That's what I'm talking about. But here's the thing. If you go look at fucked up old deer stands, it's like thumb through fucked up old deer stands. Is
it a twelve photos of crumpled up ladders? No, I've just been through house.
I'm just I don't think it's a deviation from what we've done in the past. I'm just trying to give people a sense of if they're not familiar with the series.
What kind of idiots do you think you're listening?
I take back everything that I've said. Could be your truck, Yeah, it could be your truck.
I'm just Steve, you've done an impression of many of your your loyal listeners. I think it sounds something.
Like they're they're out there.
I'm just saying, now, that's the noise for people I don't agree with.
Okay, we're looking for odd yes, and I feel okay.
But that's not the calendar series. It's not odd old trucks.
Yeah, I know. And so I think we have a little bit of old trucks.
Anyone wants that calendar you like to have.
You know, friction at times, and I think we have a little bit of friction between the title and what we're actually looking I don't.
Think so we know a thousand different photos and we're gonna.
Pick the cool one like i'd like, I'd like a hunting Are you guys even talking about me and Brody's project? Yeah, this year's calendar. Where's your give me your calendar? Bona Fiji.
I think I had a couple rather clever captions in calendar.
We do captions cool, we do cations for sucked up old trucks.
Guess who ain't coming.
I'm pointing at them not invited. Ouch, But I love it so much.
If you just.
Trying to correct anything you've said, I was just trying to add some add some some guidelines. You know, if you have a truck that the driver's seats ripped out and you have to sit on a milk crate or something, right now, you're just you's a lensky.
If you want to come to this Calendars Fucked Up Old Trucks meeting, you apologize and thank me. Thank me.
I will not.
No, I do want Randam to come to the meeting. You still.
I appreciate that parameters on people from just like vomiting into our email.
Take a bajillion hours, Let me.
Take let me, let me.
We want it to be. You want it to be fucked up in an interesting way? Just not all right? I take it back.
No, I understand. Go on, then I'll retort that No, that's.
That's all I was just I was just trying to suggest that, like, the more interesting it is as a fucked up thing, the more likely it is to end up in the calendar, not just your average like.
I I rest my.
Case, add that to the list of things that Steve feels very passionate about his calendar.
Okay, please, you're making you're you're a solution looking for a problem. We have never had a problem with our audience understanding what we mean when we say fucked up old taxidermy, Like when we did fucked up old tax Durmy, go look through the calendar. Is it burned up taxidermy?
There was some charred tax jermy. I believe in that.
You're right a little bit, and there was a shiitter that had burned up.
Yeah, so.
Have at it.
But you're you're acting like you're acting like people don't understand what we mean when we say a fucked up old truck, and you're like, you're you're you're infantilizing them, and you're what's that there's another word like that, you're patronizing them and infantalizing them, as though they don't know a fucked up old truck when they see one.
Well, trucks are a dime a dozen. There's so many trucks out there.
Yeah, I have to be more.
I'm with Randall.
I got here, I gotta I gotta wait to put numbers around it. Yeah, we'll put numbers around it. I'll bet.
I'll bet you right now one hundred.
Dollars as we sit right now, where we're sitting right now.
Last time you bet with me, you didn't pay up?
What your money?
Yeah?
For?
What for?
When we were talking about the Arizona thing? In what episode we mentioned the whole Arizona State big game raffles?
And who was right?
I was, of course?
How much did I bet you?
It was like five dollars.
I'll pay you.
I don't need it, don't worry.
I'm just saying, I want a thousand dollars bet against Giannis and forgave him. I want a thousand dollars bet against my sister in law Karna and forgave her.
I better.
At one point in time, I better that in ten years pebble mine. It was like my best was that pebble mind, and it was a ten year window. I was like, in a decade, pebble mind will not be developed and I won and forgave her the thousand dollars.
I'm forgiving giving you.
No, No, here's the bet. Here's the bet. Me and Rander bet one hundred bucks. We got a witness, and here's the bet. And I don't know, we'll have to put it to Seth to figure out. I bet you that of all the submissions, fifty percent will demonstrate what I understand to be people's understanding of what is a fucked up old truck. A minimum of fifty percent will be like, well look, it'll be like it'll be you'll put a picture up, it'll be like gets it, doesn't get it.
But what you're saying there is that my guidance and further clarification would in fact have been needed for one out of every two listeners, because fifty percent would not be in line with what you think of as a fucktible truety.
What percent make the calendar? What percent of submissions make the calendar?
Less than one? Probably we less than one.
Yeah, So I'm.
Just trying to be helpful.
Going back to my point, we'll get a lot of really.
Cool photos, we'll pick the coolest one still end up in the calendar period.
Yeah, but we're talking about doing this too. Is we're talking about building a voting function. Yeah, we're going to do that.
We're gonna build a voting function where I don't know how it's going to work.
Well, we'll say we get a thousand it'll be more probably, but let's say we get a thousand submissions. We'll have a website. We'll select one hundred of those, put them on the website, and people will vote and the top say ten will end up in the calendar.
Yeah, but we need to Here's the thing is, like, you know, here's like a complication with with with democracy is we're like, what if we do the whole vote thing, but there's some that we just like too much and they don't make it.
That's why we're gonna peel off.
Yeah, checks and balances, Yeah, we're gonna peel off. Then we're gonna buy executive order. By executive order, we're gonna.
Birthday months, like you'll have February.
In the time that we've now discussed this, someone could have gone to a dealership, driven off the lot with a nice new truck and turned it into a fucked up old hunting truck.
Yeah.
Number five, I'm gonna add one more thing. This doesn't guarantee you're gonna get in the calendar. But if you've got a sweet photo of your fucked up old hunting rig on public land, that's even better.
Yeah, or you just say it was so yeah, game on, game on, fuck uple trucks. Uh. Not very far into our document, you know.
I just suggested to Phil that when we edit this, we play the fast forward sound effects, so it's like, you know, fucked up old truck, fucked up trucks. No argument, so we can get through this.
But I guess no, we're getting this is my favorite episode in a while, keeping going.
So here's the next thing we're gonna talk about. Has Yanni researched what his part of Wisconsin that he's deforesting looked like pre contact?
I am researching it. It is harder to find that information that you think. But I'm partnering with a private lands biologist with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and they're helping me put about five acres actually we've turned it into seven now seven acres of the property. We're gonna turn it into an oak savannah. I'm familiar with that is that's what you're aiming for well, and we have we have forty acres that we're dealing with fifty really, but this is just seven acres of it is doing that.
But because I feel like they have access to this sort of information, I was asking them, and because we're going to have a seed mixture, right that goes in once we after we deforced the place and then chemically burn the shit out of it, We're going to come in with native grass seed and forbe seed to bring in what's there. And I was saying, I was asking him, I said, well, are we going to go and look at historical data to then inform what sort of stuff
we try to plant back in there? And he said, yes, we can do that, but because things are constantly changing in the environment, it's not all like it can inform you. But what has happened in the past might not necessarily be what you want to do in the future, because one hundred years ago or two hundred years ago, the climate was a lot different than it is now, and so depending on what you want to see and the successes you want to have, it could be different. So, yes, I have been researching.
I think it's good whether or not you can achieve it or even want to achieve it. I think that understanding what it is would would enhance your Oh great, enhance your journey. Great, your slash and burn deforestation journey.
You want to continue, I can talk about this memoir.
It's gonna be the labbr lover my time as a deforestation agent.
No, our buddy, Kyle II Barber. You know, I was listening to him recently talking about the state of Alabama. He says, in probably since uh European contact, the state of Alabama has never had more trees than it has today, and he would like to see a lot of trees cut down and restored into native grass and some prairie habitats.
Understood, I'm mostly joking, I'm mostly yeah.
I know he just gets talking about No.
Well, okay, we'll get some time just to dive in more deeply. There's another one that we were gonna talk about today that we're gonna have to punt on. But God's a great question, like I try to skirt free of like just major controversy on the show. But this guy's wondering, like is that right?
He's wondering about I don't know if I can go I don't know if I want.
To get into this. It's like really divisive, is uh how much fur shit is too much? Like you know, like you're saying, like when you do a little like you put some bear ces around your hat band or you got like a bear klaon necklace. Yeah, you got like a fur hat our body.
Dan Gates pushes the envelope. You know who I'm yeah, from Colorad's.
A great person to have on the debate.
Yeah, yeah, because I don't. He has a giant wardrobe according to what I see on Instagram. Are you guys familiar Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean every time, every time he's addressing a topic, I mean there's a new vest or you know, some sort of new accouterment to his wardrobe that is you know, fur or like you said, there's a lot of claws, horns, antlers.
It's a real.
I think it's depends on the person too.
Man, we're right airport, You're like that person shouldn't be Yeah, you know.
We will dive into it bad. We'll dive into it bad. What's too much?
And he gives quick thoughts Michael.
Yeah you want to touch it because you won't be here when we actually dive into it, you know, just from listening to to your friend there, I think I need more, you know, in your own person.
And I will put a feather in my hat when I'm turkey hunting or something, or you know, I like to collect the odd pheasant feather. I too have a muskox hide that I'm wondering what to do with. You don't wear it though, I don't wear it, but it would that would make a cool.
I would suggest harvesting the what was it, kivvy kivy kivo?
Okay, I still might yeah, please.
I hope I'm still on the list of people that might receive a beanie out of it?
Phil, Can you aim a camera at that muskox hide?
No? No?
Can I sure?
You wanted to? Sure? This? This should be fun? You go, No, don't even worry about I just want to see you figure it out. That's the up and down one. Here we go?
Is that it?
Phil?
No?
There you go?
You got it now, Johanni, grab a little kivot off that sucker. Well, now that bro, he's got a camera on it. While we're doing this.
