Ep. 789: A Bad Road, Rutty Bucks and Cookbooks | MeatEater Radio Live!

00:00:04
Speaker 1: Smell us Now, lady, welcome to Meat Eater Trivia Podcast.

00:00:26
Speaker 2: Welcome to Meet Eater Radio Live. I’m your host Brody Henderson joining me today. We’ve got Yannis Betelus and Maggie Huddler.

00:00:33
Speaker 1: Good morning, morning, Happy.

00:00:36
Speaker 2: It’s it’s eleven am, Thursday, November six here at the Meat Eater World headquarters in Bozeman. But no matter what time zone you’re in, you should probably be out hunting right now.

00:00:47
Speaker 1: That’s right, instead of listening to that stupid show.

00:00:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know, if you are listening to this here podcast, it should be from the standard a glassing now because this is a week the rut kicks into high gear for white tails and the mule deer bucks are also starting to get pretty frisky, I hear. So, whether you’re doing in all days, sit, you’re stuck at work, or you’re already tagged out, we’ve got a great show for you today. We have an interview with a couple of folks from the Wilderness Society up in Alaska regarding the recent federal approval for building the controversial Ambler Road. If you don’t know what that is, well we’ll fill you in. We’re also going to be checking in for a rut report from a few of our crew members who are out hunting right now. Me and my charming Hope co hosts are gonna be competing in our own hot tip off segment for What’s You. The live chat audience is going to decide the winner, and we’re also going to share some recent hunt stories. Rather than some you know, weird segment that Spencer would do, We’re just gonna talk hunting and finally we’re gonna try something new. I hope it works out. It involve the folks in the live chat, and it evolves those one of those folks getting the sweet Prize to celebrate the release of our brands banking new Meat Eater cookbook box set Right there? Can you see that philm to two cookbook box set that releases next Tuesday, November eleventh, which is also Veterans Day. We’re gonna give away a copy of that thing that’s signed by Steve. All you guys have to do while we’re doing the show live is you got to write a comment in there in the chat and it has to be the most convincing reason why you and you alone should deserve to be the winner. Phil’s going to weed through those as we go. He’s gonna pick out a few of the best ones, and at the very end of the show will vote and decide who gets a copy of this cookbooks.

00:02:55
Speaker 1: Who came up with this game? That’s what I did. You don’t like it, well, I just don’t really understand. Are you expecting to be entertained by by their comment?

00:03:04
Speaker 2: I want to be.

00:03:06
Speaker 3: You don’t want genuine heart wrenching stories about why they just.

00:03:08
Speaker 2: Well, you know, something like that too. It might work, but yeah, we just want to get people involved in having fun.

00:03:14
Speaker 1: All right, You guys better be entertaining.

00:03:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I’m sure they already are. We probably already have our winner already.

00:03:24
Speaker 3: There was there’s been a chat discourse happening here. I mean an hour before the show even. Still, yeah, there’s people in here talking away.

00:03:31
Speaker 2: I’m going to sweeten the pot too. If you make a really strong case for why you deserve the cookbook, you’re gonna get the old Trucks calendar that’s also signed by the crew. So there you go, little little extra something fancy. Be honest, Maggie, before we get get really going, what have you guys been up to and what are your plans for the November rut.

00:03:57
Speaker 1: Well, I’m just really here for the report since I leave for Wisconsin tomorrow, and uh, as long as I can get these rut reports in, then I know what to expect.

00:04:09
Speaker 2: I think we have a Wisconsin reut report coming in, don’t we? M M, we do?

00:04:13
Speaker 1: And I don’t know. I don’t think we’re gonna play Mark’s reut report. But I got a picture this morning from Mark and he put down a bruiser.

00:04:20
Speaker 2: Is that right, little teaser, Maggie.

00:04:25
Speaker 4: Uh, Admittedly I don’t have deer hunting plans. I got a freezer full of elk meat right now.

00:04:31
Speaker 2: But my got your meat.

00:04:33
Speaker 4: My bird dog, Bill has been real bummed when we’ve been leaving every morning to go elk hunting without him. So the gears are shifting and we’re gonna go try and shoot some birds now, So what do you saying?

00:04:46
Speaker 2: Birds? What kind of birds? Uh?

00:04:48
Speaker 5: Ducks around where we live.

00:04:50
Speaker 4: And then we’re gonna venture to the other side of the mountain and start dabbling in some upland hunting, which h’s some some new grounds for me.

00:04:59
Speaker 2: So bring that dog up here to hunt pheasants. It’s like a banner pheasant year around here.

00:05:04
Speaker 5: Really, yes, I will.

00:05:06
Speaker 2: And I saw it in the other day, mule deer and antelope, and I must have seen I don’t know, a couple hundred sharp tails like they were just everywhere man where I was. So I’ll tell you where they were if you don’t tell anyone.

00:05:22
Speaker 5: Else, I know how to keep my mouth shut.

00:05:27
Speaker 4: Man.

00:05:28
Speaker 2: On Saturday, I had I had a good lesson, I feel like a lesson that everyone needs to get now. And then I found I killed an antelope Saturday. Sunday found a like for Montana, a very very nice buck, and I wanted him really really bad. But it was windy and it was like I had a sprint to get into position, and I think I made the right choice not to shoot, And I think you need a reminder like that now. And then like I wanted that thing bad and I was a millisecond from squeezing the trigger and held off.

00:06:10
Speaker 1: Well, tell us just because it was windy, it was.

00:06:14
Speaker 2: Rushed, like I had to sprint, I was breathing hard. It was a small window to shoot through that comminate windy.

00:06:21
Speaker 5: Just wasn’t right.

00:06:23
Speaker 2: It wasn’t right.

00:06:24
Speaker 1: He wasn’t big enough for that kind of a shot.

00:06:27
Speaker 2: No, he was too big to make that kind of shot.

00:06:31
Speaker 1: So you’re saying, I’m guessing he was like a solid one sixties maybe even a one seventy tight buck something like that. If he was a two hundred incher, you don’t think the lad would have been flying.

00:06:44
Speaker 2: No, No, I wouldn’t have shot.

00:06:46
Speaker 1: Because I was telling my kids last night actually at the dinner table, that personal ethics usually tend to as the buck gets bigger, the ethics sort of slide down down.

00:06:58
Speaker 2: But I was like, I’ve been talking to my kids lately, like about there’s just no reason to do that shoot and see what happens. Thing like if you want, like you shouldn’t want something that bad, like you need to be like not that you would say I don’t care if I get that thing or not, but you need to say, like, you know, it’s okay if I don’t get that thing, and I think people need that reminder now and then I respect anyway you look, you look like you’re doubting me.

00:07:30
Speaker 1: Honestly, No, I’m not not at all. It’s just I like struggle with this, uh, the whole uh, the theory of the conversation around it, because I know, if like if it was like a one fifty and I was kind of like, yeah, I don’t really need that buck, you know, I’d be like, yeah, you know, it was too windy.

00:07:47
Speaker 2: I we don’t ever really need any buck.

00:07:50
Speaker 1: No, I know. But when they get huge, yeah, like it’s it’s like a drug. Well that’s what I make people do, stupid shit, That’s what it was. Two dure. I’m gonna be like, well, if I can just get one in him, then I can probably get two more in him later. Okay, I’m just saying there’s a different way to think about it. I mean, I’m happy for you that you you know, you had that experience and you made that decision. But you know, it’s such a personal thing.

00:08:20
Speaker 2: It is it is. You know, we’ll see what happens. I’m heading to Colorado, like today, two hundred inch pops out. I might be shooting over the horizon.

00:08:32
Speaker 1: That’s right. You’ll be like, eight hundred never tried it, but this buck is worth it.

00:08:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, moving on to the guts of the show. As always, there are a lot of important public lands issues going on right now. One you gotta know about is this is the last few days of a public comment period where you can weigh in on the plan to there’s a plan out there from the federal government to rescind the what’s called the BLM public Lands Rule, which essentially prioritizes managing BLM lands like multi use, but prioritizes wildlife conservation. The plan would throw that out the window. That are rescinding the plan would throw that out the window. So you can go to Regulations dot gov and leave a comment supporting just leaving the public Lands Rule as is. Go on there and do that. I think you’ve got what’d you say, Maggie till November tenth?

00:09:36
Speaker 5: November tenth, I’ll.

