00:00:14 Speaker 1: My name is Clay Nukleman. This is a production of the bear Grease podcast called The bear Grease Render, where we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the scenes of the actual bear Grease podcast, presented by f h F Gear, American Maid, purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the place as we explore. Hit it, Christian, that sounds famil. Do you know that song? 00:00:50 Speaker 2: BRep? 00:00:50 Speaker 1: Yeah sounds good. All right, Joe, Welcome Christian. Good to have you. Man, Hey, welcome to the beargreash Render. This is a monumental day. Monumental day we have. We have an incredible room full of guests. I've got Gary Believer new come here to my right. Good to see you Dad. Where does Believer hat? Yeah, that's like that's like me like, uh, it's. 00:01:34 Speaker 3: Like Michael Jordan wearing Yeah. 00:01:36 Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like Michael Jordan's wearing is m j you know, like spreading out for the dunk. Welcome, Dad, thank you. I'll introduce our guests. Last have Josh Lambridge Spilmmaker here to the left. 00:01:48 Speaker 4: Uh. 00:01:49 Speaker 1: We have Brent Reeves of this Country Life wearing his overall is looking good as usual I've never want Yeah, yeah, you were. 00:02:00 Speaker 3: Well, we're the ones that are nice and broke into yep, every I got like seventh pair of them. 00:02:05 Speaker 2: They're all will What is it? 00:02:07 Speaker 1: Is there a strategy one for every day? 00:02:10 Speaker 2: Yeah? Oh yeah, if you have a Sunday. 00:02:12 Speaker 1: You don't watch them every day. I know that's a lie. 00:02:14 Speaker 2: No, Lexis does takes them right down to the creek, the old rock down there that gal's working. 00:02:21 Speaker 1: Well, good to have you, Brent. Our our guest today, who uh, Lieutenant Joe Alexander, Yes, Sir, Oklahoma Department of Wildlife game Warden. Good to have you back. You're on the last render. 00:02:32 Speaker 5: Glad to be here. 00:02:33 Speaker 1: Yeah, it was, it's it's been. Uh it was a lot of fun last time. And uh kind of our guest of honor today, I don't know about that. Well, you're you're our guest of honor for sure. Is retired Oklahoma game Warden Jeff Brown. 00:02:49 Speaker 4: Who was good to be here. 00:02:51 Speaker 1: Who was the star of the Last Burgeris podcast. 00:02:55 Speaker 4: You know there again if you want to call it that, yeah. 00:02:58 Speaker 1: That's what we call it. That's what we can Jeff the star. 00:03:01 Speaker 4: And my uh my wife's getting a kick out of it. 00:03:04 Speaker 1: I know that did she What did she think? Did she? 00:03:07 Speaker 3: She? 00:03:07 Speaker 4: She likes it? And uh the part there at the at the leading end of that he said something about legendary Oklahoma law man in the Sooner state or something, and she guff aled And she's still she's still laughing about it. But I played it back and forth several times. 00:03:25 Speaker 3: She's like's gonna start rolling in. 00:03:28 Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, I guess I need to. I need to solve something like right off the bat I had somebody. So far, the only complaint I've heard about the podcast is that I called Oklahoma the Midwest. So so I'm asking the Oklahoma's in the room. Is Oklahoma the Midwest? 00:03:51 Speaker 5: You know, it could be the Midwest, it's you know, maybe central I don't know, you know, we're part of the Central Flyway. 00:03:59 Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's it's kind of it's kind of the it's uh, it's part of the Southwest. It's part of the South, it's part of the southeast. Part of the Midwest's kind of in the center. It could it's the either the say. 00:04:10 Speaker 1: That qualifies for it being in the Midwest. 00:04:13 Speaker 2: Geographical center of the United States in Oklahoma. 00:04:17 Speaker 1: It's in Kansas, Kansas. The geographic center of the US is is a town kind of like in I think it's central to West Kansas. Don't quote me on the West Kansas, but it's definitely in Kansas. Do you know where the center of them? Okay, completely unrelated, but related to geography and the center of ranges. I learned something this week. If you were to pick where the absolute dead center geographic center in North America of the Black Bear Range would be, what state is the center of the Black Bear Range in North America? 00:04:57 Speaker 2: Arkansas? 00:04:58 Speaker 1: Good quick, that's what I thought, deep in my heart, I would say Missouri, Missouri. 00:05:04 Speaker 2: Yeah, Tennessee, Tennessee. 00:05:09 Speaker 1: Okay, any guesses, I'll give you a hint. We're underestimating the size of Canada. Minnesota. 00:05:19 Speaker 2: Minnesota. 00:05:21 Speaker 1: Minnesota is the dead center. Like think about Alaska, Oh yeah, Florida, New Brunswick and Newfoundland, all the way into Old Mexico, all the way to up to like almost to the to none of it, I mean, black Bear Ranger doesn't go that far. But yeah, Minnesota. I was surprised that you don't think of Minnesota as central to anything. But when you but the North American continent and black Bear Range it is. 00:05:47 Speaker 2: That's good. 00:05:48 Speaker 4: Yeah, big, That would make it about the geographical center of North America itself, because black Bear Range, with little exception, is just about North America exactly. 00:05:58 Speaker 1: It covers a lot of Yeah, it covers a lot of it. 00:06:01 Speaker 2: For sure. 00:06:03 Speaker 5: I'd consider Oklahoma the hub of America. 00:06:06 Speaker 2: There we go. 00:06:07 Speaker 1: You have the right to think that he's also toting the gun, so that we'll take his word for that. We uh, yeah, we over just a little bit further east. Think it's kind of over here. But no, Jeff, when did you retire? 00:06:26 Speaker 4: It in? I retired last October October of twenty three. 00:06:31 Speaker 1: And you started in eighty five, eighty five, So how many years now? 00:06:34 Speaker 4: Thirty eight thirty eight years and one month? 00:06:39 Speaker 1: When when you when you retired? Was it? 00:06:44 Speaker 4: Was? 00:06:44 Speaker 1: It difficult? 00:06:46 Speaker 2: It was. 00:06:49 Speaker 4: Being a game warden I lived. That was my life and my family's life. That's what we did. I did it on a daily basis, but but my family was directly affected by it on a daily basis. 00:07:04 Speaker 1: And uh, and by that you mean just like being on call twenty four. 00:07:09 Speaker 4: Being on call, it's it's uh, it's a way of life. It's not a job. It's a way of life. It's a lifestyle, and we lived it, and so naturally when I just threw a light switch and one day I wasn't anymore, Joe drove me to Oklahoma City my last day and and turned all my stuff in and on the way home. You know, one minute I was one, the next minute I'm not. It took some getting used to, and I'm getting used to it, but it did. It hurt for a few months. And uh, but I'm I didn't miss the phone being tied to the phone twenty four to seven, but even that got got Uh. It was hard to get used to because I was constantly looking at my phone waiting for it to go off. Yeah, and and it took me a while to talk myself and I didn't have to do that anymore. Yeah, Yeah, but it was It was a great It was a great career, great life. I loved it. I lived at I was ready. I was I was ready to quit. I outlived my usefulness. 00:08:14 Speaker 1: So now, Brent, you were tired about the same time, same month, did y'all? Did y'all? I guess you hadn't met. We had the same party, are at the same party. It seems like a pretty good strategy to uh on your undercover work to retire. 00:08:31 Speaker 2: Yeah. Probably, it is a great it's a very you don't think about it when it's all going on, but then one day, just like Joe said, you wake up and you're just like the guy next door. Yeah. Yeah, kind of weird. 00:08:45 Speaker 1: Yeah, now, Joe, you and Jeff worked together pretty closely for years, is that right? 00:08:52 Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, that would be That would be an understatement. There's a we go back a long ways. In fact, I wouldn't be here for worn't for him. As far as game arden work goes, I can the first time when Jeff moved to to the county that that I grew up in. That's kind of what introduced me, you know, to to him and game warden work. 00:09:12 Speaker 1: Before you work for the department. 00:09:14 Speaker 5: Oh yeah, when I was a kid. 00:09:15 Speaker 1: Oh really, So yeah, you've known. 00:09:18 Speaker 4: I've known Joe since he was in high school. It's not before. Yeah, And uh I knew his dad. His dad was a hunter education instructor for me. Uh I say for me, he was a volunteer hunter instructor that would help me and and do classes for me and with me. And got to know Joe through him, and yeah, and Joe got into law enforcement and and uh we joke and it's kind of a kid, but he was my deputy for a long time before whoever was a game arder. 00:09:46 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:09:47 Speaker 5: Yeah, it's kind of a unique story, but you know, it's it's just kind of the way it played out. I started out law enforcement as a police officer, and I wound up deciding that wasn't for me. And but I enjoyed law enforcement. I enjoyed hunting and fee I thought, well, what's the best bet? You know, got the visiting with Jeff about it and decided, you know, game boarding, that's a perfect fit. So I had to go back to college to get all that time of squared away and then you know it just everything worked out that I became a game warden later on and the rest is history. We spent a long time together, even before, like you said, before I was a game boarding officially. 00:10:23 Speaker 1: So yeah, when did you start? 00:10:26 Speaker 5: I started in uh six? 00:10:29 Speaker 2: O six? Yeah, O six? 00:10:31 Speaker 1: Excellent, dad. Do you have any advice for for Brent and Jeff on retirement? You're kind of a pro. 00:10:37 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:10:37 Speaker 1: Yeah, when'd you retire ten years ago? 00:10:39 Speaker 2: Yeah? 00:10:40 Speaker 1: Thirteen thirteen, Yeah, twenty thirteen. Oheen. 00:10:44 Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, well you know, just LOLLI dag all you can, man, because it's coming to an end pretty quick. 00:10:53 Speaker 1: Well on that note, yeah, pretty good advice. So today, would you say, you know, in the in the episode, Jeff, you emphasized how much it's like paddlefish was king over in terms of enforcement and what you guys are doing that was like high on the list. Is that is that still the way it is? 00:11:20 Speaker 4: It is at least as of October it was, you know, and I was the district captain for several years. For eighteen years, I was a district captain, and so I got to dictate some of what was important and what wasn't. Yeah, but but yes, paddlefish is very important, like we've talked about before, because of the uniqueness and the opportunity to to uh over exploit and so so you know, deer I went to work back in eighty five and we were still growing our deer herd. We were still growing our turkey herd, our turkey flock. I'm sorry, but those things for most part been taken care of. You know, Deer here to stay. Paddlefish is something that is there again is unique and and and extremely valuable not only sport fishery, but also on a commercial side. And it deserves a lot of protection. And that's what it got from us. 00:12:22 Speaker 1: It's interesting to hear you've put it like that that, uh, these species that are recovering might receive more attention early on. Is that what you're saying about? Like with deer turkeys in the eighties and nineties. 