00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is Me eat podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten in my case underwear listening un podcast. You can't predict anything presented by on X. Hunt creators are the most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters. Download the Hunt app from the iTunes or Google play store. Nor where you stand with on X? All right, everybody? Uh, first thing, I was gonna start off talking about how disappointed I am at Chester's job, of the how bad of a job he did it hanging up some things he was supposed to hang up in the studio here. It's horrible. He doesn't hang him up like I do. No, like they're they're they go together, but they're cock eyed. And then and then he allowed. But what I'm gonna talk about instead? Yeah, I mean the fray. It's a pissport frame job. But it didn't improve any with the hanging got good thing. You were in in Mexico with us because someone else followed Chester's grocery list that he wrote up for us, and you wouldn't believe what was on it. More so, what was we had literally stacks towers of containers of doughnuts. There's never been a donut on a media shoot. Ever, I donuts, man, Um, what else was there? Seth that was really out of place? Oh? Soda pop, multiple cases of SODA's. I'm like coach right now. And then in Mexico, we'll sometimes get to thinking I might like a soda water, but then I drink half of it and I just feel like going to brushing my teeth. Yeah. Well, when you're down there, you get caught up in because it's like the special Mexican soda that you they were, Yeah, you do get caught up in that. Instead, we're gonna talk about part two, so like it doesn't really matter to you folks, but the more episode. We've got more episodes up on Netflix starting uh February seventeen. February seventeen, four days after I turned a whopping can you believe it? I can been alive that long? Yeah, and you're still tearing up the mountains. I'm like an inspiration for old people. Yeah, you're you're doing good. I think. Uh. Five new episodes up on Netflix starting February seventeenth, and good ones, man, you know throwaway episodes Good Ones coming up. Um. I'm pointing this out because I like this person's name Sondra. How do you if your name is Sandra? What is your name Sandra Sonja? Yeah, I would pronounce that Sonya. Oh, I'll still do it anyway. I was mostly interested in her name. Oh you know what, there's this artist. Check this out. There's this artist. She's not you. You wouldn't freaking believe here. You want to talk about someone who's good at making art. Well, my favorite you know, my favorite artist is Seth girlfriend. So don't don't be thinking that that's not the case. But this Seth Plugger. What's her instagram? Yea, because I don't listen, I'm gonna talk about another artist. But this isn't This is meant all a rising tide, Seth, A rising tide lifts all boats. Yeah, see what I'm saying. It's like it's I'm being metaphorical for sure. Okay now this okay? Plug her ka underscore Ray John's. Yeah, she's emerging as um emerging as the greatest wildlife artist of all time. Meanwhile, hot on her heels. There's an artist her on her Her instagram is Jamie Wild Art. Jamie Wild Art. She does these like things of dogs that look like it's like I can't even tell I'm not the kind of guy that measures art as being that it looks a lot like a photo, but like, I don't you know, but it's so weird, like look at this, that's that's a pencil drawing. It's like it's kind of like only when you leave it like unfinished, you realize what you're looking at. Anyways, she's offering to make me an art piece, and I've been telling her I want an art piece of wolves killing a buffalo, but I don't want I want it to be like actually with its guts hanging out, like like mortally wounded, but still on its feet, with one of them pulling at its intestines and stuff. And I said, I don't want to squash you creative, but that's what I'm picturing when I closed my eyes, and she's gonna try to work it up nice, I'll be sweet. Uh how did I get on there? Oh, sony, because Krane made those duck feet earrings with my little daughter wore around a little bit, and then our dog, your dog ate one of those. Like my pair of earrings is now earring, She say, more in line for like a guy with one earring. Did she swallow the metal too. We can't figure out she got it, and we can't find the metal and she, I don't know. I think an X ray maybe in order because she's fine, Okay, I mean it was like she's weird stuff. She had a game bag once. Yeah, but the what like, you know, the wires all hooked and were those from your speckle belly feet? No, um no, there there were. I think there. I couldn't. I separated my some of the speckled belly feet from the specs, and then there's a thing about not being able to transport that, so I left them there. But then I have also I also have frozen geese with the feet on, but I think if I defrost them and make earrings out of that, it's just not the same because it's like all wet and frozen and I don't know if it's going to dry out the same way. There's not that much water and those things. Anyways, you're golden. I'll make another pair. Sonia Sondio she makes Kyote bacculammear rings, which you're great, beautiful, But the weird part of the reason I bring it up is um so she makes like kyote packerbone earrings but she points out that her husband does not. She kind of like spells it like trump, like it's all upper case, does not like these. I was like, why