00:09:37
Speaker 2: Only a few more days, So go do that. The public lands issue we’re actually going to talk about today is the Ambler Road, And if you’re not familiar, the Ambler Road is will be a two hundred and ten mile long east to west route from the Dalton Highway, which runs north south almost all the way through Alaska. Isn’t that right? Honest? Yes, it runs east west from the Dalton Highway over to Ambler and it’s gonna cut directly through this like massive, pristine roadless wilderness of the Brooks Range to uh to Ambler. The Trump administration recently it had been it had been nixed. The Trump administration recently reversed that approved construction of the road despite series concerns about destructive impacts of fish and wildlife habitat, including a major caribou migration corridor. Now there’s there’s proponents of this, and there’s people, and there’s detractors. But what I would say is, like, Alaska is the last place in the United States that still has these like vast swaps of largely pristine tracts of roadless wilderness, and like that’s what makes Alaska special, and it’s the only way it’s going to stay special. Those in favor of the road are site job creations and other economic benefits for local communities. But you got to keep in mind that the road is being built almost exclusively for foreign mining interests, which are Trilogy Medals of Canada and South thirty two of Australia. So yeah, there’s going to be some local jobs that are going to get created, but the bulk of the financial kind of winnings are going to go to foreign mining companies. So we’re going to dig into that today. We’re going to talk to Tim Fullman from the Wilderness Society. He’s their senior ecologist. We’re also going to talk to Matt Jackson from the Wilderness Society, who’s their senior manager, and we’re going to see what’s going on and check out the potential impacts with those guys.

00:11:54
Speaker 1: So, guys, if I can add Redy too, if you want to hear more from someone that’s opposed to the Ambler Road. Did a great podcast with author Seth Cantoner probably a year ago. He wrote a book called A Thousand Trails Home, Living with Caribou, but basically where he lives. Uh would be greatly impacted by this road right at the end of the road. Yeah, and his his caribou that h that he hunts, and that the villages all around there hunt would be impacted by this road. And I’m sure if you just searched Seth canton or meet your podcast, you’d find the episode.

00:12:28
Speaker 2: Yep, you got those guys in there. Yep there. Okay, thanks for coming, guys. We appreciate you talking to us today and informing the audience a little more on the Ambler Road. Matt, I want to talk to you first. It seems like this this is a situation to at least to me that in many ways mirrors the Pebble Mind situation that was going on a little while ago down in Bristol Bay. You know, it’s really controversial. It involves like really good wildlife habitat also fish habitat. So why don’t you talk about the wilderness societies number one, what you guys do holistically, and your role in the Ambler Road situation, and then after that, after that we’ll get in and like more of a feel for who in Alaska is for and against. But let’s hit the big stuff first.

00:13:29
Speaker 6: Yeah, thanks so much for having us on Mine’s Matt. I’m born and raised Alaskan and the Wilderness Society nationally, we help write the Wilderness Act. We advocate for public lands, fish and wildlife habitat, and so we’re working on this issue of the Amble Road in Alaska because of its impact not just the federal public lands, national public lands, but this huge swath of the Brooks Range the proposed road wood cut through gates the Arctic National Park can preserve also public lands right around the Dalton Highway corridor that you mentioned, and the parallels you drop with the Pebble Mine are really accurate. You know, what we’ve got here is we’re looking at the short term profits of foreign mining companies versus the long term well being of public lands of wildlife and most importantly the communities that rely on them for their way life. And so that’s how the Wilderness Society started to get involved in the Ambler Road is through listening the local communities and looking at the impacts that it would have on those public lands in the Brooks Range.

00:14:39
Speaker 2: So it’s been kind of a roller coaster because not that long ago the road had been shut down and then just recently it’s back on again. So that’s like it’s got to make your job harder, you know when things change. So and then the same thing with Pebble mind too, right, like it’s up, it’s down, and you know, it’s been a little bit of a roller coaster.

00:15:02
Speaker 6: But what’s been really consistent from within the state is actually the opposition. You know, we’ve been through multiple public comment periods where communities have gotten to speak up on this. You know, eighty eight tribes across the Yukon Quay, cuk and Obuck watersheds have opposed this project. So you know what the FEDS are doing is a roller coaster. But here in the state pretty level, we know what we want and we’ve said no to this road a bunch of times. So I just try to focus on that local perspective to protect the land because that’s been consistent.

00:15:38
Speaker 2: I want to get into some like nitty grity stuff for the road, like who’s paying for the road?

00:15:45
Speaker 6: That’s a question we don’t know the answer to. The cost estimates for the road keep going up and down.

00:15:52
Speaker 1: You know.

00:15:52
Speaker 6: I think it’s upwards of three hundred and fifty million to build dollars to build the road is the estimate right now, and nobody’s a red who’s going to pay for it. I think one thing that’s really important for folks to know is this is not a public road. You know, it’s not a US highway. It’s going to be a private mining road for industrial scale mine trucks calling or back and forth. When you have trucks like that driving there, what’s called fugitive dust mindtailings escape from the trucks, and so there’s kind of some rough drafts to have it be a tool road and the mine company will pay the toll, but nobody knows who’s going to pay to build it.

00:16:31
Speaker 2: Is there any chance like American tax payers end up on the hook for some of the costs.

00:16:37
Speaker 6: We’re certainly going to be on the hook to clean up the mess afterwards. That’s how it worked, but it’s not sure who’s going to be on the hook to build it.

00:16:46
Speaker 2: A risk is there is there a timeline for construction or or is it too early?

00:16:53
Speaker 6: You know, some of the boosters, these foreign mining companies, they say they want to start as soon as next spring. You know, I think that’s un realistic financially and you know, legally for them, right, that’s what they’re trying to do is start construction in the spring.

00:17:08
Speaker 2: Normally, when something, you know, a road like this gets built, there has to be all these like assessments done beforehand, like impact stuggs and things like that. Has that work already been done or is it going to be done or.

00:17:26
Speaker 7: Well yes and no.

00:17:28
Speaker 6: You mentioned roar Coaster, all of the Federal roller coaster. All of that work was done, and in twenty twenty four the Bureau of Land Management set in a record of decision that based on all that work and permitting, there’s no way you can build this road legally because it would impact wildlife, it would impact subsistence habitat or subsistence communities, it would impact water quality, you know, all these issues with it. And so that’s why the government said no in twenty twenty four. What the administration did at the beginning of the Ober is by proclamation, they’re just trying to say that none of that matters and to force the agencies to issue permits that contradict what they decided in twenty twenty four. And so that’s what we’re seeing happen right now, is that by proclamation they’re trying to say none of that science that happened in twenty twenty four matters anymore. Just bulldoze the thing anyways. And that’s what the Wilderness Society and are more importantly the frontline communities here in Alaska are trying to stop.

00:18:29
Speaker 1: Right now.

00:18:29
Speaker 2: What what are you guys working with a bunch of other conservation groups to fight this.

00:18:37
Speaker 6: We are, there’s a big coalition. You know, I mentioned those eighty eight tribes. Yeah, and so you know Tannona Chiefs Conference is a consortium of tribes in kind of the central interior region of Alaska, and we work with them. National Parks Conservation Association also deserves a shout out. What they do is in their name National Parks Conservation, and they’ve been a leader on this for a while because of the impacts to kates of the Arctic National Park. It’s definitely a team effort. But really the stars of the show, and I tried to bring some of them on today but they weren’t able to make it are the tribal members from the region who from the beginning have said this is not going to work for our way of life.

00:19:23
Speaker 1: Great, I had a question, bro, where does the where does Alaska’s governor stand on this?

00:19:31
Speaker 6: Our current governor has spoken in favor of the project. You know, I don’t want to speak for him, but he tends to be pro resource extraction.

00:19:44
Speaker 2: Which isn’t I mean, resource extraction itself isn’t necessarily bad if it’s done in the right way. But you know this, this doesn’t sound like the right way, Tim, I want I want to move on to you. The Ambler Road, as I mentioned earlier, is going to bisect kind of the core range of the western Arctic caribou herd and go right through their migration path. It’s also critical habitat for doll, sheep, moose, boreal birds, salmon, et cetera. But if you could, let’s let’s start with that, that caribou herd, because it’s already, as far as I know, kind of in a in a downturn. So just give us a brief history of that herd and how they’re doing right now, and then Crystal ball at what could happen, you know, if the road goes.

00:20:38
Speaker 8: Through Sure, yeah, I mean, I guess zooming out even a tiny bit more caribou and reindeer as they’re called over in Europe and Asia, all the same species across the globe. We’re seeing declines in many populations. It’s true across a lot of Canada, and it’s true here in Alaska. So when I moved here eleven and a half years ago, there were more caribou than people in the state of Alaska, and that isn’t true anymore. And the Western Occurred is a prime example of that. It used to be the largest herd in the state, with nearly half a million animals as of the early two thousands, but over the last two decades it showed a nearly seventy percent decline in numbers.

00:21:19
Speaker 7: Now, as you mentioned.

00:21:21
Speaker 8: The proposed area in which the road would go would cut through migration and winter habitat other important areas that are used by the herd, and the concern there is that caribou are an animal that needs to be able to use big, intact areas. They live in a really variable environment. There’s lots of changes from seas to season, and caribou need to be able to be free to roam across their habitat to access the different resources they need at different times of the year. And yet studies have shown that caribou also are sensitive to development, and we see altered moved behavior at certain sensitive times of the year, like having post caving. They displace away from roads and activity, and so there’s a concern about, at a time when the herd already is in decline, what the impact of adding on extra stressors might be for the caraban.

00:22:15
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, Can you give us some other more specific examples of potential impacts on wildlife but also on local subsistence communities?

00:22:29
Speaker 7: Sure?