00:12:35 Speaker 4: When when when we were still growing the deer herd in Oklahoma, Man, that was something we really worked hard on. You worked on hard on deer poachers and and uh and things like that because that was important. But the deer herd has recovered not only in Oklahoma but the whole United States for the most part. Same way with turkeys. Now, turkeys may be on a kind of down right now, but they'll be back. You know. We used to trap, trap and transplant turkeys in Oklahoma, and I got in on some of that, and then all of a sudden, you know, they said, we don't need to do anymore because if there's not turkeys there now, there will never be turkeys there. So that reintroduction was complete. Well, and so yeah, you move, you moved from one species to the other depending on on on what's going on with that species at the time. And uh, paddlefish was the same way. You know, it was commercial fish in Oklahoma back in the day, and caviar wasn't a thing then and we phased out. 00:13:39 Speaker 3: Just commercially fished for the meat. 00:13:41 Speaker 4: Yeah, and and and even then, what the commercial fishermen were fishing for, we're rough fish, flathead, Uh, some carp species, suckers. Paddlefish was not even not not utilized that much. 00:13:56 Speaker 1: I bet you, I bet they can make some good fish sticks out of paddlefish. 00:13:59 Speaker 4: You know, the best, the best paddlefish meat that I've had with smoked it. It can be real uh chicken like in its texture. It's not flaky. It can be pretty uh stringy for lack of a better word. And smoked it was pretty good. I don't care that much for it any other way. If you take it out of the water and put it into grease, it's good. 00:14:21 Speaker 1: Just quick. 00:14:22 Speaker 4: Yeah, it's fresh, it's good, but you put it on you put it in the freezer and want to thought out and cook it later. Not so much. That's been my experience. 00:14:31 Speaker 1: Is anybody slight digression, Does anybody think it's a little suspicious that. 00:14:36 Speaker 3: Brent. 00:14:36 Speaker 1: When did you get your commercial fishing license in Arkansas? 00:14:38 Speaker 4: Brent? 00:14:39 Speaker 2: This year? 00:14:40 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, just like a few months ago. Yep, right when you kind of learned about powlefish eggs. 00:14:47 Speaker 2: It's always something I see where this is going. Yeah, yeah, how long we've been friends. 00:14:53 Speaker 1: They part of what we had to we it was it was in the it was in the episode. But uh, Christian, get your band you're ready. It was in the episode. But how a lot of these guys were taking paddlefish eggs out of Oklahoma and bringing them into Arkansas because it was the closest state where you could legally sell paddlefish eggs. They were smuggling it. I just I don't know. I just I don't even have that license. I don't have a road taker's license. 00:15:19 Speaker 3: Well then probably there's a road taker's license. 00:15:22 Speaker 1: Yeah, oh really with a commercial fishing Arkansas separate deal altogether. 00:15:27 Speaker 2: I don't have it. 00:15:27 Speaker 7: I don't have that, Okay, yeah, yeah, Dad, did you know Brentson commercial fisherman? 00:15:35 Speaker 1: Did you know that? I changed in my phone? I changed his uh his phone number to uh to uh hold on, wait for it. It's worth it guys commercial, I can't say the bag. 00:15:49 Speaker 5: I seen him run that. 00:15:50 Speaker 1: Look it says, uh, commercial fisherman, Brent Reeves, that's who is used to Yeah. I used to say, cameraman, change it to commercial fishermen. Yeah, well, I totally hijacked your story. 00:16:04 Speaker 4: Well, and kind of what he was talking about right there, We didn't have commercial fishing in Oklahoma. It was phased out over time. Now, in the first episode of all this, there may have been may been some confusion. Yeah, some people could have been confused, because yes, commercial fishing in Oklahoma was outlawed in the in the late seventies, mid to late seventies, but it was phased out over time. So Billy Wishard was still commercial fishing even though it was illegal in most parts. He was still commercial fishing in the Grand Lake legally, legally in the late eighties, early nineties, or he was associated with commercial fishermen in lake because they outlawed it and then, but they just didn't pull the plug on everybody's livelihood. So when when this commercial fisherman would either get out of business or pass away or whatever, that license for that lake was never renewed. So now that lake has closed well, it took several years to get around and Grand Lake was the last lake to be CLOSEDO good way, I understand it. And there was still legal commercial fishing on Grand Lake into the late eighties early nineties. 00:17:17 Speaker 1: Now, why would a state. It actually was news to me that not every state had a commercial fishing you know, people could be it just because in Arkansas, I just always knew there were commercial fishermen that were fishing the rivers and whatnot is what's the agency's philosophy on not having commercial fishermen? I mean they just literally taken putting too much tax on the resource for the management plan. 00:17:44 Speaker 4: Yeah, probably a combination of that. I don't know that. I don't know a hard and fast answer to that, but it kind of goes back to one of the conversations we had that wildlife is a public a public resource, and if even if one person is benefiting from it, it's short changing everybody else. Uh. And there again, anytime anytime there's money involve, anytime anytime there's commercial, anytime there's money involved, and with wildlife, wildlife loses. Even though there are legal and good commercial fishermen, there's also that element that's not and that happens that that's also true in in guides, fishing guides, hunting guides, anything in the wildlife. Buess, you got you got good people, but then you got unscrupulous ones over here. If I can say that word that that makes it hard on everybody else. Uh. I don't know the exact answer. The direct answer to that is, but mostly Oklahoma wanted to concentrate on sports fish and and and commercial fishing took away from sport fishing and regardless of the species they ever taken or whatever. So that's what they did. 00:19:05 Speaker 1: What do you think, Brant? 00:19:07 Speaker 2: I listened to this country life this week. You listened to it this morning it came out, which when the last friday when this comes out? But I dressed, I had some I got some flak from people seeing the rondo's nets on the river, and I thought, well, maybe this guy's right, Maybe I am harming the resource. So I called gaming fish, talked to the deputy director. He put me with the two biologists, the large river biologists and the commercial fishing biologist, and I posed a question, is commercial fishing hurting the catfish and the rough fish population in Arkansas? They said absolutely not, So you would not believe the number of fish in that river. You know, they can estimate and do surveys on the Little Red and the White River and the Norfolk and they can get a estimate, a good estimate of the number of fish pro mile oh in that but they there's no way that said, they absolutely became even estimate how many catfish there are on the Arkansas River. So if the resource is there and it's plentiful and it's not hurting, I'm all about it. I also talked to a commercial fish fisherman, and it was in last week's podcast about he said, you know, you do what you want to. I'm quoting him. This is a guy that I was just inundating with questions when when Tim and I were starting to do this, and he said, you do what you want to. You catch those big females, the egg laden females, he said, throw them back, he said, because that's they're literally throwing money back in water. But they're also invested in the future of that, Yeah, of what's going on out. 00:20:44 Speaker 3: Yeah, and as guides. 00:20:49 Speaker 1: Is a is a commercial guide fly fishing. 00:20:52 Speaker 3: God as gods, we're we're the biggest conservationists on the river. 00:20:55 Speaker 2: Man. 00:20:56 Speaker 1: Yeah, you're about six too, aren't you. 00:20:59 Speaker 2: Because there's no face there, there's no well exactly. 00:21:10 Speaker 1: We did a really robust series last summer on the Mississippi River, and I talked with doctor Jack Kilgore, who is a fisheries biologist for the lower He's like the big dog for like the last as I understood it, the last thousand miles of the Mississippi River for the corb engineers fisheries biologists. When I sat down with him, I expected him to tell me that the Mississippi River was imperiled and that the fish populations were struggling, and it was the sewer of America and the agricultural runoff and pesticides and chemicals. I just expected this like dire story and had no knowledge of it. I was. I was in utter shock when doctor Kilgore was like the fishery of the Mississippi River, he said, is incredible. The fisheries are incredible, except for invasive carp. There's problems, invasive carp being of the biggest one. But he said that basically the catfish, even with commercial fishing on the Mississippi River, is an unexploited resource at this point and partly it's because now if there were fifteen thousand commercial fishmen in Arkansas, I don't know how many permits they sell, you know. 00:22:20 Speaker 2: It's thousands less than it used to be. 00:22:22 Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so I mean like fire attrician or by design attrician. 00:22:27 Speaker 1: Farm raised cat Yeah, there's no limit on it. Like farm raised catfish has impacted you know, just people buying fish. And then it was undetermined whether people are eating less catfish and river fish than they used to. But I bet they, I bet they are eating less. 00:22:46 Speaker 2: It's also hard, you know, yeah, it ain't easy. 00:22:50 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, anyway, just there's no conclusion of that other than I was surprised to hear how. 00:22:58 Speaker 4: Something THATSS have made. It just popped into my head. It may have something else to do about it, do with it. Back in the day, you had more of a rule America who was willing to eat rough fish, flathead, channel cat carp suckers. Not so much anymore because those fish are all have a distinctive wild caught flavor, and some of it you have to be fish hungry, you to want it, you know, to be ableeded. So there may not be that much call for wild caught some fish proseas just because of the demographic and society has changed. I don't know that that just kind of makes sense to me. 00:23:40 Speaker 1: That was my kind of what I was thinking, as well as that maybe there's just less market for it, because I mean, I think if people could make a living commercial fishing where it's legal, they would. I mean, I know one thing. 