Ep. 923: Wild Horse (Mis)Management, Dr. Randall Hunts Austria, and Fishing as a Constitutional Right

00:00:04
Speaker 1: Welcome to the news show. This week we’ve got Randall goes to Austria and tears that place a new one. Meat Eater Live, the Christmas tour is even realer than Santa. Roadless rule updates. Does banning drone use for shark fishing save swimmers from getting mauled by sharks? The wild horse situation is out of control in the American West. The Trump administration is taking steps to fix it. And some people are, of course, pissed about that. Coloradan voters will have a chance to help right the ship in November. An old dead dude got found in the woods a long time ago thanks to a forest fire, which kind of grabs you by the boo-boo, and more. Now, on to our news. I’ll tell you what our news is. One of the pieces of our news. Meat Eater Live, the Christmas tour, is coming your way. We are in a pre-pre-sales phase here. It’s a pre-presale space. Meaning these tickets are not for sale. Soon there will be a presale. And in the genius of marketers, that means they’re for sale. Then they will become more for sale.

00:01:22
Speaker 2: So you can’t buy them now.

00:01:24
Speaker 1: It’s pre-presale. Right.

00:01:26
Speaker 3: Okay. Can I buy them?

00:01:28
Speaker 2: But they will be for sale during the presale and the sale.

00:01:31
Speaker 1: They go on sale. At the pre-sale. They remain on sale at the sale. We’re pre, pre-sale. So there’s nothing you can do.

00:01:48
Speaker 2: So there’s a pre, pre-sale, non-sale period.

00:01:51
Speaker 1: Correct.

00:01:52
Speaker 4: The more it’s discussed, the more confusing it gets.

00:01:54
Speaker 1: No, no. I’m going to clean it up. I’m going to tell you about tickets that you cannot buy. But you can mark your calendar. On September 14th, you can buy them. On some other date later, you can buy them even more.

00:02:11
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.

00:02:15
Speaker 1: Monday, December 14th, we will be in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where I graduated from regular college. It was my third try, my third school. 20 Monroe Live. That’s the venue we’re going to be at, Grand Rapids, Michigan. That’s going to be a hoot.

00:02:31
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.

00:02:32
Speaker 1: We’ll be joined by the last American smelt dipper, Matt Drolst. I’ve already got our special guest lined up for the night there. Tuesday, December 15th, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Turner Hall. That’s going to be a hoot. These are guaranteed laugh nights. You are guaranteed. I challenge you to find someone that went to the Christmas show and would give it a thumbs down. December 16th, Madison, Wisconsin, Bubbly Doug, special guest there, among others, at the Barrymore. Thursday, December 17th, Des Moines, Iowa. Val Air Ballroom. December 18th, a Friday night. Minneapolis, Minnesota. Pantages Theater. Not contagious. Pantages.

00:03:20
Speaker 4: Oh, thank God.

00:03:23
Speaker 1: That’d be awesome. If they changed it to the contagious theater. Saturday, December 19th. What’s funny about Cantagious and Pantagious, Contagious and Pantagious is we had to cancel the Pantagious because of the great contagion of 2019.

00:03:42
Speaker 2: But we also did another Pantagious.

00:03:44
Speaker 1: Did we?

00:03:45
Speaker 2: There was a Pantagious one in the Northwest that we did.

00:03:48
Speaker 1: What the hell does that even mean?

00:03:49
Speaker 2: It was a big theater guy.

00:03:51
Speaker 5: Alexander Pantagious owned 84 theaters.

00:03:54
Speaker 1: Are you just pulling it out of your ass?

00:03:55
Speaker 5: Nope.

00:03:56
Speaker 1: Phil ought to know that.

00:03:57
Speaker 3: That’s amazing.

00:03:57
Speaker 1: That’s a theater guy back there. Shows you how big of a theater guy that big theater guy is. Thank you, Nate. Like a teeny theater guy. Last show of the trip, December 19th, before everybody has to get home to their families. Fargo, North Dakota at the Fargo Theater. Cannot wait to see you guys there. Lots of prizes. Lots of laughs. Lots of people drinking beer.

00:04:22
Speaker 2: Some holiday cheer.

00:04:25
Speaker 1: Years ago, we did a show in Billings at the Alberta Bear, and we broke the booze record that had been held. We broke the booze sales record, which had been held by Rob Schneider. That’s pretty good company. A buddy of mine, he’s probably the only guy on the audience, a buddy of mine had been there for David Sedaris a few nights before we went.

00:04:54
Speaker 5: Hmm.

00:04:55
Speaker 1: And he pointed out, he said, man, the mask habits, the masking habits of the David Sedaris crowd were extremely different than the masking habits of our crowd. And then I pointed out to him that we now broke the booze record. And he said, well, I think it’s a lot easier in reference to Sedaris. He said, it’s a lot easier to carry two Bush lights than two Chardonnays. So there that is. What’s this now?

00:05:33
Speaker 2: My hunting. Hunting in Austria.

00:05:36
Speaker 1: Oh, but I want to go a little bit out of order here because I just want to hit something real quick.

00:05:39
Speaker 2: Sure.

00:05:40
Speaker 1: No, go ahead. No. I want to go a little bit out of order.

00:05:43
Speaker 5: Yeah.

00:05:43
Speaker 1: Apologies, Nate. Sure. Just while I’m fired up. I have a Honda 7000 EU generator. That won’t fire up? I’m going to keep this very quick. Can you reset the shot clock? Phil invented this new thing. We can tell how long we’re spending on a topic.

00:06:02
Speaker 5: For reference, live tour is supposed to be two minutes.

00:06:05
Speaker 1: It went for five. How long do I have for this? I’m going to borrow time from this for five minutes. I have five for this? So you got two now. Oh, great. I have a Honda 7000 EU generator. It has a mystery ailment that no mechanic can solve. I’ve taken it to town two times to have it fixed. Both times it has come back not resolved. If you write in, don’t give me any BS about fuel filters. Don’t give me any BS about fuel pumps. This generator will run for hours under load and then inexplicably shut off. Then it’ll run for hours and inexplicably shut off. No mechanic has the patience. To fix it, start it, put it under a load and let it out, run out in the driveway or parking lot and then go like, oh, wow, shut up. That they don’t have the patience for it. I’m wondering if there isn’t something like, so pick, you know, you have a low oil shut off. What if that sensor went haywire or something? Don’t send me easy. Don’t send me easy fixes. This is like it’s haunted by a devil.

00:07:26
Speaker 3: An exorcism.

00:07:28
Speaker 1: Crystals. Yeah, it needs like an exorcism. It’s old. I don’t know how old it is. It’s not 10 years old. We have a fleet of generators. It’s impossible to keep at least one running. A Honda EU 7000 just inexplicably turns off. When you start it up, it’s ready to rock. Don’t be telling me about fuel pumps.

00:07:56
Speaker 3: Steve almost didn’t bring this up because he said the audience is only going to tell him.

00:08:00
Speaker 1: About dumb things.

00:08:01
Speaker 3: Yeah, easy things. So you got to really like.

00:08:04
Speaker 1: Try cleaning the spark plugs. It’s like I don’t want to hear about things that an idiot can fix because I’ve fixed all the idiot parts.

00:08:13
Speaker 3: Steve is challenging you.

00:08:14
Speaker 1: I need a guy that knows these things like his own mother.

00:08:18
Speaker 4: I’m surprised you can’t find a mechanic that wants to charge you the hourly rate for a couple hours just sitting there watching the machine vibrate.

00:08:24
Speaker 1: No. It’s funny. They’ll work on it. I’ll ship it to town, which is hundreds of dollars. Ship it back. They’ll work on it. But you go like, can you do me a favor? Do you mind just running it? Like run it for a day under a load. Put a box fan on it. I don’t care. Run it and see. No, that’s not something we can do. Too busy. Meanwhile, I run it around the clock.

00:08:47
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:08:47
Speaker 1: So if you got an idea, The Meteor Podcast at TheMeteor.com. Not a complex idea, but like high-level mechanic stuff.

00:08:58
Speaker 5: Subject line, mechanic. No, generator, exorcism.

00:09:03
Speaker 1: I own, I’m at the risk of running over time. i own a honda i own trouble no i own a honda a old honda eu 3000 i own a honda 5000 i owe a honda eu 7000 they’re all old someone might say but it sounds like it’s time for a new generator but i’m not there yet randall’s back from hunting in austria yep tell me about.

00:09:29
Speaker 2: That oh it’s amazing i uh I was over in Austria for, I think, nine days, uh, hunted roe deer up in Northern upper Austria, um, near the German border. And then I went South and hunted Shamwa or Shammy.

00:09:46
Speaker 1: Yeah. Or is it pretentious? Do they say Shamwa?

00:09:48
Speaker 2: So I got at least from the perspective of our host who they, they call it GAMS there.

00:09:55
Speaker 1: Oh, like I’ve never heard that. Yeah.

00:09:57
Speaker 2: Which if you think about it, like Shamwa and GAMS, like you could the transition between French and German, a lot of words sort of.

00:10:03
Speaker 1: No. Okay. No.

00:10:06
Speaker 2: But yeah, Gams is the German term. And then they say, Shamwa, I think is the appropriate pronunciation, but then they say the Kiwis call it Shammy.

00:10:16
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:10:16
Speaker 2: And so a lot of people.

00:10:17
Speaker 1: Well, my old man was a big fan of chamois cloths. Yeah. And he called them a chamois cloth. He didn’t call it a chamois cloth.

00:10:23
Speaker 4: I know.

00:10:23
Speaker 1: I know.

00:10:23
Speaker 2: But they pronounce it chamois.

00:10:25
Speaker 1: It’s not chamois.

00:10:27
Speaker 2: I like saying gams.

00:10:29
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:10:29
Speaker 2: And then a buck is a gams buck. Like a gams buck, but a gams buck.

00:10:34
Speaker 1: Gams buck and a chamois are not the same thing.

00:10:37
Speaker 2: No, it’s a word. It’s gams. A gams buck. A gams is a chamois and a buck is a buck.

00:10:44
Speaker 1: Got it.

00:10:45
Speaker 2: So it’s a gams buck. a Gems buck is a Gems.

00:10:49
Speaker 1: That’s a buck.

00:10:49
Speaker 4: This is more confusing than the presale presale.

00:10:53
Speaker 1: This could create problems. Cause picture that you’re in a situation where you’re like you’re with your kids.

00:10:57
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:10:57
Speaker 1: And there’s a Gems buck and a Gems buck together, but one is strictly forbidden. Right. And you’re yelling, shoot that Gems buck. And they shoot the wrong one. Yeah.

00:11:11
Speaker 2: Um, So anyway, the roe deer hunting was, was very cool. They rut in the middle of the summer. So they have a delayed implantation of the fertilized egg. They, they start rutting, gosh, like 60 or 80 days after they give birth to their fawns. And they, they rut in the middle of the summer so that the theory- The theory goes that they aren’t going to stress themselves with all the rutting behavior and activity in the lead up to winter. So they can rut. The egg gets fertilized. It doesn’t implant in the uterus until December or so. So it’s weird to be hunting bucks in the rut when it’s 90 degrees out. But they’re really active.

00:11:55
Speaker 1: It’s that hot there. Yeah. But you’re in a high elevation.

00:11:59
Speaker 2: There we weren’t so high, but I mean, Europe has had a pretty hot summer, a lot of wildfires. We didn’t have any smoke, but it’s kind of like coyote hunting. You go to a stand, you call for 45 minutes.

00:12:12
Speaker 1: Really?

00:12:13
Speaker 2: Then you go to another stand, you call for 45 minutes. And if there’s deer there, they come in. They might come in stealthily. They might come ripping in. We didn’t have any that came into like five feet or 10 feet, but they will do that. Uh, we had some that came into 20.

00:12:30
Speaker 1: What percentage of stands were you having seeing does or Heinz or whatever they call them?

00:12:35
Speaker 2: At least, at least half.

00:12:36
Speaker 1: What? Yeah.

00:12:37
Speaker 2: I mean, there’s a lot of deer. The other cool thing is the other cool thing is when you’re driving around in upper Austria, you think it’s like the most hunting is placed you’ve ever been. We were never out of sight of two, uh, like tower blinds. Like when you’re driving down the road, if you just stopped and looked around in a circle, you’re gonna see half dozen tower blinds in any given direction.

00:13:01
Speaker 1: It’s like driving around Doug’s place in Wisconsin.

00:13:03
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:13:03
Speaker 4: Sounds like Michigan too.

00:13:04
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:13:05
Speaker 2: And then we were sitting, at one point we were sitting by the lake at this cafe. I was talking with my host just about the hunting culture there. And I was saying, this is the one place where we haven’t seen a hunting blind. And then we look across this lake that has sailboats and people out and everything. And you can see there’s a little clearing up in the woods. And I’m like, I’m pretty sure that’s a blind up there.

00:13:26
Speaker 1: And it was.

00:13:27
Speaker 2: So we were never out of sight of a deer blinds.

00:13:29
Speaker 1: Homemade or do they buy an American made blinds?

00:13:31
Speaker 2: No, they’re all homemade. A lot of them, it’s like milled out of local timber. It’s not like dimensional from the hardware store or anything. And a lot of them are old. I climbed up in one tree stand that was probably 30 or over 35 feet high. And the crotch board was grown in over the tree, like more than halfway to the point that the two, the two big trunks of the tree were almost touching.

00:13:59
Speaker 1: Got it.

00:14:00
Speaker 2: It subsumed the whole crotch board.

00:14:01
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:14:03
Speaker 2: So just, it was really cool to see that hunting culture. Obviously there are fewer hunters over there and it’s harder for someone to become a hunter because hunting is tied to land ownership and the tag allocation is tied to the land ownership. They either have, if you have a big enough property, you have sort of your own quota that you’re required to fill by the state. If there’s a bunch of smaller properties, they make what’s called a community hunt where they sort of have a hunting HOA that the state facilitates. And then off of those properties, they have a quota they have to hit. So what they do is they build exclosures and someone will come out from the state with the property manager and they’ll look at what impact the wildlife are having on the area outside of the exclosure compared to inside the exclosure.

00:14:53
Speaker 1: To make a determination.

00:14:54
Speaker 2: To make a determination of what the load of the wildlife is on the landscape.