00:22:30
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:22:31
Speaker 8: So earlier this year we published a study looking at the winstern art occurred and looking at how they responded to roads, and we found that it wasn’t every caribou every time, but over time, impacts on the herd accumulate, and it’s much more than you might expect just based on the footprint of roads. And so we saw that caribou were being affected throughout the year with altered movement. They might delay their movements near a road, spending more time near the road than otherwise expected. They might not even be able to cross all they approach around then they’d bounce back away and they can’t make it past those roads. Other kinds of things like that. And then you mentioned the impact for the people who rely on caribou. There are concerns about the ability to access caribou herds to be able to carry on the traditional subsistence way of life that people have been practicing here for thousands and thousands of years who rely on cariboo. And so there’s real interest among groups like the Western Arctic Caribou Herd Working Group that I’m a part of, which brings together some sistence hunters from the range of the herd, hunting guides and transporters, and myself representing conservationists to try to come up with ways to encourage conservation of the herd and its habitat so that it can stay around to sustain future generations.

00:23:51
Speaker 2: Has the Western Arctic curred? Is that is it already in a situation where quote us for the number of animals that are allowed to be taken, have I have already been reduced before? Like before the road.

00:24:05
Speaker 7: It was I believe it.

00:24:07
Speaker 8: Was just about a year ago that because of the ongoing decline in the herd, the bag limit, the hardest level for residents, was dropped. They’ve also put in restrictions for out of state hunters and what they’re able to access from the herd because of the decline.

00:24:23
Speaker 7: And so that’s exactly.

00:24:23
Speaker 8: Why, you know, with all these things going on, there’s a question of does it make sense to add additional pressures to the herd?

00:24:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, you guys got anything?

00:24:34
Speaker 4: Yeah? Isn’t this also going to have a huge impact on fish? I mean there should be like I think in the thousands of creek crossings having to build culverts with this road, things like Dolly Varden sheep fish being impacted, mind tailings. I mean, it’s kind of expansive how much the impacts go.

00:25:00
Speaker 8: We definitely are hearing concerns about the impacts to fish from people out on the land and in the community’s nearest to where the road is proposed. And you know, we have an aquatic ecologist who works with us here at the Wilderness Society, and yeah, he’s much better able to speak to some of the details of that. But yeah, there’s concerns about what the impacts of putting in a road, putting in the culverts, all those things might do to fish and to fishing opportunities.

00:25:24
Speaker 2: If you if you guys don’t mind.

00:25:26
Speaker 6: Right, it was four thousand culverts, Yeah, would be required to build this road.

00:25:31
Speaker 2: If you guys don’t mind, send us his contact info because we might want to talk to him about that more. All right, we kind of got to wrap things up and move on, guys, But before we go, is there any hope of a reversal like in the courts? And is there anything people can do to fight it right now?

00:25:51
Speaker 6: There’s always, especially when there’s so much unity around protecting this landscape within the state, within the communities that live there. Unfortunately, kind of by design, there’s not a lot of public engagement. There’s you know, there’s not a comment period, there’s not a chance for people to speak up at this moment. But the Wilderness Society and our friends here in Alaska. We’re working to create that opportunity to make sure we have public comments or a chance to speak up. So what I can tell folks right now is to just follow the Wilderness Society on social media, sign up for email updates, and also to defend the Brooks Range group. As you asked earlier, if we were working with lots of other groups in Alaska. That group of is called Defend the Brooks Range and they’re also on social media, and you know, the Wilderness Society we work on a bunch of things. If you follow Defend the Brooks Range, you’re going to get content on the Brooks Range, you know, learn more about the people that live there, the kind of wildlife that’s there, and how to stay involved.

00:26:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, and just just look at Pebble minus as an example like that was a big win, so hopefully we get one here too. Well, thanks a lot, guys. I’m sure you’re busy, so we’ll let you go.

00:26:57
Speaker 1: Thanks guys, thank you.

00:27:02
Speaker 2: Okay, you guys, got anything to say about that?

00:27:06
Speaker 4: Oh?

00:27:06
Speaker 1: It just it makes me sick, you know, to think that. But you know, the whole thing is people are always like, well, we need to we need more energy here, well than even energy. This is sure just mindy. But you know when they talk about doing more uh you know resource extraction on the north side of the Brooks Range in the uh in the in the park there. Yeah, right, yeah, it’s like most of our resources now are exported. Sure, people don’t understand that, Like we have plenty we export it. We don’t. We’re not always buying oil from some other place to to you know, make our cars go. We have plenty of it. We don’t need to pump more out of it. Like it’s a reserve for a reason. Let’s keep it there until we really need it, you know, for when it’s like dire in this.

00:28:00
Speaker 2: Case, like it’s foreign mining companies, like it’s it’s.

00:28:05
Speaker 4: Crazy, well, and there’s this frantic need like we have to do this now. We need to get these industries going now. And when there’s this push to get things done so fast, you know, environmental protections aren’t taken into consideration.

00:28:17
Speaker 5: Things are just they’re jumping through hoops.

00:28:20
Speaker 4: And it it’s you know, it’s really a like reversal in time of like we’ve seen the damage that mines can do, yet we’re so willing to just go right back to this cause all this environmental damage without a second look, just for you know, make the rich richer.

00:28:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, there’s no doubt there’ll be a few Alaskans that have some jobs there for a few years, you know, and it could be twenty years of jobs. But like, the real winners are not going to be Americans.

00:28:50
Speaker 4: Nope, No, And and think about how much time they would have to be spending cleaning up mine tailings, cleaning up the water, cleaning up the land.

00:29:00
Speaker 2: The thing is is like like you can’t like never truly clean that stuff.

00:29:04
Speaker 4: No, it’s there, it’s it becomes part of the land. And it’s when you have a place like Alaska. It’s just such a shame that some people are so willing to sacrifice that for the sake of the dollar.

00:29:20
Speaker 2: Yep, let’s move on to something fun.

00:29:22
Speaker 1: That’s right, let’s get this. Let’s get this thing that our smiles turned around.

00:29:28
Speaker 2: Yep, we got an in house hot tip off contest. We’re going to do so you gotta fall along and place your vote in the chat. Make it real easy for Phil to figure out who the winner is.

00:29:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, I’m not going to start a poll here as soon as the tip offs end.

00:29:47
Speaker 2: Before we get into it. If you’ve got a hot tip off that’s so hot, it has to be shared with us because we do fan hot tip offs. Also, send it to I think it’s radio live at the meat eater dot com. I think it might just be radio. I might be radio.

00:30:05
Speaker 3: I’m a horrible engineer of the show. But maybe the producer Jacob Pipe or.

00:30:10
Speaker 2: Send it to like info at the meat Eater. Someone will get it at.

00:30:14
Speaker 5: The medeater dot com.

00:30:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, send it to Jannas at the meadeater dot com. DM it to Maggie on Instagram. Yeah, someone will get it. But uh yeah, send us those we like. We like doing those from the from the fans too, Phil, you ready to see him up? Or Yeah, we’ve got some.

00:30:32
Speaker 3: We’ve got video tips from Brody and Janie and then Maggie is going to do an in house hot tip off.

00:30:39
Speaker 4: I thought that’s a students, so that’s what I rolled with.

00:30:43
Speaker 1: No, Brody said I couldn’t do it.

00:30:45
Speaker 2: I didn’t say it couldn’t.

00:30:46
Speaker 1: Well, anyways, depends.

00:30:48
Speaker 2: On like I couldn’t have done mine that way.

00:30:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, let’s watch the tips. Welcome to another hot tip off. Tell us here. Here’s my hot tip. During the year, prepare for hunting season by making.

00:31:04
Speaker 9: Large amounts of things like chili, elk stew, breakfast sausage, meat balls, cook meat.

00:31:20
Speaker 1: For barbecue sandwiches from a deer neck.

00:31:26
Speaker 2: Bear beeria.

00:31:27
Speaker 7: Here’s enough for three meals.

00:31:30
Speaker 2: I want some.

00:31:32
Speaker 1: More slow cooked meat, more breakfast sausage. If you do this and every time you have dinner, you just make a little extra and vacuum seal it, put it in your freezer, then it’s time for hunting season. You just throw all that stuff into the cooler, go to camp, and dinners are pretty much done. All you gotta do is reheat it, hit the grocery store, buy tortillas, some buns, whatever you need. Makes life super easy and you get to continue to be living the meat eater lifestyle and eating game while you’re hunting game for next year. So there you go. Beat that hot tip off. Maggie and Brodie hang aggressive. Note to future Yanni from past Yanni shoot straight this week, Okay, aim for the top of the heart.

00:32:21
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, thanks, ming at you with a hot tip from antalyp season here in Montana. My son just got this buck like an hour ago, and we’re ready to take the head off of it. For years and years when I was taking the head off of buck or a bull, I would always come in from the top, like back behind the ears and through all that heavy muscle and tendon that’s down here. And I learned that if you flip them over and come in from the throat down, it’s just way easier, way faster. That you come out right where you want, where the skull meets the spine, and slip your knife right between the skull and the spine, and it takes like less than half the time of coming in from the top to just go down cut through the the esophagus there and follow those jaw muscles that are jaw bone down right there, and you get through that stuff and you’re there like it’s right there and you’ll find, oh, Kenny, execute that. If you get get it right, you can just.