You had mentioned earlier in the show about animals people don't want to eat, but they shoot. When I was in the I was before the show. Sorry to the listeners for confusing people. But what I found interesting was when I shot mine in the Arctic, the locals. It was where there's four guys, we shot four muskoks. We couldn't possibly bring all of it home. We brought home about angels pounds of meat. But uh, the locals didn't. A lot of the locals didn't want it their primary
and a lot of them really need food. They want caribou like that is their main source of protein.
That's weird because on Nunavat Island, Yeah, it's very popular. Yeah, so I was in Baker Lake. They actually brought it out there as a source.
So where I was hunting in Baker Lake is the only inland community in in Nuneva. All the other communities are coastal and caribou is like their bread and butter.
Oh I say, I said, sorry. Nunavak, Nunavak Island and the Bearing Sea, Yeah, with the with the cupic Eskimo muskoks is very popular. Yeah.
Anyway, I just thought that was interesting because a lot of people are not necessarily starving, but they're in need of food at a lot of them.
But yeah, especially my kid wore that Muskox head for Halloween one time.
Remember that. So we'll do a whole big We'll do a whole big thing on what's enough, what's too much? What's enough?
Okay? Clear? So that wool you just pulled the wool off the Muskox hide. Yeah, you can actually harvest wool and make stuff with it.
Well, supposedly it's the warmest, like it beats out cashmere marino. There's nothing else. Like, let me think about where that animal lives and uh, yeah, it's but it's hard to harvest if I remember correctly, Like it takes a I forget. There was something that made it a little bit prohibitive to do stuff with it.
They don't have domestic do they have there?
There was no I want to say a lot of times they harvested it just in the springtime by plucking it off of bushes where it.
Out and goat you know. Yeah, No, people would go out and just collect it off. That's cool when they're shed in the spring. Okay. One of the things, Michael, that we're going to get into is I was trying to challenge you on something that Brody found out you were.
Right, Okay, all right?
I like this, Like, did Canada have wild turkeys historically?
Historically? We were told in our honey course that yes, at least where I grew up, and the hunting license are done by the province, so we had to take a honting course and we had to specifically take a turkey hunting course where they gave us history about the wild turkey that Ontario in fact had a native population of turkeys. They were extinct due to market hunting in the eighteen hundred's, got it and they were brought back I believe in the nineteen eighties, seventies, eighties.
Two hundred and seventy four wild turkeys and from various US And.
Did we we traded?
Do we trade moose to a States partridge geese and moose?
Yeah?
That was good trade. Yeah, I love it, the cool trade.
And now the wild turkey population in Canada is like in Ontario anyway, is absolutely flourishing. Like is it hard to get permissions? I would say yes and no. It kind of depends. Like I grew up in a rural community, so I've got a lot of contacts and family friends and stuff that let me run around on their farms. I think for like an average you know, city person that's interested in hunting, he wants to get their license,
I think it's harder for them, you know. I take you know, when my son was smaller, I would just take my kids to farmers doors and knock on the door and say, I want to take my kid hunting, And.
You got to get yourself. Yeah, I wouldn't be bringing him anymore. Sary, get yourself some kids, even if you got to borrow them.
Yeah, little nephews or something.
Borrow be real friendly.
That cute.
Yeah, but yeah, no it And I don't know the laws, but there are some provinces where it's actually illegal to lease your land for hunting, whereas I know in the States it's really you know, everybody's got a hunting lease somewhere like Saskatchewan. I know, I think it's illegal to lease your land specifically for hunting.
You know, however one feels about that personally, How does how do you like, what is the I know you're not like a policy expert on the issue, but how do you argue, like what is the argument? Like?
How do you even tell the landowner that.
Like, what the hell?
I have no idea.
I mean, how would you enforce that? Yeah, well, I'm just saying like, regardless of how you might personally feel about you know, however you might personally feel about leasing, not leasing, paying your own money, lease, whatever, wishing it was the good old days where you just hunted on everybody's place, never even asked, well, how are you feel about all that?
I just can't picture crafting legislation.
Yeah, they would tell a landowner you cannot lease hunting rights on your land. It's like kind of.
Like that's like saying, what's it to you? That's like saying you can't raise cattle or grow hay.
Yeah, you can't make money off your land.
Yeah, you can't leave farming rights on your land and be.
Like why yeah, there's more government overreach.
Well no, it just seems like to be a hard one to like a hard one to sell people on. Yeah, because it's it's not, uh, there's no sort of like there's no impact on neighboring properties. Yeah, you know, it's not like you dump and hog shit into the river and action like it's not your problem anymore. Yeah, right, It's just it's not it doesn't like bleed over onto your neighbors, It doesn't have it doesn't impact anybody.
Yeah, it just.
Seems like could be your call.
Yeah, I'm not sure. I'm not sure how it works because in Ontario I don't think it's the case, but other provinces I've heard that it is.
What's the public land situation up there? Public land we call it crown land.
There's tons of it, and hunting is generally pretty you know, pretty good depending where you're going. And I think some of the bilaws like there's I guess it depends if you're close to you know, provincial or federal parks. Like there's certain parks that there's no hunting in the parks. But the crown lands, I think it's open. You're allowed to camp on them for you know, you have to move your structure every three weeks, like if you're going
for a big trip or something. But it's it's pretty well just free reign.
Can you guys find turks on public land where you're at?
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I know there's there's there's public land, but it's like municipal public land. So not far from where I live, you know, an hour and a half from Toronto. You can hunt I think they call them like their county forests, and there their municipal lands and I don't know if they've been donated or what they are, but there's hiking trails, there's squad trails, snowbial trails, whatever. And then they'll say like yes to hunting or no
to hunting, and there's some turks out on them. Yeah, they have shot turkeys on public land. Yeah.
How many turkeys can you kill in this season?
We have two per spring to mail bearded birds per spring. And they opened up a fall season, which I don't have time for.
Can you guys shoot uh? Yeah, you know what?
And then the fall you can shoot hens. And again it's like I you know, they're way either half the s eyes with tom and it's deer season, like why you know if one happened to walk by my deer stand. But the season is super short, it's like two weeks or something, and the likelihood anyway.
I've never been able to get I've never well, I'll tell you this, like I'll do a lot of turkey hunting.
I love turk hunt. Yeah, I have never.
Because I missed. I have never killed a turkey in the ball. I just shot one bullet. I shot one thirty six round O's head about ninety yards away and missed.
And that was as close.
So now I can sit back and say I've never killed a fall turkey. Yeah, I tried to accident.
I tried to draw my bow on a pair that were walking by my tree stand and the moment I even moved, like, they took off and it was like, how do you even do this in the fall, So.
Yeah, it's pretty I had a similar experience. I wasn't gonna draw on them, but I had a little flock coming to me and I was up in the tree. Yeah, I thought I was pretty high up. I thought I was pretty well concealed. I had the tree between me and the turkeys, and before I moved, I let him get to probably twenty Yeah, and the moment I like, I was just going for my phone and whatever. That was just that little bit of elbow movement. I saw him and go give me one of those. And then
the whole flock just turned and it didn't run. But it's They're like, eh, I don't know what that was, but we're not messing around with it. Keep walking.
Yeah, yeah, I'm not into it. No, Mike kills my kid. He thinks we should be like big time Fall Turkey.
Hunters and I and again, I've never done it, but I've heard that. You know, you need to find a flock, spook them so they disperse, and then you try and call the flock back.
They make a dog for that. Yeah, I got that's.
How we did it when I was a kid in the fall.
And it's different calls right, like it's not you.
And a lot of times you don't even have to call.
They're just gonna come back.
Like there's like there's like a grouping call Kiki. But the reason those boys use dogs for it is you can't run fast enough to scatter because what you're trying to do is you're trying to throw the flock into such disarray that they lose track of one another. So if you go run and a half and they just run off like a group and they're like in a trail, yeah,
they're like, what's this annoying ass dude? But if you send a dog to go slipping in there, raising hell, he might succeed and getting them to lose track of each other. I've never done this. I would like to see if I've never done it, yeah, but just my understanding of it. And then you be we we be wee wee, and they hopefully, you know, draw him back in. I know, guy used to kill houns like that. That was his hun strategy. He would when he kicked a
flock of hons, he because they'll always scatter. Yeah, he would kind of like watch them land and figure out what he thought was the center. And I don't even know what call he did. He would do a mouth call. He would go to what he thought was the kind of center and sit there and call that's cool, yeah, and shoot them coming back in. How far do you do?
You live an hour and a half out of Toronto or you.
Know, I'm right in the city, so yeah, yeah, my restaurant is about twenty five minutes from my house. But i live on like kind of the northern side of the city and I'm close to all the highways, so I'm pretty mobile for getting out of the city.
Quick.
How's your restaurant doing.
It's doing great. We've been around for nine years now, Antler Restaurant, and yeah, we're just trying to figure out how to grow, you know. We we've been there coming up on a decade and you know, we were thinking about either a big renovation, you know, possibly expanding the space. We're just trying to figure all that out.
Yeah, the last time you here your restaurant, you were you were real worried about the CONVID thing.
Yeah, COVID really hurt us for a while and a lot of businesses and a lot of business closed. So you know, we're very fortunate and lucky. We had a really good community around us that supported us, and you know, people like what we're doing. And we've got really great team behind us as well, staff wise. So yeah, it's uh, it's good.
How often are you there?
I'm there during the week. I try not to work weekends anymore. I want to see my family, so I'm there during the week. And then we've got a really great general manager and a head chef. Now that kind of run it.
Tell me, tell me what's on the menu.
Right now, we have deer, duck, bison, wild boar, our fish is kind of generally rotating for going it what's in season, So we'll do like hal a bit, you know, salmon when it's running. We get walleye from Lake Erie. We get swordfish from the East Coast. Sometimes it's really cool scallops. We get little Canadian like kind of northern shrimp. We do spot prawns and stuff in the in the spring. So I'll be coming up.