00:14:58
Speaker 1: Really? That’s how they do that?

00:14:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it’s really interesting, especially with the road here. I mean, they talk about it.

00:15:02
Speaker 1: How big of an exclosure do they make? Just like a sample patch.

00:15:05
Speaker 2: They’re like 20. The ones we looked at were probably like 20 yards by 20 yards. And they go and they count the species. They count the density of growth. And so you’ll just be driving through this big estate and you’ll see different exclosures.

00:15:18
Speaker 1: Dude, I’d be in there fertilizing that little thing and like.

00:15:21
Speaker 2: And what’s, what’s really interesting is like they, when they talk about how they manage the roe deer, they talk about it almost in the same, cause there’s a, the forester manages the wildlife as well. So each property will have like a forester and he’ll tell you how many board feet are coming off that property. And he’ll tell you how many deer coming off that property. And he’ll talk about managing for different age classes with the wildlife in the same way that they’re talking about managed for different age classes within the forest. And they’re like, we don’t talk about any of it.

00:15:53
Speaker 1: On its own.

00:15:54
Speaker 2: It’s all part of this holistic view of how they manage the property. It’s wildlife and trees.

00:15:59
Speaker 1: Do they name bucks? No.

00:16:02
Speaker 2: He said some of the bucks, like some of the bucks people will know. They don’t name them, but.

00:16:08
Speaker 1: They’ll know all split times and… No, they.

00:16:11
Speaker 2: I mean, we didn’t encounter that, but they said there will be guys that get to know certain bucks over the years. But it’s not like they get reserved for anybody. It’s just sort of the forester will know that this buck exists. They live in pretty small territories and they run through the woods like antelope out on the prairie. Like we saw a buck chasing a doe and it looked like birds weaving through the trees, just. Really active. I mean, we saw deer every day. We had deer come in. When they spook, when the buck spooks, if he wins you, they’ll bark.

00:16:48
Speaker 1: Like what?

00:16:51
Speaker 2: Like the first time I heard it, I thought it.

00:16:53
Speaker 1: Was a dog. Really? That’s his warning call.

00:16:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, because they also, the other thing is they have right to roam over there. So people, even though we’re on private property, people from the community come out to walk their dogs or ride.

00:17:05
Speaker 1: Their bikes and stuff. Scotland has that right to roam. Yeah. But you can’t. It doesn’t mean you can hunt. Yeah.

00:17:10
Speaker 2: That’s the same deal.

00:17:10
Speaker 1: You can roam, but you can’t hunt.

00:17:12
Speaker 2: Same deal here. And there’s some restrictions on the roads, like some roads you can bike on some, you can’t, but we like the, when I shot my first buck, it was early in the morning and I’m glad we shot it when we did. Cause 15 minutes later, there’s, you know, some old ladies walking their dog on the road, right past us and guys riding their bikes past us. So it was really interesting to see that how, how, um, interwoven, um, hunting is with just people getting outside like it’s on public land but it is private.

00:17:41
Speaker 4: Is there is there any public opportunity out there.

00:17:44
Speaker 2: Um no if there is it’s very very very limited um it’s it’s all private land from my understanding and um to become a hunter over there you have to go through a very serious hunter ed course that involves um You have to learn about tracking dogs. You have to learn about all kinds of stuff. You have to learn how to analyze the organs of the deer for signs of disease. Because when you harvest a deer, it’s going to go to market. So that’s the other side of it, is the deer, once it’s killed, it doesn’t become the property of the hunter. It becomes the property of the state. And so.

00:18:22
Speaker 1: Hold on, back up. Huh. Like, by… That’s just… You have no right to have a bite of that thing. No.

00:18:34
Speaker 2: I mean, from what I understand, the hunter could buy it back from the estate, but it’s the property of the estate.

00:18:40
Speaker 1: Oh, I thought you said the state. No, no. Sorry. The estate. Yeah. It makes total sense. I thought you meant like Austria. Right. No, no. It’s property of the estate.

00:18:50
Speaker 2: And they talk about it.

00:18:51
Speaker 1: You probably say the same thing technically. No, I guess you couldn’t. No, no, I get what you’re saying.

00:18:56
Speaker 2: Because when you buy a tag here and you put your tag on that animal, that animal is now your property.

00:19:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, but the estate could be like, hey, let’s party and cook the whole thing up or whatever. Absolutely, absolutely.

00:19:09
Speaker 2: And we did one of the animals, when we went chamois hunting, we were going to take this chamois to the butcher who processes them.

00:19:16
Speaker 1: Did you get one? Yeah. Was he up in the mountains? Yeah.

00:19:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, we were in steep, steep, high country. I shot two yearlings. So it’s very much like a cull program. The big bucks, you only can hunt them in the rut because they live very solitary lives in the timber. But I shot two. The most memorable part of that is the angle that you’re shooting and then the recovery. So we got into some sketchy stuff on the recovery. Chris Gill compared it to the mountain goat hunt.

00:19:48
Speaker 1: Oh, Ridge Pounder was with you? Yeah.

00:19:50
Speaker 2: And he got stuck a couple times and our host had to come up with his big Austrian trekking staff and jam it in the side of the mountain under his feet so he could have a foot.

00:19:59
Speaker 1: No way.

00:20:00
Speaker 3: Really?

00:20:00
Speaker 2: I also fell when we were coming down with the chamois. I passed it off to, I was dragging it.

00:20:05
Speaker 1: Because it’s how big?

00:20:06
Speaker 2: Oh, they’re like, it’s like a dog. They’re like, 60 pounds maybe. You know, people use that all the time, but dogs are such different sizes.

00:20:14
Speaker 1: That’s a great point. I don’t think it’s that helpful. That’s a great point.

00:20:16
Speaker 2: It’s like a 60-pound dog.

00:20:18
Speaker 1: It’s like a whale. What kind of whale?

00:20:19
Speaker 2: I think one of the roe deer that we weighed, it weighed, gutted, it weighed like 15 or 16 kilos. So like 30, mid-30 pounds.

00:20:27
Speaker 1: Got it.

00:20:28
Speaker 2: Easily carried over your shoulder. And the shamaw were smaller than that.

00:20:31
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:20:32
Speaker 2: Actually, with the roe deer, one of them, we gutted it and then cut the, you know how Heather does the backpack thing?

00:20:38
Speaker 4: Yeah.

00:20:39
Speaker 2: They have a thing where they make a little suitcase. So you cut the tendon, you put the legs through, and then you fold it, and then you just walk out with a little suitcase.

00:20:48
Speaker 1: Sure.

00:20:49
Speaker 2: But yeah, I fell coming off one of the chamois recoveries and had one of the Austrian mountain staffs with me that uses like a self-rest. And I slid down this grass. They were actually filming at the time, but I slid out of the frame of the camera because I went down so fast.

00:21:08
Speaker 1: It’s going to look good.

00:21:09
Speaker 4: It’s going to look good.

00:21:10
Speaker 3: In the film.

00:21:10
Speaker 2: I slid between the rocks.

00:21:11
Speaker 1: Faster than they could move the camera.

00:21:13
Speaker 2: I had enough time in my mind. I was like, shit, maybe I should push harder on this thing to stop.

00:21:18
Speaker 1: And then I did that.

00:21:19
Speaker 2: And then I had time to think, I guess I need to push harder than that. And I had several conversations with myself about whether I was applying the appropriate amount of pressure. But we were bringing one of those chamois to the butcher who butchers them for market.

00:21:35
Speaker 1: And we went to this little house, but at what point does the estate transact? Do they transact at the counter selling finished cuts? Do they transact at the butcher?

00:21:48
Speaker 2: So they, I don’t know exactly how the money changes hands, but they, like where we hunted roe deer, they have one butcher pretty much that does everything for them. And we went to him and his daughter was there she spoke English. So she explained it, but they both showed us how they met, how they like what you’d see in the package. So like they’d laid it out, you know, two tender, two back straps and two tenderloins that do the rear, like the big rear muscle group, everything’s attached and just gets wrapped up like that. So you can cut it how you want. They make stew meat, they make burgers, they do all the sausage products. I ate all of, I did actually eat all of the sausage products they make.

00:22:30
Speaker 1: It’s a lot.

00:22:31
Speaker 2: Um, But then when it’s marketed, you can see on the packaging the forest that it comes from and the name of the estate.

00:22:43
Speaker 1: But you’re seeing it for sale where? At the butcher? Or he’s passing it along to the grocer?

00:22:48
Speaker 2: You can buy them at the grocer. You can buy them at the butcher. The butcher has a vending machine actually out on the road that only sells wild game. And so you can go up and there’s, you know, like a pack of steaks. There’s a, you know, there’s a tenderloin. There’s a bunch of summer sausage. There’s fresh broth.

00:23:06
Speaker 1: You just chugged quarters into that thing.

00:23:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, swiping. I swiped the meat eater. business card in it probably a dozen times. Because we had to get all the different angles for the film.

00:23:16
Speaker 1: Val’s sitting there like, what in the world? I know, I’m sitting there. Val’s like, I’m turning this card off.

00:23:23
Speaker 2: It was almost like we could have recorded the noise, because I would swipe it, and it would go beep, and then the thing would go thunk, and then my phone would go ding, with the, like, please explain this expense. And we just did that over and over and over.

00:23:34
Speaker 3: What were the prices like?

00:23:36
Speaker 2: It’s like a pack of.

00:23:40
Speaker 2: Frankfurters. So like just a pack of road to your hot dogs. I think it was like six or seven.

00:23:45
Speaker 3: Euros, something like that.

00:23:47
Speaker 2: Like probably eight, nine, $ 10. But yeah, it’s really interesting. You know, it’s obviously like a self-contained system that works. It’s so foreign to us in terms of how the wildlife, how the opportunity is allocated and what happens to the meat afterwards. But, um, they, they, even though it would seem very transactional. And, you know, again, it’s a lot of it’s calling and management. And you sort of think of that as like, not very romantic. Like there’s still this very serious tradition and culture and romanticism around hunting these animals.

00:24:22
Speaker 1: But it’s like, it’s regarded as a thing of enjoyment or a chore. Absolutely.

00:24:26
Speaker 2: It’s a thing of enjoyment.

00:24:27
Speaker 1: Okay.

00:24:28
Speaker 2: And, and, um, and like, there’s still that same passion, even though it’s very different from what we do. You know, when I think of guys that are culling 200 deer off of an estate or off of a property i sort of think of that as like whack them and stack them you know and this was like you know we could have sat on a field edge and shot shot bucks you know at dawn and dusk whatever but we were you know the only way phil hunts them who’s my host on the deer hunt it’s like you go into the woods and you call them.

00:24:59
Speaker 1: Well it’s too bad you went all the way to austria and there’s a guy named phil yeah.

00:25:04
Speaker 6: Anyway He didn’t have a more Austrian. I’d want a guy with a crazy name. His cousin is Matthias, which is good. And then chamois hunting, I went with Paul.

00:25:16
Speaker 1: It’s like Phil. I already know a ton of Phils. Yeah, I know. I got a lot of Phils. I got Phil.

00:25:22
Speaker 2: But yeah, super, super cool experience. And like the amount of hospice, like the first five days, I don’t think we ate outside of someone’s dinner table. Every night they were cooking roe deer.

00:25:33
Speaker 1: Was that right? Yeah.

00:25:34
Speaker 2: And we pretty much only.

00:25:35
Speaker 1: Ate wild game.

00:25:37
Speaker 2: Um, cause they, you know, they sell it, but they also eat it.

00:25:41
Speaker 1: Right.

00:25:41
Speaker 2: So when they bring a bunch of deer to the butcher for them to sell, it’s like, we’re going to take this one. And the butcher sent us home with a big thing of sausage to, to cook out that night.

00:25:51
Speaker 1: But it’s totally different, but that was like being in at like the camps in Africa. Yeah. Um, there is no domestic meat option. Yeah. Jimmy, it’s like, it’s just, every meal, it’s always wild game. Yeah.

00:26:07
Speaker 2: You know, and we had, I mean, I think the last night when we had this big dinner with all the families, um, and the kids and everything, we probably had 20 people there. Uh, we had rodeo backstraps. We had rodeo, uh, steaks from the rear quarter that had been marinated. We had rodeo brats. We had rodeo Franks. They do another thing where they wrap the Frank in bacon and do that. I mean, it’s, Kind of feel like you’re in Texas at some points. But we probably had roe deer five different ways.

00:26:37
Speaker 1: Is that the favorite of the chamois and the roe deer? Is roe deer the good one, or do they like the chamois too?

00:26:47
Speaker 2: I can’t say. I don’t think there’s a chamois harvest that’s as, just in the numbers, I don’t think it’s the same. So roe deer, like when you buy dog food there, when they go to the butcher, all that trim, like everything that you put in your scrap pile or maybe give this to the dog, that goes to a dog food processor. So you can buy a can of dog food that says, in German, roe deer, and then the dogs eat basically burger.

00:27:17
Speaker 1: God, there’s got to be some good dogs. Yeah, yeah.

00:27:19
Speaker 2: And that was the other fun thing is we hunted deer and chamois with dogs the whole time. Like we’d tie, we had the, Bina was the dog that came with us roe deer hunting.

00:27:27
Speaker 1: What’s his job?

00:27:28
Speaker 2: You’d climb up in the stand, you’d tie her to the, to the ladder and she’d just sit there silently. And then once you shoot, she’s just fired up and you take her to the blood trail and let her loose.

00:27:41
Speaker 1: Oh, her job is fine.

00:27:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they trail everything with dogs.

00:27:46
Speaker 3: Even if you saw it like lay dead out in the field?

00:27:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, just good practice.

00:27:49
Speaker 1: What breed?

00:27:50
Speaker 2: Just good practice. Bina was like a fox terrier. She was like a tiny little, she was 13 and pretty deaf. except for the gunshots. And then the dog we took Shamaw hunting, I’m not going to remember, I can’t remember the breed of Ixie, but she was a bigger dog. Almost like, yeah, she was kind of a hound, like a short hound, but not like what you’d think of, not like Mingus, but like a shorter kind of hound dog.

00:28:21
Speaker 1: What was their general attitude? Do they hang out with a lot of Americans? Were they hip to what Americans are all about?