00:33:32
Speaker 10: Cut kick it a little bit and you’re right where you’re at and you’re through just like that. Like it’s like fast, way faster than coming through all the heavy muscle and tendon from the top.

00:33:47
Speaker 2: So that’s your hot tip.

00:33:50
Speaker 4: You know about your hot tip, Brody, If you’re getting lymph nodes for CWD.

00:33:55
Speaker 5: You’ve already made that first cut. You’re already right there.

00:33:59
Speaker 2: Yeah. I don’t do the whole like skin in the head and all that. When I take a skull or take a head out. No, I’ll leave all that stuff on.

00:34:09
Speaker 1: You do have to be careful though, cutting them that close like that, because a lot some CWD test check stations will be like, hey, you’re a little tight. We like to leave a little bit more neck on here.

00:34:20
Speaker 5: Well, Wyoming, you just have to get the lymph nodes out.

00:34:25
Speaker 1: Can you bring them in personally?

00:34:26
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, all right, Maggie, let’s let’s hear yours.

00:34:31
Speaker 5: Oh okay, this.

00:34:31
Speaker 4: Is this is kind of a lukewarm tip, but uh it was extremely convenient this year.

00:34:38
Speaker 5: Phil you got the picture up. Uh so processing my elk this year.

00:34:45
Speaker 4: Uh we just laid out butcher paper on my kitchen island, and uh we could label all the pots and everything because we’ve got like a grind pile, a jerky pile of dog pile. So when you’re shipping Miller lights, you and you don’t get them confused.

00:35:01
Speaker 5: Actually that’s a high life.

00:35:04
Speaker 4: And uh it just made clean up really easy because I don’t have big enough cutting boards for a whole quarter, so you could just kind of flop whole muscle groups there. Get ready to clean it up a little more. And uh, you know it’s kind of a lame tip, but man, it made clean up the breeze this year.

00:35:22
Speaker 2: You’re not cutting on the table though, right.

00:35:25
Speaker 4: No, I mean I’ve got it’s just like a walnut butcher block, so I could if I wanted to, but trying not to.

00:35:32
Speaker 5: Yah, patina it up that much.

00:35:34
Speaker 1: But I do the same thing but without the butcher paper.

00:35:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, yep, just spray and white.

00:35:41
Speaker 4: Well. See that’s the thing I can’t really because it’s an untreated butcher block, so I don’t have a way to like really disinfect it that well.

00:35:50
Speaker 5: Or it been like dish soap.

00:35:52
Speaker 2: You should just like rub a bunch of mineral oil into that one.

00:35:55
Speaker 4: Well, I keep doing it, but it’s like not even a year old, so.

00:35:59
Speaker 5: It does doesn’t quite have like it’s not quite there yet.

00:36:03
Speaker 2: I don’t want to seem like I’m bagging on your hot tip off. I think it’s great.

00:36:06
Speaker 1: It’s a good tip.

00:36:07
Speaker 5: Yeah it was.

00:36:07
Speaker 1: It does make clean up super easy.

00:36:09
Speaker 5: It made clean up real easy.

00:36:11
Speaker 1: Brody’s tip is good too, he told me about it. I forget when maybe on the youth hunt, and I’ve used it on two different animals. Now you’re going through the same stuff as you would go from coming in from the top.

00:36:23
Speaker 2: It’s just easier to bind.

00:36:25
Speaker 1: But yeah, it’s easier to find the gap that takes you there.

00:36:28
Speaker 2: Something about coming in from the top where you’re just not lined up right a lot of the.

00:36:32
Speaker 1: Time, or I don’t know, but I just think that, yeah, the top, it just takes way more experience to like hit the spot exactly right, because when I hit it just right, I can do it that way fast too.

00:36:42
Speaker 2: And it’s also like the way that the joints come together, the skull and the spine coming to if you turn it over and it’s like they’re coming apart, almost like you stretch that throat out, and it’s it’s, you know, like that. It’s hard to explain, all right, I pull his live everybody.

00:36:58
Speaker 3: I’ll give you another thirty seconds or so and then we’ll call it.

00:37:01
Speaker 4: I remember that conversation because that was when I was up here last time for me to to roast you guys were talking.

00:37:07
Speaker 2: About that we were stick those antlers in the ground or whatever layser just right.

00:37:13
Speaker 4: I like your tip too, Yannie, because I do that all the time, just for my sanity, not even just for hunting, Like I love having stuff ready to roll over.

00:37:21
Speaker 5: I’d like to just.

00:37:22
Speaker 2: Roll that way all the time.

00:37:24
Speaker 5: Yeah.

00:37:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, my wife would like it too.

00:37:26
Speaker 1: We use some of it throughout the year. But what happens is the kids get overeaten something or you know, they’re like do again. And so this worked out perfectly because you know, I had to cook for myself for the next week and my dad and to have basically seven or eight meals done, it’s gonna make it easy.

00:37:47
Speaker 2: Where’d you get that Burier recipe?

00:37:50
Speaker 1: Probably New York Times. I’m guessing you’re going to try that.

00:37:54
Speaker 5: Have you? Have you gotten into the little freezer mold things, a little square.

00:37:59
Speaker 1: Things they do for baby food.

00:38:02
Speaker 4: I don’t know that they used to be like ice cube trays, but you can freeze like stock and stuff and like a square thing and then you just stick them in a freezer bag.

00:38:11
Speaker 5: Those are slick. That was going to be my other hot tip option.

00:38:14
Speaker 2: Now, no, where are we at with the voting?

00:38:17
Speaker 3: I will let you know right now. With twenty one percent of the vote. In third place is Maggie Hudloaws. But we have the Maggie has a lot of supporters.

00:38:26
Speaker 5: In the chat thanks chat.

00:38:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, someone said that they’ve been doing it Maggie’s way for the last few years. Game changer, That’s what he said. But then the winner with forty four percent of the vote is Brody Henderson.

00:38:47
Speaker 2: Thank you every much to try this weekend. When you kill a great big buck. If you’re not going to get it mounted, I’m just going to do a freedom ount. Well, Phil, let’s uh do some like questions and comments.

00:39:02
Speaker 1: Sure it is.

00:39:03
Speaker 3: I have I’ve been book flagging, book barking all of the cookbook submissions.

00:39:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, but and we have.

00:39:11
Speaker 3: We have a few just straight up questions, but I kind of have to like sort sort through them.

00:39:14
Speaker 2: Here, I get it. Uh.

00:39:16
Speaker 3: And Andrew was in the med Eater store this morning and saw Maggie in the wild and was starstruck. But that just that just goes to show you that even even our crew members go shop at the mediat store.

00:39:27
Speaker 5: Fort Hi, Andrew.

00:39:31
Speaker 1: I can’t believe you didn’t buy this one. Get this.

00:39:34
Speaker 4: I almost did, and then I thought we’d be matching if I came.

00:39:37
Speaker 1: In was the luckiest hunting hat I’ve ever owned. Oh yeah, yeah, I think like five or six big game animals have fallen I’ve been wearing, so you like when you’re going.

00:39:47
Speaker 2: Hunt now, like you feel weird if you don’t have it on.

00:39:49
Speaker 1: I’m gonna wear it through the end of this season and then I’ll retire put it in the auction house oddities or something. But I’m telling you, if you’re having a rough season right now, go order yourself. When he’s wired to hunt, buck ats.

00:40:03
Speaker 5: As what everybody wants is a stinky hunting hat.

00:40:06
Speaker 3: Nathan still Will says, with the deer, I am putting the rib meat into the grind for burger. How much would you worry about having the fat tallow attached to the meat going into the grind? Will it affect the flavor or texture?

00:40:17
Speaker 2: I think it depends on the deer. Like a big buck with a bunch of that tallow on the outside of his chest, Yeah.

00:40:25
Speaker 5: Be a little waxy.

00:40:27
Speaker 2: I mean, I’ve gotten away from using that type of meat in my I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with it, I am, but that rib meat is just full of gristle, and the more gristle your burger has the shittier your burger’s going to be. I know people don’t like sacrificing like big hole muscle roasts off the ham or off the shoulder, but like that’s what I use for burger.

00:40:51
Speaker 5: It makes better burger.

00:40:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like I would just save the ribs to cook.

00:40:55
Speaker 1: His ribs agreed, or de bone them and then chop them up real small and make stew or any other slow and low preparation like you would do with the neck or the shanks, melt that stuff. Where that stuff that you’re like worrying about, how what to deal with deal with it, and how it’s gonna be negative to your recipe. If you slow and low those ribs, it’s gonna it’s gonna add to the flavor and the consistency in the recipe.

00:41:24
Speaker 2: I mean he’s specifically asking about fat and tallow. I would get rid of as much of that as you can. But you can’t get rid of all that gristle that’s in the rib meat. You just can’t.

00:41:37
Speaker 1: Uh.