you can't even come up with one reason that Her husband went like, well, does it feel like is he like jealous of the kyo? Like I don't understand, Like what is he like does he feel that it's like emblematic of him being emasculated? Like I don't understand, Like what's not to like about it? No? I just think that, Uh, the same people that probably just get a little squeamish when you're just talking about pecker bones might get a little squeamish and uncomfortable when their wife is has a peckerbone hanging off her ear. Yeah. I don't know. I'm always telling people they might need to get a new wife of this girl might need to get a new husband. When we're when we're coon hunting down in Arkansas, we should bring those pecker bones back for current so she can make some big earrings. Many I'll get my ears pierced if I had at of those. Yeah, oh man, that would be epic. I thinks Steve needs like a single piercing. Who's that dude? That used to do sixty minutes had that earringley Good job, dog, I forgot about you up there. That's dog during ladies. I'm just here for information. Uh, Clay Nucomb is going to be making a video for the meat eata dot com and how to make a raccoon vacuum makes it. He's gonna make a video about how to steal it from the radcousy, how to clean it. Maybe exactly at that point, you're just like a drill bit away from having earrings. So check that video out. I want to get into Clay's business and just make videos about stuff that's interesting to me. Um, you kind of do, but just like quicker turn, you know, a quick turn. Oh. We never talked about this last time, but we teed it up because I was talking about how I remember how like when uh who was it? John no? Oh? That like when Elvis died as Colin was supposy pack full of cheeseburgers, and um, we covered on this thing. We cat quite a few episodes ago. We covered about this thousand year old like a mummified a mummified carcass. There was a thousand years old from a man I can't remember wearing in the desert southwest, and he had had evidence of having um uh you know, a disorder that caused him to have this enlarged uh colon. And how I had two point five see what this guy had two point five pounds of what what? This guy doesn't realize. This guy is pointing out that that's not that bad. Two point five pounds a feaces and the colon is not bad. But this is a mummified colon, right, It's like it's just different. So it's not with them. I don't know what the hell it would weighed with all the moisture in it. Either way, what was interesting about this individuals They were doing some work on this and they realized that he'd probably died from this disorder he had, but in the final days or weeks of his life, he had been eating um grasshoppers with the legs and head removed. I believe so like the softer what's that part of a bug, the abdomen or the thorax off a grasshopper, like the soft part? Believe, yeah, I think the upper part. I'm developing that problem with Spencer that I used to have with Rick, Like I feel that they'll know something yeah, but they don't. There's just a lot on the line here. If I'm wrong, I wanted to say, but I was waiting for I don't think special will go the lengths of like to hide the Yeah, he just like, yeah, he starts just digging a hole. If he doesn't know, he like. He's good at he's good at making you feel like that he knows. In fact, he might not know. Uh. This guy bad mole from this two point five pound colon was telling us that at the Philadelphia Mutter Museum, I don't know what that is. I trusted it's real. They have on display a colon of a man who was born in the eight hundreds who at the time of death had a colon. It was forty pounds forty pound coal. That sounds painful. That killed him. That would be a fourth Now how much do I weigh? I can't do the math quick enough. That'd be like a lot. That'd be a huge colon for me. That's terrible. You wouldn't believe it if the picture wasn't there, Like no, but it looks like a dried out because there's nothing for scale. They should have put a burger next to it. If they had a cheeseburger next to it, because right now I feel like I could be looking at a scant yeah, or maybe like a like a one pound or even two pound ribby next to it. Yeah, well burgers like, but a burger is more kind of like a burgers. It's like a known size. Yeah, but we can put a river by by it. It's it's looking like a dry out nightcrawler. I think it looks like a coyote scat. But yeah, yeah, yeah, like a crawler that got you know, sometimes they'll get themselves caught up after a rainstorm. They come out and then it dries up. Well no, yeah, but you're right, like when you find them at your dry wherever. I'm talking at too about how now and then one will get out of the bedding and get up around the lip of the worm container and then he'll get in a tight spot get all dried out. Um. Another piece of interesting feedback, a law enforcement officer rode in. We're talking about stacking charges on people. So we're talking about that that In a recent episode, I was discussing how there's like, for instance, there's a there's a prohibition. You know, states all have prohibitions on bartering and trading um wildlife meaning is technically illegal for you to say to your body like, hey, uh, I just caught a bunch of walleye. If you want to bring me by a backstrap off your buck, I'll hit choose the walleife fleas Like you're technically breaking the law. You're you're like formally bartering. Now. Were you to say to your buddy, I love