00:28:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they have a business selling dogs American hunting brands over in Europe. So they’re, they’re a retailer for first light, um, and FHF and they, they travel the U S a lot. Um, and they’re familiar with this. So one, one of the funny things was Phil, when I went to go hunt Shamal with Polly, other Phil, Philip, when I went to go hunt Shamal in Southern Austria with Polly, I was like, Phil, are you going to come down? And he goes, it’s like, ah, you know, What you’re asking me to do, he’s like, this is the first week of August. What you’re asking me to do is to ask a Texas whitetail nut to leave his whitetail spot in the middle of the rut. He had that analogy up his sleeve. They’re very conversant.

00:29:13
Speaker 1: I was in Italy this summer and all the Italians have to come up and tell you how much they hate Trump, but they don’t hold it against you. Did you find that kind of thing going on there? Was everything political? No, we didn’t. Not at all.

00:29:25
Speaker 2: We didn’t talk politics. I mean, the other, the one political thing that came up is in southern Austria, the wolves.

00:29:33
Speaker 3: Oh.

00:29:34
Speaker 1: Wolves.

00:29:34
Speaker 2: And actually, while we were there, there was a grizzly a brown bear spotted in the same Valley that we were in.

00:29:39
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:29:40
Speaker 2: And we found out two days later, but they have wolves coming in and it’s a very hot button topic. So it was interesting to have those conversations, um, sort of in parallel. What’s what going on?

00:29:51
Speaker 1: Was the flavor the same? Very much so. On the wolf question, the flavor’s the same.

00:29:58
Speaker 2: Um, Yeah, just a super… Can’t wait to see the.

00:30:00
Speaker 1: Video, man. How much video minutes are you going to get? What is this, a two-pack? Is it a one-pack? What is it?

00:30:06
Speaker 2: That’s yet to be determined. I think it’s definitely a two-parter. Garrett this morning said maybe it’s a two-hour thing.

00:30:15
Speaker 1: A film? I’ve never watched that. I don’t know about that.

00:30:20
Speaker 2: I’m not throwing that out there. He gave a number of terabytes.

00:30:23
Speaker 1: And I don’t know what terabytes mean. Well, what I would do I would make it like a two or three parter. Yeah.

00:30:31
Speaker 2: That’s sort of how I imagine it. But I’d give people a rest. We also went to a gun maker in a town where they’ve been making guns for more than 500 years. We went to a gun maker that produces 12 rifles a year. They’re all hand engraved.

00:30:44
Speaker 1: Ain’t giving those away. No, no.

00:30:46
Speaker 2: But they’re beautiful, like old world double rifles and drillings and fearlings, which is a four-barreled rifle.

00:30:52
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:30:53
Speaker 2: And we just got to hang out with those guys and film them as they as they did stock work and shit.

00:30:59
Speaker 1: It was, yeah. So this is like a cultural immersion.

00:31:01
Speaker 2: It was a very, it was a very, it felt very lucky to be able to do this. And our hosts just like rolled out the red carpet.

00:31:08
Speaker 3: Talk about a four barrel rifle. And it was like, surely he doesn’t literally mean four barrels on a rifle. Okay. But I’m seeing a four barrel rifle here. Yeah.

00:31:17
Speaker 2: And the, and the thing that you realize, you know, if you talk double rifles, the big thing is regulating the barrels. So they hit the same point of aim. And he’s like, think about a fear link. Because then when you have four barrels and you mess with this one, it messes with all the other ones. He’s like, you’ll just drive yourself insane trying to regulate four barrels.

00:31:34
Speaker 1: I was talking to a guy about that. It never occurred to me, that whole process of putting that thing together and ever getting the two barrels around the same program.

00:31:41
Speaker 5: Yeah.

00:31:41
Speaker 1: Because you’ve got to do a lot of tweaking because the harmonics are different.

00:31:45
Speaker 2: But then you double the number of barrels and you quadruple the number of connections between barrels. Because two barrels, they’re just connecting in one place.

00:31:55
Speaker 1: Great point.

00:31:55
Speaker 3: I assume one trigger on a four barrel gun.

00:31:59
Speaker 1: I don’t know.

00:32:00
Speaker 2: I don’t think there are four triggers.

00:32:01
Speaker 1: You know our saying, give them both barrels. Yeah.

00:32:05
Speaker 3: I’ve never heard that. Give them both barrels.

00:32:08
Speaker 1: How would you not have never heard that?

00:32:09
Speaker 2: Give them all four. Give them all fear.

00:32:12
Speaker 1: Yeah. Give them all four barrels. That don’t sound good. That’d hurt.

00:32:17
Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean, it was like a full-on cultural immersion and just super lucky, super grateful to do that. And our hosts were just the best.

00:32:26
Speaker 1: You didn’t grow up with like old men talking about giving them both barrels?

00:32:29
Speaker 3: That one, that’s escaped me.

00:32:31
Speaker 1: Oh, give them both barrels.

00:32:33
Speaker 3: I like that.

00:32:33
Speaker 1: You might say something like that.

00:32:36
Speaker 3: You mean business if you say both barrels.

00:32:38
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. It’s like no one wants to get shot even by one shotgun barrel. But imagine that they give you both. It’s terrible.

00:32:44
Speaker 2: One last thing for me.

00:32:45
Speaker 1: Oh, you’re going to hit the deer call?

00:32:47
Speaker 2: Oh, I can, yeah.

00:32:48
Speaker 4: Yeah, look at that thing.

00:32:48
Speaker 1: You can turn it around. It’s like, who’s that playwright that if you produce a gun, it better go off? Is that him? No, it’s Chekhov. Chekhov? Big theater guy over here. Yeah. That’s the noise they make?

00:33:02
Speaker 3: It sounds great.

00:33:02
Speaker 1: That’s the dough.

00:33:03
Speaker 2: It’s like the little kids were laughing. The little kids over there, the kids of our hosts gave this to me, and one of them has a a call made out of the other antler from the same deer. And they thought you sucked at it? Yeah, they thought I sucked at it. And then I got some lessons and I sucked less at it. Yeah, you just sit there and call.

00:33:20
Speaker 1: Just like that?

00:33:21
Speaker 2: Constantly.

00:33:22
Speaker 1: Not loud?

00:33:22
Speaker 3: Constantly?

00:33:23
Speaker 1: Constantly.

00:33:24
Speaker 3: That can’t be how they behave in nature.

00:33:26
Speaker 2: You might pause for a minute or two here and there, but you start calling with a fawn call, which is like a squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak, and then you’d hit the doe call. And yeah, it was very different from the deer hunting that I’m used to. One last thing.

00:33:45
Speaker 1: Oh, there’s a picture right there. Look at that sucker, man.

00:33:48
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:33:48
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:33:48
Speaker 2: So we watched like all that stuff down there is hand engraved and then inlaid with the gold.

00:33:53
Speaker 1: We’re looking at one of these guns and I didn’t realize this. He’s got like a shotgun. Yeah.

00:33:57
Speaker 2: 20 gauge shotgun.

00:33:59
Speaker 1: It’s like the breach is open. On the bottom, at the 6 o’clock position, sits a 20-gauge shotgun. At 3 and 9, you’ve got some kind of centerfire rifle, like a larger caliber.

00:34:11
Speaker 2: It’s like an 8×57.

00:34:13
Speaker 5: It’s two 8x57s, a 20-gauge, and one. 22 Hornet.

00:34:17
Speaker 1: And so then at the 12 o’clock position, sits a. 22. Dude, you’re ready for action. Yeah, yeah. He’s like, I don’t give a shit what comes out of them bushes. Yeah, and this is.

00:34:27
Speaker 2: So, so typically when you have two barrel, when you have two rifle barrels in a shotgun barrel, like a, like I’ve always known that as a drilling.

00:34:34
Speaker 6: Yeah.

00:34:34
Speaker 2: And it’s a term you’ve heard. And I didn’t realize this cause he, then he says it. So four barrels of feeling. And I realized a drilling is a dryling cause dry is three and we just bastardize it to drilling. But that’s where that term comes from. I never understood what drilling was, but yeah. So anyway, you know, you.

00:34:53
Speaker 1: Got like Frank of, files and what’s the guy way into austria.

00:34:59
Speaker 2: I don’t know it might be a germana file no yeah i’m getting there getting there.

00:35:05
Speaker 1: Um saturday october did you drink all kind of beer where you at on beer drinking right now what do you mean where am i at are you because everybody i know is always quitting this and quitting that are you like a beer drinker right now big time okay.

00:35:18
Speaker 2: So were you drinking all kind of yeah the problem was the real problem was you go to Germany and Austria, and you can drink all this beer because it’s four or 5%. It’s all very light lagers. And then you go to Sydney and I went to Belgium for a couple of days and you go up there and it’s all 9%. And so like, you have to re you have to re-regulate, pull all the levers and re-regulate your intake. You have to put on, you have to turn on the choke. Um, but anyway, that was great.

00:35:45
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:35:45
Speaker 2: A lot of beers, a lot of sausages, a lot of schnitzels.

00:35:49
Speaker 1: I’ll take them schnitzels, man. That’s for sure.

00:35:50
Speaker 5: Yeah.

00:35:51
Speaker 1: Yeah. All right, on to the punt gun. Oh, sorry.

00:35:54
Speaker 2: Sorry, one more thing.

00:35:55
Speaker 1: What do you keep saying that?

00:35:56
Speaker 2: Tailgate tour.

00:35:57
Speaker 1: Oh, that’s totally different.

00:35:58
Speaker 2: It’s totally different, but it also falls under this. So tailgate tour, we’re kicking that off again. We’ve got four stops coming up in the next month. This Saturday, August 29th in Missoula, Montana.

00:36:10
Speaker 1: I will be there.

00:36:11
Speaker 2: Clay Newcomb will be there for the Grizz taking on the Southern Utah Thunderbirds. So kickoff is at 7 p.m. this Saturday, August 29th. We will be out there from 5 to 7 in the Fan Zone, which is one of the official tailgating areas near the stadium. Come say hi. We’ve got games. We’ve got free stuff. And Clay Newcomb will listen to every single one of your hunting stories told in its fullest detail.

00:36:38
Speaker 1: He even wants to see the pictures.

00:36:40
Speaker 2: He’ll want to look at all the pictures, even the ones that are just slightly different angles.

00:36:44
Speaker 4: Randall, the problem here is that you guys are only there for two hours the next weekend. I’m going to be at the tailgate tour at North Dakota state.

00:36:51
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:36:51
Speaker 4: And we are doing that from nine to two 30 or so.

00:36:54
Speaker 3: Wow.

00:36:54
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:36:55
Speaker 4: So way more stories and a lot more beer drinking.

00:36:57
Speaker 1: Well, this is, yeah.

00:36:58
Speaker 2: So this is the official tailgating hours because we’re part of the university tailgating area. It’s open from five to seven. So we have that bookend built in, but yeah.

00:37:07
Speaker 1: That’s great. Uh, that’d be great. Everybody can come find those guys at Washington grizzly stadium. The, uh, uh, Grizz Thunderbird game. August 29th, this Saturday.

00:37:22
Speaker 2: On the punk gun.

00:37:23
Speaker 3: You’re not going to talk about the other stops? No.

00:37:28
Speaker 2: No, I actually asked Jen. There’s more stops. You can go to the website and check them out.

00:37:33
Speaker 3: TheMeteor.com slash events. Alright, the punk gun. We bought a punk gun back in 2022. We bought this thing so long ago that The people who approved the budget for me to spend $ 20, 000, they just don’t work here anymore.

00:37:45
Speaker 1: They died of old age.

00:37:46
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. The punt gun, not saying it killed them.

00:37:49
Speaker 2: Or they were fired for reckless spending.

00:37:51
Speaker 4: Maybe, yeah.

00:37:53
Speaker 3: The punt gun may have played a role in this at some point.

00:37:55
Speaker 1: We don’t know. Yeah, I know. Even internally, I got to go, do you remember that punt gun? People are like, no. No.

00:38:03
Speaker 3: That’s how long ago it was.

00:38:04
Speaker 2: When they call me out for spending all the money on the vending machine meets, that’s exactly what I’m going to say. Remember the punt gun?

00:38:08
Speaker 4: Uh-huh.

00:38:09
Speaker 2: It’s gonna pay off someday.

00:38:10
Speaker 3: 2022, we bought that. We shot the punt gun. We made a video in 2026. You can watch the video. It’s called Firing a 140-Year-Old Punt Gun. It’s on our YouTube channel. We then decided to turn around and sell it through the same folks that we bought it from, which is Rock Island Auction. They’re the world’s biggest dealer of fine and collectible and historic firearms. That auction happened this last weekend. Their estimate publicly on their website, was 20 to $ 30, 000, which we paid 20,000 for it. Privately, quietly, they were like, well, you know, maybe 40,000 if like the right bidder gets in there. The bidding started, it shot past 50,000 very fast. There were a lot of bidders involved up to that point. Beyond 50,000, it dropped down to just two people. It got up to 100,000. I was told that in the room, the folks were giddy. There was some laughter involved, which is a good thing at a gun auction. They told me if people are laughing, that’s… Because.

00:39:08
Speaker 1: It’s kind of like a laugh, like, you got to be kidding me.

00:39:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, like, oh, okay, yeah, all right.

00:39:13
Speaker 4: Now, the people bidding, this is like, they’re bidding, this is an online auction?

00:39:16
Speaker 3: It is happening in person in Bedford, Texas, but you can participate online. You can participate on the phone. When I bought it, Originally, I was just bidding from my house in Bozeman, um and i was on the phone with somebody who was there in person at the auction uh that is you know on your behalf raising their hand and then placing a bid gets up to 100 000 bidding ends at 117 500 yes uh so almost 100 000 more than what we paid for it All of that money is going to the land access initiative. Rock Island is waiving our fees to make sure that even more money goes to conservation.

00:39:52
Speaker 1: It’s great.

00:39:53
Speaker 2: That’s huge.

00:39:54
Speaker 3: I also have heard from the person who won the punt gun. Rock Island is waiving their shipping fees involved.

00:40:00
Speaker 1: Really?

00:40:01
Speaker 3: Which is a tremendous thing to ship across the country.

00:40:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, because it weighs 40 pounds.

00:40:06
Speaker 3: It weighs a lot. It goes on multiple pallets.

