00:00:00 Speaker 1: All right, man, got a super exciting announcement to make. The Meat Eater Podcast is going on a live tour. We're starting out with four dates Denver, Colorado, Tempo Arizona, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Columbus, Ohio. So we're spreading this love out around the country. Now, what you can do You go to www. Dot mediator dot live to get yourself some information and tickets. You can go to the v I P Route, which I recommend, where you come for a pre show experience hang out with me jest but tell us special guests will be announcement soon. We'll do an exclusive little private Q and a session, get your pictures taken, books signed, general hangout, and then you stick around for the real show where everyone from the podcast is up on the stage wrestling with all those vexing questions that come up in the hunting and fishing world, talking about hot tips and tricks, wild game, weird trivia, just the usual bullshitting. Um. If you just want to go to the general mission route, you will admittedly you'll miss that opening deal there, but you'll come from the main show and get the real juice out of it. So I cannot wait to meet all of you members of the meat eater community at the meat eat Podcast Live Tour www dot meat eater dot live. Get your tickets now, see you soon. This is a me eater podcast coming in you shirtless, severely bug bitten in my case, underwear listening podcast. You can't predict anything, Yanni? Do you know? Do you remember? How do we get in our heads that Missouri's turkeys are the hardest turkeys to hunt in the whole wide uh world? But partially I don't know all the reasons, but part of it is because my friends that I guided with from who are from Missouri. I used to always say that, yeah, because I started hunting turkeys in Nebraska and started killing turkeys in Nebraska, and they would say, yeah, but you really haven't hunted a turkey. Yeah, let me tell you about these hurricanes down here where we're from. Yeah. So that's that's where it started from me. I think that I haven't hunted Nebraska, but my understanding of it and the type of turkey that's running around there, uh, I could see that that might be true, that Missouri's harder than that. But are you guys to me with the Missouri's the hard how many states have you hunted turkeys in Parker A lot? I don't have to add him up, but I don't know that more than a dozen, more than a dozen brandon how turkeys in half a dozen or so. But I got a theory on why people say they're the hardest to kill, and that's because at the time in our country, when so many game species were being extra pated, the wild turkey was able to hold on just in a small amount down here in southern Missouri and in the Ozarks. And then in the nineteen thirties when they really started trying to turn things around with conservation and started their game survey on turkeys, it was a Starker Leopold that was down here working on the wild turkey. These turkeys ended up becoming the basically the stock that was used to not only repopulate other parts of Missouri, but then Missouri turkeys were taken to Wisconsin, in Indiana and other Midwestern states. So the the whole repopulation of the wild turkey across the eastern United States has a lot to do with these turkeys that were just unkillable in the other But I feel like I've heard though the Missouri is not the only holdout that there were. There were holdouts. I've heard that about swamps of South Carolina, Alabama, Alabama head holdouts, north and south North Carolina in the high country, right South Carolina in the lower country. Yeah, that's certainly, you know true. Other places there was it was down to nineteen states, but they had some numbers some some unknown number and maybe it's not specific. I don't know if it's no one for sure, but somewhere around that many states and most of the states now most of these states are probably southeast, and I feel like that's where you most commonly here that Yeah, we have the hardest, toughest turkeys. It's like Southeast. But I'm buying because they couldn't have been that tough in Michigan because they got them all. It's like they got them all. And then, yeah, I'll buy that the toughest turkey because they got the home field advantage. No one. They just been here, they know it. And it's rugged, remote rural country. A lot of it's hard to get into. I mean, it's hard to shoot him from the roads in some of these places. You gotta get way back in there, and they find little pockets where they could hold out. Yeah, how many did you answer me? How many states you want to turkeys? In? Half dozen or so? In Montana, South Dakota, New York, Indiana, Missouri, Texas. You've gotten around fair bit and then uh, Park, you've hunted him in a boatload of places. And your old man huntsome hard. He does, he does, and he's actually got my mom and hunting them hard. So I don't know, I don't know how it happened. But all of a sudden, she's, uh, she's chasing him. Man. She started, she has she is, she has the disease. You know, she can call better than me, and the whole thing. Yeah, she's into it. And they start in Florida. Yeah, I'll start in Florida. And then in what time you're hunting in Florida, you know, Florida in in February, you know, South Florida. The season comes in. So they started breeding and nesting in February, February, and it is migrated northward. Yeah, yeah, north and west. So they'll wind up where by the end of the year, down in Mexico or what last year, Yeah, Dad ended up in Mexico. Um this year, I don't know what the plan is. I know they're they're in Texas or they've already been. I don't know. He's got several turkeys under his under his belt, and I get the get the pictures. Starting in February, you know, we're still snow here, and and Dad's already you know, knocking back to spring Turkey. So yeah, now we showed up here the other day. It was it's kind of like amazing that the difference from the conditions. I mean, I was full on pulling my fingers in making fists inside my gloves. Parker got snowed out opening day. Yeah, and in the northern part of the state, we had an inch of snow and twenty five winds and you know, as the the snow pellets were hitting me in the face, I was questioning my sanity. But you know, after waiting for a for a year, man, you can't miss it. And now it's eighty one degrees. We were stoking the wood stove on Monday and now we need the air condition er plugged in. On Wednesday, yeah, we got down here to to we say, south central Missouri in the old s arcs, that's right, and got down here and it looked like man. When we showed up here to hunt, it looked like, uh, I was not feeling optimistic. It looked like just wintertime. And it did like the trees aren't butted out. Yeah, it's been it's been a just abnormally long winter here. Our youth season, um typically we see a harvest of about four thousand birds, and this year we only had seventeen hundred. It was nineteen degrees on opening morning a youth season. I had my my daughter out dressed up, you know, like it was a November deer hunt. So it was. It was pretty horrible conditions and that held on until opening day, and the weather really broke yesterday and that really like cat heavy duty into the That's kind of nice testament to what the weather can do to you when your turkey hunt. We hunted up a property that's just a private piece of ground. It's overloaded with turkeys, and we heard one gobble each day. We had five youth hunters on the property and nobody killed a bird. And I would have bet going into it four out of five, if not five out of five. They just weren't moving. They were all flocked up still in their winter flocks, and it was just horrible conditions. Yeah, and we showed up here the ore night. It was so cold, and I'm sleeping in a sleeping bag. I'm just sleeping in mummy bags, sleeping in the old school or open top. What are they call those things? Those are Butler bags? No relation, but you know, I mean, like the type of bags even have a name. It's like classic sleeping bag, like a rectangular sleeping bag. Yeah, I don't know. Did No, No No matter how thick it is, you can still feel the breeze coming into the top of the thing. I know people complain about mummy bags, but a mummy bag is like a genius invention. You could you could fit. I'm not to dog. I don't want to dog to have you on your sleep bags. I like them. I've been sleeping great. But you could stuff. You could fit ten zero degree mummy bags in that sleeping bag. Yeah, man, But when you're in a mummy bag, your shoulders are all constricted. I get it. For backpacking, it's like I'm snuggling with my wife. Man, It's like I'm spooning with my wife. But the bag makes me feel like I am, and so I sleep better. I just like those kind of bags and yeah, and I was like taking a breeze in through the top of my bag. If you come back, I will have a mummy bag. I don't know, I like that one. It just I just had hadn't slept in one of those for so long. I kind of forgot and it wasn't aware that people were still manufacturing them. But I understand it. But I'm just to point out how un turkey like it wasn't we showed up here because when I hunt turkeys, I want to see I'm expecting to come up on little water holes and see little tadpoles in them. The world coming to life. Yeah, that's part of the majesty spring turkey season is you're there for the awakening of all things trees and bushes. Everything's budding out, birds are building nests the whole. It's like insects are coming up alive. I think that made the hunting harder, to the fact that the woods are still so wide open. I mean, Parker and I were in a situation this morning where we just had nowhere to hide. We don't get ahead of ourselves too much everybody, I suppose we don't have to. But you know, my dad really really appreciates it when we do that. For I was gonna get to it, but since it's important to you to do it now as the whole dealing cards, we will start with me and and move this this away. Are you the dealer, I'm the dealer. Well, then we went and start with you. If we're doing it as we're dealing cards, that's a good point. You'd be shot madly. Brandon, I'm Brandon Butler, the executive director of the Conservation Federation Missouri. I'm Steve Jones. I'm a board member of the Conservation Federation of Missouri. And yeah, and uh and also, you guys are always talking business. Yeah, I knew you were involved. I don't know you were a board member. And uh also a board member of Missouri Hunters for Fair Chase, organization that's working on chronic wasting disease topics. Can you guys real quick spell out long as we're doing the intro stuff, Um, can you real quick spell out what the Federation does. Yeah, we're Missouri's largest nonprofit conservation organization. We really work on education, advocacy and through partnerships, we have ninety two affiliated organizations where the group that can bring together hunters and anglers with bird watchers and parks enthusiasts. We kinda we bring everybody together to focus on natural resource policy. Um, A couple of big issues that we deal with here in Missouri is we have a unique constitutional authority for our department Council Ovation, and we work to advocate on behalf of that, and the dedicated funding that we have through a few sales taxes, and then any other friend issues that come up, like chronic wasting disease is a big one force in the last couple of years. But really those those kind of key issues of constitutional authority and dedicated funding for the Department of Conservation. Yeah, I want you know, let's just let's let's talk about this real quick right now, because we spend a ton of time talking about how wildlife work is funded in the US, and we're always pointing out that most fish and game agencies draw the bulk of their funding from excise taxes on guns and ammunition and other sporting goods, equipment, and sales of licenses, tags, and stamps. So basically, hunters and anglers fund wildlife conservation at the state level. But Missouri went in and put in a little itty bitty teeny sales tax like a what of a penny? It's one eighth of a cent and it adds up to the tune of what hundred and twenty million a year. That's pretty incredible, it really is. And people voted this in yeah, yeah, y six. We also have a secondary sales tax that supports park, soil and water, and people have to revote on that every ten years. And in Missouri in the two thousand and sixteen election, in November election, when we saw our country so divided, we passed that vote to self impose the sales tax, a one tenth of a cent sales tax, with eighty point one percent of the vote, and we passed it in a hundred and fourteen out of a hundred and fourteen counties. So we got eighty point one percent of Missourians to agree the self tax themselves to fund our state parks, healthy soil and clean water and the other So we know that of people in Missouri hate mother