you so much, Um, here's some walleife flays and your buddy says, by god, I love you so much. Here's a backstrap. Everybody's cool, okay, but it's like a formal bartering. And I was talking about how this guy in Wyoming, uh, an attorney in Wyoming, he's done a lot of work for the Fishing Game Agency, had said, the only time we ever hit anybody with that in some other arcane or not arcane, some other little known laws is one where really stacking a bunch of stuff on someone like you got a real bad character and you want to make sure that something sticks on him. After plea bargaining and everything, you started adding on all these things that you'd otherwise never go and apply to anybody. And this guy writes in that he had this dude who became he had this meth head. Um, he said, a meth amphetamine addict. He says, what we refer to as a meth head who he even he even names the guy. Can we talk about this guy's name. I'll tell you what his initials are. I just noticed his initials are BS. Not making this up. BS became a a C unit specialist, became a specialist at stealing a C units. In one night, stole out of an apartment building. Help me out with this, Help me out out of an apartmability one night stole eight a C units. M Hm, they were working the case. But you gotta say what he was doing with until it makes sense, is that he was pulling the copper like it was just the way that he figured out how to make quick money was to pull an a C unit, pull the copper from it, and then sell it. You know at that, uh, I guess some kind of like a salvage yard of recycling center, and then go buy his drugs, which causes thousands of dollars in damage, and he yields about fifty dollars in copper. Each one yields fifty bucks in copper said talking about not and I don't want to name these guys I went to high school with. I knew some guys in high school. The hot wired a bulldozer. Went to a construction site, hot wired a bulldozer, use the bulldoz. These guys, these dudes could take I thought it was before. I think these guys could take like a like a piece of heavy equipment apart. And as they take it apart, they would just throw all the bolts. They could take your truck like apart, throw all the bolts into a five gallon bucket. I'm not talking about taking pictures of ship. Put all the bolts in a five gallon bucket, and then turn around and put that thing back together the way they found it. Mechanical geniuses. They hot wire a bulldozer, stole a giant coil of coated copper cable, got a big ripping fire going burned all the coating off. Like at a point you could just get a job. I mean, like the model of like work and risk and stuff involved this guy. Uh, how much did they make off of that? Do you know remember what they made off? And that was like their endgame. This copper, the copper is valuable. So they went through all this and then had to burn all the coating off and burned all the coating off in the fire and had like a big black blob or there. Sounds like they're just the kind of guys that didn't like having a boss. Then it sounds like there's a there's a dude that got I was telling you about. Dude, he got caught poaching elk up on my hunting camp in Pennsylvania. He shot that bullet, scored scored four sixty. That doesn't even make sense that a bull could score four sixty. Well it did, I believe you. Um, you showed me the article. He was just doing it to cut the antlers off and sell him. It's like, why don't you just get a job, because you don't get to you don't have a job shooting out When did this happen? But burning copper? Coding? Like if you put to me like, hey man, I got a job for you in which you'll go shoot four sixty bulls or you can go make a fire and burn copper. That's true, but I think he's still sitting in prison for it. Oh yeah, so this this officer starts working this case and he knows that when he gets this guy for stealing a C units, nothing's gonna happen to him. Keep reading this article, honestly, can help me out where I run into trouble. Well, he winds up doing. Tell everybody what he winds up doing. Yeah, what the guys in jail for. Yeah. He researches the e p A Clean Air Act and violations that he could get under it, and found out that, oh, let's see, this is which tall Kansas. Yeah, federal, he's charging with federal EPA violations. Um, now he's housing a really nice federal prison. I'm sorry, I'm sorry I missed the part of for what what the actual charge was too, But it's basically for releasing free on into the air. I'm looking at the article right now. Yep. Faces he went to jail for this. B S faces three counts of venting a class to substance and violation of federal law. Each count carries a potential sentence of five years, two or fifty and fine. And you get that it's sort of like when they cracked al Capone for tax evasion, rather than all the people that he had murdered and all the other things. It's like the one thing they could get him on. Yeah, and O J O J ended up going to jail for stealing his own T shirts, like for stealing his own memorabilia, not for killing his wife and a waiter with a knife. I think an interesting detail is that this guy, this detective is from the Gang and Felony Assault Unit investigations. So how he ended up prosecuting this guy for a violation of the Clean Air Act is it's pretty Uh, that's a guy who's doing overtime. You know. The article said they still have like long term impact as well, because this is a common method among meth heads to like turn a dime. So they said anytime anybody's