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Speaker 1: Smell us now, lady, Welcome to Meet Eater Trivia met Eater Podcast.
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Speaker 2: Welcome to Meet Eater Radio Live. It’s eleven am Mountain Time. That’s nine pm for our friends in Daresalam, Tanzania on Thursday November twentieth, twenty twenty five. Wish I had written that out instead of having to go just by the numerical slash thing.
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Speaker 3: You nailed it.
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Speaker 2: We’re live from Media HQ and Bozeman, Montana. I’m your host, Randall, joined today by my dear friends and colleagues, mister Corey Calkins, mister Seth Morris. Howdy, folks, We’ve got a great show for you today. We’re gonna be talking to Franz Inglefinger and elk researcher with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. We’ve got an interview with Derek de Munn, who shot an exploding deer. More on that in a bit. We’ve got a hot tip off, and we’re debuting a brand new segment, very exciting stuff, folks, called Meat Theater. It’s an innovative concept that I think will perform poorly, but there’s a small fraction of you that will really like it.
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Speaker 4: We’re all really excited about it.
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Speaker 3: Yeah.
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Speaker 2: First things first, we need to tell you about our big Black Friday sale happening now over at First Light, FHF, Gear, Phelps, DSD, and the Meat Eater stores. This is the time to get killer deals on gear from our family of brands for you and yours today November twentieth through December first check it out. Pretty amazing deals, actually exciting. A little promo video yesterday for the sale, and I think folks are going to be pretty pleased with the offerings.
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Speaker 3: Good time. Knock out some Christmas shop.
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Speaker 2: And we just bought our first Christmas presents yesterday.
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Speaker 3: There you go. Trip to the bookstore. Oh yeah, get the books. It’s great.
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Speaker 4: I believe we have books.
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Speaker 2: At the media. We do, we do, We have cookbooks. You can also buy a digital copy of any of our Meat Eaters American History audiobooks wherever you get your audio books and support the fine publishing team here at Meat Eater. Good folks, and they work hard. Uh. One more, one more detail here throughout our twelve day Black Friday sale, we have a fun little photo contest happening again. Submit your favorite hunting or fishing photos over at the Meat eater dot com for a chance to win a fifty dollars or five hundred dollars. That’s not a typo, that’s fifty zero, one hundred dollars First Light gift card.
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Speaker 3: Wow.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, there’s fifty dollars daily prizes, and then there’s the overall five hundred dollars gift card.
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Speaker 2: Just by submitting a photo and somebody’s gonna be we’ll pick the winner sitting high on the there’s.
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Speaker 3: Some good photos in there already, I know.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I’ve heard good things.
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Speaker 3: Let’s scroll through them this morning.
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Speaker 4: It’s going to be tough to pick a winner.
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Speaker 2: But fellas, I’m happy to have you here today on another Thursday. Happy to be here, but just wondering what you’ve been up to recently. This is the part of the show where we discuss our what we’ve been up to casually.
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Speaker 3: I kind of can’t chat.
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Speaker 5: I can’t really function mentally until I kill a deer m And that’s where I’m at right now.
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Speaker 2: Oh, this should be a good show, Yeah, Cory.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, I killed an elk last week, which I’m pretty tickled about. Full so now it’s time for me to go deer hunting.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, there you go.
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Speaker 2: That was a weird, weird bowl.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, he’s funky. He’s got five on one side and then just a big black club that hangs down on the other. I think his mother kicked him when he dropped out of her womb.
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Speaker 2: And he’s got like a real tall time on that side as well, don’t want.
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Speaker 3: To call it.
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Speaker 4: His brow tie sticks up very strangely up and then the main beam just goes straight down and it’s all black from just the blood gravity falling out. Man, he’s cool, that’s cool. He’s a snowflake, very unique. Yeah, and he tastes so good and eating him up last couple of nights.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, he was, he young, I’d say it was four. Yeah, I had to guess.
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Speaker 4: I’d ever asked him.
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Speaker 3: Milk is like chewing on a damn boot.
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Speaker 5: Oh no, really, I don’t know why, but my goodness, you got to get out the meat mallet if you want to do any sort of steak.
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Speaker 2: I did a little freezer filling of my own last night night last night.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, you didn’t tell us about this.
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Speaker 2: Right before I went to work, our rooster was pecking one of our other chickens to death, so I put her in solitary confinement to let the wound heal up. I see what was going and went home last night and stuck a stuck a little poultry in the freezer.
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Speaker 3: Yeah that’s great. I’d love to hear that.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, and we had a better rooster that I really liked, and then Snort killed that rooster. And then when Snort killed that rooster, this impostor took his throat and learned to crow and do all the rooster things. But I’ve never really felt any affection towards him.
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Speaker 3: Well, he didn’t earn.
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Speaker 2: It, he didn’t. He didn’t. The other one was like this beautiful red rooster, and Snort killed it unceremoniously. But no one’s upset about that. But yeah, so that was that’s the excitement over at our house.
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Speaker 5: Cal offered to replace the poultry population after that or now.
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Speaker 2: Well, yeah, we got three other chickens because his mom was moving. Yeah, and so she gave us three of her chickens. It just happened time. The timing coincided with the untimely death of our rooster. And uh yeah, one of one of Cal’s mom’s chickens was the one that the the impostor, the heir to the throne was pecking at so so now it’s it’s almost like another coup because these outside chickens have now dethroned the master rooster.
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Speaker 3: Wow.
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Speaker 2: I don’t know anything about how any of this works, but.
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Speaker 3: All you know is that that rooster had to be in the freezer.
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Speaker 2: Yep, yep. So now we’ve got two roosters in the freezer. Cal did the cal did a fine job with the first one as penance for his dog’s sins. So yeah, a lot of fun, Phil. What’s going on with you lately?
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Speaker 3: Oh? Goodness, you do? You really do not want to know?
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Speaker 6: Because the most exciting thing that’s happened to me in the last few days that I beat Act three of a video game called Hollow Night Silk Song. It’s just got the secret ending, which is very important to those who know what’s what’s the internet parlots?
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Speaker 3: Is it I y k y k.
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Speaker 2: Oh Hollow Night Silks, Hollow Night Colon Silk Song.
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Speaker 3: It’s a sequel to a video game called Hollow Night, That’s correct.
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Speaker 2: I’m just trying to think of. Is it like an Ocarina of Time type deal?
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Speaker 6: You do acquire items that allow you to progress to new areas much like a Zelda game, so you’re not on the wrong track. It’s called the genre is called the metroid Vania because it’s a games like the Metroid series. In the Castle Vania series, they kind of made a portmanteau of that.
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Speaker 2: I’m going to dig us out of this hole.
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Speaker 3: Phil.
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Speaker 6: You play as a character called and you’re protecting the bug kingdom of far Loom.
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Speaker 3: You want to keep Should I keep going?
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Speaker 7: No?
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Speaker 2: I was going to say, have we talked yet about are you eating a deer at your house? Has come up? It has not.
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Speaker 3: No.
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Speaker 6: My son, my twelve year old son, shot a deer before I did, and we have a freezer full of full of mule deer right now.
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Speaker 2: Speaking of family coups and impostors to the throne.
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Speaker 6: It says a lot about me that you asked how I was doing it. Instead of saying, oh my god, I’m so proud of my son who shot his first mule deer, I said, I completed a very difficult video game.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, no, but that’s exciting. That’s exciting.
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Speaker 3: It is.
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Speaker 6: It’s been It’s been a lot of fun because we also signed up for this farm seat CSA and from this farm that’s less than a mile down the road from our house. So we’ve been making a lot of meals with fresh ingredients, fresh ingredients and and harvested deer.
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Speaker 3: It’s been great.
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Speaker 2: How’s he He’s a couple of weeks out, now, how’s he? Is he ready for next fall?
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Speaker 3: Is he?
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Speaker 6: He seemed kind of just nonplussed about the whole thing, like, yeah, I did it, what’s the big deal? But now this was his last year of being able to do it as like an apprentice. So he’s gonna have to go through hunter safety next year. And well, I’ll see if he has the motivation for that. But he loves going out on on on Grandpa’s Grandpa’s ranch and and trekking about and looking for animals.
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Speaker 3: So I think I think he’ll do it. He’ll go through the process.
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Speaker 2: Hopefully he won’t get to the point like Seth is where his brain won’t function until he can kill a big buck, because it’s important to keep some perspect.
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Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, maybe I’ll maybe I’ll pull it back then.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, just have a little shortage, too bad? Well should we should? We move on to our first guest today, Let’s do it?
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Speaker 4: Do it today?
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Speaker 2: We are joined by Montana Fish Wildlife in Parks Kalispell Area wildlife biologist Franz engle Finger. Franz oversees wildlife monitoring across some of the most remote terrain in the lower forty eight, including an ongoing elk research project in the Bob Marshall Wilderness. Franz, thanks for joining us today.
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Speaker 8: Thank it’s great to be here. Thank you for making the time to talk to me and hear about some of the work we’re doing up in northwest Montana.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, we’re excited to hear about it.