nature. Yeah, that's not bad. It's pretty so does that? No? Yeah, And he want to introduce yourself the eagle, the eagle, and then also the producer and then uh Parker Parker Hall I'm a wildlife ball just with the U. S. Park of Agriculture. Well, so you're coming at this, professor, you're coming at this with your I'm coming at you today as a lonely defeated Missouri it was our turkey hunter. Okay, So that's that's your angle. That's my angle. Not speaking as a professional, just a loser defeat, speaking at a loser who's had close calls. Defeat. So we get down here to do this and it's like, and I remember that right we met up Brandon, I said, do you hear any gobbles? And you didn't really answer, but you were just like, man, I was nervous. I mean, I'll be honest, you guys came a long way to hunt turkeys. It's not like you're going on some you know, major expedition. So you're traveling all the way down here to hunt turkeys. I wanted to make sure you had a good hunt and the kind of hunt that I think you guys enjoy a back country hunt, and show you that even in the eastern, you know, or midwestern part of the country, we can find places really rule and remote and and get miles back in there. But if you can hear him Goblin. It's not like you can set up on an egg field and glass form. There's you know, you've gotta be able to hear him Goblin in these hills to be able to locate them and go after them. And they were not talking on Monday. No, it had everything going against it. Were the stiff wind, so very cold, a stiff wind, and just like that kind of wintry nous man like no leaves on the trees, extremely noisy to walk around. It was different than any season I've ever seen before. And like the turkey is gonna spot you from a thousand miles away and you can't you can't sneak up on them because the leaves are so damned noisy and it's so windy. But then there's no cover, like like leaves make it like leaves on the trees makes that you can kind of move around a little bit without every turkey in the world know when you're there. But here, man, it's like when they're gonna know you're coming because it's so loud and too, they're gonna know you're coming because there's no leaves that we're hunting, just big oak forests. There's not a lot of undergrowth at any time a year, but usually there is at least some some foliage on the saplings, and like you said, you can blend into that. But yeah, it's wide open right now. Yeah, when we left here, well, first we had to deal with a straight pitbull. Yeah, we had a we had a dog, a stray dog try to accompany us and dealt with that. And then we got out and went up on a big ridge and the plan was just to go up and listen and make racket. Because when you, like, like in the spring, we're trying to do, you're trying to find a male turkey what you call tom or call a gobbler. You're trying to find a male turkey and make and coax it in with the sounds of a female turkey. And you're sort of trying to subvert what normally goes on, as well as generally understood is generally a tom or a gobbler goes out and gobbles and hence come to him. What you're trying to do is switch that around and and somehow entice him into coming to you. And there's a ton of reasons he doesn't want to do this. The first step in this spring hunting is just to find a gobbler. And you generally find a gobbler by hearing his gobble. And there are things you can do to make him gobble. Um. Commonly, before it gets light out, you do a thing just called they called shock gobbling. No one knows, Parker, Do you have no idea, No one knows why. But for whatever reason, it's a real vulnerability to the species. For whatever reason, in the spring of the year and other times a year, two gobbler's gobble at loud sudden noises. I have heard gobbler's gobble. Two. You guys can add when I get done, or we'll start. Let's do it like this. I will start as the dealer. I will risk that being shot. I will name a thing that I've heard of, gobbler gobble too, and we'll just go around the room until we've exhausted. When you when you when you tap, when you gotta tap out, tap out car horns, when you shoot their buddy thunder car doors, rumble strips on the side of the red yes, down down, that's good, um, just simply going Hey, reeled out the woods, who DoLS crows, jake breaks woodpeckers, a sonic boom, dogs barking, no one did they yet? No hawk screaming, goose really hawking, Yeah, train horns, redtail hawk. The sound that they people who don't know better dub over bald eagles. Like when you're watching something there's a bald eagle, they play a noise that's the redtail howk Yeah so yeah, redtail hawk. And I can tell you, I could. I could take you right now and show you the tree hours under when it happened four with their backfiring king. Yeah. Yeah, um, I might be running out man, man, any lot of noise works, but yeah, I'm tapping out. Do you got more? I'm tapping a rumble strip. Rumble strips. Yeah. So stuff like that make And I've said his full on this show that uh I remember some time Will Primos, the great call maker. Will Primos was trying to put his finger on why Gobbler's gobble to noises and he was He said something to the effect of, it's just him saying, this is my time of the year. But I've heard him do other times a year two. So, if you're trying to hunt turkeys and you go out in the dark in the morning, you go out and just start raising a ruckus uh to try to get one to gobble, and people bring I think like a little bit too much thought to it because we use you know what I didn't add. I've used predator calls. So I just take a rabbit squealer predator call and just give it the most loud, heinous, sudden squeal that I can out of there because it really carries. But some people would say, oh yeah, but he'll never come in that direction because he thinks that something is killing a rabbit over there. So people justly try to shot God, but by making more benign sounds such as crows. Buddy Eric always used the peacock call for some reason, which he felt, uh didn't send any message to the turkey because he's never heard of peacock before. Um My preferred one as a crow call. Would you guys agree with that? Like it's bad to be gapping on a Kyle Howler and then trying to call it turkey and that turkey go to where Kayo was. I think you're giving him too much credit. They have I'm not doing that. They have them. There are those who believe they have amazing instincts and self preservation and census. But I don't think I can credit him with that much smarts. But it just makes sense to use a sound that you know they're used to hearing, like a crow or like a hood owl. Uh. But when you're up like like not the first morning was dead because it's so windy. But when you're there, there's all manner of there's all manner of owls going off up there, and they're not getting gobbles. Well, they do get gobbles when the bird of goblin. Yeah, But then I take my crow and I do I do a thing called that. I called that I just yesterday decided to dub the Corvett because I take a crow call and blow it with the cadence of a pistoe off blue jay and I get I mean, yeah, he can attest I am. I am a very effective getter of shot gobbles, better than I am of calling turkeys like I'm kind of I specialize in getting them, specialize and get them the shot gobble by just making a very unusual sound. It's so grating that johannest will always want to ask for time to get away from you before I do it that kind of noise. It worked yesterday. It just gets him to gobble. Yeah, it's we go up in the squealing, asked Wind to go do this and nothing happens. Yeah, the first morning, run off the pit bull, go up the hill. Nothing. You made a joke that it was like Rachel Carlson's Silent Spring, like the Silent Spring happening. It was, it was. It was depressing. You know, I've been planning this for a few months with you, and I'm thinking, you know, we'll go up to this spot where I always hear bird's gobble from and we'll deploy in teams and you guys will go after this bird goblin, will go after this bird goblin. And there was nothing. I had nothing, so we went. Yeah, I was even thinking bad thoughts about you, like this guy don't know. This is the most god forsake and Ridge I remember. Yeah, we walked a long way and you and I never heard of bird gobble that whole day. You can hunt till one for turkeys. Yes, yes, I've got a quit hunting deer in the middle of day, right, No, it's just a turkey thing. Yeah, and there's a there's a group of us. In fact, the Federation passed a resolution in favor of extending it all day. We've talked to the biologist. We see no scientific data, no scientific reason not to let it go all day. The fact of the matter is it is. It's a it's a divided issue between really the old timers and the new turkey hunters. And what's the reasoning behind it. Well, I really don't know. Scientifically, yes, scientifically, there's no reasoning behind it. Well, in the early days of wild turkey research, the theory was but of the biologists that the birds needed to break to make sure they could get to the roost that they wanted to without being disturbed, and that they needed that that quiet time to be more successful at mating. And and it was a you know, a logical idea just turned out to not be true. But by then it was already an established tradition, So I can see that. I mean the part about I mean, I kind of understand the roost part, But I don't think that these birds have like here only they have like a lot of roost fidelity. I think they pretty freely move around roost wherever the hell they want to roost. One thing I don't like about it, I mean, not just for me personally and people that like the turkey hunt. But you know, kids in school, you know, you get out of school at three o'clock in the afternoon, a lot of a lot of guys want to go turkey hunt, doing the evening turkey hunt, and they can't. So it really hinders getting youths out turkey hunting. Yeah, how's that even talking about? Why were oh? Because you yeah, you can't say that hunted all day, hunted till one huntil one all day in Missouri. Turkey terms in Missouri, Turkey terms on all day. But meanwhile, meanwhile Yanni was having an entirely different experience. Yes, much different from probably most folks in Missouri that morning. I don't know, there's probably a few other folks that got got what I got, but uh, maybe in some corner of the state where was a little bit warmer and the wind wasn't blowing. But yeah, you want me tell my turkey story? Um, we we all we took four wheelers up to the spot and stopped and then Brandon was like, all right, we can go here here He's giving us all the options, and Steve and I've never set foot there, so I'm like, you make the call. So you guys decided to go on down the ridge, and you'd kind of pointed me towards two different ridges that I should work and be listening off of. So I went down one and quickly ran into some private property, and so I decided I didn't want to be foxing around the edge all morning, so I just turned around. It's like tens of thousands of acres of Yeah, I could just go the other direction, walk from miles, which is how I like it usually. And uh yeah, so I literally just went over one ridge and started walking down a uh what you described as a knife ridge. You know it's at times. Steve was actually common. Team were back on it today and how it's almost like man made feeling because it's so steep on either side. It's it's like the Romans made of ridge. Did you come up with a real name for yet? I called the hour glass when you look at the top of map, looks like hour glass. But now I'm gonna start calling the levy. It's like a man made ridge, like super steep pitch. And then someone came in and grated off the top. Yeah, you wouldn't want to walk down at drunk at night. You fall off that thing. It's a long way to the bottom, but it's like it almost has like a It's like you're walking on a levee. Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna dig in there. Bet. It's it's all people don't realize. But it's like this, uh, it's like this archaeological wonder of the world that people didn't realize. But anyhow, Mayans used to be turkey hunting. Ah, yeah, I don't get but a hundred yards down that ridge and in the wind, I can just here what might sound like a gobbler, And so I go a little bit that feeling for a minute, like people might be thinking one during What do you mean it might be a gobbler? Oh it's uh yeah, you just the sound is is because that's all you're trying at that point. You're not even trying to look for a turkey, You're just trying to hear one, and so your brain is in that mode the same way. It's uh in that mode sometimes when you've been glassing for hours and you're you're like, oh no, it wasn't dear. You know, you're just like looking through the woods all day long, and you start to just make up deer sightings, Well, the same thing happens in the morning listening for gobblers. You're like, oh, maybe maybe could have been, and especially in the wind, because you know, there's all kinds of noise carrying, and uh so, basically it's just very very faint in your double if you're listening for will be that all of a sudden you'll be with a buddy and you both turned to each other because you so desperately want to have what you think you might have heard verified, And each person has the same feeling. And so in the woods you find you often like are whipping your head around to look at whoever you're with to be like, did he hear that? Because I can't tell if I did. Yeah, And then usually what happens after that if they both heard it, one guy points to the north and they got points to the southeast. But so eventually it turns out that it is indeed a Turkey goblin, and he's goblin. As I get closer, I can hear that he's goblin quite often, and that's probably every I don't know, points five to ten seconds, and that's what we call hammering, not quite what i'd call choking, But he was what they call hammering there at the next level. No, that's as good as dudes in Georgia to start shooting. And uh, yeah, I could tell he was on the ridge across from me. I could tell he's below me in elevation, and uh, not knowing the country real well, I mean he was on the ridge where you guys could locked eyeballs. He was like you were on opposing slope, opposing slopes that that met in the bottom. Yes, So I decided just to bail off the ridge and just take my time and work towards the sound that he's making, and uh, just hopefully. And the woods are so open that at points I could see the other ridge, I could see the ground cover on the other ridge, and I was just crossing my fingers that I wasn't gonna get busted walking down this big, fairly open hillside. So I get to the bottom and I figured sometimes when I got towards the bottom, he must have flew down around seven am, and um, I hadn't heard him for five minutes or so, and so I hooted and he answered, and he hadn't moved too far, maybe just down to his ridge a little bit, just because on a morning like that, they're gonna stay in the tree longer. Yeah, possibly, I mean I think he came down around seven, is my guess, you know. I mean he could have been on the ground longer and was just and just kept gobbling. Now I know that he was by himself. Would you guys agree that bird when it's cold and nasty, they stay in the trees longer. I agree sometimes they do. For sure, rainy, nasty days, I think they stay in the tree longer. I don't want to get uh yeah, sure. And you guys have both hunted out West and here, do you guys get a feeling that the these birds stay in the tree longer? And say, Miriam's I don't have extensive I don't. I don't know that I could comment to that. I don't know. I'm the same way. I think. One thing that is different than out West though, is, and we were talking about this a little bit, is they don't always roost in the same areas here. You know, just because they roosted in that drainage yesterday, they could be you know, quite a ways away. And it seems like out west, there's um it's more common for him to show up in the same places. So yeah, I would I would say a more common, but not like fixed you know where I think that it's yeah, it feels like more kind of like that. There's like certain spots they like and like year in, year out. As long as something doesn't happen to that little local population, they'll kind of like to use that spot. But when you bump them, man, it's not either're gonna they don't. I don't think they feel forced to come back there that night. It's like a bell curve. I mean that's generally true. But I've got a farm in northern Missouri and there is one area there always, I mean of the time, there's gonna be at least two gobbler's roosted exactly in that same spot every night, the same. Yeah, if you're if you're leaning on it at night, well I don't, I don't bump them that hard, but but it's just a it's a guaranteed place. Now, I don't know that I've ever seen that before other than that one location. So it's it's not common. But if they find the thing that does everything they want, you know, they'll they'll they'll have some level of faithfulness to that location. And out west where they don't have many choices A lot of times, you know you could we'll find it. Yeah in areas which is not a lot of trees. Alright, so young there are there. I was. I crossed the bottom the little it was a dry creek bed, and I climbed up maybe ten yards or so, and uh, I'm all kind of a big it's been an oak. Uh maybe another twenty yards ahead. I'm thinking it would be a nice spot to get to because I could just start to see kind of up on this the ridge it kind of benched out where he was. I was thinking I could just start to peek my nose up and see on the ridge if I got to there, and uh, all my way up there, he gobbles once on his own. I'm like, sweet, right, you know, so like that's a good sign. Yeah, yeah, it's nice when you get a courtesy gobble. That's what I like to call those. And you don't have to ask him for it with a hood all or it's trike your call. He's just like, hey over here, yeah, And uh so I make it to that tree and I think he actually hammered again, and uh and when I when when I heard him. Then I was like, okay, I just should just sit down, like I don't need to go any farther. This is this is something you and I have talked about that there's like a turkey goes from being real far a turkey's gobble goes from being kind of like you can't really get a grasp of it. It's kind of far away in some sort of abstract sense, and then you cross like a thin You crossed like a thin plane, and all of a sudden, like he's right on top of you, do you know, I mean like you pass into a moment when you are suddenly like in his area. It's just the gobble just sounds so different. You could be sitting there listening to a gobbling like I quite know where he is, and take like a depth and also you'd be like, not, I know exactly where he is. More. It's like that they become at some distance, they become like you. You hear that you hear more quality to the sound than you otherwise do. Yeah, It's like at one point it's just kind of like a blur of a gobbl sound, and then you get just a little bit closer and all of a sudden, you can hear every little uh part of that gobble as it kind of breaks, you know, it's like something it's like an image coming into focus. Yeah yeah, and then all of a sudden, your your ears can triangulate and go, yeah, he's over there, roughly a hundred yards away, you know, and uh yes, So I sat down and uh, I got my head net on and uh put a diaphragm in and uh I gave him I don't know, five or seven not it's pretty soft, and it got no response. You know, it's calling behind my hand, trying to throw my call a little bit because it was a perfect spot because he had to come to about probably sixty to eat even see where I was, and then there was a role between he and I, and then right behind me I had another little little spot. So you can imagine when he came over looking, even if he didn't see a hand, there's spots with that HND that was calling to him, could have been right. So I felt I felt confident in this spot, and um so he didn't answer. I waited a little bit and then I just up my volume a little bit and just gave him three, three or four louder notes. Yeah, yeah, and he uh he he just jumped right over it. And um and you told me that at that point you could hear his feathers. Yeah, I could hear his feathers kind of shake a little bit as he gobbled um. So you know at that point, yeah, I don't know se yards And it didn't take long, maybe a couple of minutes, and I could see his head coming and he came right to that edgeway it was, and I could see the whole body out of range and there he hung up for a little ways. But from that range, I already see a blue and white head. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I've been I was taught that when you see a blue and white head, he's kind of in love and you kind of you know, you're the deck is stacked in your favor at that point, right, much better than seeing a redhead. Oh yeah, man, yeah, And uh were you hearing him? You know at that point, at that point, he hadn't um strutted, end, I hadn't heard him drum er spit. But uh so he's still there for like a minute or so, it seemed like five is probably a minute, and uh then you just started working towards me, and that's when it started. So he went into full strut, did some drama and spitting. He leaves strut a couple of STI you got a nice spit drum, can you do it for us? I like this far from right, and man, it is a sound. We've talked about this before, but it's a sound that you have to tell yourself that you're hearing it. I mean, when he's right on top of you're sure, you're like everybody can hear it, but your ears hearing better because there's been a number of times you've heard him drumming when I can't hear him drumming, Like it's like it's a decibel or something that yeah, between somehow between your age and my age goes away. Well, it's like those suiti grouse, you know that we chased around and I've got um dusky grouse in my yard Montana, and I can get five fam maybe more like seven or eight feet from this dusky grouse, and I can hear him. You can see his yellow patches vibrating as he does this. You can hold your phone out and record a video and play it back at full volume, and the microphone on the phone cannot pick it up. It's a ghost sound. Yeah, it's crazy. People that film ghosts and whatnot reports similar problems. Yeah, so that's what a turkey, Um the drumming is because really at a distance, you rarely actually hear the spit right you more here the yeah you know that and that can work again, that can work the other way to sitting there for hours and going what is he drummond? Here? And drummond? I think I hear drummond? Which way is that? Is it behind me? Is it on top of me? It's it's super hard to course, you know. It's just like it's all encompassing. When it's close to all around you, it's it's it's a neat sound. You feel it more than here. And what he's doing is taking his wings and like beat his wings on his body. And they'll go out and beat their wings on the ground and wear off their primaries. Is that the primary? Yeah? Yeah, like a turkey in the spring, you'll wear the ends off them. Yeah. It would be a nice straight line. Um. Yes, so I got the show. That's what you know. I call it. Man. He gobbled maybe three or four times as he came in and you know, went in and out of strut the same thing three or four or five times, and uh, it wasn't very long, and the whole thing happened in five minute. I killed him at seven fifteen, so I kind of had a window once at maybe thirty five yards. And at the time, I was like very confident because I'm like, yeah, look at that blue and white head. And then as soon as he gets into some thick shit again and behind the tree, I'm like, you dumbass, You're dumbass. You should have shot because that it seems like I had seen him before. They get behind that tree, and you're thinking he's gonna just pop out the other side at thirty and instead the next time he pops out, he's at sixty again, and for whatever reason, he decided to go away from you. But anyways, this time it worked just how you want, and he pops out and he came to twenty yards or so, and at that moment, I was sitting against the tree. We're just blind calling. I'll sit in there, chatter my teeth against a tree and also bouch and I'm like, Yanni shot that pit bull because there was like no other reason that I could imagine that he would be shooting his gun off. I'm like, either Yanna got shot by the guy down the landowner guy, or the pit bull attacked him and he had to defend himself from the pit ball. And I was kind of magic, like, what's sort of you know, investigation like how does one when you shoot a dog? And self defense? Like what happens? You know? Nothing? I think in that case, you just let him lay. So we we proceeded to wander all around, but we ended up right there. Happened to Yeah, So we made a plan to meet Joannie at ten, and we just made a big long loop heading for that spot because in previous years it's a really good spot. And we ended up down there and we had to split in time to meet him at ten. When we got up there, I'll tell you it was pretty redeeming. When you had that bird and we're doing a thing called blind like because we're not hearing anything and it's not it's just so windy. Then you're kind of like, all right, I'm gonna give up on the whole idea that I'm gonna hear gobbler. And we would just go to likely areas little bottoms where you're kind of out of the wind. You can get out of the wind down the little bottoms, hollers, hollows and um just call give it twenty minutes because that can work. That can work. They come in silent a lot. Yeah, you'll lay down, And the thing is you gotta get like real comfortable because you don't know