00:40:07
Speaker 1: It weighs a lot more than 40 pounds. What do we weigh it at?

00:40:10
Speaker 2: I never got to point it around.

00:40:11
Speaker 3: I think it was $ 70 or $ 80. It goes on multiple pallets. It gets special shipping involved. Rock Island is waiving the buyer’s fees because they were so thrilled about the price. The buyer is Brandon from North Carolina. He did reach out. He said he came into the day with his top dollar at $ 50, 000. He wasn’t going to go beyond that. He got carried away. He got carried away.

00:40:33
Speaker 1: He said he really doesn’t like it. He was drinking them German beers or something. Good auctioneer.

00:40:38
Speaker 3: Brandon told me he really doesn’t like to lose. So it got up to $ 50, 000, and then he just kept going, and the auction just unraveled, and he won it. Brandon sounds like a fun guy.

00:40:47
Speaker 1: But it was the first time that they’ve ever sold a punt gun. This is an important detail. Yes, it is. It doesn’t account for the price, but this is the first time they were ever able to sell a punt gun. Where they can say, this is a functioning, usable punt gun.

00:41:00
Speaker 3: Confirmed that it works. We had a shell for them that the buyer could then make their own shells. They’ve seen it work on a YouTube video. Brandon didn’t say this is why he spent the money, but Rock Island Auction, they do a tremendous job of making every auction feel like a really big deal. And if you like watch sports, this is something that sports fans will criticize or compliment networks on. They’re like, You know, ESPN does a really great job of making this Sunday night football game or Saturday night football game feel like the biggest deal in the world. Rock Island does it every time. They like really hype it up. They do a great job. And I could see how someone like Brandon comes in, you know, be like, oh, $ 50, 000. They end up spending $ 117, 500.

00:41:44
Speaker 1: You know what we’re working on for the show? What? We’re bringing in, for the interview show, we’re bringing in an auctioneer.

00:41:52
Speaker 3: Oh, okay. Who auctions off what?

00:41:56
Speaker 1: Bringing in a livestock guy but my main it’ll be a short interview i’m gonna be like why do you guys talk like that yeah that’s the main thing i.

00:42:05
Speaker 2: Look forward to that explanation i hope he explains it nate already knows the truth nate already knows from the pre-interviews it’s gonna be great because then we’re gonna learn how to auction yes we’re gonna do it in here and everybody can come and we’re gonna learn how to do that whole little deal.

00:42:20
Speaker 3: Yeah. If you want to learn to auction, I think you go to like a one week seminar and you leave there.

00:42:24
Speaker 1: No, we’re bringing in, we’re bringing in world champions. You go to auction school. Yeah. But no, we’re not, we’re not bringing in school kids. We’re bringing in world champions.

00:42:32
Speaker 5: Potentially the triple crown auctioneer.

00:42:35
Speaker 1: We’re courting the triple crown world champion. If that is not some school kid.

00:42:40
Speaker 3: You know, it’s a big deal. Now here’s, here’s like the, the coolest thing. You don’t know this yet. Steve, our punt gun sale is a new world record. This is now the most money anyone has ever paid for a punt gun, making it the most valuable punt gun on earth.

00:42:54
Speaker 4: Really?

00:42:55
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:42:56
Speaker 1: That’s pretty cool. It’s like Rembrandt or something.

00:42:58
Speaker 3: Nobody has ever bought or sold a punt gun for more than $ 117, 500. You’re telling me we.

00:43:05
Speaker 2: Sold the most valuable punt gun? It’s not our punt gun anymore, Spencer.

00:43:09
Speaker 1: Dude, I wish people kept up on Wikipedia pages like they used to because that’d be the best thing in a Wikipedia page.

00:43:16
Speaker 3: Brandon, the buyer, he’s not aware of this yet either. He now owns the world record, the most expensive punt gun in the world, which with collectibles… Something is only worth what someone’s willing to pay. And so he set the price and now he owns the world’s most valuable punt gun. Rock Island, they set some other world records during this. It was the first sale ever that had two guns fetch over $ 1 million. One of them was the Bonnie and Clyde shotgun that sold for a million dollars. It’s now the most expensive shotgun ever. They also sold a German military tank. Yeah, the Bonnie and Clyde thing was like the biggest deal. That was the crown jewel of this auction. They also sold a German military tank for $ 1 million. Again, the first time at a firearms auction that two items went for over a million. And Bonnie’s shotgun is now the most expensive shotgun in the world as well. So the most expensive shotgun and the most expensive punt gun.

00:44:10
Speaker 1: You know what I’d pay a lot for?

00:44:12
Speaker 5: What?

00:44:13
Speaker 1: I’d pay a lot for the shotgun that was used to kill the man that killed Robert.

00:44:22
Speaker 5: Ford.

00:44:25
Speaker 1: The gun that killed Robert Ford, who killed Jesse James.

00:44:27
Speaker 3: You want that one?

00:44:28
Speaker 1: I want that shotgun.

00:44:29
Speaker 3: Ask Rock Island. They might track it down.

00:44:31
Speaker 1: Witnesses say it nearly cut Bob Ford in half. Wow. Other witnesses say it cut his head in half.

00:44:38
Speaker 3: Okay.

00:44:39
Speaker 1: He was a slight man.

00:44:42
Speaker 3: The Bonnie and Clyde shotgun, it’s the one that she’s holding in a photo where she’s got the barrel shoved into, I think, Clyde’s guts. They’re just like posing for a photo, but that is the shotgun. My understanding is they didn’t know that existed until like a year ago. It kind of just showed up and they’re like, oh, my gosh.

00:44:57
Speaker 1: This is and they were satisfied with the provenance.

00:45:01
Speaker 3: They I guess they tracked down that like this is official. It’s actually Bonnie and Clyde’s gun. Now the most expensive shotgun in the world. Again, thanks to Brandon for setting that world record. Rock Island for helping us create more money for conservation and meat eater for funding this big dumb idea of having a punt gun.

00:45:18
Speaker 1: Love it.

00:45:19
Speaker 4: What a happy ending.

00:45:20
Speaker 1: That’s the end, man. No one’s ever going to bring that up again on this show, I can tell you that much.

00:45:23
Speaker 2: Whenever I buy a new gun, I’ll be like, Sidney, you’ve got to think, this could be worth $ 120, 000 someday.

00:45:29
Speaker 5: No.

00:45:30
Speaker 2: If I was her, I would say.

00:45:34
Speaker 1: That.

00:45:35
Speaker 2: Okay.

00:45:41
Speaker 5: AMA solicitations. In September, we’re doing an Ask Me Anything episode with Steve.

00:45:47
Speaker 1: Which will be the new show.

00:45:48
Speaker 5: Which will be the new show.

00:45:49
Speaker 1: For that week.

00:45:50
Speaker 5: For obvious reasons, everyone is gone in September. And so this is what we’re going to do. It’s going to be great.

00:45:56
Speaker 3: It’s going to be the best episode we’ve done. I’m excited to hear Steve. Steve, here’s the deal. You need to send in good questions that are brief. I will not read long questions.

00:46:07
Speaker 2: Send them to The Meat Eater Podcast at TheMeatEater.com.

00:46:10
Speaker 5: If you put them in the YouTube comments, I’m probably not going to see them. And so email me. The window closes September 3rd. And we’ll see if they make the cut.

00:46:20
Speaker 1: Great. On to corrections. We have a nitpicky correction to clarification and a helpful critique of trail cam usage. The winner gets a Moultrie Edge sail cam with, and this is the important part, a one-year subscription. You get a camera and a subscription. One is from the… Great writer, tennis writer, outdoor writer, hunting writer, Peter Bodo. New York Times contributor. Are we using the interest-o-meters or not?

00:46:55
Speaker 5: We’re not using it for this one. I’ll talk to the guys who sent it in.

00:46:58
Speaker 1: I’m interested in it. We’re going to pick the favorite, though. You’re interested already? Yeah, I’m in. I didn’t hear damn correct.

00:47:04
Speaker 2: Peter Bodo, Austrian-born.

00:47:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw that. Not American. I just read it as not American, but yeah, Austrian-born. Hey, fellas. I don’t want to be mean-spirited. But as a raggedy-ass old journalist, I have a few grammatical quibbles to share. They are not super current, but they recur across different episodes. This first. Morality. In a recent news show, episode 866, Boundary Waters Tragedy, the gang discussed the morals morality of the old coot trying to prevent others from accessing public hunting land for turkey hunting. You debated the morality of this, but you should have been debating the ethics of it. As per the Oxford Dictionary, morals are your own internal rules about right and wrong. Ethics are the shared rules of a group, job, or society. So clearly the gent’s behavior was an ethical rather than a moral issue. If it helps, this is a very common error made by all kinds of folks. A bank robber is not immoral. He is unethical. Learning curve. Spencer on the trivia show has talked about the learning curve, making a common mistake. Something that is easy to learn has a steep learning curve. You get from point A to point Z very quickly. Something difficult to learn, expert marksmanship spay casting, has a flat learning curve. I can’t point to specific episodes as it would take too much research, but it always struck me. The reality is something easy has a steep learning curve. I didn’t know that.

00:49:03
Speaker 3: I don’t think anybody knows that.

00:49:04
Speaker 1: That’s good. Finally. Finally. And lastly, especially on the trivia show, many contestants consistently confuse less and fewer. Dude, I didn’t know this either. This is amazing. Less is for things you cannot count. Well, I’m going to put it right back in his face on this one because he says the well has less water. You damn sure count the water in a well.

00:49:31
Speaker 4: But only if you’re referring to the units of water. If you just say water is like a general concept, it has less water. If you said it has fewer like cubic feet of water.

00:49:40
Speaker 1: Fewer is for things you can’t. Giannis has only six TSS shotgun shells left. Hmm. The first two, I like. That third one, I got real questions.

00:49:56
Speaker 4: Before we move on.

00:49:57
Speaker 1: Correction two, if I may.

00:49:59
Speaker 4: I just got to throw a plug out for Pete’s book, Whitetail Nation. It is an under-the-radar whitetail gem. Nobody talks about this. Yeah, it’s worth blurbing. Um, very fun read. It talks about his kind of journey as a deer hunter from New York and kind of wants to explore this wild deer hunting culture across the rest of the country. And so he goes on this kind of year long pursuit of traveling to different States, diving into Texas, Montana, the Midwest, and, you know, does it in a very interesting, unique way, given his perspective, his writing pedigree, uh, very well done and a fun read for really any deer hunter.

00:50:38
Speaker 1: Great. Thank you.

00:50:39
Speaker 4: Sounds like a mildly steep learning curve.

00:50:43
Speaker 3: Mildly.

00:50:44
Speaker 1: He didn’t get into mildly steep. No, it’s a new one. Number two, recent Alpha Gal podcast, they had a brief tangent about chiggers. Well, hey friends, he says, it’s about chiggers. He says, just an FYI, chiggers live and lay eggs in the soil. They latch onto you and secrete digestive enzymes into your skin. Then they use sort of a fancy mouth straw to suck up your broken down proteins. None of this is new. The part that itches are those digestive enzymes. The spots are just, excuse me, the spots are just an inflammatory response to the tissue breakdown. None of this is new.

00:51:28
Speaker 5: It’s just clarification.

00:51:28
Speaker 1: There are no chiggers under the skin or anything like that. Okay. Not new. Best way to treat the bites. This is new. It’s just with a topical anti-inflammatory or anti-itch cream of some sort. Same sort of thing you’d use to get your dog to stop scratching a sore spot. This is not going to be the winner. Love him to death. Love him to death. I’m sure he loves his family. I’m sure he’s a great American. Not the winner.

00:52:05
Speaker 4: No, but it says he designs anti-inflammatory and anti-itch products.

00:52:08
Speaker 1: The reason he wrote in is because… He’s got a horse in the race, too.

00:52:11
Speaker 5: In your conversation, you talked about various remedies like rubbing oil.

00:52:16
Speaker 1: No, no. We talked about various mids. Right.

00:52:18
Speaker 5: But then you never said what actually worked. And he was just saying this actually works. But he’s also… He’s in the pocket of big anti-itch.

00:52:26
Speaker 1: I love you. I think we should send him a care package regardless. Because I like him so much. But that’s just not… Okay. Okay. Episode 915, Dan Moultrie lost camera story. I was explaining that I have lost a camera. It cranks out great photos every day. We cannot find it. Oh, interesting. Well, not so much interesting anymore.

00:52:46
Speaker 3: Okay.

00:52:47
Speaker 1: Because the lat lawn is in the camera. Hey, Steve, listening to the podcast this week and your question about how to find the trail cam of Dan Moultrie. Just a little more background on this. We were putting a trail cam where we knew there had been a lot of ocelots. from an ocelot collaring project. We knew there was a lot of ocelot pings in the area. And so we’re like, let’s go put our own camera there and try to make a sweet ocelot video.

00:53:13
Speaker 3: In what state?

00:53:14
Speaker 1: Texas. Okay. So we make a pin and we get there and we make a pin on a map, but we get there and we don’t like the area. Like it doesn’t live up to its promise. The e-scouting didn’t ground check. So then we wander off into the bush and And then we find the queen mother of all trail cam setups. No one ever thinks to repin the actual place. I send Yanni. Yanni’s down there. I say, hey, go find our camera. Yanni wanders all over hell, and I never even get a picture of him looking for it. I was like, it’s by a bush.

00:53:51
Speaker 3: What do you get on this trail camera?

00:53:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, did you get the ocelot? Everything but what I’m trying to get. Okay. Hogs, Javelinas, Nilgai, Waterbuck, Big Bucks, Regular Bucks, you name it. Coyotes, Albuazu, Oryx. So, isn’t that a Gemsbok? Oryx. But we can’t find it. Okay.

00:54:15
Speaker 3: Literally everything.

00:54:17
Speaker 1: And the guy, the corrector, says, I was a little surprised that neither of you thought about the camera’s GPS location. My Moultrie Edge 2 Pro has GPS data under device info. The gal. Steph. Steph Maddell.

00:54:34
Speaker 4: Could be a.

00:54:36
Speaker 3: Guy.

00:54:37
Speaker 4: Steph Curry.