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Speaker 3: Yeah.
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Speaker 4: Hey, Franz, Corey here. When you hear about elk in Montana, most conversations focus on areas where herds have an air quoting over objective population. But Region One in northwest Montana, where I was born and bred is home, which is also home to a sixth of Montana’s public land, which should be an eye opener to a lot of folks. Region one faces a very different set of challenges. Franz. Can you lay out what makes elk management west of the Continental Divide unique compared to the rest of the state of Montana.
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Speaker 8: Yeah, sure, Corey. I think first off, one of the unique things is in Region one. We have an opportunity to grow elk on public land, and I think some of the things that make Region one unique is a abundant access. Like you talked about, we have over five hundred million acres of public life and as well as an additional half a million acres of private land enrolled at our bark management programs, So a lot of opportunity to get out of the woods and have a great hunt. Region one is also in northwest Montana forested, which makes hunting complicated. I think a lot of people come up here for the first time and they’re like, didn’t think we have so many trees, and so that changes how you can hunt. It also changes, you know, as biologists, how we can survey our populations and monarch or kren. You know, flying and during aerial surveys is really only effective where you can see to the you know, through the canopy or where there no trees, and so we have very few districts where we can actually you know, do aerial surveys. And then finally, you know, with so much the landscape forested, our changes in our elk populations are closely tied to changes in our forest cover, and so when you look at you know, history of forest extraction Montana where you had a big boom from about the you know fifties through the nineties and then are real drop off after that. You you know, some of those you know, timber cuts that really provide a great habitat from a number of our ungulates have played out at this point. So you can’t talk about you know, changes in onion population without talking about forest management, force fire. And then finally, you know, Region one we’re also known for, you know, our recovered carnivore populations. We have healthy populations of wolves, bears, lions, and so that’s also in the mix. Region one, you know, great white tail deer hunting. Twenty percent of the state’s harvest comes from northwest Montana. Good black bear hunting as well, Neil dear, you know, we harvest about three percent of the state and for elk it’s about five percent of the overall state harvest. And in Region one we kind of say, you know, we force elk to be moose. We bury their groceries and four feet to snow and make them eat shrumped. So you know, no surprise. But again, you know, many some of our hunting districts are under objective and again that’s where we have this opportunity to grow out on public land.
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Speaker 4: Well, speaking of populations, you work primarily in and around the Great Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex, specifically up and around the South Fork of the Flathead Drainage. What have historical elk populations been like in that area and what are today’s most recent population estimates.
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Speaker 8: Yeah, you know, the South Fork has a long history of elk numbers and elk fluctuations. I think when I think of the Bob Marshall and the South Fork, I think of three herds you’ve got which all summer within that South Fork drainage. You have but two of them those that go over to the Sun River to the east, and those that migrate south to the Blackwater Clearwater.
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Speaker 3: They go.
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Speaker 8: They’re kind of our winter birds. They bug out in the winter to better winter range conditions outside the Bob. And so my research right now is focused on those hardy souls that spend the entire winter or their entire life cycle within the South Fork, and there they deal with you know, deep snow and e got a living on the valley bottom. And then those south and southwest facing slopes in terms of the history of that population that that winter in the South Fork. You know background the start, you know, nineteen hundreds they first started to document elk over wintering in the South Fork, and there was a series of conditions, you know, fire, isolation, limited hunting, and you know, also limited pressure from predators that allowed that population to balloon such that by you know, the late thirties, we saw high of over thirty eight hundred elk in you know, wintering in the South Fork. Granted, they were also becoming alarmed by the impact that these elk are having on range conditions. But again, you know, back then, you know, things blew up and it made for some of the best hunting in the country. You know, the Bob Marsha Wilderness is isolated, it’s rugged, it’s beautiful, and elk numbers like that really supported a you know, wonderful hunting opportunity. Things have changed, several things have conspired that today, over the last twenty years, we’ve seen numbers decline. Now, when I give you population estimates from the thirties, those are estimates based on on winter track counts and walking boots on the ground in the winter. And then when I talk about you know, our estimates stays. It’s not so much estimates as they are minimum counts. These are the number of animals I see when I fly, and so so it’s sort of an orange as and apples comparison. But what I will say is it appears that we are you know, at loas we haven’t seen in decades. And you know, although it’s orange and apples comparison, there’s certainly less fruit on the table.
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Speaker 4: Well with that, what steps is FWP taking to understand what’s driving this decline and in turn support the long term herd health of these elk?
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Speaker 8: Sure, I think, you know, this comes down to the question of, you know, what drives population change or elk populations? And you know, I tend to think of, you know, elk kind of the middle. There’s ordered on the bottom by forged production and little pressure on the top from predation. It’s this question of, you know, is it bottom up processes habitat and forge or predators that are limiting populations? And I kind of like to think of, you know, elk sitting around the table playing a friendly game of poker, and every season is a you know, is a hand and I know that you know, habitat conditions forge production that will moderate all things. And so if you know you have a wet spring and you got good forge production, that’s like getting Delta a sixth or seventh card. But if you got drought, uh, you know, fire that whips through your rental range, maybe you’re playing with only four three cards, and then if you have a big, big snowstorm, you just fold. So you know, every season it changes. But again, habitat is a big player that helps moderate the other factors, namely climate and predation. In terms of what you know FBP is doing. You know, we use information research to inform and adapt our management. And so in Northway, Montana, we’ve got a couple of different projects going on. I’ll briefly touch on one and then we’ll dive into the work we’re doing in the South Fork. So we have the NOx and Elk Study, which is a comprehensive study looking at elk survival, sources of mortality, predation, looking at forest management and how that affects forge quality and production. And there they’ve got about one hundred and fifty callers on cow Elk. They’ve got another one hundred and fifty they put on Neo nates that you know right after birth and tracking survival, tracking sources of mortality that will help inform our management statewide and especially here in northwest Montana. The work I’m doing, and we’re going to talk about today a little bit more in depth, is coloring elk in the South Fork to try and tease out some of the things that are causing that decline and preventing that recovery of elk in the South Fork. So yeah, using resource to and form management.
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Speaker 4: So this coloring project has got must have a lot of specific details that you have to figure out. So how are you capturing these elk? What are these callers trying to measure? And what kind of data are you hoping to collect from this study?
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Speaker 2: Yeah?
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Speaker 8: Thank you. Yeah, So we got two approaches to catching elk. We can do aerial captures. That’s with higher team that comes in with a helicopter and darts and immobilizes elk from the air and then goes on and slaps on the collar. That we can do when we’re outside the wilderness, but wilderness designation provides with it some additional challenges. Our other option for capturing elk. Can we do this both in wilders? Outside is ground captures where we use clover traps that are baited with alfalfa hay and there’s a trip wire. They’re basically, you know, metal cages with netting and we bait the elk in there and they set off the trap, and then once they’re in there, we’ve got trapped transmitters that then tell us something’s there and we can go and collar them. What we have is we GPS callers. These are callers you can program. They’ll give us you know, six to twelve locations a day, and a tremendous amount of information you know, day night, bad weather as well. And if our animals stop moving, we get a mortality report. I get a text or an email that says your animals down and it’s here, and I can go in very quickly. If I can get there and start to look at some of the factors and causes of that mortality. What we hope to get out of this, you know, we have very limited information about elk movement and vital rates within the South Fork, so simple things like you know, adult survival, pregnancy rate, some of the things that you know people thought might be limiting. That’s information we can tease out from this limited study as well as some of those seasonal movements and habitat selection. And again, all this is to help us think about ways we can help this population recover.
00:18:57
Speaker 4: Well, specifically the wilderness portion of this study and being in an extremely remote setting. And correct me if I’m wrong. You’re trying to pull this off during the winter months. It sounds like a logistical nightmare. So what are some of the key challenges of this project and also what keeps your team motivated to keep pushing on?
00:19:18
Speaker 8: Sure? Sure, I think you know, to be clear, you know, the men and women I work with at f to BP, they all work in remote settings doing you know, stuff in rugged terrain. So what makes this unique is that wilderness aspect. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention some of our project supporters. You know, this project is funded you know through Pittman, Robbins and Dolls these or excise taxes on hook and bullets. So that’s provided the funding for the collaring and the helicopter captures. But it was a grant from the Rocky Mountain out Foundation that allowed us to actually extend this work into the wilderness. And so what we need is, you know, they helped pay for aluminum traps that are portable enough that we could pack them in. Then of course partnering with the US four Service, they have crews that go there in this area and the winner to do snow surveys. They’ve got the technical skills as well as you know, they wrapped their head around working remotely very well. So they’ve been a critical partner as well. But again in terms of some of the challenges, you know, access for sure, we’re talking it’s a two day to three day ski and at a minimum, and it depends on conditions. Last year when we went in, you know, it took my crew about eight hours to get up over Gordon Pass. The next crew that was coming in or relieve us, they got hit by snow. It took them over thirteen hours and they were getting to the halfway point at about you know, nine pm at night in the dark. So access is a challenging and that makes also planning difficult. You know, if I forget something, I’m not running out to the truck. We got to make do. If we have you know, a binding break like we did last year, you got a kind of a guiver, a fix and so you know, there’s that challenge as well. Physical demands, you know, like I said that, you know, traveling in snow, just you know, keeping your body fed. I lost ten pounds and I don’t have ten pounds to lose. We were eating you know, candy, you know, we were you know, breakfast sandwiches cooked and bacon soaked in bacon Greece, and you know, I just couldn’t put on enough calories. And then obviously the environment. We saw temperatures from you know, fifty degrees to negative thirty and I have a frame of reference of what you know, negative twenty is, but you get down to negative thirty and it’s just like, you know, that’s new.
