00:00:04
Speaker 1: Smell off now, lady, Welcome to Meet Eater Trivia podcast.
00:00:26
Speaker 2: Welcome to mete To Radio live at eleven am Mountain Time. That’s nine am for our friends in North Pole, Alaska on Thursday, December eighteen, and we’re live for Meet Eater HQ in Bozeman. I’m your host, Spencer, joined today by Corey and Cal. On today’s show, we’ll interview dear biologist Matt Ross about identifying buck tracks. Then we have a hot tip off about European mounts, followed by a game of meat pole where we’ll find out how much Corey and Cal know about their fellow outdoorsman. After that, we’ll talk to Trent Presler about the history of Christmas trees, and finally we’ll look at some regrettable outdoor tattoos. Cory Cow. We are a week away from Christmas. I’m sure you have some big, fancy meal plans already in the works. What are we gonna be eating Christmas Day? Cal?
00:01:13
Speaker 1: I have, Well, it’s probably not gonna be Christmas Day. Christmas Eve, I have like a nice standing antelope rib roast, a cut special for the occasion.
00:01:26
Speaker 2: How many folks are you feeding with that?
00:01:29
Speaker 1: You know? It’s an antelope, so it’ll be like an appetizer type of deal, you know. But yeah, it’ll be like I think it’s a six rib rack, and then so I have two of those and then I kind of bind them together and make a circle. Okay, And you know, I struggle with making things fancy and too fancy because I don’t I don’t want it to be like some super fancy thing.
00:01:55
Speaker 2: Okay, more approachable. If you’re leaving ribs in it, then already like elevates it.
00:02:00
Speaker 1: I think, Yeah, it’ll be good, make like little hats on there or anything.
00:02:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, how are you gonna make it?
00:02:07
Speaker 1: Just meetium rare man like, Yeah, put it on the pellet grill, figures itself out. Yeah, you just don’t do not overcook that stuff and it looks real pretty.
00:02:16
Speaker 2: So Corey, what are we serving at the Culkin’s household this Christmas?
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Speaker 3: Man? We typically do a fond due Christmas night, Okay, so probably some do you need.
00:02:26
Speaker 1: Cheese or oil cheese cheese?
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Speaker 3: Yeah, go to Costco get some fancy cheeses, and then just do all the sides. Probably do some wild game sausage, some fruits and bread. Probably do some little steak bites in there at least for myself, but probably start the day with some black Bear biscuits and gravy. I’m thinking a little white gravy in the morning, just thinking maybe just two meals on Christmas, one in the morning.
00:02:51
Speaker 1: And what what what with with your son there? How do what time does Christmas kick off?
00:02:58
Speaker 3: He gets pretty antsy and wakes up a little extra earlier this morning, so good.
00:03:02
Speaker 2: He earned it big time.
00:03:05
Speaker 4: This year, so.
00:03:09
Speaker 2: He was.
00:03:10
Speaker 1: Keep in mind, I did an impartial audit because when I was at the on X event, I spoke with your next door neighbor.
00:03:16
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, Colorado, yep uh. He was definitely on the fence this year. But we jumped in and did the Elf on the Shelf, which has helped us out a lot because Elf, of course moves around throughout the throughout the house. Every morning he’s in a new spot and he’s going to report to Sanna like double time. Sanna is always listening. But the Elf on the Shelf like really deep digs deep in like double oh seven style, reports back to Sanna. So ever since Elf on the Shelf, he’s kind of picked it up.
00:03:45
Speaker 2: So we’ll see.
00:03:46
Speaker 3: He’s got a week to go. I hope he makes it on the nice list. I got a big bag of Kingsford charcoal if if things stay the same, But he’ll make it.
00:03:55
Speaker 1: He just to introduced that big brother culture early on. Yeah, a little lie in the sky.
00:04:01
Speaker 2: Uh huh. Cory is wearing a nice black eye today that Marshall did play a role in. Uh, he was there. We’re not going to address that today. Besides, right now you can get the story of of Corey’s battle wound on next week’s episode. It’s not that obvious meat eater radio a little bit. Yeah, I’m going to deep fry my first turkey this Christmas, a hen that I killed in Idaho. You boys have any advice besides you know, doing it frozen in the kitchen?
00:04:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly did you, Brian?
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Speaker 2: I have not yet. It is I just got it out of the freezer this morning. It’s going to get into a Brian. I think on Monday will be the plan. Cool.
00:04:41
Speaker 1: I would in your your run of show, right, which is always like nice thing to just right out ahead total, I would budget in twelve hours of air circulation in the refrigerator drying out post Brian.
00:05:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, that make sure it’s nice and dry.
00:05:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you can like you know, like load up I hate waste and paper towels, but you can like load up the cavity with paper towels and do a couple of swaps there that’ll help. But like getting getting that skin getting everything like dry, sure is a is a great? That’s is its skin on?
00:05:32
Speaker 4: Right?
00:05:32
Speaker 2: You skin on, pluck the whole thing. It’s a hen. It’s probably like I don’t know, twelve or thirteen pounds. I haven’t weighed yet, but it should be good.
00:05:40
Speaker 1: So did you go all the way out to the wing tips?
00:05:42
Speaker 2: Oh?
00:05:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that’s the whole asper for presentation. It really does make a difference. Yeah, it’s hard. Good for you.
00:05:50
Speaker 2: That’s very excited. I’ve got a five course meal plan. That’s going to be the fifth and final course. It’s going to be the climax of the whole meal. So nice, a lot of pressure.
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Speaker 3: Do you need a turkey fryer?
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Speaker 2: I got one. I have one of those ready to go. Normally this time of year you can use just like your front porch as a refrigerator. But it’s been so damn warm lately, because you know, the fridge gets so full on Christmas. I don’t think it’s even cold enough outside to keep.
00:06:16
Speaker 1: Your Are you doing like a soup course?
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Speaker 2: We’ve got a soup course. I’ve got an antelope squash sausage that that’ll come right before the turkey. I think. Before that, I’ve got what is it, some mac and cheese. Before that, it’s some roasted carrots. Before that, we’ve got a winter salad.
00:06:33
Speaker 1: So five courses and dessert course obviously, well if you.
00:06:37
Speaker 2: Count that six courses, I’m still trying to learn how to bake, so I’m gonna whip up some cookies that morning. That’ll be the sixth and final course. Nice, very excited, Yeah, very cool Christmas? Who are you putting the show on for? My wife? A couple of friends, sister in law. So we got six people in the houses.
00:06:58
Speaker 1: Very manageable, right.
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Speaker 2: We can we can do it. It’ll be a team effort though.
00:07:03
Speaker 1: All right, ahead of time to let’s get on with the show.
00:07:07
Speaker 2: Joining us on the line first is Matt Ross, the senior director of conservation for the National Deer Association. He’s going to tell us about what’s fact and what’s fiction when it comes to identifying buck tracks. Matt, Welcome to the show.
00:07:22
Speaker 5: Hey, guys very much feel very underdressed, at least inappropriately dressed.
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Speaker 6: You guys look great.
00:07:28
Speaker 1: Oh we like that first light gear there, Buddy Well Warren.
00:07:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, you you were dressed like a dear biologist. We are dressed like dummy. Podcast Christmas fellas, all right, I want to start off talking about do clause explain what they are and what purpose they serve.
00:07:46
Speaker 5: Do clause are their digits? They’re like extra digits, you know. Do clause are on deer anyway, we’re talking about deer are vestigial. They’re like a remnant digit, a little bit up from the actual hoof. But all mammals, or most mammals and birds and other animals actually have dew claws. Think of your pets, if you’ve got a dog, cat, they have those little extra digits up the back from their pad, their normal pad. Even some bird species like raptors, owls, eagles, hawks, they have that extra claw. For most animals that actually have dew claws, they don’t really serve a purpose except for raptors of course they’re they’re using them to catch fish and tear fish and other uh, other prey animals.
00:08:34
Speaker 6: But on deer itself, they’re those extra digits.
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Speaker 5: They have a cratness or like, you know, kind of a hoof material on them, and uh, they’re behind the actual hoof and a little bit a little bit up from that.
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Speaker 6: But they’re vestigial.
00:08:49
Speaker 5: They’re not used deer of a couple of remnant things on them. If you’ve ever killed a deer with upper canines, those are, you know, an evolutionary throwback.
00:09:00
Speaker 6: That’s what dew claws are. They’re part of.
