00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is the me Eater podcast coming at you, shirtless, severely, bug bitten, and in my case, underwear lessening past. You can't predict anything. Welcome to the summer, souls now in. In a lot of indigenous cultures, to night, you would have a ceremony in order to get the sun headed back in a southerly direction. And Kevin Murphy, since we're not gonna all get up and dance in the counter class direction around a large sun dial, Kevin Murphy is going to rip on his horn that he uses to alert squirrels to his presence. But this is gonna send the sun back south and we will be honoring some souls. Hold on, Kevin. Keego is just a little more background because Steve didn't do a Justine City that you just alert squirrels. Use the MICUs to Mike, use the mic Mike. Every hunt that I tried to do, even fishing, we go out, we always sound the horn, tell all the critters that were coming, and it's their chance to get away. If they don't and they get killed, get start falling. So here we go. So you guys maybe could leave if you want to take so. Well done, Let's hunt, Uh, it just lapps that three of us are from one state to the north, you guys in Michigan, and in Michigan we always um look down and laugh at you guys, But it's that. It's that for you might think, because um, you guys know the Toledo the Toledo Strip, right, So years ago we were trying to sort out who what state got what chunk of ground and we weren't quite sure how the landscape was laid out and where the lakes were. What's that I don't know, Jake gone now was gone? So years ago when we're trying to figure out like what state's got what chunk of ground, right, and we weren't clear on how the lakes were shaped out, Ohio on Michigan got in this big pissing match over this little teeny five mile wide strip the landing now includes Toledo. And it got so bad that we sent our military, like state militias to go up and it ready to square off over what became the Toledo Strip. And um, some people call the Bloodless War. But there was actually one guy whose first name was Too who stabbed another man with a pen knife and drew blood on him. So it was not a bloodless war between my home state and the people of Ohio. And then they brought someone too, They brought someone into arbitrate the whole thing. And the person looked and says, Okay, here's we're gonna do. We're gonna give Michigan the up it's up for peninsula, and we'll give Ohio this little strip of land. And everyone in Michigan was passed. They thought was a raw deal. But then all of a sudden they discovered all the copper and iron ore they came out of the up and we realized that the last laugh was on you guys. And then if you factor in how much fishing game I pulled out of the Upper Peninsula over the years, and back to that into all the iron ore that came out of that place, you see that we got a pretty sweet deal. But I do now. And then uh come up into Ohio or down into Ohio. And I was gonna tell about one time I came here. So how many you guys have heard of the Serpent Mound. Okay, so it's in people's Ohio and it's like, you know, some of the some of the Native American cultures around the turn of like the eight years. In the BC years, we're into this practice of building these large earthen effigy mountains in the shapes of animals. So there's turtles and bears and all manner of creatures. But the Serpent Mountains one of the biggest ones on where they built a coiled snake that's four hundred and fifty yards long. It's anywhere from a few feet high there's one ft high. People didn't even realize it was there until, you know, one day some guys started putting together that stretching out through the landscape was this giant snake and people's ohio. And it's got a coiled tail, and its mouth is a gap, and in its mouth is the thing that everybody tries to debate, like what is it? What is the thing that its mouth is wrapped around, Like what does it symbolize? And some people feel that maybe it's an egg, that the snake is swallowing an egg, And some people feel that maybe the snake is swallowing the sun and it has something to do with the solar phases. So I think that's like kind of a over here for today being the solstice. But one time I was I wanted to come up and see the Serpent Mount and from the direction I was coming from, I was coming up from West Virginia. I remember driving through West Virginia and saw my first ever road killed black bear. And I was with an old girlfriend of mine. We were driving in a van that I had traded my buddy Ronnie a husk Varna, chainsaw and two bucks for and you'd expect the van like that just the home, right, but we met my girlfriend passed, you know, come out of West Virginia and passed into Ohio, and a guy is coming up along me and he's like trying to like gesture that something's wrong with my vehicle and rolls the window down and yells to me that I have a tail light out, so or a blinker out, and it's a tail laid out. And we get to the first exit. Right when you leave West Virginia you enter Ohio. We get to the first exit and I pull off and go in there, and I go into a part store and I buy a bulb, and I need a torks bit and I try to going to borrow a torqus bit, and he's reluctant to lend me one. Eventually, lends me a Torqus bit and I come outside and I'm working on the tailight, and next to me is a car wash and there's some people back in the car. There's some kids vacuum in their car, and they have loud music that's profanity laced. You know, you're like a certain age and to use profani lace, but it's profani laced music. And there's another guy with the young kid, and the guy that takes offense to the music and starts urging them to turn down the profanity lace music. And he's using profanity to express how like displeased using the profanity lace music, and a kid from the car produces a pipe. So when Ohio kid produces a pipe as though he's going to confront the guy, and the guy calls his bluff and races all over towards him. The kid throws down the pipe and the guy disappears into the car, from which emanates the loud profani lace music. And I'm thinking that's never gonna work out, because it's always hard to figure out other people's stereo, you know. So when you get to a hotel and you pick up the remote and you're like, dude, I'm never gonna figure this out. But he's just like immediately back out of the car at the CD and throws the CD on the ground and stomps on the CD. And then the other side of me, they were having a cheerleader did a car wash fundraiser, and one of those guys most have called the police, because then all of sudden, here comes the car, pulls in with a siren, lights of flash, and we pull out and start driving down the road, and I'm headed to the Serpent Mount and I make the mistake of saying to my girlfriend, you know, I kind of see where that guy was coming from, and it just so happens that she was thinking what an asshole that guy was. We got into such a fight that we fought all the way through our time at the Serpent Mound. And every time I'm in Ohio, I cannot come here without thinking of the Serpent Mound and that fight. Um. Now, so from Michigan, and then we have Kevin Murphy from Kentucky, and I figured that we don't have anyone from Ohio. But if you average out Kevin and me, you have like an Ohio and you know, we are holding Ohio up. It would probably fall out somewhere your wedding for Kentucky. So don't, yeah, don't feel underrepresentat here by this like symbolic Ohio and that that that we think. And then Mark Kenyon from Wired Hunt podcast, Ryan Callahan from just generally being a well known guy, and also from First Light Apparel, and then of course, but really you're honestly tell us the Lavian eagle, sorry, the Lavian Eagle bear beater. Uh, Mark Kenyon? You Mark Kenyon likes to come down in hunt in Ohio all the time, but you just lost your Ohio hunting spot. Yeah, it's it's a tender wound still, so I'm not sure I'm ready to talk about it, but please, Yeah, it just happened this week I found out. Do you want to hear what happens? I want I want to hear like how you used to be a dude who comes down on hunts Ohio but now you're not anymore, because I think that that's like, that's you know, people, that's relevant to people. Right. I always knew I wanted to come on down to Ohio because us in Michigan we often talk about how the grass is probably greener south of us, and I wanted to come down, but I had friends who had said that they had hunted down here with Michigan license plates and said that they would have their windows smashed in their tires cut. So I had serious apprehension about it. But I don't like the Michigan wolverines, Eiland. I don't know what that is. So I did start coming down hunting here probably six seven years ago. It's been really good to me. Um. We had one small property sort in your Cincinnati, and the landowners were in their early nineties when we started hunting there. I can smell trouble already, man, when people get that old, like change is the ruin. Yeah, and it was. It was one of those deals where right from the get go we knew, Okay, the clock is taking. This isn't a long term thing, probably, but it was so good still We're like, well, let's just enjoy it while we got him. And it kept every year, We're like, ah, how so and so gonna be, you know, every year looking for it. And I don't want to sound like all I cared about was the hunting property. I love the hunting property, but we got to know the landowners to really nice people, really nice people, enjoy getting down there and chatting with him, and long story short, this year, finally the last last ball, I was down there and just noticed that things are going downhill. The landowner I went. We went down and I was heading in for a muzzle otter hunt. And I got there late for the afternot drove down from Michigan in a rush. I wanted to try to get up for the last couple of hours of daylight. And so already I'm looking at my clock. Oh gosh, I'm already running late. I pull in and I see the landover there, and he's outside of his house, and I always want to stop and say hi, though I'm like, okay, you know, I'll say hi and then let him know I'm sorry. I gotta kind of run. Let's catch up tomorrow or something. So I do that. I go say hi to him, and you know, he starts chatting, and I don't want to be rude. I hear him out, and then finally the conversation ends and okay, now now I get I'll have like one hour of hunting, It'll be okay. And as I'm walking away, I start hearing like cursing. Yeah, I'm like, oh, no, what happened. I turned around to look and you could see him like doing this thing and looking around, and I'm thinking to myself, and he's standing next to his car. I think he locked his keys in his car. Well, I thought he just realized you had Michigan plates me. No, so so he he had locked himself off of his vehicle and there was nobody else home. There's no one around. So I end up, you know, losing that whole hunt. Hung out with him for a couple of hours while a wait for someone. I called the tow truck and everything for him. And it was that kind of thing, that kind of a few instances like that where you just knew it was probably