00:54:38
Speaker 1: As opposed to Tim Curry. So, yes. The minute we talked about this, it became… Someone else in the room pointed out you could just go in there and into your app and find your lat-lon. So the camera’s now no longer lost.

00:54:57
Speaker 3: Okay.

00:54:57
Speaker 1: I got pictures this morning. Great photos. Yep. I’m going with the camera. Same. Are we going to vote? That’s my vote. Okay. Let’s back up. Nitpicky grammatical stuff. Great. Nate likes it.

00:55:20
Speaker 3: I’m going nitpicky. Wow.

00:55:21
Speaker 1: Wow. Wow.

00:55:22
Speaker 4: I feel like I learned something.

00:55:24
Speaker 1: Yep. He put a lot of thought into that.

00:55:26
Speaker 2: The learning curve thing, I realize I’ve been doing that wrong my whole life.

00:55:30
Speaker 1: That’s a four vote.

00:55:30
Speaker 3: But that just makes me not want to say learning curve ever again.

00:55:33
Speaker 1: Because you’re just going to mix it up.

00:55:34
Speaker 3: Well, if you don’t mix it up, though, then you’re like.

00:55:36
Speaker 4: I think you’re confusing me.

00:55:37
Speaker 3: Correcting somebody, and that’s kind of weird.

00:55:39
Speaker 1: That’s just one. Can I see you show hands again?

00:55:43
Speaker 5: No, I’m going to change my vote.

00:55:44
Speaker 4: Oh, you can’t do that.

00:55:45
Speaker 2: No, because now I can’t say learning curve.

00:55:49
Speaker 1: You can. No, just say it right. You can.

00:55:51
Speaker 2: You just have to correct.

00:55:51
Speaker 1: Are you honestly changing your vote? I’m changing my vote.

00:55:55
Speaker 5: Only because you flip-flopper.

00:55:57
Speaker 1: Yep, I’m flip-flopping. Okay, so three. There’s a potential. There’s seven votes in the room. Anyone on using anti-whatevers when you get a sugar bite? Using this guy’s personal products. No one.

00:56:14
Speaker 3: The one Steve declared not to be a winner.

00:56:16
Speaker 1: Your camera’s not, in fact, lost. I’m going with that one. Wow, four.

00:56:20
Speaker 3: Okay, wow.

00:56:22
Speaker 1: Sorry, Bodo. Peter Bodo. Love you to death. Love you to death. You just had tough competition.

00:56:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, you just got fewer votes than the other one.

00:56:30
Speaker 1: Yeah. That’s all that happened.

00:56:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, it’s Nate’s fault.

00:56:35
Speaker 1: Sorry, Pete. Still a good book. All right.

00:56:41
Speaker 5: This takes us to the first harvest success sent into the Meteor Meat Eater podcast inbox from Rodney Kidd. Sends in a report.

00:56:49
Speaker 3: Three squirrels.

00:56:51
Speaker 5: He says, a little report from Indiana early squirrel season. They are not moving much.

00:56:55
Speaker 3: It’s hot.

00:56:56
Speaker 5: They are speaking to each other in soft tones. You must really listen for them and then sneak.

00:57:03
Speaker 1: And he’s got a nice photo. He’s got his double barrel scatter gun. He’s got a stringer, a three. Is that a brace or is a brace two? He’s got a brace and a half. He’s got a brace and a half of gray squirrels hanging from a cord. He’s got a backpack. He’s got a bear grease hat and a real tree. No. And Mossy Oak.

00:57:23
Speaker 3: A brace is a pair. Or exactly two.

00:57:27
Speaker 1: Great. And he’s got some kind of woods in Indiana. It looks like it. I just get itchy looking at that. Yeah. That is poison ivy country. I would be washing my hands after I skin those squirrels. People don’t know this. Squirrels harvest that soft fuzz off the vines and line their nests with it.

00:57:50
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:57:50
Speaker 1: You can get tore up from squirrels and poison ivy country.

00:57:54
Speaker 3: Hmm.

00:57:55
Speaker 1: I was sharing that in Michigan growing up, September 15th, opening day of squirrels. I could always take opening day of deer rifle off, opening day of trapping off. I could take opening day of bow off. We could kind of take like a half day off for opening day of squirrel season. But the first weekend that would happen of squirrel season, if it didn’t, you know, whatever, first weekend, I just loved going down into the beech woods, the beech trees. and sitting there at daylight and listening to the beach nuts raining down. And you just sneak in under where they’re like, peep, peep, peep, peep, hitting the forest floor. And the canopy be so thick the squirrels wouldn’t even know you were down below them. Oh, such a good time. And then shooting on up in there with a shotgun. Not even totally sure what you were aiming at. At least that’s how I remember it happening. You’re like, I feel like that noise is coming from right thereabouts.

00:58:55
Speaker 3: Then the squirrels did know you were there.

00:58:56
Speaker 1: Yep, then they knew you were there. But man, that first trip, you were going to get your limit of five, man. Such a good time. In the news. Well, that’s great. The in the news. I read the news. I skim. So just to keep my head balanced in life, I read a bunch of different news sources. So when I wake up in the morning, I lay in bed, the missus would still be sleeping. And I’ll go into, um, take talk. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. No. I’ll peruse the Wall Street Journal. This is just a headline run. Just to be like, what happened overnight? The major things that shape global event kind of stuff. I’ll skim Wall Street Journal. I’ll skim the New York Times. I’ll skim The Economist. I’ll skim Free Press. And I might get on to some other stuff too. But that way you’re hearing it from both sides. Because all these places have their own biases. So that way it kind of levels your head out a little bit. I love New York Times. I like this part of my peruse. But they have the wrong guy. They have the wrong guy on the wild horse beat. He’s the wrong man for the job. Sure he’s a nice guy. Sure he loves his family. Great American. Dave Phillips. I got turned off by the journalist Dave Phillips years ago and he wrote a piece. You know those pieces where those pieces where it’s not it’s politics. Like this thing that came out the other day, this news thing, it gets picked up all over the place. And this news thing that like, Hey, mountain lions reduce vehicle collisions. Cause there’s some like cockamamie, like analysis. They’ve determined that if you have like, it’s sort of the argument is the more mountain lions we have mean the less mountain lions, anybody shoots, the more they’ll scare deer away from roads.

01:00:58
Speaker 5: Yep.

01:00:59
Speaker 1: And I’m like, but when you just change the headline to road hunters, like road hunters reduce deer car collisions. Because if you look at like how many deer get killed by mountain lions, that number is dwarfed by the number of deer that get killed by humans. Why wouldn’t it be a big study about how humans reduce deer car collisions? But it’s like, it’s politics. They knew where they wanted to land. They knew they wanted to land at, look at the bright side. All these people are anti-predators, but it reduces… It’s hogwash. It’s politics, which is cool. It’s fine. That’s what I traffic in. I traffic in manipulating shit to get what I want. Do you know what I’m saying? But at least I admit it.

01:01:45
Speaker 4: Yeah.

01:01:47
Speaker 1: This guy doesn’t. This guy did this piece a while back where he’s like, hey, good thing about mountain lions is they’ll reduce the wild horse overpopulation. And you talk to anybody that has anything to do with wild horses or anyone that has anything to do with mountain lions, and they’ll be like, no. Cute, but no. Anyways, they’ve uncovered… So the New York Times has ran this kind of investigative piece where they’ve uncovered that the Trump administration… has found this loophole by which they are shipping, they are selling protected wild horses to slaughter through a loophole. Meaning, if you, well, let me give you a little background. In the mid-70s, how long did I tell you I needed for this?

01:02:34
Speaker 5: 10 minutes.

01:02:35
Speaker 4: Okay.

01:02:37
Speaker 1: In the mid-70s, this country passed a very, very bad, short-sighted piece of legislation, which was it’s known as it’s, I can’t remember the exact term, but the wild horse and burrow protection act, terrible piece of legislation that did not contemplate the complex, the complexities of the future. At the time there was maybe 25,000 wild horses and burrows out on the landscape of the American West. It defined what a wild horse and burrow was and it protected them. And, and, really tied the hands of future managers and how to deal with the situation. Should it get out of control? We are now there. It was 1971.

01:03:19
Speaker 3: It was called the wild free roaming horses and burrows act.

01:03:23
Speaker 1: Okay. Short-sighted. It happens like it happens. You make short-sighted things because you can’t contemplate the future. People always point this up with the constitution. Critics of the American constitution will say they never contemplated the Crypto, they never contemplated whatever, you know what I mean? They like, they wrote the document, not contemplating things. And so now sometimes we’re in this spot where we’re trying to figure out what people meant. This did not contemplate the present. We now have three times as many wild horses and burros out in the landscape. We have more wild horses and burros sitting in holding facilities than there were at the time they impacted this legislation. We got 73,000 wild horses and burros out in the landscape, which is a drier landscape now than it was then. We have 60,000 of these things in storage where we’re paying money to store them because the act that was meant to protect them made it that you couldn’t send them to slaughter. It made there’s virtually no outlet for these animals. They have a budget. They have a budget to manage wild horses. The whole budget gets burned up paying farmers and ranchers in Kansas and Oklahoma $ 1, 000 a year apiece to hold these wild horses in perpetuity. The government spends.

01:04:54
Speaker 3: $ 3, 000, up to $ 3, 000.

01:04:55
Speaker 1: To catch a wild horse where they’re overpopulated. They then sell them for about $ 25. And they have all this convoluted crap where like, first you have to offer it for adoption and no one comes and gets them or three people come and adopt them. I’m being ridiculous with my numbers, but it’s like not nearly enough people come forth to adopt them. Then the next step, there’s like this sales process and you have to do that. And then if you try that and try this and try that and try this, you can then sell it under a certain caveat And then the person that buys it is sort of less beholden to the law and they can then move it to another person and then that person can send it up for slaughter. So there’s this big cry fest in the New York Times about the fact that some of these wild horses are getting sent to slaughter, which if it’s illegal, it’s illegal. They shouldn’t be doing illegal stuff. But this is a problem that is not going away and it has hit maximum absurdity. The only solution here, the only solution here is to not restrict but lubricate the path to slaughter because these are not, this is not American wildlife. This is a non-native domestic animal. People that cry about ranchers having grazing rights out on public land. Like this is tax. This is, this is grazing rights for, for livestock where the, it costs the government tens of millions of dollars. These are not wild animals. They’re out competing deer. They’re all competing. Bighorn sheep, all the mountain lions, like, If they all switch their diet to horses, which they don’t want, they don’t like horses. It’s not their preferred thing. They like deer. They like bighorns. They don’t want horses. They don’t overlap with horses in the proper way. It’s like nothing’s going to take care of this problem. Nothing will take care of the problem. You go back to 2013. The National Academy of Science reports. Here’s a quote from the National Academy of Science report from 2013. Continuation of business as usual practices will be expensive and unproductive for BLM because compelling evidence exists that there are more horses on public rangelands than reported at the national level and that horse population growth rates are high. Unmanaged populations would probably double in about four years. That has happened. If populations were not actively managed for even a short time, the abundance of horses on public rangelands would increase until animals became food limited. Food limited to horse populations would affect forage and water resources for all other animals on shared rangeland and potentially conflict with the multiple use policy of public rangelands and the legislative mandate to maintain a thriving, natural, ecological, 2019, the BLM estimated that there are 88,090 wild horses and burros on rangelands. That is not counting these 47,000 that we’re paying $ 1, 000 a piece to put on otherwise productive farm and ranch land. Because we’ve tied our hands with ridiculous legislations. It’s like they got the wrong guy on the job. This guy is talking about this old dumb thing where people are supposed to go out and shoot him with contraceptives. He’s still on that? They were going to pay all these guys to go out and shoot contraceptives into 80, well, let’s say half of these are females. I don’t know what the ratios are. Let’s say half of these are females. You’re going to hire guys to go out and shoot contraceptives? into 44,000 wild horses? It’s like, wrong man on the job. If the Trump administration is in fact doing a thing that’s naughty, I’m a law and order guy, but the sentiment of that something, that they have created an unlivable situation, And I would expect at this point that as Americans get a more sophisticated understanding of ecology, that we would be putting true native North American wildlife way ahead. Way ahead in priority of livestock. And these things are livestock. I have heard.

01:09:44
Speaker 4: There’s all sorts of different levels of animal rights or animal lovers who go really hard on their species of choice. I’ve heard that the horse lovers are a whole other level. Dude, they’re the Gestapo of animal rights people.

01:09:59
Speaker 3: It feels like a group that probably has money, too.

01:10:02
Speaker 1: What’s that Iranian group? Soleimani ran it? They’re the Quds Force. Dude, they are the Quds Force of the animal rights movement. Yeah.

01:10:14
Speaker 4: Uh, and then we see that film unbranded.

01:10:17
Speaker 1: Sure. That was like, I know about it.

01:10:18
Speaker 4: Introduction to this whole thing. They go and they adopt a couple of these Broncos and kind of explore it. It was, it was interesting.

01:10:25
Speaker 1: People just, but here’s the thing. Go read the piece yourself. It’s called, uh, where is it?

01:10:30
Speaker 4: It’s called, um, under Trump protected wild horses are going to slaughter Dave Phillips.

01:10:35
Speaker 1: I usually have great luck with guys named Dave. He should, we should maybe just have this guy on the show. Just be like, dude, come on.

01:10:41
Speaker 5: Yeah.

01:10:42
Speaker 1: He reports on military affairs, which I respect. He’s the wrong man for the job on Wild Horses.

01:10:45
Speaker 3: You should start an interview show where you can talk to people like this that you’re interested in.

01:10:49
Speaker 1: We already have an interview show. I’m not going to make a whole new one. I know, man.

01:10:53
Speaker 4: It’s a joke.

01:10:54
Speaker 2: You should have him talk to Arthur Lawson at the Wind River Fishing Game.

01:10:59
Speaker 1: Yeah. Remember?

01:11:00
Speaker 2: I mean, that was a great conversation for wrapping your head around.

01:11:03
Speaker 1: The impact that they have. I have better luck with Dave’s than any other name. Really? Absolutely.

01:11:09
Speaker 2: Is the sample size on Randall just too small?

01:11:12
Speaker 1: I don’t have bad luck on Randall. I don’t want to tell you the names I got bad luck on because it would make people feel bad with those names.

01:11:19
Speaker 3: Anybody in this room?