00:23:53 Speaker 2: You can't go to home depot with a hoop net propped up in the back of your truck without somebody stopping you and say, hey, you got any fish for sale? Because that has happened to me more than one occasion. 00:24:03 Speaker 1: Yeah, that's awesome. 00:24:04 Speaker 5: We keep it on that when we said, what did y'all call that a clue? Yeah, that was a clue. 00:24:09 Speaker 1: If Brent, if Brent, we're in the state of Oklahoma with a hoop net in this truck, would that be bad? 00:24:17 Speaker 4: It would draw attention? 00:24:17 Speaker 1: It would yeah, Yeah, be careful how you drive home at night. 00:24:23 Speaker 2: I go through Oklahoma only a lot. 00:24:26 Speaker 1: No, I didn't know. I guess. I guess having a hoop net in your truck would show intent to fish. 00:24:32 Speaker 2: It would it would? 00:24:33 Speaker 5: Yeah, But you know that that population and the fish population in Mississippi River, it's it's in good shape and unexplorted. Now, but wait till that. Tim and Brent. 00:24:43 Speaker 1: Yeah, if we ever figured out how to catch the man, tell us tell us about that hoop net needle that you can. 00:24:52 Speaker 2: You Yeah, I can tell you about it. I'm gonna do some stuff on it. But yeah, my brother was going through some of my dad's stuff and found that I net needle that was carved out of hickory. And you can see the knife marks on there. And it wasn't our dad's, but it had to have been either, and it wouldn't have been my grandfather's. It would have had to been like my great grandfathers or beyond that because there was some net fishing. I mean it was unrestricted back in the day, but they did some net fishing and stuff. Now my dad never did do it, but it's there's no telling how old that thing is. This probably goes back five or six generations and it's it's pretty cool. And he found that going through some stuff the other day and gave it to me. 00:25:33 Speaker 1: So it's a wooden I'd never seen one, but it's a it's a it's a wooden tool about this big yep that's about it's about carved from a single piece of hickory. 00:25:43 Speaker 2: It's about ten inches long. 00:25:45 Speaker 1: And it's it's it's hard to even describe it. 00:25:47 Speaker 2: It looks like a it looks like a long folsom point yeah, and uh ain't that's the ones that cut the flutes on the side of it, right, it's shaped, it's shaped like that. And I mean, these guys know what a net needle looks like. But I'll you wrap your string around and it's got a it's it's hollow on the end, like a like a church steeple. It's hollering. It's got a point a pegsticking in it, and that's where you'd wrap the string around. And then as you did the I think it's called the flying Dutchman knot that you tie nets together with. It feeds off of that, off of that needle, and that's how it works. It's really cool, very cool. Well, uh, dad, have you ever had caviar? 00:26:34 Speaker 1: Oh? 00:26:35 Speaker 2: No, not. 00:26:36 Speaker 6: I probably have as old as I am, But just for that, I don't want any of I'll be honest with you. If you know we're gonna eat caviar, y'all, might I mean I'll probably taste of it. I'm just not much. You know, if it's not peanut butter and jelly, I don't go for it. 00:26:54 Speaker 2: Yeah you go us. 00:26:57 Speaker 1: Wait, you had fried caviar on the Christian Have you ever read caviar? 00:27:02 Speaker 4: I don't know what you can call fried egg fish eggs caviar, that's what we called it. I think that's just fish eggs. 00:27:12 Speaker 1: Lieutenant Joe, have you had had you? Have you had caviar before? 00:27:15 Speaker 2: Yes? I have? 00:27:17 Speaker 1: Are you a fan? 00:27:18 Speaker 5: Well, you know it goes back to. 00:27:20 Speaker 3: That chose a refined kind of guy. 00:27:22 Speaker 5: And you know, I'm looking for that mirror war or. 00:27:27 Speaker 1: Taste of the ocean church combined into a beautiful poetry that in the mouth with a burst of the I wish we had that guy from California here. 00:27:37 Speaker 3: I have to shout out to Alan Morris with sterling caviar. Yeah, he did send us some some wow, some sturgeon white sturgeon caviar for us to try. 00:27:46 Speaker 1: Well, let's let's look at it. Okay, Christian hit us with a banjo lick. We got here hit it Christian celebration, that's what you say, sek. So this is how the caviar comes. It comes, and it's they overnight it. Wherever it's wherever it's going, they overnight it. Now, where has it been since? It wasn't overnighted last night? 00:28:09 Speaker 2: It was, it's been a refrigerator. 00:28:11 Speaker 1: Okay, I'll eat fresh caviar. 00:28:14 Speaker 3: Well it's as fresh as you're going to get. 00:28:16 Speaker 1: Okay, So now let's let's do a little review here before we get going. So it was really interesting to me to learn about the history of caviar in in Eastern Europe and the Europe. I mean, like how they had these rich sturgeon filled rivers and you can imagine when the population was put your lid back on. Yeah, this is going to take a while, gentlemen. I happened to be a caviar expert. No, but you know when the poppy, you know, a thousand years ago, the population of Europe would have been way lower than it is, and you get you get the idea that they could pull a lot of resource from those rivers and not affect populations as much. And this lady we listened to a podcast. There's a book about the history of caviar. We tried to get the lady on our podcast and she wouldn't come. 00:29:09 Speaker 2: She was not real cooperative. 00:29:11 Speaker 1: Yeah, she uh, wonderful, wonderful lady, but wouldn't was unable to come on our podcast too. Yeah, and uh but from listening to her some of her stuff, she she Wow, was she the one that said caviar was as common as butter at some points in time? Like it was just something that like it was the common person ate caviar. 00:29:34 Speaker 3: There's actually a movie, a Russian movie from nineteen sixty two where this this this Soviet military guy is sent to this kind of remote area and he's sitting in front of a mixing bowl full of caviar and he's just complaining about having to eat caviar. 00:29:55 Speaker 1: So so the way it became so popular and ingrained in the culture ended up being this this symbol of luxury and wealth, was that at one time it was like common food, like everybody ate it. It was just food. 00:30:09 Speaker 2: There's a lady that works with a Lexus and she immigrated with her family from from Russia and she said that. I asked her the other day, I said, you like do you like it? She said, oh, yeah, I love it. That's what's the difference in it? She said, Well, the elite people eat black caviar and the rest of us eat red. 00:30:27 Speaker 1: Oh is that right, black and red caviar, that's what she said. Huh, I'm a I'm a black caviar man. 00:30:33 Speaker 4: But you know, these Eastern Europeans that we dealt with a lot in operation Russian Snag also made caviar out of other fish species. 00:30:42 Speaker 1: Oh really, what were they tapping into? 00:30:43 Speaker 4: Yeah, you mentioned like three or four Yeah, some they did a lot of what's that salmon? In Colorado still had no cutthroat. 00:30:56 Speaker 1: Silver salmon caviar. 00:30:57 Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, but they made red cab are at of different salmon species type fish because we would, as we would catch some of them, confiscate some of their tackle and stuff. Also in this tackle was was little snagging tackle. We'd ask them what that was for, and that was the the species or whatever they were trying to take in Colorado, which I think it was. It was legal in some instances some way they could do it. But yeah, they utilized other fish species too. 00:31:32 Speaker 2: They said in an article I read the other day about Arkansas that they would use both ins grintl Yeah, you can buy both fen paddlefish and then sturgeon. But there was like you said, it was like three or four on the list. What are the middle too? 00:31:47 Speaker 1: Well, it's different types of stur. 00:31:49 Speaker 4: Different types of sturgeon, I got you. Yeah, yeah, that you mentioned in both end. Yeah, you can buy both in caviar in caviar shots. But that goes back to the both in is a prehistoric species of fish also, right, so there's a common denominator. There is this similar to sturgeon. I've never seen it today. 00:32:10 Speaker 1: Now we have sturgeon in our rivers in this part of the world. 00:32:14 Speaker 5: Is that is that true Arkansas? 00:32:16 Speaker 1: Yeah, but they're not they're not showing those sturgeon here. They get big. I mean, why are people illegally catching sturgeon for that caviar. 00:32:27 Speaker 4: They don't get big like they do in the Snake River up in the Northwest. That's a different sturgeon. These these are small sturgeon. They're I don't know. 00:32:36 Speaker 3: That if there is abundant, No, they're really get since that in Europe, those sturgeon are big. 00:32:42 Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I think they're like the surgeon. They're like the sturgeon in the in the Snake Rivers. Yeah. 00:32:47 Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's why they hundreds of pounds. They had these huge eggsacts and tons of eggs and why they could harvest so much. Back to the story just for anybody that had missed it in the podcast. So the sturgeon was just like common. It was this common thing that people ate. And then it became it started to become this way I understood the timeline. It became more of a limited resources as populations increased, as sturgeon populations began to be exploited. And this took place like over hundreds of years. And then that's when what do you see. 00:33:20 Speaker 2: Five pounds was the largest chiven old sturgeon caught in Arkansas. 00:33:24 Speaker 1: Oh okay, so it wouldn't have that many eggs. And then and then that's when the churches they were they were asking people to fast from meat, the Orthodox churches, and that's when they made a decision at some point and sometime and they said, well, you can't eat meat on this religious fast, but you can't eat caviar. And all of a sudden, it was like caviar just became the thing because people could eat it and still meet these religious rituals. And then I think the rivers became exploited and all of a sudden it grew into this thing where just the wealthy had it and had access to it. And then now, what I asked Keith when I was with him and it was on the episode, was it seems like this stuff would translate into our culture if it was that big a deal. Like, I'm still a little bit surprised that like Midwestern and Southern America places where there are paddlefish, I'm surprised that we're not pumped about paddlefish caviart. 