You've you've seen this cook up some pretty wild stuff here at Meat Eater, like whether we're experimenting with deer, making our own sausage or rendering down some bear fat or in one case, even snake oil fat to make a bit of tallow. We are passionate about what we cook and how we cook it. And we know that not everyone has access to these odd cuts materials. So we decided to hook up with Port Road and give you a chance to join in the fun.

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Chances are if you're living on this planet and have access to a television, you've probably been exposed to some Hollywood version of the survival genre that pits man against nature as though nature is so mean. Bastard that's best avoided. Like fretting about mountain lions while you drink your own pee. The reality is most survival stuff is produced for entertainment and that's about it. Maybe it's fun to watch, but much of it is nothing more than a good way to make a bad situation worse.

That's why we wrote The Meat Eater Guide to Wilderness Skills and Survival. It's my latest book. In it, you'll learn from the hard earned advice of accomplished outdoors men and women, including river guides, lifelong hunters, mountaineers, emergency room doctors and Wild Foods experts like how to effectively find and treat water, how to gear up for any outdoor venture, why cooking accidents mess up way more people than grizzlies. How to deal with a porcupine quills in your dog and a porcupine's me on your fire and how to develop a mindset that keeps you calm, rational and focused during your most stressful moments.

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This is the Meat Eater podcast coming at you, shirtless, severely beaten, in my case, underwear, less than half a Meat Eater podcast.

You can't predict anything presented by Onex Hunt. Creators of the most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters. Download the Hunt app from the iTunes or Google Play store. Know where you stand with Onex. They are right off the right, up top, right off the bat, the you know, on the couple on an episode ago or two or.

No, an episode ago. We launched the what's that called s. Brandon Butler's cabin burned down by poacher go fund me, that's a hell of a name. The Go Fund Me site is called Brandon Butler's Cabin Burned Down by Poacher.

Yeah, and we gave everybody a heads up about this go family that was put together for our friend Brandon Butler, who whose cabin was burnt down.

In mysterious temporal proximity, I like that sense in mysterious temporal proximity to him having reported a local poacher who he eyewitnessed trying to jack like deer night before deer season opened.

So bother's body puts up this Go Find Me site. And. You you kind, generous folks out there have been kicking in heavy duty things up to nineteen thousand seven hundred and sixty eight dollars.

Yeah. Four hundred and twenty three donors.

Now, Butler pointed out that he had his place insured, but, you know, he had all of his heirlooms and stuff in there.

And he also had a lot of stuff that he uses the like most people and do river trips and things that good, do the trash, do good stuff at his place. There's been like a major development in this deal. So we wanted to have him come back not just to talk about the money. And he didn't set this thing up. His body set it up that I clarify that.

Yeah, his body set it up, but he's going to share it is kind of interesting development around this case of his place getting pretty much smoke down to the ground. Bring about a real quick man. Glad you could join up with us real quick here.

We'll probably have to check in with you multiple times as this whole deal plays out with your place getting burnt down. But give us as much as you can give us right now about like the latest.

Yeah, it was hard not to tell you guys everything I knew last time. And all your listeners and the readers of Patrick Durkin's article, the outpouring of care and support has been overwhelming. So, first of all, thank you guys so much for the opportunity to share the story. I also want to clear up real quick, you know, in the article that I did with Patrick, I had a number of people reach out and say it sounds like he classified the whole area as guilty.

And of course, that wasn't my intentions. I mean, you guys have been down there. Anybody that's followed my work knows how much I poured in to try and support that area. And I have lifelong friends that I've made down there, and I love that area. And they're absolute salt of the earth people. What I was talking about was a very local subculture. So when I was talking about the culture, I was talking specifically to my little neck of the woods.

So to everybody in southeast Missouri, Shannon County, Missouri, you know, I'm trying to stand up against the people that have, you know, held everybody down, held all the good people back. So it wasn't a blanket statement. So with that out of the way, I had game cameras up, multiple game cameras, and I even set kind of a dummy camera out where I knew people would see it. The chip was missing from that camera, but the arsonist did not did not find the two cameras I had pointing at the front in the back of the house.

And they pulled the chip from the dummy camera. They did. And they thought they had they thought they had gotten away with it by pulling the chip from a trap camera. And they did not find the two cameras that I had in the woods.

So I've got the suspect on camera walking to the house, carrying a rifle and a bottle of accelerant. And then I've got them walking away from the house carrying just the rifle. And you can see fire coming out of the back window. So he broke out the back window and lit it from there.

He's in jail now. He showed up to his probation meeting. This guy was in prison for four meth and firearms previously. He's he's got about four pages of arrest records on what we have here in Missouri called Castanet, where you can look up what somebody's done in their lifetime. And it's going to be front page news in that local newspaper this week coming out. And it all is tied to the poaching situation. Now, this guy's got multiple poaching violations that he's been arrested for in the past on his case net.

But he wasn't in the truck that night. It was actually three women and man, I went all insists on trying to figure out who these people were and got to the shooter who was a girl. And I'm not going to use their names, but it was a girl from St. Louis. And then. Corey's father's girlfriend, so that was the tie, essentially, he was going to be the hero for, I guess, these women that. Came down the road at eight thirty at night and and poached, but there's, you know, two of are all three now have have confessed and gave a sworn statement and all three got tickets for artificial light.

After dark or after hours and firearms from AVR hunting from a vehicle, so they all three got three tickets and that's the whole the whole poaching story. This guy's he's on a no bond warrant right now in jail. And if everything goes well, he's facing four different felonies and hopefully he'll be reunited with his old chums in the state pen here real soon.

When you torture dudes place, what is that called? Well, arson. Arson. I'm really pushing and hoping that this becomes a federal case. I literally just met with the lieutenant governor of Missouri, Mike Kehoe, two hours ago in the capital to talk about the situation and what I've learned from law enforcement down there. It's just a real hard place to be a law enforcement officer. There's so much public land. It's so remote and rural. There's there's no cell service across most of the county.

But I'm I'm trying to make a case to the Department of Conservation and the Conservation Commission that law enforcement doesn't need to be divided out equally. So right now, in most cases in Missouri, we have two conservation agents per county. I kind of liken it to we have more law enforcement in urban areas than we do in rural areas. When it comes to city and state police, we need more law enforcement as far as conservation and conservation agents in these rural areas than we need in, say, St.

Louis or Kansas City. So hopefully there's going to be a change made that will readdress the resources being applied to where they're most needed, which is in some of these southeast Missouri counties. And then I've gotten a commitment from the lieutenant governor to explore a potential task force, joint task force with multiple law enforcement agencies. And my next step is to talk to an old senator, friend of mine who's now on the parole board to ensure that this guy's parole is is is is revoked.

And he goes back to prison on that as well. And then I'm I'm working some channels to a couple of U.S. congressmen that I know well who cover those counties. And we're just making sure that this person goes away for a long time, because I have I've been reached out to in the last 24 hours by three other families that have had their house burned down within five miles of mine in the last year. And none of them had cameras on real.

And there's been no arrests. There's been no arrests made.

So I would only be speculation, but it sounds pretty coincidental that those folks feel like those incidences were some sort of retaliation or did they have any idea of a cause?

One guy had a run in with a known associate during muzzle loader season last year, and then his cabin was torched and it was his grandfather's cabin. It was hand built. He didn't have any insurance on it. He lost so many of his grandfather's possessions as well. Guy's name was Duane.

And I've met so many strangers in the last like 48 hours that have about, you know, stories about the same sort of things happening in other states and across different parts of Missouri. You know, and I told the lieutenant governor it's it is painful to tell this story about a place that I came to love so intimately. And you guys saw that when you were there? You know, I was I had you there because I wanted to show you and your fan base, like, how great this area is.

And it's it's underserved in notoriety, the natural resources and the wildlife in the fish. It's it's such a great area. And there are good people there.

But everyone down there lives under the same cloud of fear that if you if you stand up for what's right, we're going to burn your house down. And in my case, I stood up for what's right and they burned my house down. So, you know, it's there's some reality to it.

And and it's a shame that this is going to cause other people to not go down there and it's going to hurt the economy down there. And it's all because of a few bad apples.

Well, man, I appreciate you coming on to catch us up on it. And when we want a couple more things shake out, I like to have you back on again to to to fill us in. And we kind of were earlier we touched on what was going on on the Gulf on Me site, which is great to see.