01:11:21
Speaker 1: Well, much as I love you, Nate, Nate was a problem for me.

01:11:26
Speaker 5: Yeah, that was one of the first things you said to me.

01:11:31
Speaker 1: But dude, Dave’s, dude, me and Dave’s do great together. Then you got the tagline or whatever they call it. I forgot. It’s been a long time since I took Journalism 101. There’s a word for this. It’s like the sort of other title. A legal loophole. Yeah, you can tell where this is headed. A legal loophole allows the government to sell Mustangs on the cheap, stripping them of protections and clearing their path to destruction. You know what would really get this guy worked up? If he somehow found out that they’re killing all these cattle from steaks and burgers.

01:12:07
Speaker 5: Yeah.

01:12:09
Speaker 1: He’d be like, they’re what? Yeah.

01:12:11
Speaker 3: Randall could sway some.

01:12:11
Speaker 1: He must not know this. He must not know that this is happening, that people are eating chickens and cattle and stuff.

01:12:16
Speaker 3: People like Randall are eating horses.

01:12:18
Speaker 2: I’m a horse steak guy now.

01:12:19
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. In New York, or sorry, in Italy, you can get horse sandos.

01:12:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, I got a horse steak in Belgium.

01:12:25
Speaker 4: How was that?

01:12:25
Speaker 2: It’s delicious.

01:12:26
Speaker 1: Yeah. Dave would be like, if I was like, Dave, dude, I got to tell you, man, they’re killing all kinds of cattle.

01:12:32
Speaker 3: Eating them.

01:12:34
Speaker 1: Selling them.

01:12:34
Speaker 2: It also sounds, when you say a legal loophole allows them to do this, it sounds like it’s legal.

01:12:42
Speaker 1: They got the wrong… I’m sure… I know he’s a… I’m sure he’s a great guy. They got the wrong… They need to hand the wild horse beat over. I’ll tell you who to hand it to. Jim Roberts. Is that his name, Jim Roberts? Yeah, I think… He’s the guy you like. Does pieces for the New York Times. He’s from Montana. You need to fire… Give Dave more stuff on veterans. Fire him off the wild horse beat. Bring Jim Robbins in to rewrite all that stuff. Here’s a great one that Randall found. This one tickles the hell out of me. This is an old news story. Listen to this. You want to talk about a headline? Forest fire explodes gun of trapper. Skeleton is found. Lewis and Clark Forest. That’s when they knew how to write a headline. Forest fire explodes gun of trapper. Skeleton is found. Lewis Clark Forest. We’re going to start a segment called Old Ass News. Here’s the piece. Great Falls, Montana, August 29. What year was it though? I think it was 1928.

01:13:52
Speaker 2: That’s right.

01:13:52
Speaker 1: 1928.

01:13:52
Speaker 2: The skeleton of a trapper.

01:13:58
Speaker 1: Which has lain undisturbed for years, perhaps half a century, has been uncovered by a forest fire in the Lewis Clark Forest. The skeleton was found when bullets from the trapper’s old gun exploded from the heat of the flames. The firefighting crews heard the explosion and then found the skeleton. The man had apparently been killed by an animal, on the spot where he had made his camp. The rifle was beside the skeleton with a date of 1873 upon it. There was an old iron skillet of the type long off the market. That’s my favorite part. I’ll just go back because I want people to really savor the true journalism here.

01:14:49
Speaker 2: That’s my favorite part.

01:14:51
Speaker 1: There was an old iron skillet of the type long off the market. a salt shaker and two bottles of trappers poison. And then he wraps it up. That’s you need to find this guy.

01:15:06
Speaker 2: Just the facts, ma’am.

01:15:07
Speaker 1: Drag him out of the dead and have him take up the wild horse beat for the New York times. This guy gave it to you straight. That’s journalism. Hell of a story. Yeah. That’s journalism.

01:15:19
Speaker 4: God, there’s gotta be a few more of those laying out there.

01:15:22
Speaker 1: Oh yeah.

01:15:22
Speaker 4: Yeah.

01:15:23
Speaker 3: I never considered that a forest fire would, uh, send unsent bullets off into the atmosphere.

01:15:29
Speaker 1: And that they’d be laying by an old trap with an iron skillet of the type not currently for sale. Marcus, roll this rule.

01:15:40
Speaker 4: Alright, I’ll keep it kinda short since this has been something I know you guys have talked about over the months in the last year or so, but we can dive as far as you want into this. The news came out last week that the USDA has officially… proposed their ruling on the roadless rule. So last summer, a lot of people started talking about this because the administration kind of released their floating of this idea of rolling back the roadless rule. They started a comment period. 600,000 or so comments were put into the federal record. Many, many, many, many folks spoke out in defense of this place, of this ruling. Fast forward now, back in August 20th, I guess it was, the federal government showcased the fact that they want to officially rescind the roadless rule in its entirety. Soon after that, they released the mandated draft environmental impact statement, and then a 30-day public comment period was opened after that.

01:16:42
Speaker 1: Can I back you up to one thing?

01:16:43
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:16:44
Speaker 1: The comment period is a thing they have to do. No one pays attention to that, sadly. I’m curious, how many comments were there in favor of revoking… the role of, of opening all this up. Did you see, was the split, what was the split?

01:17:00
Speaker 4: About 99% were in favor of keeping it.

01:17:03
Speaker 1: Yeah.

01:17:04
Speaker 4: And there was more than 600,000 comments applied back when the roadless rule was created back in 2001, they went through like a year and a half process and there was 1.6 million comments submitted and more than 90% of those were in support of this, of the roadless rule. So yeah, so the, the public comment period, some people will say doesn’t really matter. But it does a couple things. Number one, it does establish a record of the public’s perspective that ostensibly the government should be looking at and considering when making their decision. But also down the line when it comes to litigation, when it comes to how this might play out for the next administration too, all of that will be reviewed and looked at.

01:17:47
Speaker 1: Got it. So to say this is overwhelmingly, this is an overwhelmingly unpopular move. With the American public. Yes.

01:17:57
Speaker 4: And I was messing up my words there earlier, but about 44 million acres of public land fall underneath this ruling. There are also separate roadless rules for Idaho and Colorado. So this would not impact those two states. But the high level thing here is that the roadless rule keeps these forest lands from having most new roads and most forms of industrial scale logging. So the idea that the administration, that the USDA has placed around their preferred alternative, which would be to roll it back in its entirety, is that this should help with wildfire mitigation, that this should help with active management.

01:18:38
Speaker 1: It’s a lie. It’s a red herring. Yes, that’s true a teeny bit, but that is not where this is coming from. Yes. They use that. They use that.

01:18:47
Speaker 4: Yes.

01:18:50
Speaker 1: Like way overemphasize how much they care about that. True. But it sounds really good. Yeah. And if you look at, oh, what, you want everybody’s house to burn down? Well, gosh, I don’t want that. If you look at this log, the shit out of everything that’s unlogged, you know.

01:19:04
Speaker 4: There’s 193 million acres or so of national forest lands, right?

01:19:09
Speaker 3: Almost.

01:19:10
Speaker 4: almost 100 million acres of those are wide open to whatever kind of active management a forest would like, whatever kind of wildfire prescriptions. Then you have the 44 million. It’s 58 million if you include Colorado and Idaho. 58 million acres of national forest lands, which do fall underneath some kind of roadless rule protection. But they did include exceptions for wildfire treatment. You can build new roads to battle a wildfire if exceptions are needed. There are exceptions for wildlife habitat treatments to make sure to account for some form of active management needed. So there’s ways around this. There’s flexibility built into the ROLIS rule to account for these different things. And then there’s 37 million or so that are protected by the Wilderness Act, which truly are off limits to those things. So the point being is that there is a lot of room for management of our forests. There’s other challenges to getting that management, right? There’s litigation, there’s forest planning processes. But The roadless rule is not some kind of de facto wilderness that is keeping people out of these places. It is not keeping, you know, actually not even keeping mining or development of that kind out. It is not keeping grazing off of these landscapes. There are even off-road vehicle use. Off-road vehicles are allowed in these places. Existing roads can exist in these places.

01:20:28
Speaker 1: So it’s kind of a nice.

01:20:29
Speaker 4: Middle ground public land designation that for 25 years has kept these these roadless cores intact. And I think a lot of people now really appreciate that. And that’s why there’s so many hundreds of thousands of people that have spoken out about it. And I expect now that the official ruling is out there, the draft environmental impact statement is out there, the public comment period is now officially open, that we’re going to see something similar again this time around. What that means then for the actual changes on the ground is that the Forest Service will have to review all the comments that come in over this 30-day period. They will have to assess the sentiment. They’ll go through all these different things. And then some number of months down the road, they will release the final environmental impact statement and decision. Like I mentioned, they’ve said they fully intend to roll it back in its entirety. And then what happens after that will be, you know, up to the next administration or whoever’s appointing the forest director in the future.

01:21:27
Speaker 1: Besides all the stuff that they say they want, that they maybe want a teeny bit, what in your mind is the main thing they want? This is coming from someone. This is coming from some group. I know that the appetite to do rare earth and old growth and Tongass National Forest, our biggest national forest, is enormous. Right? There’s an enormous appetite for those things, and those things are held back by the worldless rule. What other things do you feel are the ones that the people that are spending money on this and that are pushing this and that are coming up with these little fire mitigation schemes, what do they want?

01:22:11
Speaker 4: So the funny thing is that when you look at the timber value and the resource value in many of these places, it is actually not economically feasible to make a profit from going in there and extracting timber from a lot of these locations. They’re high elevation. They’re hard to get to.

01:22:25
Speaker 1: Correct.

01:22:26
Speaker 4: Just building the roads, in many cases, and maintaining them would cost more than any kind of profit from the timber. So it’s not really that. I just spoke with someone today.

01:22:34
Speaker 1: What is it?

01:22:36
Speaker 4: The people I’ve spoken to really think it comes down to more of almost, I’ve heard it referred to as a religious thing, like ideological. Ideologically opposed to this kind of regulation. They want to come in and move things back to state level, remove roadblocks to any kind of potential development. or resource extraction opportunities. So that’s what it comes down to. I’ve heard like the timber industry, supposedly from what I’ve heard, the timber industry isn’t asking for this.

01:23:01
Speaker 1: Got it.

01:23:02
Speaker 4: This is, this is something that is coming top down.

01:23:04
Speaker 1: It’s philosophical. It’s like ideological. Yes. How would a country like, why would a country tie its hands behind its back when it comes to industrial might? Yep. We might all be dead tomorrow. Yep. Might as well use everything up now.

01:23:25
Speaker 4: I think the roadless rule is one of those sweet spots where they took into account the fact that you need to have flexibility. And maybe, in all honesty, there likely are ways this rule could be improved still, right? Things are different now than they were 25 years ago when this was written. But this full-scale rollback seems like a short-sighted way of doing it.

01:23:46
Speaker 1: Yeah. When I sit and ask myself, If I was like, what do you fear most? Running out of roads or running out of places with no roads? I’m like, man, I thought it through long and hard. I just don’t think we’re going to run out of roads. I don’t think sometime down the road I’m going to be like, man, whatever happened to all them roads? There’s nowhere to drive. I don’t foresee this issue.

01:24:17
Speaker 4: Our unfragmented You know, wild cores are just becoming increasingly more rare. And this is the kind of thing that they’re not making any more of. So there’s some value to keeping it around.

01:24:29
Speaker 5: You know, you talk about like when TR was doing all his stuff at the time, it was very radical. And now we look back and it’s great.

01:24:36
Speaker 1: Yeah.

01:24:37
Speaker 5: I looked back at the public comment when Clinton enacted this and they loved it at the time. It broke records for public comment, like one, one and a half million comments. And 95% of those were positive. It’s just like, the through line is, this is great.

01:24:51
Speaker 3: Since we started.

01:24:53
Speaker 1: Oh yeah. I mentioned the TR thing all the time. He was controversial at the time. He’d be regarded as a tree-hugging lunatic now. And now everybody’s like, TR, TR, I’m going to the library. While simultaneously trying to dismantle his legacy.

01:25:13
Speaker 4: So yeah, if you have interest in sharing your perspective on this, The comment period is open until September 21st around midnight. So going over to the federal register, that’s where you can leave your comment. You know, Backcountry Hunters and Anglers and other organizations have like an easy action, right? You can go to their take action center. You can sign on to the form letter. But truly, if you want your voice to be heard, you know, sharing an actual unique comment is going to get you the most traction. And not just, you know, doing the action email that sends to your elected officials, but actually going to the federal register where the Forest Service is mandated to review every unique comment. So if you go and actually share a unique comment that shows, you know, not only that you understand the issue, but that you have a personal experience or connection or perspective on it, that’s going to, you know, get a little bit more credence with those folks too.

01:26:05
Speaker 1: And again.

01:26:06
Speaker 4: Maybe this administration is going to do what they want to do from the get-go, and it doesn’t matter what you say. But down the line, this stuff will be useful for whatever’s next.

01:26:17
Speaker 1: No, I’ll go down there. Hit me with the Tim Walls thing, because this is puzzling to me.

01:26:21
Speaker 4: Yeah, so you guys are all familiar with the Boundary Waters fiasco this spring. They used the Congressional Review Act to roll back that mineral withdrawal. Now, just recently, the governor of Minnesota, Tim Walls, Sign this executive order.

01:26:35
Speaker 1: Can you put that in like idiot terms, please? Yeah, yeah.

01:26:38
Speaker 4: So there was a set of protections placed around the watershed, around the Boundary Waters a few years ago that would keep certain types of mining from happening right around this incredibly popular, important wilderness area.

01:26:55
Speaker 1: On the headwaters of the rivers that create Correct. The boundary waters area.

01:27:01
Speaker 4: And it all came from this mine that’s been proposed right on the upstream border of the boundary waters. The Twin Metals mine, like you said, just upstream of this watershed, the flow through the boundary water. So that’s kind of what led to everything. And it’s been years and years and years of back and forth and back and forth on this thing. So in 2023, I think it is, the Biden administration put this mineral withdrawal in place, which basically said you can’t do this kind of mining in this place. And then this spring, There was this whole legislative battle that we’re all familiar with that effectively removed that, opening the potential road for these types of mines to happen there again. So that’s what led us to last week when the governor of Minnesota said, not so fast. He signed this executive order that essentially put substantial roadblocks in the way for a mine. So it’s not necessarily 100% no, it can’t happen. But there’s a certain amount of state and federal cooperation that typically has to occur for a mining project or any kind of resource extraction.