going to be a change is coming in. Yeah, a week ago, got a phone call that said we're not gonna have anymore. They're selling it and that the kids are taking it on and trying to get sold. So it was a great place, had a lot of fun, really enjoyed getting to know the folks are still alive. Um, they're they're going to be moving to nursing homes and and the death of an Ohio hunting spot. Come on, are you telling me that? Since I watched my keys in my car last week. Then um on the downhill slide that in several other factors. I think, let's say that you're heading that direction, you know, so I wanted to ask you Mark is. We had a guy right in proposing that you like to hunt for like you like to look around, as they to call it hunting, You like to look around out in the woods for deer handlers laying on the ground. Un a guy rode in to ask this question, to ask a question to say, like he feels that there should be a bag limit on shed antlers like that the real he's like, he's like, because we have this thing. We have this thing in wildlife management. We have a fair use thing right right, Like we spread out the resource. You know, you don't get the hog all the year. You don't get the hog all the ducks because things in place, so you're allowed some number and allow other people to have more. And he was proposing, like, what if we came up with this idea of having, uh, like a shed antler season. Now we already have seasons in some states. What if we had a thing where you were limited to how many you could have? How would you feel about it? As a shed antler hunter. Short answer, I don't like it. Longer answer is bag limits and stuff. I get what you're saying from a fair use perspective, but really the reason why we have those is to maintain sustainable populations of animals. So if I go in there and pick up a hundred sheds, that's not going to impact the long term sustainability of a dear population. So I don't see that as like a viable argument. Not much time in the woods might be stressed and out animals. So so you have a question here also as far as impact. How many dear antlers have you come across that have nine marks on them? A lot in certain places, depending on the time of the year, But ye a lot. That's not just for taste. They're not just trying that stuff out. That's calcium dance bone. So you're trying to tell me, I've been hearing a lot lately that what are we really what are we removing that raccoon populations and squirrel populations their nutritional the importance of shed alerson as that's I just don't see it. But I would say that I can understand the argument that there is stress put on deer herds or elk herds or mule deer herds or whatever of people going in there too early, especially in the Western States where snowpack and stuff like that does significantly impact dear. And so I understand why states like Utah and other Western states are putting in seasons, um, to make sure that we aren't overstressing the deer at that time of year when they are struggling the most, or maybe even in the very furthest northern states like northern Minnesota, northern Michigan, northern Wisconsin, parts where these deer have to find yarding areas, you know, where they can only survive in certain areas to get that kind of food and shelter. Yeah, that's an argument, um. But down here in Kentucky, Ohio, well sorry, yeah, he's got me Kentucky, Ohio, this whole region anywhere around here. I just don't think that the stress is that high that it is going to make a no salimpact. But but you could get me on the seasons. But I get a lot of emails people warned about that, and I want to side. I think there should be a bag limit, the size limit, size limit, and a slot limit. Yeah, no, I'm joking. I don't see it as a real honest to goodness problem. I just wanted to put it to an actual hunter hobbyist. And my best shed hunting year ever this year defined by quantity and quality, and I found my largest shed antlers ever here in Ohio on this property. Um, anybody has got a spot that you don't want to hunt, you want to the people to ask. Yeah, it's like, oh, you know, in the fact that you have a large property, no one's using mark. It's like, oh, guy talking to the wrong crew. Yeah, you need to go down to the rotary club or something. Check down there, Kevin, can you, um would you mind? Uh? Bigin some predictions this year on how what the squirrel season is gonna look like based on mass crop. Is it looking like a strong season in Kentucky. We had a good carryover from this winter. Uh, the squirrels went into We had a good, good squirrel crop coming into the season. We had limited mass. Uh. The squirrels pretty much ate everything into woods, everything they could get their hands on. The fatten up. They were mud ball fat and they had limited activity throughout the wintertime. Uh. Their activity pretty much from the UM thirty minutes at daylight thirty minutes at dark. Uh into the season, very very little movement towards the end of the season when the elm buds start coming out water maples. Squirrels would fit prolific during the day and you could go in and get harvest a limit of squirrels. We had a very unusual winner in Kentucky this year, probably like the worst in forty years. A lot of forty year old people who had never seen a winter that we had. But the ice froze about nine inches. I had to chop eyes for the horses. Uh. It kind of shut me down. I got acclimated to hunting and twenty and thirty degrees winter. When it got below zero and negative windshill, we just shut down. But eventually we got too hard to sitting in the house and we started getting out and we started killing rabbits that we didn't even attempt to kill any squirrels. Um. But I got to thinking back in the seventies and eighties, we hunted like that when it was that code. Um. So we had a late spring, it was snowing during Turkey season, had some late freezes, but due to this unusual winner, we had the oak trees did not bud out, and when we did have those late freezes, they did not freeze the buds on them, and we came through the wintertime with a good healthy oak population. I've looked at the fruit trees, the mulberries, pretty good crop uh uh, the treery trees at my house, the blueberries uh. And it did catch the plums. But from what I'm seeing, got three pretty good size uh, pecan trees in my yard, and the caspians on them, they're they're full. They got a lot of small bacons on them. So I'm predicting, uh, a good solid squirrel crop in the state of Kentucky in the western region where where I live, if these guys are lucky to drift into Ohio. Are you famili the are you familiar with the phenomenon phenomenon? What do you say? Phenomenon is plural? Right? No phenomenon either way. A weird thing happening. Where have you ever heard of a great The great people could say the great squirrel migration. It is not a migration, it's a dispersal, an emigration. But you've heard of this before because Ohio had won in eighteen eleven where there were there gets to be this thing where you developed overwhelming numbers of great squirrels. I don't know if it can happen anymore, because we've carved up the woods so bad. But you developed overwhelming numbers of squirrels, and then you have a mass crop failure and the squirrels disperse. I used to think that this was a lie when people talk about the great, the great squirrel migration. But in night they had they had another v great squirrel migration. And there was one in my own lifetime that happened in Have you ever experienced nineteen uh North Carolina, Tennessee had a mass figure. The squirrels migrated north through Tennessee through the south end of laying between lakes a hundred and seventy thousand acres they came across. I didn't hunt much then at all. My dad avide squirreld hunter. He'd take her squirrel dog over there. Of course, I was in school a lot, and he said the dog might tree one squirrel and then three or four come by on the ground, you know, the shoot them. I remember hundreds drowning in the lakes, the river banks full of dead squirrels. Yes, the crappie fisherman would be out there, uh fisher for Croppie Lake Barkley over a mile wide. Squirrels be coming by. They would just take a deep net dip them up. And so I have witnessed at I have witnessed some minor migrations. UM. Probably right around the late ninety drove from Paduca to Louisville. It's about a three and a half hour drive. There was one stretch of about a hundred miles between there that I counted over a hundred dead squirrels on a four lane highway. That's that's not normal, folks. I mean, you just don't see a squirrel ran over on a four lane And UM made a trip I was basically going to a ball game up in Cincinnati to take my kids, and made a trip like a week later, uh down to Nashville, and there was a stretch of four down through there that I counted fifty four squirrels dead on the highway. You know, I get kind of board sometimes driving down the highway, so you know, I'll start looking at animals and seeing what's going on and really not paying a lot of attention to what's in front of me or behind me. But yeah, when when someone wrote in to ask if the Great squirrel migrations were true, and I always thought they were not true, I started reading about it and read about a man that this article described at as a budding squirrel expert, which is not something you've seen throwing around very often, like he's not quite a squirrel expert, but is emerging as a squirrel expert. You know, I've done a little reading on this, and I forgot where the article was. But sometimes there was steel food in the area, but they didn't know if it's because they had so many squirrels and they had infestation of fleas and vermin in their nest, and so they left that area to get away from those. That's just one thing that I read. Of course, you know, we can read anything anytime we want to right now, but that was from some texts, and I don't remember exactly where that came from. I think we've all been doing a little reading on this, because it's kind of bounced around some emails, and I started looking into it. And back in the eight hundreds, like you mentioned, there were a number of these supposed events and John James Audubon, famous naturalist, had observed this what they thought were millions of squirrels over the course of weeks, and I believe it was crossing either the Ohio River the Mississippi River. And they saw this in the behavior was so bizarre, and they saw for so long that they proposed actually that this was a different species of squirrel entirely from the migratory So they started calling it the I like the securious migratory us or something like that is what they thought this thing was. And it even happened at the beginning of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Merriwether Lewis saw this happening acrossing the Ohio River when they're coming down heading towards Yeah, and I usually disregard old timey accounts of freakish stuff, because this had a weird way of explaining things. You know, or you or is like you can't you can't tell like that where the mythology ends, you know that like Simon Kenton, Um Simon Kenton, you know figures he saw around