So, Brandon Butler, thanks a lot, man. As I say, you know, as whatever Part three, you let us know when you think it's time to come back and fill us in on where it stands now. Then, then now you don't talk about that.

Thanks again for your support. It's been overwhelming. So thank you. Yeah, man. Take care. OK, we got a couple we're still reeling from the pandemic here, I'm now you've had it right, Seth.

Yep. Means that they've had we're survivors. Johnny, Carl, you guys have not, as far as you know, haven't had it. No, no. Have any of you guys had our remote guests?

No, no, no. You guys introduce yourselves. Go ahead first, because you're on the left of my screen.

Buck to me first. Yeah, why not say what you do, all that kind of stuff, OK?

Yeah, my name is Duke Waste Ineke customer service rep over here at first light. Yeah. Answer phone calls, eight hours a day, five days a week. So I got a big old meal this year.

That was nice. Yeah, if we had a time, I'd like to I'd like to add something to Josh Pristine this morning about this, like it is quite amazing.

That you can call first, like it's just regular old Joe Hunter, you got some questions about gear and a dude that hunts.

I don't even you never gave me an actual number, but I'm going to go ahead and throw out like two hundred days a year for Moldea, maybe two fifty. That's include scouting, looking and all that. Am I right? Am I approximately right?

But you still have a job, right? What the hell is your guys vacation policy, man.

Well, see, that's just the thing, man, that you guys are into this business get better vacation than all. These aren't full days.

Oh, I just like as in skiing, if you go out and take a couple of runs, it counts as a day skiing. So when he makes a quick jaunt, you know, three miles into the woods in the morning, just look at a deer for 15 minutes and then makes it back to work by eight.

That counts. Let let me ask you I got a couple things you got to do. I don't want to go into too great detail. You got a nice deer this year. Really talk about where anything. Had you ever seen that deer before? You got it?

Yeah, quite a few times. Like, I actually think twice so the year before.

Oh, I see it quite well. Now, let me do it real quick.

I want to finish my thought, the point of it. That wasn't the thought that you can just like you're going to get customer service from Madu. That is just like an absolute backcountry mule, deer, professional expert, whatever you want to call it.

Yeah. You know, just like getting just some rando that just learned the first light line recently and is going to recommend that you use the middle of the road bassler because, you know, it should work for all things like, yeah, Duke's going to really dive in and just give you a top level service from a lot of experience, give you the straight dope from a real person.

Yeah, I just I don't know.

I can't get over it. I mean, how many other companies can say that they have someone with that kind of experience and success doing customer service for them?

Hey, do you know this? Never mind. I was going to quiz you on something that's in the news, but that's not fair.

OK, I feel change my screen around, Jase. Now, it's not left-to-right anymore.

Now it's like you guys are like, I don't know what you call it. Just different. Chase, go ahead.

What do you do? Chase noaman I run operations for first light meter feature. All right. And I think it's worth noting that from Duke's introduction, they count on his name was Buck for half the trip.

So let's get that out in the open, which if you know the monkey wrench gang, I guess it's a great little crossover.

I feel I'll point out these guys are on and joining us from Mouly. They're all down in Ketchum where where first light is based because they're just coming back from.

So, Seth, Johnny, Cal, do you just matches who you're meeting, Matt, who you haven't met yet, are all of us returning from the. The senator accused your trip that I was unable to go on because I had been I was afflicted. So will you save yourself, Jason, not a whole lot, that's about that's about all there is to say about me on the on the work site.

Got to you got like a wife girlfriend. I do not have a wife. Girlfriend. We'll hook you up, man.

Yeah, I do have a girlfriend.

Oh, I've worked up a long time and I'm kind of itching to hook somebody up.

OK, and then Matt, my name is Matt Desrochers. I'm the that's it. Line manager for Desrochers.

Something Matt D I answered all of them now but I manage Western big game product line at first sight. All right, Kate, we got to take care of a couple things, but I wanted to share with you guys, Jani and Seth, do you know that, you know, on a past episode?

When we had Luke Holmes in, Dan Isbel on, yep, yes, and they were just releasing that tune that they played for us.

Yeah, I think we even had them playing that tune on Instagram or something.

We definitely require better together. Yeah, Kylie just told me it just hit number one. It did. So I sent Luke and Dan a text yesterday, like saying how congratulating them and saying how I had such proximity to that.

To them, their process of writing the song that I felt a little bit like I had written it.

And Dan Isbel wrote back and said, that's in keeping with you being a hunting TV host and that you always take credit for shit you did not do, which hurt, which hurt bad.

Always hit a little close to home with that shit, man. Yeah, he's pretty sharp that.

Yeah, I think he, I think he might I think maybe all of our talk about.

Everybody likes to ask, you know, if it's so much harder. Hunting with a crew. And I would point out that we scare more, but we spot a hell of a lot more, you know, this is a lot more eyeballs looking around so called, you know, what's up with the I want to tell you about this Oklahoma deal. Yeah. I mean, it's like kind of like but this is a real politician.

There is a real life politician elected to office who I can only imagine is acting on behalf of a very, very niche part of his constituency, and he's introduced a bill to get the Oklahoma Fish and Wildlife to institute a legal Bigfoot hunting season.

Yeah.

Now, if he's been pressured by a constituent, we hear from this constituent because people don't realize Oklahoma is a real sleeper Bigfoot locale.

I did not know that. I don't know that either.

Everybody's always thinking it's like Oregon, Washington, Michigan's Upper Peninsula, the Pacific Northwest, you know, and I'm Neyman, like, wildly different places. But no, but they all have something in common. And it's kind of like that northern.

Yeah, Dick. Some wet, wet, dank, yeah, Bigfoot country, yeah, so I'm sure the serious Bigfoot hunters.

Are like many hunters thinking when a specified season opens up, it's not to protect the resource, it's going to exploit the resource even more because new regulations often draw a lot of new eyeballs, right?

Oh, I'm sure the resident Bigfoot hunters in Oklahoma are really shaking their heads that the spotlight's being put on.

Yeah, it's like a spot burn. Yeah. Oklahoma spot burned on Bigfoot hunting the dude, the Oklahoman that wrote us a lot of nasty letters.

Do you remember when we had you remember Laura was a Kretz, Krantz, Krantz.

She did this whole podcast sound like Bigfoot people, and we had her on to talk about Bigfoot people, and it got this Oklahoma dude super fired up and wrote us a bunch of letters. And he's a Bigfoot person and they hunt Bigfoot's.

And he wrote in letters about them shooting guns at things they heard off in the woods and whatnot at night. But they haven't gotten one yet and he wants to be able to kill it. So he can be like. Put that your pipe and smoke it. That's right. He wants a dead one. But I think what they want to not get in trouble when they. Or have anybody take it from them? Yeah, I'm hoping that if there is a season, then there will also be a license or a tag.

That's part of the bill that's covered in Section one. In fact, does it have a price?

I believe the price would be set by Oklahoma Wildlife Conservation Commission. But it does say a season and license.

I'm hoping it could just be like a boon to the department as in some extra revenue, but I also don't want it to promote more of what you just described, shooting and stuff running off to the woods at night, hominids shooting it soon, it sounds, in the night.

Well, yeah, because what it was like the minute I saw I had two legs, it was standing upright. I started shooting two years ago, the state of Michigan, somebody. Hit somebody no, that was here. Oh, that was Montana. Yeah, the guy put a big foot.

Sudan jumped out in the road to spook. Someone got hit and killed. Wow.

Hopefully, you see some of bitch driving. Would have thought he had like a real Harry and the Hendersons moment man could imagine, like that poor guy. We should find that person to get him on the show.

Hopefully the season is closed during Halloween. Mm hmm. And any other hunting season.

That's the world coming to terms. I want to talk real quick, what's his father's name again? Mert's. Oh, yeah, I have his letter here right now, it is John Mert's John Mark or you found it.

What? OK. My wife sent me a picture of the letter.

I asked her, now, why do you think that the that the spiring decoy that John Mert's made for you is somehow superior to my spiring decoy that he made for me? Well, in my. Very minimal dark horse spearing experience.

Yeah, I've had great luck with red and white men in mine because of the Latvian colors, Latvian flag colors came red and white, just like, you know, like you ever catch fish on, like the red devil spoon?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like it's that color combination.

There's a very popular surf casting rattle plug surface thing that's classically red and white. That's right. Red had white body.

You can't think of the name of it, but I think that mine is this color. See, they were all customized, Kal. He sent Kal one that has a mustache.