00:34:32 Speaker 2: Yeah, because we're eating gizzards and livers. Yeah, everything, it. 00:34:37 Speaker 4: Isn't I think it is an acquired taste. The right reasons Europeans like it was that they've been raised on it. Yeah, it'd be just like us going to northern Alaska and eating seal blubber probably would find it terrible, but the the natives up there love it. Culture, it's a cultural thing. 00:34:56 Speaker 2: I had a guy I put a video on my Instagram by cooking a cuckoo coon and he said, my gosh, man, what's next squirrels up? 00:35:06 Speaker 1: That was. 00:35:11 Speaker 5: Yeah, I think you know what Keith said that. And when when you were talking to Keith about you know the people around here, they they see fish eggs laying on the ground. Yeah, you know, they they wouldn't even imagine trying to eat that fish eggs that somebody had cleaned their fish and thrown it back in the water and whatnot. Uh So it's it has to be culture. 00:35:32 Speaker 2: You know. 00:35:32 Speaker 5: Throughout the throughout the years, we're you know, pretty much all the the regular common Joe's so to speak, the blue collar America. You know, they they weren't raised with caviar. Yeah, they didn't put caviar on top of their crackers and that sort of thing. 00:35:48 Speaker 2: You know. 00:35:49 Speaker 5: They catfish, they had flathead right out of the river, you know, and they they weren't keeping. 00:35:54 Speaker 4: Even though even the upper crust people and Mid America, uh the more you know, wealth to do. We would have open house at the Paddlefish Center and would have fresh paddlefish, caviar, and and there were senators and legislators and wealthy business men they came to this and there was always caviar left over. 00:36:26 Speaker 1: Is that right? 00:36:27 Speaker 4: Even even even the upper echelon of people in the mid United States don't eat a lot of it. It's been my experience. 00:36:35 Speaker 3: Now, I really hyped myself up to like this caviar in there. 00:36:41 Speaker 4: You know, there's some people talk it up. I talk it down every chance I get. I do not like it. And I told you all to go why I don't like it and that, and it just tastes like rotten paddlefish. 00:36:55 Speaker 2: Man. 00:36:55 Speaker 1: One time I had uh m, I had whale whale. It's it's I can't remember the name. There's a there's a there's a term. It's like tartar. 00:37:08 Speaker 2: Uh But it was. 00:37:09 Speaker 1: It was a piece of it was beautiful. It was just like chunk of It didn't look like meat, but it was. It was a square like a big stick of butter, like imagine four sticks of butter stacked together. And there was a black line white dark black about the quarter of an inch, and then white like bear fat. And they took it and sliced it and it was literally whale skin and whale blubber. Yeah, and it was legally harvested by indigenous people in Alaska. And uh man, I put that in my mouth and it I didn't like. I mean, I wasn't going back for more. It was chewy, but I felt like that guy that was describing caviar. It felt like the ocean was in my mouth. 00:37:57 Speaker 2: Well, had you gone back from here? Here was probably plenty of it. 00:38:00 Speaker 1: Yeah, it was beautiful, but it was it was wild, it was. It was just like now if I was if I was describing it like Hillbilly would describe it, say, boy, that's fishy, but it was. It was more complex than fishy. It was like I was tasting like coral reefs. 00:38:17 Speaker 3: And oysters, circle cold cold. 00:38:20 Speaker 1: Ice cold. Yeah yeah, yeah, that's probably the way people think. Would they eat a squirrel they never had it before. 00:38:31 Speaker 4: I don't see how that's possible, because squirrel is squirrels delicious, delicious, regardless of where you come from. 00:38:37 Speaker 2: For real. 00:38:38 Speaker 1: Well, let's so we have some cavea. Okay, I'm ready for the carry. 00:38:41 Speaker 2: Now she comes like in ice packs. 00:38:45 Speaker 1: I feel like we're getting a peeking through the lifestyles of the rich and famous. 00:38:48 Speaker 2: Yeah it is, this. 00:38:49 Speaker 1: Is what this is what happens. Yeah yeah, oh. 00:38:58 Speaker 2: No, here this here, this, Josh, what you need? 00:39:03 Speaker 4: You know. I always I always got the impression that that in the even in the United States as a whole, but especially in this part of the United States, that this caviar thing was just more of a status symbol type thing. Yeah, you eat a little bit of it, so you say you did, and that's what you were supposed to do. But in Europe, Eastern Europeans, it's completely opposite. They eat it for uh, like we would eat you know, take vitamins and stuff. 00:39:32 Speaker 2: Them. 00:39:32 Speaker 1: It's not like status and wealth and luxury. It's just like us going for play the barbecue. 00:39:38 Speaker 4: Oh absolutely, or you know the man, they were just gentlemen. 00:39:43 Speaker 1: Uh, I brought something. 00:39:49 Speaker 2: You mean, tyle that before. It's still it was time from the last time he. 00:39:52 Speaker 4: Wore last time. 00:39:59 Speaker 1: I felt this appro So I feel like you boys are a little underdressed. 00:40:11 Speaker 3: Okay, So we were ready for this big reveal here. 00:40:14 Speaker 1: Yeah, that's it. Let's it. 00:40:15 Speaker 3: So this is this is almost four ounces of paddlefish caviar. 00:40:20 Speaker 2: How much that costs? This? I believe was one hundred and twenty five dollars. 00:40:27 Speaker 1: Really, yeah, let me see paddlefish caviar. There's no way that would have been from there's no legal way not gonna come from Oklahoma. 00:40:37 Speaker 4: That come out that probably come out of the Mississippi system somewhere. 00:40:40 Speaker 3: It says battlefish. What does it say on the side product or wild. 00:40:46 Speaker 2: Caught leopard frog? He says paddlefish wild us A And it's even got a sight ease. 00:40:56 Speaker 1: Yeah, oh wow, how big are those eggs? 00:41:00 Speaker 2: Say? 00:41:00 Speaker 3: Those those are a number number four shot Probably they're. 00:41:03 Speaker 1: Smaller than I thought they would be. 00:41:04 Speaker 2: That'd be number. 00:41:07 Speaker 4: Keith. 00:41:08 Speaker 1: Keith went into a very detailed description of a shotgunshell size five maybe. 00:41:12 Speaker 5: Uh. 00:41:13 Speaker 1: When he was describing all the caviar of the world, it was pretty interested. 00:41:18 Speaker 2: Okay, what else? 00:41:20 Speaker 1: So how much is that that? That's about? 00:41:22 Speaker 3: That's about one hundred and twenty hundred and thirty dollars plus a lot of dollars to overnight it. Then our our friend Alan Morris Sterling Caviar sent us an equal dollar figure in in sturge of white sturgeon caviar only it's a quarter. 00:41:39 Speaker 1: Where where do white sturgeon live? 00:41:41 Speaker 3: They they they farmed them in their their aquaculture in California? 00:41:45 Speaker 2: Oh really? 00:41:47 Speaker 1: Is that a Is that a North American school that's with American species? 00:41:52 Speaker 3: They have some wild cat that people get in in California there. 00:41:56 Speaker 4: But but is getting you talk about you talk about these being uncle culture? Is that's another thing that that's happened to the caviar trade. Uh? Is that the Chinese is like to do everything else is farm raising their farm raising, et cetera, a type of Chinese paddlefish of some sort, kind of the Chinese equivalent. 00:42:19 Speaker 3: So that ten that tin of caviar has to have a key, really be able to open it. 00:42:26 Speaker 1: I think Christian for him to play a little banjo music while you open your caviar, and then and then like one minute long song when he opens it. 00:42:38 Speaker 3: Most importantly, we have our genuine mother of pearl serving spoin mm hmm, carved out muscle. 00:42:48 Speaker 4: Probably probably an illegal fresh water probably I shouldn't say, knowing, Josh. 00:42:55 Speaker 1: Maybe those muscle pickers. 00:42:57 Speaker 4: Muscle picking. 00:42:59 Speaker 1: So you gotta open it up. We're gonna for this Christian hit it. 00:43:04 Speaker 2: Okay, let me get my spoon right here. 00:43:08 Speaker 5: How much extra was a spoon? 00:43:10 Speaker 2: This is five dollars? 00:43:14 Speaker 1: Okay, who's who's gonna try? You don't have to eat. 00:43:18 Speaker 4: I'm not going to just like you. 00:43:22 Speaker 3: I've had it and so I I. 00:43:26 Speaker 5: Yeah, John, Christian, nice, nice, I'm your huckleberry. 00:43:30 Speaker 1: You're gonna you want something? Yeah, you like it. 00:43:33 Speaker 5: It's it's an acquired taste. It's okay. I mean it don't taste like butter to me. 00:43:37 Speaker 4: I've made Well, that's not I've made lots of. 00:43:41 Speaker 2: Okay, let me see what this smells like. 00:43:44 Speaker 1: Hey, Isaac, smell. Can you film this? 00:43:47 Speaker 2: I don't even smell nothing. 00:43:49 Speaker 1: All right, all right, hit me fire up, let me smell, Let me smelly. 00:43:53 Speaker 4: To get the real effect. You got to eat the first bite without no cracker, you think, so, yeah, well I better change that. Without any cracker. I'll get in trouble for better right there. You know you have to do it. 00:44:04 Speaker 1: I mean, I have a boom. 00:44:06 Speaker 2: They call it. 00:44:06 Speaker 3: That's what they call it. 00:44:10 Speaker 2: That's a clue. 00:44:11 Speaker 1: Keith told us. 00:44:12 Speaker 2: That's what Keith told us. 00:44:13 Speaker 1: All Right, This is that's probably one hundred and fifty potential paddlefish that would have been in some river. Bright acidity, a taste of the muddy water of the river, very salty. It's actually really good. It's fishy, fishy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's interesting. 00:44:44 Speaker 2: Thank you, tennant Joe. 00:44:47 Speaker 1: Now watch this. Let's see how this goes. Not bad, it's gotta it's got a very I can eat, very fishy I could eat. 00:44:57 Speaker 4: I may have to test them because when not on I've had it before. It was it was something that I made eat something. 00:45:04 Speaker 1: Okay, we got Jeff. 00:45:06 Speaker 4: If we eat some that I eat something that somebody you did, it might be all right. 00:45:09 Speaker 2: I like that. That's good. 00:45:11 Speaker 1: It actually is good Christian. He's with the band Joe Celebration. 00:45:15 Speaker 2: Come on, that's a whole. 00:45:17 Speaker 1: That's the song. 00:45:18 Speaker 6: It's a salty you've got fishy taste in my mouth. 00:45:24 Speaker 4: Bam, drink like. 00:45:27 Speaker 3: I regret this, all right, Jeff's look at Jeff's. 00:45:30 Speaker 4: Face, spinning it out. 00:45:35 Speaker 2: He still don't like it. 00:45:36 Speaker 5: Just you remember it. 00:45:39 Speaker 3: Let me have another cracker for Brent. 