I think it was ten thousand buffalo around Nashville, right, you hear that, like it's just impossible to picture, right, But the sixty eight one is like the sixty eight Great squirrel migration is really well documented. Just you know, just the image of drowned squirrels. We once rescued one out of the yellow Stone. He was such a sad looking critter. You know another while I have you kept another squirrel question I wanted to ask you about. Do you remember if you oh please, yeah, go ahead. I'd like to know, just from a sound of whoops, how many squirrel hunters we have in the audience and relevant information? Then how many of you? How many of you witness a squirrel migration, a great the great squirrel migration? Nobody? How many of you have squirrel meet in your freezer? Right now? All right, real deal, Kevin, can you break down for me? Um, do you remember a few years ago it kind of became like a thing people talk about? Remember when like noodling became like bricard builder. I think started people like the media celebrating noodling for catfish, right, because something that had always been around, but all of a sudden entered the popular imagination and became like a thing, right, a thing beside, no, a thing that was known about outside of people who already naturally knew about it. Do you remember a few years agoing to be there begin this big conversation about eating squirrel brains very much leave that up for me. Mm hmm. Well it was do you eat squirrel brains? No? No, I do not. I do not do not. My background is in water wastewater. I ran the wastewater plants for twenty years. UH got interested in pathogens HIV, hepatitis, had thirty guys working for me. I would work out in the in the sewer system. Also. Uh, it was I wanted to know what's going on. That was when the AIDS epidemic was going around, and UH, I would read what I could. UM. And I was in a bookstore one day and there was a book called Deadly Faced and it was by Richard Rhodes and he's a man that wrote the Making of the Atomic Bomb. And of course the book was only five dollars. I skimmed through it real quick, since I'm gonna buy this baby. So I took it home and started reading it. And it was about a scientist that found the scrutch Field Jacob's disease or something like that, and the humans. Um. But he went down to New Guinea to study a tribe of people down there, and the children and the women were coming down with tremor disease and they would shake and die. The men did not have this disease. And he sat down and he was studying that tribe, trying to figure out, um, what was going on. And he read a lot of technical journals about human beings and people like sniffing gold dust and would go in deposit in certain locations in your brain. Um. He read one article where a scientist trained these tape worms round worms to run a maze. You know, we all think of something the maze being complicated, and I just kind of kind of said, well, it's probably just like a real simple maze, you know, from point A to point the to eat this food. But for some reason, I don't know what the scientists was doing. And he took those those worms that he trained to run the maze. He killed them, ground them up, fed them to worms that never ran the maze. The worms could run the maze. Yes, read the book and and and from that, the the scientists knew that the the the people from New Guinea, they had a practice where they practiced cannibalism. Not for uh, defensive measures are trying to kill the anymis whatever, but to celebrate life. They thought if they ate one of the elders that it passed on that they would live in their body and go on. The men got all the choice pieces of eight and you women got the organs, being the lesser desirable quantities of meat, such as the children. There. So they were eating the brain and the heart and in us. And so he figured out there that that that was the transfer of the brain matter after they would eat it go in and that's where the tremor disease, the mad cow, the human version of the cruach frail Jacob's disease was coming into their their um society. So he got them to stop, uh doing that part of it. I don't know exactly how that went. Has been a pretty good while since I read that book, um, but there was a number of articles and it seemed like it was like a year or two ago. Wasn't back and looked at some of those things, and it was a two or three families in Kentucky and I have eaten squirrel brains, But uh, it was just one of those things that after I read that, read that book and looked at a little research and there was nothing definite about that um happening, but they did see that's the common thread that those two or three families had that they did consume the same squirrel brains. So I don't need eat any type of of of of brain matter whatsoever. Um um. I was at a convention down in Houston, I guess it's about thousand and there was a young engineer from Britain there and it was a water wastewater thing. We went out to eat with a with a vendor ordered me a big steak and then he said, aren't you worried about b v I? And that is the human version of the mad cow disease, and started to talking to him about it, and and and in the book also, I don't because the same book or another book. Uh. It came into our system after War two and we started doing factory farm and we started uh feeding tankage to cattle. Tankage is dead animals that they would go around from farms and pick up you know, nothing but pretty much pure protein. So they would feed it to the cattle's over in in England and France. And that's when they started coming down got into their system over there, the cattle and they would call it the tractor disease. They were supposed to report it to the authorities, but when their cattle come down with it, they went and got a tractor, shot him in the head, drug them off, and buried them where they wouldn't have to kill their whole whole herd over there. Uh you see it in cattle sheep is called scrape ees in there. Uh hogs, I know it. I don't think it. It's gotta it's gotta have gestation period of several years out there caused from a preon. You can put something contaminated with preons in an autoclave and autoclave will not kill it. So a preon is very very hard to kill. But you know, do not eat any brain matter of That's all it took to turn you off on it. I have a question in here too, before we get off the squirrel subject. No, I was ready to move on from squirrels, but go ahead, Can I jump in? Um, you, Kevin Murphy, are not just squirrel shooter. You're not just trigger man. Right, You're a squirrel hunter, correct, So you observe squirrels more more carefully than any man you've ever met. And you just told us that you watched them throughout hunting season, You watched them throughout the winter. You see what happens in the spring? Correct? Correct? Is are you part lawyer or where is this lady in your observations? Yeah? Does intense squirrel activity in the fall relate to a heavy winter? Oh? You mean like in a predictive fashion, In a predictive fashion like a farmer's almanact Kevin Murphy's Farmer's Almanact by a squirrel bearing in mind, Kevin and I am looking to get off the squirrel subject. No, that's all I want to know. You know I can't get off the squirrel subject. I could have one last things like Montana. I'm sure that's an old man, old todder thing all over. Yeah, that they know it's coming, right, so's they're building that making cautiful to imagine, beautiful to imagine. Let me go back to that. It's not maybe not squirrel activity. But like like I said earlier, I looked at the squirrels that we were killing and uh, late November, early December, and they were mud ball fat. I mean mud ball fat. So I knew that's when you got to wipe your hands on your pants finished skin in the squirrel Y Where does this saying come from? What's saying? Mud ball? Yeah? Yeah, what does that mean? But I don't know why it means that. It sounds good? All right? They were large fat. How's that sound butter ball fat mud ball? But but I have noticed that that that when they when they come, you know, like said two kind of two things are going on there. There's not enough food to get them through the wintertime, so they're out there eating everything. And another observation that I made one year is that we had the locusts come out, and we had somewhat of a mass figure of that year us. They come out late August or whatever. But I never saw a squirrel eat a locust. But I know that that's what they were eating because they were as fat as I've ever seen any squirrel in my life. But they were consuming the locals. You know, a squirrel supposedly practices cannibalism, going to a nest and and and eat bird eggs, eat young birds. Uh, they're rodent, and we all know what rodents do they eat. Uh. So there's some observations I have made as far as squirrel activity bearing nuts and things of that nature. You know, I'm out killing stuff. I'm not waiting two days watching a help or whatever. So so that type of observation to see that it's what squirrels do over eight iurs that's not in my DNA. All right now officially moving on. Um someone wrote in and asked the question that I just don't understand. I know that we struggle with it, and he was saying, yeah, I has n has had a confusion around this. The other day on the phone, he was said, um, why do people say a half turkey breast? Meaning? Right, if I told you that I was out in the woods and I found half of a man's breast, right, what is the image you get in your mind? Not this right, but half? So why do people are like when you when you clean the turkey, okay, you you cut off. He's saying, when you clean a turkey, is it do both parts? Is that the breast are both parts? So a half breast is half of all? Or is a half breast when you cut in half? And I actually do not know the answer to this. Do you understand what I'm saying? I understand it's half of the entire breast. It was it wasn't asked my boy Tommy yet. He was saying he's having his daughter's graduation party at which he would like to cook turkeys, and I said, so take half of reast. He's like, you mean cut the thing in half. I'm like, no, you know, half a breast, like the chest. I don't know what I mean. Because then I realized I say it, but I don't know. I say both ways, that don't know what I mean. I mean. He's like, I think the turkey's breast is the whole damn deal cut directly down the sternum bisect the breast. A half breast would be one of those correct. Cutting half in a breast would be like what I imagine on a human being, not cutting half. No, Cal's calling the whole thing one breath. Yeah, when we're like the breast region both sides, Yes, the breast in its entire teeth, You're wrong. And when you say a half breast, no one says that, you'd say take out. Like I'm messed up. I said, I said take out. I did say half a breast, meaning yeah, you just got confused in the moment. Yeah, but no, because this guy is confused about it. So it's not like it's just me. He's confused about it. I'm moving on to something because anybody having to add about this. He's confusing me and it made me more confused. But way forward. Okay, I'm gonna hit you with another one. Um have