Hmm. It's a cute little boy. That's nice. It's like a San Juan wurm mustache glued on to the front. I think mine I did.

I never made up if it ain't chartreuse and ain't no use, but I think maybe I was like quoting it. And he heard me say that even though it's not my saying, I believe it's you know, I buy it, but I didn't come up with it, but.

I'm going to use this thing this weekend, and I just had Travis Barton, the fancy fireman welder. Who normally Weld's like stuff for nice houses, handrail and stuff, but but I keep tell them that's bad for his soul. And he needs to do like weird hunting and fishing welding projects to keep him, like, in touch with his true self. How does he feel about that? He believes me that it's true because he just made us to pick spears.

Chase over at first light, he's going all the way to Kamchatka to fish for steelhead and ensure that he can go all the way across the world and have a successful trip. I'm going to paint him up some chartreuse beads to guarantee some fishing. Successful.

That's nice. Yeah, when I call those beads aren't making the trip go. Oh, Kalmadi, a special beat. You're not you're not going to bring it with you. What's the deal? Yes, you need a little you need a little background here. There's like he's going to catch these steelhead, right, that only live there. It's like this. It's like this steelhead trip of all steelhead trips to go over to the Far East Russia and fish to Kamchatka.

And he is going to stick to like some purist type techniques and would rather only catch 20 with purest techniques than one hundred by fishing a plastic bead.

And it's a research trip where every fish is, you know, weighed survey scales taken and tagged and released.

So it really behooves Hannah if he fish to be a little bit. Yeah.

Let's say, like if that was the case to go and catch a whole ship pile of them. Right. I mean, he can sit and catch them and be selfish, you know, but he's going to Kamchatka for research.

I don't want to do the species a disservice by not fishing your beads, but there is a certain amount of recreation that's involved in this trip as well.

It smells a little bit like that. Back to the. Oh, when I called.

Travis Barton, what's the name of his what does he work under, Barton Fabrique, Barton fabrication, the dude, the spear is like a work of art.

When I called him, I said, like, hey, an ass about his familiarity with Pich Spears. He pointed out that he grew up in Minnesota and when you were in metal shop, all anybody made was by experience, by experience.

But Pike's beer making has changed for now. People use those like CNPC. You just cut it on a plate, steel, hmm? You don't like, sharpen up barbs? Well, the whole thing together, it's like a frickin handle and then you get a piece like 10 inch by 16 inch plate steel and cut the hole.

Is that how he did it? Oh, yeah. He has the scene seamanship, dude. It's like a gorgeous.

Gorgeous. Did you give him, like, specs to work off of or did he find them on the Internet or. I sent them a photo of my body's spirit. He likes a lot. And I sent him the sort of recipe. But when I'd done that, he'd already been online researching it and then didn't use the didn't use the design I sent him. He used the design that was very similar, but. And he even put like a little decorative twist and what it's like, it's a gorgeous spear, you know, that guy, he likes it on the hashtag built, not bought.

No, Travis does, yeah, no, like without trying to be he's very much like at the forefront of a like a movement in across our country and maybe the rest of the world, like a very green movement to, like, limit, you know, big manufacturing. You know, people just like making stuff at home with what they have.

He laughs. He embodies that without actually, he's certainly not doesn't think of himself is at the forefront of some green movement, you know, no know. Built, not bought. Yeah, that's good stuff.

It is ties in well with what's going on on Yenny side of the street or his brand new appliances or no crap.

The bed.

Yeah, I don't think it's you know, I'm not going to tell you how the athlete will tell you how they came to fix my Samsung range, said the one coming out. I told you not to buy from Samsung. Oh, OK.

Really? You got some dud appliances from Samsung? Just one. But he in general, he was just telling me that from what he sees, there's very much a planned wausaukee engineered obsolescence.

Obsolescence. Yeah. And he's just like, if you don't have it, he's like, I recommend right now you go online and get yourself an extended warranty because like, you know, every appliance now has like a digital display of some sort. And he's like on an oven. It is literally right above the part where the heat is escaping the most. Well, guess what gets cooked? Yeah, it gets cooked. He's like, so these I replace these boards all the time, two to three years into the appliance.

And it doesn't matter if you spent eight hundred dollars on your range or five thousand, that thing is going. So that's the appliance you had that's bad and you bought a brand spagetti new. Yeah, yeah. Well, and that wasn't what went bad on us. For us, it was the best. The the element that heats up the oven, the like starts the heating process. That's what's going to happen next. Yes. Oh, man.

I feel terrible that you get screwed over by those guys. I see. Right. To run their phones. Yeah. For a while I had this thing called Samsung White Glove Service. Remember that?

I do. Yeah. It was like for redialed. It was like for celebrities. But apparently they made it down to like delice celebrities and their celebrity list because I was I got white glove service, which is pretty nice. Then I gave up on them all together.

Dude, New York. I kind of want to talk about this, it's a good one. Oh, well, let's first talk about this. So some guy in Idaho, Carol. Yes, sir, do you know about this, that you're talking poacher's now?

Yeah, it's terrible about this.

Just as you got you got I don't used to live there. Are you first light fellows familiar with the big Idaho? Poetry that just got busted here. Oh, they call them. The guy that killed the mountain goat nanny with a practice practice bolts from a crossbow.

No, but Chase, this is up in your neck of the woods, guy. A shot? Sorry, I shouldn't say a guy, a suspect shot a mountain goat with.

To me, it looks like a like probably not a hunting style crossbow, but the bolts, which are the short little arrows that people fling out across bows, we're stuck in this mountain goat, this nanny female mountain goat.

And they're not a hunting setup at all. They're their target bolt. So no made for targets, not for effectively and humanely. You would call it killing something. And Idaho Fish and Game, it was forced to. Euthanize the nanny mountain goat. And they haven't caught the dude, they have not got the person. So if you know someone here, I'm going to figure out how to solve this. If you know someone with a crossbow. They like to call Omar.

Like I said, I have it like if you like crossbow enthusiasts, they like to have it be that there's horizontal bows and vertical bows.

If you know and that's if you know a vertical bow enthusiast.

And you knew they had some practice bolts and then with the horizontal horizontal bone, sorry if you know a horizontal bow enthusiast who had some practice bolts and then one day you noticed that he had three fewer practice bolts than he had previous.

You might have a clue. Yeah, boulter, like a yellow, shiny gold. He's he's shaking his boots right now, shaking his boots. There's not one cow I feel like you know about. This is an interesting one, a guy in New York. I feel bad for this guy kind of guy in New York is barbecuing up a barbecue and up a canine. And. Apparently, the some version of the police show up. And in confiscate a hunk of his.

Whole canine that is grilling up. To send it off to Cornell to find out if he is cooking, as he says, a coyote. Or as neighbors suspect a dog. It is illegal to cook a domestic dog, however, the state of New York says that it is legal.

Do you have at least have in your possession or do what you want with a coyote carcass, heider pelt, you actually found this out that it is illegal to cook a domestic dog?

Dude, I'll tell you, it falls under. I tell you a whole lot more I know about this than that falls under the domestic animal or animal abuse I'm fixing to abuses up there.

Yes. Animal abuse.

Now, when I hear something that happened, I thought that. I'll share a million years ago when I was writing a story for Outside about. Animal cruelty, sorry, that's what the word I was going for. Now, animal cruelty nine years ago when I was writing a story for outside about the consumption of dogs. In Vietnam. I had a line in my in the draft of my article that I submitted. I had some line like to the effect of, you know, everybody knows it's illegal to eat a dog in America.

And the fact checker. Pointing out that where are you? Show me that it's illegal to eat a dog. In America, and I'm like, oh, I just assumed I don't know, I didn't actually find that somewhere, I was just young and stupid at the time and younger stupider.

And then once I had to actually look into it, it's illegal in California, it's illegal in New York. Other than that, there's no there's not a prohibition on eat your dog. Oh, you could eat your dog right now. The area it falls into is like consuming a dog necessarily rolled into animal cruelty. But like, if your own dog, whatever got if you ran over your own dog in your driveway, there's nothing saying you can't consume that dog.

Yeah, I don't think there's any rule against euthanizing your own dog, right, so no. What this one of the things that's brought up is those like, why is it? Why is it not possible to buy dog meat in America? And when I was working on this article and I want to talk to some USDA. Inspectors and staff and I was like, you just never going to get a. You're just not going to get an inspected facility.