00:45:40 Speaker 4: That's disgusting. 00:45:43 Speaker 3: Actually, I mean I like sushi and it kind of gives you that that. 00:45:50 Speaker 1: The potato steps some blue blood in me. I love it. 00:45:53 Speaker 2: Oh, you definitely do you Dad was run the bank, Lieutenant Joe. 00:45:57 Speaker 3: You want a cracker? 00:45:58 Speaker 5: Sure, I'll try cracker. 00:46:00 Speaker 1: Now, this is a paddlefish, though. 00:46:01 Speaker 4: I'd have something to get that taste down my mouth. 00:46:04 Speaker 1: Every powerful aftertaste. There's thirty dollars worth of care on that. 00:46:12 Speaker 5: You don't have to give me. 00:46:12 Speaker 2: Such a big dollar. Oh that's good. 00:46:15 Speaker 1: I need to let yeah, there's there's yeah here, y'all keep that over there. 00:46:23 Speaker 3: Let me let me, let me try on that. 00:46:26 Speaker 1: It does have an odd non fishy taste. That's kind of powerful, Like it's not. 00:46:31 Speaker 4: A taste like dead battlefish. 00:46:35 Speaker 1: Now, okay, tell us you were telling us before about how that tastes like paddlefish smell. 00:46:41 Speaker 4: Paddlefish have a distinctive smell. A boat would come off the water and maybe they had had fish, caught fish, release fish, or whatever. But you could tell, you could tell that that boat had paddlefish in it because of a distinctive smell. And they're real only and they would leave an oily sheen on everything they touched. Same thing with the pickup or something. You could tell if that pick up it had paddlefish in it recently because of the way they smell. To me, that's the way that taste is just yeah. 00:47:07 Speaker 2: Can't go for it. 00:47:08 Speaker 4: It's it's unique battlefish task. 00:47:10 Speaker 6: Say, why is paddlefish so prominent in northeast Oklahoma? 00:47:15 Speaker 2: Is that the hub of it or what. 00:47:18 Speaker 4: The Grand Lakes excuse me, as ah tis Cracker Grand Lake, we call that the nursery. That's kind of that was kind of the last holdout of them. They'd kind of been because of the dams and the rivers and all that stuff. They'd kind of been for one reason or another extirpated from different river systems, and but Grand Lake was the last major holdout. Now several lakes in northeast Oklahoma, all the lakes in northeast Oklahoma and several lakes and other parts of the state have had paddlefish reintroduced and are doing real well. 00:47:49 Speaker 2: Huh interesting, good m yep, here's the lead for that cow me in Man was like, good moonshine. Once you on cork it, don't put just throw the cork out of the window. 00:48:04 Speaker 1: Hey, now, what's it going to take for us to get a row license? 00:48:10 Speaker 2: You just gotta go pay for it. 00:48:13 Speaker 1: How hard is it to process it? 00:48:14 Speaker 4: Is? It? 00:48:14 Speaker 2: Is? 00:48:14 Speaker 1: It pretty hard to make it taste that good? 00:48:18 Speaker 3: No, literally just mixed salting. 00:48:20 Speaker 4: Well, if you take to process, to process the eggs, you have you have a screen. You take the eggs out of the fish. There they're attached to a membrane. You lightly screen the eggs we call it screen, and you lightly screen them off of that membrane. Throw the membrane away. Now the eggs are in a mixing bowl. We use stainless steel mixing bowls. You fill it full of water and just kind of kind of like you're panting for gold. You kind of all the all the blood and yuck, which is very little, comes to the top. You pour that off, You add a predetermined amount of salt to it that you want to use on that batch, and then you put it in the hydrator, I say the hydrator. You put it somewhere to to so that moisture can can come off of it. And you've got to finish product. Now, for commercial product, then you have to pasteurize it and all that stuff. But as soon as you salt it and then get some of the moisture off of it, it's edible. 00:49:24 Speaker 2: Wow. 00:49:25 Speaker 1: Wow, Okay, okay, so josh, this is how much did this tend? 00:49:29 Speaker 3: That is probably one hundred and forty two hundred and fifty dollars worth of Wow, that's a rough one. 00:49:35 Speaker 1: I think we should all take a hit without without a cracker. 00:49:38 Speaker 2: I don't ready like the terminology. 00:49:40 Speaker 3: Yeah together, Now this this looks a little different. It's bigger, it's bigger, it feels less. Oh yeah, there's less moisture in its Number six is right there. Hit me, hit me, And this is supposed to be better than the other job. 00:49:55 Speaker 1: This is some of the best in the world. 00:49:57 Speaker 5: Yeah, all right, yeah, that would be supposed to be paddle. 00:49:59 Speaker 2: F All right, don't worry. That's put too much of it. Let me have half of that. That's better. 00:50:09 Speaker 1: Less is it doesn't taste fishy. 00:50:12 Speaker 3: Oh oh my goodness. 00:50:14 Speaker 2: Please please adedit that out. 00:50:17 Speaker 1: Don't edit it out. 00:50:18 Speaker 4: I guess I better take some of this too, so. 00:50:19 Speaker 1: Like, hey that I get it. 00:50:22 Speaker 2: I can see the difference. 00:50:24 Speaker 1: I get it. Okay, this is what happens when you spill big difference. That's probably forty dollars worth of sturgeon caviar that was on the ground here in my office. My office is very clear. Yeah, I've seen the dog in here. 00:50:43 Speaker 2: The dogs claim too. 00:50:45 Speaker 4: I can, I can. I can see that. 00:50:48 Speaker 2: It's pretty good. 00:50:49 Speaker 6: Uh the fishy, the fishy taste went away on that. 00:50:53 Speaker 3: Oh oh wow, that's good. I don't know what to say. 00:50:58 Speaker 1: Did you try, Joe, it's definitely yeah, describe what's going on in your mouth. 00:51:06 Speaker 5: It's a circus and the eggs are on the trapeze at the moment. 00:51:15 Speaker 2: Go back. 00:51:15 Speaker 5: Yeah, no, it is. 00:51:17 Speaker 2: It's a lot. 00:51:18 Speaker 1: It's almost sweat. 00:51:19 Speaker 4: It's almost Yes, it's a lot more subtle. 00:51:21 Speaker 1: It's subtle. 00:51:22 Speaker 5: That real brightness of the paddlefish caviar is, it's not there. It's real subtle. It's nice, super creamy. You can actually feel the eggs pop. 00:51:29 Speaker 4: Now that that's doable. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's delicious, but it's doable. 00:51:35 Speaker 2: Yeah. I could eat that with any kind of cracker. 00:51:37 Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I'm sure you put that on a cracker and it may be. 00:51:41 Speaker 2: I shake you old hands. 00:51:43 Speaker 1: Now, I don't know who told man that that does taste buttery almost. It almost feels like they put something in. 00:51:51 Speaker 4: You know. And in all fairness that who knows where that paddlefish caviar came from? I mean I know where it. I know the company you got it from, whoever made that. Everybody everybody makes her caviar different. Well, he's watching some of those Eastern Europeans. They'd add all kinds of stuff to it. They've adding vodka to it. They just adding different types of so they were adding all kinds of different uh, spices and stuff. They fixed it all up. Yeah, they did all kinds of weird stuff to it. 00:52:18 Speaker 5: They would process that caviar in hotel rooms and you know, you'd you'd walk in you know, and there's vodka bottles laying everywhere, remnants of eggs, you know, things like that. But no, but no, that's it's good stuff. 00:52:33 Speaker 1: We need to eat all this, Okay, I mean. 00:52:35 Speaker 4: We're a little bit from Yeah, it didn't have. 00:52:39 Speaker 1: I mean, we can save a spoonful. She's not going to be too pumped about it. 00:52:43 Speaker 2: Lieutenant Joe, you. 00:52:44 Speaker 1: Let's give something to Isaac and Christianeah. 00:52:46 Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely, guys, cracker straight. 00:52:49 Speaker 1: Up, like, yeah, you don't you don't need it on a cracker. 00:52:54 Speaker 2: This is really good. 00:52:55 Speaker 4: You know, I'm getting kind of a I'm getting kind of a tuna aftertaste. 00:52:59 Speaker 5: You know when you think, you know, we talk about it being butter or tasting like butter, salty butter. Well, everybody like salted butter, you know, Well, pattle fish eggs that's really just fat, fat and salt, same thing butter is, and so that you're going to get that flavor. 00:53:14 Speaker 4: The eggs that came out of the Grand River system we used for caviar the Wildlife Department made in the caviard and these great big fish start showing up in Keystone Lake. You know, we talked about how the state record come out of the world record for a while. Come out of Keystone Lake right there on the west edge of Tulsa. Keystone Lake is just full of great, big, huge paddlefish, and we were really concerned that the Eastern Europeans would start trying to mess with those fish. But our biologists had done a lot of work on them, and they told us that those big fat fish had big fat paddlefish eggs and that they didn't make good caviar. 00:53:55 Speaker 1: Oh, it was like too big, it is too fatty, too fatty. 00:53:59 Speaker 4: Yeah, it wouldn't make a good caviar. And consequently, we never, if we do, know that the Eastern Europeans fished over there, but we never did. We never saw it to the extent that we saw it in other places, and that may be why that the eggs just didn't make good caviar. 00:54:21 Speaker 2: If you're not eating caviar, you need to take that tie off. 00:54:27 Speaker 1: Well, I was expecting that not to be good at all. 00:54:33 Speaker 2: It was good. Good, It was good. 00:54:35 Speaker 1: Good, It was good, wasn't it. 00:54:37 Speaker 3: You were expecting both to be not good. 00:54:39 Speaker 1: Well, Okay, the paddlefish. I could see like fifty to fifty people being like I'm going back. Yeah, But the salt and fat was nice. The paddlefish that we had definitely had a stronger rivery taste. 00:54:54 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:54:55 Speaker 3: I think if you have a palette for like sushi and raw fish like that, you'll probably like it. 00:55:00 Speaker 2: Yeah. But if you don't, but that that's searching. 00:55:04 Speaker 4: That caviar that you had there, that was that was doable. 00:55:08 Speaker 2: Man, I don't like caviar. Uh. 00:55:10 Speaker 6: You noticed in the podcast that these guys are saying how healthy it is, you know, they they enjoyed the healthy aspect of it. Yeah, so't feel healthier. 00:55:24 Speaker 4: I don't know. I don't know if it's actually healthy or whether that was a cultural just like a myth, a myth all like uh like with Oriental Oriental culture. Lots of wild things have bear gall bladders have medicinal purpose, medicinal properties. So I don't know if it's actually somebody's ever sit down and said I can I can't see maybe a doctor saying no, it's not good for you because it's full of salt. But the rest of it, I don't know. But man, the Eastern Europeans, they they thought it, uh man, all of a sudden they were superhuman. 