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Speaker 5: The animal family that has an even numbered of toes. You know, all of the servids of deer, elk, and other species moose. And instead of two hoofs, they used to have four, now they only use two.
00:09:15
Speaker 2: Of them now. Most hunters would tell you that you can identify a buck track by the dew claw indentations. Is that true?
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Speaker 6: That is not true.
00:09:27
Speaker 5: Both bucks and does actually have dew claws, so it’s not sex specific. So if you’re saying just because dew claws are present in the track, it must be a buck, that could be a buck, but it’s it’s not a definitive thing. They both sexes have them.
00:09:44
Speaker 2: Now. Another common bit of wisdom deer hunters will tell you is that buck hooves spread the furthest apart. So if you see a track that is shaped like a heart where there’s a lot of space between the pads, then that’s a buck. Is that true?
00:09:58
Speaker 6: That is also probably not is reliable of a thing to use.
00:10:04
Speaker 5: Most deer might spread their hoofs apart based on their weight, and so you could have a big female or a big male buck or dough that that could spread their toes apart. It also could be based on their gate and how quickly they’re moving, or the material.
00:10:20
Speaker 6: That they’re stepping down on. So if it’s you know, soft mud, their toes might spread apart.
00:10:25
Speaker 7: So generally the everybody’s Yeah, generally, the heavier the deer, the likelihood of those those hoofs spreading apart will happen.
00:10:36
Speaker 5: But just because it’s doing it, I wouldn’t say it’s a reliable estimator.
00:10:40
Speaker 2: I’ve also heard it said that hooves can be like fingerprints, where some deer will produce unique tracks that you can identify them by. Is that true?
00:10:50
Speaker 6: Yeah, they could be true. I think the likelihood is is low.
00:10:54
Speaker 5: I mean, most deer hoofs look the same, so most tracks look the same. But I mean I’ve seen and killed deer that had unique characteristics in their hooves. Never gone back to go look to see if I could find that track. And I’ve never used a track. Maybe you guys have to track a deer, but you know, they mess up their hooves, their material that grows constantly, but they can chip pieces off or parts of it. Might if they’re disease like with epizootic haemorrhagic disease or EHD, their hooves can crack.
00:11:23
Speaker 6: So that is true. Have you guys ether ever experienced that.
00:11:27
Speaker 2: I don’t know that I’ve seen a unique track where I’m like, that is a weird walking buck, you.
00:11:33
Speaker 1: Guys, I feel like I’ve read about it, sure, but I’ve never not first hand, no.
00:11:38
Speaker 2: Corey anything with elk deer.
00:11:40
Speaker 3: The buck I killed this year, actually I knew he had a limp, at least from the landowner told me, like, look for a buck that’s got a pretty obvious limp and old and his hooves were extremely large and elongate, so just in a normal track, I could tell that at least guess that that was him.
00:11:58
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, you knew his finger print.
00:12:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, but that’s just being big though, right.
00:12:05
Speaker 3: My thought went to Old, like really old nasty hoofs. They were indented, almost hallow the inside.
00:12:11
Speaker 1: I feel like there’s like an old outdoor life story of like a bowl that has like it’s missing the front part of it’s of one of its toes there, you know, and it’s like, that’s that’s how.
00:12:26
Speaker 2: The last bit of tracking wisdom I’ve heard is that buck tracks are just simply bigger than dough tracks. Please tell us that’s at least true.
00:12:34
Speaker 6: Yeah, that’s true.
00:12:35
Speaker 5: I mean bucks generally are bigger than than does and so if you’re looking at tracks, the largest ones would likely be a buck just because they’re they’re bigger animals.
00:12:48
Speaker 6: That that from a sexual dimorphism. But there’s a lot of overlap there.
00:12:52
Speaker 5: As you’re showing on the screen, you know, being able to take somebody to an individual track and say, definitive, this is absolutely a buck. You know, there’s only a small percentage, it’s five ten percent of all tracks that would be on that right end of the scale there where you could say, well, that’s likely a buck. But there’s a lot of overlap. I mean, just because it’s got big tracks doesn’t necessarily mean it’s it’s a buck. And if you’re interested in antler’s You know, there’s a lot of probably large antler deer walking around for bucks that have medium to small size, So you may be able to set, you know, segregate bucks out a slight a bit, but there is a ton of overlap, as that graphic shows.
00:13:36
Speaker 2: And how big of tracks are we talking If we want to be sure that we’re looking at a buck track, what size does it need to approach to be like, okay, that that is a mature buck.
00:13:45
Speaker 5: Where you’re looking at that graphic right there, you know, at least in that study that was from Georgia, you know, the tracks that are more than four inches in length, at least down there, it would change geographically. So you know, I live in upstate New York in the foothills of the Adirondics. Deer here are much larger than they are in Georgia. Is where you guys are in Montana. So you know, a deer track that’s probably four and a half five inches in length and overall three to three and a half inches wide or wider is going to be a large deer. And then you’d be looking at probably some if not most of those being bucks.
00:14:25
Speaker 2: And I think I remember matt from that study, it’s saying like the top ten percent of the biggest tracks you see those likely belong to a buck. Is that is that correct?
00:14:34
Speaker 5: Yeah? That study that you just showed was from Georgia from the mid or early two thousands. They had about one hundred and fifty deer that were hunter harvested and they measured the tracks off of all of them. About one hundred of the deer were bucks, and I think it was eight percent where you were able to definitively say of the one hundred and fifty something deer were bucks, just based on the length.
00:14:57
Speaker 2: Or the width. Okay, so simply put, dew clause don’t mean much, The amount of space between the pads of the hoofs doesn’t mean anything. But the very biggest tracks in the woods likely belong to bucks. Is there anything else hunters can learn by looking at deer tracks?
00:15:13
Speaker 6: Oh heck, yeah, there’s a lot you can get out of tracks.
00:15:16
Speaker 5: Freshness of the sign right, I think that’s probably one of the most undervalued types of sign we concentrate on, like sign post behavior, scrapes, rubs, those kinds of things, at least for white tails, and I think a lot of people overlook the freshness of the track and the preponderance of lots of tracks in an area just to have a lot of deer activity, whether they’re feeding there or they’re spending a lot of time. So freshness, the direction the deer are headed, and that travel might give you an indication of what their needs are, where they’re.
00:15:48
Speaker 6: Going and coming from.
00:15:51
Speaker 5: And then just it could potentially point you in directions of other sign that will help you get on deer. Yeah, you know, tracks are important, but looking for feeding sign or some of those other things I just mentioned, and certainly up in at least in the New England and Great Lake States, there are a lot of successful people that use tracks to you know, hunt down and kill a deer just based on following them in the snow. And I’m not one of those people that are successful at tracking only, but certainly that could that can get you on deer too if you’re in the right environment. So lots of things that we can get out of tracks, not necessarily segregating whether or not they’re bucks or does.
00:16:28
Speaker 1: And if you come across like a deer with with with the big red nose, is that like what’s the etiquette there is that a shoot don’t shoot scenario for you and the good folks at NDA. Have you covered that one yet?
00:16:41
Speaker 6: I think that I think that one’s off limits for all.
00:16:44
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, good, all right, thank you for educating us, man, thanks for joining us. You got it.
00:16:50
Speaker 3: Merry Christmas, guys, Thank you.
00:16:55
Speaker 2: All right. Our next segment is Hot tip Off.
00:17:01
Speaker 4: That’s salty, ya, that’s salty.
00:17:13
Speaker 2: Hot tip Off is where two listeners go head to head with competing pieces of advice, and after we hear each tip, we’ll declare which one is hotter. If you have a hot tip, take a one minute video on your phone and send it to radio at the Medeater dot com with the subject line hot tip Off. This week it’s Jack Anderson versus Luke Long and they’re competing for a one hundred dollars Meat Eater gift card. Take it away, Phil Fluke clowng.
00:17:42
Speaker 8: Hey, guys, mind’s Luke Long. I’ve got hot tip for you today. If you’re like me, you’d like to hang the European mounts from the bucks you kill on your man cave wall or wherever it may be. And I’ve got an easy way to do that for you.
00:17:53
Speaker 6: Go to Walmart.
00:17:55
Speaker 8: You can get these two and a half inch metal brackets like four for five bucks. And you take on these brackets and you’re gonna bend it at one of these holes. So I take a pair of ice cripts here and give a little bend about like that. You can adjust the angle. May need to go a little further on this one. And I’m gonna show you now on the wall how it works.