You're not going to get like the USDA, you're not going to get them to come inspect. And certify that product, right? So that would be what would block someone from.

Trafficking in dog flesh, but it wouldn't be any kind of in more states would be kind of any kind of other prohibition because nothing says you can't do it because no one's ever gotten set up to do it.

So this dude, he says he said, have you seen these are pictures of Speaker I'd like to have this guy in show.

Have you seen any pictures they searched around to see if anyone had reported a dog missing that fit the sort of stature and girth? Of this dog, which I thought was great, and they couldn't turn up any reports of people searching for a canine in the area that fit this general make and model, if you will.

Yeah, like he was kind of cooked, but I don't know. I'd like.

I thought this was something interesting to bring up because the coyote, the only coyote I was.

Was while we were hunting Kuzio near Mexico and you guys just got back Montague's door, Mexico. However, transition that was that was good, I'll tell you one thing about that transition is it's premature, of course, because I'm not ready yet.

Oh, I couldn't figure out if the guy got his meat back or if or how much the state confiscated, how much they confiscated. To me, the couple article I read, it sounded to me like they took the entire well, they took this whole thing meal, which would make sense.

How does that mean you can't do that to somebody? Well, yeah, I imagine somebody comes up and takes the rack or ribs off your barbecue and they're like, listen. These may or may not be a person, so we'll get back to you. I want to be real happy about that. No, I like how the article points out, like now that a journalist will include like a detail. That is a telling detail, and you could tell that it's very important to the person covering this that it was a makeshift grill.

It's like like there's sort of there's saying something there.

I think the journalist and this fellow's neighbors are probably on the same page. They're like there's more than likely nothing going on here.

But for some reason, I don't like this person.

Yeah. And I'll note that it seemed to me to be a makeshift grill, not like a super nice grill.

Mm hmm. Weird dude cooking some weird ass meat. So makeshift grill, it really paints a picture. It's like incriminating.

Yeah.

And he's using the hashtag Kott not bot and all of the other oniony that made it not built.

Not built, not by God, but doing look continent bought and built, not bought at the same time the neighbors couldn't stand.

Who does he think he is is he's mixing up all his hash tags. Man there's a hash tag I want to get into account of.

We feel like getting into right now. You tell me if we wait or not. There's one more thing I want to talk about, big giant Colon's oh, mega, that guy that got his testicle torn out of his scrotum. We'll talk about that in another one.

I didn't hear that. One has to. Yeah. So horse riding story. But I do want a quick touch on this colon deal.

And do we want to talk about the hashtag? That was brought up in conversation around who the woman that. President now President Biden has put forth. As his nominee for the interior secretary. Oh, the not specifically about her, but about the movement, that could be a big talking point.

Yeah. Do I get into that an hour later? I think it's a fascinating topic. We may as well kick it off. It's not clear how much time we here know, because what we should do is do it for real later.

Yeah. Yeah, OK. Tell it to everybody. Just just the vagaries. Yeah.

So, ah, it's an appointed position.

She hasn't been confirmed, confirmed yet.

Thank you, Deb Holland.

Who's out in New Mexico? She's from a pueblo in New Mexico. Yeah, on her bio, it says Thirty fifth generation New Mexican, which I think is is cooler now.

Hard to calculate, hard to calculate for sure. But, you know, around Montana, it's like you open conversations like second generation. Oh, yeah. Yeah, fifth generation. Yeah.

You know, I mean, I was just telling somebody, you know, it's like I had a nephew for Christmas. My sister Courtney popped out of her niece for Christmas and.

Yeah, it's like your sister popped out. My niece. Your niece? Yes. Yeah. Oh my God. You're like. But you thought it was your nephew that. Well, the nephew was present. Yeah.

But, you know, it's like fifth or sixth generation and she's pregnant. Was she like. I'm I'm pregnant with Cal's niece.

They held off on identifying the sex. OK, really. Yeah, they did. Old fashioned. Yeah.

And and yeah I'll, I'll be the first to tell everyone that my sister does a very, very consistent and good job of work in the Catholic guilt on roping me in more firmly into family affairs. And I keep saying we'll wait till they get older and I'll give them a bunch of stuff and we'll be able to go do things.

Which I think and she thinks you should get started earlier. Yeah, yeah, but I don't know really how to do that. We're not.

No, I, I was one time when we took a little nephew of yours fishing.

Yeah. So that's that's Courtney's son. My nephew. And so that sister had a a daughter. Yeah.

You were like I thought you were like full fledged uncoiling. Yeah. Thank you. Years ago. Yeah. Seen them since.

It's intermittent. Yes, I am I moving on. So anyway, you tell us we hashtag his land back. Which is the landmark movement, right, and there's conversations and this has been going on, we got to be clear about right.

Go on. If you don't clarify the point, I'll make sure to clarify.

The point is, is give the land back to the natives. Yeah. Which would be the inhabitants of, in our case, North America within the United States prior to European. European setting foot on the soil and spreading disease and claiming big chunks of other people's property for ourselves. Fascinating subject.

It is a quagmire unless you think that all Native Americans were on the same same team, same page, and they all know all like identifying who occupied what at what time, what at what time, because later, like, you know, the you know, the Sioux had displaced a group from the Black Hills and presumably they had displaced another group from the Black Hills.

Oh, yeah. And. Yeah, just like the mixing of races, religions and who's leading who, I was just reading a great book that Martin Heinrich told me to look up, which is Lost City of the Monkey God. Mm hmm.

And in a relatively small area, the the empires that rose and fell in a pretty small area and a pretty small amount of time.

Yeah. When we were Cariboo one, he told me about that book. Yeah. Pretty pretty neat. So yeah, land back would, would be the hashtag and it's a really interesting one and it's going to be coming up a lot.

My guess is it's going to be coming up and presumably the land back is not coming from the private sector. Presumably, it would come from public land, it would be coming from public land or else the pieces that are most like obvious, the most obvious target would be that you would do public land, right?

So it'd be federally managed lands. Yeah, I was you know, I was swapping emails with Cal about this yesterday. And I pointed out that, well, one cow pointed out that is very awkward conversations. Yeah, it's hard for a bunch of white dudes to sit and act like we got a handle on covering it from all angles. But I was thinking that and I put this to Carl. Oh, the thing I want to clarify before I even say my thing is that it's presumptuous.

It's like it's it's like if Biden's interior nominee. Is what's the word use would be coming from an indigenous culture. If she's confirmed, there would be the first Native American interior secretary. And it's known that she has. Voiced this perspective or is sympathetic to this perspective in the lead up to this this appointment and confirmation, she hasn't said my thing is going to be laying back. It's just like articles I've read about her to try to get a sense of this.

The appointment came out like I was very much rooting for Martin Heinrich that be like the in my mind, the dream that make this all worthwhile.

The dream interior secretary, in my view, because I like Resat environmentally and he's like very friendly to hunting and fishing.

When that didn't happen, I was like, who is this person? I wasn't that familiar with her. And I remember people like like journalists speculating on what might be her priorities.

And the two of them that were that I read about were both alarming to me. Would be land back, so taking public land and handing it to sovereign groups. And that someone was speculating that moving more public lands over into renewable energy production, so wind and solar. Moving away from not that I'm like not that I'm excited about drawn fossil fuels from public land, but not excited about turning them all into wind farms. Yeah. And so I was like there, but there's no indication.

From her, what like, you know, there's no indication from her that that is going to be her priority, it's just speculation. But I think that it's going to put out saying that the cow that if the land back movement.

Is that it'd be like, oh, no, the obvious thing that you would give back would be to give federally managed public lands the lands that belong to all Americans.

Regardless of race, creed, religion, whatever, like they're all of ours, we all have a say in them that you would hand them to groups that are sovereign nations, to tribes that are sovereign nations.

And not subject to all federal things is going to put organizations, public land protection organizations like BHP in a very weird position.

Yes. Potentially, right? How do they how does how would it not become weird for them to be consistent, they'd have to say, no, we don't believe in the transfer of public lands to private groups.

Yeah, I mean, correctly, you're right. So the sovereign nations, from what I see right now and to be very, very clear, I've got a ton of education to do on this, and this is a great, great way to kick start it. And Deb Halland or Halland.

Hey, Weland, Hayzlett, if you're listening or somebody in your office is listening, we'd love to have you on and get your information, your two cents on all this stuff.