what direction they're gonna come from. And you can't be fidgeting around because you could be he could be behind you. Never make a noise and you fige it around, he's gonna leave and you never knew he was there. So what if I'm doing that sort of thing, I like to try to get where I'm almost like and I don't even think it's a bad thing to fall asleep for a minute blind calling, because you want to be that comfortable and just call every whatever ten minutes. Last year blind calling, I woke up. I woke up to see a turkey coming. You know, you get that kind of fitful sleep and I was like, oh my god, redhead coming through the coming through the brush, you know, and heat that bird came in never made a peep. Yeah, so uh yeah that was in Wisconsin last year. So yeah, we're blind called and then really nothing happened. That was the end of the day. We went out that night and tried to do what's called roost in them, which is now and then like turkey gobbling just gets generally throughout the day, it just gets worse. Like in the world, calls per second just drop to where by about ten in the morning unless it's really good's not many calls. Six in the mornings, all kinds of calls, and it just gets like worse and worse and worse and worse and worse. But in some locales you'll have a spike at night where there's something about them going back to the roost. Do you understand us at all from a from a never they never talked about this in school, No, I'm sure they did. I wasn't paying attention towards night. As they're going back to their roost for whatever reason, they sometimes will gobble some more, and then they like to Oftentimes they like to gobble once they get up in the roost. You know a lot of times they'll the turkeyo gobble and of course the hands come to him like you explained before, and they'll do their thing. They'll kind of hang out and breed and knock around together, and you know on up in the morning, the hands will go off and kind of do their own thing, you know, and they're starting to look for a place to nest or wanting to feed or whatever. And and often times they leave the gobbler. And so sometimes there's there's a spike or you can at them to a gobble midday. Then again in the afternoon when they're starting to gather back up, the hands are kind of backing around. He's feeling his oats again. You know, he may he may get a gobbler too. And you know, oftentimes it's a shock gobble that that happens at night as supposed to them just goblin. They do some. But you go out and try to shock gobblm um, I think you get more responsores than them just naturally gobbling, gobbling a whole lot. Maybe the hunting miriams, which is, you know, the people don't really accept the idea of subspecies of turkeys, but like it's like varieties of turkeys, right, there's there's five now what was to say, there's five subspecies of turkeys in in in the US. Um, the mirrors is a very vocal one. We used to drive around sometimes hunting mirrors. We would drive around from spot spot spot on on logging roads or whatever and stop, turn the car off, honk to horn to find out where you're gonna in the morning. But we didn't. We haven't heard. No one in our group has heard a turkey gobble passed I think nine am on this trip, going out two nights in a row, spreading all out across the ridges, blowing crow calls, kyo, yips, screech, owls, what the hell kind of owl? Bart owl? Not peep, crickets not even Yeah, I didn't try a cricket call, but yeah, you mean like crickets, like silence. So then all of a sudden we wake up the next morning and you just knew there's gonna be goblin. Yeah, because the weather switched. Yeah, we're brushing our teeth in the driveway and uh heard one gobble in the distance the wind no wind. Yeah, oh you hoot owl are called I'll call that him, and that's what at him. Yeah, you're stepped out of the porch of your cabin. What do you call this thing? Tripped with acres? But when you call it a cabin, yeah, so what i'd go into my blank. I told my wife, it's a cabin. It got a little big for cabin status. So what do you say you're going to when you go here the cabin? We say our shack. Yeah, because my wife says it does it's not a cabin. That's that's called a shack. Yeah. Yanni had his electric toothbrush going. We had to turn that off and then we could because it was, like you said, I thought I heard one turned toothbrush off. Did it again? Your toothbrush was impeding the ability to listen to gobbles. It was. That's the only good argument I've ever heard against letcher toothbrushes. But so at the back up, we met up with Yanni and we tried all these different spots and I even took you down on a gravel bar and I know you guys are thinking, there's no way there's that's the day we cut that track. Yeah, so that was like the highlight of our day. We closed out our day on a track. Do We just were like, well, here's a track that's right, and we just sat and called the track. I even took a picture of the track so we'd have some semblance of a trophy from the day. But yeah, from the driveway at who dialed and it went and uh Parker and I deployed and they ended up being four gobblers, probably three gobblers in a jake, and uh Parker called one across the river. Talking about that for a minute, Well, I think with turkey hunting, you're either a hero or zero. It's like you're never there's no like mid grade turkey guys. You know, it's not like, well I saw, I could have shot a couple of gobblers, but he wasn't nice and I had a great experience. But like you try as hard as you can every time, or I do when I'm turkey hunting. So, uh, we got on this turkey. They were goblin goblin acrossing hundreds of yards away, right, Well, we slipped up on them and we got I don't know, across the river and we were just on the other side of the river from them. Yeah, they were up they're up on a bluff and we're down on the gravel bar. But they're not hundreds of yards away the other side of the river, the other side of the river above us. Worst case scenario. If you're thinking about turkey hunting, you want to get you know the same level or above them, preferably the same side of the river. You know, those types of things. Um, so everything working against us. I think we're just so happy to hear Turkey's goblin um that it didn't matter. You know, we were right after him, so um yeah, they got fired up and they were in the roost and we called at him a little bit and we got one sure enough. You know, I thought he wanted to play ball, and you know, we kind of brandon and I kind of shut up quick calling, and all of a sudden, man, things zings across the river and lands roost tree left his buddies behind. Arms are, yeah, the whole it's on a gravel bar just came sailing. Man. It was beautiful. You could see his big beard. I said, here he comes, yeah, here he calls that like yeah, here he comes coming in to take a pass shot like geese. Yeah. So he sailed in human and he landed on a gravel bar. Made me think that like, either there's something wrong with him or it was the most masterful, beautiful bit of calling. Something's wrong with the turkey, trust me, because like I just don't think of him being like I'm gonna fly out of this tree, cross the river and land on some rocks. He did, and then he probably landed eighty to a hundred yards down from us, worked right up and there's a lot of little scrub brush down there, and we were tucked into some small cedars, and there's another one about twenty yards away, and he just took up shop right there on the other side of that seedar. So I mean, how far thirty yard? No more than thirty year, I would say, twe And he's just drumming and drumming goblin, and it's going on for it's going on for twenty minutes. Yeah, and then all of a sudden, it's like it just it was NonStop action for twenty minutes and then it stopped. And the whole time, I'm thinking, Uh, Brandon and I were when the turkey sailed across the river. H I said, turn and face him, Turn and face him. So we were set apart from each other, so we're the way we're sitting against the trees, were kind of facing each other, right, And so the turkeys behind me at this point just tomahawk goblin all of me, you know, and drum you know, and I'm looking at Brandon and I'm like, I'm just like shoot him, man, you know, what are we doing here? But yeah, it was right behind the bush. But I never saw him that whole time, never caught a glimpse of them that whole time. Yeah, it's so exciting. So then he goes silent, and then he made it to this field, which is private property that we can't hunt on. So he's got to be in the low water on the gravel bar and are in the high water area of the gravel bar. So he gets into this field and then he starts gobbling again, and man, it was beautiful. He's full strut. Every time he gobbles. You can see his breath coming out. Detail. Man, man, it was beautiful. If I was a painter, I would paint a turkey gobblin with his breath coming out as So at that point, he's probably sixty yards away and ten yards onto private and I'm thinking he's just gonna split across that field. But there's one lane like runs back down. It's like, whoever that landowner is, It's there, like lane to get down to the river, but it's cutting onto public land. And when he got to that lane, I said, give it to him, and Parker hit him, and he turned and came He went down this swelle, yeah, him with a call, and he turned and came back. And now he's back in the game, goes down this swale, and I'm afraid that I didn't see him cut through the woods the first time. So I'm thinking he must have cut through that swale, and now he's gonna take that same route back to the gravel bar and end up behind that bush again. But this time he made a fatal mistake of going up on top of the lip of that swale. And that was the end of it. From my perspective, Like I said, we were facing each other right um, and so I could I was watching the hunt through the perspective of watching Brandon and him, uh seeing the turkey, and I can see him looking a little bit, you know, slight movements of his head and his eyes and yeah, and he's going, he's going, He's coming, He's gonna come. And I see him his his breath starts getting faster, you know, you know the excitement of the turkey when he realized as he's coming, and he disappears behind the swell, like you said, and you see mild panic said into his into his face, just like, oh no, oh no, I don't see him now. And as soon as he comes up out of the swell he's talking about with that white head, I see as his eyes get big and then, you know, cheek down on the stock. And that was it. When you when you when you hold because you're shooting a skull, which I've never done. I was just shooting elevated a beading though, tell you call it like a vented rib. He's basically looked down the damn barrel, right, But I've always been tempted with um messing around with various apparati even though I don't have you know, I don't know. I don't take long shots or something, cause I've never I've never whipped a shot at one. But when when you're aiming at where are you holding on him? Right at the base of his neck? There's a cross hair and there, and I hold right on the base of his neck. And you know, I was on the media hunt and out with Dakota and one of the sponsors had those scopes, and I had that gun for many years, and I, you know, had to put it on there to appease the people paying for the trip. I've never taken it off in seven or eight years. It just works for me. Um. I've got one of those red dots on my daughter's turkey gun and she likes it. But I mean when I shot that bird, I panicked for a second because I didn't see anything. And when when I finally realized, it just it never even flopped. It just went down that you know. Normally when you shoot one, they flop around, and I couldn't see it. I mean, it was just where to go. And then I looked and there it laid kind of on the back side of the base of the neck. Like were you saying where there's feathers start or lower than that, because see I I aim were like the head and the neck joint at that's just below the skull. You're probably sailing some pellets over the top of his head. I kind of depending on how far away for the pace of the neck, about where the feathers start. That's where I put the crosshairs. And I know, you know, my I got a real tight choke and at thirty yards it's about the size of a skillet, you know, And if I put it there, I'm not gonna miss him. Probably not gonna put too many low, and it seems to work when they're far out. I'll aim a little higher just because the drop. But I kind of, you know, I don't know, man, I'm hold I hold because I've had a lot of guys say that, like dudes that miss turkeys are shooting over the top of them because they're even for the head. Yeah, and they got a tight pattern. It just feels people feel that if you were low, he'd be dead because you got him the neck, or you at least would have fluffed him. So I kind