you Uh A guy wants to know, and I don't have enough authority noess to ask. Do rattlesnakes killed dogs? Yeah? Right, yes, if they zap him on the throat or nose. You know, a big diamondbacks packs a punch in there, so I would think a big diamondback could could kill a dog. Now, copper head is our main poisons snake in Kentucky, third third most prevalent snake out there. I've had numerous dogs met by copper heads, And just like Steve said, um, if they yet bit in the throat that area, the snake bite is not What really kills them is the swelling from the snake bite. Uh. If they yet bit u um anywhere else, it swells up. I never take them to the to the bed on that part. We were hunting one year January O b l out on a point and it had been cold. He warmed up, got sunny and my one of my best squirrel dogs came in there after he treated squirrel and you got to look at it, and it's front left shoulder swelled up like a country ham. And the best thing that I could, uh do you like that again? That that's Steve's favorite meat, country ham. So if you guys want to send him a present, he really likes country ham. But uh, it swelled up, I mean like four times its size. But my experience with numerous dogs throughout my lifetime, the copper Head like said, unless it beat the bites a dog in the throat or whatever and it has some swelling, um, you're gonna be okay. I mean, you know, take your dog to the vent, let him look at it whatever. But like I said, my hunting dogs, I pretty much just let them, let them write it out, just like a beast thing or whatever. But my experience with with the rattlesnakes, I can't really answer that. You know, we've got some timber rattlers in our area, but I do know that that that they are pretty brutal. We've got cotton mouse also in there that have like a neuro toxin in there, so I think they have some some flesh degradation when I get beat that bite a dog, but the copper head being a poison steak, I'm not too concerned if I do have a dog bit by cop kise. I'm gonna tell this dude, just don't worry about it. Plays listening right now? Uh Mark? In our home state, right it's illegal to shoot a piebald or is it still illegal in Michigan to shooting a pie old or albino deer? I'm pretty sure not because it was when I was a boy. Because I don't know this because I know the actual regulation. But I remember a few years ago somebody and a kid in Michigan shot I believe it was a piebald and it went viral and there was all sorts of Facebook hate mail and stuff like that and death threats. I remember people writing, some blogger writer writing like in defense of the kid and stuff. So I'm don't I'm not a hundred percent, But that's because of what the question was that someone had is like why is it He's like, why is it unethical to shoot an albino or piebald deer? And it's like I didn't know that. It was like why does that make because because it's an oddity. Do you remove you You removed this freakish thing, and now you're a bad person. I don't know if that feedback is coming from hunters, but I think that maybe non hunters view it as something extra special character almost. You know, once you have this unique feature, then you can personalize that animal. Probably, Oh, this is that Bob the white deer that we say on the neighborhood or something like that, and then all of a sudden becomes something that emotions can get wrapped around. Yeah, he becomes like pedals the bear exactly from New Jersey exactly. But I mean, I don't I don't know many hunters who have a vehement position on it. I personally wouldn't go out of my way to target a pieball or albino deer, Like it wouldn't be a thing like, oh wow, I really want to go after that deer. Um you would, Well, I don't. I don't know. I don't know what I would do for for whatever reason, I don't really, I don't know. I feel like it would just I would be maybe maybe I even as I'm talking through this, I might be struck with the rarity of it and just be like, Wow, that is really cool. I don't want to see that end. That's yeah, I think more I say, I don't think I would. I don't think I was shooting. It was annoying to me when you couldn't because I remember thinking like, because pieball means just patches of albinism, right, like not patches, but patches of whiteness. So when it was illegal to shoot one because I think it came from a case, but there was one that was well known only because he was identifiable, so he didn't blend into the normal general dearness of deer and he was distinguishable. And so then when someone killed and people were pissed because they knew that one. But I remember thinking like, well, if what if it's patches only on the side that's facing away from you, we're fighting someone all of a sudden, like accidentally be a a internet priya. Yeah, if you were to have the audacity to put a picture of But if I was looking at one like to stand actually turned one had that characteristic, I would be like not drawn to the to the one with the recognizable characteristics, But I wouldn't like look down on someone who did want to take that deer that's their progative. I want to because I feel like you guys weren't getting me. I want to return to this turkey breast thing. But now I'm looking at the actually doing Okay, this guy is right in because him and his father are in a fight. They're in a fight because we are a disagreement on the subject. Because my belief that a turkey breast is a comprised of two parts that you cut out, and these two parts are each classified as one turn key breast each once, and you slice him in half, you have half a turkey breast. My dad, in the other hand, whole hardly disagrees with me. He said the turkey breast is one whole thing. So it is a real issue tearing a father and son apart. Here's how I think, Steve, I think that you can right here. How do you remove a turkey breast? Is it a one part procedure or do you take out two things? You can't. You can't take it out as one whole piece because they are two separate breasts. Moving on, big question from a dude named Matt. No, Matt wants to know this is it okay? This is a hot This is more hot. This is an actual problem. This isn't like how many breasts around turkey. This is an actual problem. Why is it okay? Why? Why does everyone say it's not okay but it actually seems to be okay that you could thaw me out and re freeze it. That's a big no no. But I don't understand the no no nos. Totally fine, Yes, this is a question that we get often. Do you find out what I'm saying no and why? It's just a thing like if you go and ask like an actual real chef who deals with actual real ingredients to tell you that it's a big no no because when when it freezes, well, you're gonna you're gonna tell me why. Yeah, I think there's a couple of reasons. Oh why did you just ask me? Well, just because I want to get the context what they're saying about it. But I would say it's probably not so much that the freezing and thawing that it's going through, although that might deteriorate the meat as well, but meat's probably spending more time in the food danger zone, and so you just inviting there's like more opportunity to have bacteria and stuff grow and probably gets sick from it because you probably just don't want to be letting that meat go back and forth through that you know space of you know temperatures. So I guess you did under controlled, real controlled circumstances and never let it get out of you know whatever. About forty degrees probably wouldn't be that big do I thought I had to do with water loss, which kind of doesn't make sense. Well, I think what it has to do with is water, but uh what I it's the water freezing breaking down the cell tissues. That's what I was gonna get into all that craft. Yeah, yeah, and then he could come up with like some mushy meat. Right, So they're doing a multiple times fracturing cell walls because you ever notice when you freeze something thought out, it's like where all that water come? Like? Right, you get that like that watery, bloody thing because all that water comes out of there. Had you never frozen, hadn't done that, I mean, you know the thing on top about right, like just pull out of rolls and thought on a plate, the water comes. But times like I'm digging through the freezer and my stummach gets bigger than my brain and I pull out more than I can possibly feed anybody that week, and I'm I gotta take off again. So I'm like, oh yeah, chuck her back and the freezing whatever, I don't get to, you know, And I've never had any ill effects. Yeah, That's why I feel like it's not a problem, because what we'll do oftentimes is, especially if you're traveling, is we'll hunt bone something out, put it in gallon size ziplock bags, freeze it. Then you come home and got a total mess on your hands. You thought the thing back out, sorted out, process of property, grind it if it's burger, trim it, parted out, refreeze it, and then people act like you've just committed like the cardinal sin of meat handle. Would it be fair to say that's not the ideal scenario, but it's not the end of the world. Probably, So I have an Internet Mario playing out there, refrigerator in the garage right now, okay, uh down Texas a couple of weeks ago, and of course, make I kill a deer the this access here with the pretty meat the last day that the very last morning over there, hundreds of five degrees, So get it into a walk in refrigerator. I break it down into general big pieces, uh for travel, and to let it cool out as much as possible. We hang out there as long as possible, let things cool down, stuff everything, and big gas cooler pile ice on top of it, drab four hours, puld things back out of the cooler, stepping into smaller coolers. Things are pretty darn chilled down now, and then you know, walk onto the plane and fly. They basically like an eight hour day back to my house. At that point, Um pulled the big pieces back out and put them on the racks and my refrigerators. And I've let him go a little over two weeks now, yes, because there was no opportunity for that muture rest now. Sun Sunday night, I took a loin and I never let loins the age like that because there's neat loss and it's not that big of a wine. But it had a really nice sharp away knife and basically like her Shuto size cuts off ed outside of that wine and it was fantastic. And I'm intending on processing all that meat when I get back uh the mystery smart I'll be processing eat tomorrow night there and feed off it now. But you know, now I have like big hams left and I'm not gonna be able to eat through that. Yeah's tell about the audit piece of meat weird, remember that? Yeah? Sorry, I was. I was also thinking about that someone else, everybuddy Mike Rule aged some is it words I was telling you about, Yeah, the same way that you did. I think he did eight weeks in a fridge. No fans just got it. Keeps it can't be sitting on it. Everything was like, we ate all dat meat that had hung for eighteen months in the clip and it was like hilly controlled, very temperature and humidity control, and it was like eating blue cheese. It tasted like cheese. It was good though. It was good, dude. The only negative about it, the only negative about it is