But yeah, you would man as a board member for I would be a. a transfer of public land or sale of public land to a sovereign nation or sovereign entity, just like we have been. I don't know. I just don't see a situation where we couldn't be I could see a possibility where we. You know, I get to a point where we have much more input from many more groups on sacred sites, sites with, you know, huge anthropology and an archaeological.

Importance. And and coming up with a better way to.

You don't have access while protecting those areas, bringing more people to the table, which is something that gets regurgitated all the time, have more voices, have better conversations, but that doesn't mean it's not something we need to do, but an outright transfer like land back begin with.

Like land back to who?

Yeah, I could see a way. It would kind of like I don't know how I feel about it yet, right, in large measure, it would depend on scale. Ah. You know, like just I'm just bringing up New Mexico because halons from New Mexico, like Bandelier National Monument. So it's like an ancient Pueblo. National Monument site. It's managed as a monument, right? It's geographically like defined to be sort of, you know, around this monument site.

It's not it's not like hundreds of thousands of acres. But this site. I could see. Situations like that.

Like, very specific, you know, I could see where you could get a majority of Americans on board with these, like, very specific sites that had direct relevance to people that own them, significance to people that own them, like the site of, you know, Wounded Knee, like Devil's Tower or whatever, like like very specific spots that had religious significance and that you would hand over administration, whatever of these two to their prior, you know, arguably rightful owners.

Pompey's pillar.

It would be a great example. Yeah. Right next door.

And I could see that you would have one reception that the public Americans might buy, perceive that differently than, say, Yosemite. We're taking all of Yosemite National Park and, you know, giving it to its prior owner. Yeah, all of Hudson's Bay. Yeah. Or Manhattan. Manhattan. Exactly. We're going to go right to the start, right where it all started with Manhattan or Plymouth Rock. And you know, that state that's not going to go right.

But Pompeii's bill are a great example. Like right now there's there's a cultural site. There's, you know, all sorts of infrastructure set up for education. And I went and walked around it over Christmas. And pheasants forever has a bunch of ground in the monument. And I hunted my way with the dog. To the no hunting zone. Through my shot, through my shotgun, over the shoulder, you know, broken eventually there are some other folks around.

I just don't want to deal with anything. And I was using an overnight one of those Weatherbee over and unders. Yeah. So I just broke the thing in three parts and threw it in my backpack.

So I didn't look like you're up to no good. Right. And then just, you know, toured the site, read all the signs that I wanted to see.

My grandpa's got out of Iraq over there.

He used to do some education tours on medicine at Pompey's and and then snapped her back together and hunted my way back out to the truck.

That's great. And it's like, but do we have to give up any of that? Oh, you know what I mean, it's a very small site, no, you know, puppies, pomp. So Sacajawea a. Psychology are Sacajawea, who was the. I don't know. I don't think they're married the yeah, the. The sort of wife of a guide that was hired by Lewis and Clark on the loose, the Clark expedition and the guide wound up being like a kind of I think he's kind of his reputation was he's pretty worthless.

But his wife, Sacajawea, a. Who was with child, right? She was her child born Pompey was born along the Lewis Clark Charboneau.

Yeah, Charboneau was the Pops had a bad reputation, but his wife, who I think was Snake. From that, if I'm not mistaken. Secretary want to be a very valuable. What do you mean she was snake? I think she was snake in hand, wasn't she, or she had she was had been born with the snake and it had been. I have been born, look it up. She was born snake and had been kidnapped by another tribe.

And raised in another tribe, but knew certain landmarks around her.

Tribe in which she was born, she proved to be very valuable around some navigation and has been celebrated ever since, is like the only female.

She wasn't formally a member. I don't even think she's getting paid like her old man was getting paid. And he was a, I guess, worthless. But so she's been honored ever since being this like the only female member and I think so like, well, they had a slave with them to York who wasn't paid, but he was given as he was gifted, his freedom after the expedition. She died in obscurity. Sacajawea But she this kid, the name the kid Pompei and they got to a pillared as prominent pillar along the Yellowstone like a sandstone pillar that sits there.

Clark goes up and carves his name, and that's and for a long time had always been billed as the only visual marker of the Lewis and Clark expedition is where Clark and I've up and looked at it.

You still go up, look his damn name from 18, five or six, whatever is carved net and rock.

Very nice penmanship. And he named the Rock. Pompey's pillar, Pompey's pillar, and then later, interestingly, Koster, they had a shoot out right below that. Well, below that, below that spire. Seven years later, hmm, now she's shown her Shoshoni and. From the lemhi. Zohn. But who was she raised by? We should remember the Lemhi band, The Shoni Tribe, she was kidnapped by the Hidatsa. And then sold. To Charboneau Oh, you bought her so she's like a slave.

Yeah. Ekwall, Phil. You know all this? Yeah, I mean, most of it, I feel like most if you were a wife, a Native American wife, I mean, you were pretty much a slave back then, right, to a white trapper.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I don't know, man.

You watched Jeremiah Johnson. Oh, that I'm aware that's probably one of the ones I slept through in middle school, I'm sure I'd love. Now, Steve, I'm sorry if I offended you.

All I worry put the colon on hold. You know, with your little report about who you gals like toadying girls now.

Oh, yeah, definitely. Yeah, I'm sure we're going to get an overwhelming load of emails in, as you said, when we started this conversation by email yesterday, very aware that we're a bunch of white European men talking about this stuff. And I'm very interested and very looking forward to seeing how these conversations evolve on the land back movement. Yeah, we just got to get the right people to talk about it with us.

Yeah, because on one hand, I want to not talk about it, but on the other hand, you know, you don't wanna be like I'll tell you what these people ought to think.

We're acknowledging it exists and we're acknowledging that we need more info criminal find us the right people to talk about.

Yes.

All right. Now. Old Mexico now I missed out on the trip because I was. Afflicted. With covid C one niner. Which I got lucky and it didn't do anything bad to me. But how was it, man? Was it like the greatest thing in the world? That generally is the hunting highlight of my year.

I saw you said that in an email to one of these fellows and the.

Didn't surprise you, did it?

Partially, I guess, I mean, I know that it's like I know that it's like top tier, but I didn't know that it was like the number one highlight.

You thought it was trapped trap a golf course, muskrats with Seth?

No, I mean, that that's hard to top, but Mexico's pretty cool, too. Yeah, man, it's a you know, it's funny, somebody in the group, I think Matt D said to me, he said, this is my first international hunt and I don't ever really look at it, that because you can look into America.

Yeah, but half the stuff you see is an American.

Yeah. We're so close to the border that you can see the border blimps, but it does put in perspective.

It is an international hunt. And, you know, you can't you can't deny it. No, it's it's it makes it all that much more special.

Yeah. But the fact that you drive over and then it's only like 45, you know what the hell it is.

Would you consider any less or more international if you drove into British Columbia and went stone sheep hunting? I would consider it equally on international for some reason, but I don't know why it's the North American. When I hear it internationally, I don't know. It's just it's just stupid. I don't know. I mean, like my I don't know why. That's very much I thought that's another country into.

But yeah, they're intercontinental hunts. Yeah. I'm, I'm mixing up Intercontinental with international.

I think that's the probably the the root of a lot of issues at customs for both Canada and Mexico with American hunters traveling is there's part of your brain that just says, listen, your job's just semantics. Yeah. Like you're you're right next door. Yeah. I can throw a rock over the border.

Let's not act like I'm far away from my house. Exactly. I live right up that way.

And he kind of when we started going down to to Sinora years ago.

There was always a little tension because I think we started going like after things went. After the border got where it started to develop a reputation, the we were dismantling cartels. It was leading to a lot of. Strife, beheadings. Leaving do a lot of turf wars, violence was kind of like boiling over and it was like a little unnerving.

Yeah, even though I don't know how many times we've been down there, nothing has ever happened ever. They're not even kind of did you were you guys a little edgy? Driving down and being around no, and, you know, because I'm probably coming on, you know, trip number 10 down there, you know, every time you go, you get more and more comfortable. But I think that's a good question for the guys from first light, if they felt that edginess at all.

Well, two of the dudes from first light, I think spent a lot of time in Mexico.

Yeah, we I've driven down to the tip of Bombach a couple of times, and it's been a it's been a bunch of time down there. So first time taking firearms across, which was a little different. But it wasn't. It was it was pretty mellow for the most part. Yeah, I'd agree with that.