00:18:15
Speaker 2: All right.
00:18:15
Speaker 8: So here you can see, I’ve got one mounted on the wall. I paint them black so they don’t show up as much. But you’re gonna push that bracket right into that brain cavity and your deer is gonna hang there just perfect.
00:18:27
Speaker 1: You can also hang antelope on them as well.
00:18:32
Speaker 8: I’m sure quite a few other animals maybe feel. Deer work jack a little and load got that one crooked, but there you go. I’ve got a lot of them, and uh, they work really good.
00:18:45
Speaker 1: God he had to borrow a lot of deer to make this big jack.
00:18:49
Speaker 2: Good hunter.
00:18:52
Speaker 9: Jack from Minnesota here coming at you with a hot tip off for skull cleaning. Ditch the turkey burner. Get yourself a thermostack controlled water heater. Keep your temp between ninety and one hundred and ten degrees, a process called maceration will happen. The bacteria in that temp range is gonna just eat the meat off of the skull. You’re not gonna have to do any high pressure water blasting. It’s pretty much all just gonna fall off. Change this water every two to three days until all the meat is off of the skull. To the same process with don dish soap and water to decrease it, whiten it with peroxide, and you’re gonna yield some taxidermy level skull cleaning at home. Your nose bones are gonna be there, Your nasal cavity is gonna be there, hands off, hands free. Your dog’s gonna love the smell of it.
00:19:37
Speaker 2: Give it a shot, all right. Phil is going to put up a pole for the Chat to vote on. The Chat is going to decide who gets that one hundred dollars meat eater gift card between Luke Long and Jack Anderson, and we’re gonna discuss which one we like best. Again. Luke Long had the manipulated metal brackets for European mounts. Jack Anderson had the thermostat controlled water heater for European mounts. Corey, Which one do you like better? Which one would get your vote?
00:20:06
Speaker 4: Man?
00:20:07
Speaker 3: Both just fantastic liquid hot magma tips here. But I think i’d have to go with Jacks. I’m gonna have to try that. I noticed he had his antlers in the water too, which is something I’m always worried about when you’re boiling. Sure to keep those out. I always wrap them in, illumin them, foil, and do like everything I can to keep the antler.
00:20:24
Speaker 2: And he was just using a five gallon bucket, which is you know everyone’s got a dozen of those.
00:20:28
Speaker 1: Lander.
00:20:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, I didn’t think about that either, So I’m gonna have to try that. So I’d probably have to go with mister.
00:20:32
Speaker 2: Anderson, cal Luke Loong or Jack Anderson? Which one?
00:20:36
Speaker 1: I agree? They’re both great. I’m gonna go with Luke, though I don’t know. There’s just something you do save money with both for sure, but you also have to invest a little bit more with Jack. True, So I don’t know.
00:20:54
Speaker 5: I like.
00:20:54
Speaker 1: I like the simplicity. I think of folks who aren’t mechanically skilled, like even they can shut that’s great.
00:21:04
Speaker 2: Phil, Do we have some votes happening?
00:21:06
Speaker 4: We do? You have some votes? They’re still coming. We’ll give them another thirty seconds. Okay, so I started kind of.
00:21:11
Speaker 2: Late, so we have one versus one in the room here. I really like both of these lukes. The manipulated metal brackets. That’s great because that’s like the exact shape I want for a European amount, Like it put the skull right in the perfect position how I think you want to display ahead. It is saving you a couple of dollars. I think he said a four pack is five bucks. But I’m going to vote for Jack Anderson’s. That’s just like it’s taking a really sucky chore and making it much less sucky by doing the thermostat controlled water heater for euros. That’s something you can, you know, walk away from. It’s like a crock pot version.
00:21:49
Speaker 1: I think that’s where things go wrong with my friends just walking away apart. It’s like change the water every two to three days, and they’re like, oh, yeah, that’s been back there a long time.
00:21:59
Speaker 4: Our producer just let me know that he bought one of those heaters on Jack’s recommendation on Amazon, and it was thirty dollars.
00:22:06
Speaker 2: Thirty dollars that’s what it costs to fill a propane tank that you’d go through, you know, doing a European mount on a turkey cooker.
00:22:14
Speaker 4: And on that topic, with sixty two percent of the vote, the winner is Jack.
00:22:19
Speaker 2: Okay, here, Jack Anderson, he’s got a good head of hair on him. He’s now going to get a one hundred dollars Meat Eater gift card as well. Good for you, Jack. Send your hot tip offs to radio at the meadeater dot com and you might show up on a future show of media to Radio. All right, we’re about halfway through the show. Let’s take a break for some listener feedback. Phil let’s chat have to say.
00:22:44
Speaker 4: Chat’s mostly talking with Randall, who is very active in the chat.
00:22:47
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, Randall. Where’s Randall sitting at right now? Somewhere on the live tour?
00:22:51
Speaker 4: Right? He is in Nashville, Tennessee. He sent me a picture from the same green room we were hanging out in at Buckfest twenty twenty five for the Big buck Hunter Championship. They’re playing in the same venue that that was in. So Randall’s a seasoned vet of that building. But we’ve got a few questions. Get some more in. We’ve got Cal here, We’ve got Corey here, uh, speaking of Mogor, says, let Corey know that he Morgan was just saying thank you Corey for helping him with his his cookbook through customs. Such a kind and helpful guy. I agree, Mogor. We love having Corey. Oh glad you got your books.
00:23:23
Speaker 2: Moor took him about a year, but that’s that’s how long it takes to get a book across the count so really.
00:23:29
Speaker 3: It was actually quite fast.
00:23:31
Speaker 4: That’s good. Garrett has a question for cal Cal have you why? He says, why do guides not like the seven villainter rem bag.
00:23:38
Speaker 1: We’ve covered this multiple times, so I’m gonna do it real quick.
00:23:41
Speaker 4: Sure.
00:23:42
Speaker 1: When the seven Numb Numb made its appearance, it’s it’s the classic thing that we still see today where target loads are are the most prolific thing on the market. They shoot great, but they don’t kill well. And looking back on my experience with with the the old backfiring fire belching boat anchor, I think is what it was referred to as multiple times that was the issue. Not the ballistics, not the caliber, but a lack of good ammo on the market. Killing ammo.
00:24:27
Speaker 4: There you go, sweet, let’s see we’ve got a question from pain Poplars Deer Jerky on a pellet grill versus a dehydrator. Is this something you guys have experience with? Yeah, both methods, yep.
00:24:41
Speaker 1: If you have a big fancy pants dehydrator, I think that’s the way to go for that same kind of set it and forget it type of deal, and it’s it would be like less expensive too, doesn’t doesn’t take not a big drain on the old electric bill.
00:24:59
Speaker 2: Something you can do in your your kitchen as well versus pellig grill this time of year. I don’t care for firing that thing up in December outside.
00:25:07
Speaker 1: It’s yeah again in your your run the show when you’re cooking, like you got to account for that thing warming up. It is a pain, But I do. I do like the products still good this time of year. It just takes more time.
00:25:21
Speaker 2: Corey. Any thoughts on jerky versus on the pelligrill versus dehydrator.
00:25:26
Speaker 3: I’ve only used my oven connection of the Yeah, I don’t know. It takes that work three four hours. Makes pretty fine that you.
00:25:34
Speaker 2: Look forward to firing up in December. Yeah, exactly kind of neating. Ye, what else we got?
00:25:38
Speaker 4: Phil Friday Arrows asks best Christmas movie.
00:25:41
Speaker 2: Hmmm, Phil, you answer that one for us?
00:25:44
Speaker 4: Oh, I don’t. I love Christmas, but I’m not super passionate about about Christmas movies. I love, I love the nineteen eighty, nineteen eighty, might be eighty three, the animated Mickey’s a Christmas Carol. It’s short and sweet. Yeah, it’s only like twenty five minutes long. That was That was my that was my Christmas Carol. I it’s a wonderful life. It’s it’s a long movie. I saw in Amazon that they have an abridged version or they cut like an hour out of the movie, which I think it’s like sacrilegious.
00:26:07
Speaker 1: That’s horrible.
00:26:08
Speaker 4: But it is a long movie. Yeah, you know, and like as far as modern stuff goes, I mean Elf, Elf has kind of become like a classic. Yes, that theme Home alone one and two are also good to put on the background.