doing this now they're going to get hit with the E p A Act. Oh so it was a common thing. It's you and a C unit, That's that's what it made it sound like. Well that that was a whole storyline. If anyone seemed the wire anyone on HBO, I'm sure it's not the copper tubing. Well, the drug addicts and the wire steel a bunch of copper from construction sites and stuff to get drug money. I think I get Yeah, one of my favorite short story Collections of all Time is Dennis Johnson's Jesus Son and In jesus Son. Yeah, it's name comes from the Velvet Underground. You know when I'm rushing on my run and I feel just like Jesus Son heroin um in it. These two guys go and going to a house that's been repossessed by the bank and spend their whole day busting the walls out to get all the copper wiring out of the house. At some point, one of the guys wonders to the other guy who owns the house, and the guy reveals that it's actually his house. And then that night they have they go to the bar and they talk about how the drinks take so much better after a good day at hard work than like their normal workless routine. Um, what do you think, Doug? We got? How should we lay this out? How itch are you? How itching? Nowre you to go? How itch nowre you to tear it up? Or should we go into this other thing we got to talk about? You talk about whatever you want. Man, I'm just here for the the duration, So whenever you want to come to me, oh, I'll be here, You'll be You'll be here waiting. Um, you owe me one and fifty dollars. Doug, Yeah, that's on the way. Doug and made a four years ago, four years ago or some amount of time for over four years ago that Doug felt that that Trump wouldn't finish his first term, and I was like, I think you will, and Doug out all. I had it around the Mueller probe. I got all excited around the Ukraine probe. I got all excited around the attempted coup. And then in the end, oh, at the last minute, when he got excited about I got so excited when he got that excited he um he. I said, if you're that excited, Doug, let's throw down more money dogs like I need odds. And then I was like, I'll give it you to one odds. So Doug puts another fifty in and then on the last like the day before the inauguration, Doug he had some other thing about well, you know, it's always like I don't know what kind of helicopter mechanics they got down there, but and dougs like, you know, and I said, Doug, I'll give you ten to one if you want to add more money to our bet. If you're if you're at the point where you're bank where it's gonna be a helicopter issue. So now Doug goes me hunt for the bucks, which I need to use. I need the money because I owe people money for the bet I lost about I was I made two beats a hundred bucks apiece that he'd do a second term. So I'm waiting on your money to then turn around and send that money plus fifty more dollars. So I'm still in the hole on this whole thing. But I didn't make a thousand. I am looking to make a thousand bucks off pebble mind. Anyway, we'll come back to you, Doug. Alright, Uh K, Spencer, get into this whole thing. This is some interesting stuff, man. This is the kind of story that starts making gravy. You know, it unmakes gravy. It's kind of it's kind of been that way. People were trying to have it make gravy, but then the gravy has rather than thickened, the gravy has thinned. Yeah. All uh on that point, like there can you keep it all in gravy terms? On that point. Before we started the conversation, there was a quote, um, from a reporter on this story that said, this is like a bad horror movie. It's missing a lot of plot points, basically implying that there's just not enough information yet right from investigators. So what we're gonna be talking about is a tragedy that happened on Monday on Real Foot Lake in northwest Tennessee. I gotta jump in, uh, Phil, you know real fote like, because we've discussed it on the show you a few times, and do you remember when you had to put in the audio of how on Real Foot Lake they have a calling strategy where you go I to call in Mallard's that lake. Is this lake? Okay, that's there, So we've covered is it. I'm guessing it's really popular then massively duck hunting. So just so fills up speed and film. Maybe you can put that that guy yelling back in again to remind people. M I I I, I'll interrupt the hundred more times, but now you're right. It's it's a historic duck hunting lake in the Mississippi Flyaway. Um. And when we're talking about the story, I think it's important to understand like a little bit about the lake. I'm gonna read the description from the Tennessee State Park website. Real Foot Lake State Park is located in northwest corner of Tennessee and is noted for its fishing, boating, and wildlife viewing. Theft thousand acre lake was created by a series of violent earthquakes in eighteen eleven and eighteen twelve that caused the Mississippi River to flow backwards for a short period of time, creating real Foot Lake. So essentially the new badge of earthquake. Yes, this is an enormous water body with the average depth of six foot and it's just a giant flooded forest with a lot of vegetation on the surface and submerge cypress stumps. That ye, earthquake right around the war was right around the ward. Did you take the challenge when I asked you to discuss the botanist Bradbury? I forgot about it almost immediately after we hung up the phone, So I did not take your challenge. There was a dude, There was an English botanist that had come to America to do a