00:21:36
Speaker 2: Everything’s hard.
00:21:37
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, sounds like an adventure. Yeah it was, you know, it was an adventure. It was also you know, you know, hard work, and I think important work. And you ask, kind of what what keeps me motivated? I think two things. One is, you know, I feel indebted to the sportsmen and sports women here that you know, enjoy the Bob Marshall, you know, care about our unguar populations or game populations, wildlife in general, Curious, you know what’s going on. You know, I feel like we owe them, you know, an answer at least to try and find an answer. And then I think the other thing that keeps to be motivated is, you know, biologists that came before me, that did a lot of work to get some of the information we have. We had you know, back in the seventies, eighties, nineties, there are a few colloring studies where you know, they go out, they slap these callers on, but then they’d have to go to get locations. They’d have to fly and use VHF radios to triangulate. So took on an immense amount of effort as well as risk to get those those locations. I can sit now at my desk, I don’t but I can sit you know, back and every morning sip a cup of coffee and see, you know, what my elkor doing. And I can get a tremendous amount of information from these callers, and I feel sort of you know, you know that it’s important for me to put the effort into trying and getting them out.
00:22:50
Speaker 2: Wow.
00:22:51
Speaker 4: Fascinating.
00:22:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, that’s cool.
00:22:53
Speaker 4: Well, for people who want to learn and follow along as the study progresses, where can they find updates or learn more or about your work?
00:23:01
Speaker 8: Yeah, FMVP has some you know, Fishwife and process has some great resources. The first off is every year we put out an annual ELK report that looks at harvest throughout the region. You can just google you know, FWP R one ELK Report and you’ll see that that’s a great resource. But in terms of the research we do, you can also just google FWP ELK Research and that will bring you to our research page. We also have that from mule there and other species, but FP ELK Research and you will see, you know, project annual reports and summaries for just about every project we’re doing, and when I get to it, you’ll have one for this one too, So that’s where information will affair great.
00:23:42
Speaker 4: Well, I could talk about this all day, just as somebody who grew up and used to live and work in the in the wilderness. But thanks for your time and giving us just a glimpse into your work. Research like this plays a huge role in how Montana manages wildlife, and we appreciate all your hard work, dangerous work that you guys are doing to try and wrap your heads around what’s going on up there. So we thank you for that.
00:24:04
Speaker 8: Oh, thank you. Corey Randal Seth, I really appreciate you having me on and yeah, it’s been fun.
00:24:08
Speaker 2: Thank you, Yeah, thank you.
00:24:09
Speaker 4: I do have one more really important question, maybe the most important Cats or Grizz this Saturday.
00:24:16
Speaker 8: Oh well, my son’s down and Bozeman, so go cats.
00:24:21
Speaker 3: For Cory.
00:24:22
Speaker 4: All right, well go Griz, go Griz.
00:24:26
Speaker 2: Thanks Froz.
00:24:27
Speaker 8: Yeah, thank you.
00:24:28
Speaker 3: Take care man.
00:24:30
Speaker 2: That’s that’s wild stuff.
00:24:32
Speaker 4: Yeah sounds like fun.
00:24:34
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I know, it sounds sounds like a lot of work.
00:24:37
Speaker 2: Multi yeah, like a multi day ski trip. Is I could count on like one hand the number of times of skied in somewhere in camped and it’s not not not very I mean it’s fun, but it’s it’s a lot of work.
00:24:48
Speaker 4: Just stressful being in ski boots for twenty four I mean you sleep a little bit, you know. He was saying how hard it is to get in there, a couple of days worth of just skiing in. Imagine living in ski boots for those who have ever slipped their feet to them. They’re not comfortable. Those guys are living in them while they’re back there.
00:25:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, might make me cry.
00:25:05
Speaker 4: Yeah, most of those people, most days a lot of tears, blood, sweat, and tears.
00:25:11
Speaker 2: Speaking of tears, now it’s time for a new segment, Meat Theater. Meat theater is the concept that we came up yet with yesterday where we take outstanding hunting literature and feed it into artificial intelligence and ask the AI to generate a short dramatic script to be performed live by untrained actors. And as we’re brainstorming for today’s show, we wanted to tie in the latest episode of Meat Eater season thirteen, which, as we all know, captures Steve’s first African safari. And what better way to do that, I thought, than perform a hasty stage adaptation of a classic Ernest Hemingway’s short story, The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, originally public in the September nineteen thirty sixth issue of Cosmopolitan magazine. Guys, ready, oh manny, and we did this, absol. We just did this once yesterday to make sure that it wouldn’t take ten minutes, and it didn’t. So let’s give her a rip. Boys.
00:26:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, not a lot of practice went into this, so action.
00:26:19
Speaker 2: The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber on Nice Lights Phille, scene one after the Lion.
00:26:31
Speaker 3: Oh no, that’s the wrong one. I’m already screwing this up. Here we go, We’re live.
00:26:35
Speaker 6: It is late afternoon at a hunting camp in Africa. Francis Macomber has just run like a coward from a wounded lion.
00:26:43
Speaker 3: His wife watched it all happen. So did their pH Robert Wilson. No one has spoken directly of it, but everyone knows.
00:26:52
Speaker 2: How is your drink, mister Wilson?
00:26:56
Speaker 4: Fine, just fine.
00:26:58
Speaker 3: We got that lion eventually, though, didn’t we Yes, we did.
00:27:02
Speaker 2: We got him. How interesting, Margo. I I’m going to clean up before dinner. You were lovely today, Darling, really impressive stuff.
00:27:13
Speaker 6: At the moment, Margo turns her back on her husband and walks away.
00:27:18
Speaker 5: I bolted. I just bolted like a scared little boy. I’ve never done anything like that before.
00:27:27
Speaker 4: It happens to everyone at some point.
00:27:29
Speaker 3: Does it happen to you? Oh? Hold on, Oh that’s double sided, paid, double pain.
00:27:38
Speaker 9: No, she saw it all. She’ll never let me forget it. Women are difficult in these situations. Can we go out tomorrow, go after something else? I need to I need another chance.
00:27:55
Speaker 4: Buffalo will go after buffalo in the morning.
00:27:58
Speaker 9: Yes, Buffalo, thank you, Thank you, Wilson, don’t thank me yet.
00:28:03
Speaker 6: That night, Margot Macomber visited Wilson’s tent. Francis knew. Wilson knew that he knew, but nothing was said. In the morning they would hunt buffalo seem to the buffalo.
00:28:20
Speaker 3: Morning the hunt begins. Well, Francis shoots three buffalo for the first time in his life. He is not afraid. He feels it that thing he had never felt before. Perhaps this is what courage.
00:28:36
Speaker 4: Is good shooting Macomber, damn good?
00:28:39
Speaker 3: Did you see? Did you see them drop?
00:28:42
Speaker 2: Yes? I saw.
00:28:44
Speaker 3: I wasn’t afraid, not at all. I felt God, Wilson, I felt alive. You shot magnificently. Did you see, Margot?
00:28:53
Speaker 2: I saw.
00:29:00
Speaker 3: Wilson.
00:29:01
Speaker 2: Wilson.
00:29:02
Speaker 3: One of them’s just one.
00:29:04
Speaker 4: Of them’s just wounded. We’ll have to go in after him.
00:29:07
Speaker 2: Good, let’s go the bush.
00:29:12
Speaker 4: A wounded buff in the bush is one of the most dangerous.
00:29:15
Speaker 3: I don’t care. I’m not afraid anymore. Can you understand that I’m no longer afraid? Is it safe? Oh?
00:29:23
Speaker 4: Nothing’s safe, But we have to finish him.
00:29:26
Speaker 3: Then let’s finish him. Margo stay here with the gun.
00:29:29
Speaker 2: Bear.
00:29:30
Speaker 3: We’ll be back and there it was.
00:29:33
Speaker 6: Francis Macomber had crossed over just thirty minutes ago. He had been a boy and now he was a man. His wife knew it, Wilson knew it, and Macomber himself knew it. Most of all, he was happy, perhaps for the first time in his life.
00:29:53
Speaker 4: There he is twelve yards away.
00:29:56
Speaker 3: I see him.