00:56:00 Speaker 2: I feel pretty good to my Grandma also said that if you ate fish and drink milk, you die. 00:56:05 Speaker 6: So yeah, that was a great joke, no joke. 00:56:14 Speaker 1: She wouldn't drink it if you ate fish and drink milk. 00:56:17 Speaker 2: Yeah, she fried. We eat fish every Friday. And I'd say, Moslin, I want to see what you want to drink, and it's on the glass and mealk. She said, well, you can't have it, And I'm like, why, she's able to kill you and she had to. My grandmother could cook anything, and being a lady, a true southern bell of the South, made the worst tea you ever drink. She hated tea, so she didn't. She was just like, here it is. I mean you can stand ankle deep in it and not see your feet. 00:56:46 Speaker 4: We have to have it, but it doesn't have to be good. 00:56:48 Speaker 2: That's right, that's right. So we drink water, but she wouldn't let you have milk. 00:56:53 Speaker 1: According to Google, it's a powerhouse food. The fish eggs. Well, if you think about just people wanting to eat as minimally processed food as possible, I mean, just like less chemicals less yeah, like I mean it's it's it's like it's not even cooked, you know. 00:57:11 Speaker 3: So Yeah, ingredients on that package and salt fish row and salt. 00:57:20 Speaker 4: They there's there's a pasteurization process. I don't know exactly what that is, but for commercial use there's a pastorization process. But other than that, it's it. 00:57:30 Speaker 2: Is there anything? Is there anything that you could get from it if you didn't do it correctly? Oh? 00:57:36 Speaker 5: Like salvonilla that I don't know. 00:57:41 Speaker 4: It doesn't if it's not frozen, it doesn't have a very long shelf life. I mean, you can put it in the refrigerator, but you gotta eat it pretty quick. 00:57:48 Speaker 2: How long can you freeze it? Definitely? 00:57:51 Speaker 3: Alan Morrisse told me you could freeze it. 00:57:54 Speaker 2: I think for a year. 00:57:56 Speaker 1: Well, my my caviar expert, who I get my information from, Keith Green, tells me that you can freeze paddlefish but not sturgeon. 00:58:05 Speaker 4: Yeah, that's what he's what he said. You know, it's funny we've we've talked about before in those podcasts. The US Fish and WILI Service and O d w C had a progression of rules on paddlefish eggs and there was a time there where the only way paddle fish eggs could leave Oklahoma is if they were frozen everybody thought that once you freeze them, they're no longer good for cavia. We'll come to find out that wasn't right. So you know, there there was a period of time there where yeah, you can leave the state with paddle fish eggs, but you got to have them frozen solid as a rock. Well, come find out that wasn't It wasn't necessarily the best way. 00:58:44 Speaker 3: I've got a question for you guys. The the regulations are that you can only possess three pounds of processed eggs correct. 00:58:55 Speaker 2: For personal use. I think it's three three. 00:58:59 Speaker 3: Three, So tell me the philosophy of the Oacle Department, Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation. What's the real how do they come up with three? If a if a paddlefish is going to produce a minimum of five to eight pounds of eggs, what's the why just three pounds? 00:59:21 Speaker 4: I think maybe that probably a lot of that's just arbitrary. 00:59:24 Speaker 2: Okay. 00:59:25 Speaker 4: They want they want people to be able to make caviar for personal use if they want to. And looking at this, three pounds of caviar is a lot. Yeah, it is so rich tell you, uh so, so you don't need a whole lot you're allowed to fish for the year if you if if you're taking fish to make caviar for personal use, that's six pounds and you. 00:59:49 Speaker 3: Can if you can throw, you can throw back till you get a female. 00:59:52 Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah, you can catch your release all day long if you want to. But a little funny story to tell you about how how far this stuff will go. There was a guy that worked at the Paddlefish Center and he stole a tub of caviaar. Now Keith had a system in place. It was all computerized, and it was all accounted for. They not only him, but the buyers to be to go back and tell you what fish that batch of eggs came from. Oh wow, And if there was a container of eggs, there was only eggs from one fish in there. Oh, there wasn't mixing. There was no mixing eggs. So all of them had a lot number, all of them had a fish number. 01:00:32 Speaker 2: All this stuff. 01:00:33 Speaker 4: Anyway, somebody stole one of the guys that worked up there. They had a lot of part time summer help. He stole some eggs and it wasn't very long. They knew him, They knew it was gone, and Keith knew it was gone, and they had an idea where it was that So anyway, they went to this guy's house and he had eaten tried to eat it all, and he was literally out in the yard sick as a dog. 01:00:54 Speaker 2: Is that right? 01:00:55 Speaker 4: Yeah, it's so rich. It's like he'd just eaten a tub full of butter, you know, and his old he had a belly ache, and and Keith with laugh left back, said yeah, we showed up and he was out in the front yard, you know, as sick as he could because I tried to eat all the evidence. But so so you can't eat very much of it at a time. It goes a long ways. But back to your original question, Yeah, that's just I think that's probably just an arbitrary number. Three pounds of eggs is a lot of eggs. 01:01:22 Speaker 1: Yeah, you probably lose. So if you have if you have a let's say, a ten pound eggsack on a big female of seventy pound female or something, you're not going to get ten pounds of processed cavy. Are they're going to get almost that? 01:01:34 Speaker 3: Are you really? 01:01:35 Speaker 2: Well? 01:01:35 Speaker 4: Yeah, only the only the only, the only thing that you're not getting is is that little bit of membrane that held all those eggs together and you got to batch eggs. It's as big as a bast Like if you get a little bitty baseball sized sack off. 01:01:57 Speaker 1: If I what are the specifics three pounds per person or per household per person. 01:02:04 Speaker 3: So like if I went with duns and my wife can get three. 01:02:08 Speaker 1: Pounds, and it can be from the same fish that we could tag. We could tag one fish, like our family catches one fish, but we have one fish twelve pounds of caviar. That's okay. As long as those people are licensed in Oklahoma. Yes, as long as I have okay that that makes it so you're not there. There aren't people that are like throwing caviar and like throwing it on the ground because they can't have three pounds or they can't have more than three pounds. I mean they're they're they're probably fishing. 01:02:35 Speaker 4: With other other than other than the Eastern Europeans. I've never seen anybody making caviar. Nobody, not that they don't, I've just never seen it. 01:02:46 Speaker 7: Yeah, what is that your experience? The same people aren't doing it. The only people that I know that that do it, you know, other than Eastern Europeans. Is Keith and maybe his brother. 01:02:58 Speaker 1: They so maybe that'll change after people watched watched us. 01:03:04 Speaker 2: I doubt it. 01:03:08 Speaker 1: Fish being that rivers just before the dinosaurs, nobody been eating their eggs and they are gonna be in their eggs now. 01:03:13 Speaker 5: I don't know if this will be the catalyst for cultural change. 01:03:16 Speaker 1: Remember when we started eating it? 01:03:19 Speaker 2: Well, that's true, it's all good. That's good, man. 01:03:22 Speaker 1: Now I could eat that sturgeon. Caviar was a lot better processing though, I don't know, it was a lot better. I'd say, I like. 01:03:32 Speaker 2: Both of them. 01:03:33 Speaker 3: You gotta taste for fish though. 01:03:35 Speaker 2: Yeah, I love fish. I eat fish every day. 01:03:39 Speaker 1: Well, hey, that that was really interesting. Dad, You didn't know. I didn't talk to you at all about this story. You wouldn't have even known we were doing it. You listened to both episodes? What was the most the coolest thing that you learned? 01:03:53 Speaker 2: Rainbow Rock? 01:03:57 Speaker 1: Who is this guy's parents? 01:03:58 Speaker 6: Man, he's got such a great story and he starts it with Rambow and it ends it. 01:04:07 Speaker 4: I gotta be honest. I listened to it when it would come out. I thought, where's he going? It was all good? 01:04:15 Speaker 2: It was all it was good. 01:04:17 Speaker 4: It was all good. 01:04:18 Speaker 1: But uh, you know, just just the fish. 01:04:21 Speaker 6: I mean, it's ancient, you know, and you look at it and you just think, Man, this mistake, God, monkey up here somehow. 01:04:28 Speaker 1: I look at this thing still here? 01:04:30 Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's still here. 01:04:31 Speaker 4: Yeah. 01:04:31 Speaker 6: I mean, it's just just the strangest thing I'd ever seen. 01:04:35 Speaker 3: It's pretty cool to think of a fish that you could find fossilized that's still floating in the river. 01:04:40 Speaker 4: That's you know, yeah, yeah yeah. And the like we were talking earlier, they're extremely tough. They go through those floodgates that blow Pensacola and down at Hudson and down at Fort Gibson, all in that system, and they go through some of those floodgates in a big floody vent and they come out of there with the rosstum's broken off and the heel up. It's not uncommon in Hudson Lake, which is the lake just downstream from Grand Lake to catch fish that don't have rostrums. 01:05:13 Speaker 2: Really, what is their main what's the main thing that they eat? 01:05:17 Speaker 4: Plankton? 01:05:18 Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, all all, why are we catching them? 01:05:21 Speaker 1: Somebody? 01:05:22 Speaker 2: No, here's the here's the question. I mean, here's the deal, you know, on mining and bears little adventure we went on. Guy we was with said, don't be surprised if we don't catch some on the limb line. 01:05:34 Speaker 4: Oh really yeah, and I think it'd be accident if you did. I mean, they would accidentally snag themselves. A popular way in Grand Lake, uh, in the pattlement still is is to use snaglines, which is a trot line, you know, tite line across the bottom with hooks set just so far apart and the hooks tied on in such a way that they turned into the fish. That was a popular way to catch battlefish. They'd snag on them. They accidentally swimming to the hook and get caught. But they're not going to eat that bait whatever it is you got on there. 01:06:07 Speaker 2: Yeah, ten four. But they do. 01:06:10 Speaker 4: They do accidentally get caught on jug lines a lot. You know, people jug line a lot. It's not uncommon to see it. But they're getting accidentally hooked. 