But where's the wild hog from?
Uh?
Can you bring it in from Texas or No?
I don't know. We So there's a farm that's been doing. I think they actually just uh, there's some legislation that's closing down the wild hog farms. It was like a European hog they brought over.
Oh so it's like a it's like a domestic hog.
They're worried about coming in Ontana.
Yeah, yeah, so they actually I think they've actually started closing these uh wild boar farms in Ontario because there's been there's been sightings now so.
It's wild board, but it's it's domestic, domesticated, like the sort of ancestral sous scrofa.
Yeah, and I think they're you know, they're black, long hair type pigs with tusks, whereas uh, you know, just the farmery pigs are pink, careless things.
You know. Man, we we long time ago had a dude on aphis guy. That's that's our We have a federal agency that does they do a lot of stuff of non native species and whatnot. Wildlife control services. It's Animal Plant, it's a it's a division of like the Animal Plant and Health Health Animal Plant and Health Inspection Service.
Cool, but they.
Extra patient campaigns on invasive species as well. We were talking him about hogs and it was like, where could hogs be if you if you just take the US and I'm sure, I guarantee it's true with Canada.
Where could they be? They would be fine everywhere.
Because you got to go look like look at the habitat there in Siberia. Yeah, they're they're they're wading around and snow up to their brisket, no problem. And it was like where they are and are not is more a factor of where can you find them and kill them? Right, And it's in like open country like around here, it's just easier, it'd be easier to go find them and kill them. And it's like where they survive as places where it's hard to find them and kill.
Them, where they've become accepted, become accepted as well.
Yeah, because it's you know, California is such a weird deal, right, like.
The tree like a game animal. Yeah, yeah, but they just don't have this. They don't have quite the hordes like they get down in Texas. You know, it's just different. Like hunting pigs in California almost get a little excited when you see one. It can be hard. And you were saying last night, you do quite a bit of pig hunting.
I've absolutely gone crazy. I'm addicted to that. That night hunting with the thermal. You're really sneaking around the woods of an air fifteen and thermal. It is like amazing.
Yeah, but you just wind up wind up with like you just wind up with like a lot of hawks. You can, yeah, you definitely can.
You just sort through them and pick the ones you like or what do you do?
Yeah, so sort of like the gigantic ones that really stink, you know, those will kind of go off to the side, and you know, nice kind of medium sized sour or the smaller piglets they're incredible eating m So.
How when you're getting a bunch, how do you deal with them?
You can't.
And also you're going down to Texas, right.
I'm in Mississippi, so yeah, and they've got a huge problem with him.
And it's the guy that I go with. He donates a lot to some of the community. I know, they can drop them off at the penitentiary, the federal prison or whatever, or the state prison. They drop them off there, so yeah, they you know, the ones that we don't want, they do get put to use. But yeah, I love the meat. You know, it's just a totally different style of hunting for me. You know this, the thermal thing is sort of like a video game almost.
Are you able to fly home with that meat?
Yeah? Yeah, I just have to declare it at customs. You know. You look on the I think it's the CBS a website Canadian Border Services or something, and it's got everything listed. You can carry more driving. There's really no weight restriction flying they put a weight restriction, which is odd, but I've never had to weigh anything. I just declare it and then you said, where were you?
What were you hunting? Okay, see later. So yeah, and I freeze it and just put it in a suitcase, wrapped in a hunting jacket and it stays frozen, which is cool.
How often you go do that? I'm there pretty much quarterly doing it, Like I try to get there every couple of months. You know.
I love it. I love it down there. Yeah, I like the South.
When you guys sell deer in your restaurant, you're buying it from New Zealand or something.
No, we have there's a there's a lot of local farms you can it's actually cheaper from New Zealand, which bugs me, but yeah, we use a there's a couple of local guys at farm in the red stag species. Yeah, and he's he's uh, he's the cool thing about the game farms is there there's like smaller family run type deals, so you can kind of get to know the farmer and two of the farm and meet the meet the family. It's neat talk about what they feed them and their habitat and oh that's cool.
Yeah, I don't know more if you see that. Do you ever do those guys sell product in America.
That I don't know. I think it's a lot harder, uh for them. You know, I know that the cattle goes across the border, but I don't know about the game species.
So when you go buy it from Honey buy, like, what's the show up to you? Like?
We buy it Quartered, Like we buy a whole Quartered. Do you pick what cord? Do you want, then we take the whole thing. We have to buy a whole animal at a time. Oh you do, and then yeah, we get it. We uh you know, he just does his solid and quarter. We used to get a whole And then he asked me what are you guys doing with this? And I said I told him we just break it down with a hacksaw. And then he said, well,
just get a saws all. I'm an idiot. Why I've been doing this for like three years with an hacksaw and then the saws all just cut our time and you know, buy a fraction. And then he was like, well, I can just quarter it for you, like after five years quick enough.
Yea, Like okay, I didn't know that was an option. But so he goes out, like is he able to go out? He just goes out and shoots the thing.
No, he has to actually get it onto a trailer and take it to a slaughterhouse alive.
So he saws the antlers off it.
I haven't actually asked him about that. He I know he sells Antler. If you want Antler specific stuff, he'll sell you Antler. But yeah, I think he asked he sure.
You can transport them with the antlers on them.
I have no idea how that works. I'll ask him. I've never asked that question.
It's red deer.
Yeah, but there's like a legal governmental process you're getting them.
He has to get onto a trailer alive to a clarehouse.
Yeah.
And there's been times where he's called me and said, hey, I got to come. You know, I can't come this week. I got to come next week because I couldn't catch them. So he has to wait till they get into like he's got like a thousand acres or something, and you know, when they're in the barnyard he can kind of shut a gate and corral them onto a trailer. There's been times where he's like, I think during mating season in the early summer spring, he can't actually catch him or something.
So there's been times like in July he's like, yeah, they're mating or something. I can't I can't get one for you this week.
So you order like one.
We usually get two, yeah, one or two, and then the last couple of years we've actually been buying like thirty at a time. There's a a friend of mine that does a cull with like another game farm and he's been calling animals and they actually shoot him. They had a veterinarian on site that inspected the heart and liver, and then the brains were sent for CWD and then once everything was cleared, it went to a bunch of shop and got stamped.
Got the so they check them for a CD.
Yeah, you know.
What a weird deal. I know this isn't with you guys, but someone sent me these. I was looking at these exchanges the other day and the deer farmers here, the deer breeders here, not meat guys, but like antler guys. They're trying to they're trying to use this political climate here to try to get like the doge boys to kill CWD research because they're sick of hearing about it. Yeah, they don't want them researching it.
Yeah, that's a bummer.
That sucks. So they're trying to say that, Hey, while you're throwing out all kinds of conservation work, throw that out too.
Yeah that's unfortunate cause they don't even want to talk about it.
Yeah, say you know what it's going to mean for that.
There was a game farm in Quebec, one of the largest in the countries, that got completely shut down, had to kill all their their entire herd because of CWD, and they were just the risk of it getting out into the wild.
People were about it in the restaurant never, no, not.
One customers, probably not on the radar at that. That's the thing I wonder about man, is like with there are I'm pretty sure I heard this. There are some food banks that aren't accepting.
Oh gave me yeah.
And then also there's this there was there was a processor that used to process for food banks. I believe in Wisconsin. There was a guy in Wisconsin that processed for food banks. Or Michigan maybe yeah, you know what your email Michigan. There's a processor that you could like dudes that like to shoot deer, but they don't know they don't know how to cook or their square image. They won't eat it. They will go and shoot deer, but then they don't know what to do with it.
So they always want to donate it, right, you know, so you know because their kids are like I want butter doodles. So but this processor is like, I can't. He can't have it in there anymore. Yeah, he can't have it in his plant because of CWD. So I wonder if if as we get more CWD spreading around more, I always wonder, is that gonna put an end to being able to supply food banks and charitable organizations with deer meat.
I know they changed a bunch of laws where I am as well, where you know, any butcher could take game from a hunter and butcher it for them, you know, in charge for it. And that now a lot of them have shut down because of new rules and regulations. They've got to clear out all of their you know, farmed meat, wash everything down like wall, ceilings, floors, and give everything a wash, then butcher the game, then wash everything again, and then they're allowed to bring in you know,
farm raised products again. So a lot of the processors just say no, they don't do it anymore.
Yeah. I just get a little bit worried about I get a little bit worried about what that if people if places stop accepting it, right, if people stop accepting it, I don't think, you know, we're not in a position where we're gonna we're not gonna be able to We're not.
In a position to kill less.
Dear. They're trying to get people to kill more deer in a lot of suburban areas. So it's like if they stop accepting it, I just think it's just to be more ship winds up in the ditch.
Yeah, because people aren't There's just a lot of people will never process their own animal.
They just won't do No, they're not gonna do it. And like everything they shoot goes in that. And then if people don't want to accept it, what's going to happen? And then here's another thing that's like there's this new this idea that never goes away, is like that we should we should begin we should go back to the days of selling wild deer.
Yeah, and with c w D every year being in more and more and more.
Counties, I don't even know if that's like a great business plan because once you have, once you have in these areas where they're wanting they were pushing to sell to your particularly like in the eastern US, if there's CWD infection there percent it gets its high as fifty percent in some places. I don't know how much of that shit you're gonna be pushing down at the farmer's market. Have they be like what now have they linked to CWD?
It's a human Yet never never, I hope they never will.
Yeah, like, no, no one's ever gotten it. I mean hunters in America, not just hunters in America. I said this one time to do a CWD researcher and they're like, no, that's not true. And I'm like, it is true, dude. I was like, hundreds of thousands of Americans have eaten CWD infected meat.
Probably definitely, I would think so, dude.
Once she said no, and I was like, maybe she's right, and I thought about it for now it and I thought about it for a while longer. I'm like, dude, hundreds of thousands of people have eaten CWD infected meat.