00:29:58
Speaker 2: Christ, Oh no, the cap guns knock going off, It went off. We got it, do that, Linergain Corey quickly Christ Francis, Oh god, Francis, is he He’s dead.
00:30:14
Speaker 4: The bullet hit him in the back of the head.
00:30:16
Speaker 2: I tried to hit the buffalo. I had to shoot. It was an accident, of course it was. I thought I could kill the buffalo. You saw I was charging.
00:30:25
Speaker 4: That’s right, the buffalo was charging.
00:30:27
Speaker 2: Oh God, oh god.
00:30:29
Speaker 4: You were afraid, weren’t you? What just now, just these last thirty minutes, you were afraid of him for the first time.
00:30:38
Speaker 2: I don’t know what you mean.
00:30:39
Speaker 4: No, I don’t suppose you do.
00:30:42
Speaker 2: Scene three, epilogue.
00:30:53
Speaker 6: They said it was an accident, of course, a tragic accident during a buffalo hunt. These things happen in Africa. Missus Macomber was distraught naturally, she had tried to save her husband from the charging animal. No one could blame her for what happened. Robert Wilson knew he had seen that look in her eyes when Francis Macomber stopped being afraid, when he became, for perhaps the first time and last time in his life, a man she could not control, a man she did not recognize. Francis Macomber lived thirty five years, but he was truly alive for only thirty minutes. In those thirty minutes, he was happy, and perhaps that is longer than most men ever manage. The short, happy life of Francis Macomber. Emphasis on short, emphasis on happy, make of it what you will.
00:32:00
Speaker 2: End of play. Audience goes nuts.
00:32:04
Speaker 3: Do we still have viewers?
00:32:05
Speaker 2: Phil Or Pill dropped out the last year?
00:32:09
Speaker 6: I think, I mean, I think we’re at peak viewerships, so.
00:32:12
Speaker 3: Man, we locked them in.
00:32:14
Speaker 2: Wow, lights are back on. Thanks for the stage lights, Phil.
00:32:18
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course, there’s dried leaves everywhere back here.
00:32:22
Speaker 2: That filled seven minutes.
00:32:23
Speaker 3: That was great.
00:32:24
Speaker 2: I thought the computer did a really nice job with that script. I added a few touches this morning to make things clearer. I thought it left a little too much up to suggestion and innuendo. But I really liked what the computer did with that.
00:32:37
Speaker 6: Yeah, the power that it took for the AI to to create that. It only drained late Lake Mead like a couple of inches, So wow.
00:32:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think it was worth Hopefully Hemingway is not rolling over in his grave and catching Idaho directly across from the old first Light AGEQ.
00:32:54
Speaker 6: We have forty five new live chat comments that I’m too scared to look at.
00:33:00
Speaker 2: Well, Phil, Unfortunately, it’s time to take a break for some.
00:33:05
Speaker 6: Well, I haven’t read the new one, so let’s just look at the old ones that I’ve seen. Let’s see here this is you know, it’s almost Thanksgiving and we have more news about next Thursday’s show that Randall will talk about at the end of the show. But Kenneth would like to know favorite turkey preps smoked, fried, or oven baked.
00:33:24
Speaker 4: Man, you can’t beat a fried turkey.
00:33:26
Speaker 3: Fried’s pretty good. I’m usually a traditional oven baked guy.
00:33:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, just the oven roast, Brian, and oven roast, Yeah, got it, Brian. I feel like the taste of a smoked or fried turkey is soured by how often people like to talk about how good they are.
00:33:44
Speaker 3: That’s true, you know.
00:33:47
Speaker 2: I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the good old fashioned turkey.
00:33:50
Speaker 4: Nothing’s wrong with it. Just the last couple of years I’ve Brian and Fried and it’s hard to beat that crispy skin. It’s it’s not easy though. Yeah, a lot of accidents can happen.
00:33:59
Speaker 2: A lot of house dangerous. Be careful out there, careful, thanks Againings coming up? Never bad idea to refresh yourself on fire safety. Make sure those extinguishers are where they should be, et cetera, et cetera.
00:34:10
Speaker 3: Don’t fright in your garage.
00:34:12
Speaker 2: That’s for Rick Huttons. He’ll tell you all about fires.
00:34:15
Speaker 6: I’m going to bring this up live just to hold everyone responsible accountable. Mogre says that he still hasn’t received any news about his cookbooks. So oh so me, Jake Corey, whoever, we need to get this man his cookbooks.
00:34:34
Speaker 2: I don’t have the backstore on this. Do we owe him?
00:34:36
Speaker 6: We owe won a silly what was it like, like sort of a caption contest thing, I don’t remember what, but Brody picked him as one of the winners. And this is embarrassing to receive he’s supposed to receive signed cookbooks.
00:34:50
Speaker 2: As much as I want to get his cookbooks, I think we should have swept this under the rug.
00:34:55
Speaker 3: We did that.
00:34:57
Speaker 6: We did that a couple of weeks ago. I refuse. I respect the man too much.
00:35:01
Speaker 3: You’ll get those.
00:35:02
Speaker 2: Cookbooks if I have to fly over to Hungary myself and deliver them.
00:35:06
Speaker 4: Morgar, just to put water under the fridge here, I am replying to your email with the tracking number of your cookbooks.
00:35:13
Speaker 3: Oh that’s some CS right there. Wonderful there. Hopefully that clears everything up.
00:35:21
Speaker 2: Apologies, Mogor.
00:35:23
Speaker 6: Let’s see holiday hunting traditions on either Christmas or Thanksgiving. What do you guys do if anything? Hmm, that’s from Trey.
00:35:32
Speaker 2: We don’t have traditions. We’ll probably go out this Thanksgiving morning to shoot a Sydney still looking for a deer. And yeah, shot my first bowl the day after Thanksgiving. I actually don’t really like how many people are in the woods around Thanksgiving. Not not that it’s a bad thing, but for my own enjoyment.
00:35:50
Speaker 3: Event, it’s a big tradition.
00:35:51
Speaker 2: I feel like around Montana people just go out in huge numbers right around Thanksgiving.
00:35:56
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, usually if I’m in Montana for Thanksgiving, I usually do some sort of hunt Thanksgiving Day or yeah, Thanksgiving Day morning, whether it’s like a dough hunt or upland hunt or something.
00:36:09
Speaker 3: But this year I’m going.
00:36:09
Speaker 5: To be back in Pennsylvania and the rifle season opens the Saturday after Thanksgiving there. Oh, so it’s like Thanksgiving, then Friday, go to deer camp, and then Saturday wake up in deer hunt.
00:36:23
Speaker 2: Beautiful.
00:36:24
Speaker 3: I love it.
00:36:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, all lined up.
00:36:26
Speaker 3: Right on. This is sort of a call to action.
00:36:28
Speaker 6: This is from Ben and I was unaware of this, mostly because I edit Cal’s podcast and I don’t think he’s talked about it, but he probably will on Monday’s podcast. But Ben says, any of my fellow Wisconsin nights in the chat, please be sure and call email your reps for the Sandhill crane hunting bill. Apparently there were lots of opponents at the public hearing yesterday, and I looked it up and apparently in twenty ten there was a management plan developed by the Mississippi and Atlantic Flyway Councils that would call for a potential crane hunt once numbers exceeded aroun between thirty eight thousand and sixty thousand birds, and estimates are now in the one hundred thousand range. So get out there, Wisconsin. I let them know that you want a sand Hill crane hunt.
00:37:11
Speaker 2: Nobody’s gonna stand up and advocate for hunting seasons if hunters themselves don’t do it. So get out there, gang. Thank you Ben for bringing this to our attention.
00:37:21
Speaker 6: I haven’t looked at all the comments regarding meat theater yet, but this is from Afro Man. I don’t know about this.
00:37:26
Speaker 3: Boys. What happened to one minute fishing?
00:37:28
Speaker 2: It’s a fair point.
00:37:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that’s a fair point.
00:37:31
Speaker 2: I’ll be honest.
00:37:32
Speaker 6: I’m sure this is the only negative one and all the other ones to be honest, mister man.
00:37:36
Speaker 2: We we’re well aware that this would be a polarizing segment.
00:37:40
Speaker 6: Adam says, is it safe to return yet? Yes, Adam, we’re now in the listener feedback section. If you dipped out, please come back. But Derek says, it’s going to be nominated for an Emmy, So I’m excited to put that on.
00:37:52
Speaker 3: I’ll take yeah.
00:37:53
Speaker 2: I mean, even if we don’t win an award, I hope it inspires some audience members to go out and read the sh short Happy Life of Francis Macomber. It’s a great story if you like gunshot accidents or maybe not accidents, cuckolded marriages, and uh hunting in Africa. So highly recommend some of Hemingway’s finest work.
00:38:19
Speaker 6: Dan is asking what the weirdest thing you guys have ever found inside a critter is.
00:38:25
Speaker 3: Brodheads.