survey, a botany survey of the American West. He another thing he was interested in. You know, people don't know if people know this honey bees are not native here. And this guy was interested in um check has checked in. His name is Bradbury. William was interested in that the honey bees were always like ahead of civil ahead of civilization, that they that that honeybees colonized land ahead of Europeans. But he comes out to do this deal, to do this big uh gather up all this vegetation and he wants to publish on you know, vegetation of the American West, John Bradbury, John Bradbury. He's got like an assistant with him. At some point he wraps up his project and sends the assistant home with all these trunks full of all of his samples, and he's got a fig or two he wants to get taken care of, and gets way laid by the new managed earthquake when the river flows backwards. Gets delayed by that and over this like changes his route home and tries to go down through Louisiana. The War of eighteen twelve starts up, and the guys like he doesn't get back to it. He's like two years late getting back. Now, if you're like two days later, you get all stressed out. The guy that gets home two years late. His assistant meanwhile steals his ship and and and publishes the piece she thought he was dead. I don't know, we should get him on the podcast, look him up, get him on the podcast. But did you can get one of those those mediums, one of those people that communicate. Did he contest it? Like, was he able to get it back? Is under his name or yeah? Something like that one on? But that my uh, that's why I was asking Spencer to dig in, but he forgot about It's really you would just tell me that flat out that you just she also chose not out to the research. I'm not gonna be rick and try to get in a hole here. You manage an earthquake river the Wilco has a song or no what Wilco used to be before they're Wilco Uncle Tupelo. They had a song about that earthquake go on. So what I'm gonna tell you about this murder is just what has been said from the district attorney or what was said on the Back to the Lodge podcast. Now, the host of the Back to the Lodge podcast is a friend of the witness to the murders, So I would um lend some ability to what he had to say. He's he's a secondhand person and uh, I would say, one of the best sources within the first three days of this happening. Um, you're gonna ask me to clarify a lot of things or add more details and probably not gonna have them. Well, I would just like to UM, I'm actually gonna lean away from my microphone after I say this. I would like you to cover the ways in which people, um sought to assign a narrative to this that would uh support certain criticisms of hunting on this lake. Okay, leaning back, So Monday morning, Yeah, in the date just because this is now, it's like February fift but it happened with January. Oh, what we'll do man later, we'll uh, I leaned back forward. UM, you can just put your updates. We'll put like updates or something. Sure, we we've been updating the story on our website, so as like even more information becomes available, you'll find stuff there. Certainly the story of change. By the time this episode drops. This happened Monday morning, January. All that was really known was that a seven year old suspect was sought for killing a twenty six year old and a twenty five year old duck hunter. Early speculation on Facebook and forums was that there was a dispute. There were local reporters even reporting that there was a dispute. Some said it was over a blind. This lake is said to have six hundred duck hunting blinds, a mix of private and public. Some of them you can earn by like being in a draw system, um. Some of them are like staked out for the season from what I've understood some some people said it was a dispute over a blind. Other people said that it was an argument over sky busting or shooting at swinging birds. The blinds tend to get piled up on this lake in a way that if ducks are decoying to one blind, somebody in another blind could have the opportunity to shoot at those birds before they make it to the hunter that's actually calling them. So that was also in the early speculation Monday night that was sort of like the accepted story that this seventy year old man left his blind, came over to the blind of the year old and year old and shot him for sky busting birds or shooting at swinging ducks. To his decoys and this UM. It was like it had sort of become a story of the culture of Real foot Leg. When you saw this talked about on Facebook, people were like, why am I not surprised? Like, of course it was Real foot Leg. I knew right away when I heard this story there's gonna be a real foot Leg. There's so many problems there with bullying and intimidation UM and conflicts between non residents and residents and guides and d I y ar is um that this is just a product that has been boiling up for decades. So that was like the early story of what had happened. We've since learned that it seems as though that's not the reality of of what took place. So what I'll what I'll tell you now is like what we've learned, like I said, from the District Attorney and the podcast UM where the host had sort of second and information year old Zach Grooms, twenty year old Chance Black, and fifty eight year old Jeff Crabtree got to their duck mind about six am. On Real Foot Lake. At nine or ten am, a boat approaches the blind. The person in the boat is the suspect seventy year old David Vowel. He