No one, no one.
But there's this like there's there's there's risk meaning mad like you know mad cow has jumped.
Am I wrong about that?
No, Like it's no, for.
Sure, Mad. It becomes like yakub you know, christ felt, christ felt yaka disease preon diseases have moved across the barrier. This one has not. Okay, but there's also But what I'm talking about is this a perception issue, like picture that they in the East or wherever where you're at, whatever, they start saying, hey, we're going to go back to the days of shooting white tail deer and selling the
meat in the markets. And then you are a anti hunting organization and you start saying, well, you know, there's like a prion disease that is in that herd at prevalency rates of five, ten, fifteen percent.
How much that shit you're gonna be selling?
Yeah, so no, no one's gotten it. This is the thing we discussed all the time is there's two ways I look at it and be like, I believe a person that says CWD is not a problem. There's like a litmus test that I devised that I haven't done yet, but I need to. I'm gonna get a bunch of CWD meat from my friends in Wisconsin. I'm gonna be like, I want meat from all your positives. Okay, you give me, I want ten. I want meat from ten positives. My buddy Pat Dirkin got a positive dough this year. I
just said, semi a pound I'm gonna make. I'm gonna get all this CWD positive meat and I'm gonna make burgers with it. So it's all known positives and I'm gonna make burgers. And when I get someone who tells me, CWTS nothing to worry about, and they should cut research funding for CWD. I'm gonna make them up that patty, yeah, lettuce, pickles, tomatoes, however you want it, and I'm gonna be like, eat that burger, talk, serve it to your kids. Eat that
burger and then come tell me. Eat that burger and come tell me about it. If you eat that burger, I believe everything you say.
There will be some people that will talk to that.
I'll gladly talk to them.
Meanwhile, we're all going to be like carrying bleach and frickin' No.
No, I don't think that.
I think that that's too thinks one in the podcast room.
No, but you're falling. You're doing the other thing. You're doing the like everything has its extreme. Yes, So on one extreme you got like it doesn't matter, no one.
Should pay attention to CWT.
The other extreme is like if a deer was wd uh so much as looks at your stainless steel counter, your stainless steel counter will forever be infected with c w D. And it's like, can we remind everyone that no one's gotten it from eating this ship? Yet now we're talking about your stainless steel counter giving you c w D.
You can't even get it from eating the meat.
Like in Ontario where I live, I don't even think there's a resource where I could send uh my animal to test. I don't think whereas like in you know, I don't know if it's every state or you know, half the states where you can send in your like you said, your friendly.
Yeah, well that's what they're trying to do. They're trying to like shut the whole conversation down. And and I'm like, hey, man, I don't know. No one's gotten it. I hope no one ever gets it. I don't want anyone to get it.
I think I think we should be investing heavily in research to understand is it, like, to understand everything there is about it, because you're gonna kill I think that if if Heaven forbid, dude, Heaven forbid, if you somehow like had some hunters whatever Heaven forbid, it would it would destroy deer hunting. Yeah, or if they would put them not destroyed, it would really hurt. It would shake it up to cattle. Who knows what would happen. Yeah,
that's see. That's the other part that like the other point I always make is like I always look like, man, those boys aren't sweating it. Maybe I shouldn't sweat it. Yeah, I don't know, because they're not worried about their cattle, and their cattle look a hell of a lot more like a deer than I do. But then other guys are like cattle guys are sweating it. Mm hmm.
It's scary, man, Like just the unknown is scary.
But the whole burger point is that the CWD burger I want to make is like and I do. I am going to do this some pre pre frozen like dude, I want I want to hear from. I want to talk with and hang out with and converse with more people who don't care, because then maybe it'll make me not care because it makes me nervous.
And who wants to be nervous?
Like, no one like.
Chooses to be nervous.
Ignorance.
Yeah, when you see those drugs that are supposed to like make you more sexually desirous, right, I'm like, if you're not, if you have no appetite, do you wish you did? It's a weird thing, you know what I mean? Do you find what I'm saying like I wish I wanted something that I can't get, but like I don't want to be nervous about I don't want to be nervous about CWD. But if I give my burger to some dude and he heeds the burger, I'm like, man, this is a true believer.
Anyway, you know.
Makes me nervous around like spinal cords, Like my dude, like my before my dear tested negative.
But it's like.
Always there's no such thing as a negative.
It's non detected, right, And so that's the other thing that makes me nervous. And I'm like, if I wait three more days or wait four more days, like what's the like preon load that would push the little meter to detect it? And then I'm like getting all weird about the spinal cord. And then one day I forgot and I kind of like sectioned part of the back and cooked it in a soup and like slurped up the spinal cord and I was like, oh, I have.
No like personal anxiety about getting CWD.
Really would you eat my burger? I mean, I just Randall's the first guy is gonna have the burger. Yeah, I've gotten I've gotten deer tested company man.
No, No, I mean I just too much as a friend.
But you don't lose sleep over it.
About a meatball. I think if no, I guess Swedish meatballs.
It's one of those things where I see, I see CWD as like this existential problem for deer in North America and deer hunting as we know it, right, But I think, like the odds of the piano falling out of the sky and hitting me and I'm the first human to get it, I see those odds is very low, like me personally getting it, and I'm I'm the case number one. Does that make sense?
Yeah, I don't think I'm going to be the case number one.
I mean it'd be like everybody. It'd be like thousands of people at the same time get it.
They would have already been getting it.
Yeah, And that kind of disease, you could carry it around forever.
And that's how they scare you. Yeah, they tell you what you maybe you don't know yet. It's like the cordyceps like Last of Us show the mushroom fungus takes over their brain. Yeah, oh, I haven't seen that.
It's a good one.
Like it's India, but you don't know it.
Oh they know it. They turn into like zombies or something. It's like a horror kind of TV show. But there's that mushroom, the parasitic mushroom that will take over like an ant's brain, and it kills the ant and then the mushroom grows out of it. It's like, would you eat the burger? I mean, I don't think so.
I would think about it.
I would think about it.
I don't know that.
I mean, it's it's not that I I guess like if I had if I tested a deer and it was positive.
Mm hmm, I wouldn't eat it. Hm.
So you definitely would, right.
I mean, my burger is made of all right, it's seasoned with But like the idea that the idea that a deer that's.
That's either an unknown or has tested not detected, the idea that I would be like personally anxious about somehow that yeah, like like my own personal anxiety is I mean, Plus, if I did get CDWD and and I was case one when they did all the blood tests on me, that find something else that's wrong with me, and then that would actually be the primary concern I feel like, you know, I just think of all the things in the world for me personally that it's gonna that's gonna
change my arc in the universe.
It's kind of like eating fish from a lake that has.
Like high mercury.
Yeah, Like I don't care about that. I mean, I guess for me, it's not just fish burgerful of high mercury fish.
Yeah.
I've eaten like Ontario salmon that I later kind of researched and was like, yeah, I probably shouldn't eat that.
It's not gonna do anything to you, dude.
I mean, but you guys were eating like you know, your mercury poisoning.
Yeah, but it's totally different disease getting.
Like you know, it's just like health in general, maintaining or.
Yeah, yos.
Getting c j D is not having a little mercury spike.
No, I'm not saying that the same thing. But it's like if you can. For me personally, I try to avoid to the extent possible, Like I don't put plastic in the microwave like it extends to I'm consistent across the board.
Flirt you don't flirt with danger.
When you first brought up the CWD burger idea, I believe you're going to grind the spine into the well I someone pointed this out.
Someone pointed out, but I don't grind my spines into my burger. Mm hmm. So it's like, out of fairness, okay, I don't the deer. I don't eat the deer brains anyway, so don't put it in. I don't want to dear brain burger out of any kind would you.
Would you lose sleep if you found out after the fact that you ate?
No?
Yeah, this is like, that's what I'm saying because I guarantee I have. I guarantee, I think because I got buddies. I got burdies, like buddies of mine in Wisconsin. Like they'll be like, send you some summer sausage or something, you know, and sure, like I probably have.
But here's the deal.
One time, See, my wife doesn't listen to anything I say or right, so I can say this here it won't get back to her. My daughter killed a deer in a high c w D area or not a high area. She killed a deer in a c w where they recommend testing. And this is a county order c WD cases so I submit my sample on the way home. You just pull in and submit. I submit my sample on the way home, and we eat the heart right away because I kind of forgot for a minute.
Then I'm thinking to myself that something bitch comes back positive. I either got to live with a secret car, got tell my wife like, hey, you know, like uh, you know, and she's gonna be pissed. But it came back negative.
Yeah. I think I had text you last summer when I thought I infected myself an entire party with trichinosis. Yeah, and you were like, I think I just got the flu or something. After I had like a week later, and I text you because I was freaked out, and you said, no, I think it's like a for symptoms.
Yeah. And I turned out being being negative and it was nothing, but I was I was pretty freaked out. Sure, I didn't care that I had it.
I was freaked out that I had like potentially given it to like thirty people at a barbecue.
It doesn't it doesn't matter.
Would you serve them bear cougar?
I did a cougar ham and we we I spit this funny. I spit roasted a beaver and I did a cougar ham and uh, and I remember like temping the beaver repeatedly, and I I know I attempt the cougar, but I couldn't remember what the final temp was And then was it one thirty? Yeah? Yeah, And it's like I had it was my birthday, so I had had a few drinks. We were having fun, and the next day I just was like, I don't really remember what
that cougar was. And then I got sick, like, you know, four or five days after.
And was like, oh, yeah, but it doesn't matter.
Too.
Is probably tricky for you, you know, metrics. You could meet to in metric how's that work? You know?
I use fahrenheit.
I use Yeah.
It's like in culinary school, they still teach you the imperial temperatures. I think now maybe like because I'm you know, old enough that maybe they weren't, but they kind of teach you both. And just all the old school chefs I grew everything was always fahrenheit. And a lot of our ovens and equipment seriously come from the States too, so I think, so they're all the dials and stuff are.