00:38:25
Speaker 2: Yeah. I shot a bowl one time that had a broadhead that had gone through the the spinal what the the little bow of the ridge that goes along the spine, and it had it had gone through and then lodged in the opposite side backstrap poking out. So when I was cutting down, my knife hit the like where you had threaded onto the shaft, into the shaft.
00:38:50
Speaker 3: I shot a turkey to spring the head an air rifle pellet in it.
00:38:54
Speaker 2: Really, I we ate rabbit. And I can say this because the restaurant’s closed. Fabulous restaurant and missula and we got a rabbit that had an air rifle pellet in it at the restaurant.
00:39:05
Speaker 3: Really yeah.
00:39:06
Speaker 2: And we called the restaurant and they were like, these are raised in the bitter it like in an open not. I mean, it was not like open range, but they’re like some kid might have driven by and plunked one.
00:39:20
Speaker 3: Geez.
00:39:21
Speaker 2: So wow, Corey weird stuff and animals.
00:39:25
Speaker 4: Let’s see. I had a client catch a cutthroat that had a snake coming out of its anus. I believe it was a garter snake. I couldn’t help myself and I pulled it out still and it just kept coming.
00:39:39
Speaker 2: Was it digested like it had gone in the front end or was it still thrashing around like it had gone in the back end.
00:39:44
Speaker 4: The snake was dead. Fish was very much alive, but it was the tail of the snake was already coming out of the fish, so I just couldn’t help him pull out.
00:39:54
Speaker 2: He was still hungry too. Phil still playing with the cat gun over there. I think the critics Phil just ad the cap gun. I think the critics of that performance should know that Phil brought in a cap gun that would have really added a lot of rial.
00:40:07
Speaker 3: Uh.
00:40:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, the gunshots would have been far more realistic had the cap gun functioned. And also Phil, in practicing for his match strike. When Wilson lights his cigarette, Phil burned one of the microphones in the studio.
00:40:23
Speaker 6: I also didn’t I didn’t hold the match close enough to the mic, so it wasn’t as impactful to it again.
00:40:29
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that sounds good. Anything else in the chat there, Phil.
00:40:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think we can move on and tackle things at the end of the show.
00:40:38
Speaker 2: Alrighty, are is it a Christmas ornament?
00:40:44
Speaker 4: Christmas ornament? Anybody were supposed to talk?
00:40:47
Speaker 2: Shameless plug?
00:40:48
Speaker 3: We kind of are.
00:40:49
Speaker 4: It’s hanging right here, yeah at the media dot Com.
00:40:52
Speaker 2: Our next guest today is Derek Dumont, a hunter, photographer and the host of the th eight Outdoors podcast. You might know him from the viral video where a routine deer hunt turns surreal after his bullet hit a collar deer and made the collar explode on impact. What Yeah, Derek, Welcome to the show.
00:41:11
Speaker 10: Hey guys, thanks for having me.
00:41:14
Speaker 2: So for folks who may not know you yet, can you give us a little background on your story.
00:41:20
Speaker 10: Yeah, my name is Derek. I’m a T eight paraplegic.
00:41:24
Speaker 3: All right.
00:41:25
Speaker 10: It’s out in Utah on a c W m U hunt.
00:41:30
Speaker 11: That’s a that’s a tag that they get out in Utah for landowners who have more than like five thousand acres get some tax revenue.
00:41:37
Speaker 10: And stuff like that.
00:41:38
Speaker 11: But yeah, it was a a couple day hunt, and we’re going for known giants in the area, so we’re going for a giant. But yeah, I didn’t expect.
00:41:53
Speaker 10: The smallest deer I’ve ever shot to be the most popular deer I’ve ever shot.
00:41:58
Speaker 2: So tell us about We’re gonna pull up the video here in a second, but tell us about how as you mentioned your paraplegic, how how are you hunting, what’s the what’s sort of the style or sort of adaptive equipment that you used to hunt?
00:42:15
Speaker 11: So on I’ll hear in my local mountains, I like to mountain bike and we’ll strap a little made a little mcguivert a trailer and we’ll I’ll throw gear and stuff on the trailer and me and a buddy will smash out on the mountain bikes and and get get as deep as we can.
00:42:35
Speaker 10: Either that and I got one of those action track chairs.
00:42:38
Speaker 11: It’s uh it’s those wheelchair that looks like a tank and uh so those work.
00:42:45
Speaker 10: Those work well, although the battery dies pretty quick and you.
00:42:48
Speaker 11: Want to get stuck up on the back country with a yeah, five pound wheelchair.
00:42:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, that’s that’s not ideal, not at all.
00:42:58
Speaker 10: But on this particular, I was able to.
00:43:01
Speaker 11: So since I’m a paraplegic and I’m in a wheelchair, I have a license through the State of Utah DNR to hunt from a vehicle, any four wheel drive vehicle. So so that’s where this hunt was able to.
00:43:14
Speaker 10: So you accomplished.
00:43:15
Speaker 2: So you guys are out looking for deer in the morning and you’re you’re hunting from the vehicle. What did this deer? Did you know it had a collar on? I mean to just sort of walk us through like what you were thinking up until the moment of the shot.
00:43:31
Speaker 11: Okay, So it was actually the very last day, last afternoon of the hunt, so it was, and there was probably twenty minutes.
00:43:38
Speaker 10: Of legal shooting and light left.
00:43:40
Speaker 11: We’re driving back down the lodge and at this point I just told the landowner was that he was driving. I was like, hey, you know, anything with antlers, I would like to at least put some of me in the freezer because I was like taking my old man on hunts with me, So just anything we could munch on. But when we’re coming coming around the corner and it’s absolutely pouring rain, you can’t really can’t hear it in the in the video that I posted just microphone wise wasn’t working out well.
00:44:12
Speaker 10: But coming around the corner and this.
00:44:15
Speaker 11: Little fork he just pops up out of his bed and is staring at us. Because, like I said, it was pouring rain and we weren’t expecting to see anything. So this guy popped up and then just staring at us, probably is probably about ten yards off the road, and land landowners like here’s your chance. I was like, all right, cool, got got my rifle set up and he had he had glass on it, he had his binos on it. And I got into the optic. I was like, it’s got a collar. He’s like, it’s all good. You can, you know, take it that well. And so he wanted me to shoot it where the neck meets the body, since it.
00:44:50
Speaker 10: Was raining so hard the you know.
00:44:53
Speaker 11: If you would have hit it somewhere else, the blood trail would have probably been washed away pretty fast.
00:44:58
Speaker 10: It was rain rain really hard that day.
00:45:01
Speaker 11: So I aimed right where the neck meets the meets the chest, right there in the brisket area. Saw the collar, aim underneath of it, and I hit the lithium battery on the collar and and yeah, the.
00:45:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, let’s let’s let the video.
00:45:22
Speaker 10: Explosion, I thought the deer went sky high.
00:45:24
Speaker 2: And there’s phil can you pull off that video?
00:45:28
Speaker 3: Yes?
00:45:29
Speaker 2: And I told Derek before we got started, like I someone set this to us and said, have you seen this video of a deer exploding when the collar gets hit? And I thought, Oh, we’re gonna get like a little sizzle, you know, or like a couple of sparks. But the video is, uh is something let’s see here the yeah getting.
00:45:55
Speaker 6: Set out of the shot takes aim.
00:46:00
Speaker 2: Kaboom and it’s it’s like a yeah. I mean for folks that aren’t listening are watching, excuse me, for the folks who are listening and not watching, Yeah, it looks like a tannerite went off. So Derek, what, what’s the first thing in your mind?
00:46:16
Speaker 3: That?
00:46:16
Speaker 2: I mean, it’s crazy. So you pull the trigger and there’s one big boom and then another big boom. What’s the first thing goes through your mind?
00:46:27
Speaker 10: Well?
00:46:28
Speaker 11: It was funny because there was there was a good fifteen seconds of silence in the truck, like we all just sat there.
00:46:34
Speaker 8: And just stared at the fifteen foot tall.
00:46:38
Speaker 11: Pile of smoke, and we all just literally just sat there and I was like, uh, they and the deer you guys got out here, you know, and the landowners like I’ve been hunting my land for fifty years and I have never ever seen that, and we’re Yeah, it was just mind blowing and wasn’t expecting it.
00:47:01
Speaker 10: And honestly, going going up to.
00:47:03
Speaker 11: The deer, I thought there was gonna be a lot of damage, but there was absolutely no damage to the deer. It was literally just the battery exploded and you could see where my bullet went through. The went through the neck, dropped it right and it’s right in its.
00:47:15
Speaker 2: Track, So yeah, you’d hope so with that impact.
00:47:20
Speaker 11: Yeah, right, there was a shooting a two forty three and it hit the hit that battery and it’s crazy. You could slow it down and there’s a giant flash of light, sparks flying ten fifteen feet in the air, and then that smoke got a good fifteen twenty feet in then wow up in the forest there.
00:47:38
Speaker 6: So Derek, we got a question from Seth who asked how far did it run after that?