00:26:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, Cory cal favorite Christmas movie.
00:26:22
Speaker 3: I watched Bad Santa too the other night.
00:26:25
Speaker 4: It’s not good.
00:26:27
Speaker 3: It’s funny, but that’s not the best Christmas movie ever. I would have to say a Christmas Carol.
00:26:34
Speaker 1: I think Scrooged with Bill Murray. It’s like a fantastic Christmas movie. My like, I guess serious Christmas movie would definitely be It’s a Wonderful Life. Have always been a sucker for that one. And then a legit, fun funny new Christmas movie is uh, oh, crapes, What’s the Night Before? I think is what it’s called with Ye that is a legit, Ye that is that is legit.
00:27:14
Speaker 4: I like that one.
00:27:15
Speaker 2: Elf would be my favorite Christmas movie. I’m far less passionate about Christmas movies than Christmas music, though I love Christmas music. I’ve I’ve got Christmas playlist that you know, gets the dust brushed off it in Thanksgiving playing.
00:27:31
Speaker 1: Mariah Carey is on there. I Will Shove You to the floor.
00:27:33
Speaker 2: Riah Carrey is on there. My favorite Christmas albums Casey musk Graves. She has a phenomenal Christmas album, some very good original music on there.
00:27:43
Speaker 4: Do Wrong.
00:27:44
Speaker 2: She has a great Christmas album. I love snowm Forever. Michael Bubla, He’s you know, he’s like the Coca Cola Christmas music. You have to have Michael.
00:27:56
Speaker 4: Concert with.
00:27:58
Speaker 2: Is it a Christmas concert?
00:28:00
Speaker 4: I mean it was. It was near the holiday seasons. I think he played like one or two, but it wasn’t it wasn’t specifically Christmas. The Vince Guaraldi jazz record from a Charlie Brown. Charlie, that’s the record I need.
00:28:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, that’s like a jazzy good Christmas music. Randy Travis. I love his Christmas album, Love Love Christmas Music. Bill gives a couple more.
00:28:21
Speaker 4: A couple more. Okay, let’s see here a question for cal from Kaye Clover Dan’s are you excited for the new role? Are you going to really locate to Missoula? He’s stoked to have you at the Helm come to Colorado Rendezvous this year.
00:28:34
Speaker 1: Wow, thank you. I am super stoked. I’m real, real excited to Yeah, first first legit day as January one, so really excited. Been onboarding a bunch and working with the team already and like, yeah, crazy crazy good staff. The mission orientation is provides for a different work environment for sure. It’s pretty pretty cool, passionate folks, really really neat And yeah, I’m not planning on relocating back to Missoula. It’s like three of the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in Missoula right now. Anyway, like the atmospheric river, insanely high winds. They don’t need me in the mix right now.
00:29:31
Speaker 4: So you would be the fourth in that in that scenario, I got it exactly.
00:29:35
Speaker 2: I also love the Weezer Christmas album. Their rendition of Hark the Herald Angels Sings. It’s great stuff. It’s it’s perfect.
00:29:43
Speaker 4: As a man who loves Weezer, I don’t know if I can get on board with that.
00:29:47
Speaker 2: All drop someible recommendations throughout the.
00:29:48
Speaker 4: Show, but as far as modern Christmas movies, one more for me too. There’s an animated movie on Netflix called Klaus, which is kind of like a Santa origin story. Jason Schwartzman and JK. Simmons. It’s very very good. Really, yes, it’s it’s a it’s a great movie.
00:30:01
Speaker 2: I also love the Mannheim Steamroller and went and saw them last year in Bowsman. They rolled through, but it wasn’t the Mannheim Steamroller, which I felt a little bitrayed. I think, I mean, I think we got like lower than that.
00:30:13
Speaker 4: All of those from the eighties that’s still to an hour, kind of like Ship of Theseus, where it’s like, if you just keep replacing all the members, is it even the same band anymore? You know?
00:30:23
Speaker 2: And then weirdly they shoehorned in the song Convoy you familiar.
00:30:28
Speaker 1: With that they that is so weird.
00:30:31
Speaker 2: It was very weird, very fun.
00:30:33
Speaker 9: Uh.
00:30:33
Speaker 2: The audience was not into it as much as I was.
00:30:36
Speaker 1: That’s amazing.
00:30:37
Speaker 2: All right, We’re gonna move on. Our next segment is meat Pole Say Sule Meat. Welcome to me, lady. I got a game.
00:30:49
Speaker 3: Something give me The beat Boy.
00:30:55
Speaker 2: Meat Poll is a test of how much you know about your fellow hunters and anglers. I surveyed five hundred meat Eater listeners about the outdoors. Your job is to predict their answers. There are three questions. Whoever is closest to the correct answer between Cal and Corey gets a point, and whoever gets two points will be the winner. Also, the chat should play along because Phil is going to watch your answers and give a shout out to whoever is closest an unlike price is right, you guys can’t cheat, so we know that the winner is You only win if you’re true of heart. Here’s the first question. What percentage of meat eater listeners would rather deer hunt in the morning instead of the afternoon. What percentage of meat eater listeners would pick deer hunting in the morning rather than the afternoon.
00:31:46
Speaker 3: Oh, we don’t call it first light for nothing, not last light.
00:31:50
Speaker 2: What would you pick, Corey? Deer hunting in the morning or afternoon?
00:31:52
Speaker 4: What day of the week are we talking.
00:31:55
Speaker 2: We’re gonna say Thursday, Today morning, okay, cal morning or morning? Wow? Two votes for morning. What percentage of meat Eater listeners would rather deer hunt in the morning instead of the afternoon. Five hundred listeners answered this question. Yeah, five hundred. I like the afternoon just because there’s a definitive vent when I’m in When I’m out there in the morning, I’m always worried, like I’m leaving some meat on the bone. Like if I take off at ten am, it’s all about to happen at ten fifteen am, Whereas in the afternoon, it’s like it’s done, it’s over. I deal with that.
00:32:33
Speaker 1: That’s somebody who stands in a strap to a tree’s perspective, like why would you leave?
00:32:39
Speaker 2: Why would you? Well, you gotta leave at some point, I don’t know.
00:32:41
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, when it was dark again.
00:32:42
Speaker 2: It’s right. Okay, you boys have your answers. Yeah, go ahead and reveal your answers. Corey says ninety six percent would rather hunt in the morning instead of the afternoon. Cal says seventy three percent. The correct answer is sixty four point eight percent. That gives Cal the first point. He was nine percentage points off.
00:33:04
Speaker 4: I forget you’re good at that.
00:33:05
Speaker 1: You’re playing against the man of the people.
00:33:08
Speaker 2: He knows price is right, he knows meat pole.
00:33:10
Speaker 7: Well.
00:33:11
Speaker 1: I got spanked at prices right with Steve. That was surprising to me.
00:33:14
Speaker 2: But now I did my own survey at home. All of the forty one bucks I could recall, nineteen were killed in the morning, twenty two in the afternoon. That means fifty four percent were afternoon versus forty six percent in the morning. And I found this interesting. My five biggest white tails were killed in the afternoon, but my three biggest muleis were killed in the morning. I don’t know how to make sense of that.
00:33:36
Speaker 1: I have many animals that I located in the morning and killed in the afternoon. Had I not been out there in the morning, sure, I would have had no idea where they were.
00:33:46
Speaker 4: Just hunt both we had Mark from Southeast Arizona. I get sixty five percent.
00:33:51
Speaker 2: Two percentage points off. Well done, Mark from Southeast Arizona. All right, Here is our second question. Cal has a one point lead. What percentage of meat eater listeners have ridden a horse?
00:34:05
Speaker 1: That’s a new one.
00:34:07
Speaker 2: What percentage of me deater listeners have ridden a horse? I have never rode a horse. I was thinking about. I’m reading a book right now called The Horse. That was what made me think of this. I don’t think I’ve even ever touched a horse.
00:34:20
Speaker 1: I don’t think you’re really missing out on anything.
00:34:22
Speaker 2: I’m with you. I was like, well, I’ve made it to thirty three years old without touching a horse. I can probably do the rest of my life without that. Have you ridden a horse? Cory?
00:34:32
Speaker 1: Yeah?
00:34:32
Speaker 3: I grew up with horses, worked with horses. Majority of my life was around horses.
00:34:37
Speaker 2: When’s the last time you were on a horse.