so you got this thing. It's like this thick right after eighteen months, there's there's you know, it's like a tenderloin on the inside that you can all the rest is just dried out and all you have left is this little inside soft bit of like a block of blue cheese hiding inside that leg. Was it ultra rich like it was pungent rich. It was like if you told me it was meat flavored cheese. Like second guessing your next bite to where you're like, boy, that was really good, but I don't know if I could handle the Actually, I fully expected to get sick, not from the flavor, not from the flavor. I was like, there's no way. That just seemed like one of those things that laid and you're like, holy ship, Like what was I thinking? It just seemed like like you were entering Did you get that feeling like you were entering the territory of like your responsibility? Well, yeah, the outside was kind of like rainbow colored, wasn't it. I mean it was mostly white, but there's definitely patches of different colors of did you run out of Yeah, no, we were in a we were well fed inside a restaurant. And uh, but my old man would talk about when I was looking at my old man would talk about hanging deer, white tail deer. Until they had you would say a quarter inch of green mold was the indicator. They would use it. It It was now a time, the green quarter inch of green mold the mold you don't want black note black buzzy mold is bad. But he would say a quarter inch of green mold. These had white molebout him. Yeah, yeah, I wish he had pictures that we do. I think do we have pictures that Yeah? He snaps no white. I'm just saying with my old man said, and he's like, you know, gone now, and was had some questionable bits of information. I mean not you know, but that's something that he would talk about, is like you know, doing that hanging it that long. I will say this access here was actually it's one of the better deer running around up in the woods for sure. Yeah. In the desert, like the resting period was critical seeing that bad. I think there was no cheese. That's nice. What I might do now, since it's gonna break it down some more, that old tough cow I've been chewing on for the last five six months, I might just thaw her the whole thing out him freezing. No one's ead it again. Yeah, if that's a yeah, I'll report back. But I am into What I am into that that I don't hear people talk about is just like it is like what you're saying with just like standard fridge aging of game me and just like setting your fridge, you have to trim the outside away. But I think that people worry too much about aging stuff, Like what's I mean the worst case scenario, you get a team but sick. I was taking stuff overhead time. My buddies acted out and I went I got a brand ziplock bag and went out there to throw this one in a nip block fag and realized that it would just be I just beginning a zip block bag totally dirty for a reason, like it has such a grind all the meat that I could have thrown it got in my truck and driming it across town. Yeah, it becomes Durhamley. So that I mean think about I got another ethics one, A couple of ethics ones. Um A guy wrote in he has one time he he has one complaint about listening to the show, as he used to listen to it. Then he got his friends listening to the show, and now he can't talk about what he heard on the show as though it was something that he just natively knew, because they'll be like, dude, you didn't know that. I just heard that too. So he's bummed that he told him one because he just liked to act like he just news stuff that he had to find out about somehow, but he's talking about so he's hunting, right, and he's he's I don't know what stading. No, he's in Texas, lives in Texas, and he's hunting. And a dough and a yearling came up when I think he's not talking about a yearland because they're together. So people say yearling, but it's not really a yearling. If you're hunting in the fall, it's a Why do you People still still like always say that, right, it's like it's eight months old, that year born net spring, a deer of the year. So a doe and a yearling buck come into his feeder. He passes on the thing, passes on the dough because he would have felt guilty about orphaning a yearly. And he wants to know what are y'all's thought on this because his bodies ripped him a new one over saying doesn't matter. I think from a management standpoint, from a like a well being of the dear herd perspective, doesn't matter. From the well being of deer, I agree. Remember with that, read and heard and talked to biologists about it. Those deer of the year, those spawns at that by the time hunting season rolls around. They they are biologically capable of surviving in the Typically, from what I understand, they get picked up by the rest of the dope family group that they're hanging out with, or the nearest adjacent doe family group and they continue on just fine. So from a biological or management perspective, Yeah, I personally it's heart rending. I've I've like flip flopped on it lots, Like I've had days where I've been out there sitting and I want to kill a doe and I had a dough and bonds come out and I would just sit there and that do I want to do? I not, and I know I don't want to. And I've had other days where I, yeah, I gotta get that dough and and and put in my head. You would still have that sense of yeah, it's you know, you get into all like the ethics and morals and the the wise and house of what we do stuff, and that that's like murky, sticky, swampy territory. And I think all of us have a different process there. You shoot the faw the pawn has the least lightly who sure I need to maturity and producing more of you well, that's that. Let's think about our goals. In most of the Midwest and Ohio and Michigan, we we actually want to we actually want to lower your populations, so we have issues were actually the the smarter decision from a management perspective is to take that mature dough. It's more likely to have future fonds. And you know, because we've got too high of deer populations because you have you have states that are trying to bend over backwards to encourage people to take some step toward lowering dear numbers. Like in Wisconsin, there's areas you can't shoot a buck until you shoot a dough. You have to shoot a doll to get a buck tag. That's how serious they are about shooting does but still for me, like from the like so like the whole like just the Bambi angle on it. Um, Yeah, I would shoot the other one. You shoot the phone. Yeah, I don't know why. See, I would feel worse. I would feel worse about shooting the fond than the than the than the dope. There are management areas in but there's plenty did you you honey month where they actually have half loose seasons, so it's not a not an answerless it is a half season. Now ran to think this through. You have a calf that a mature animal is hearing for in addition to themselves when it was the hardest time of year. The mature animal can produce one or two more of those ideally, and that's breeding to you. So you I mean, it's absolutely no different than you know our uh every bolts n that cow that produces cab and be telling the gap and deep cap. Yeah, I never thought about that. People look down on a hunter for doing that. But when you go to restaurant too, that's all you're eating, and it's all you're eating. It is. It's one of those weird things. It's one of those weird things where it's like, on one hand, you want to be all you want to sit back and look at it all with sort of this perspective of like you know, herd management longevity management goals, but you're always through using these situations where you can't divorce yourself and just he's kind of like just basic, you know, he's kind of like basic native feelings of of of like kind of like misplaced empathy. I guess, you know, I remember being stuck in that situation all the time bo hunt, and yeah, I would never want to do that, be like, oh, it's horrible to do that, and and then like shoot little one, which is distasteful as well. But yeah, and the industrial egg situation, that's all it is. I would just say that I don't think personally that there's a right or wrong answer to that. I understand both sides of and I myself, like I just said, sometimes no, I don't want to shoot that deer, and sometimes I have, but I don't think it's misplaced empathy, and that I think it having some kind of sense of empathy around what we do as hunters. I'm not saying it doesn't mean we don't kill deer or elk or whatever, but at least having some sense of that, I think it's maybe a healthy thing to to temper what we're doing and to be least thoughtful about it. Um how that actually plays out in the field is gonna be different for everyone, but I would just say, like, I mean, I don't think it's a bad thing that we think about this stuff. It's an acknowledgement that you're you're engaged in something seriously, and it plays out like it's a light. You're dealing with like wives and death, most serious thing. This guy also says Tony Sassery is way better and old Bay honest. I just I hold to that that they're different. Okay, here completely anecdotal, speaking of the calf being picked up by the rest of the heard a hunter once that on open morning he killed the bigger of the two elk, and they were traveling together. The calf was left there alone. And that was like opening days. So we got it for five days, and I think I had two or three days to hunt, because this season was like nine days long. We got it for five. I could hunt the last four days of this season. I was hunting around, hunting around, couldn't find a cow, and I thought, I wonder about that cal. Sure enough, I went right back to where the hunter had shot from. I sat there, and before the sound of the first note of my cow call faded, I heard here she comes, just running over the hill, and I was like, oh, man, I kind of didn't hope for it to work so well. And then so she hadn't joined the herd. She was still like hanging out. Heard this story. It's so tasty, though, Thank you for sharing. I mean a cap like archery season, so much easier to pack out, so tasty. Yes, yeah, one trip. Ye, here's another one. The guys said, we were having a conversation on on on this year program. We're having a conversation one day where I was talking about some things that didn't like, some forms of hunting, some hunting practices that didn't interest me, okay, and I cited some examples, and we're actually having a conversation about we're having a conversation about where I was kind of like putting it to Mark Kennyan a little bit like and something like, why what is the difference between having a food plot and having bait out in the woods? Right? And some people say like it's the same exact thing, or some people say it's different, And and it brought up this conversation where um, I was saying that we used to hunt overbait all the time. Then it just became worths not interesting to me now and now I don't And he pointed out like that rees he's saying this letter, He's like, you don't read it this way, but what that reads as is it reads is you condemning and hunting practice that anyone looking in would