00:47:44
Speaker 10: About two inches? Luckily it was a clean ethical shots, so he dropped right right.
00:47:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, uh, no blood trailing needed. Did did wildlife fit? I mean, you so you posted this on your Instagram channel and or on your Instagram feed and then it went viral. Can you tell us like, did wildlife officials reach out to it all or what was sort of the reaction that you got after you posted this.
00:48:13
Speaker 11: So we were driving down to the lodge when this happened. Before we got to the lodge, after we threw the deer in the truck, we were already on the phone with Utah DNR and and they congratulated me. They said, you know, great shock, congratulations. And they asked what condition the parlor was in and it you know, we explained it and they’re like, oh, you go ahead, keep the caller. It’s no of use to us. And they even emailed me the migration charts.
00:48:42
Speaker 2: Oh cool, so nice.
00:48:44
Speaker 11: I got to see the summer range, its winter range, and its year round range, and that deer specifically migrates twenty one miles round trip from its summer round to the winter grounds.
00:48:58
Speaker 2: That’s amazing.
00:49:00
Speaker 10: It was pretty cool of that deer put on some miles.
00:49:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, whenever I shoot a deer, I always like wonder what it’s individual story is, and it’s like you’re never going to get the chance to know that unless it’s like this as an exploding collar, unless that’s an exploding collar. Yeah, so is that gonna go on the Uh You’re gonna do a euro mount and hang the collar on it or what’s the plan there?
00:49:23
Speaker 10: I have a euro amount and I have the collar hanging hanging from it.
00:49:27
Speaker 4: Yeah, I do.
00:49:28
Speaker 10: So, it was it was cool.
00:49:29
Speaker 11: I got, you know, and you asked about like the like what people said about it afterwards.
00:49:34
Speaker 10: But I got a.
00:49:36
Speaker 11: Lot of people, you know, people who don’t read the captions because I listed what happened in the entire hunt, why I was shooting from a vehicle, right, why it exploded x y Z. Because they got a lot of hate from shooting from a vehicle, But people didn’t you know, special situation.
00:49:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Derek, I know you use your platform to advocate for hunters with disabilities, and it’s an important message and I think which you just brought up there, like there’s a lot of you know, ignorance out there, not only in the hunting community but outside of the hunting community about folks getting outdoors in different ways. Can you can you share some of your like advocacy message with with our audience and kind of what what would you want other hunters to understand about what it takes to get you know, for example, a paraplegic like yourself outside.
00:50:28
Speaker 11: Yeah, it’s you know, every every state out there offers a.
00:50:34
Speaker 10: Shoot from a vehicle.
00:50:35
Speaker 11: It doesn’t have to be a car, could be any any wheeled vehicle from the road.
00:50:41
Speaker 10: You can go out, you can get those.
00:50:44
Speaker 11: It’s you know, it’s tough like I wasn’t I wasn’t born paraplegic. You know, I got got into a bad accident and just just trying to fill the freezer like anybody else, you know, and players there’s a lot less of us in this position. Then people tend to think people tend to think, oh, you know, I don’t know, shooting from a car does get abused by a lot of people. But in reality, like there’s no really other way to do certain types of hunts, Like I still like to hop hop in the blind you know, choke points.
00:51:19
Speaker 10: Food plots, water sources, all that that. That’s a lot funner.
00:51:22
Speaker 11: But sometimes when you’re hunting big steep, rugged mountain terrain, you know, you’re obviously not gonna.
00:51:27
Speaker 10: Be rolling your wheelchair through that. So yeah, hopping hopping in a sideby or a car.
00:51:33
Speaker 2: Really, yes, so maybe it really helps, you know.
00:51:35
Speaker 10: I’m just trying to feel a freezer.
00:51:37
Speaker 2: If folks see someone shooting from a vehicle, don’t rush to judgment about who’s doing that and why, right.
00:51:48
Speaker 10: Exactly.
00:51:48
Speaker 11: Yeah, some some disabilities are super visible, you know, and some aren’t. If you see me rolling down the street, like this guy’s in a wheelchair, you know. But there’s a lot of there’s a lot of disabilities out there that you can apply for a shoot from a vehicle car that you you couldn’t tell just by looking at somebody, you know, you have to dive deep into their.
00:52:11
Speaker 10: Story, hear what they’re all about. So yeah, just don’t rest rush to judgment.
00:52:17
Speaker 11: We’re all out here just trying to feed our families.
00:52:22
Speaker 2: Well, Derek, if folks want to hear more about your story and learn more about your work, where can they find you?
00:52:30
Speaker 10: Yeah?
00:52:30
Speaker 11: So my I do a lot of video logging about my hunts and stuff on Instagram the T eight Underscore Outdoorsmen, and it’s the same for a YouTube channel, T eight Underscore Outdoorsmen.
00:52:43
Speaker 10: And if anyone has a.
00:52:45
Speaker 11: Chance to hop on or would like to listen to th eight outdoors podcast, the podcast I started for people with disabilities to go out there and hunt and just their extraordinary stories and how differently logistics apply to their certain hunts about I got buddies and shooting big ol’ l dragging them out with chairs and so just yeah, if you hop on and give it a check out and see what we have to do logistically, it’d be cool just to bring awareness.
00:53:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, Derek, thanks, thanks for sharing your story, thanks for chatting with us, and uh appreciate the work you’re doing. And yeah, hopefully the next year you pull the trigger and will be a little less uh eventful surprising.
00:53:30
Speaker 11: Yeah, it was the most popular forky there on the internet for probably about two weeks.
00:53:39
Speaker 2: Well, Derek, hope you’re having a good fall, and uh maybe we’ll chat with you again here soon.
00:53:44
Speaker 4: Appreciate you guys, Thank you, thank you Derek Man.
00:53:48
Speaker 2: Every time I watch that video, it doesn’t get old. It still shocks me. It’s still crazy. I encourage everybody, if you’re just listening, go either check this out on YouTube or check out Derek since a grand page because it’s a wild wild This brings us to our next segment, and that’s a hot tip off.
00:54:13
Speaker 12: That’s salty, That’s salty.
00:54:26
Speaker 4: Love it.
00:54:27
Speaker 2: Hot tip Off is where two listeners go head to head with competing pieces of advice, and after we hear each tip, we’ll declare which one is better, and that will be by Wheel.
00:54:39
Speaker 6: I mean, the audience will choose which I will throw up a pole in the live chat after we watch the hot tips.
00:54:47
Speaker 2: Yes, please, you don’t mind, Phil, Please do that And if you have a hot tip, take a one minute video on your phone and email it to Radio at the meat Eater dot com with the subject line hop tip Off. This segment is brought to you buy our good friends at Case Knives, handcrafting high quality knives since eighteen eighty nine, and the winner of this showdown will receive a Meat Eater branded case trapper knife at Uncle Brent will be very pleased with that.
00:55:14
Speaker 3: Uncle brand will like it.
00:55:16
Speaker 2: All right, Phil, let’s hear this week’s hot tips.
00:55:20
Speaker 3: Ethan Hole.
00:55:25
Speaker 13: Hey, this is Ethan from Finalac Wisconsin, and my hot tip is, as we all know, we need a lot of room to do our cutting. A lot of times, big cutting boards aren’t cheap. So what we like to do is we go down to the local home improvement store, and for thirty dollars you can get a whole four foot piece of scrap cutoff clearance, lamb and ade countertap.
00:55:53
Speaker 8: The worst great is a cutting.
00:55:54
Speaker 13: Board, and we have three of them, so we get twelve feet of cutter space for cutting and butcher. So for one hundred and twenty bucks, we have twelve whole feet of basically cutting bar.
00:56:09
Speaker 2: Thanks bye, nice Yeah.
00:56:12
Speaker 1: Billy Shaw, Hey everybody. Billy here in Minnesota with a hot tip for you. In response to Spencer’s question about.
00:56:22
Speaker 7: The best type of gas tank to use, I’ve got a better solution. Buy siphon hos anywhere on the internet or maybe at a hardware store. It’s got a check field on this side. You put your fuel tank anywhere above the fuel fill on your vehicle, put it in the vehicle, and then you take this end and you just ham it down like this, and that gets the fuel flowing from the tank into your vehicle. This way, if you don’t have a fuel gage, you can look inside and see how full it is, so you’re not gonna spill everywhere. If you’re using a regular tank, there’s no leaking from the tank. And then when you’re done, you just pull up from the fuel tank and the rest of it. Siphon’s down into your vehicle. Much better solution for filling things like sow and bills, four wheelers inside by sides.
00:57:11
Speaker 4: Mmmmm amen, very familiar with that device exactly. Yeah, good thing to have in your truck.
00:57:16
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:57:16
Speaker 2: Get one at Harbor Freight. I wonder if poll is live. Get in there.
00:57:21
Speaker 5: I wonder if Chester knows Ethan from Fondlise. That’s where Chester’s from.
00:57:26
Speaker 4: Get out fd Man, a.
00:57:28
Speaker 2: Lot of great hot tips coming. How many people possibly live in Fondolac.