01:06:20 Speaker 5: They're just they're just a unique species. I mean, if you've never you know, everybody out there listening, if you've never caught a paddlefish, you know, it's one of those experiences like you got to go do this once. Yeah, you know, so yeah, come to northeast Oklahoma, and that's where they're at. 01:06:33 Speaker 4: If we haven't people to come on, oh yeah, yeah, and if we haven't made it exactly clear. You don't catch them with the with a hook and the line, I mean a hook and a bait. You do catch them with a hooking line, but you they're snagged right by dragging. Dragging. 01:06:47 Speaker 1: We actually didn't talk about that much at all. Uh yeah, So, I mean guys are using really heavy duty tackle. 01:06:53 Speaker 4: Using big tackle. Big surf frauds a minimum of forty fifty pound test A lot of a lot of them now use a braided line, which is even tougher, and you use anywhere from if you're bank fishing, you're using a four to five ounce weight, if you're if you're trolling for them in a boat, they use one pound weights. Wow. Yeah, but they're not throwing in. Somebody figured out that if you troll at about four or five miles an hour and just drag that hook behind the boat, you can catch all the fish you want. 01:07:27 Speaker 2: And they do. 01:07:29 Speaker 5: They target them with life scope and stuff like that. 01:07:31 Speaker 1: Yeah, they're using a big treble hook. 01:07:33 Speaker 4: Using a big treble hook in Oklahoma. That barblous and then that came with the catch and release. So, like you know we talked about in in maybe in episode one. Uh, there's been a progression of rule changes, and every time somebody thought they had it figured out, well, let's tweak it this way and tweak it this way. And I found out that that people just really like fishing for them. Keep the fish wasn't necessarily that big of a deal. A lot of people do like them, a lot of people, a lot of people eat them. But catching release, man, people just eat eat that up. So made it where you could catch or release all you want. You can only keep two fish for the year. You know, there was a period of time where you couldn't keep fish on Mondays and Fridays and uh, and that was controversial, a lot of people scratching their head. But what come out of a lot of our research and the fact that people had to have a paddlefish permit, So we had lots of non residents coming in and I'm not even talking about Eastern Europeans right here. We had lots of non residents coming in where you could possess what was it, two days limits or three days limits. You could possess that many fish where they were leaving here with a lot of fish, and they were supplying fish fries for everybody legally, legally, and and so with the you know, local people, residents were complaining about that a little bit. 01:08:59 Speaker 3: All the lot just deleting. 01:09:02 Speaker 4: Lots of non residents showing up and and taking back a lot of fish. So those non residents were showing up on a weekend. Well, that so made it where you couldn't keep fish on Mondays and Fridays. That way they were only. 01:09:18 Speaker 1: Took it took a two days of a four day weekend and people came. 01:09:21 Speaker 4: Yeah, so it took two days out of it, and and that limited the number of fish that they were able to take back home with them. But now that's that's a moot point. Now now you can uh keep fish on Mondays, but you can only keep one a day, two for the year, two for the year. 01:09:38 Speaker 2: Yeah, hm hmm. 01:09:40 Speaker 4: And that's worked for most people because like I said, most people just want to catch and release. 01:09:44 Speaker 5: They just liked the picture. 01:09:48 Speaker 4: They want that, they want that fight, and then when they get it to the bank, they admire it and they turn it loose. 01:09:54 Speaker 2: What about the paddlefish now compared to when you went to work. Is it in better shape you? Yes? 01:10:00 Speaker 4: Yes, like Brandon Brown or fisheries boys talked about thirty forty thirty years ago. So when I moved back to eastern Oklahoma from Western Oklahoma, the Wildlife Department was just now starting to reintroduce paddlefish into some of their historic range where because of dams and certain situations they have been removed and now those places have come online. Uligall Lake is there's now guides that are guiding for paddlefish on Uligo Lake. Lots of paddlefish in Ulugaul Lake, Keystone Lake, Call Lake, Fort Gibson Lake has always been there, but it's even better Grand Lake. You fall the lake. There's paddlefish everywhere. 01:10:43 Speaker 2: Yeah. 01:10:44 Speaker 1: Do you know how many fish they're tagging every year in Oklahoma? 01:10:46 Speaker 2: I don't. I don't. 01:10:47 Speaker 5: We could find that out. 01:10:48 Speaker 1: I mean, would it be like fifty thousand fish? 01:10:51 Speaker 5: I don't know what the number is. 01:10:54 Speaker 4: They are fisheries people do netting surveys every winter and they kind of hop scotch around to different lakes. Lakes are on a schedule. You know, they're not doing the same lake every year. With the exception maybe a Grand Lake. I don't know that, remember that exactly. But out of so many of those fish that they catch, they tag some of them. 01:11:15 Speaker 1: So they're able to kind of track like how many are getting caught, and they might be like, we tagged three hundred fish in this lake and yeah, two of them got caught. 01:11:23 Speaker 4: I think they even they even they even put that, uh, well, there's radio chips in some of them, interesting and that you run the scanner over and and uh. But they get able to get more, they get GPS dat out of those, you know, tell where the fish went? Now? Where they being? 01:11:41 Speaker 1: One thing I didn't, I just wasn't. We weren't able to get into it with with the fish biologists. But paddlefish and other parts of the Mississippi drainage are struggling for the am I right. I mean like there's a lot of places where they're they're not doing as well. Why are they doing so well in Oklahoma but not as well in other places. 01:12:02 Speaker 4: I'm going to go out on a limb here and this is just my opinion just because of no commercial fishing. Oh really yeah, because now, unlike years ago, now paddlefish are targeted I see by commercial fishermen because of the caviar m we're we're back in the day they weren't. That's my opinion. I got no, it's anecdotal, but it's because we don't we don't commercial fishing. 01:12:32 Speaker 5: Yeah, throughout the years, we've learned a lot as far as you know, highly regulating the take throughout the years, kind of kind of manipulating it along the way. I think that probably has something to do with it as well. 01:12:43 Speaker 4: You know, over over the course of a decade there, every year we were changing the paddle fish rules because every year we dialed in just getting it dialed in. Now, it was a big jump to dial it into just two fish for the year, But our fisheries biologists thought that was the right thing to do, and I think probably they were right. Most people just want to catch and release them. Yeah, it's a big tourist thing. There's people come. It's kind of I think maybe it's died off, maybe just a little bit. But uh, just five or six years ago, ten years ago, especially, man, it was popular. There's just people just going crazy for poddlefish, you know, fishing for them, and it may have died off a little bit, uh, but it's still it's still going strong and uh, people just like to catch them with real men. Let them go, take pictures, let them go. 01:13:35 Speaker 1: You know in the in the in the hunting world and aurel as we're talking about fishing in the honting world, there's there's a lot of people not mappen, not a lot. I think it's a small group of people that speak negatively about uh, like recruiting people to come to a specific state for a specific reason. You know, they're they're like burning, yes, spot burning, or like like if if we'd been talking about deer hunting, like I wouldn't have I would have bleeped out or not put in like specific lakes and different stuff. But but but it feels like as an agency, like you're wanting people to come fish in Oklahoma, would you say that's absolutely? 01:14:23 Speaker 2: Absolutely? 01:14:24 Speaker 5: You know, the Wildlife Department is funded mainly by the sale of hunting and fishing licenses. You know, if if we didn't want people to come hunting fish, I mean we're just we're basically unfunded. 01:14:37 Speaker 2: You know. 01:14:38 Speaker 5: If we want to we want to remain funded, we want to be able to manage the fishing, wildlife in the state, and so hunting and fishing licenses is the backbone of that in Oklahoma. Yes, we want people to come hunting fish in Oklahoma. We want to provide hunting access, we want to provide fishing access. We want our hunting and our fishing to be top notch, and you know, water quality and access and all kinds of stuff like that. It's going to play into it as far as up here in the Northeast, and I think that's why paddlefish are so popular, or at least one reason. But you know, the more folks that we can get to Oklahoma to enjoy what we have to offer, the better. So I mean, I'm sure you're going to have people on both sides of fence on that non residents versus residents and things like that. 01:15:18 Speaker 4: There's always the struggle between residents and non residents. Yeah, the local guy didn't want his leg called out, but the Walleoute Department's all about it. You know, come and fish lake x y Z. 01:15:32 Speaker 2: Yeah. 01:15:32 Speaker 4: The Walleote Department really really promoted paddlefishing in Oklahoma for a long period of time and they were successful in getting that word out because it it was a big deal to the point that even from a low enforcemance standpoint, we said, let's let's back off of that just a little bit, you know. And because through through the research, through our pattle fish permit program process, we found that a lot of our fear we're leaving the state and going out of state, not not illegally, but and the residents not that they didn't like it, but they moaned about that a little bit. So so they dialed that back a little bit and and quit promoting it quite so much to slow the takedown just a little bit. And and it helps some because it did slow down a little bit. 01:16:26 Speaker 1: Yeah, there's it feels to me like in in uh in our nation where there's so much that's competing with fishing, hunting, outdoor activity, and and to us here where we're at, it doesn't feel like that as as strong. But I mean, so much of America is kind of urbanized and moving away from this stuff. It feels to me like the right move is to recruit people to come do this, come hunt, come fish, and and they're are there are people that are saying that's the wrong move. It's interesting. I like listening to their arguments. I think they're like dead wrong. 01:17:06 Speaker 4: Across the United States, most states are losing hunting and fishing participants, and Oklahoma is an exception to that. We're either gaining a little or or holding our own, which is which is an exception to the to the rule. And a lot of that is is they just really promote uh, you know, everybody, we wanted to come and fish Oklahoma because Oklahoma is okay. 01:17:38 Speaker 1: And Oklahoma has increased their non resident. 