of hold down a little ways. Remember like some some Turkey guy saying that the holds on the wattles, it was low on the neck. So I started kind of doing that kind of isn't the wattles and where the base's neck, that's not the same down at the where the feathers start feather. Yeah, they kind of hang a little. They kind of hang like a beer belly. What about over that waistline of his feathers. Yeah, Well, now that I was telling you, I put a new bead on my gun, and the beads a little bit taller than the beat I hat on there. And so if you understand how that works, and you're aiming, it causes you to put the the higher bead causes you to uh. If you bring that beat down, it caused you to shoot a little bit lower and so um. But yeah, I would just aim halfway between his wattles and his head. But I mean at thirty yards. I don't know that if I'm really getting that precise. But the one thing I just make sure of is that I can see his head over my site. I don't ever cover up his head doing it. I'm not thinking about how when I'm trying to do shot placement, shooting like a big game animal, I'm not like doing that level. But I am thinking. When I have the thought, I am thinking, don't shoot over his head. And I especially get nervou about it when they're super close, because then you gotta patterned size of a baseball. It's gotta be on. Yeah, Rose, he's gonna run off. That's not what you're out there for. But meanwhile, while this whole gravel bar flying out miracle turkey thing is going on, we go out, we go back up and early remember how y honest staying he didn't want to go down and flirt with this private property boundary. We get back up in that area and sure enough bird gobbling down on that zone. And we don't want to do that because then we feel he's gonna pitch out of his roost land on the other side of the painted trees, and then you just gotta sit there, right, We're gonna sit there, not very confident in our miracle calling abilities and whether he will we call him across the kind of stuff. Man, I hate that kind of stuff. So we just like, never mind that turkey, but grudgingly, yeah, continued on down the ridge. Go down the ridge here another turkey and kind of like stay a little bit like maybe, but he's very far off where it's like hard to even begin thinking about how you're gonna go about it. So we're kind of like, maybe then go little ways and look down into this kind of little hell hole, and then we're like, that's our turkey. There's several of them, but one of them is like, that's the turkey. So we start nosing down into the holler. Is it a cultural appropriation for me to say holler? It works? So it's not horrible, Okay, Um, I'd like to be sensitive to that kind of stuff. Because I can switch to holloway. Uh, We've been calling creek beds, work our way down to work our way down towards the creek bed, and pretty soon we get where we enter into that we crossed that plane where all of a sudden, you're like in his zone and we get set up and I'm thinking, damn it, we got too close. Get set up and call and call up a hand who comes up just basically bitching at us, like they get it does seem like that. I hope one of you guys can enlighten me. But yeah, she just comes in there. I thought it was like it was like a happy putt, but now I'm thinking it's just she's just clucking. But she I guess she's just clucking and looking and trying to make that connection. They got a thing they do. They got a thing they do where it varies, but like when you're calling a gubbler, like he's kind of coming at a handle come up and kind of cut these half circles around you far out like she you know, where they don't. They don't come barreling in. They're very like what's going on? What's going on? They tend to be like very vocal. We had the same thing this morning. Yeah, but I don't think we ever saw the whole body of that hand. She got to where she could look up onto the bench that we had sat up on a little bench ridge and looked at look. Look, look, look, walked back and forth a little bit. We could see her head and neck, and then she just went back over to this, you know, swale a little bit and shut up. Yeah, point to the point. Yeah. So she she's all piste and goes and dips off the side of the hill. I just want you can only shoot bearded You're supposed to shoot males. But the way they define it as you know, a bearded turkey because they have a weird beard feather coming out of her chest. Uh. She goes off. We kind of forget about her, and a while later we realized that the gobbler we were calling to it drifted off in the other direction as they're wanting to do, and we're staying up to go chase him, and she takes off flying from that same spot. So she was all piste, went back out of sight and then just decided to mellow out and hang out. Chase. We chase that gobbler and kind of set up on him, chase him, set up on him. And then you hear off to the right, we hear a hand calling it ain't a hen. Off to the left, I hear owl hooting at getting a little late in the morning. There's other people are getting other people are growing aware of our holler right like people are like, there's a holler that has a lot of goblin emanating from it, and people are zero. Other dudes, there's zero. That's like public land hunting man. Other dudes are zeroing in on this thing. Yanni. I didn't hear this, Yanni. Here's two car doors and he thinks that those guys left. Yeah, I feel like the dudes that are left took off. But the right. As we're working this turkey, can hear this guy on the right yep yep, yep, yep, yep, yeap. Like coming down and the closest we get to the gobbler post roost, we get clothes for down in the bottom. It looks beautiful. Put out a decoy. He hammers like probably the closest gobble we got. I'm very excited. And then he gobbles again and he's the same spot. I'm more excited that he gobbles again and just get that sinking feeling where it's just like unmistakably he's farther away now, which is like usually what happens in turkey hunting. And I think he gobbled again. It's like, damn it, that was farther away for sure. And then about not very far away. No, I think I heard the turkey flop. It was that close, you know. But jumped out of my skin. And that dude that coming on from the right just out turkey hunted us, out hunted us. Wasn't his first trip to the holler? Yeah he might, Yeah, he might have been in there knowing that those turkeys like to leave there going up that branch or whatever. Yeah, And then we wanted all over Holy Helm. Then prece was one o'clock and we came home. So meanwhile we did a tour. Parker and I regroup after bringing my bird back to the cabin, and we hear one goblin in the same holler where Yanni killed his bird. Then we go up to the we go up to the meeting spot or the calling location, and we thought you guys had deployed down after that bird. Im like I used that term deployed. We stayed out of there like wandered over made his way over. We were on a mission. So we deployed down into that, deployed into the hollers. He tells me when to deploy. But what a difference a day makes. All of my spots redeemed themselves. All the ridges, I said, would have birds on them, head birds on them, and all the holler's had birds, even killed one off the gravel bar. So it's unbelievable how they turned on overnight, because like in that like they're gonna breed, and like in understanding all these cycles in the natural world, like fish spawning and all that, there's sort of like a photo there'll be a photo period window, right, there's like a length of day that is appropriate, and that window depending on what thing we're talking about, what natural phenomenon we're talking about, Um, that photo period window, that length of day window could be wider, skinny. But within that there's all the other all the variables which kind of turn it on and turn it off. Right Like you think, like steelhead are gonna spawn, Um, it's gonna happen, like never happens before this date, never happens later in that day. But within that window of time, there's myriad things that need to occur, water level, water temperature, all this kind of stuff, and it's gonna happen. They're gonna pick their moments. And it's like funny with these turkeys that on Monday it seems to be well, except for Yannis, it just seems to be they're not doing that. Today. The next day that slight change, warmer, no air, and they're just back to it. And I think yesterday was better than today, even though the conditions today were almost the same as yesterday. It's like they were just shocked into getting going and today they settled back down a little bit. They gobbled early, but they stopped earlier today too. So then yesterday, did you guys work more birds? We definitely went for a long walk. We we had several minor setbacks yesterday, to say the least. I don't know if we ever worked a bird. We chased a couple others. I don't know that. I don't know if we ever worked in another way. I had to find working a bird where you're in the game. We we never got back in the game. An amazing thing, amazing thing that happened yesterday, though, we jumped a covey of a quail on the public land way in the back, and that doesn't happen. That doesn't happen, not in the old days. In the old days, that's what people did down I mean, we have so much work going on on quail restoration, but in this part of the country especially, I had no idea that this was a quail country. It's really not. And that was historically it was. Yeah, when you had more small farms or what. I really don't know what the change has been over. I mean, I think you could be really rich if you figured out what the problem is. I walk around out there, the last thing on my min would be that I'll jump a quil. I jumped quil. To take me a minute to realize it was a quail, because I'd be so not expecting it to happen, really surprised. We were deep in the force. It was on a power line where we jumped in some brush and there was it looked like the right slot if we were fifty or sixty miles north of here. But it was cool, really cool for sure. How many quail were in the covey? What do you think park of ten, yeah, ten of tilve. It was a nice little covey. Let me tell you quail story real quick. Let's see. Let's here's quail spitting drop many many years ago, um, fourteen or fifteen years ago. My girlfriend at the time was friends with someone who was a private chef on a yacht. And this friend says to my girlfriend at the time, Hey, do you guys want a bag of quail cleaned up quail? And uh she said, sure, she goes. You know who gave me this quail? George H. W. Bush. M the owner of the yachts friends with George h. W. Bush, And he came out on the yacht and brought a sack of quail that he had shot. So I was like, well, I was pretty interesting. So I saved him for a long time. I think I'd save him for some kind of special occastion. When I did bust him out, not one of these quail had not a pellet in any of these quail ahead shot. No, here's what someone told. Someone told me at these high flute and quail places, they're raising them in pens anyway. And he said, when you go to these high flute and quail shooting facilities. You go out and shoot quail, but then they're all shot up and the dog has been chewing on them. Who wants to eat that? Right? The thinking goes So when you leave, they just go into the pen and get you fifteen nice new ones that aren't molested by shot. And that's what you bring home that I have. No. I had never backed up or verified any of this, but this is just what was told to me. Do you know who Ray Scott is the bass master? No? Remember when bass fishing tournaments started? You know who Ray Scott from Michigan? You ever heard of Kevin Van Dan He's our next Parker. You gotta know who Ray Scott is the bass master? Well States yet Alabama? Yeah, yeah, he started, He basically started professional bass fishing tournaments. But I went down and stayed with him one time and I got to my room and it had a plaque on the bed that said President George H. W. Bush slept here. So that's my George Bush story. He don't need a lot of those bass I'm not guessing. I don't think. So we got a body. He's a bass he's a recreation what do you call like amateur tournament bass guy? Caught. Lord knows how many bass in his life. One day I'm talking to him in his whole life, he'd never eat. We served him his first bass ever, a tournament fisherman, certain his first bass ever. He liked it. Did not want his wife to find out about it, because she'd be wondered what in the world he's been out there doing all this time. We have a small mouth sandwich tastes that we have to call bass out of our pond. If you don't take so many little ones out, the big thing they get stunted, grows because the ponds on't even support so many ounces of fish, and it's gonna take the form of larger big So we we a lot of large mouth bass. So back to Turkey on. That's my story about h W bush Uh. Someday I'm