00:34:39
Speaker 3: It’s been a couple of years now though, Okay, yeah, five six years.
00:34:42
Speaker 2: Now, Calvin’s the last time you jumped on a horse?
00:34:47
Speaker 1: The last fall I did some I can’t imagine it’s all that high.
00:34:54
Speaker 2: What percentage of meat eater listeners have ridden a horse?
00:34:58
Speaker 4: Phil have you if you wrote a horse, I have ridden a horse? Okay, yeah, I don’t know if you know this, but Philip means lover of horses.
00:35:04
Speaker 2: I feel like I told you that you already knew that.
00:35:08
Speaker 4: I didn’t know that. But I do not love horses. But I have ridden one. Yes, that’s horseship.
00:35:12
Speaker 2: What percentage of meat eater listeners have ridden a horse?
00:35:18
Speaker 4: That’s seventy just in the room.
00:35:20
Speaker 2: Is it true of you, Phil? Do you love horses?
00:35:22
Speaker 4: I do not. I don’t. I just something about them. Maybe I’m I’m just intimidated by them or they I think it’s just the smell.
00:35:30
Speaker 1: If this wasn’t a kid’s show, i’d tell you exactly. I mean, take the romanticism away.
00:35:38
Speaker 2: I don’t mind looking at them, especially like I know, wild horses are all wrong for ecology purposes, but they’re quite majestic out there.
00:35:46
Speaker 4: I just think, in the year twenty twenty five, almost twenty six, I find no use for a horse living living in my suburban neighborhood. Yeah.
00:35:53
Speaker 1: I have had many fun adventures that have included those animals, And every one of those adventures also included moments where I was like, I hate these things so much.
00:36:03
Speaker 3: They were just a tool for me the last few exactly, it’s the tool, exactly.
00:36:07
Speaker 2: The boys ready with an answer.
00:36:08
Speaker 3: Sometimes the tools don’t make it out of the woods.
00:36:10
Speaker 2: Sometimes the tool tries to kill you and reveal your answers. Corey says forty percent of meat eater listeners have ridden a horse. Cal says thirty percent. The correct answer is eighty one point eight percent. So Cory is the closest and he wasn’t even halfway to the correct answer eighty one point eight percent. Phil, how’d the chat do?
00:36:33
Speaker 4: We had Friday arrows who asked the Christmas movie question goes eighty four percent. That was the closest one I could. I could see most people were way under.
00:36:41
Speaker 2: According to a twenty eighteen survey, about twenty seven million Americans ride a horse each year. That’s more horse riders than golfers, tennis players, or skiers. Of those twenty seven million Americans, about seventy thousand wind up in an emergency room because of horse related In all Right, the third and final questions, it is tied at one to one between Cal and Corey. What percentage of meat eater listeners have eaten deer testicles? What percentage of meat eater listeners have eaten deer testicles? This will determine our winner. Corey, have you yeah?
00:37:20
Speaker 4: Sure?
00:37:21
Speaker 2: Cal, have you yep, I have as well. We’re three for three at the host table, Phil Lubber of horses. Have you eaten deer test three?
00:37:30
Speaker 4: I have? Not?
00:37:31
Speaker 2: Three for four?
00:37:32
Speaker 4: Man?
00:37:33
Speaker 2: What percentage of mediater listeners have eaten deer testicles? Such an easy thing to pack out too? They got no weight?
00:37:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, you’re already packing yours.
00:37:43
Speaker 2: Out, Phil, Excuse me, Cal, how would you tell someone to prepare a deer testicle?
00:37:53
Speaker 1: Oh, beat it and fry it?
00:37:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and like a tenderloin in that just like, don’t let that thing getting the freezer. They’re too small. Make it up as an appetizer in those first couple of days.
00:38:05
Speaker 1: Yep, yeah, yeah, I mean you can pull that membrane off the outside, but if you just cut the thing in half and give it a couple of wax with the hammer, totally, yeah.
00:38:17
Speaker 2: And leave that membrane. Leave that membrane until you’re ready to cook it though, Like until you know the minute you’re about to throw that thing in the fryer. Leave it on right up until then. You boys ready with an answer.
00:38:28
Speaker 4: Let’s do this.
00:38:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, go ahead and reveal your answers for the victory. Does that say twenty six or two point six twenty six. Corey says twenty six percent of our five hundred Meat Eater listeners have eaten a deer testicle. Cal says thirty three percent. The correct answer is nine point nine percent. That Ma’s Corey our winner of meat poll today.
00:38:53
Speaker 1: Kat. We’ve been talking about this stuff for so long. I’ve figured the adaptation rate it would be a little higher.
00:39:00
Speaker 2: Convinced some folks, if not. My little flavor text here will do that. Deer testicles are a superfood. A three ounce serving has one hundred and ten calories, four grams of fat, and eighteen grams of protein. Nutritionally, that makes them similar to sardines and pork tenderloin. For tips on cooking them, go watch Steve’s video called how to Cook Venison Testicles on Meat Eater’s YouTube channel.
00:39:23
Speaker 4: It Ryan bet twenty one guests ten percent wow.
00:39:26
Speaker 2: Point one percentage points off. Well done, Ryan.
00:39:30
Speaker 1: I would rather have a fried deer testicle with cocktail sauce like legit cocktail sauce than pork tenderlin.
00:39:42
Speaker 2: Hmmm, yeah, you know what, I think. I would say the same. It’s very close, but I would say of all the organs. That’s my favorite. It’s a deer test call. I take that above a heart, above a liver, anything else in the gut pile.
00:39:53
Speaker 1: I used to make every year. I haven’t done it in years because now I just get frustrated and throw the hearts in the grinder in the grind, which is a fine use of them. But I used to make these capre s a sandwiches with dear heart or elkhart because the bite, the consistency of that muscle is so perfect for sandwiches, Like it’s there, sure, but you’re going to be able to to bite through it, and that is a like it’s pretty it’s pretty special when the garden’s all fresh.
00:40:28
Speaker 2: We asked this question a couple of years from now, it’s going to be double that point, all right. Joining us on the line last is Cornell University professor Trent Presler. His new book, Evergreen, is about America’s relationship with connifers. Trent, welcome to the show.
00:40:46
Speaker 10: Hey, thanks for having me.
00:40:47
Speaker 1: Guys.
00:40:49
Speaker 2: We will get to Christmas trees in just a second. First, I want to talk about some of the other things your book covers. You say that Evergreen trees have started wars tell us about that.
00:40:59
Speaker 10: Oh yeah, the American Revolutionary War actually started with the pine tree Riot, which I think most people find shocking because we’re taught in fifth grade that it started with the Boston tea Party, right. But by the fifteenth century, the Brits had cut down every single tree and all of their islands in the British Aisles. You go to Britain today England, you drive around the countryside, you think these are nice sheep’s meadows, full of grass. But historically they were covered in trees, and they used wood to build their battleships, and they were desperate for tall, straight pine trees to make the masts on their ships for the Royal Navy. And they had been blocked by other nations from cutting trees, and the Pyrenees, the Alps, and the Baltic States. So they sent the pilgrims to America to cut down trees. And eventually the crown said, they told all the colonists, we own all the big trees. Any tree over twenty four inches wide belongs to the monarchy for the Royal Navy.
00:42:00
Speaker 4: So the guy up right.
00:42:03
Speaker 10: So the colonists got pretty mad. They started cutting down all the pine trees that were twenty three inches wide in defiance of the law right, And so you see today even in a lot of colonial homes in northeastern US wide pine plank flooring that’s twenty three inches wide, which is from that era of rebellion. But anyway, long story short. The King sends his surveyors over to mark the trees that they own. And this poor guy was having a beer in the Where tavern, the pine Tree Tavern in Where New Hampshire, when this angry lumberjack named Ebenezer Mudget stormed in with his crew. They’d painted their faces black with soot. They held the king surveyors up by their feet and whipped them furiously with pine branches and sent them out of town on the back of a horse. So that was really the start of the American Revolutionary War, and it predated the Boston Tea Party by exactly one year.
00:43:04
Speaker 2: Amazing. That’s a great bit of America.
00:43:06
Speaker 1: Wonderful.
00:43:07
Speaker 2: In chapter nine, you talk about the relationship between whaling and evergreen trees. How were those two connected?