00:41:37
Speaker 3: Great, most of everything else has been cookbook stuff. But I’m just gonna this is a phill question that Brody loves. To John’s asking if I’m playing Battlefield six. I am not, but alex Plocta, who’s our social guy who plays trivia occasionally, is playing red SEC and we might play together soon.

00:41:56
Speaker 2: So that’s fun. Oh you guys can have a little video game play day now, John. I just rolled credits on Hades two.

00:42:02
Speaker 3: I’m in the act three of Hollow Night Silk Song and I’m playing Ghost of Yot, which I’m kind of bouncing off of. I’m kind of phil I’ve got open world fatigue. Yeah, Brody, what.

00:42:10
Speaker 2: Maybe you’re not willing to share because you don’t want to get attacked online? But what’s your like online video hand video game plan? Handle?

00:42:19
Speaker 3: Oh well, yeah, you don’t have to.

00:42:22
Speaker 2: I’m not going to share it, Okay, you gotta tell me. I shared it.

00:42:25
Speaker 3: I shared it once before on Ben O’Brien’s old podcast, and even then with with his smaller audience, I got inundated with a bunch of requests from I’m sure find people, but I like to have a clean free.

00:42:37
Speaker 2: We should run a contest to have people guess your handle. Oh okay, I think some people do. All right. Is that all for now?

00:42:45
Speaker 7: Yeah?

00:42:45
Speaker 3: Yeah, that’s all for now, but please send in some more straight up questions for the end of the show, because we’re a little light on those.

00:42:51
Speaker 2: Questions and a good reason you you need that their cookbook. Okay, Next up, we are going to be checking in with some around the country for some boots on the ground reports. But before we get to them, I just want to check in with you guys. Gianness. You got some exciting stuff showing up on your trail cams.

00:43:12
Speaker 1: I wouldn’t say exciting. It’s kind of what you expect. Deer movement, lots of deer movement, more daylight movement than a month ago. It’s not like the cams all Sunner just lit up with you know, Boon and Crockett type bucks. And I try to remind myself and my dad especially a lot all the time, is that, like you can’t not make hunting decisions based on cameras. And we have a lot of them, you know, we’re you know, partners with Boultrie, so basically have as many cameras I want to run. There’s probably two dozen of them out there right now, but still deer walk behind them, they walk sometimes in front of them and don’t get their picture taken. You just like I like them have them for like a general inventory. I know where there’s like a bunch of dos are hanging out right now, which that’s a good thing to know for the rut, you know, like where they’re hanging out. So yeah, that’s my trail cameraport.

00:44:07
Speaker 2: Maggie said, you’re you’re not gonna be I’m not.

00:44:10
Speaker 4: But I have seen more mule deer running around. Yeah, which is cool to see, except for you know, I was driving up from Wyoming last night, so I was driving pretty slow the whole way because I saw quite a few deer running around, especially driving it.

00:44:25
Speaker 2: You know, I think the way to avoid them is drive faster.

00:44:30
Speaker 4: Yeah, take a look at my truck and then maybe you consider that.

00:44:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just I have one day of mule deer hunting in this year. Just a few days ago, there was some some small box four ki’s that were like hanging with those fought like getting their nose up near the dose. But but it’s just like that mule deer, right, I feel lags behind the white tail rut a little bit. I did have that big buck that was that was checking a dough, but he was like not ruddy. He was like, I’m gonna walk over there and see what’s going on? And then he walked away. So like I’m hoping because I’m heading to Colorado, I’m hoping that it’s it’s gonna start kicking off good. Let’s check out the actual in the field. Reports Phil.

00:45:22
Speaker 11: Hey Spencer new Arth bringing you a rut report from November three. I am in eastern Montana hunting a place that is almost exclusively mule deer, So that’s the kind of information you’re getting from me. Last night I saw thirty to forty muley doze broke up into like ten different groups, and not a single one of them had a buck with them. I think if it was a week from now, two weeks from now, that would have been a different story. But clearly the mulis out here are not at a stage in the rut where they dos are getting too harassed quite yet, Otherwise I would have seen it last night. This morning I saw a bachelor group of three bucks together. They were leaving an egg field headed to bad right at about shooting light, and those three bucks seemed kind of irritated with each other.

00:46:16
Speaker 2: A couple of them.

00:46:16
Speaker 11: Postured, looked like they were going to lock antlers. At one point, a different buck I saw him rubbing his antlers thrashing around in one of those draws, and one of those bucks I killed right at sunrise, and I’ll go show him to you in the back of my pickup here right now.

00:46:34
Speaker 1: Here he is.

00:46:35
Speaker 11: I was doing that rot report from inside of my truck because it is so damn windy out here, and I care about our listeners. This buck was the biggest buck in that bachelor group. And if I’d have been out here a week later, he might have been in a different county because he seemed like he was getting amped up to chase some tail. All right, I will be hosting Meat Eater Radio next week. I’ll have more on this story. Then back to you, Brody, nice buck.

00:47:09
Speaker 7: Nice Tony Peterson’s got your rut report right here.

00:47:12
Speaker 12: As you can see, you should probably be in a tree right now. Not a huge surprise, that is, it’s the first week of November.

00:47:18
Speaker 13: Put in all fairness, he killed it four minutes into his first sit, so he has really no idea what’s going on.

00:47:23
Speaker 12: I did sit there for two extra hours.

00:47:25
Speaker 13: Afterward, right, did you see rud act like after you were done hunting, did you observe any.

00:47:31
Speaker 12: I was drinking a Starbucks energy drinking, eating a protein bar, and I did see a little buck come through cruising.

00:47:38
Speaker 7: He was rotting.

00:47:39
Speaker 12: This dude was looking. That dude was looking, and we had does going between and they were not together. So it was just like Bucks for Roman. Does were trying to avoid him. But it’s definitely even being sixty five degrees seventy degrees today, they were going.

00:47:53
Speaker 7: I’ll like to return to something in case people missed.

00:47:55
Speaker 13: It four minutes into his first set, right, but I would like to I would like to wrap this up by asking Steve what he was doing when I shot this book.

00:48:07
Speaker 7: I was trying to help the deer heard by doing some kyot work on November four, And that’s why that bunk was free to see who he was, you know.

00:48:14
Speaker 12: Right, because the real threat wasn’t in the woods to get out there.

00:48:19
Speaker 7: Oh you know what, Tony had found him on a camera and his name was He might not have heard it before. His name was old split times you put an old old try split is what he should have been, right, pretty derivative, dear name here. We didn’t go too far outside of the lines. I’m trying not to seem jealous. Do I see him jealous Chilli, I seem good. I seemed like I seem like I’m not like, I don’t care, right, I don’t think a jealous man would go Kyle November four? It was like I didn’t know. I mean, who could have foreseen that in November four?

00:48:55
Speaker 12: You should definitely not go to your tree stand and go run a trap lane out on the moonscape and the brass.

00:49:00
Speaker 7: Guy, I can see where you’re coming from on.

00:49:02
Speaker 12: It anyway, get into a tree right now?

00:49:06
Speaker 7: Oh look, how didn’t notice that he’s been rubbing? Rubbing big time?

00:49:12
Speaker 2: These guys need to work on their report and skills.

00:49:15
Speaker 7: East Nebraska. Rudd is running.

00:49:20
Speaker 2: Before after?

00:49:24
Speaker 7: No?

00:49:25
Speaker 2: Is it over? Oh no, it’s still going. It’s one wait before we go to the next one. I got addendum to this one. Our buddy Pat was also out there hunting with those guys. He got a buck as well. So it’s happening out.

00:49:39
Speaker 5: There and Steve’s chasing coyotes.

00:49:42
Speaker 1: M hm, well now he’s he’s in a tree trying to kill a deer.

00:49:46
Speaker 2: Now, all right, back to the report. I don’t think we need to finish this one.

00:49:54
Speaker 14: What’s up, meteor Live, I’m bear newkeom coming at you with a report for the Southeast. I’ve been hunting a lot the last two weeks, and I’ve really seen the rut activity start to pick up the last couple of days. The first chase I saw was the last couple days of October. But this week I’ve seen two big shooter bucks that I haven’t seen before, both chasing doze. So the rut, I would say, is coming into its peak over here. Next week we’ve got a big cold front coming and so i’d imagine that that will be probably the peak of the rut. But I’ve been seeing a lot of chasing. I’ve seen three or four chases alone this week, and the big bucks are starting to come out of the woodwork. But I’m switching over from food sources right now, switching more to travel corridors and other pinch points, and have been having a lot of luck that way. There’s also a few spots where I saw a lot of does in the early season, and I went into one of those spots the other day and instantly got in on a chase. There are three box chasing one do, so the rut is in full swing. If there’s ever a time to be out in the woods, it’s right now, So good luck to all of you guys who are getting out there.

00:51:11
Speaker 15: Hello everybody, good morning from central Wisconsin, giving you a little rust. Sitting at the breakfast table this morning, coming up with a solid hunt plan for the next few days, and I think I think we’ve got a good plan. Anyways, what I’ve been seeing is a lot of the mature dominant bucks have been pretty locked down on doughs, so the ruts obviously happening right now. It’s a good time of year to be sitting all day. Once those bigger, mature deer you know, get off that dough, they breeder, they start looking for another one, they’re going to be cruising.