01:28:05
Speaker 1: It would require a lot of state land permits, too.

01:28:07
Speaker 3: Yeah.

01:28:08
Speaker 4: So this EO that Walt signs, it requires the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources to not undertake any kind of environmental review or permit work associated with proposals like this kind of mining until litigation is completed. There’s a whole set of litigation related to this going on right now. It would direct the DNR not to participate as a cooperating agency in any federal environmental review. It would not offer any new state leases for this kind of mining. It would require… the DNR not to offer any new state surface leases for this kind of mining. It would also require them to start drafting legislative language prohibiting this kind of mining in this watershed as well. So spoke to some folks on the ground there in Minnesota about this, basically asking, you know, does this thing have legs? will this actually stop this or is this kind of window dressing? And the, the cliff notes of what he shared was that this is a roadblock. This would expire 90 days after the, uh, after the new governor governor takes office. So if a new governor comes into Minnesota here that has a different view on this, it would expire and this stuff would be gone. Yeah.

01:29:21
Speaker 1: That’s like any executive order. Um, Executive orders are generally much weaker than legislative action because they just get, the next time a different person comes in with the same job title, they undo executive orders with other executive orders, which is how we wind up with some of these perpetual issues. Yes. Like these issues that never die.

01:29:42
Speaker 4: I think the thinking or the hope, though, is that it’s likely that the next governor there in Minnesota will be on board with this or close to it. And so this sets it up easily for whoever’s next to continue this. And again, They can’t stop federal leasing. They can’t stop that from happening, but this certainly will prevent it from moving quickly. This is going to be the opposite of lubricating the rails. This is going to slow down the process, and hopefully there will be other ways and other forms of protection that can make this more permanent down the line. So it’s positive news if you care about the boundary waters, but it’s not a permanent fix.

01:30:20
Speaker 1: This ain’t going nowhere.

01:30:21
Speaker 4: Not going anywhere.

01:30:22
Speaker 1: We’ll keep you posted, though. North Carolina.

01:30:28
Speaker 5: You want to talk Amendment 84 first?

01:30:29
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I’ll do it real quick. We had a guest on some time ago. Dan Gates came in and talked about the signature collecting phase of putting a codified right to hunt and fish vote to Coloradan voters this November. Meaning, on your ballot, they’re trying to collect enough signatures to put on the ballot. Boy, I’m doing a terrible job with this. There’s a ballot initiative in Colorado called Amendment 84. It would codify the right to hunt and fish in Colorado. In order to get it on the ballot, they needed a bunch of signatures. Dan Gates came up from Colorado and did the news show and talked about the signature gathering process. And we alerted Colorado voters where to go to sign to get it on the ballot. Gates has updated me that they’re looking good. They’re sitting pretty on signatures. This thing is headed to the ballot. We will remind you before, but when you go down to vote, if you’re in Colorado and you go down to vote this November, skip all the stuff. I don’t care. Skip all the other stuff like president, whatever that won’t be on there, but skip all the other stuff. Find amendment 84 and vote in favor of amendment 84 passage. This will be helpful to you. Um, uh, uh, These are widespread. I can’t remember how many states now. 30 states, 20-some states have right to hunt and fish things. We’re sitting in a state, weirdly, that does not. We should remedy that. But a problem I have with right to hunt to fish legislation is it’s sometimes hard to see where the rubber meets the road. Meaning, you have this. What are those occasions when you’re able to effectively sue the government? for violating one’s right to hunt and fish, right? It’s like, I have yet to meet anyone that can come to me with a interesting list of ways in which the right to hunt and fish was weaponized against assaults on hunting and fishing rights. But here’s an interesting one.

01:32:47
Speaker 5: Enter North Carolina.

01:32:48
Speaker 1: Enter North Carolina. Here’s an interesting case study on where a right to hunt and fish actually proves to be useful.

01:32:57
Speaker 5: This story comes to us from Mike L.

01:32:59
Speaker 3: Of North Carolina.

01:33:01
Speaker 5: And what he’s calling attention to is a lawsuit filed in 2020 by the CCA of North Carolina, the Coastal Conservation Association of North Carolina. And through six years of litigation, a whole bunch of plaintiffs, including five former members of North Carolina’s Marine Fisheries Commission, they were able to prove that by allowing The commission, by allowing North Carolina’s coastal fisheries to degrade and deteriorate, the state of North Carolina violated the legal rights of North Carolinians to fish and harvest fish in the Atlantic. These rights that they infringed on are guaranteed to them by a constitutional right to hunt and fish.

01:33:42
Speaker 1: Hunt, fish, and harvest wildlife.

01:33:44
Speaker 3: Exactly.

01:33:45
Speaker 1: And to be like, if you kill the wildlife off, you have taken away my right to harvest. Yep.

01:33:52
Speaker 5: And so ultimately what this comes down to is this tension between sound management, the public trust of marine and estuary resources, and protecting that not only for the current, but future generations as well, which is what this thing kind of stipulates. And they found at trial, including tons of expert testimony, previous, current fisheries, the commission members, as well as other states commission members, the state had failed to meet any of the standards set by themselves. Um, the court cited undisputed evidence that none of Carolina, North Carolina’s 13 state managed coastal fish stocks is currently viable. So like they’re over 13. And so the situation is, um, it’s really a critique of the commission structure, not necessarily the biologists or the fishermen attempting to.

01:34:45
Speaker 3: Steward the resource.

01:34:46
Speaker 5: Uh, and the way this, this commission is structured in the, the results of the, the regulation they’ve pushed down is there’s this tension between commercial trawling and gill netting in the estuaries where these, these unhealthy fish populations typically spawn. And the three legal grounds that this was litigated on is public trust doctrine and two provisions of the North, North Carolina constitution, the right to hunt and fish and the duty to conserve lands and waters. And this was the thing they, they, they pointed to pretty regularly is that the state is violating the right and hunt to fish by removing all the fish that people that, that, constituents could go out and pursue um there’s there’s of those 13 we we won’t go into every single one but southern flounder river herring blue crab spotted sea trout red drum hard clam these are those 13.

01:35:35
Speaker 1: And none meets the state’s definition of.

01:35:37
Speaker 5: Viability yes the state’s own definition of viability and there’s there’s kind of three three buckets here um there’s one red drum that has tight commercial, they have slot limits. Uh, there’s no real commercial fishing forum. Um, and they’re somewhat on the upswing. There’s four that have no stock assessment at all. Like they just don’t, there’s nothing to compare it to, you know, we took out a million, whatever. Um, but out of how many out of a million out of 2 million out of five. Um, and so because there’s no data, the court pointed to the fact that you’re not managing the fish at all. The lack of data points to a failure of, on your part to manage this resource. And those four fish happen to be the preponderance of bycatch in these commercial fisheries. When a shrimp trawler pulls up his net, they found typically anywhere between 20 and 30% of that catch is shrimp, and the other 80 to 70% are yearling fish. That includes the Sorry, the sheep’s head, the spotted sea trout, and river herring.

01:36:49
Speaker 1: Can I tell you a metaphor? Yeah, please. I was in Belize one time, and I was watching these guys check fish traps. And they pull the fish trap up, and they pull out of it whatever snappers and grunts are big enough to mark it. You know what they do with everything that’s in that trap? They carry a weed-burning torch on the boat with a propane tank. It’s a wire mesh trap. They hold that trap up and bake every fish in it with a weed burning torch because that’s bait. And they throw it back overboard.

01:37:20
Speaker 4: Man.

01:37:22
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don’t think that’s happening here. No, no. I said it’s a metaphor. Agreed. It’s a metaphor. It’s a bycatch metaphor.

01:37:32
Speaker 5: And so there’s a lot of nuance here between commercial and recreational fishing. But the crux of the issue is these commission structures. And what’s interesting is in North Carolina, they have two commission structures. There’s the WRC, Wildlife Resource Commission, that’s inland game and fish. And then there’s the DMF, the Division of Marine Fisheries. And basically, WRC is crushing it.

01:37:54
Speaker 1: Like they’re out.

01:37:55
Speaker 5: There maintaining and stewarding the wildlife resources. They have 21 appointed members, half by the governor, half by legislature. They don’t have certain industry or like requirements on who they are. They’re just by statutes. They say, an experienced hunter, fisherman, farmer, or biologist who shall generally be informed on wildlife conservation restoration programs. You compare that to the, I’m sorry, the Marine Fisheries Commission. Those are all governor-appointed, three-year terms, no limits, no confirmation. Two are active or retired commercial fresh fishermen. One’s a seafood industry person.

01:38:29
Speaker 1: Two are rural.

01:38:30
Speaker 5: Sport fishermen. One’s a sport fishing industry person. One is a fishery scientist, and two are general. They vote on the rules presented by the Division of Marine Fisheries, which are the biologists and whatnot. And basically, they get into blocks. They vote for whatever is good for their block. And there’s no care for the resource. They just care about who’s getting the fish this year. That seems to be the voting trend that this court case bore out. And so the court’s recommendation are restructuring this commission, adding some sort of legislative oversight, adding a third party commission that’s independent and streamlining the process to align incentives for those commissioners and then allowing the DMF to.

01:39:11
Speaker 1: Do their job.

01:39:12
Speaker 5: When I reached out to CCA, the people who brought this, They’re currently, they won, you know, they’re in the remedy stage, but that’s where they’re at, is they’re deciding what the remedy is from the state for these plaintiffs. And everyone’s kind of tight-lipped at this point. You know, they don’t want to impact the process.

01:39:28
Speaker 1: They don’t want to muddy the waters by yapping about it.

01:39:30
Speaker 5: But hopefully we’ll get some sort of solid remedy for the resource as a whole, and we’ll be able to talk to them about that.

01:39:38
Speaker 3: Is this going to end with the state, like, cutting a big check to somebody? I don’t know.

01:39:42
Speaker 5: I think it’s going to end with a restructuring of the… commission and just like, sorry, this is the new way we’re going to try it. That’s what I imagine. Um, but you know, we asked the question earlier is like, what is it like?

01:39:53
Speaker 1: It’s a remedy play and not a money play.

01:39:55
Speaker 5: I think so.

01:39:56
Speaker 1: Um, cause then it wound up being a class action lawsuit, I guess, between all people that hold, Oh, I’m on the hook right now to make, to get money from Costa Del Mar, the sunglass company. I’m part of a class action lawsuit without even knowing it.

01:40:07
Speaker 2: I just got paid.

01:40:08
Speaker 1: Because I was charged. I was charged for repair. Next time you see me and Randall, we’re going to have a gold teeth and shit.

01:40:13
Speaker 2: I just got paid in a class action lawsuit, my first one.

01:40:16
Speaker 3: Fabulous.

01:40:17
Speaker 1: How much.

01:40:19
Speaker 5: Did you make?

01:40:20
Speaker 1: It’s more than you think.

01:40:22
Speaker 2: Four digits.

01:40:24
Speaker 1: Wow. I always bought it for like $ 2. 71 when I went to class.

01:40:27
Speaker 5: $ 2. 71.

01:40:27
Speaker 1: There was a big antitrust lawsuit against a bunch.

01:40:29
Speaker 2: Of, colleges and universities and how they administered and offered financial aid so there’s a big lawsuit against like university of chicago columbia all these and uh it was like a four-year thing every six months i go oh yeah what’s happening with that and i google what’s happening with it nothing and then one day i just saw my phone ding yeah somebody’s getting.

01:40:52
Speaker 1: It i know i’m gonna be i’m probably gonna make three four bucks on this costa deal unless I choose to withdraw my name, which is very complicated. They’re like, you’re in it, and if you want out of it, it’s a bitch. But the one I’m excited about where it is a big deal is I’m in a class action lawsuit against the AI company Anthropic for many of my book titles. So there’s this whole class action lawsuit where they were stealing from writers to train AI models, and you can go into this big database, and my name’s in there like eight times for books. Nice. Some… And it’s like real money. It’s real money.

01:41:28
Speaker 2: I’m also in a class action lawsuit against NBA League Pass.

01:41:32
Speaker 3: I get emails about that one almost every day.

01:41:35
Speaker 2: I’m a big class action guy now. Big time class action guy.

01:41:38
Speaker 4: The last month I’ve.

01:41:39
Speaker 3: Been getting a lot of those.

01:41:40
Speaker 1: How much are you staying to make there?

01:41:41
Speaker 3: I don’t know, but I should go sign up for that.

01:41:45
Speaker 1: I’m on a roll right now.

01:41:46
Speaker 3: That was inspiring, Randy. I’m one for one. You got four digits? That’s inspiring.

01:41:49
Speaker 2: Low four digits.

01:41:52
Speaker 1: This anthropic deal, this could wind up being like, I think it could wind up being like 10, 12 grand, dude.

01:42:00
Speaker 5: You going to give that to the land access initiative?

01:42:02
Speaker 1: No, man. Well, a lot of it is meat eater books, but some of my personal stuff is in there too. Stay tuned. Anyways, are you wrapping her up?

01:42:12
Speaker 5: Yeah, it’s just like, what kind of door does this open?

01:42:15
Speaker 1: I could see it.

01:42:18
Speaker 5: Getting real squirrely real fast as people compete. Like, you know, I don’t have any deer here now, and it’s because of the commission.

01:42:26
Speaker 1: They screwed me.

01:42:26
Speaker 5: And it’ll just be really interesting. I think it’s generally positive. You should go vote for your constitutional right to hunt and fish. But who knows where it’ll go.

01:42:34
Speaker 4: I wonder if it’s going to make it more difficult to get that passed again in the future in other states. Because now that they’re saying this constitutional right has teeth, now will a state like Montana be more worried, or somewhere else, about the possible ramifications?