00:43:14
Speaker 10: Yeah, absolutely so. As we hunted whales to near extinction in eighteen hundreds, we were using them primarily their blubber for lighting oil. We burned it for everything. People lit their homes with whale oil candles and whale oil lanterns. And as the whale populations diminished, shows sharply that the price of whale oil skyrocketed. Where it was in like eighteen fifty money, it was like thirty eight bucks a gallon, which is like outrageous, like several hundred dollars for a gallon of whale oil. So there was a desperate search on to find a more affordable burning fuel, and we settled on something called camphene, which was a blend of turpentine and a few other Solventsine is one of the world’s most flammable substances, and it exists in evergreen conifers. So that thus began this huge effort to tap pine trees from North Carolina all the way through Texas to tap the turpentine and the sap and the resin so that we could have a burning fuel. And ironically it actually saved the whales from extinction because it released the pressure on hunting them so much.
00:44:26
Speaker 2: Wow. Love this evergreen history. Later you write about how in the nineteenth century, being a lumberjack was the most lethal profession in America. One stat showed that over a forty year career, lumberjacks had a fifty to fifty chance of dying on the job. What was it about that era that made this so dangerous.
00:44:46
Speaker 10: Well, it’s hard to fathom how men in that era cut down trees that big. You see these archival photos of the lumberjacks kind of leaning up against a soquoia tree or a redwood tree that might be thirty feet wide at the base and if you’re you know, it’s hard to picture it now, but America was covered in old growth trees, trees that were between five hundred and three thousand years old, and the only tools that they had at the time were these rudimentary tools. There was a double bladed axe and a what they called a misery whip, which was a long saw that was between fifteen and twenty feet long that two men would hold on either end and like kind of push and pull like this. Right, So you think about it, You have no mechanical equipment, you have a saw and an axe, and you’re with a group of guys. You know, you all probably have rotten feet and sore and rotten teeth and syphilis and you’re miserable. It’s like eighteen fifty, right, and you’re like, let’s cut down this tree that’s three hundred feet tall and weighs as much as six humpback whales. So the majority of those deaths happened simply by being crushed underneath the fallen trees and branches. It was shocking.
00:46:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, you and I both grew up in South Dakota, so when you covered the Green Glacier in the book, that hit close to home. Explain to folks what the green Glacier is and why it’s a problem.
00:46:11
Speaker 10: So the Green Glacier is this menacing advance of millions and millions of cedar trees that are taking over the Great Plains, and it is an ecological crisis of epic proportions that I wish more people would pay attention to. Let me just back up for a second. The cedars I’m talking about are the eastern red cedar, otherwise known as Juniperus virginiana. They’re native to the US. They’re not invasive, they’re actually native here. They grow in all fifty states. They’re incredibly resilient and adaptive. So for about ten thousand years they were kept in check in places like South Dakota. They only grew in river valleys and ravine bottoms, and they were kept in check by two things. The first were indigenous peoples. Native Americans had controlled burning practices, so they would occasionally light fire to the prairie, which would suppress the vans of woody tree saplings. The second was the presence of billions and billions of bison. So there’s a lot of research that shows that land where bison were present, where they grazed and they trampled, they kept the emergence of woody tree saplings at bay, which allowed the world’s greatest grassland ecosystem to thrive here in the central part of the United States.
00:47:24
Speaker 2: It’s still the.
00:47:25
Speaker 10: World’s largest remaining intact grassland, but it’s in grave danger right now because without indigenous fire practices and without billions of bison roaming the plains, now the cedars are taking over. They’re creeping up out of the river valleys, and they’re spreading across millions of square miles of the prairie states. And I’ve talked to cattle ranchers even that are going to have to close up shop because they’re losing prime grazing land to the trees.
00:47:52
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:47:52
Speaker 2: Where I grew up in eastern South Dakota, the cattle ranchers there public enemy number one was the red cedar. Was not coyotes, it was not Canadian thistle, it was a red ceedar, just because they would take over and choke out entire pastures that were otherwise, you know, very productive places to graze.
00:48:09
Speaker 1: And you get that neighbor next year who is not into agriculture. They just want to be out there for their deer season. Sure, and they like the trees because it gives the deer something to hide behind. Hey, come on, come on, North American Grasslands Conservation Act. That is one tool that if we get that sucker off the ground run and would provide some additional tools to get knocked back the cedar encroachment. I love that you bring this up. Yeah, grasslands are very important to us in the Hunt and Anglan space.
00:48:45
Speaker 2: All right, let’s talk about Christmas trees. To write this book, you spent a lot of time on Christmas tree farms. That is a type of farm. I’ve never been around. What is the average Christmas tree growing operation? Like?
00:48:57
Speaker 10: Yeah, so they’re out of public eye for a seven months of the year, right, But they’re mostly small family farms. The average age of a Christmas tree farmer is sixty five, which is a problem for the industry because people are aging out and not replacing themselves. The average salary and income actually is actually quite low at about twenty five thousand dollars, so most of these farmers have off farm income or day jobs. But one of the great benefits of Christmas tree farms is that they’re growing a great, highly valuable economic product on marginal land. So this is land often that is you know, rocky or on steep slopes where you can’t grow corn or you can’t install irrigation, So what can you grow there? You can grow Christmas trees. And often those farms also are doing a whole lot of work at just preserving open space and keeping the you know, suburban sprawl from getting every single square inch of our wild habitat.
00:49:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, and in nineteen eighty five, Americans bought thirty three million fresh cut Christmas trees. In twenty twenty three that number was just twelve million. That’s a twenty one million decline. What happened, Trent.
00:50:06
Speaker 10: Yeah, the Christmas tree industry has contracted by about eighty five percent in the last half century, and that there’s a couple factors. The first is the pernicious rise of artificial, fake, plastic Christmas trees, which has which all are made in China one hundred percent in plastics factories subsidized by their.
00:50:25
Speaker 1: I’m getting the feeling you don’t like them.
00:50:28
Speaker 10: You think like, I don’t know, I read my book, I make no bones about how I really feel about Christmas trees. But you know, so the the plastic Christmas tree business. Now, last year those imports were over two billion dollars, with another four billion dollars in just plastic Christmas ornaments and lights and everything else. So that’s one thing that has really affected the natural Christmas tree farm industry. And by the way, today the entire national stockpile of Christmas tree farms could fit within roughly within the city limits of Los Angeles or New York City. There’s only yeah, there’s only three thousand farmers left grow in Christmas trees. It’s a dying business. But the other thing that happened along the way is that trees became much harder to grow in a climate that’s changing quite rapidly. So we’ve seen like the heat dome that was in Oregon a couple summers ago, where it was one hundred degrees for a week. It killed tens of millions of young saplings in Christmas tree farms. We’re also seeing extended periods of drought. You’re probably familiar since you’re deer hunters. You’ve seen the extensive beetle kill damage in the western US, with just millions of acres of pine trees standing dead because the beetles would normally be killed in a really tough cold winter, but with a mild winter, they’re surviving in great numbers and attacking evergreen trees in the spring, and they’re just not able to recover. So I’ve spoken to a lot of Christmas tree farmers around the country where they just lose the seedlings to disease or drought or heat, and they can’t afford to replace them. And it’s a slow moving disaster. Because if I might add one more point, if you think the heat dome that killed millions of seedlings three years ago, we won’t see the impact of that in the marketplace for another seven years. Oh, because the trees grow eight or ten years before they’re big enough to cut them down.
00:52:18
Speaker 2: Now you interviewed the man who hunts down America’s most famous tree, the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree. Tell us about how that tree is selected.
00:52:28
Speaker 10: Yeah, Eric Pouts. He’s got one of the most fascinating jobs in the world. I think he’s been in this position for thirty years as the head gardener for a Rockefeller Center. And he drives around the Northeast in his Ford truck and he’s kind of just scoping out trees constantly, and he keeps notes and note cards and notepads of where he sees trees. And then sometimes he will literally just walk up to a door of a house and knock on the door and say, hello, I’m the guy from Rockefeller Center. Can we cut down your tree?
00:52:58
Speaker 1: You know?
00:52:59
Speaker 10: And some people the door and they think this is an axe murderer, this is weird. And then some people are like, really, are you that guy? And you know, he has an ID and some stuff he shows them to prove that he’s legit. But he’s got a backlist of many trees in his mind, so he’s already pretty much picked the tree for the next like five years, and then he kind of circles back to monitor them, make sure they’re healthy. They’re getting water and nutrients. But anyway, once they pick the tree, they get the approval of the owner, they’ll make a nice plaque to install. They’ll come on cutting day, they wrap all the branches very carefully, and then put it on a giant flatbed truck and haul it into New York City.