And I thought the checking the firearms in was kind of the most interesting part of it. But otherwise, I don't think I think you get down there and you realize it's people, too, you know, like no one's looking to give you a hard time, really. Persay. I felt pretty safe the whole time.

Do you do not know fear of safety whatsoever? Or lack of safety? Yeah, I mean, I do feel like it went pretty smooth. That was the first time I'd ever personally traveled anywhere with a with a firearm. And so, I mean, you guys helped helped me. I think it went pretty dang smooth. Yeah.

But when you got across the border, you weren't like all set and worried about getting abducted by a drug cartel and possibly held for ransom.

And now that's interesting.

You must just be different times because that was definitely in our heads when we went for the first oh, my first time I thought about it, but I thought about it a lot.

But I mean, this time this trip was my second time down there and it was like not anything near the first time.

The one time that I got most nervous was just when we were staying in a place along the highway along like a very busy road. And I don't know why. But like nothing happened, nothing happened. There was one kid that just had a shady personality about him and he might have been the nicest, like best, you know, law abiding kid citizen ever. No, but he had he had a tinge of shadiness. Yeah.

But if he was hanging out with you guys on on a shoot, for whatever reason, on some property in the U.S. for what he has described to me, he probably would have been like, man, I don't like leaving my stuff around that kid. Oh, absolutely.

See where he lived. And I was pissed because Steve made to sort of like not that it was necessary or even inferred, but to sort of like make everything just completely good.

Steve made me give my pocket knife to the guy because he really wanted a knife. Seems like we don't give him your knife, Yoni. Then who knows what's going to happen. Give him your knife that I just got mine. Johnny was a burrito buck. Breteau, but that's the part that we've killed on the last morning of the hunt. So we're kind of going backwards here, starting with the last. So I'm just looking at what you wrote down.

Yeah, but we can start there. What happened to his to that? We got a really kind of odd story starts earlier. You know, the day before on the radio. We use radios there to communicate both just, you know, between hunting parties and then to also during the hunt to help us find deer that we've spotted from long distances. Well, I'm on the radio with somebody and some other dude chimes in. And it was sometimes because I don't know the guys from first light, you know that.

Well, I didn't know their voices bark. And I'm like, who is this? You know, now, do you know who you're talking to? This is Yoni's.

I'm trying to talk to Seth, not Matt dead. So identify yourself. This guy is like, oh, man, sorry. We're just on the same channel. We were down in Escanaba and we're just heading back to the border.

I'm like, oh, OK, Mike, you guys were there. Hung Yeah. Because I'm like, how did you guys do you guys. Oh, man. That killed 115 and we killed 295.

So I'm like, oh man. And when he said that, like, does he think he knows me because you just like said dad like, you know, like I'm supposed to know who his dad is, you know.

So they they had a decent hunt.

I think they went three for four. But he asked me how long we're hunting.

I said through Sunday. No, through Saturday. Going back on Sunday. He goes, oh, did you hear the military is close on Sunday. And for everybody listening, you have to check your guns in. When you go to Mexico with the police and the military, the federal agents check with the US dudes. Yeah.

And then leaving you go through the same process and you get a signature stamp on this gun permit on the way out that says you are now leaving with the same weapon. And if you don't have that signature and stamp, you legally can't cross the border. And so I'm like, oh, you know, we're supposed to leave that day. So we got to change plans. So we figured out that we had to leave a day early. Luckily, the military is going to still be open till 5:00 on Saturday so we could hunt the morning.

So we get that all figured out. But we are now.

And you found this out for some dudes driving on the highway that you picked up on your radio. Yes. Yes.

And then then I confirmed valuable, confirmed with our fixer cell phone and confirmed with her. And so, yes. Yeah, it was it was very. What's the word, not coincidental, fortuitous, fortuitous, so so we said, Dad, this is a guy, you know, I know it just like some people do that.

Yeah, it was me. It was moving along pretty quick and, you know, we had Horton to do. And so anyways, we're feeling the pressure now. We're cut by a half a day of hunting, you know, at least, you know, maybe a little bit more.

So anyways, last morning, every hunting hard cow has a tag on field and so does Chase. And so we split the groups up evenly. Chase and Seth and I go to a spot where we had seen some deer maybe the day before, and Seth had seen a little runt party where usually you see like a couple dogs or a dog getting chased around by two or three bucks. And we're going to go to that same area and see if, you know, maybe a branch gentleman had shown up in that area.

Can I can I interject real quick? Yeah, I think those parties move. They certainly can, yeah, like a lot of times a party and you go there the next day and the party is elsewhere, man, right. ICE things like, Oh, I'll go there tomorrow.

No, but there's pop over the hill or sure. Anyway, so you go back to there was also a lot of doors there. Got you.

Yeah. I mean we had like what, five, six, seven doors in this one little basin and I mean literally one hillside and they were holding tight. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Set that scene a couple of small box. He had heard another very deep guttural run.

That's interesting down here. That down there. Yeah. That's crazy. How much you hear the grunts.

Yeah. And anyways we pop up on the knob says look in that direction and because we're near another zone that we like to hunt, I just go to the other side of the knob maybe 75 yards away and just figure will glass all directions and first bucket pops up, you know, Chase is going to go after and it didn't take. But, you know, it was such a pretty morning.

The layers were so nice in the distance of the mountains. And the sunrise actually took two minutes to snap some iPhone pictures.

And it was just so nice.

Then I put my binoculars up and thought to myself, look where you've been seeing the most, dear. And I looked on that one hillside and it didn't take like a half a sweep. I'm like, oh, there's about call everybody over. And just like, looks good to me. Let's go.

So we fell off the hill and we make it like one hundred yards from sets that's going to stay back and and keep an eye on the book. And we make about a hundred yards down the hill and we spook another.

But just get ready. And I look back at Chase and he's like doing the thing.

We're like, you're grabbing at your shoulder. We're like, you're looking for where your rifle strap is a sling.

And then you're like, it's not there.

So he hustles back up the hill, goes to get my rifle and he had to borrow my rifle. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And a rifle shortage. Yeah, yeah. Hard to go kill them without a rifle.

In my defense, I hadn't carried a rifle the first few days, so I got pretty comfortable with that program and I'm glad that Buck popped up.

It could have been a real problem.

Yeah, we might have made it a long ways down that hill and he remembered.

So we make it down there, we get in it.

We're sort of creeping up on this, like, low bench. It's underneath the hillside, the Bucs on. And, you know, Seth, kind of tell me where he's seeing the buck. I can see this little draw that says describing for me, we're three to four hundred yards away. And I'm feeling very confident, it's like we found a book, we made the stock and we refined him and now we're within shooting range, right. So it's like you're like still a little anxious, but you like feeling that like you're starting to get, like, those visions of grandeur.

I like to call them where you're like you're like imagining taking the grip and you're like is just my workout. Yeah. Yeah. We might have another buck dead here shortly. And at that time I think he's like 350 ish. And I spot him and he's in this little shade patch and he's like white out in the open. And we've got like a nice shooting range to him. And I'm like, OK, I got him. Tastes like, OK, cool, I'm going to take my time and get super comfortable, you know, make the shot like, yeah, that's the right thing to do.

Like, you know, let's not rush this. Like we got a big open hillside ahead of us, like we're going to get a shot. Well, sure enough that Bolgar, like Rightest Chase, is getting settled in, walks behind a tree and like an hour goes by and he just feeds in a spot where sess like probably sitting up there thinking, like, why are they not shooting?

Like, most frustrating thing from our angle, we couldn't see a deer like nothing.

That's like, yeah, he's just right there, you know, it looks broadside to me and we just had, like, absolutely nothing.

So we're just like, stay on him. Stay on him. Seth and I are talking about, you know, what trees we're looking at to make sure that, like, when he pops out, we'll be in the general vicinity.

You know, Chase has the gun dial to the proper range.

Well, the light hooks up with a doll where she was right there the whole time. We finally see the doll and she starts moving up the hill. He's following her and he proceeds to move up the hill and never stop in an opening and just disappears out of our lives.

Gone goes up and up and over the top, up and over the top.

That takes maybe five to ten minutes as he makes this move feeds a little bit, but basically follows her up and over the top to go to the shady side of the hill out of your lives.

Yeah, a lot of our lives, man. So we went from feeling pretty darn good about the situation to the lowest of low because it's the last morning now.

It's like nine a.m. we made like a call that the heart out was going to be ten. And because we had to go and pack and make it to the military, you know, by 5:00 and. We're just bald, man, you know, just like you, just the gut punch, you know, everybody's been there and you like you like like I said, you could see the grip and grin and now starts to face. Now you're just like, oh, man, I don't feel so good.