01:42:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don’t want to get into details on it, but when they tried, my understanding, which is like fresh, new, I’d never heard this, it was tried in the past in Montana. You know the term like strange bedfellows? What’s the opposite? Husband and wife? No, strange enemies. It was pointed out to me that there were some strange enemies to the right to hunt and fish. Not who you’d think would oppose it. And it could be because of stuff like this where people are like, man, this is going to turn into a big old headache for me. Right? Not who you’d think. It could be. Like these commissioners could be like, or whoever, they could be like, oh, damn it. I knew this was going to happen. that’s going to come around and bite me in the ass. And here they are. Tough titties, that’s what I say. Drones?

01:43:51
Speaker 3: Yeah, buddy.

01:43:53
Speaker 4: Drones continue to hit.

01:43:54
Speaker 1: It’s the end of the show.

01:43:55
Speaker 4: Save the best for last, I see.

01:43:57
Speaker 1: Best for last.

01:43:58
Speaker 4: Drones continue to hit the New Jersey headlines.

01:44:00
Speaker 1: That was a great headline.

01:44:01
Speaker 4: You like that? Not for more nighttime creepy light flights you may remember back in 2024, which led to thousands of tips to law enforcement and temporary flight bans by the FAA. Jersey coastal town officials are reminding anglers that it is illegal to knowingly or intentionally use an unmanned aircraft system or a drone to take or assist in the taking of wildlife. Per recent New Jersey statute.

01:44:27
Speaker 1: Sorry, what are you reading from right now?

01:44:29
Speaker 4: I typed this up last night. You’re reading, this is your own thing. Yeah, I’m trying not to read a script here.

01:44:32
Speaker 1: So you came up with a headline that has the word headline.

01:44:35
Speaker 4: Yeah, you could put this in a newspaper.

01:44:38
Speaker 1: Dude, you could. If I had a newspaper, I’d be running it already. I wouldn’t even read the rest of it. But go on.

01:44:42
Speaker 3: We should start a website. It’s called like TheMeatEater.com where we could publish this kind of article.

01:44:47
Speaker 1: Put news stories.

01:44:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right.

01:44:48
Speaker 4: Yeah, first timer here.

01:44:49
Speaker 2: Got to figure out.

01:44:50
Speaker 1: How to make money off this. This is phenomenal. Go on. This is too good.

01:44:55
Speaker 4: Uh, per the recent New Jersey statute, offenders could be slapped with up to six months in jail and up to a thousand dollar fine.

01:45:03
Speaker 1: For what?

01:45:04
Speaker 4: For intentionally trying to catch fish with a drone. Specifically sharks in this case.

01:45:12
Speaker 1: Six months in jail. What are you in for? Fishing. Drone fishing.

01:45:18
Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah.

01:45:19
Speaker 4: Ocean County towns of Manteloking and Bayhead have recently been cracking down on anglers who are using drones to carry and drop baited hooks, lines, or chum off public beaches into the surf, specifically for shark fishing. In the last decade, drone fishing for sharks has become very popular on summer nights.

01:45:37
Speaker 1: Along the Jersey Shore. Because every cast is right where you want it. You drop it where you want it.

01:45:42
Speaker 2: Every cast is perfect. And way out there.

01:45:44
Speaker 3: Way out.

01:45:45
Speaker 1: Yeah.

01:45:46
Speaker 4: As a Montanan… Sheltered Montana boy, fly fisherman. This is very new to me, drone fishing. I knew it was a thing, but I really looked into it. You’re not going to have a drone drop your fly here and there? Probably not. I can cast better than a drone, I think. Where am I?

01:46:03
Speaker 1: It’s very popular, and for good reason.

01:46:04
Speaker 4: This new techie tactic allows anglers to fly or cast their baited lines hundreds of yards out to sea, drop their baits beyond the break, fly their drones back, then wait for a strike. It’s highly effective, as we were just saying. And as shark sightings have increased in recent years, especially this summer, the draw from anglers to hit the shores to fish for sharks has also increased. But many beach goers have expressed their opinions that the practice may be creating a Jaws-like situation that puts swimmers at risk.

01:46:34
Speaker 1: Well, just ban swimming. Good luck.

01:46:37
Speaker 2: I also think if you can get the baits out further with your drones, that’s probably better.

01:46:42
Speaker 1: That was my initial thought. It’s like, you’re getting the bait out yonder.

01:46:46
Speaker 5: Mm.

01:46:47
Speaker 1: Be like, okay, fine. I’ll throw my bait right there.

01:46:51
Speaker 4: Not only bait, but supposedly there’s been some chum in action going.

01:46:55
Speaker 1: That feels to me a little crazy. That might drift some blood in there. That feels a little like you dumped 30 pounds of chum. That feels a little nutty.

01:47:03
Speaker 2: I like it.

01:47:05
Speaker 4: The most common species targeted in the area are brown sharks, sandbar sharks, sand tiger sharks, and spinner sharks. But the concerns coming from law enforcement and beach goers are the large apex predator-like apex predators like tiger sharks and bull sharks that are being lured in by anglers. They’re worried that people could be mistaken for chum, especially small children.

01:47:27
Speaker 1: I would say if I’d written that, I’d be like, the chumps could be mistaken for chumps. Try that next time.

01:47:34
Speaker 4: Masterclass on headlines.

01:47:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, goodness.

01:47:36
Speaker 4: According to the University of Florida International Shark Attack File, dating back to the 1800s, there have been 15 recorded attacks along the Jersey Shore. including the 1916 attack in the Matawan Creek that was said to be the inspiration for the movie Jaws.

01:47:53
Speaker 1: Was he drone fishing?

01:47:54
Speaker 3: I doubt it.

01:47:55
Speaker 5: No.

01:47:57
Speaker 4: There have been many attacks.

01:47:58
Speaker 3: Excuse me.

01:47:59
Speaker 4: There have not been any attacks in 2026. The last known attack in the area was May 2023. So these concerns of luring sharks closer to the shoreline are just out of precaution.

01:48:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, it’s a solution looking for a problem.

01:48:12
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.

01:48:14
Speaker 4: Trying to keep everybody happy.

01:48:15
Speaker 1: There’s plenty of gripes you could have with drone fishing. And I do think that dropping chum on a swim beach is potentially of poor taste. Yeah.

01:48:26
Speaker 4: And they’re doing it at night when folks aren’t typically swimming.

01:48:30
Speaker 1: But the big argument would be. If you’re getting it out hundreds of yards and you say, hey, don’t use a drone, doesn’t that same guy then go down with the same bait and plunk it 50 yards out?

01:48:42
Speaker 2: And he wades out to his waist and dumps a bucket of chum and.

01:48:47
Speaker 1: Then wades back? I just confused about, is this coming from hysterical beachgoers who don’t really know what they’re talking about, or is this coming from an informed perspective?

01:48:58
Speaker 3: A little bit of both, I believe.

01:49:00
Speaker 4: A lot of concerned beachgoers and I think there’s some science behind it, too. Extra sharks coming. Are real shark anglers wanting to do this, though? I feel like the guy that actually wants to cast and do some real fishing, this isn’t going to appeal to that person.

01:49:14
Speaker 1: No, I think it’s a big thing. You think so? Yeah. This is a dude who wants to drag a big old horse up on the beach.

01:49:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw one shark earlier this year, I think from Florida, that was just a giant. And what they’d done was take a huge bait out deep with a drone, drop it, and then you’re sitting on shore waiting for them.

01:49:33
Speaker 1: Long drop, boys. And then there’s also the drone thing, just using drones to find bait balls. Yeah. Drones, dude. I hate them. I like them for the military. I hate them.

01:49:48
Speaker 4: They’re getting to the point in the whitetail world that people are installing drone detectors on their properties.

01:49:54
Speaker 1: Good.

01:49:55
Speaker 4: Because they’re worried about people snooping on their property with drones. Because the drone use has become so ubiquitous now.

01:50:00
Speaker 1: Dude, I’m going to hire some Ukrainians, man, to come down and just take care of that drone business, man.

01:50:06
Speaker 4: I’m with you.

01:50:07
Speaker 1: I’m not sure, but you better not. When are you going to sell drone jammers and stuff that anybody could buy? I had a drone hovering over my house the other day. I talked about this. It hovered over my house. My wife ran in the house. It was a drone right over the house. I was going to shoot it, but it was already gone. And some guy’s like, you’re technically not allowed to shoot it. Yeah. A guy wrote in a correction.

01:50:22
Speaker 4: Mini.

01:50:23
Speaker 1: I would love to go to a judge. I’d be like, guilty. I shot a drone 50 feet over my house.

01:50:28
Speaker 3: What were you going to shoot it with?

01:50:29
Speaker 1: Shotgun. TSS.

01:50:30
Speaker 2: Well, that’s one of the… Guilty as charged. In the corner crossing stuff that was happening in Montana a couple months ago with the state coming out and making a case for corner crossing being illegal, one of the things that they mentioned was that sort of the sanctity of one’s airspace is tied to this drone issue.

01:50:54
Speaker 4: There was some precedent, right? They determined some airspace.

01:50:58
Speaker 2: And so they were saying like, yeah, well, if corner crossing is legal, then anybody could fly their drone into your backyard and snoop around.

01:51:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I’m not always that concerned with being consistent. I tell my kids all the time. Oh, yeah. That’s not fair. Okay.

01:51:15
Speaker 4: I dove into the local New Jersey Reddit hole, and there have been many concerns.

01:51:21
Speaker 1: Is that a bar?

01:51:22
Speaker 5: It’s sticky.

01:51:22
Speaker 4: There have been many concerns. From recreational anglers who are worried about the growing popularity of shark fishing in the area from those who are not practicing ethical catch and release habits. As stated in the New Jersey Fish and Wildlife Marine Digest, if a shark is caught but not kept, it must be released immediately. But unfortunately, a few bad apples have chosen fame over ethics and are dragging sharks too far onto the beach to pose for photos before releasing the sharks, endangering the shark’s health, of course.

01:51:51
Speaker 3: It’s the drone’s fault.

01:51:52
Speaker 4: Well, making it easier.

01:51:54
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.

01:51:54
Speaker 4: It’s not just drone anglers doing this. Anglers should know how to catch, handle, and release fish in an ethical manner and have the right equipment to quickly release sharks back into the water. Using a drone to assist in fishing has been explicitly banned in Hawaii, Texas, Michigan, Kentucky, North Carolina, Alaska, and of course, New Jersey.

01:52:13
Speaker 3: What?

01:52:14
Speaker 4: Yeah, Texas was kind of a surprise. Many of these state regulations.

01:52:19
Speaker 1: Texans, man, they don’t like that word one bit banned.

01:52:22
Speaker 3: Yeah.

01:52:23
Speaker 4: Many of these states, including Texas, are out on bans. They reference the 1971 Federal Airborne Hunting Act that banned shooting, killing, or harassing animals or birds from an aircraft. But as with many written and unwritten drone laws, the evolution of regulating this new technology is slowly catching up. But you should always check with your local state wildlife agencies to get the most up-to-date local regulations before fishing with drones over any body of water.

01:52:53
Speaker 1: Do you know that song? His name is Rick. He’s got the itch.

01:52:57
Speaker 4: Sounds like a commercial.

01:52:58
Speaker 1: No, it’s Rick. Our camera guy likes flying his drone. And he tries to make up reasons to fly it. Sure. And then we’ll sing the song. His name is Rick. He’s got the itch. He’s a drone enthusiast.

01:53:10
Speaker 4: It looks fun as hell.

01:53:13
Speaker 3: There’s an old man in my neighborhood who flies model airplanes, right? That brings me joy. When I see him at the park with a model airplane, a drone doesn’t bring me joy.

01:53:23
Speaker 4: But the sound, you just hear that sound and you know what’s coming your way.

01:53:27
Speaker 1: I hate them. I hate them. It’s like, I just hate them.

01:53:30
Speaker 5: Yeah.

01:53:30
Speaker 1: Those people are lucky I’m not like the emperor.

01:53:34
Speaker 2: For many reasons.

01:53:35
Speaker 1: I would give. Chain lightning. I would take everyone’s drone and give it to the military. I think the military should have more drones they know what to do with.

01:53:43
Speaker 5: I got a buddy who fishes drone fishes, but he’s got a little boat.

01:53:48
Speaker 1: Yeah.

01:53:48
Speaker 2: I remember seeing those.

01:53:49
Speaker 1: You like that? That’s cute.

01:53:52
Speaker 2: Like the old Cabela’s catalog or the old Bass Pro catalog. I remember seeing a little boat with the pincher on the back for your line. And I always thought, man, I’d catch some bigger catfish if I had that back.

01:54:02
Speaker 1: There’s something cute about that. Yeah. So boat drone’s good. Flying drone’s bad. I’m not saying it’s good. I’m just saying I just. And that was a great report. You’re not done, are you?

01:54:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, that’s it. Oh.

01:54:17
Speaker 1: He takes it back. It finished just on time. It’s got the wheels turning big time. Outside of any individual issue, someone say, well, what about recovering you wound a deer and the drone helps you recover? I’m like, that’s really great, man, because no one wants to lose deer. No one wants the deer to go to waste. No one wants the hunter to have to live with not being able to find a deer. So they’re like, okay, I have some sympathy there. What about this? Or what about that? I’m like, okay, I have some sympathy there. But I just mean generally My general attitude toward them is I just hate them. Except for the military. I think they should have a boatload of them.

01:54:58
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think restrictions are going to get tighter and tighter as the years go on. Well, they’re just becoming more and more popular.

01:55:04
Speaker 1: Cheaper.

01:55:04
Speaker 4: Easier to use.

01:55:05
Speaker 1: It’s so invasive.

01:55:07
Speaker 4: Yeah.

01:55:09
Speaker 1: It’s like having an anal probe. But in the air. But in the air. Yeah. Over you. But my body registers it the same.

01:55:19
Speaker 4: Can’t relate to that one.

01:55:21
Speaker 1: It’s not a laughing matter, man. All right. Thanks for listening to the news show. That was a great report. This is upcoming talent right here. I’d be careful.

01:55:33
Speaker 4: September’s coming.

01:55:36
Speaker 1: Unavailable. What’s coming? Unavailable. You should have bombed. If you had come out and just bombed.

01:55:44
Speaker 5: Right.

01:55:45
Speaker 1: And you’re like, well, I guess I’m out for September, huh? Let’s try again this winter. Yeah, January, let me try again. I might be able to do a good news story in January, but I need some time to reflect on how bad I bombed with September coming on. All right, thanks for listening to the new show. Find us next week.