00:53:41
Speaker 2: Amazing stuff. Last question, if we’re just strictly looking at this from a conservation standpoint, is it better to get a real Christmas tree every year or use a fake one?
00:53:51
Speaker 10: Always buy a real tree. I will say this from the tible, shout this from the top of every mountain. The world doesn’t need more plastic and artificial trees. There’s a myth that, oh they last forever, Let me get a fake tree, but a lot of research shows that in fact, artificial Christmas trees are similar to IKEA furniture and that they people usually throw them away after seven years. After seven years, you know, you like you want the next tree that’s got different lights, or the revolving base or Bluetooth speaker or now there’s even there’s even fake Christmas trees that come with an artificial pine scent embedded in them. And you know also every time you buy an artificial tree, and let’s say you do use it for seven years before you throw it in the landfill, that during those seven years, that means seven years of real trees that are not being purchased from small family farmers. And then you also have to think of just the farms themselves where the trees are grown. They’re providing wildlife habitat for grazers, birds, insects, the mammals that we all like to hunt and fish, you know, like these these are part of our ecosystem and our living environment. And yes we cut it down, but all those farms they plant another one right in the place where they cut the other one down. So it’s the most renewable resource. We’ve got good stuff.
00:55:12
Speaker 2: Love it. Don’t need to twist our arm about having a real tree.
00:55:16
Speaker 1: How did you find this guest? This is the best guest.
00:55:19
Speaker 2: Oh what a couple of Trent. We’ve done a year and a half of episodes and Cal has declared you to be the best guest. Well fell us out the codings. We stick together. Yeah yeah. Trent’s new book, Evergreen, is available right now wherever books are sold. It’s a fun read, for folks who spend a lot of time outside Trent. Thanks for joining us.
00:55:38
Speaker 10: Thank you so much pleasure, Thanks for having me.
00:55:40
Speaker 2: Guys, do you have a Christmas tree up at home right now?
00:55:47
Speaker 11: No?
00:55:47
Speaker 2: I don’t know. No, No, how about last year? Did you have one last year?
00:55:51
Speaker 11: Yeah?
00:55:51
Speaker 2: The year before that? No, okay, every other year rotation you’re on.
00:55:56
Speaker 1: It’s just like the travel schedule and trying to keep take care of something. And if I’m being honest, the dead tree is still hanging around.
00:56:09
Speaker 2: In your back. You know.
00:56:09
Speaker 1: We tucked over on the side of the house.
00:56:12
Speaker 2: It’s good habitat for some birds and voles and mice. It is, yeah, good, good.
00:56:17
Speaker 1: Doesn’t bother me. But boy, I just do not think much of people with fake trees.
00:56:23
Speaker 2: Now sure, yeah, the planet.
00:56:27
Speaker 1: Right up there with those scented trash bags for me.
00:56:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, out of the mountains to get our tree, Cory, you you sometimes do that. This year you bought one out of parking lot though, right.
00:56:38
Speaker 3: Nope, No, we got a fake tree.
00:56:40
Speaker 2: Oh, fake tree. What a loser.
00:56:42
Speaker 1: But they walk among us, sitting right next to you.
00:56:47
Speaker 2: What’s the tree situation?
00:56:48
Speaker 4: We’ve got a real tree. We we just go to a nursery. So we’re not we’re not out there getting getting our boots dirty. But but it’s it’s real.
00:56:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, there’s things that I just don’t argue with my wife about.
00:56:58
Speaker 2: There you go, now you tell her to watch this. I’m going to age your mind. Definitely.
00:57:03
Speaker 3: We’re going to read that book.
00:57:04
Speaker 1: I’d go like this route, I’d be like, you know, what’s interesting that you’re so invested in raising this child? Right, Yeah, that’s that’s pretty neat that you think this is worth worthwhile. But some things aren’t.
00:57:19
Speaker 2: There’s not going to be any planet around for Marshall when he gets your guys, it’s.
00:57:24
Speaker 3: Trust me there like late November deer hunting. She’s looking at Christmas trees. I wish I could, Yeah, but again worth it maybe, So.
00:57:33
Speaker 2: That’s why Corey has that black eye all right. Our last segment is Tattoos. I regret.
00:57:43
Speaker 9: Hello talk miss my old friend.
00:57:47
Speaker 11: I’ve looked at my tattoo again. Such a good when I was drunk last summer, and a pizza says, A fuss will always fine, harps, it’s a tattoo.
00:58:17
Speaker 2: We do this segment only to hear that beautiful song. It’s wonder Phil wonderful stuff. We have two tattoos today. Calan Corey are going to describe what they look like for the listening audience. But if you want to see them for yourself, and you do, then head over to the Meat Eater podcast YouTube channel to watch this episode. All right, Phil, show us that very first tattoo.
00:58:40
Speaker 4: Is this the sorry.
00:58:42
Speaker 2: You got it right there? What does that look like? Cal, describe for our listening audience what you’re.
00:58:48
Speaker 1: Seeing, say, real tight racked white tail.
00:58:55
Speaker 3: I think it’s sitting on top of a knee.
00:58:59
Speaker 2: I think that’s shoulder. That’s like, yeah, his shoulder, upper arm.
00:59:03
Speaker 1: And then the eye is real dark.
00:59:06
Speaker 2: Uh huh.
00:59:06
Speaker 1: It is interesting.
00:59:07
Speaker 2: This tattoo was sent to us by Jack Shotgun. He says, hello to my favorite podcast. I present to you the tattoo I most regret. I was nineteen years old. It was the fourth of July and my buddy had recently purchased a tattoo gun. He asked me what I wanted, and, being a lover of all things outdoors, I said I’d like a big old buck on my arm. I paid fifty dollars for it, and he tattooed a nice big white tail. Now here’s the problem. I live in Utah and have never seen a white tail buck with my own eyes. So Jack wasn’t specific enough, and instead of getting a big old mule deer buck, he’s got a white tail that came straight from Michigan and he’s never even laid eyes.
00:59:48
Speaker 1: Would did the friend continue on in his tattoo career. I’d be an interesting aside.
00:59:53
Speaker 3: I think it’s pretty well done. I love the muscular Yeah, it’s all run it up.
00:59:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is not Yeah, yeah it is funny. It’s worth it’s worth having it.
01:00:02
Speaker 2: It’s not a bad tattoo, but it’s not a great tattoo if you’ve never seen one. It does take up some space, a lot of precious real estate on Jack Shotgun’s upper arms.
01:00:13
Speaker 1: Oddly enough for me, the fact that it’s fifty dollars, I’m like, oh, yeah, good job.
01:00:18
Speaker 4: Yeah says honestly, not bad for fifty bucks.
01:00:22
Speaker 2: Okay, here is our next tattoo. This is from Eric James Corey. What are you seeing there? From Eric?
01:00:28
Speaker 3: Well, there’s a lot going on here. It looks like a mountainous scene with a fly rod and maybe some sort of wolf dry fly going on there. There’s a latitude longitude coordinates looking at his forearm there on the inside. It’s very well done. It looks fresh, obviously in this photo a lot of detailed skin still red.
01:00:53
Speaker 2: Here’s what detail Eric had to say about that tattoo. He said, this tattoo is actually one of my favorites. That being said, it still managed to cause me a great deal of embarrassment. The coordinates in the tattoo are of a small creek my family and I have fished as long as I can remember. We usually go together once a year. About six years ago, though, I went with my uncle and cousins and we hiked separately. I got to a point in the trail where it forks, and I took a wrong turn and wound up a mile from the creek. Not a big deal, but as you can imagine, my family gave me all sorts of shit. How could you not know? It’s literally on your arm, they said. They mocked me the rest of the day, and that story often comes up at family gatherings or anytime the creek is mentioned. I’m sure this week at Christmas, Eric is going to hear about that. Now. Okay, someone Phil has just put a comment up there from dnh sage. He says, Now that’s how you spot burn. Totally agree. Can you imagine putting like your favorite spot in the mountains the exact coordinates on your arm for all to see.
01:02:00
Speaker 3: Nope, No, you’re just sitting at a restaurant in somebody’s eyeballs.
01:02:05
Speaker 2: Yeah. Watching the show, Eric James has told all up right now his favorite creak is to fish at with his family. It’s not going to be so good anymore. Eric.