But there's like a silver lining because everything happened that morning so quickly that we hadn't got our little burrito in.

Now you've been down there, you eat like sometimes burritos for dinner.

But most of the Brito's go down as breakfast lunch burritos because every morning Luppi build you or if there's a different cook there. But Lupe, we've had the last couple of years. We love her. She builds you like some version of a bean potato meat, bacon, maybe some eggs in there, some salsa, whatever burrito, you know, with, you know, this year, Lupo's pack and some fatty's these things are some of the times are like double the size of the normal burrito, like filling up a like a quart size baggie.

Two of them like stuffed big burritos.

We've had at least two, sometimes three of these every single day, and we're on like day six now, so Chase and I are sitting there not feeling very good about ourselves. Oh, my God. You know, we didn't have our burritos yet today. Let's have a burrito and we'll just, like, keep an eyeball on this hill and, you know, maybe something will pop out.

There was there was a doe there. There was a buck. I tell Seth on the radio, I'm like, hey, just keep watching the hill. We're going to have a burrito.

You show me around about where you are because, yeah, I'm in basically in the drainage that Marc Canyon killed his block, but we're like up drainage upstream. Eight hundred yards and we're down on a bench and looking up at the big, bigger, farthest left yellow bench.

We lost that, balked at one time.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Before you move on. Yeah. When that's when the buck that you guys saw go up over the top, he like as I'm following him go up over the top, another buck appeared. He like kicked up another buck. Hmm. So there's all of a sudden two nice bucks on the hillside. Yeah, he stare, left LSW, I gave him my 18 by 56 is yep. Which the sweet sess looking through those things.

And you know where I messed up man I gave you my post too. And then I was trying to get my Benos on it. Oh yeah. At the bottom of the hill. I didn't have that capability.

And God does that burn the thing you used to staring at them through the, you know, on a tripod and then you got to go into like some rinky dink balancing on your head on your tripod head. It sucks. Yeah.

So, yeah, it's chase, you you weigh in here any time you feel it's necessary, but. So we're like, yeah, we'll have a burrito, so we're marching away on our Brito's kind of talking about how we're getting sick of eating burrito, was there any chopped up onion burrito that one didn't have any chopped up onions, I don't think.

Yeah, it was still a darn good burrito. A lot of us agree that, like with you and me, that after a week of eating Mexican food, as much as we love the first four days, five days on that last day, you're kind of like you're like ready to switch diets.

Like a cow, on the other hand, just says he could just keep eating. This goes deeper. Deeper. Yeah, just yeah.

I get that anywhere I go. Anywhere I go.

I dug out the my second burrito. Of the day for for lunch after this, after a shower and got ready to hit the road and do the march back across the border, and I will admit that that burrito did not go down quite as that one left a little something to be desired.

So you found the other side of it? Yeah, the other side of your breedlove. So Chase and I are stuffing our faces, munching away, kind of having a conversation, you know, while be to talk to your spitting out between our lips and.

We had seen a spike since the big buck left over already on the hillside, so we're like, OK, there might be some deer up there, a few more bites, the burrito go down.

Chase looks like, well, there's a book like, holy shit, I look up there and get my Benos on it.

And you just happened to be stopping a spot where he's like almost pretty much visible with the naked eyes. I put the Benos on him real quick and, you know, with a mouthful Breteau. I'm like, who?

Gaulle and which I said, Shoot that book.

And, you know, he gets down on his gun, the box, like kind of in half, like I'm chasing the old scent of Addo move. You know, we're like it doesn't look like he's going to be sticking around long, right. He's not just sitting there feeding. He's knows the ground.

Trav'lin And because we had just gone through the whole exercise of watching that other buck move across the hillside, every single marker or like visual marker on that hill, whether it was a big white snag with the Blackburne gash on the front of it or the two white rocks together, the tall Ponderosa that's sticking up over the horizon.

All that stuff had just been recently talked about. So as is Box now moving across the same landscape, it's very easy to communicate.

Your whole vocabulary is square. Yeah. Oh, my.

Remember where we lost the book? Like Get your gun on the meadow below those rocks, dollar your scope to, you know, whatever it was, six point five and, you know, get ready. Buck's going to be there in two seconds.

And the second funny punch line part of this story is that earlier when that other book was going up the hill, I kept trying to like stopping in and little openings and say, hey, or map like that. And nothing was working right. He was just following this note.

So this time the book walks into this opening and I might have set a record for loudest because I like I amplified it with my hands and just gave it up.

You know, I might as well just yelled, hey, yeah.

Which works total. And that bugger just freezes up like a statue in the middle of that opening.

And it is like looking down the hill, you know, what was that?

And again, we're ready because we had just gone through the same thing. So Chase already had like a nice rest set up and he was able just to get in right behind his back back. And he had them, you know, bipod on his gun. And we had the range dialed and one shot. And I saw the bullet hit and he ran roughly I don't know, I'm forty fifty yards kind of downhill. One of those runs where his head's moving faster than his legs, his front legs can keep up, you know, and fell over dead and.

We're like, sorry, that worked out. We both looked down. We were kind of bummed out to see that both of us had sort of thrown plopped our half eaten burritos like they could have landed on six other five other sides. But they both landed with, like, the feeling down into the bowl, the dirt. Yeah. And so you kind of pick it up and look at it. And this is not as appetizing as it once was.

But, yeah, that's the story of Chase's burrito buck.

The the. Cuz your hand in my mind comes down like finding them. Yes, it's the fun part of it. It's the challenging part. It's the part that you get good at. It's the part that frustrates you that you're not good at. It's like finding them.

Did you have a bunch of newbies down there? These three fellers had done it before, like, how would you sort of grade them, though, man? Top notch some of the best. As a matter of fact, they blow just got away and not quite that good. But a couple of examples of that. The first day Chase, he's got a pretty good Spanish vocabulary. So he and I rolled around in the vehicle with one of the cowboys, the local ranch cowboys, to kind of go over some fence lines and make sure where we could and could not hunt and kind of talk about where, you know, he's been seeing deer.

And we had a little time left over that first evening. And so we just stopped at kind of a random spot to glass a little bit. And Chase picked up a deer before I did, like, right then and there. And then I'm going to say, Chase spotted his own deer that he ended up killing the book. So did Matt, right, Seth? Yeah, we were spotted in his book.

Yeah, I was hunting with Seth and Matt and, you know, he picked up his own deer. So, yeah. I mean, I'd say overall they did a amazing jobs first on deer hunters.

And did you know the weather was a lot different than what we've seen a fair bit in the past? I wouldn't say a lot got hot. It was really good the first two days where it was cold deer on their feet most of the day and and then it got hot. And I can't say that it got any hotter than it's gone because I think in years past we've had lulls too.

And you definitely realize that like cooler temps, cloudy days seem to have the deer on their feet more make them easier to find if if like our killing success, you know, has any is an example of it.

The first two days that were the coldest, we killed four bucks and then we killed one buck. The next four days of hunting that were hotter.

So. Yeah, but I wouldn't call it abnormal, you know, house of jealous man, just frickin jealous. I was so jealous I didn't know if I should.

I kind of felt like just hoping you guys would get anything, like, in something bad did happen.

Trav'lin Like, not like bad bad but like pretty bad.

I can see you wishing that I'm like Johnny and I but not on. Oh. You know, when I was having a mind movie about it, it was more than you guys.

You guys or would I just hope that you had a great trip.

Yeah, I think that if it's a bad hunt, it wouldn't have bode well for you, because I think that you want to go back next year and you want to hear good things about that ranched and go back to that ranch and have and be able to think about it for a year that like we saw some big box that we didn't kill. Then you're alive next year. Yeah, but it could also be like this, like, let's say you went.

It was no good. Mm hmm. Then it'd be like the year Steve couldn't go. We weren't able to really pull it together. Might be how you viewed it, right? Our toe. I didn't realize to what degree he really made the hunt, you know. Stuff like the gear conversations around the dinner table at night were definitely lackluster without your presence, really.

How much did you guys talk about how you wished I was there? Was that like a thing that would come up like. At least outwardly, at least a half dozen times a day, so if there's 12 waking hours in a day, I'd say, you know, every two hours you'd be like, God, do I wish?

Yeah. I wonder how Steve's doing.