gonna work up I'd like to work up a real good punchline for it, which might take some time. But so you guys wrap her up. One o'clock. Done deal. Mm hm. This morning, step out on the porch. Presumably the eagle was not brushing, because yeah, we got we got wet. Yeah, I took Jones out on the on the porch this time he's a he's a world champion hood al collar. That wasn't impress ripping out your owl? Sure, I won't make this thing melt if I do. I think you might do is maybe well what do you think just just just take your mic away from your face? Yeah? Perfect, rip out an owl hoot? Oh my goodness, the end? How did you work that out practice? Can you just do the end for me again? Yeah? That's nice, man, It's like you swallow the owl um. So I put him to work on the on the porch this morning, and I was hoping that those other three would be back, and at least two of them were, and he got them fired up from the porch. And this time Parker and I got on the right side of the river and I'll let him take it from there. We got on the right side of the river, slipped in there still on the roost um. Right as in right versus wrong, not left and right. No, he's got it right both ways. He means right proper. But he was on river right both got it you know, like just a quick thing for listeners. River. When you say river right, river left, it's from the perspective of someone looking downstream, so you could be facing upstream and when you say river right, it's on your left, correct, like you're floating down the stream. Yeah, the river right, the correct side, which happened to be that used had to be part of my safety speech every day when you're fishing. So the proper side of the river, which happened to be river right. Correct. We slept up under the cover of darkness. Um, selected two trees. Tried to get a tree that's wider than a back to break up. Mind. I do, I do think about that, um a lot. I know some fellers that have a hard time finding a tree. Yeah, on the Redwoods. We found one today. Um, well, I found one. Brandons was. I'll get to that later. This is a little a little skinnier than we liked it. He blames me. I blame him for this what happened. I blame the turke. Yeah. At any rate, they're goblin goblin nice and you know they they're goblins so much that I'm trying to pick him out of the tree. We're we're within a hundred yards, I think, and you know, I'm looking looking, I can hear him. He's goblin, goblin, goblin, goblin, And you know we're calling just a little bit back to him, um, some soft yelps and any rate, we we kind of put the call down and then we're to standoff. You know, he's wanting a gobble and I'm not saying anything. Well, then I see him pitch out when he pitches out to me, and it's the same thing again, yeah right to us, right, so, uh, the same thing Yan is talking about Yesterday's two little little swells. Right, So he pitches down behind he's two swells over, which is maybe maybe seventy eight yards and goblin drum and spitting the whole thing. This turkey was going and I had my gun on my knee, and I hear the turkey and every once in a while can see the tips of us of his tail fan just over the top. You know, it's a done deal. I'm thinking about coming back and get something Mr Steve's coffee. The turkey comes in kind of follows this finger down right. I can just see glimpses and pieces of him. He turns around the swell and I say, well, if he gets around that and comes starts breaking towards me, it's over. I got him. He's committed. He did that. He broke around, took about ten steps, and at this point he's maybe fifty five or sixty yards coming on a on a string, turned sideways. I see his head yards waiting for inside forty. I like to shoot him closer to than further. Um. I know some of the new loads these days, but you know, when I started turkey hunting, it was the twenty gage with the two and three quarter inch six, you know. So we'll let him come on in. So I like him inside forty, I really do. It was too far from me. Some guys, maybe I don't. I don't like the cripple turkeys or anything, but turkeys. I couldn't. I like him to get close. So the turkey's coming. He turned sideways. His head's just bright white. He kind of comes out of strut, sticks his head straight up in the air. All the color leaves his head. He turns around and fast walks away. No doubt in my mind, he saw us. He walked around the corner, he saw us, and he split and that was that. I think he said, Man, I'm gonna check by that big tree. No, dude, he saw Brandon back there moving around. I'm telling you, I was in the almost asleep mode. I was not moving around. Yeah, so that was it. That was it for me today. And then I wanted all over the hole. We wanted all over Holy hell. Yeah. And the wind picked up today, which was a little more frustrating it did. That was annoying me, man, Yeah, that was annoying. Yeah. It kind of makes it harder to keep going at that eleven o'clock hour, Like you could barely hear him if he was gobbling at you. So here you are, turkeyless, come to the end of your side. It's over. It's over. Uh. We got out the turkey in the one spot was not there, in the in the borderland the border turkey was not there. Went down to the to the Roman the dour glass, the Roman Ridge, descended the Roman Ridge, and we'd already picked up a gobble by this point. No, we had to descend quite a ways until finally, and I don't think we shocked him. We're we're kind of walking in and just maybe stopped, and all of a sudden we heard us a double gobble, two birds over the top of each other. So I wanted to start his goblem before he finish this gobble, his buddy gobble over him, which is cool. And then people like to talk about a double gobble, which is different. Double guy was just a turkey that goes. But these guys were gobbling over. When you go to doug During's farm on a good day, you'll get the whole ridge where it's like someone running their fingers down the piano. But on the whole damn riche a bird on one end of the ridge, old gobble and it just the gobbles just traveled down the ridge. That's fun. We weren't in that kind of situation and set up and right away repeat from yesterday, called up a hand, come up, make an all manner of noises. Um did she yelp? Yeah? Yeah, I don't think she actually every yelped the second the second one did a little bit doing a kiki out we we we But that's not a key? Is that a French kiki? Do you have a name for that? When it wasn't like she's doing like a right she yeh, that's not that's not but that's not what I'm talking about. She was doing this, am I not? Am I right or wrong? Yeah? You're right, she heard not that I am I call I do it? Yeah, but no that's too much like a pigeon. It's just a content clucking, purring noise. You' she caught? She she caught lots of cuts, clucked, didn't yell, did not she she caught? She did she that's not a cut. Boys the premost boys call that sound that we heard. They call it woo woo because it's just like she's going, Oh, that's what they call that. Yeah. But it's like, because the key I'm doing the kiki, the KICKI is like a louder, longer kind of noise. It's like a hurt It's like a hurting noise I'll make to their pulse. Yeah. So she clucked, cut, purred, and whood, which I think is interesting. It's all in that same content. Interesting part about it. Here's the interesting part about it. I like there's a there's there's the way turkey's sound mm hmm. Sometimes oftentimes you'll hear you'll see a real turkey doing a sequence of notes over a period of time that no turkey caller that I hang out with replicates. If I sat down in the woods with a guy and clugged his six minutes, he sat there just making racket like just piling on noise upon noise, NonStop. I would be after while I would like hit them on the shoulder. But here's a real live turkey just go into town. Not only just going to town. She just tromping through the woods too, walking and calling it cutting like a big arc just raising holy hell. And then not long after there was those hands we couldn't see in the bottom, just raising hell. It's like, if you wanted to really sound like turkeys, you get six seven guys just to go sit out in the woods and start just doing crazy stuff with turkey calls. It's kind of what it sounds like down there, I mean, But the difference is they're doing all that and it makes sense to them. If you sit down and start making like sequences of strange sounds, lord knows what message you're setting. I think that that's part of being like a little bit judicious, is because um, they're feeling something that might not match up with what you're laying down, Like they're in kind of a little fight, right or whatever, and it just means it makes sense to them that they're doing You don't know why they're doing it, but then um, try to work our way down spook a couple of turkeys. Here's a weird thing. I think Yann even knows where they are, and I think they're farther away. And we're arguing about this on and off, and eventually it proves that Yannie was correct because here they jump, they spook and fly off, which is a bad sign. I it's a real bad sign. We thought it was the end of our morning hunt. And I do a kind of like a very like having like three scoops of ice cream and all three of them is falling off your cone in the man. Yeah, and I do kind of a physical expression of you know, like it was like you're a little paler than you were, Like you're like that bird that uh Parker was working. Yeah, yeah, bunch of in your head. My head went from blue to red. So it was just like the right and for whatever reason, Yeah, he just does like a check like I don't know, dude. We do an elk hin all the time, because especially the bull might have just been over the ridge. He spook half of his cows. He just hear his hoose running and so all saying you go give him the super sexy and like thrash around like someone else is chasing one of his cows. And that's something bitch, you know. Oh yeah, then he's just like coming to see what all the fuss is about. And yeah, because it's thing in animals, man, It's like some animals, um hold more. Some animals in a group people pay attention to, and some animals in a group people don't pay attention to, because you could have it be that you're like putting the move on something and one will spot you and get nervous and you lost. The other ones don't pay any attention to that one. He hasn't proven his value. Um other ones. There's an animal that gets nervous and everyone gets nervous. Like when that animal gets nervous, everyone gets nervous. They did this thing with I can't remember verbets their monkey verbet monkeys. What is it? Verbet monkeys? I'm not sure. How do you can remember the name of this monkey? They went into these researchers went into this group of monkeys and made an audio recording of one of the monkeys in the troop. They made an auto recording of his warning call and started playing all of his war started playing his warning call to the troop all time, and he lost the street read they made it that when he made his legit morning, when he made when he did do his legit warning, everyone was like, whatever, never cried wolf. He cries wolf lost credit, So it could be something like that. Whatever it is, Yanni all of a sudden yelps again and yeah, right from the same. But they were agitated and edgy, and we hit the dirt, and I thought it was all over because here he comes kind of not like the blue redhead, yeah not instrud, not intrud, and a hand striding hand so close to him, her heads out over his tail, and he comes around this open hillside, and there's a number of things that I think might have happened. My guess is he gets where he can see and looks on this very open hillside and he says to himself, I don't care what I'm hearing. There's not a hand. That's two mugs laying in the dirt out of hand. I don't think he saw us, probably not. I just think he looked and he's like, I didn't get to be this old bye, which is twenty four months. Probably I didn't get this old by doing this. But here's the deal, Yanni screwed me out of that turkey because it was a yelp from a diaphragm call that got him to gobble and got him coming. And he gets there and he gets out of you, Yanni, and I'm watching him and he gets where he can see the hill, and he started getting bored and turned around and like why is he not calling? Why is he not calling? Turned out he couldn't see that. He thought turkey was just coming, and it was all over, Like why call now and mess up? You know, everything's already set in motion, Like why do anything? Yeah, because I've I've had experiences, not many, but I've had experiences where it's a direct line of sight with the turkey and I didn't have the control to not call anymore. I just maybe one to hear him gobble again or whatever. And I called and that turkey stopped and was like I can see exactly the blade of grass that that call came from, and I do not see a HND. So usually if I made contact