00:57:33
Speaker 3: I don’t know. I don’t know what the population is.
00:57:36
Speaker 2: Do you like the countertop trick?
00:57:38
Speaker 3: I do. Yeah.
00:57:40
Speaker 4: When we redid our counters, I saved two big sections just for that very thing, So I do that.
00:57:45
Speaker 2: You know, it’s funny when we redid our counters. When we redid our counters, I saved all of the butcher block, and I just cut it into weird shapes. I’ve got a piece of butcher block with a with a barrel of ice on it, so I can pull barrels and stuff on my truckbed, and I can also put a reloading I can put a press on there and reload cases at the range if I’m doing some experimenting with seating depth things like that. But I have all this countertop just leaning up against the walls in my barn.
00:58:17
Speaker 3: I just like that.
00:58:18
Speaker 2: I mean, you could go to you don’t even have to go to home depot. You just go to like the the home salvage store.
00:58:24
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:58:25
Speaker 2: I like to find all my weird stuff.
00:58:26
Speaker 5: We did butcher block as well, and yeah, my leftover chunk is a cutting board now.
00:58:31
Speaker 4: Yeah, I love any hot tip that involves recycling stuff.
00:58:34
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:58:35
Speaker 7: Good.
00:58:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, But I also feel like anything we can do to get at big gas, can you know, fight the man, fight the man and his few mitigating gas cans.
00:58:45
Speaker 3: Yeah, I like that. It’s kind of tight.
00:58:47
Speaker 6: So I’m gonna give you another thirty seconds to get these last votes and maybe you can sway sway the tide here.
00:58:53
Speaker 2: How many votes total do we have? Phil?
00:58:55
Speaker 3: Right now? We have eighty eight votes, but people watch, come.
00:59:01
Speaker 4: On, democracy is a right, yeah, even if you’re driving, get on it.
00:59:06
Speaker 2: Embarrassing.
00:59:06
Speaker 6: This this is this does kind of match up with the American electoral as far as population to people.
00:59:13
Speaker 2: Who actually we’re probably higher, yeah, probably performing, So you take that back you guys are doing great. Let’s give it another five seconds and then we’ll call it, because that’s how they do elections.
00:59:25
Speaker 8: Too close to Cole.
00:59:27
Speaker 2: Sorry, that’s that’s it.
00:59:30
Speaker 3: Okay, pulls over. I was gonna say, I’ve the which Steve has one of these now, but we first saw it from the the guys that do some flying for us when we mosse on.
00:59:44
Speaker 5: Up in Alaska. But they have one of those siphoned hoses with it in the middle of it. They have a shut off valve.
00:59:50
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, so.
00:59:51
Speaker 3: When you know, when it gets full, they can just hit that shut off valve.
00:59:56
Speaker 2: That’s smart.
00:59:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, which is like a hot tip. With fifteen percent of the vote, the winner is.
01:00:06
Speaker 2: Ethan with the.
01:00:07
Speaker 3: Lamon at countertip.
01:00:08
Speaker 2: Congrats. I also think my favorite part about Ethan’s video is just the inside of that shop oh yeah, or barn or whatever it is. It’s like that guy is deadly serious about cutting up deer.
01:00:21
Speaker 3: Yeah.
01:00:22
Speaker 5: I mean, the folks in the in the Upper Midwest take their shop serious.
01:00:26
Speaker 2: I think good shop culture.
01:00:28
Speaker 3: They like to hang out in the shops, which I enjoy. Well.
01:00:30
Speaker 2: Ethan, uh we should he email email radio at the Medeater dot com. Our producer will reach out email Ethan, our producer will reach out to you and get you that meat Eater branded case trapper knife. Congrats on your victory, and uh, thanks for submitting your tip. And thanks to our good friends at case Knives for sponsoring this week’s hot tip off. All right, Phil, let’s get back in the chat. See people saying.
01:01:00
Speaker 6: I’ve been I’ve been kind of absent from the chat for a little bit. Oh knobs back here. Yeah, pil Steve were here, he’d be acting the exact same way. He’d talk about how he’s already posted the job listing looking for a podcast. But Randall, I think you’re gonna like this one. This is a question from Mason. I need some gun selling advice. I am trying to sell my grand prize twenty fifth anniversary Christensen’s Arms travers in three hundred win bag serial. You know o case here, Remember, he says, He says it’s been on gun Broker for a while and I’m not getting much traction. I live in northeast Ohio, Hey, and thought about shipping it to a gun shop out west. Do you have anything to add here?
01:01:40
Speaker 2: It’s a good question. It’s a good question. I would be. I mean I’d get it on gun Broker. I don’t know what you’d what you’d get for that if it’s not getting much traction on gun Broker. Yeah, I mean you might reach out to some gun shops out west that do a lot of I mean there’s there’s service and shops that’ll list your stuff on gun broker and do like a very high end bespoke auction page to maybe get some eyeballs. But I mean I always sell stuff just by plugging it into different forums. And this may not be what you want to hear. But when I’m trying to sell a gun, I low ball myself. So I don’t I lower my standards so that I just sell it quickly. I don’t have a lot of experience like selling high value items for what they’re worth or more. Typically, I just am moving something to move on to the next thing. So Seth, you have thoughts on that.
01:02:38
Speaker 5: I mean my gun selling advice is don’t sell guns, just keep them, hoard them.
01:02:43
Speaker 3: Yeah, put them in a safe.
01:02:45
Speaker 4: Get ready for Yeah. Yeah that’s a beautiful rifle.
01:02:49
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Phil, what else we got here? Good luck to you, Mason.
01:02:53
Speaker 6: I picked this question because it’s incredibly vague, but I think it could open up a discussion of what this actually means. But sisk Grant twenty six asks, what’s what is the most admirable non game animal? I think you could. Yeah, admirable could mean different things to different people. I think it’s pretty subjective. So so if you guys want to hash that out, I think that’d be fun.
01:03:18
Speaker 4: Probably a grizzly bear for me.
01:03:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess in the lower forty eight.
01:03:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, that’s where you’re at.
01:03:24
Speaker 2: I think that’s cheating. I would say, if we’re going globally, I would have to say it’s one of the great apes, either a gorilla you’re here, yeah, chimpanzee or in orangutan.
01:03:40
Speaker 3: You have a lot of respect for those creatures. I like the wolverine, but you can get them in Alaska.
01:03:48
Speaker 4: Yeah, not down here though, Yeah, Canada wild animal Yeah.
01:03:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don’t know. I’m wondering about things like possums.
01:03:59
Speaker 5: You can get them, yeah, all over the place.
01:04:04
Speaker 2: But I wouldn’t call it like a game game. Yeah, it’s fair. Yeah, you’re talking to the trapper here, armadillo? Nah, cheat, No, I think I think the great apes. I’m gonna I’m gonna plant my flag, and these guys don’t have good answers. So that’s it.
01:04:27
Speaker 3: Great, we locked it down, Bill, did we did we get it?
01:04:30
Speaker 2: Do we squeeze enough juice out of that?
01:04:32
Speaker 3: You know?
01:04:32
Speaker 6: I thought you guys might squeeze a little bit more, but hey, we’ll work with it.
01:04:36
Speaker 2: I think there’s a lot of good questions in there.
01:04:38
Speaker 6: It’s cord asked. I think I know the answer that set Set’s answer. What is the weirdest health condition slash diagnosis? Y’all have contracted from the outdoor lifestyle. This includes friends or pets.
01:04:48
Speaker 2: Just mostly diarrhea. Okay, just a lot of diarrhea.
01:04:52
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, Jordia, m m yeah.
01:04:56
Speaker 4: Kept it pretty safe and healthy out there. I don’t know Set’s mental breakdown here. Not shooting a deer kind of got me concerned, but oh yeah, it’s that’ll get fixed here.
01:05:05
Speaker 3: It’s something I got to work through myself.
01:05:07
Speaker 2: I like there’s cuts, there’s I don’t have any trick and nosis stories weird insect bites and beastings, including pets. We had one of our dogs this past winner.
01:05:23
Speaker 7: Uh.
01:05:24
Speaker 2: I wish I could remember the name of it. But essentially what she did was poke a hole in her abdomen with a stick and then it filled up with air because her body was working like a bellows and it sucked all this air up under the skin and it was like she had bubble wrap under her Oh wow. Which I always think it’s fun when there’s something weird with your dog’s body and you like google what could this possibly be, and then you figure it out. But yeah, it was a bizarre one. I wish I could remember what that was.
01:05:49
Speaker 3: And then.
01:05:51
Speaker 2: And then we told a doctor friend of ours about it and he’s like, oh, yeah, bubble wrap and we’re like yeah, and he’s like, oh, He’s like that happens all the time, and you give chest tubes. I was like, all right, drained the air. Yeah, so wild. Anyway, that’s what I got so far, so good.
01:06:09
Speaker 3: Great hitting these.
01:06:10
Speaker 2: Out of the park, I phil.