I think it's like a car, like you can see the celsius or fahrenheit, but I think fahrenheit's more predominant.
That's because in the US, everything that matters they do in metric, Like I think the military runs the military runs metric. Yeah, nah, so they're not like three eighths of an inch like my other a couple of yards from the moon here, My oven at home is in fahrenheit.
So it's just isn't really. Yeah, I saw cooking stuff I use fahrenheit.
And you were taught that in culinary school.
Yeah, I think they always showed you both. But like like, like I said, our equipment it's in fahrenheit.
When you wake up in the morning, what's the temperature.
That's in celsius? Which is bizarre, Like I have to I have to cross reference stuff when I'm traveling to Like I know, eighties like warm, you know, nineties hot? You know sixties seventies is like comfortable, you got thirty two is freezing. I know the basics, but I don't know the conversions, like exact.
Tell me about spit rolls and a beaver.
So I text a friend of mine that's indigenous, and I someone had gifted me this beaver.
They were trapping. They said they had too many. Did I want a beaver? And I said, you know, yes, And this thing was gigantic. It was the biggest beaver I've ever seen.
Don't give me vaguaries, man.
I didn't know. I didn't weigh it, but I've seen like this thing was massive, Like it was like a like a large dog. I show you a picture. So I called my my buddy, who's indigenous. I said, I said, you know, what do you guys, what do you do with this? I don't know, like, what would someone in your community do with beaver? Meet? And they said they smoke it, so they always smoke. So I thought, okay, I bought this rotisserie thing and I did a huge
open fire and and just spit roasted it. And then so he said they smoke it, so I wanted to smoke it over wooden charcoal. And then I I was glazing it with birch syrup, which I just kind of came up with that on my own because it's like kind of molassesy, savory sweet, kind of has a tanginess to it, and it came out awesome.
Now I got a problem where I like I missed some of the detail. You bit you were putting the syrup on it while you Yeah.
So I had it on a rotisserie and dripping it on the dripping and I had like a brush and I'd kind of brush it every every every so often, bruph.
I you know what.
I tried to make birch syrup one year, and I got so many flies and moths in it. It was pretty gross.
Birch.
The birch trees run after the maple trees run, and by that time all the snow is gone and it's actually quite warm. And you have to do it with the tube and line system where there's no oxygen and the flies can't get in, which I just did it with a bucket. Oh no, kid, So if you just hang a buck like for a maple season, that you can hang, I do line.
Now I want to get in there.
They so like I opened the lid of this bucket and there was like three hundred moths in this one little bucket, and I was like, that's gross.
This whole thing is such a knowledge gap with me.
Is it's neat? It's fun.
Yeah, when we were kids, we'd run around trying to tap stuff. We had no idea what we're doing. Yeah, and we just like tap it the summer. Yeah. Uh yeah, no, no experience with it. My brother Danny in Alaska, he makes the birch sierup cool. It takes twice like the racial is already terrible. Yeah, but it's twice as terrible, yes, yeah. And then everything you put it on tastes like a buckwheat pancake. Yeah, its like a molasses yeah Haines, Yeah, no, it's so yeah.
Maybe so it's fun. So like back home, it's the season is now in the spring, when the temperatures are above freezing during the day and then they freeze at night. It's sort of the optimal season.
So how'd you serve? What'd you wind up doing with that beaver?
Then we, uh so we're shooting it for the cookbook. So it's in the second cookbook, which is in September. And uh we just did like a barbecue plate with it. We sliced it, sliced some of the tail and just had it with that bird syrup claze.
But when you did that, were you able to get it? You didn't get where you could pull it.
It was some parts you could pull, Like I think I did it for about ten hours or yeah, I started in the morning.
Yeah.
So like some parts you could pull some of the thicker, like the hind quarter stuff. I could slice like I could physically rip it, like it wasn't like falling apart pulling, but I could kind of pull it off the bone, and then I sliced it. You did hide off right? Yeah?
Well yeah, well you know, and there's a mountain man Osborne Russell Okay left a very very good journal and he describes that. He describes the she beaters, the shoshowone group that was in like the Absorcas. Was that where it was when he ran into him? Was he in the Absorcas? I think it's down by the tee towns.
Oh, was that where he ran into him?
Yeah? They when they're cooking them, they were doing it like how you would do a hog, a roast hog, but they're burning the hair off instead of scalding it. So they're rolling it to burn all the hair off and then roasting it skin on like you was a pig, which I'm kind of dying to try.
I want a d hair one, Yeah, got it, d hair it so it's.
Cavity back up. Was good stuff to eat inside there and then roasted skin on. Yeah, I wonder if you get that crackling like you would with pigskins. They're kind of greasy. They're greasy. I'm definitely wanting to do it. And then what you do with your mountain lion? I got everybody.
I did like a charsius kind of Chinese barbecue sauce that I marinated it in and uh and and smoked it. And I say thing, I smoked it not to the point of pulling, but where it was like really tender and I could slice it.
You guys, don't where's you? Where's that mountain line?
From my friends? Shot that in British Columbia. Oh okay, yeah, so he gifted that kind quarters.
What do they call him up there?
They got the.
Cats mountain lions. They say cat hunting or a mountain.
Lion, not cougar, not catamount. I've never heard cat mount not painter. No, No, I have yet to shoot one.
I've I've I'm trying to trying to get my hands on a tag, but they're unless you live in a you know, province or state. I think they're they're getting kind of expensive. You gotta know somebody here get a deal.
But does Canada the same way that for for an American dude to go hunt or so like to go hunt big game. For an American to go hunt big game in Canada, there's all the guide, there's guide requirements. Yeah, but if you hunt out of province.
In Canada, depends on the province. For me to go to BC or Alberta, Saskatchewan, Newfoundland, most of the province is actually except for Ontario where I live, you have to go with a guide. I'm technically a non resident even in my own country.
See, that's all a game birds.
I don't I think it's a big game. Small games off that list big game, And I don't know if it's like a safety thing. You know, they don't want people climbing mountains that don't know what they're doing. Maybe, I don't know, you know what kind of thing it is. Yeah, money for you people not watching them doing the money signing. But yeah, maybe that's a good thing, Like it's like local economy, it's but you know, the price tag of
things now is just getting out of control. Like I'm like, will I ever shoot a sheep?
You know?
The one cool thing.
Though about Alberta and BC in these big games. There is a slight kind of workaround. If you know someone that has someone that lives there and is a resident, they can apply It's called the permission to a company. So I can go with a local that lives there, and we have to apply for this permission to a company three months before the season or something, and then I can put in for the draw and then potentially draw tag.
Spencer was just researching the old permission to a company.
I've had people invite me on those permission to accompanies. Yeah, but you know, it's so I'd love to understand it better. I mean, you got to have It's hard to understand your own state. Yeah, you know, I'm always explaining what goes on here, and it changes all the time. It's hard to get like a good grip. And then you're talking about like a huge place with all these you know, how many what seven? How many provinces are there? Thirteen? There is ten provinces, three territories.
See that randall something like that?
Pretty good, I corrected myself.
I'm gonna count.
Tell tell us about the book, though, man, tell us about your new cookbook.
Cookbook? Well, the first cookbook did did really well, and I think It surprised my publisher as a first time Canadian author, you know, thanks to guys like you. It did really well in the States, so I think they were really surprised.
You know.
It was in every bass pro across the country, which I thought was pretty amazing.
It was amazing.
Yeah, thank you.
And that was a passion project for me for like ten years. I worked on that thing. I originally thought, oh, I'm mean a self published and I did a lot of the photography just because I was like a twenty year old kid, you know, take an interest in something and run around with a camera. I couldn't really afford a photographer, so I thought I'll just take you know, pictures myself, and you know.
And then.
So the first book did really really well, and then you know, a lot of years went by and my publisher said, hey, you know what you think about a second book? And I really love you know, I love barbecue, you know, but you know, I'm not really known as a barbecue guy. Yeah, but you know, because at first I was like, oh, I'd like to do a barbecue book, and that's like, well, not really a pitmaster. But then I started thinking about it.
I felt like you were like a you felt like you were like an inner lower.
Yeah, you know like that, what's that syndrome the imposters?
Maybe is barbecue like popular it is.
But you know, Canada doesn't have its own barbecue culture right now, Like there's like, you know, the Carolina barbecue versus Texas and you know so, but then I was, I want to, you know, really make it authentic. And then I thought, you know what do I love most? And it's like, I love cooking over a fire. So the second book is all over the fire.
Do you guys do that in your restaurant?
We have some We have a little live fire grill that we finish everything on. So we'll like pants here a rabbi and we have a bison ribbi. We cast iron pants, sear it, and then we finish it on this little charcoal barbecue that's a and it just imparts that, like you know, that little charcoal kiss of smoke into it, charcoal that a lot of people comment, they're like, what's different about your meat? And it's like, oh, it's finished on charcoal. And then but yeah, there's just something about
cooking over a live fire like you can't. You can't. It's hard to explain. But it's just it tastes better. And I don't you know, I don't know why that is. It's whether you're just because you're standing around watching the flames, being outside, you know, all those things that go along with it, you know, you and everyone in this room knows about you know what cooking like cooking at camp is like, like why does it taste so good? And then when you go home it's it's good, but it's
not the same, you know, And is it? Is it the experience outdoors? Is it that you're so hungry because you've been hiking a mountain, you know, on your on your sheep hunt or whatever it is. You know, why does that meal taste so good? It's over the fire, you know, and it's a it's as a professional chef like I, I can't figure it out, you know. And
it's so that's what I was passionate about. I thought, you know, this was this is gonna be a fun project to do all over the fire and h and yeah, it proved to be a lot harder than the first one because everything had to be done outside over a fire. Yeah, but there's a lot a lot more seafood in this book, and there's still some desserts and cocktails and stuff I worked into it that you can be made over the fire or on a smoker.