say, like the by saying you wouldn't do it, you're condemning it. And I think that that's like kind of an interesting thing that needs to be proud of that a little bit, because I don't feel that I am right. I'm feeling that everyone looks and there's things that you're drawn to and things that you're not. And how could it be held up that if you're not drawn to something and don't want to do something, it doesn't interest you, that there's sort of this like this like implicit condemnation of the activity, which seems like a stretch, like it doesn't feel to me that's what I'm doing, And I think it like just opens up some level of sensitivity on people's behalf where they feel like you're saying that they like to do something, you don't like to do it, therefore you must be saying that they're wrong. If I choose not to play soccer, are you gonna think that that means I hate people to play soccer, that I'm condemning the sport. No, well, and not playing golf that's what I'm doing. But yeah, I agree with you. I think that there's there's nothing wrong with people having different takes on what appeals to us, or what lines we draw, or whatever it might be. And that's okay. I think it's a good thing that we all have our own different lines of what we feel is compelling, interesting, or even ethical. We all have a different take on some of those things. And yeah, because he's inviting to look at he's inviting one to look at it from the non hunting perspective, saying like from the non hunting perspective, people were looking to be like, see you see what I'm saying about those certain practices these people because you're signaling that that it's bad. And maybe his argument is that because because you have a platform, So maybe it's someone who who's like a leadership's position in some capacity within this community. By saying that you don't that signals to other people as someone that you know has a platform. But maybe that's the case. I can better understand that argument. But yeah, I agree. I got one for you. You um dudes want to know is it okay to hunt dear the two twenty three? Why is that for me? Because I think of you as like a like a guy that you're definitely kind of a bulletin. Did you guys, see my tattoo. Is that what it makes of the bullets? All of them? I'm joking, you don't. I forgot to mention. Not only is it the Solstice, but it's Yanni Day in Latvia, where I think like people named like the singer No, people named Janice, people named Janice celebrate today in Latvia because they're all everybody's celebrates. It's kind of it's it's weird, it's it's a summer solstice party and it just happens to be called Yanni, which is like the Yanni name Day, like everybody in all that means have a name day as well. It's kind of nice growing up because it was almost treated as like a second birthday. So you get you want to get quite as many presents, but you get a few. You'd have like a little celebration. Would it wouldn't know, joke be equivalent they're being to there being a Steve Day, Yeah, exactly, Dude's named Steve party that day. Yes, yeah, but for Yannie Day, it's in the summer souls this and yeah you go. But you have all kinds of traditions that you do, sing a lot, big bonfires, travel from house to house. Would you greet all the neighbors eat? This is gonna it's gonna get a good laugh. But you eat a bunch of Yanni cheese, um, which is like a it's kind of blamed as caraway seeds in it s tasty. There's pete agga usually like some of you have had, or maybe it's just Steve. Yeah. Um, what else do we do? Yeah? You do? Um? Just you know, like you were saying about the Native Americans, you know, doing things to sort of you know what. I would you say, they move this on somehow. Yeah, you're you're sending it back south. Yea good luck for the rest of the year. I think you had to get a partner and jump over the bonfire. That was like the highlight were when we were old enough to do when your parents like, oh you get to do it? This year is like, yes, we get to jump over bond fire. Um. You want to know more? Yeah, I know, I want you to jump real quick, because I thought the solstice was the day you guys throw a molten lead into a bucket of water and then read the future with it. Can you break that down? Winter Solstice? Yeah, winter break that you don't want to wait until the winter solstics for that. I want to talk about it right now. Yeah, very safe practice. I can't believe our parents were like, but yeah, we would uh buy a bunch of fishing weights and probably everybody got a bag or so. And you have an old pot that was used every year for this, and you would melt the lead, and you have a cold bucket of five gallon bucket of cold water and you would I think some years, I guess we had a ladle, but I remember usually just having a small pot and you would dump the pot quickly into the cold bucket of water and they would just turn into a form. Everybody would go around doing that, and you'd sit around and look at this thing. And then you would um find a take off a painting off the wall or something. Just have a plain hand, just doing it right now on that wall behind you go and you set up a candle and you just hold the lead, big green sculpture. I don't know what you call. You didn't sculpt it, really, but the form that you made and uh with the light from the uh candle moving a little bit, and then that odd shape everybody else sits around. It's in your group and looks that shadow and sort of projects your next year. I'd be like, Yanni is gonna get a big old buck, right if it throws a shadowy? Yeah, that's good stuff. Now back, you know, I've never ever done it, and I'm like, I've never owned a twenty three, so I really can't. Um. I've never killed that. You were the two forty three. I've seen it done, so I know you know, and it was a nice, quick, clean kill. But to two three, I'm sure with the right bullet and the right bullet placement, it could be done right bullet. Yeah, but those guys have killed charging grizzly bears with twenty two. But I don't think anyone proposes that. That's like a thing that makes sense. You So when people rely on the like I like when you hear that argument, well, my brother's cousin, that does make sense. But you know what I mean, Like, it's like it's thrown out there all the time. But this dude wants to know. I'm not a gun guy. But the reading I've done on it in the past is that yes, but it's you've gotta be mindful about your bullet choice and your distance, like it should be a close range thing only because, like I said, I'm not a gun guy, but I think the two three it's a velocity thing right to make that work to kill a larger game species, So you want to make sure you don't shoot so far that velocity drops off. And we've talked extensively. Uh, Janice and I both had poor guiding experiences when folks would show up with the seven mm meg and that was when that cartridge first came on the market and was very popular, and I trying to be a grown up and objective and looking back, it's not that that rifle isn't worth uh anything, but likely there was not the appropriate ammunition on the market at the time to make that a good killing rifle. Yeah, I believed at that is this dude, I wish I knew if he was If he was here, we'd know if he was happy with that or not. Yeah, I think you need to look at uh velocities, how much energy that projectile is taking to the animal at a given distance, so you know what is what math says is the correct amount of energy at what distance and have an appropriate projectile for hunting, not a target projectile that especially in a two case is the most prolific and the least expensive by fire. Yeah, I would recommend he go read what Chuck Hawks has to say about it. That is kind of the authority. But he's a reliable dude, Chuck Hawks and Chuck Hawks is a gunwriter who's kind of anti gun writer, which is helpful. This guy, this is a good one. I understand you used to live in grow up in Montana, where everyone knows that you skin an animal hanging it from its gambrels. I mean you hang it from its hawks upside down. In Wisconsin, everyone knows that you hang a deer by its neck. Why is this and who is right the neck guy? I think because what we used to do is we would take them and do all the skinning cuts hanging up by the neck, and then take a golf and skin the neck down a little ways, put a golf ball in there, wrap a rope around it with a slipknot, cook it to a four wheeler or a vehicle, and just drive away and that whole hide squirts right off slick. One cannot do that the other way around. So I think that's God's way of saying hanging from the neck. But it's like it's that like regional bias. He was wondering, how why the difference is? Anyone have anything to add about that. I would guess that if you actually took a census and drove around those two states, you'd probably see it's probably split down the middle. In Texas, you can probably go from one ranch they're all hanging by the neck, go the next ranswer hanging by the hawks. I don't know if that's necessary true, that it's one way in the north in a different way in the south. So he like hung out with two people hung out. One guy in Montana did it that way and one guy in Wisconsin did the other way. And he's like, that's just how they do it in these states. Few enough that I think it's a coincidence. Make it clean, get the meat cooled down fast. I don't care how you do it. Have you got a guy rode in from Ohio here, um, and he wanted to know, like, what is up? Why can we not have elk in Ohio? Of the people who were in from Ohio, how many of you guys would like to see Elk in Ohio? It's how many of you which would not all Ohioans are in. Yeah, it winds up being a kind of an interesting story because of course Elk here like everywhere, pretty much everywhere else Um at the time of European contact, you were in the heart of Elk country, right, Elk occupied almost the entirety of the Lower forty eight. There's like some debate about where the line was drawn around Maine, where the line was drawn, like whether they were down on the floor to anced or not. But they were just everywhere everywhere. You know, early English columnists plant many places of Spanish columns went, there was Elk. And I think we always point out is we've only recovered Elk on you know, ninety or so, like, you know, we've only I'm sorry, we haven't recovered Elk. And someone like n of the historic range Elk absent from most places that Elk belong. And someone was saying, like what's up, Like why not Ohio, Ohio did a feasibility study. Another interesting thing is that you guys with the musket gum river, how do you say it? Oh, because I'm from Moskegan, we don't spell it nearly like that. How do you guys say it moskeegum? You know what it means, okay, one dude, say it musk and gum. Can you guys hear what someone's saying? I got yeah, just get let him let it up. That's what it is. Okay, you know what that means? What he's right so many because you know, like in the old day's a very popular Oh yeah, he gets something for that. Like if you read accounts of if you read accounts of how hunters would hunt in Boone's time, like a very common way to hunt, like the early hide