and I see him coming, I'm shutting down because like why mess is a good thing? Like why I draw extra attention unless you're like a ventriloquist, why I would be like, oh, by the way this tree right here by this shotgun. Yeah, so he drifts off, okay, because there's a part of this I failed up to the left is not an owl. I'm like really really, and you know that's so it's like you're working a bird, but you're also aware of like the coming trouble because this bird's goblin. So you know that somebody can hear this bird gobblin. He probably thinks that he just discovered whatever, no idea what he's walking in on. Probably nicest guy in the world. But pretty soon the who who switches the yippy yipp yep and he's just coming hard. Man. It's like this guy's jogging jogging. We never see him, you just hear him, like he's running down into this and the turkeys started to move off and he's behind him, and for a minute, we I'm feeling, hey man, we found this. We would here since four got light out, we're here since daybreak. It's not your holler. So he's moving along and the turkeys are not moving and he's moving behind him, and we think we're gonna game him and maybe get out ahead of him. But then we're just like racing over turkeys and yeah, the turkey's went to his side of the holler, and so we went wander around. Found some turkey tracks, found like where a turkey had dusted a little bit or some such. Stamped up and winged up an area. Found a little pig track, found a bigger pig track. Wandered around a bunch more uh eight a snack, made a whole bunch of really loud locating type calls. Hoping started feeling sorry for myself. Come down, oh man, it was getting late in the day. I was I was having uh sympathy. Come down to holler, hit a creek and start working our way up. Oh found a nightcrawler, tore it up with little pieces and threw it in the river to watch creek chubs feed on it. Um, get down to a creek and you're honest and you're both common. Like, man's look good down here in the main the lusciest place we've been in the last three main stem creek, lots of sunlight, very lush, and we start working our way along. Had kind of like done, you gotta quit noon, you gotta quit it one. And we got a long walk and all of a sudden, I look and like here is abedded down turkey not but ten or twelve feet away in a blowdown when a hen like a couple of things, when a hen's like, you know, nesting, and she actually once she gets all of her eggs and there she's gonna incubate him. I throw up my shotgun and I'm aiming down the shock and I had to sing on the ground, and Yanna says, hen, but I I've also seen turkey's laid down to hide, and you've seen this park one. The one time I saw it, we were coming down a canyon in New Mexico and come around a corner and caught a turkey out in the middle of a field. And the turkey laid down flat on the ground and stretched his neck out and just laid down. You got and then got nervous and broke Yeah. We he I think he thought he had been just slicking up and he had this appeared, you know, behind her eyes. And because we I mean we were you know, a tight little cannon kanyon and it had just you know, broken up, and it's like the first time you could look left and look down the opening. All you see is a turkey head and you know, descending and you could see him laying his neck out. Remember seconds before that we found where a mountain lion and killed a turkey. Yeah. Um, so he betted that he just laid down the hide. That's the only I didn't know. I didn't know that was the thing that could happen until that day. So I throw my shotgun up. Yanni says it's a hand and I said something like, I'm just checking making sure it's not a jake. I don't know, because I thought, like a jake, he's young, he doesn't even know what's going on. Maybe he would think it's a good idea to lay down, and all of a sudden it jumps up and it's a crippled turkey. Yeah, a crippled gobbler, a crippled long beer who can't he's trying to take flight, but he can't take flight. So blouched him to a little effect. He went off through. I tore off after him, running short, shocked my shotgun, pulled the trigger, nothing happened, did a regular full long stroke on my shotgun, ran more and caught up to himuntain the woods and shot him and get up there, and he had he had been injured. His wing was suffered to injury, and we did a do you say knee crops here? We did a knee cropsy on him to no avail. Shattered. The main joint in his wing is shattered, like he got hit by a twenty two. He got hit by a truck. What did you make of the leg? Later? And I want to ask you this, all his back leg was all bruised. Was he running full steam or was he gimped up? Show that promise? He was trying to take flight, so he didn't run off like a normal turkey would run. He was trying to take light. So he's beating his wings to no effect. So he was like putting all this energy to trying to get airborne. He wasn't running with his wings tucked. She couldn't tell about the leg at that point because it was a real man. It was not like a graceful departure on his part. Yeah. And plus I mean you got a shot on him in him within seconds of him getting going. So yeah, and it's noon. You don't hunt at one. It's my last day. So one there's sort of like this idea that a lot of guys that they found like a mortally wounded animal they're gonna kill it anyway, which I've done. But I'm thinking, here's my turkey as well, and he's obviously messed up. So we go there. But he's not emaciated and the wound wasn't an old wound. He I don't know, he got shot by another turkey hunter. That's the most plausible explanation. Um, but I don't know. Man, that windows awful broken up. Who knows anything could have happened. Anything, There's a infinite number of things that could happen. But no, he's mine. Yep. Now he's going to Seattle, head to the fryar longer schnitzelham cooking in a pan. So I got two turkey breast flays in one leg. Coming home like good deal though here. Now, at first I didn't feel like I got a turkey. But you know, all the details get in life, like the details get hazy. I know, I feel like I just got a turkey, Like like when I get home to be like, hey, how's missouris you get a burn on me? Oh yeah already? Like at first I was, you know, we pull up and like did you get one? I like, wow, I'm not really, you know, kind of asterisk next to this one, but then that like does three hours later? Yeah, yeah I got one. Yeah, checks check Missouri off the list. In case you're wondering, I still feel like I didn't get one. Yeah, you didn't know that that much. As clear as that you did not get But if you didn't asked me on Monday at about ten o'clock, if we were gonna go three for four, oh, I already had it all put together. People are gonna be like, hey, how'd you guys dealing with serious and be like, bro, the weather, weather, You've never seen such horrible weather. I was gonna say that all before I said no, we didn't get any. But now and they'll be like, how that you know that birdie got down Missouri? How far was that shot? I'll be like, oh, it was close, called him in. It was closed those close. He kind of turned. He kind of turned right before I got him. He drumming and spitting. No, he's doing like came in solid. Yeah, yeah, never peep out of him. No, Yeah, I got a turkey, Absolutely no doubt in my mind about that. Hey, listen, have we not been just out wandering the woods until one pm? That wouldn't have happened. So the the hard work of that paid off. To keep walking through the woods. If you're just walking around like looking for nightcrawlers, keep walking in the woods. And then we came home and had um came back here and uh Steve Hugh lay out the many for us. What we had for lunch, Well, we had some venice and chili and uh some of Brandon's Uh what kind of catfish was that? It was flathead? But it was donated by Mark flash Polar. All Right, dude, if I had a name flash Polar, I would fish a lot more. And I already fish a lot. He's uh, I'd shortened it the flash Pole waterfall biologist. Flathead cats man unbelievably good. But I love them so much. But like growing up, we'd catch a big flathead and we didn't know to trim the fat off. My it's guys, that stuff tastes bad. Yeah, catfish fat is not good. Why is that? We don't know? Man, it's but it's not. It's horrible. Yeah, we made the mistake. When was that last fall? Maybe we're doing some uh cooking for television, No cook, we're shooting recipes for the cook pot. Is that when we had that, I thought we had that. Yeah, we didn't have any. We were doing a fried catfish thing, but we had to buy a piece cast. So someone went and bought a big slab of catfish, and we're you know, nobody even thought twice to think about trimming it more. Obviously it would have just been trimmed fine and godly, it is nasty, nasty, nasty the fat. Yeah, that's why I like the little channels we catch because little I mean, you can trim it, but I mean the little channels don't get the fat on him. You call those fiddlers. I know that people do calm fidders, but no, we call them little dinkers. Call them fiddlers around here. Yeah, I know, whole fries and fiddlers just skin them back. We flame them because we fiddlers, I don't know, Kevin Murphy says, because they fiddle with your bait. Yeah that's a good, that's a good. Yeah, that might be it. But yeah, you can just pull back the skin and and front, you know, take the head off and fry him. Hoole. We flayed dinkers because putting them on sandwiches, poll boys with pickles, whole you type roll bag at whatever frr catfish make up like a like a like a you know, tartar type sauce. Then you put red hot on them, pickles on them, let us on them. Basically like the kind of sandwich is Aris Feedy in Florida with grouper, but we just make them with kind of similar, different bun. But the flathoad was good Man, and the chili was like real chili. It wasn't like Midwest mom chili. It was from scratch. It's it. I love that stuff because I love Midwest mom chill. You know what I'm talking about, right, I don't know. You take the ground up deer meat and put it canned tomato products in there, and then you put pinto beans in there. Yeah, I like it. I like the venice and cut more chunky than than ground and using real chilies instead of chili powder, and uh in adobo yep, Chipotle's and adobo. We're in there, and uh I love it. I have to have another bowl before I leave. I like the fried guy like fried catfish, Man Friday, any kind of fish because of my upbringing. But in the South, you guys eat a lot of that. You guys come, no, you say this is not the South. No, this isn't the South, saying I thought it was the Midwest. And you guys say this isn't the Midwest. From we're at where I'm from, you'd be like, yeah, it's a little south. It's technically the Midwest. There's twelve states in the Midwest. Missouri's the southwest corner the Midwest. I will say the Missouri is in the University of missouris now in the SEC, the Southeastern Conference. So when I'm running around in the Hollard town, when I'm down in the Holler, I am a hard time believing that I'm in the Midwest. It's a good argument, especially talking to Parker. If I was down in the holler with Parker, we're in the South, but the the frigid, cold North. That's all I have to say about Turkey hunting. Action packed. And I like the way you set it up with the shitty first day. Yeah, I was gonna remark on that, man, that's what you know, because looking back on it, yeah, it's just the way to have it. If you set it up the other way, that had been horrible. I did my best to have a screaming good first day, then have a shitty last day. It would be a bummer. It's unbelievable. What what a difference it made though overnight, just one day difference it was. It was the way turkey hunting is supposed to be. I actually thought, maybe I'll find a mushroom. You know, this time of year, we're supposed to be waking up with a sweatshirt on end in the day, with shorts and sandals on, going out mushroom hunting and crappie fishing. You know, the trifecta of the Missouri spring is the wild turkey, the wild mushroom, and crappy filets. And uh, none of those have been happening until yesterday. No, And if you come back a week from now, you won't even recognize the place will be all leaved out. Well, it started to change. Yeah, in the last two days. The leaves started budding. Yeah, things are popping up out of the ground. His friend was saying, how this time you can sit in the woods and almost watch the leaves grow. I feel like that happened on the days today, you guys, I'm glad you got to see a little bit of the red buds. That's such a beautiful tree, and they grow here and these in these hills and mountains. And I know it's hard for you guys to look at these and column mountains, but no, no, I went with you. Yeah, so the red buds were starting to pop a little bit. But like Steve said, a week from now when those white dogwoods