And h and yeah, I'm really excited about it. You got photos all over the place. Yeah, I did a lot of travel.
I'm really really fortunate to uh to work with some some cool hunting companies that kind of helped me on the travel stuff. And uh, yeah, the muskox is in there, Antelope is in there, Elk is in there, and grease balls, lakers, there's some lake rod in there.
Love those things. But I was more joking about when I was a kid, that's what people they were. They went through a period of being. That's weird. Man Like in Michigan, they went through a period of being.
It was probably because of like the introduced salmon and people looked at them.
They got all excited about.
Yeah, I think that's like those that fishery was built on lakers, not built on I mean, lakers were a huge part of the fishery, you know, and then they kind of got decimated by lampreys. Salmon came in, and then when I was a little kid, people would talk about Lake Trout like almost being like adjacent to a rough fish.
Now they're celebrated again.
You know, Damn they're good, man, They're so good.
I was actually fishing for the lake trout last week with some buddies, and I was actually getting frustrated. I didn't catch any good eating size when we're catching these monsters, which is like unreal through the ice, through the ice.
I'd never caught.
Anything that big, any kind of fish through the ice before, so I was like freaking out. And then I was like, we can't eat these in this big and they're like no, like you can't eat their way like mushy, and like they're not good to eat when they're big, because I've I've caught lots of small ones, you know, through the ice in different different lakes and up north a couple summers ago, I caught like a forty five pound lake trout.
Wow.
Wow. Yeah, there's a lodge. They're called Plumbers Arctic lodges, and they're a great Bear lake in the Northwest Territories and they're one of the deepest lakes in the world. I have forty five pound lake trout and that's not even like their record is seventy.
They like to the record record out of it.
I think wasn't Michigan. Wasn't there a ninety pounder came out of.
Mission the world records out of.
Slave Lake.
Mate, what it's out of Canada?
It's over one hundred.
Yeah, I feel like the Missy.
There's one. There's like an account of a ninety something from mission. But it was so long ago, you wonder what the hell they measured it on. Yeah, like bags of sand on one of the little deals.
You know, the scales of justice. But that Yeah, so that place was. But I never caught one that big through the ice. So this one's pret it's probably like fifteen twenty pounds range. But uh yeah it was wild and I had gone. I wasn't expecting to catch anything that big. So I used my little six inch auger and my buddies had an eight inch auger and I'm like yelling at them to come over and give me a hand because.
I widened the hole.
Well, I was like, what are we gonna do here?
You know, we got it through. It was pretty pretty uh challenging what we got it through. But yeah, it's uh so anyway I've been, I've been on a big ice fishing kick. Lately.
Did you guys put a gaff into it to drag it up through that small hole?
No, No, we just suck her hand in them, because that's the thing you want, Like when the whole when you get real deep ice, yeah, that you can't get you know, And when they come up and that hooks I'm talking about nors, but you know northerns, but have been the same with lake trout.
Yeah, is the hooks coming outside of their mouth.
And when he comes up to the ice, he's like sideways in there, Yeah, where the front of his face is on one side of the hole and his gill covers on the other side of the hole, and no amount of it's so hard to ever get him fanaggled. Yeah, to get his head because you can't because the whole the ice is too thick to manipulate it by right pulling the line around. So we would turn into a drywall anchor.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, we would just take a big fishing hook.
I have one that's just it's a big treble hook on the end of a long graphite fishing rod. Yeah, that you can just put down there and just try to get something into him. Yeah, to pull him up finagle his head around.
Yeah, we were on like twelve inches, so we just stuck her hand down, pulled them up.
That forty five pounder. That's cool.
Yeah, and you got a cool way of cooking them in the book. The lake trout we just did over a fire, and then we maybe got that one that picture where it's like pro oh that's uh, that's a steelhead.
And that some reas I thought. I remember that being a.
Yeah, I nailed that to a cedar plank. I put some culp behind it and with that over far.
That was cool.
Yeah, really cool pictures.
Thanks, Yeah, thanks, Yeah, so some of those, A lot of those. I took the ones in nature I take myself and then my business partner takes the the indoor kind of play.
That's a lot of your photography. Yeah, yeah, it's talented.
You know.
I can take I'm not you know, I use auto mode a lot. I can. I can manipulate some stuff in manual mode, you know, but I'll take a picture in auto and then try and correct some stuff. But yeah, yeah, I just point and shoot.
How many recipes are in the book.
Thinks about one hundred this one as well. Yeah, yeah, the seafood one, I got them down to eighty because I'm like, I don't know if that's a lot. So the number three is going to be eighty, but yeah, this one's one hundred.
When you're doing it, how much when you're putting a book together, how much do you think of it? Like how do you imagine the balance between things that people wouldn't think to eat? And so you're trying to convince people to try stuff which I would put like, I mean, people have always eaten beavers, but I'll put beavers in that pile. Mountain lions I have always been eating, but
I'll put mountain lines in the pile. So like just general Joe Blow, Like there's always subcultures that consume this stuff, but like the general Joe Blow is going to be reluctant to try, So you want to encourage them. On the other hand, you want to have the stuff that's just easy and good everybody knows is good.
Are you aware of this? The mix the sales?
Yeah, like yeah, yeah, what is your mix?
Like what's your personal mix?
I think I think my publisher called them, our editor called them, like the aspirational recipes. I think there's a.
Five to ten percent kind of weird stuff. Yeah, the weird stuff.
So I think it's probably five or ten percent you know, weird's aspiration and then yeah, I just I cook what I like and I want, you know, And there's there's like a uh, you know, porketta, which is like an Italian staple with you know, with pork and uh, you know. So it's not like that's not you know, really anything new, but uh, it's just stuff that I like to cook. And maybe you know, somebody in uh, you know, rural Mississippi has never done a porketta, you know, so they
can see that book. But it's it's again, it's not like I'm reinventing the wheel, but it's just I just want to share with people what what I like to cook, and you can use wild ingredients doing it.
I'm looking at like some of the some of your barbecue recipes for instance, and you have like smoke cougar ham bear ribs. So it's like pretty cool that you know, you've got some some odd odds well not odd, but like species.
Yeah, asration.
But do you then like if you can't get a cougar.
Do it with this.
I don't know if I gave uh, you know, alternative ingredients for cougar and you know, for a lot of the gay my publisher did ask like if you can't use bison and use use a grass fed beef or stuff like that. But yeah, the cougar, that's it's pretty hard to you know, switch that out. You know, squirrel, you could switch out rabbit or something. But yeah, like for for bear ribs or you know, I guess the closest thing might be like bison ribs.
That makes me want to like just think about bear the bear.
They're so good. Use a sauce. All that I learned from my dear farmer. And yeah, you can just cut like whatever size you know, length the rib you want. These ones, I did probably like four or five inch cuts down the rib.
And you're not you're leaving all the fat everything, so you're not you're just taking the hide off.
You're not trimming the outer layers hide off.
And then there's probably like a bear that was a spring bear and uh and yeah, so then I put on the smoker. You know, I had a dry rub on it, smoked it. I kind of treated it like a brisket where I you know, wanted to hit you know, one hundred and sixty sixty five for the stall, and then I wrapped it in tinfoil just to keep that moisture in and then what and then just cook it till like two hundred and two o five fahrenheit until you could actually like pull the bones apart.
No brazing at all, just all done in the foil.
All done in the foil. The bear ribs were fatty enough they didn't need to deer ribs. I'll put like a splash of beer in or something in the foil, and or I'll put it on a like I'll smoke them first to get the smoke flavor in there, and then I'll put it on a baking sheet. I can add, you know, splash a beer or something, some stock, and then cover it. But it also that's the thing about game Meet. You know, if you shot a lean spring bear,
maybe you do need to use some liquid in there. Yeah, but for that one, it was you see about the picture, like it's pretty fatty. There's a good meaty it almost looks like a beef short rib. It's kind of so meaty.
Yeah.
You know what I made Monday night that bummed me out was.
I had this, I'd killed a pig in Texas, a wild pig. Yeah it was fatty, right, But there were so many pigs around. You could go sneak into the you could sneak into the what they called the sounder. You can sneak into the little party and look for the fat ones. Just it was just like a freak thing where there was just like you never imagined you could pick fat ones out. And I had one that I was like, you so seldom get a wild hog was just like layered and fat, and I was so
excited about these little ribs. I cut up the little wild hog riblet.
I think I have the other half of that which I haven't cooked yet.
Okay, well they were good, so I did a braize on them and then threw them in the oven.
It's like too much of a good thing. Oh no, my kids were not into it.
Just just the cloopiest. I never thought you could have it be there's like two.
Like it did render out or like.
Glatinous.
What I needed to do is put it in an oven at low heat and let that ship drip out a long time. Try out a little bit I was eating from you. I ate them and enjoyed my daughters like yeah, they but they don't like They don't eat a lot of they don't like real faty meat. They're just not used to it. And my kids don't either.
Like kind of breaks my heart when I see people like cut the fat off a strip line and they leave it on their plate, like, oh, that's that's.
The best part. If you're surprised to hear that, because my kids, you know, that's the reason they love the Mallard duck is because they're like, oh, wow, you're actually serving us something with some fat, and you know, the skin's the best part.
They I don't like it all over their face. My wife likes you don't like it. She don't like domestic meat. She don't like beef steaks, she likes she don't like any of that kind of fat.
She likes it older.
If you treated it more like you would treat a domestic rack of ribs, if it would have come out better.
Yeah, if you just smoked it, it's I treated it just like I did, just what I would do for like deer ribs, And it was just the wrong move I got after I'm gonna put him back and I'm gonna mess with up. I haven't given up that's.