00:51:46
Speaker 7: So what I’m.

00:51:46
Speaker 15: Focusing on is betting areas, so down wind side of betting areas, pinch points between betting areas, and then also in the evenings and mornings, transitions between you know, the betting area and food. Wherever those doughs are going to be, those bucks are going to be checking them out. So be careful on the roads driving at night in Wisconsin. You know, it’s a hazard, so deer are running around. Good luck to everybody, and I hope you get out there, and I hope you shoot a big buck.

00:52:19
Speaker 1: What acuting there?

00:52:21
Speaker 4: You have?

00:52:22
Speaker 2: It sounds like things are happening. Does that get you real excited? You’re honest?

00:52:28
Speaker 1: Uh, you know, I was kind of joking about being here for the rut report. The thing about a rut report is like it’s never gonna change because what one person sees doesn’t really make a difference. What you could be the next ridge over, next valley over, county over, it could be a completely different thing, just depending on if you’re where the hot dough is or not right or Chester there has got some cool video like he’s been in them, Like they obviously have a hot dough that these bucks are around. But like Mark, is it a great podcasts with about like what science says about the rut? And those fawns are all they try to be all born, or I should say their moms all try to give birds sure on the same day so that they have the fauns have the best chance of survive.

00:53:17
Speaker 2: It’s called predators.

00:53:18
Speaker 1: Well that’s one reason, but the other reason too is that like if it’s Memorial Day, which is from like Pennsylvania, just take that latinitude on the line across the Midwest, like you have the most food on the ground.

00:53:31
Speaker 2: They try to time it with the green up.

00:53:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you don’t want to be too early because you don’t have enough food. It can you can still be get some cold nights and you could die when you’re only weigh two pounds, you know, as a deer. And so like the peak breeding is going to always be sure, it just might happen at night or that gestation period before you know whatever that is two hundred some days before Memorial Day, right, So it’s fun to hear about what people are seeing and what’s happening. But every single year for the rest of our lives across like the Midwest, right like roughly November one to November fifteenth, twentieth, it’s gonna be pretty good hunting.

00:54:13
Speaker 2: Yep.

00:54:14
Speaker 4: You know.

00:54:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know, it’s it’s good to know what’s going on around some different areas.

00:54:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, it’s fun. Like I said, it’s entertaining.

00:54:23
Speaker 2: It’s about the hype, yep, I’m hyped the Obviously we’re in the hard of hunting season here, so we’re gonna we’re gonna share some recent crew hunt stories. No, boy, Maggie, what do you got?

00:54:39
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, I U I was zel hunting this year, and uh, I’m gonna.

00:54:45
Speaker 2: Pull up the pictures, Maggie.

00:54:46
Speaker 1: Is that not something you do every year?

00:54:48
Speaker 5: I mean it is. So I kind of been like year on year off for the health reasons.

00:54:56
Speaker 4: So like last year, I was just U I was packing out, so I was I was hunting, I just wasn’t pulling the trigger because my eyeballs were messed up, right, But so yeah, this year it was my turn to pull the trigger. And we had a real slow October. We hunted every weekend in October and did not have a single opportunity to show it.

00:55:23
Speaker 2: Now, the thing about Wyoming is their rifle season starts like October first. Yeah, they’re still rutting, you know.

00:55:30
Speaker 4: Well they’re real high up too, and we don’t have pack animals or nothing, so and I just had a general tag. So we’re kind of hopping around because it’s like one place will be open for a couple of weeks for bull and then another place will and so it’s like sort of just hopped around for where we could hunt because I was like, you know, I’d like to shoot a bull if I can, I’d be cool. You know, It’s I’m a meat hunter. But I also can’t help it that I want to shoot something with horns. So I think we ended up hunting four different areas in total, and uh, this last one was like, all right, there’s a cold front coming in, feeling good about it, We’re gonna hunt this new spot. We were scouting out on Onyx and like we’re both from the area, so we’re pretty familiar with you know, where to go. It’s just a matter of where there’s gonna be people, where there’s gonna be elk, and so uh.

00:56:28
Speaker 2: Usually there were where the people aren’t.

00:56:30
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, and that was we got pretty lucky.

00:56:33
Speaker 4: We uh we saw these elk first thing in the morning, but it was just dumping snow and it was like they were like five hundred yards away. So we were just kind of chomping around falling tracks all day, like trying.

00:56:51
Speaker 1: To saw a bunch of elk, but then didn’t go after them.

00:56:53
Speaker 4: Well we did, but they we just we kind of lost them in the timber we we were we were trying to get after him. We eventually got back to those elk. It was the same It was the same group where I shot that bull at like three o’clock that afternoon, So It was just a matter of like looping around, crawling around in some downfall hell holes, and finally coming back to an open meadow where we could get to him.

00:57:25
Speaker 2: Were you tracking him in the snow or just looking for him?

00:57:29
Speaker 4: It was both, and then we had a pretty good idea of where they’d be. We kind of gave him some time in the afternoon, went on a little side quest, saw some real big bull tracks, and I was getting it really excited. We were going to see a bigger elk, which we didn’t, but I’m still happy to shoot little four by five elk.

00:57:52
Speaker 5: He’s real tasty.

00:57:55
Speaker 2: Listen, those young bulls are the ones.

00:57:58
Speaker 5: O my gosh, young bulls. I don’t think anything can top it.

00:58:02
Speaker 2: You’re rolling the dice with those cows. Man, they could be like feen years old.

00:58:06
Speaker 5: Yeah, I totally.

00:58:08
Speaker 4: I was just explaining that to my mom, like just the other night. I was like, I don’t know, I feel like I’m kind of a cougar hunter, Mom, I like the young bulls.

00:58:23
Speaker 5: And then oh that’s Bill. That’s uh, that’s my bird dog.

00:58:26
Speaker 8: Bill.

00:58:27
Speaker 4: He’s happy, he is, he’s ready to spend some time, and he got to fetch like one duck that day.

00:58:33
Speaker 5: We were kind of just tramping around.

00:58:36
Speaker 4: It was a quick morning hunt because we had an elk to cut up that afternoon.

00:58:40
Speaker 5: Uh, we just wanted to get him out.

00:58:42
Speaker 4: So Bill is happy to get some elk scraps and happy to be be the star of the show from here on out.

00:58:51
Speaker 5: Nice work, Maggie, Thanks, it was a fun hunt. Oh I forgot.

00:58:57
Speaker 4: I brought you guys a little treat milk jerky from my bowl. But I’ve been told it is not a fun auditory experience to listen to people eat jerky.

00:59:07
Speaker 1: I eat jerky and tell my hunting stories at the same time.

00:59:12
Speaker 5: We’ll save it for after the show.

00:59:14
Speaker 2: But uh, I mean, I don’t give a show I’m looking for.

00:59:16
Speaker 1: I’m looking forward to trying.

00:59:17
Speaker 4: If you haven’t tried, uh, Danielle Prue Its smoked venison jerky recipes.

00:59:23
Speaker 1: It’s heavy on the smoke.

00:59:25
Speaker 4: It’s uh it’s my go to favorite and it’s it’s worth trying out.

00:59:30
Speaker 5: I tweak it a little bit, but we’ll try.

00:59:31
Speaker 2: It here in a few minutes. Yeah, your honest letters hungry all right.

00:59:37
Speaker 1: I started with this first slide because, uh, it turns out this is my biggest bull to date. Bow or rifle. Yeah, Yehnie, and UH didn’t really know what I had until I walked upon him and found him. Uh so, yeah, that’s exciting Corey. Uh, it’s taped him for me the other day, three ten inches on the dot. He’s pretty stoked. Next picture shows Uh, speaking of eating bulls, the backstrap was very surprised. I’ve actually sort of reorganized my freezer and my plant because I’ve got a lot of meat this year, caribou, deer, lots of deer with the kids shooting deer, this bull, and I was gonna give away a lot of elk steaks, but this bull is eating extremely well, Like even the hind quarter steaks have been very tender, just delicious. So I’m actually starting to hoard this bull’s meat a little bit more.

01:00:33
Speaker 2: Well you can like you can keep that Like people think it’s like a year, Like you could be eating that bull three years from now.

01:00:39
Speaker 1: Oh for sure, for sure. Let’s see. Next there’s a buck of gott in Idaho. Whatever. Nice buck.

01:00:48
Speaker 2: Fun hunt.

01:00:48
Speaker 1: What made it super fun was hanging out with our buddy Max Barda, who you can see in the next photo. Oh no, we had We had an awesome tent site where you could literally glass for bucks right out of the tent door. S Yeah, there was a little bit of snow up high and it was not That was kind of probably the last camping trip of the year.

01:01:08
Speaker 4: You know.

01:01:09
Speaker 1: We got to spend three nights on the mountain.

01:01:11
Speaker 2: Packed some pizza in there.