01:06:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, guys are doing great.
01:06:12
Speaker 6: On the note of diarrhea, friday Eras asked Randall, would you rather give a pot dogs or briskool?
01:06:18
Speaker 8: Now that’s a question.
01:06:20
Speaker 3: Randle’s getting real serious.
01:06:23
Speaker 2: I think I think the honest answer, Well, there’s two answers. If I could give up beer, I would that’s a big as I don’t but I don’t think I can. I’ve never been able to make that commitment to myself and my loved ones. So I think the honest answer is I would have to give up pot dogs. But if you were gonna, like, you know, brainwash me somehow, like office space, hypnotize me, I’d probably say get rid of the drinking, because the drinking actually leads to more hot dog eating. Yeah, but he says, bruskies, could you you could? You could resort to, like become a whine.
01:07:08
Speaker 5: Up brown liquor or something, you know, Oh, I can’t drink the spirits.
01:07:11
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I get out of control. I get out of control. Well, yeah, before we I mean, yeah, it’s a good question. I wish I had a better answer for you. If Yeah, if it was like someone said, you have to give up one or the other, and it’s all on you and your self control. Otherwise I’ll find you and you know, put a bullet in your head, I’d probably say hot dogs. It would be easier to do. But if I could hypnotize myself, i’d say beer because it’s probably the healthier choice. Great, great, knocked another one out of the park.
01:07:43
Speaker 6: Keeping come and fill here’s one back here’s a question that I can contribute a little something to. Is this from Wally Bloomer? Not sure what size brooks Down sweater to buy? I wear a large sweatshirt and a medium T shirt. Which way would you go? Yes, I would say large because I wear a large T shirt, So I’m guessing I’m like a slightly bigger than you, and my large brooks Down sweater is like just barely smaller than what I would want, So I think it would fit you pretty well. Then again, I brought I mine’s. I think mine’s like a different about mine years ago, So it might be a different sort of cut or something that they do now, but I would say large for sure.
01:08:22
Speaker 4: It should be about the same. Yeah, I’m kind of in that same boat there, wearing large items and medium items. I go big because the brooks Down you can still wear it just a tad big. If it’s too small, you’re not gonna lay under lay under it, and they’re so light you’re not going to feel the difference if you’re worried about packability, the difference between a medium and a large.
01:08:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like to wear that. I like to wear the brooks Down with like a fleece hoodie underneath.
01:08:46
Speaker 4: So put it on over your bino harness if it’s a little bit.
01:08:51
Speaker 3: I like to wear with that hoodie under.
01:08:53
Speaker 2: The first I was, I’ve been wearing this one a lot. Yeah, and I got another one for like a nice looking one mm hmm. And now this one’s just like mucking around hoodie.
01:09:07
Speaker 3: Yeah.
01:09:07
Speaker 2: Oh are you.
01:09:08
Speaker 4: Mucking around right now?
01:09:09
Speaker 2: We’ll be later ready, Yeah, this is my mucking around herdie cool.
01:09:17
Speaker 6: Let’s do one more here, and this is gonna be kind of like this is going to be a double plug question since we just did a very practical but first like question, Roe says Phil, I have a question. Most weeks, they stream the live show as a podcast the next day. Do y’all see that a lot? That is how we see it most of the time. Row like only you know, sub one thousand people will dip in and out live, but then you know, it gets thousands of views as it goes on, and that’s only on YouTube. The podcast gets tens of thousands of downloads after that. So so like you’re you’re you’re not alone. But I will say, because since we don’t do this enough, in my opinion, we never plug our own YouTube channels or the podcast one. Really we we I think we said, hey, you should go subscribe to it, yeah, when it first launched years ago. But please subscribe to the Mediat podcast Network YouTube channel if you have not done so, I I think most of the people here live probably have. But if you’re a podcast listener, dip on over there and hit that subscribe button.
01:10:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Mediat podcast is it? Mediator podcast Network?
01:10:17
Speaker 3: Yes, I believe so.
01:10:18
Speaker 2: Mediator podcast Network YouTube channel. It’s a separate channel from the just standard Mediator channel. And you’ll if you’d ever wondered what Corey looks like and you don’t have social media, you’ll want to check that out.
01:10:32
Speaker 4: Yeah, get up on that.
01:10:33
Speaker 3: Get a look at him.
01:10:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, get a good look at this guy.
01:10:36
Speaker 3: You won’t regret it.
01:10:37
Speaker 2: He said, He’s a large, sometimes a medium sometimes.
01:10:46
Speaker 3: Phil.
01:10:46
Speaker 2: We got any more? We got any more?
01:10:48
Speaker 3: Well, how how long do you want to keep We’ve got some more questions.
01:10:53
Speaker 2: Track there, just some.
01:10:54
Speaker 6: It’s hard because a lot of people come in with good intentions and ask pretty good questions. But it’s a question that we answered a week ago or a couple of weeks ago, and I don’t want it to be too repetitive. But we can just keep digging through some of these questions if you want. Some of them are kind of are vague, like for some reason or for examples from Jordan, we’re heading to Kentucky today to hunt for three days on public with no information. What is the best plan to start hunting white tail deer because it’s kind of open ended, right like scouting.
01:11:22
Speaker 5: Yeah, I would say scout for a day and a half and hunt for a day and a half.
01:11:26
Speaker 2: Ooh, that’s good advice. I’d see it’s.
01:11:30
Speaker 5: Spend three days sitting in a spot where there’s no deer. Yeah, but if you scout, you can really narrow it in.
01:11:36
Speaker 2: And make cute, make half your trip real productive. Yep, that’s a great idea. That’s pretty good because if you double your productivity of a day and a half by scouting for a day and a half, essentially get those scouting hours back by the double productivity. So it’s like you get to hunt for three days and scout for a day and a half because you’re doubling the productivity of those day and a half.
01:11:57
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
01:11:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, that’s a great that pencils.
01:12:00
Speaker 4: Out top that tip.
01:12:03
Speaker 6: Oh, here’s the question for seth photography questions. Do you prefer faster, lightweight prime lenses or heavier, slower zooms when out in the field.
01:12:10
Speaker 5: Well, I typically go with the zooms because I can cover a lot of things with just one lens. But I prefer a prime mmm, specifically a fifty Wow. Primes are just cooler, they look better, but you know you can’t always get the shot with the prime, especially in hunting situations where things happen quickly, and you know, it’s nice to have the range.
01:12:40
Speaker 2: Phil, is that it?
01:12:42
Speaker 6: Well, how we can keep going? It’s your show, Randall, tell me what you let’s.
01:12:46
Speaker 3: Call that it.
01:12:46
Speaker 2: I’m looking at the clock. I realize we’re keeping people late here. We do have one last item, and that is a bit of housekeeping before we go today, we’ve got to address the elephant in the room. Next Thursday is Thanksgiving Day, so none of us will be here in studio for our weekly Thursday broadcast, but the show must go on. So this time next week we’ll be airing a pre recorded podcast episode with Steve and some of the crew. As always, please tune in, especially if you already need a break from the kitchen or your family. But please know that the chat will be unsupervised, and so if you have a pressing question that you’d like addressed on this show.
01:13:23
Speaker 6: Actually I need to interrupt you here. It is not a radio live episode. This is a it’s going to it’s a Meat Eater podcast episode. Crew at crew episode. I don’t think we’re going to be live streaming it. It’s just going to drop. It’s going to drop, Randal, you really, yeah, I don’t.
01:13:39
Speaker 4: Can we redo this.
01:13:40
Speaker 2: Or you should have told me that before we went We’re live? Now?
01:13:43
Speaker 3: Should we just end it? Now?
01:13:45
Speaker 6: Hey, Randall, if you have a problem with the way I run the show back, we just I don’t want you to talk about it behind the mike.
01:13:51
Speaker 3: It’s embarrassing for me.
01:13:53
Speaker 2: So if you have a pressing question for pull it together, if you have a pressing question for the crew, rand David until our next Meet Eater Live on December fourth, December. This is a really bad look for you Thursday, December. I think it’s a bad look for you. I mean no, I’m fine. I was told to wrong. I was told to address this and and prepare the audience for next week’s schedule. But I was given incomplete information, and so now I look like a fool.
01:14:20
Speaker 6: You’re right, you guys should hash this out a little later. Hey, as always, you want to grab a beer after this?
01:14:25
Speaker 2: Yeah?
01:14:26
Speaker 3: As always, hot dog.
01:14:29
Speaker 2: As always, thanks for tuning in, guys, hope you enjoyed the show. We’ll review some of the feedback and decide whether there will be another segment of Me Theater. I’m thinking it’s likely. Doubtful.
01:14:39
Speaker 3: No, it’s happening, but uh, appreciate you great.
01:14:43
Speaker 2: Calls and uh and enjoy the hunting this time of year.
01:14:48
Speaker 3: Happy Thanksgiving early.
01:14:50
Speaker 2: Happy Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving? All right, Phil? Play the cut music
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