01:17:43 Speaker 4: I was awaiting, been a long time. 01:17:47 Speaker 1: Every right to do it. Man, Like I've talked to our people here in Arkansas. It's like, charge the heck out of them if they're come. I mean, I think residents should be given priority. 01:18:00 Speaker 4: I do. 01:18:00 Speaker 2: I don't care. 01:18:01 Speaker 1: It's just you know what to speak of a priority. And if I want to come hunt in your state, I don't pay taxes, I don't shop there, I don't drive on those roads. 01:18:09 Speaker 4: All the time I've been on the other I'm on the other end of it too, just like y'all are too. You try to go to Colorado and an elk and an ELK classes is eight hundred and some dollars and a resident's paying fifty. Yeah, it's hard to stomach that yeah. So I'm like, I can see both sides of it. Yeah, but yeah we did. 01:18:29 Speaker 1: Yeah, there's there's definitely two sides of it. But but I don't if I want to go to somebody else's state, I just got to be willing to sacrifice to do it, because if you come into my state and hunt my places, my you know, my public land spots, I want you to sacrifice it too. That's just the way I feel about you. And I don't think that's an inhibition. I mean, we could just make it free and say well anybody can go anywhere and there's no money involved. I mean, that wouldn't work. 01:19:00 Speaker 2: And then we lost all the bus and so. 01:19:01 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, good point, good point. 01:19:04 Speaker 2: Yeah. 01:19:04 Speaker 1: Well, hey, I just want to say, uh, thanks to Austin Jackson. Austin called me months ago, months ago, I mean probably nine months ago, and he he said, hey, I think this is really good story. And people do that to me often and and honestly it rarely works out. He gave me a sales pitch that was good. He said, he did all the things I needed. He said, I've got the people, he said, I got him lined up. This is a story you should tell, you know, he gave me kind of the highlights. 01:19:42 Speaker 4: He made lie to you a little bit. I think he talked to you before he got everybody lined up, because he called me one evening. He goes, he said, hey, I threw you under the bus a little bit. I said, what do you do? He goes, do you know clayon nukeomb? I said, I don't know him, but I don't know who he is. He goes, well, would you be willing to sit down and do a podcast on Russian snag? And I said, well, yeah, that'll be fine. 01:20:04 Speaker 3: Yeah, he'll be there on Tuesday. 01:20:08 Speaker 4: Well, you know, and you know, I don't know how much time much time we got left. But that's a story too, because when I met you all over there, I still think we're in the planning process, you know. And I show up with you guys over there, and you put these headphones on me and let's go, let's go. Wait a minute. I'm not really prepared for all of this, but it turned out. But it turned out great. 01:20:28 Speaker 2: Job. 01:20:30 Speaker 1: If I can, you make your time, take your time. 01:20:34 Speaker 4: So my whole worry about this whole process was about me coming off. I'm the one telling the story and you're telling it for me. But my my worry was that I would come, it would come across as as me doing all this work. So I've got to I've got to, I've got to throw the props out. Joe was a big part of that. All I all I did was facilitate and make sure everybody knew what was going on and had what they needed. Joe and the game warding in Mace County, Monty Reid probably somebody you should have talked to. He knew them all by name. He knew all their kids, he knew all their grand babies, and if they showed up on the river, he knew it. He worked tireshly. Breck Henry was the supervisor in that area, worked tiresly. Jim Gillen was another game warden. We brought game wardens from all over the state. We couldn't work it because everybody knew us. It just took one day for everybody getting on, you know, over there. So we were bringing people in from the panhand on from southwest Oklahoma to come over there and be our eyes and ears because they could go down and seemingly fish with them and at least just watch them. It was such a big group effort that I didn't. I just had to take a minute and drop some names there because they had a lot beer rolling it. And then actually I did. All I'm doing is just tell the story. 01:22:00 Speaker 5: Yeah, it was a team effort for sure. I mean, there's only one hundred and eighteen of us across the entire state, and at one point or another, everybody had an opportunity to come to northeast Oklahoma and work baddlefish. 01:22:10 Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, and and to their benefit, a lot of them wanted to yea, you know, from from other parts of the state, and oh, they just ate it up. There's a female officer that that worked at Grove at the time. Her name is Marnie Loftus. She's now a district captain in Oklahoma City. She is the one that got our foot in the door with a lot of these She worked under cover and we've got pictures of her and boats with the Russians just snagging away and she she opened the door on a lot of the investigations that we had going on. Just just outstanding job. You need to, you know, shout out to her for what she did. But it was it was just such a group effort. We had a blessing from the from the top down. The only negative if there was a negative. He was as like I talked about, we were letting all these eggs go out of state and following them and stuff and had some success, and but we weren't having the success that we thought we we needed. And finally my boss says, how long are you gonna let this go on? You know, when you're gonnaut, when you're gonna stop it. That's a good question. But I took that for the way he meant it, and we stopped it, and we started arresting them and taking their stuff. And I think it's like Cody told you last time. He said he talked to one of them, and they said, Cody asked himself, well, why did y'all stop? Because y'all made it too hard on us, And through some legislative change and through taking a lot of their stuff, we made it hard on them. And they I don't know that they stopped. They sure changed the way they's doing it. 01:23:47 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, but job, Yeah, for real, it's an incredible story. And uh and and I'll say on behalf of you and and Keith and and everybody. Yeah, sometimes when you tell these stories, like we just kind of swoop in and like learn this story really quick, and we kind of have to focus on the people that are in front of us, and you go. And people didn't hear the whole the whole interview. They hurt heard probably forty percent of the interviews with both of you, and both of you guys were very given credit to to other people that sometimes it was hard to put into the podcast. So I mean, like it, I didn't feel in any way that I mean, you guys were that was. 01:24:30 Speaker 4: That was my only concern and apprehension if there was I've never done this before in this format. But but the one thing that did worry me was coming across it was the Jeff Brown Show. And it's absolutely not there was one hundred and eight guys and girls that that participated in it. I'm just the one telling the story. 01:24:52 Speaker 1: Well awesome, Yeah, you know, I think you're a hero. I think Joe you're a hero. I think Keith's a hero, and that that's the story that I want to tell people. You know, and man, the work that you guys do, it's pretty cool that we as a society really have chosen to protect wildlife to the degree that we do, you know. I mean, we got guys twenty four hours a day, three hundred and sixty five days a year, putting their life on the line protecting wildlife. And it shows the cultural value that we have as a people for these fish, this wildlife. And you know, I also want to give credit to just the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife in their willingness to even let you guys share this story. I think it's a mistake to hide some of the stuff. I mean, there's probably some liability, you know, like small liability. I think with agencies letting people like talk and you know, it could have been a bad experience. Maybe I'm a punk and I misconstrue the story. But this stuff translated in a meaningful way to where people can actually understand it. You know, they listen for two hours and understand. I mean, I think it's worth the risk, Like because there is risk, there's there's there's risk in telling these stories. But man, I think in today's world, with all the technology, all the communication, all the fast paced nature of society, I think agencies would do well to even cooperate more. And I see that happening in Arkansas with our with our regime here in Arkansas as they're they're trying to stay congruent with the times and the way that people communicate, and it is different. I mean, I think there would have been a time when people would have been like, no, you're not going to talk about that. That's this is out of play. And I just think that's a mistake. And I see Oklahoma doing a lot of a lot of great stuff, even down to the simplicity of we talked about the social media how incredible and the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife social media is they're really funny. They had a really good girl, uh doing it that I don't know her, but I see her. 01:27:06 Speaker 5: Yeah, that's that's Sarah Sutherland. 01:27:08 Speaker 2: Yeah. 01:27:08 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, she's really done a good. 01:27:13 Speaker 2: Uh. 01:27:14 Speaker 4: I don't even know what social media uh platform it's on, but yeah, she she did a good job. I'm not I'm not very social media. 01:27:22 Speaker 2: Uh savvy savvy. 01:27:24 Speaker 4: Yeah, so I trove Facebook ever now and then. 01:27:29 Speaker 1: But yeah, well so thank you to you guys. 01:27:32 Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you, absolutely, thank you. 01:27:33 Speaker 4: Thank you for having us and thank you for doing you know this, This is the main reason Austin wanted reach down. One of this done was to preserve it preserve to preserve the story. So that that and I think I think you did that. So we appreciate that. 01:27:49 Speaker 5: He wanted to be here today, but he he was teaching an active shooter class today. 01:27:53 Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, he messaged me, well, Brent, Josh, Christian players Plasta exit song, hit it here we go. 01:28:09 Speaker 5: That's right, Yeah, that's. 01:28:10 Speaker 2: Where the hair title. What keys are? 01:28:13 Speaker 4: Yeah? 01:28:16 Speaker 2: Barbecue. 01:28:19 Speaker 1: I'm ready to eat some of those fish eggs. 01:28:21 Speaker 2: I hope y'all leave and leave. I won't take it home. 01:28:25 Speaker 1: All right, thanks Christian, you got very good, all right,

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