01:01:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, well we made we made a pit stop on the drive down and we were having some pizza and I’m like, you know what, let’s add a uh, let’s add a few more slices to this order and then we can have some in the mountains. So we packed some up in the into the mountains with us, and uh, yeah, it was great to share a week with Max. All right, here’s here’s the exciting stuff. Here’s youth hunt with my daughters. We are three hundred fifty yards maybe a little bit less from a betted buck. Mabel was the one to be shooting. Mabel laid there on that on that buck for nine hours. We got there on to that spot right there at ten am. That buck never stood up. We yelled at it. Aina, my other daughter shot bullets ten feet long. Nine hours really ten ten to What time did you get dark out there?

01:02:10
Speaker 2: I don’t think it was that like but a lot. Yeah, eight hours maybe.

01:02:14
Speaker 1: Well ten to six would be eight. I guess, all right, eight hours.

01:02:17
Speaker 5: Long time and she’s like staring through the scope.

01:02:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, on a bettered buck. And the one thing Brody later told me I should have tried is to I didn’t have with me. But I’ll get to that fawn and distress that. Oh Brody’s gonna talk about it anyways. Uh yeah. The next slide shows that when you’re waiting for eight hours on a buck, it takes some masks. My girls have become extremely good at napping because they’re both napping. I’m like, who’s watching the deer? To stand up you?

01:02:46
Speaker 7: So?

01:02:47
Speaker 1: Did you guys have the sun? I’ll gladly do it.

01:02:49
Speaker 2: Did that sun get behind you? Like you weren’t having to stare into the sun to watch that buck? No, that’s good.

01:02:56
Speaker 1: No, No, we’re looking kind of doo east actually, so I got behind us for sure. And then let’s see, was that it for all my pictures?

01:03:03
Speaker 4: That was it?

01:03:03
Speaker 10: That was it?

01:03:04
Speaker 1: Okay? Oh well, I was gonna mention last night Mabel, who did not get a shot off that day. We went on a hunt last night to a very target rich environment not far from Bosman a lot of white tail deer, she kind of I asked her. I thought this was a clever answer. I said, are you gonna shoot the first box that comes out? Which I thought she would say, yes, you know, to be successful, put some meat down. She goes, uh, depends on what he looks like. So then we had to look over. We had to look over. We literally saw more deer yesterday than I’ll see on on my entire Wisconsin hunt. I mean, I don’t know. We saw probably close to one hundred white tail deer and multiple bucks that we were like, okay, too small, small to medium, two medium, little, getting a little bit better than we finally got. We saw a few that were like big enough and they the one big enough buck came to us, got to within two hundred, like with twenty minutes of light left, and we were like safety off, ready to shoot him. And that sucker had been feeding all evening, not running doughs, nothing up until that point, like just out of range. And then once he like came into range within the doors, he just got full on ruddy and he would not stand still long enough for an eleven year old to make the shop and It was funny because I was like talking her through the whole time. I’m like, Okay, he’s the one facing left, he’s the one facing right, he’s running right. He’s got dough behind him now, And all the time she’s like, yeah, okay, I’m on this. I’m on the right buck. I’m on the right buck. Okay, he’s got a dough going right to left behind him. Yep, I’m on the buck. I’m on the buck. And then as light was fading and they were getting a little bit farther away from us, I could like hear her answers and her voice starting to crack a little bit, as in like, oh, I know it’s not gonna happen tonight. I’m going home, bucklest I gotta tell the story about not shooting one. And then multiple times she’s like I think I’m looking at him, but there’s also some grass and like I want to be sure, And I’m like, yeah, you can’t shoot if you’re not sure. You know, you gotta be sure, And so we had that a bunch. So anyways, it’s like, it would have been great to kill a buck last night, But at the same time, I’m like, she’s killed I guess she’s only killed one other bucks. She’s got three dollars. Now, it’s all been pretty easy form, right. It’s good to have a couple of hunts where she’s just having to work for it and not have just success just laid in her lap.

01:05:31
Speaker 2: Again, Definitely, definitely she’ll get one this season. I guess that leads me, Phil, Can you pull up the antelope one first? This is my kid Hayden. This was opening day of antelope season. The reason like, he shot an antelope, four, he shot bucks, he shot a elk, like the kids killed some animals. The reason I’m showing this picture is because this year I kind of decided I was going to let him make most of the the decisions, like on how the hunt went. And it started like at first light, like we were parked on a high spot on a road to glass as you do for antelope, and I was like, let’s check what would be the north side of the road, because we had in the passing a lot of antelope in that zone. And he’s like, no, we should glass the south side of the road first, because pretty soon we will be staring into the sun over there and we won’t be able to glass it. I was like, man, kid’s got a point. So we like hike in in low ways, get on a knob, start classing, and he found five antelope like within minutes, and I was like, it’s great. There’s a like I couldn’t I couldn’t tell if like with my eyes and it wasn’t like quite you know, light light yet if there was a buck or not. But he’s and he’s just freehanding a pair of those Siga image State one. He’s like one of us buck like cool. But and I was like, we can’t. There’s like no way we can’t go straight at him, like they’re gonna see us, you know. So I’m like, what do you think we should do? And he’s looking around and he picks a route like a circular, you know, half circle route around like sounds good to me. And we kind of eventually get up into that zone near where they were. We had a little like pointy like dirt mound kind of thing we’re using as a landmark, and man, we got in there and it’s just like where are they? Because you get in that antelope stuff and it’s broken and there you realize that they were in a low spot. You couldn’t really tell from the road. And We’re sitting there for a while and I was like, man, I think we should like creep forward like fifty yards and get a look into that low spot. He’s like, no, let’s stay here. Sure enough, a few minutes later, we see some ears and some horns and uh. Eventually they feed up out of that low spot and I’m like two fifty and you know, he took care of everything else. It was cool because it was like, really like his hunt for the Yeah, for the first time.

01:08:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, sounds like from the at least the details that you shared that you might just want to let him continue to do that, start guiding you a little bit, look in.

01:08:20
Speaker 2: The right direction, exactly exactly.

01:08:23
Speaker 1: I like that you are doing that with him, because I told both my girls too. At the end of this year’s youth Hunt, I’m like, next year, I’m not glassing. I’m I’m in glass because I like the glass, and I’ll be like, oh, I see some bucks.

01:08:37
Speaker 2: Find them.

01:08:38
Speaker 1: But yeah, I’m like, you guys are gonna have to find them, yeah, because otherwise they just like they like to hang out while dad’s glassing up the critters. Yeah, and now I’m gonna I’m gonna make them find the fine deer.

01:08:49
Speaker 2: Yep, we can do the next one there, Phil, all right, that’s my younger son.

01:08:56
Speaker 4: Uh.

01:08:56
Speaker 2: This year he turned ten, so he first year he’s able to hunt in Montana. And you know, same thing, youth hunt. We do a youth hunt together a group of us, and this was opening morning, and he definitely wasn’t like looking for my other kid was looking for a big one, the one that got the antelope. But Conley, the younger one, was like any buck. And we went kind of in a zone we had hunted in years past, and his brother was a little bummed because that was like his brother’s zone. But just me and Conley went in there and it was windy and cold that morning. He was suffering a little bit while while we’re glassing around, and things calmed down, like maybe an hour after shooting l like eight thirty, it kind of got a little warmer, the wind calmed down, and I glassed up two little teeny bucks, like one of them might have been a forky, the other one was probably a spike. But it was like, all right, it’s on, let’s go, And we had to kind of hustle down this drainage to get into shooting position, and these two bucks were like oblivious to what was going on. We were out in the open and they just weren’t looking our direction. And I got conly set up for a cross candying shot that was a little over three hundred, and you know, get him. He’s laying down, he’s shooting off a bipod and kaboom, Like I say, are you steady? All that stuff. We go through the whole thing and he lets one fly and misses, and one of the bucks continues to stand there. The other one runs. I was pretty sure he had missed, but the other one ran in a way that I was like, we got a check. We went down there and he’s like, can I shoot it the other one? It’s like, nobody, We got to make sure you didn’t hit the first one. So we went in there and we spent a good thirty to forty five minutes looking for blood and hair nothing, and he was down man like bummed out first first opportunity. He was definitely like bummed, like no tears, but like close, you know. And I was like, man, we gotta both hold it together and just go find another one. And an hour later we found a buck betted down and the train laid out nicely for us to get set up, but it was still three hundred yards and he was bedded like on a timbered hillside. And I forgot to mention that. Earlier that morning, when we had first sat down to start glassing, we’d heard some like hooting and hollering way off in the distance, and well, Conley was like, is that a coyote? And I was like, man, I don’t like I think it was people. And the first thing that came to mind is like, there might be some cowboys in here, because there’s cattle in the area we’re hunting. Anyway, we’re laid down on this buck. He dry fires on it a couple times, like he’s comfortable, he’s solid, everything’s looking good. And I tell him, like, we might have to lay here for a while, you know, before he stands up and he’s cool with it. And then we hear that hooting and hollering again, and I look off that direction and maybe a thousand yards away, here comes two cowboys with a couple of dogs pushing some cows, and I like know that zone well enough to know where they are, that that cattle trail is going to go right under that buck, like right under him, and I’m like, oh my god, really, like what do we do here? And I told Conley, I was like, we can lay here and see if that buck just lets them go underneath him and nothing happens, which and I was like, I think the buck’s gonna spook because they’re gonna get too close to him. Or I can hit this fond this fond bleat real loud a couple times and try and get him to stand up. There’s a chance like he could run, but there’s a good chance he’ll stand up. And he didn’t even think about it. He’s like hit the bond bleek like I don’t want the horses running underneath that deer.