hunters. What how they would hunt was they would burned pine knots in the bottles of boats, and they would just hunt at night, like you know, booned, like boon hunting a lot with dogs, ran stuff with dogs. They hunted a lot at night, and they would go out at night and they would break up a platform in front of a canoe, and you burned pine knots on the platform and they would just drift rivers that night, shooting deer coming down and drink in the summertime. And they say that that river draws its name from elks. I presumably you would when you're drifting down instead of seeing the eyes shine on white tails that had its own particular dimensions in color. You would tend to see their the eyes shine elk your guys when I see you, guys, those of you are from Ohio. You guys conducted not longer. You conducted the feasibility study, and it was determined that habitat was pretty scarce in Ohio to have elk, but that there was a possibility that you could have or that you guys can support a population of around four hundred or less. Elk Um the last elk here, the last place elk were commonly seen. I don't know how to pronounce this either, ash Taboula ain't right? What is it? They used to be pretty common in that county uh As of eighteen thirty two, they were commonly seen around there. The last Ohio's last elk died in that county in eighty five. And they did a multi age and see thing to take a look what if we bring them back to Ohio. What's that gonna look like? Kind of scoured the state repeat feasible locations to pull this off. They looked in southeastern east central Ohio and they figured that it wound up being that you could support maybe about four which is a lot better in zero, but when they looked at it, there were too many They felt that the there were too many social obstacles to ELK reintroduction in Ohio, meaning that you just weren't gonna get people on board. We're gonna deal with agricultural loss and cars running the ELK. The Rocky Mountain ELK Foundation took a look at it too, but they I feel that the way the ELK Foundations looked at is like they feel that it has to be a hundred percent commitment because the ELK Foundation has been burned in places where they did a bunch of work to come in. They spent a bunch of time in New York working with the d e C to come in and play a full scale ELK restoration project, and in the end, the state it's like, you know what, never mind and win another direction. Um. They had the same thing into Virginia. For a while, Virginia fiercely opposed the idea of restoring ELK and for over a decade they thwarted ELK volunteers efforts to bring ELK back into the state. Then all of a sudden, New Jersey gets a new governor. The new governor appoints a new director and within two years Virginia had elk back on the ground. So even though it was thwarted here as being there's too many social obstacles to it, I do think that it's something that you guys should continue an idea that you guys should continue to dabble in because you look at that map of missing a species, like a valuable species with a lot of you know, a lot of social support and everywhere it's found, and you look and think that you guys could aim towards someday bringing that back here and filling that map and eliminate some of that of the ground that's absent this big, beautiful, gorgeous animal. I think that as a state, you guys should continue to kick that one around and keep pushing for it and try to overcome the social obstacles that would be in place to put elk on the ground in Ohio. So keep that in the back of her mind as you're drinking cold beers tonight. Um. One final thing I wanted to bring up here another letter from a person where a hunter's wife wrote in and she's trying to understand why does my old man like to hunt so much? M and She's saying that he one time was watching a buck and you like had to get it, and so he ignored all of his family issues to get this buck and he finally gets the bucking. She celebrates with them. She's all happy. It's like fatherly put this behind us. And they had a wedding reception they had to go to, and she's like, I guess now you're cleared up to go to this wedding reception. Well, my buddy has a tagged out yet. So she says, please correct me if I'm wrong. But is there ever a point where you have to just put hunting aside? Someone says, married to the wrong woman? Do you feel like you feel that you're honest that push and pull a little bit like like you know, if you were on the bars that night, you feel guilty. Yeah, But do you feel guilty for being out in the woods. No, I don't, um, but yeah, I don't. I don't get that from my old lady at all. But again, I could probably push it more though, But I feel like, I you know, I'm I'm conscious of how much time I spending the woods, how much time I spend at home making dinner, playing with the kids, the kids are now with me a lot in the woods. Um, I don't think I get that many. I mean I had an eighteen turkey hunting days this spring. I might have had two mornings that were by myself, so I had kids and friends and you know, family, my wife with me. Um, So yeah, I might only get ten days that are like that really to myself. If I get to hunt kind of hunt for work a lot too, so that makes it easier. Yeah, I toy with the guilt all the time. But that's why I keep feeling like the real solution to my problem will be when my kids are like you know, I have a three year old, right, they're hard to deal with that home. But when my kids are all of age, I feel like I look forward to the day of enjoying it without even the guilt, because once they're all with me, there's like nothing holding me back. It just be it'd be like guilt free, just utter blitz to be in. It's like everything I want all in one spot, my kids in the woods, you know, And I'm not that far away from that. And maybe you'll invite your wife along. Oh, she's welcome anytime. But that doesn't like bring like I think that she would be just like there or not, she would be just as fine with it, because like as a parent, you carry like one like if you're you know, as a parent, like I need you, you need to be with your kids all the time. But then you feel this like sort of like native pole to being outside. And I think that part of the guilt that comes from not being with your kids all the time is that someone's with them, So you also feel like you're kind of like dumping someone with responsibility so you can go enjoy this thing that means a great deal to you. So I think that to alleviate the whole thing just makes sense. Like heavy kids out in the woods. When I was growing up, it would be it was a laughable idea that my old man would be out hunting your fishing and you weren't welcome to go along. Laughable. It was just taken as a matter of course that if he was going, you were welcome. But I don't think that everyone runs their program that way, you know. I think there is this sense of people that like you, like, do you want to leave that behind and go out and be out the woods without your kids because they're hard to be around. Sometimes it's like a struggle with little kids. So that's just like my answers to have them being that little period when they're big enough where you can move them around, but they're not so big that they that they hate you, you know. Yeah, like the whole piece and quiet and meditating in the woods, that that's gone for a while now, right. Yeah. My brother took his daughter out caribou hunting, and when he came home, I was like, how'd that go? Is that? What surprised me is that that knowing to whisper when animals are real close. Apparently it's not just like a thing that people naturally understand. He said, these carribould come up and they're walking by a real close and like and everything. He feels like, it's just like, you don't move, you don't make a sound, like everyone just knows this. And his daughter just turns to him and flat out, on a rarely conversational voice, wow, look at that, you know, And he's like, how could that? I just assume that was like native knowledge, you know, store it into you. Yeah, kel uh, I'm gonna just pass you by on this one mark every day is pure pawing off. One of the kids for some higher learning. You you official, I'd appreciate that you like, but you've spent time you've su fished with my kids. Oh yeah, it's hard. It it is very constant. The the I don't even know how to explain it. It's that it. Yeah, it's just very constant. There is no like drifting off. It's a lot of questions, which is great because you know, like they're paying attention and learning. But yeah, it's it's very full on. Uh real quick talk about your experience when we're diving for c cucumbers with my kid, because this is the good way of explaining, like what is the get the juggling you do with the kid, meaning that there's a problem but you can't admit to the problem. Yeah, so alright, So, uh skifft skill it's a sixteen ft skill. Your blue boat or red boat red sixteen blues eighteen Okay, so sixteen foot skiff. Um, Steve's child is in the front of the skiff. I am in the rear of the skiff. We start off just fine. Steve and his brother Matt are diving for c cucumbers. Um. I feel very comfortable in around the water and safety and all those things. But I have the variable of young James up there in the front of the boat, and when we started off, he's got his his fishing pole and he's casting around and he actually catches a rock fish. And the seas are pretty high, so I'm constantly, you know, trying to keep an eye on my guys in the water. I'm kind of being safety for those guys and keeping this you know, relatively small boat oriented into the waves so we don't take water into the very small boat. Um and it is it's slightly more than I bargained for because that watching the guys keeping the boat oriented, I'm not paying attention to James. All of a sudden, James is like and like, oh fish, no, it's the propeller. And then that breaks off, which was a bummer but not that big of a deal. But the problem was is that I couldn't like get his rod, tie on another lure and keep the boat oriented and like be safe where we were. And then James was like is this safe? Is this okay? Like yeah, everything's totally fine, and he's like, okay, great, tyler lure on. I'm like, well, I just hang on a second, because I can I'm like and he's like, well, if you can't tie luan, can I get a snack? And I'm like, yeah, get a snack. And he's like great, hand me the bag and the bag he's in the ballot boat. I'm in the back of the boat and bag is in the middle of the boat. And I'm like, well, uh man, I can't keep your snack right now. It's like, well is this safe? Can we be out here? I'm like, well, yeah, it's safe. We're fine. He's like, well, great, end me a snack, Like what ah. And that's kind of how the day went. And it was very and then we did take away over the side of the boat and Jimmy hot drenched and stuffs floating around, and and it was just constant like is this safe as this Okay? It was. It was a big day day for me. Uh and I want to get I think the market Mark and Kevin's perspective on this one kids or not two? Is there ever some reason you should put hunting aside? Because Mark, you're