are in bloom and they're mixed in with those red buds which are really more of a purple color, and turkeys are goblin, croppies are biting, the mushrooms are popping. I mean, it's just the best. There's a good variety trees here, man, it really is. We got like the cedar, which is the non native short leaf pine, a lot of oak, hackberry, a lot of hickory, hickory sass I know, it's a bunch of sassafras trees today. Back at the turn of the century, the largest sawmill, not this New century, but early nineteen hundreds, the largest sawmill in the world was only you know, a couple of counties over from here. For the ozarks were pretty much logged bare twice before protection started. Um And now we have incredible canopy and there's much more management of the forest proper for for tree harvest rather than just taking it all and fell swoop right. I think originally the short leaf pine was more dominant than the oaks, but the oaks came back after the There's still a lot of those short leaf pines around. When I'm looking to set up, I'm always We're always like, let's go ahead of those pines. We're setting up to a turkey. It's always like you're like Marker. You know, I've got a little stand of them. It's my favorite place on the property. Yeah, we're wondering to the Ozarks. Is there a place in the Ozarks where the relief becomes more severe than what we see here? Yeah? Yeah, I mean the oz are stretched, you know, down into Arkansas, over into a little portion of Oklahoma. And I would say the most dramatic kind of mountainscape is down in Arkansas, the watch Atas and But do they get taller or just steeper? I can't really speak to the elevation, I'm not sure, but just the vastness of the entire range. The tallest the tallest point in Missouri there was a little ways north of here, so they're kind of scattered out. Um, what is the highest point in Missouri. It's right by Johnson shut into what's it's tom Sack Mountain, tom Sack Mountain, which is a heart of the pig country. Yeah. I don't know how idea Yeah, easy to find out, uh, Brandon. Final thoughts closers, concluders. Just never give up on tomorrow. Never give up on tomorrow. Never give up. There could always be a crippled up Turkey land. You will never see that again in your life, No, I really won't. Yeah, it was it was a great time. Glad you guys came down and um, I'm glad the turkey hunt worked out the way it did. It was tough the first day and we redeemed ourselves. All worked out in the end. Steve. That's it you, Brandon. I'm good, Steve. I just it was kind of strange being in turkey camp and not hunting. I've never done that before. But I was saving up for going up to my farm this weekend, and it was just fun to be with you guys. And you have a place you'd like to hunt, right, were you to kill a turkey here, you couldn't hunt your favorite place to hunt, right, And my wife would have said, well, we don't have to go up since you already got a bird, and I know she really really wants to go up, so I didn't. I didn't want to get into that situation. So so you just cooked wild game. I cooked wild game, and I know right what tree my turkey is gonna be in. So yeah, although he embarrassed me last year, I'm gonna get even this year. Good final. Uh, we appreciate the cooking. That was good. We a lot of good food, a lot of Suvie cooking this week cranbrule. Suvie hadn't even heard of that yet. Uh, we should grab the recipe from you before we leave. Yeah, can you can you real quick walk through the Suvie uh medallion's little backstrap steaks? Yeah, that's just you just take a loin and butterfly it nice and thick, good inchine and a half thick and uh butterfly it and just put salt, pepper and garlic potter on it. Can you can you? Because my like I hear that, but I don't like when we say butterfly. I think we're talking about two different things. We would say that to butterfly, like, for instance, to butterfly a pike flay will be to take that flay in every three eighths of an inch cut through, but not all the way through. That's what I do. I kind of I kind of bout a about a three inch section of the loin. But you're saying you're cutting. I understand, Like I'm not saying you're I'm not saying either of us is right or wrong, but our use of that term would be that um to not cut all the way through something. That's exactly what I did. They folded out and there was like, oh, so you did do that? Yeah? Really, yes, so I guess that because that's why. Yeah, but really a deer loins, No, but I thought it was like an elk loin when I looked at it. Really, that's what you did. You did, butterfly, it's the same way. Absolutely, I didn't catch that. You sure got like a uniform looking product out of it. Well, I take pride in my work. Really congratulation, Well, thank you. But so you take him and put him in a plash what everyone knows that word means. That's right, open it up, salt, pepper and garlic powder and put it in a plastic bag and the meats hew thick, but I'm gonna say echine inch and a quarter. Usually I tried it between me between an inch in the quarter. I'm saying the final meat, the final opened up piece of meat. Normally I'll do a two and a half to three inch section and then i'll, you know, do the one seam in the middle where you cut almost all the way through where your butterfly folded folded out and make it look pretty. I had no idea that's what I was eating. Absolutely, And then I put it in the water. I mean, you could take a long time explaining what suvied is, but basically, you know, just put it in the water, in the bag and put the little immersion circulator on and I said it a huddy nine degrees for two hours and take it out and then finished it with a weed burning torch. I did finish it with a wade burning torch. Holy sh it? Was that a good steak man? Yeah? Yeah, you reverse, because I hear guys torching them or seeing him first now and then putting them into Yeah, yeah, I don't. I have heard like if I'm doing a brisket, I will smoke the brisket first for three hours and then I'll finish it in the suvied. I know you're messing this up, though, reverse is to see her after because in normal cooking. Sorry he did do reverse, and no one's gonna tell me about this wrong. I have heard what you're talking about, and I just like like a reverse, like a reverse suvie, because the commons suvie preparation, I think is to you know, in the water first and then see her at the end. So it's a good yeah, but that's not like a very smart way to do it because it just gets resocked. Is that a word all over again? Yeah? I think about what people. I think the uh, the benefit is that the flavor that you get from the searing is then in the in there in the bag. He took these steaks out on the front deck here, from which he hoots up, hoots up turkeys, and fired up a wheat like a weed burning torch, which like ranchers in West Texas will use to burn thorns off prickly pair of cactus so the cattle can eat him when there's a drought, and seared the steaks beautifully. That's a good steak man. That's his white tailed deer. Ye from a holler from We don't have hollers in northern Missouri. That's up in the Midwest. You're in the Midwest. Yeah, some big corn fed deer up there is that? It Uh fine? All closing thought, you don't have too much. I just want to say thanks to Brandon again for having us. My pleasure sharing his place. Good times vacuuming up all them invasive beetles for us. Parker's got to get to work on those. We gotta figure out how to get rid of these Asian beetle and those dudes are tough man. Uh Parker, do you have any final things you'd like to add? No, thanks guys, it was a good time, and Brandon for having us down. And you know I did come up turkeyles, but you know we heard a lot of birds in in the last two days. It was a good time. Man. Finally get back out in the woods. Bring turkey seasons upon us. I have full turkey pressure now I have not harvested the turkey, so the pressure's building. You have more time though, I have a little time. Yeah, so hopefully we'll get after one. Um. My final thought is the way oh hunting on public land in the east which you hear from all manner guys about how horrible public land hunting is in the East, And I would have agreed with him at eleven today, Yeah, because you're like that, because yeah, we got burned by a couple of guys. But then I then I found my special uh my special bird. But even besides that, man, it's just like it's got, you know, a couple of things. One, it's still great hunting people got you know, you got turkey. We people got turkeys. We're working turkeys here in turkeys. It's a lot better than sitting inside um. But man, like, if you can get, if you can get and be successful, regularly successful, like consistently successful in the place like this, you're gonna be a good turkey hunter anywhere you go. Definitely to have the added thing of the race against the clock. Knowing that the more that like you're trying to make that bird goblin, you're doing everything right. It's gonna get that bird goblin. The more you get that bird goblin, the more other people are gonna be like, hey, it's bird goblin. It's almost like you'd refine a thing by which you um, like you'd refine a hunting strategy, but which she's like, don't just don't gobble. I just do one gobble out of this bird, and then I'm gonna do I'm gonna figure out some hunting strategy about which they just will not gobble. I don't want him excited. Does everybody stay calm? And I just want you to casually come in as to not notify other hunters that you're down here, because the more he's going, you can almost just feel him. You can feel the people being like you're that. But it's fun. Man, it's a whole other challenge. It's a whole other challenge, and it's something that's like, yeah, I can see why people get for rustrated with it, but I also see why it must make some really really good hunters, some turkey masters. Everybody should come down here to check out these creeks too. Man, there pretty amazing just chomping around the hollers and and looking at these creeks. They just come bubbling out of the ground. I was really hoping that we'd have an opportunity to float. That's partly what this area is known for. Our rivers are just second to none, you know. And I'm a guy I lived in Montana and Colorado. And I'm telling you these ozark rivers, they're just all you know, gravel bottom, crystal clear. Their spring creeks. Dude, poland spring doesn't get water clear in that shop in the bottle at the store. Yeah, it's it's crisp, looks cloudy compared to the creeks around here. We've got incredible trout fishing, but the small mouth is what is so attractive. You know, there's great trout fishing out west, but our small mouth fishing here is just world class. That's in my mind, a small mouth this is we're gonna wrap her up. But I do want to acknowledge that saying something super truthful is uh, in my mind, is a small cooler in the trout? Go ahead, I agree, And we can float them and and and fish out of drift boat the same way you would fish for rainbows out west, and you're fishing them with you can fish them with spinning equipment, but I prefer to fly fish. And so it's like you're it's like your trout fishing on a crystal clear spring creek, but you're you're fly fishing for lunk or smallmouth, and they fight for trout fisherman, I'd be like, you know, it's almost like it's almost like your fishing Smalley's on a crystal clear ozark stream. But nothing, it's harder, Nothing fights harder than a small mouth. I agree. I think like that we used to say, like in Michigan, everybody's like like pound for pound, I would say with freshwater fish, it's hard to find a rival and pound for pound fighting ability. There's a small mouth bass, for sure, I think the I think they're I think they're at least seven times cooler than large mouth. And what would be what would take second place in fresh pound for pound, no doubt, think of the shape of that thing. Right. And it's tough fishing too because of how clear the water is. So you you do really good at do really good at dawn and dust. So when you're out fishing with some poppers or any kind of surface plug, throwing a mouse or anything for the small mouth at dusk and they just come up and destroy it on the surface. Man, it's exhilarating. I could picture that you'd have to use some some fine floral carbon line or something. Man, with all that light and all that clarity, certainly during the daytime. All right, thanks for listening. Oh you know what, I gotta work on. The guy emailed in and he says I have the worst way to end. It's the worst ending for a show he's ever heard. And he says, I need to work on a catchphrase. Oh like, who is that guy who would say like good night and good luck Walter Cronk hit, Yeah, something like that. I need to work on something like catch freeze, good hunting, you freeloaders, something along the line.

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