01:02:14
Speaker 3: It’s a great tattoo though.
01:02:16
Speaker 2: Good tattoo, but now he has to get mocked at Christmas time because of the time he got lost going to that exact spot. Huh. All right, that brings us to the end of this week’s show. Phil, Let’s get some final feedback from the chat.
01:02:30
Speaker 4: Oh sure, I was gonna look up where this guy’s spot was.
01:02:32
Speaker 1: I guess.
01:02:35
Speaker 4: Let’s see here here we are. First of all, Santa came into the chat. He says, quote, you think getting a tattoo is good. No, getting a tattoo is not good. I don’t care about it, but it’s not good behavior. Thanks Santa, appreciate it.
01:02:50
Speaker 2: We’ve got a question, Williams.
01:02:52
Speaker 4: Do deer balls taste like cowballs or are they completely different.
01:02:56
Speaker 2: Tastes the same. It’s just like working with something that the cowboys, which are from a bowl, those are five exercise from a deer. So it’s like working with a roast off of a big bull elk versus an antelope.
01:03:10
Speaker 1: I think there can be some flavor change, whether you’re working in the rut or not. Sure, that’s more elk experience with Yeah, elk.
01:03:20
Speaker 2: Testicles five exercise though on a bowl.
01:03:27
Speaker 4: From Jack Lions. He says, oops, see hi, all advice for cooking prong horn prong horn antelope for someone who is an adult onset hunter. Got my first antelope with a both.
01:03:38
Speaker 2: I think in the nation archery antelope has one of the lowest success rates for hunters. So well done, Jack Lions cal tell him how to cook that thing.
01:03:47
Speaker 1: Just meet hum rare, buddy. Don’t don’t overcook it. Yeah, just just nice and simple. Don’t overcook it. It’ll be great.
01:03:56
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I think the taste of that antelope, Jack was determined back in August or September, whenever you killed this thing. I think antelope gets a bad rap because people kill them when it’s hot outside. They don’t take care of the meat right away. They’re butchering the thing in a place where they set the hind quarter on a sage bush. And those sage bushes are super oil, And so when folks are like, oh, this meat just tastes like sage, that’s not what the antelope tasted like. That’s what the anelope tasted like after you laid the hind quarter on a whole sage bush and got it covered in oil. So I think, Jack, if it tastes good, pat yourself on the back back in August for how you took care of the meat. Corey, what would you say about cooking that antelope?
01:04:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree, hopefully steaked most of it. At least every antelope that I get, I try and I try not to grind any of it, just because every steak from neck to tail is just so darn delicious.
01:04:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, and typically tender. I’ll tell you straight up, we had a very tense evening meal about ten days ago in my household us. I said, now, don’t overcook that, and snort overcooked it and overcooked it? And how overcooked? Just a solid medium well okay, yeah, like near burn. Yeah, I mean it’s like cube it up and turn it into green chili. At that point differences from Ryan mo a Han a question for everyone.
01:05:27
Speaker 4: I’m still looking for a gift for my dad that might help him hunt a little easier. He’s getting older and isn’t as mobile as he used to be. Gift ideas for older folks.
01:05:37
Speaker 1: Have you got him the fed up old trucks calendar?
01:05:40
Speaker 4: Yeah?
01:05:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, I’d make him a better hunter.
01:05:42
Speaker 1: Well, it’s something to think about a little easier on X.
01:05:50
Speaker 2: I find that most of the older hunters in my life don’t have on X and you show it to them and they’re blown away, like well, I’ve always wondered who owned that property over under? I don’t know. Makes it getting in out of the field a lot easier if he hunt any cold place. Just some hand warmers, till warmers, so folks, they get cold faster than a young buck like Corey.
01:06:10
Speaker 4: Yeah.
01:06:10
Speaker 3: Well, and one thought of those image stabilizing buyos. Everybody gets a little shaky as they age, but be a little less expensive, A solid shooting tripod, something that can help keep that gun steady.
01:06:26
Speaker 2: Yep, he’s a rifle hunting.
01:06:28
Speaker 1: I like all these. That’s good thinking.
01:06:30
Speaker 2: They’ll do a few more.
01:06:31
Speaker 4: Sure, we got one from Phil. He says, Hey Phil, Phil, here, I’d like to know if the crew has a preferred Christmas cocktail or adult beverage. Can you ask them about the next question break we’ll do Phil.
01:06:41
Speaker 2: Corey said yes before the question was finished. What is it, Corey?
01:06:44
Speaker 3: Anything and everything? Uh huh yeah, beer, whiskey, yeah, vodka, quila.
01:06:52
Speaker 4: That really is anything and everything.
01:06:54
Speaker 2: I saw an old ad for doctor Pepper back in like the sixties or seventies where they recommended eating up some doctor Pepper on the stove and you serve that at Christmas time is like a Christmas drink. I like that idea. So the last couple of years, I’ve been heating some up on the stove and then I pour some rum in there, and I feel like I’m having a cocktail from fifty years ago.
01:07:16
Speaker 1: Nice Phil and I have covered this and I’ve secured some, but it’s in Idaho. Go on Bose Angelus, like we just cannot get the the Christmas ales, like the seasonal cold weather beer.
01:07:34
Speaker 4: Those are my favorites. That was going to be my answer. Yeah, yep, yeap. So we have jubile Ale, which is good, which is one of my favorites. That’s from the shoots out a Bend. Jewbil Ale is a big, good ones, very very unique tasting for sure.
01:07:45
Speaker 1: But I think that my favorite is Nincossi Slayer and it is not distributed in the state of Montana.
01:07:53
Speaker 4: The thing is it used to be, but there is I heard about. There was some drama about it. There’s like a distributor war they where they were kind of buying for power Ever distributes Nincosti said fine, we’re just gonna worth. We’ll take our business elsewhere and they stopped bringing Nincosti beers out of you. Which a Slayer is a fine good winter beer. I love beers that don’t have like a lot of Christmas beers. We’ll do a bunch of additives, like they’ll put spices in them of fruits and stuff, which is you know, that’s fine on occasion, but I can’t drink a lot of that. And I think it’s like a natural beer that gets kind of like a nice fruity, roasty flavor with just the grains and the hops. Is impressive.
01:08:28
Speaker 1: Lower budget option that was surprisingly tasty was the sam Adam Seasonal Oh like their winter beer. We had that in South Dakota. Uh huh A couple of weeks ago, and it was great back when it felt like winter. It was like six blow zero.
01:08:48
Speaker 2: Yeah.
01:08:49
Speaker 4: I love a good eggnog. I do a homemade eggnog. The thing about egnog is that I can’t drink a lot of it, and I’m not much of a sipper. I don’t really like sipping on drinks.
01:08:58
Speaker 2: You know another Christmas song I Love of His Father Christmas by The Kinks. I’d put that like a top five Christmas song of all time. It’s like where some kids are angry that, like, God damn, Santa didn’t bring this any gifts again this year doesn’t necessarily age great because he asked for a machine gun to scare the kids down the street and father Christmas. So it’s a little relic. What else you got, Phil, give us a cup more sure?
01:09:22
Speaker 4: Dylan’s asking what you’re gonna do with your deer this year, Spencer Old, specifically, are you going to make more tallow?
01:09:27
Speaker 2: We have tallo in the freezer. We’ll render that over Christmas break sometime. Then we’re going to have some more lip bombs, boot bombs, make some lotion, some chapstick. We have great plans with all that towel. I didn’t kill anything early enough this year to have like a super super fatty buck. Last year, I killed a buck in Idaho in early October and that thing was loaded with fat. So this year I’m kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel as far as my towel goes. One more, Phil, One more.
01:09:59
Speaker 4: Why hasn’t met eater created an ugly slash holiday sweater that’s from a teodor or something or other. Great, that’s a great question. I think it’s a good idea. We should do something like that.
01:10:09
Speaker 1: Yep, that’s good.
01:10:10
Speaker 4: That’s for Sam upstairs. Okay, take care of that.
01:10:12
Speaker 2: Twenty twenty six. Now we have pre recorded episodes next week and the week after for Christmas and New Year. So this is our last live show of the year. Thanks for listening, everybody. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy New Year.
01:10:25
Speaker 1: Travel safe, get outside, have fun.
01:10:27
Speaker 2: Appreciate you hanging with us for twenty twenty five. By now,
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