The secret of cooking. When people are like, oh, how do It's like practice. You just got to practice to try new things. And you tried braising it, you know, and didn't get the same results. So it's like try straight smoking it.
Well, I'm going back down and I'm going back down to that same place and I'm gonna hunt me down another little fatty and I'm gonna try to do it.
But you don't get a chance to practice with fat wild hogs?
Is there aren't many a mountain? What Jesse Griffiths was Jesse Griffiths put.
A number on it one time.
No, it wasn't him.
It was Remember remember I do Clayton Saunders.
He was really good the obesity rate among wild hogs.
Like, how many are fat?
No?
I said, that was it Clayton Saunders down in Texas.
I can't remember what we're talking.
I said, like of all the of all like all wild pigs, how many are suitable? Remember he put as he put a hog shoulder, Yeah, he put a hog shoulder in a smoker Texas style, had a mop.
And I said, how many like one out of what is suitable to do that with.
The front shoulder? And I feel like he says something like, man, one in a hundred, Wow, I'll do that. But it wasn't that it wasn't that bad. It was bad, but it wasn't that bad that he would do a again. Just to be clear that he would take a whole front leg from a wild pig and do it the way he cooked it for us, which was phenomenally. He said, it's like a one and whatever, like treating it like exactly and not need to bring any extra stuff to the show.
You know, we did ribs this weekend, and I also learned a little trick for next time.
Bison ribs and I brought.
I had just the whole side of ribs and they're frozen, and I went to cut them up into those like five inch strips.
Huh.
And they did it in the kitchen with the saws all sure and frozen frozen little me and bone dust all over the backsplash.
Your wife get out about stuff like that. Yeah, that was that was a good lesson learned. Weird mind like like she just doesn't man, as long as I clean it up. Oh yeah, I clean it up too.
But it was just like this was a thing that didn't need to happen. It would have been much easier to do that, do the saws alling outside.
If I didn't clean it up, I'd hear about it. Yeah, but I could cut up a person on our counter and she's not caring if I clean it up. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, no, we have our program's a little different. She doesn't like that kind of stuff. Yeah, it's just like, well, I'll call her, She'll probably hear about it.
No, I think you're pushing it there with the person analogy. I think she would care.
Depends on the person.
If I cleaned up, I wouldn't need to hear about it.
That's a secret.
It was a secret maybe Okay, not a person. But I'm saying, yeah, not like there's like a person. There's like legal implications. What I'm saying is like, if I clean up, I don't need to worry about.
What I do in the kitchen.
Yeah.
And she's walking through your garage every day where there's like hides hanging, and.
Yeah, she's just like clean clean that shit up. I don't know when you're done.
That's just it might be that it might be that my my cleanup is like a ninety seven out of one hundred. You know, there's always some residual.
Do you think your wife would come on the show. Yeah, happily.
She's been on trivia.
That'd be a great episode, man, just interview Randall's wife.
Fantastic.
She actually she actually uh, she.
Was listening to the Trivia like the past couple of Trivia episodes, uh, the other day, and she said, what what my her new favorite game to play is instead of trying to answer the questions, it's trying to guess which one Seth gets right.
That's cruel, man, like even set that well.
She just sort of like she doesn't know Seth that well, but she like she listens along. She's sort of playing this meta game on top of it. It's like, based on what Seth gets wrong and right.
Does she root for you?
Do you feel?
Yeah?
Yeah, yeah, she see you.
When my wife stopped caring about trivia a long time ago, get all excited about winning, she does.
She's just just clean your mess.
Randall's still on the tribun still with the whole trivia thing.
Yeah, she's like, just clean your mess up.
Brother.
I hope you have fun of trivia. What's your Uh?
So that's the mix the Blende ten to fifteen.
Something like that. Yeah, she just yeah, made it a point to say, you know, not too not too many of those aspirational recipes.
And then what is what do you feel is like the best?
The best? What's the star of the show? Like in the book, what is the one? Is someone said, Hey, I'm gonna cook one thing out of this book?
What should I cook? That's so hard because I love you know, I love a lot of the content in there. The bear ribs. I think it is a way up there. Like I was really surprised we.
Got off on this whole thing.
Sorry, keep going on the bear ribs. You just serve them like bon on.
Bon on, Yeah, uh smoked the whole time. Didn't really braise it, uh you know, dry rub and uh yeah, just phenomenal. Really really surprised how good they came out laying on a plate.
Yeah, serve them with some tangy Ksey style sauce or I.
Don't know if Brodie still got that, still got the page up on the computer there, but I forget.
I think I served it with that barbecue sauce. The bear ribs.
I know you had listened, maybe you reading the table of content the barbecue. I forget what I I think I played it with something.
It's like I never want I'm cutting up a bear. I never think to do the ribs, Like I never think to do the ribs on the bone. Yeah, most of the time I will cut in between the meat out. But yeah, I just I was on a barbecue kick and I'd shot a bear and I'm gonna do the ribs. Yeah, I'm gonna try that this spring. A lot of the bears we deal with their coastal bears though, Yeah, and I wonder I wonder if that because it's hard to trim the fat out and that fat can be pretty fishy,
I might try it. We I was serving some of that fishy bear meat to my buddy Dirt, and I was like, problem with it. It's like it's like it's kind of like it's like meat, but it's kind of taste like smoke fish. I love smoking.
That's funny.
I want to ask you about your fried perch, because I know Steve's got opinions on perch on me.
I I think I use like a seasoned flower yeah, like flower fish, crispy like my corn meal. I think I I think I mix. I put some core meal in my seasoned flower.
But would you say, like, in all honesty, in all honesty, just love with me, Brodie, Is this what you're going for?
Oh?
Yeah, I know this.
I got a couple more questions. In all honesty, I'm no Canadian. Uh do you feel that you're from a fish fry culture?
I would say no?
No?
Do you leave the skin on the filets?
Not to fry them? If we're If I was gonna see it without breading and stuff, I would I do like fish skin like whileye I love crispy walleye skin, say it like most fish, I leave, I scale it and I will leave the skin on.
Because when they're clarified that you're not a pitmaster, no, I wouldn't.
I wouldn't.
Now you see me, you're a fried man.
I love.
I like the find a lot of food. I think I fried more food in my life than than than legit barb cue.
But okay, so tell me the perfect perch is wheat flour not corn meal?
I use both. I mix, yeah, I do. I don't know if it's twenty five percent corn corn.
You know, got corn meal, But I like that approach the corn meal flour mix because what it gives gives like like I like a real fine corn meal, but if you can get a little, like a little bit of a medium ground, yeah, you don't get that universal coat. Right, So if you do flour, flour sticks to like it's just on there and then and then you got that corn meal, so you got like a good even coat.
Then you got like a little of that texture and stuff.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's a good way to go. What do you fry and what's your oil?
Lately I've been using peanut oil. I kind of save fat and render everything. I love frying stuff and bear fat. I think it's like the best of the best o hot. Do you get it around three fifty up around there? Like you know, we'll do French fries at three hundred and then to finish it like three seventy five.
Do you ever make a French frying bear fat?
Yes, I've done that. Oh kid, it's really good. Bear fat, Like I don't know what it is, it's like it makes the flakiest pastry. I want to talk to a food scientist about why bear fat makes flakier pastry than like pig lard. I don't know why it is like the most incredible lard to make pastry.
Huh. Yeah, you couldn't legally, No, you probably couldn't. Like in your restaurant, you couldn't be just frying stuff and bear fat.
Probably get a lot of bears to make that work hypothetically, Yeah, I know they'd frown upon that. So you like you like to fry and peanut though at home, I fried peanut at the restaurant, we don't, just because of the peanut allergy thing.
What do you have to use in a commercial kitchen?
It's not what like we could we could use. We gotta tell it, you know, we gotta be really careful we use like you know, most restaurants use canola. It's like just standard. It comes in a big box with a jug and it's you know.
Do you ever fry in beef tallow in your restaurant.
I've never fried with it. I've used it in potatoes, like to roast potatoes and stuff and like you know, brush based stuff with and whatever, but I've never actually filled the fryer with beef tallow. Yeah.
Have you ever hung out with Jesse Griffiths?
I So I was going to tell you because last time I was on the show. I'd never heard of him, and you told me to look him up, and I'd been following him for the last four years and then I just met him at n WTF show.
Ok.
Yeah, he was there with his new Turkey book.
Dude, you guys, I feel like you guys, like you guys be like nuts on a dog.
Screwed the whole thing up because he was here the other like where.
Ship's passing, but where we're going to make plans to hang out and if you guys went to if you went to each other's restaurants and stuff, you guys would be like you guys would be like best friends.
Yeah we we We kind of became best friends of the show. So we're gonna trying to do some stuff together.
I feel like you guys would have a great time hanging out.
His books really cool books.
If you ask him about frying stuff and what grease he uses, he'll not say, no opinion.
Yeah, well he said he likes the be fat.
Dude. Really, when they do their Friday fish fries at at Die do A, they when they do their fish fries, they.
Do their fish fries and be fat. That's funny, that's cool. I find. I was like, it's not waxy, but it's so much thicker than like.
And you know what's funny about is I keep it in my fryer, but I keep my fryer outside by keeping loading be fat and in the winter, like we just had like negative twenty, Yeah, a rock.
And like you turn that thing on, you've turned on in the morning.
Man.
Really, I think those I think those heating elements get a little bit of that ship liquified, but it takes a while to bring that back to really yeah, when it's just frozen, like yeah, you know, I've never done a whole pot of beef. I definitely definitely will give that shot. What else is in the what? What else is in the book do you think of as a highlight? You like the bear ribs, the bear ribs? Definitely.
The fishing part was there's a lot of fish stuff, and and there's I started spearfishing recently, so there's some spearfishing stuff in there. Yeah, just just just over the fire thing is prevalent through the whole book. So if you're interested in in fire cooking, it's there's some there's some how to stuff, you know, different types of fire setups. Yeah, and uh, you know it doesn't have to You don't have to buy a five thousand dollars smoker. You can make one with cinderblox.