01:13:12
Speaker 1: And I did it.

01:13:12
Speaker 2: The buck stood up. I was like, are you solid aim, you know? And ten seconds later, boom he kills the buck.

01:13:20
Speaker 5: Nice yeah, And then like.

01:13:24
Speaker 2: The cowboys were out of sight. They had to cross this draw. But I was like, Conley, we’re gonna like walk over that direction and talk to him before we go look for your buck. And we went over there as young couple, very nice. I was like, you know, he just shot. They’re like we heard the shot. Hope you get I mean, and then the guy’s like, did you see any cows down the hill? I was like, yeah, there’s a bunch down there. So they just took off and look for their cows. We went up there and found the buck and it was all smiles. You know, it’s fun.

01:13:55
Speaker 1: Heck, yeah, yeah, yeah, he was fired up.

01:13:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, that’s great. All right, thanks for listening to our stories, guys. It’s always fun to fun to talk hunting. We’re gonna move on to the cookbook box set contest here. If you don’t know about this thing, can you see that thing, Phil, I’ll move it over there we go. If you don’t know about this is like a special edition, kind of limited run. We didn’t print a million of these things. It’s got both of our cookbooks in it, the original Media to Cookbook, Fishing Game Cookbook and the Outdoor Cookbook, their paperback, which is kind of nice. You can fit them both in there. It’s a really good Christmas gift. Uh, pretty economical way to get both of them. You can pre order them now if you really want to. They go on sale next Tuesday. If you want a signed copy like this, when we’ve got a limited number of them, that only available on the website or you can you can our two retail locations in Bozeman and Milwaukee also have some, so you could pick one up there, but not until Tuesday when the book releases. You got anything to say, you honest about like these two cookbooks? Making of them? What you think about favorite meals, recipes, anything like that.

01:15:22
Speaker 1: There are a lot of fun to make. Yeah, it’s always a fun project. Yeah, especially because we plan them not in the hunting season, which is smart of us.

01:15:31
Speaker 2: Yep, get to eat a lot of food.

01:15:33
Speaker 1: The one I keep going back to in the original cookbook is the fish stew.

01:15:39
Speaker 2: Yeah.

01:15:40
Speaker 1: I love that recipe. We got a bunch of hal but now which tends.

01:15:44
Speaker 7: To do very well.

01:15:45
Speaker 2: Is it a chowder? I can’t remember. Yeah, I mean it’s kind of one of the same and well, no, it’s doing chowder are the same thing?

01:15:54
Speaker 5: I think chowder is like creamy yeah?

01:15:57
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it’s got creamy yeah yeah. I feel like we call it fish stew in the book. Anyways, Yeah, no matter, get the book, try it out. It’s a good one.

01:16:07
Speaker 5: Is the recipe in there?

01:16:09
Speaker 2: Oh yeah? The original is the original that started a nationwide osubuko movement.

01:16:15
Speaker 5: I feel like, yeah, save your damn shanks, folks.

01:16:20
Speaker 2: Yep, drown that thing in some red wine for several Hell yeah, yeah, they’re They’re both great a lot of like the original for like Beginner Hunters, Wild Game Chefs like it’s got great butcher and tips, fantastic butcher and tips. The Outdoor cookbooks got some great like gear and equipment information.

01:16:42
Speaker 1: You love them.

01:16:44
Speaker 2: But let’s move on, philed to see if we can actually pick a winner.

01:16:47
Speaker 3: Okay, yes, I’m just gonna rapid fire through a bunch of these and then you guys just kind of flag them in your head. By far the most the answer that came up the most was that my my wife or my girlfriend thinks my cooking is terrible and this would help me. There were so many of those that I don’t think I picked any of them. You guys, step up your game.

01:17:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, you guys are gonna have to buy this thing. Sorry, yeah, sorry, let’s see.

01:17:11
Speaker 3: Okay, I’m just gonna run through these, welcome, says Brodie. If I win, I will put the recipes into the fall menu of the kitchen I manage?

01:17:20
Speaker 5: Is that a copyright?

01:17:21
Speaker 7: All?

01:17:21
Speaker 4: Yeah?

01:17:21
Speaker 2: That was gonna be my next question. Also you can’t do that with Wild Game if it’s like a restaurant kitchen.

01:17:30
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I’m sure he’s just talking about the recipes anyway.

01:17:32
Speaker 2: Okay, yeh, that’s gonna be ay.

01:17:34
Speaker 3: Ben says, need a new recipe for my tag tag soups getting a little stale. Kevin says, my seven year old daughter’s favorite show to watch together as a mediator in your favorite way of helping in the kitchen is cooking Wild Game with me. Having these cookbooks would give us infinite memory getting better mogre our, Dude, why should I win this book because I’ve already cleared shelf space and trained my cat to turn pages. I don’t win, I’ll be forced to read cereal boxes again. Don’t let that happen.

01:18:01
Speaker 2: Where live like shipping this thing to him?

01:18:04
Speaker 3: It could be expensive, let’s see, Brian says, contingency plan for acquiring the cookbook filled you accept bribes?

01:18:13
Speaker 2: My venmo is Phil Taylor six. Let’s see it won’t chair his video game handle those? Yeah?

01:18:21
Speaker 3: Duh, Ethan, anytime I cook Wild Game, I truly feel like I’m disrespecting my harvest unless I’m using one of Stee’s recipes. No, others come close. Just ask my wife how many times I’ve said this.

01:18:29
Speaker 2: They like, that’s sucking up a little bit. Yeah, a little bit.

01:18:32
Speaker 3: Uh speaking of sucking up or well that sounds mean I’m just gonna read it.

01:18:37
Speaker 9: Uh.

01:18:38
Speaker 3: Ritzman says, I’m a young adult who recently got married, had my first baby, and I’m hunting, butchering and cooking solo for the first time in my life. And then he’s got a part two. My dad was my mentor for years, but a devastating shattered pelvis left left him unable to keep up the tradition. The cookbooks would be one more arrow in my quiver and bringing the hunt tradition in to my family. Another one from Brian, He says ax Barta would want the cookbook to go to his favorite native North Dakota.

01:19:03
Speaker 2: Brian.

01:19:03
Speaker 3: When Max wins a game of trivia, I will send you so many cookbooks.

01:19:06
Speaker 2: There you go. To be honest, you’re getting excited about any of these? Not really?

01:19:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, apologies, I flagged the flagged the ones that that that’s jumped out to me.

01:19:16
Speaker 1: Remember Brody, I was looking for entertainment, I know, entertaining.

01:19:21
Speaker 3: But there’s a guy named Adam who has been just typing out verses from the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald and replacing random words with cookbook. I’m not going to select yours, Adam, but you’re gonna love the Meat Eater podcast on Monday.

01:19:36
Speaker 2: Stay tuned, Phil, We gotta find a winner here. This is dragging on too.

01:19:40
Speaker 3: Listen, you guys. You guys can can jump into the chat. Honestly, out of all of them. When Mogors popped up, I was like, I thought that he would just take it because it was funny.

01:19:50
Speaker 2: We love Mogor.

01:19:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, we’ll get it. We’ll ship it to me.

01:19:53
Speaker 5: There was one that kind of made me laugh, but it was just how it was written, and it’s this is.

01:19:58
Speaker 2: My favorite one.

01:19:59
Speaker 3: And I’m not going to put on the screen because of the profanity, but I will read it and censor it. Steven says cookbook. I don’t want or deserve no stinking cookbook, but an fed up truck calendar that I deserve. I deserved an f up anything for that matter. That’s from Steven.

01:20:15
Speaker 2: All right, well, let’s do this. Mogor gets the book and Steven gets the calendar.

01:20:22
Speaker 1: Sounds good too.

01:20:25
Speaker 2: How’s that? No, Mogor send uh, don’t send your address and stuff to me, send it to.

01:20:34
Speaker 3: Like the radio at the meat eater dot com, which is the correct email address.

01:20:39
Speaker 2: There we go. All right, we got any other like comments.

01:20:44
Speaker 3: But I’ve got a plane to catch soon, so let’s wrap this baby up.

01:20:46
Speaker 2: How about that? All right, we’ll shut you guys down.

01:20:50
Speaker 3: We’ll have I mean, this is already on the longer side of the show.

01:20:54
Speaker 2: We’ll see you next week. Thank you, Thanks everybody for tuning in and get out there in the woods of the ruts on take it easy.

01:21:00
Speaker 1: Thanks guys. Bite