just entering into it and Kevin you've come out of it. So from the entering into it perspective, obligations balancing it all racked with guilt. Yeah, but you want to be on the woods, maybe you'll bring them. Am I gonna get in trouble because it's like real dangerous. Yes, all sources of these types of things have been running through my mind for sure. And I think that even just before we had kids, even with my wife, you know, at times I would struggle with some sense of am I am I neglecting? You know, my husbandly duties at home, helping out with things, being around, doing things like that, and I'm gone a lot hunting and traveling stuff. So so I think every person, every family has a different like tolerance level. My wife's very, very understanding, but even her, at some point in the year, she always kinds of reach she reaches some kind of like stress point. Usually it's like November sixteenth or seventeenth, have been gone three weeks straight hunting every day, fourteen hours a day or whatever it is, and finally said, okay, I need to know I have a husband again. So so there's always some point like that. So it's always in the back of my mind, like what am I doing? Okay balancing that? Am I not? But I definitely am not out there. I'm not thinking about it. It's it's it is something that's in the back of my mind and trying to find a way to, you know, fulfill all those obligations. With a kid, I do think that's going to be even more and I can already feel it. Like in the past, you know what I'm when I'm going out for a hunting trip, I'm usually just amped and of course I'm gonna miss my wife, but it's not like something that's like on the top of my mind. When I'm heading out the door, Um, I'm just excited for the trip and where we're headed. But now with like my little baby, you know, he's five months old, I'm heading out the door, I'm like, oh man, I'm gonna miss him. And I can imagine that come hunting season, when I'm gone for weeks on end and things like that, that that will be something that's gonna be I'm sure a new challenge. And as he's growing up, I imagine too, like when he gets to the age you can talk like I've heard friends say, like oh man, when they start like saying how much they miss you, or when are you coming home? Or why are you leaving again? Daddy, I imagine that's going to be kind of like a dagg out of the heart, and I'm gonna have, you know, some real figuring out to do, like how do I balance this? How do I do it in the right way? But that story that you just shared, Ryan, like, I cannot wait for that with my son, Like that sounds amazing to put him a tremendous risk. With great risk comes great rewards. Sometimes they don't. They don't recognize all the other cool, amazing stuff where I'm like, wow, look at the waves crashing on those rocks. Look at this, like I think the amazing stuff, And they're like, I need a snackig tight on like fronto. Man, Yeah, I can totally see that. I can also imagine, though, like going out into the woods with a child's eyes again, like and the things they might be interested, Like I head in the woods at all, I'm thinking about I need to get to the stand without getting winded by these deer. I need to be super quiet and blah blah blah. And I could just imagine taking my four year old, dollar my three year older whatever he is, and he's gonna see a butterfly flying, or he's gonna see a track or bunny and like he's gonna stop and say, Dad, look at that rabbit. In the past, I never would have paid attention or whatever it might be. And I am already looking forward to how cool those moments can be too. So those will be far between. Maybe you're gonna be a prodigy. You'll have a few of those every time you go out. But most of the time it's like mud rocks, mud rocks, mud rocks, rocks, rocks mud mud. I might be blindly optimistic right now, that's true. Uh. We when we last summer, took are all last I took all three of our kids up to our shack in Alaska, and we're having this conversation like I'm always like very leary about overpacking. I like when people overpack. My was said, well, they're gonna be all wet during get all wet, and I'm like, yeah, well, you know it's the lasting man. We just wear our clothes dry. She's like, what does that mean. I'm like, you're getting wet. You don't change all the time, you just wear until it gets dry. The minute we get there, the two year old wades out into the water and it's cold, you know, and he waves out in the water up to about his navel and comes out and she's like looking at me, like the whole way a dry think them, you know. But then we look and he'd also shot himself out there. It was like, dude, that trip just went down hill from there. Man, It's just like the things you hadn't accounted for yet. But I've had a lot of ways to know that. I like, I've had a lot of ways to know that I've married right, and over ten years, I know I've I've like married writer and writer and writer all the time. I remember when the first time I was leaving a long hunting trip when kid was an infant, and I remember being I was sitting in the bathtub taking the bath kids. So I'm sitting there in the bathroom with my boy James on my lap and I'm sobbing because I'm so sad about leaving them, like you're talk and my wife comes in and says, you better pull it together, and I was like, that's the response I wanted here. Man. It's just like you're gonna give the kid a complex, you know. It's go so okay, this father, this father thing is gonna like least be livable you know what I mean, Kevin, you got any final thoughts on the whole thing, Like you've got kids growing up, gone things you should have done different? Yes, because you know I was married for thirty years and it come to an end. Uh My wife said she never wanted to see another piece of camouflage clothing. Uh. If I died, it was gonna sell all my guns and by guitars for my boy and um, you know it ended there, you know, And a lot of it can be not the quantity of time, but the quality of time spent with your children. That's what they remember. You know. You don't have to be around a d cent of the time or nent of time, but but when you are there due to the job that you may have or whatever, those moments that that you are with your children, make sure it is a quality experience. And uh they grow up in a blink of an eye and they're gone, So so are you kids. Hard course grow hunters. We used to have a family tradition of the Murphy's going hunting every Thanksgiving. Uh My son he would go with us on that day and that's pretty much it. That was all he carried. Anything about going is like one day a year. Uh. It kind of hurt me uh for a long time, but I finally realized. And I looked at some of my other other friends and they would have two boys. One of them was adamant hunter, the other one was not h We had a professional coon hunt uh in the West Kentucky back in the spring. I went over with a friend of mine and said, let's go over. So they want me to to guide, and I took a professional photographer over with me and asked him to take some pictures. I said, I think I want to write a story about this, this coon hunt. And so when I went through the door, um, immediately I saw some of my friends and they came over and started talking to me, just chit chat. And he was able to go around the room and he took four or five pictures of people that were there. That Chris, it was a brand new experience to him. He had never seen anything like that in his life. And he and he come back to me, said, hey, I got some great pictures. I want you to come over here and interview these these people. So the first uh two that I interviewed where there was two two guys there. One was eighty three. The other one was seventy five, still out coon hunting, and I sat down and talked to him and asked him about their their first hunting trip that they could remember, how they were one of them was eight and twelve. Uh, one of them was eight, the other one was twelve. I asked him about, well, who took you hunting? There? Neither one of the father's hunting, So they had an uncle that took him hunting. I said, whether you've got any siblings that hunt whatever? He said, well, I've got four brothers and said I'm the only one that hunts out of that those four and the other one had like three brothers and he was the only one that that hunted out of that. So and he said, I've got I've got children. I've got one that's a hunter and the others are not. So you know, we we we don't all have that DNA makeup to go out and go hunting there, So you know, don't feel depressed or whatever. But but give them that opportunity to go hunt fish whatever. Now, my son, he's an avid fisherman. He does like the fish, so he will go fish and he loves the meat. Um, I had the opportunity to go catfishing and Sandusky Bay on Monday. Did you guys know that you're Sandusky Bay is super good for catfish? Yeah, I can tell everybody. Kevin threw back eight pounds of catfish. Now, we we threw back ninety three channel cats and I would estimate that was probably over six hundred pound. Is a rough fish. Uh, I told my son. I told my son about it, and he cried. I said, the son, he lives in Lexing. He's uh. I said, I've got some home in the freezer. He says, that's not fresh. He said, I wanted some fresh fis. I said, I'll pick you up. I'll fix you up. But it was outstanding catfishing that up there, the best rod and reel catfish trip I've ever been on in my entire life. So if you haven't had the opportunity to go up there and fish, go up there. We use shrimp and it was non stop for six hours. Largest catfish was fourteen and a half pound. I won the big mug coffee mug for the trip, and uh, the smallest one. We had like maybe four or five that you could have what we call fiddlers back home. Some people call him whole fries. I would say they probably averaged eight pounds apiece. But it was just an outstanding catfishing trip. All right, let's hear a real hile is here for Kevin Murphy, Mark Kenyon, Ryan Callahan, Jannest and tell us, Oh Jannest, can you uh, thank you everyone so much for coming out. We're gonna go up front and we'll we'll signce the sign stuff and do a bunch of pictures. Have a good old time, and remember I gave you like a little job you're gonna do, which is like talk about the I think they're all gone already. The commemorative turkey post. Oh oh really, now you're rocking turkey posts here, they're gone, they're all sold out. Thank you for buying those. And then you can also get yourself a genuine um get yourself a genuine Mediator podcast t shirt. Now we have our genuine bouch shirts. Everyone that looks at those shirts, it's like it can't be spelled that way. It has to be b l o u c h put. In fact, in real life Latvian it's flow blocks bloch, not blo b l a u k s with the upside down tent you know, the right side up tent, A little right side up tent on there, so check those out. We're gonna make our way out to the front again. Man, Thank you very much dedicating so much of your time. We've done the show. We've done the show for a long time. I love it. It would not be possible without you, guys. I love every one of you. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.