You know.
So if there's a let's say this, there's a dude that fishes, what's the one hot tip you could give a guy that fishes, Yeah, to leave brownie. Yeah, we're gonna wrap up, but go ahead.
I would say, just you know, try doing something different. You know, if if you always take the skin off, you know, try leaving the skin on and frying it, you know, and then in a cast iron pan.
You know.
Just uh, there's all kinds of stuff I like to just you know, teach people about how to get more out of their out of their game, whether it's you know, bear ribs where a lot of a lot of guys
leave that stuff, or you know, shanks. So many times I've cooked shanks for outfitters and they're like, we've been feeding these to our dogs for twenty years, you know, and they just and and one of them, their wife said, if you can make a ruddy meal, deer shanks taste good like you're welcome anytime, And she couldn't believe it. I took the saws on and cut you know, two inch also buco cuts out of the meal deer I shot, and like she was dumbfounded that they weren't you know, stinky.
So you could cut up any part of that animal and cooked it up, made it good.
But yeah, the fishing.
So to get back on the what would I recommend the fishing guide, It's it's like, what what's out of the realm of you know, what's out of their comfort zone, and try and teach them something to do that's just do something new. Yeah, like if they fry everything all the time, then try grilling it, or try pants hearing, or just try something different.
Have you found that odd because you came to hunting a little bit later in life, right like when you first sort of became aware of this idea that there's a lot of hunters out there that aren't using the whole animal, or maybe even not using an entire animal, because there's this idea that oh rutted up mulder about can't taste good because it's been eaten sage, or the prong horn has been eaten sage and it's going to be sagey or the thing now that I keep coming
back to that we experienced a bunch this winter. Is the ducks that one hundred years ago we nearly extirpated the damn things across our country, and now we shoot them literally just for fun. And multiple outfits have told me that ninety plus percent of their clients would just leave the ducks with them if they were legally allowed to.
And they were wiped out to go into restaurants.
Yeah, they were wiped out not because we enjoyed shooting them, but because we enjoyed eating them so much. So, like when you encountered this as an adult, like what was your take on that?
It just blew my mind. You know the family friend that took me turkey honey for the first time, you know, I saw the way he cleaned his bird. He skinned it, cut out the breast, and chucked the rest into the woods. And I was like, no, no, no, like, can you show me how to pluck this? And he like was like annoyed, and it was like okay, and he goes, oh, no, don't eat the legs. You can't eat the legs. I was like, what do you mean you can't eat the legs. He's like, oh, they're tough.
Like like I'll die.
Yeah, Like he's like yeah, but you know he was like a forty five year old Englishman that his whole life, you know, and he's not a chef, so you know, telling him to braize it, he'd be like what, like how long?
Like five hours?
No?
Like so you know, I get it.
I just get a kick out of, you know, teaching people how to do it, you know, and it's really not that hard and it doesn't take that much extra time and you just shot this turkey and now you keep in these legs that are like three to four pounds of extra meat and it's usually well received. You know, people are generally surprised in a good way.
And it's going to a reason to why it's become this way. Is it because like him, it's a lack of cooking skill.
I definitely like and just culture, like you grew up hunting with your dad and your grandfather, and you guys shoot bears as a nuisance and you can't eat bear, that's what you're told. Like I went the first time. The first time is probably one of like third or fourth bears that I ever killed. I went to a friend's hunting camp in Alberta, and every single person at
that camp had never eaten bear before. But they were at a bear hunting camp and they're just there to have fun and shoot a bear and they keep Legally, you have to keep them the fur, Alberti, you don't have to eat the meat, and they just yeah, they just grew up thinking that you can't eat bear. So I did bear shanks. I put it in a a croc pot by the fire. I think this one's actually in the book too. It served on a paper plate because it was at the camp. It was pretty cool.
And I did like polenta, like kind of like grit style, and it was like bear shank regu and plent i like cheap cream or not cheddar cheese plenta. I think it's like they're they were. They couldn't believe they were just like, we've been hunting bear a whole life, never eaten it.
That's Lord's work right there, man.
Yea, yeah.
Actually I had this conversation with Cal when we were turkey hunting out, you know, with Danielle a few years back, and he said, as an outfitter, other guides would get pissed off when clients wanted to eat what because that's way more work now for the guides.
Me and Cal cooked bear meat for a bear guide who was blown away.
Yeah that it was good.
Yeah. Yeah.
Was that in Jeff's camp? Yeah, we made a right. Yeah.
The other thing that's pint too is in is in Texas. Those old boys like you shoot a pig that's over, you know, one hundred and fifty pounds, like, you can't eat that? Yeah, sure, you know, Oh you can't eat that. Get that out of the skinning shit, it's gonna stink us up. Like they were adamant that I couldn't eat this hog I shot and it wasn't that big, you know, And they said, oh, that shoulder plate, you know, it's
a that's that's a what do they call it? Like it's full of testosterone, like it's it's a mature male.
You can't man.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then so I put that thing in a smoke. I brinded over and I did it, I quartered it, I brinded overnight. Then I put a dry rub on it and I put it in a smoker all day and they loved it. And they were like, what what is this? I was like, Oh, this that hock you told me I couldn't eat.
I never thought that you could boost your tea with just eating hog.
Yeah, well we learned when we trapped all those hogs. I forget who told us, cause we're the one fella we were with was trapping them and then selling them live, you know, just like your farmer guys do. And uh that the the big hogs like that because there's that because of that plate and all, there's actually less yield and so the price is more expensive per pound. But over in Europe they actually pay more for it because they prefer interesting, high flavor.
I think it's how he there's a there's a skin and trick on those son of a guns too. Yeah. Then we're gonna wrap up.
But okay, picture you got him hanging by let's say we let's say he's hanging.
By his hind hogs. Yeah okay, and you're pulling the hide down when you get to the when you get to the shield, the shield doesn't roll.
It's like a dead end street. It's alsodden like the hides pulling over the ribs and it hits the.
Shield and you can't budget like it won't roll over. So they take the picture again. He's hanging from his hocks.
You run a couple vertical You run a couple vertical.
Cuts through the shield. Okay, so that the shield is now basically running in parallel vertical strips three or four inches wide. Those will roll.
Interesting.
But also right down that noise I made was speed.
That noise I made it was meant to denote speed.
Skin speed, skin. Yeah, it was genius. That's genius.
Don't you remember that right there?
I don't remember that. Do we cover that in that episode?
And he just did it from the top, like from through the fur kind of thing.
He just got down to that shield and then just gash the cut the shield in the slits and you can skinny slip down. The whole thing won't roll.
Yeah, Clayton, there.
Was those boys that were showing us that.
I feel like we made a mistake. We didn't include that in that episode.
Maybe it was hanging out with some different Texas dudes, but I don't think so. Maybe Jesse showed me that. Maybe either way, A little tripped.
Tip tip hot Tip's good one, all right, man.
So they can find you at your restaurant. Go to Antler's in Toronto, yep.
Antler restaurant Toronto at the Hunter Chef dot com. We'll post a pre sale link for the book. There's like you know, Indigo chapters all those stores, but I'll put the main kind of pre sale link on my website.
You can buy the book in the store, I hope.
Yeah, the books are available in the restaurant. We ship signed copies from the restaurant and buy them on Amazon. Amazon has been great, buy them at bookstores, all bookstores. And yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah, man, good luck with it.
Next time we're in Michigan, maybe we ought to just bop over the bridge.
I think it's like three hours, yeah, three hours.
Yeah, it's not far.
Do you guys ever do three hours from Detroit?
Yeah, Detroy, It that's quick. Yeah.
Yeah, I would love to have you guys. It'd be great. That'd be fun.
Yeah, if you come up anytime in a season, we could shoot some ducks or turkeys or whatever.
Yeah. I wonder how hard it be to get a turkey license over the area.
Yeah, we have some of the non resident Joe blow Americans.
Because it's like over everything's over the counter, except for maybe moose. Is difficult. As a nonresident, I have to look into that one. But turkeys, deer docks, everything's over the counter, non resident.
If we annex Canada, it's going to change the whole chasing fifty, you know, because.
One here's the thing they hadn't thought about when they go annex Canada. I was reading this.
They're gonna we're gonna take it over and make it a new state. But it's gonna be a blue state. They hadn't thought about that. It's a blue state. So here's yeah, so here are the.
Right and left of our.
Bit.
I haven't thought of that. Yeah, now they're all voting for Democrats. I wouldn't If I'd have known that, I wouldn't have invaded them. And you gotta take you gotta take Quebec with it too. I love Quebec. But I'm just saying, yeah, they have French people. They have a whole lot of French people there too. Yeah, it's careful what you wish for. Invade Canada, man, Yeah, I hope it don't get tense between us if that happens. No, okay, we'll stay friendly.
I love the States.
So thanks for coming on. Tell everybody the name of your book.
Uh, the it's Hunter Chef in the wild. Uh, so available at the hunter chef dot com. I'm the hunter Chef dot or at the Hunter Chef everywhere. Uh and all the socials for the restaurant or antler, kitchen bar.
I want to go to that restaurant. We'll check it out.
Good. We're an hour and a half from Buffalo. If you guys ever do a show people like tell people that they're like heads explode, like what I'm like, Yeah.
An hour and a half.
Up there for dinner.
Oh man, we do we get We get folks from Buffalo.
Listen. I'm not like taking myself out of it, but I think we as Americans. That's like our geography ends in two places, the north and South down.
I can't remember whose quote it was, but there was a quote. Is war is how Americans learned geography.
So coming up Americans will have a very good sense of the Canadian jograh. All right, thanks coming on, appreciate Thanks Michael, Thanks guys,