Hold on. He sure makes this trip.

Yeah. We finally had the bam bam the topic from conversation.

Yeah, it's getting kind of weird. You know, Seth, you got your first cruise here, the first cruise.

Your book got basically like your buck. Seth was going down there as a as a photographer, but then also he turned into a hunter at the last minute when I couldn't go.

Yeah. Which did you like sharing a gun. Oh, it was it was like the best experience ever in his career. Carl carried the gun. He ended up spotting the deer and he was like, do you want to shoot that deer? And I was like, yes. And he handed me his gun that he had been carrying. We made like a little sneak on it to get in a position. And I shot across Canyon 272.

It was like a magical snake, too, because we ranged puts you right where you needed to be from where we spotted the deer. And it was for something and then three and a half minute, five minute sneak was 272. Yeah, I mean it was great.

Not one of those aggravating sneaks where you do a lot of sneakin and you're like, oh, 13. I can't see it from four or nine. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I shoot the book, we watch the book die and we sit there and talk about it for a little bit. And then Duke and I drop like we drop off the hill and I hand the gun back to Karl and he continues to hunt.

It's like having a flick like in the old days. And you had a guy to carry your gun. Yeah. Yeah.

So I had his gun for like maybe ten minutes.

And this was an important deer, too. It was a first morning, first day. And I mean, got it right over with.

Yeah. Yeah. It was just like get the ball rolling.

You know, it was great at first one ground and then we hiked out of there, switched locations. So that was like right up the dozer, cut outside of the ranch where you could drive if you had vehicles capable of getting there. But we just hiked out of the ranch, which works great anyway.

Other side of the creek or the other side of the creek. Yeah. And then. Topped off her water, drove back up into the zone where I've gotten a couple bucks now and Steph found a great glassing knob that we hadn't been to before, and Seth spotted a buck that Duke wanted to go after. And I'll give Duke a lot of credit here, too, because the it was a. You know, I mean, relocating after you move them is a lot of times easier said than done and he took off down our mountain.

Went across the the drainage. Start going up the other side. And he was like, OK, yeah, I got him like, OK, well, that worked out that girl, but also like very good decision making skills on on but Duke's part because he was like, that's a good buck.

I'll shoot that one. And off to the races, essentially, so great man. Yes. So real quick, what are you guys like? You guys like thumbs up, thumbs down on Hankus.

You guys meet Jay Scott?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's good.

Dude, what's just what you got was about as much as what you guys like. Just one at a time there. I know it's hard because you're remote, but what's your give your sort of high level impressions of the whole deal.

I thought man between the country and. And doing it in Mexico, like the folks down there on that ranch and that deer themselves, I thought it was about as much fun as you can have on our trip. Honestly, I. I see why guys try and do it every year. I love it.

Yeah, I would I would echo chase. I think just echoing what he said and I, I personally enjoyed the disconnected city of the hacienda and all that. You kind of just only focused on the hunt and there's not a lot of service or electricity or anything to really distract you. So I felt like it's kind of refreshing in a way to just focus purely on that.

You, Matt, Matt, speaking of the the lack of electricity and the lack of cell signals and so. Well, you know, if you remember the the house is set up on a solar system, but the solar system has been. Down, I think we've been there three years, I think it's been broken three years, and so like one day we had like an hour of electricity after dark and then the following six days, it was just like, you know, living back in the day.

All right. Flashlights and flashlights, candles, you know.

Duke, did you end up throwing a tape on the back that you shot?

You know, I haven't yet, I plan on doing that here in the next couple of days, though, just just out of curiosity, but I have not yet.

It'd be interesting. It'd be great to get maps as well, just just because maps is a little wider. Just just helpful references. Yeah, yeah. Yoni's book is a great, great book. Like, you know, just like the frame visually.

Everything is is kind of like that next class. Oh yeah. That was bad ass.

But he broke one of his antlers off. Yeah. And oh to me I was like, wow, that's an awesome book. That's an awesome book that we met up with some of J. Scott's guys on the other side of the border.

We had to drop some stuff off to them and they're like, boy, that would have been a good one just because it was because it was busted, really referencing the busted portion.

But it was like kind of dismiss their focus more on what's not there than what is there. Right. That was the way I took it anyway. Yeah, well, yeah.

I'm glad you guys are back. I'm glad nothing too bad happened to you. Glad you got all all that action. That's good stuff, man. It's good stuff. Thanks. Oh, we'll try to go next year. Well, you shoot first.

That's a good idea. It's still a magical turn out like that. It is a good one. That's great.

Real dry this year. Not much.

Oh, yeah. That's an interesting point to bring up. Success has been there in years past. So dry that the oaks there, I don't know exactly what brand of oaks they are, but it's a gamble's.

I don't think so, not lives or gambles, you know? Well, I think it is a live Oak Island. That's a variety I live on because like a group of. Yeah, I'm a little in over my waders when I just think of live oak, I just think of an oak that doesn't drop its leaves, you know, that has literally, you know. Yeah. It's more like I'm being a dummy. I'm going to cut that part out.

Coniferous that's like a coniferous tree. Almost like rage has greenlees year round and.

He remembers the oaks at my in-laws on the coast, North Carolina, they call him Live Oaks, I can't remember they drop him any you probably 50 percent of the oaks on these hillsides were red and brown with dry, brittle leaves from drought. Yeah. And interestingly, they weren't spending any time on the yellow grassy hillsides like they like to do, feeding like you saw on their cow made a good point, just like they were just traveling across it.

And we saw a deer full on like on their hind legs. Max, you saw my bucket is like on its hind legs, feeding inside of a small Oguz, picking acorns, you know, off the oak.

And then the manzanita also, we realized, produces some sort of a berry or fruit that they like to eat because we saw quite a few deer like just in the manzanita head on the ground for five, 10 minutes at a time, just slurping up something at the base of those bushes.

Great. Glad you guys added to the body of knowledge.

Mm hmm. Twenty one species of oak occur in the Sonoran Desert region.

So that kind. Yeah, but here is the thing that we would be paying attention to this year is Goodwater years. They don't need to drop any leaves. They'll stay green and pour water years. They'll shed their leaves go. And so we definitely saw way more evidence that those leaves turning and dropping.

So.

All right, boys. All right. First of all, guys, thanks, man. I was bummed you couldn't be up here, I didn't know you weren't here. So I walked in here and you weren't here. I thought you were here.

Yeah, wish wish we could have made it, but hell of a trip.

Now everybody's got to get themselves some vaccines and whatnot, and we'll get together and talk about it. All right, everybody. Cal, we'll continue to dig in on this. I want to cover more of this. I want to talk about the landmark deal. Yeah, me too.

It'll be it'll be a good conversation. We didn't get to talk about that giant colon.

When we talk about it on an upcoming episode, well, I'm to look into as part of that conversation, as you remember, that like supposedly Elvis's colon was full, all kind of cheeseburgers and stuff, you know, on time.

That was a rumor that I always heard was it was. But it was John Wayne, too, wasn't it?

He use for all kinds of cheeseburgers, thought that he had a similar three pounds of red meat. Yeah, right. Yeah. Pay full of burgers.

I didn't know that. I do know that he was you. This is my concluding thought. You must see a documentary. Have you watched five came back. That's the five different directors. No, it's a start, it's a documentary about five directors who were directors, who became directors, who served in World War Two, and about the impacts of that on their careers.

And then there's five contemporary directors that are kind of telling, like Spielberg, and are kind of telling the story of these individuals and they're it's like heartbreaking, heartwarming.

It's a phenomenal documentary. It's about film, war, everything.

But in it, it was pointed out, you know, John Wayne did all those John Ford movies. John Ford is one of the directors they cover.

They also cover the guy that did Frank Koppa, who did It's a Wonderful Life, which tank so bad it bankrupted the production company, which is crazy, tanked, tanked.

It's a wonderful life. He lived to see it. Do what it did, but John Ford, you know, made all those moves. John Wayne, John Ford was a veteran. John Wayne wasn't a veteran. And the movie talks about how they used to kind of like humiliate on set all the veterans, kind of humiliate John Wayne, fly and leathernecks, always acting like a. He always playing these roles where he's like a soldier and a symbol for yeah, and he wasn't and these dudes were in it because they say he didn't know how to salute.

Right. Never learned how to salute. Right now, it's a good movie, man. All right, Abbi, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. See you fellas. See you guys, guys, guys. Thanks, guys. You see guys scan.