asked if he can join the three hunters and they said yes. Boal then loads his gun and shoots Grooms at point blank range in the chest. What has been said on the podcast is that Um, the other hunters thought that they just witnessed a tragic accident. They rush over to Grooms and as they're like trying to help Grooms, Vowel then shoots Black in the side, killing him as well. So the seven year old has now shot the twenty six year old and the year old within minutes of arriving at their blind asking me if he can hunt with them. So now we have the seventy year old left and the fifty eight year old Jeff Crabtree left. Crabtree wrestles the gun away from Vowel, strikes him with the butt of the gun, knocks Vowel into the lake, and throws the shotgun into the water. The water at their blind was about waist deep. Investigators later recovered the gun and said a third shell was in the gun, but it was jammed. Um. So some have suspected that Vowel was also going to try to shoot crab Tree. Now in Tennessee or it is probably a federal law. I guess right, you could have to have a UG and you're gone. You can only have three shells. So that was his third shell. Um. Nobody has officially said that, right, vow was going to shoot Crabtree, but that's some early speculation that this third shell was jammed in the recovered show, did he have a if you had a semi auto, it just would have cycled on its own. I don't know. No, not a lot of details right now on that palm. Yeah, So Vowel, the shooter has been knocked into the water. There's two men that are laying there with close range shots from a shotgun. Crabtree loads them into the boat and drives away from the scene. As he's driving away, he looks back and he sees Vowel getting out of the water and walking towards the bank of the lake. And that's the last time that Vowel is seen. So at this point you have Grooms and Black that are dead. Crab Tree is alive, and Vowel is missing and has been charged with two counts of murder. They have not yet found him. Why was it that? Why was it that? When you know, whenever something like this happens, Like you just get flooded with text messages and lengths and whatnot. Um, what was all the stuff that he's like on the bottom of the the suspect is like on the bottom of the lake somewhere, or you know that he's probably not alive. Like what is that coming from? The weather has been bad in that area, Um. Like I said earlier, Real Foot Lake is largely a submerged or a flooded forest. UM. So there's a lot of stuff below the surface that makes it dangerous for boating. The lake has rised um since Monday because of storms. There's been wind and rain. UM. And his his boat was found two dred yards away from the scene, but Vowel has not been found. So Vowel left the scene on foot and because of the rain, the cold temperatures, the rising water, they suspect that if he's still in the area, that he's not alive. And that is a quote that the d A had. He had said there's no good way out of there. This from the District Attorney. It's a huge wilderness area. We're convinced someone assisted him in leaving the area or he's still in the area. If he's still in the area, he's more than likely not alive now. Like I said, within the first twenty four hours, UM, most folks had assumed that this was an argument that happened over the blind or over swinging ducks or whatever. And the language that the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation of Investigators investigation had used was that Vowel um has not been caught and he is armed and dangerous, which sort of like fuel that UM this that this was like an argument that happened on the podcast. A friend of Crabtree said, there was no confrontation, there was no fighting over a duck, there was no fighting over a blind. What did take place was heartbreaking, and that is that a gentleman Vowel who was going through something very very difficult and challenging, was not able to process what they were going through and that resulted in the tragedy on Monday. Now, the district Attorney has also been quoted saying, one of the first things we look for is a motive. Here. We don't have a motive. We don't see a motive. Mental illness may prompt a shooting or a crime. Perhaps that's what we have here, or there may be some motive that we just don't understand. Those were quotes that came out um yesterday morning, but then last night, um sort of like the information that everyone was waiting for to be confirmed. The d A said in an interview that Vowel, the seven year old shooter, has early onset de matia. Mm hmm. I take it they've been probably interviewing family and friends of Vowel. Yes, yep, and and Val had no criminal record prior to this. UM. I had read a quote from a friend somewhere that it said something like he wouldn't go as far to say a cuss word. Um. Not not that that doesn't make somebody cable of murder, but it's sort of adds to the this being a mental illness thing and and fueled by the dementia. That the d A is now confirmed. So the d A has provided like a lot of information. One of the reporters working on this story said that he's the most transparent DA that you could possibly ask for, and has been really good about communicating with people. But the d A also said that it's his job to not cloud the judgment for a potential future jury, So with that, there's probably some information or details being withheld yet that that we don't know. Obviously, law enforcement has has more information at this point. Man, crazy heartbreaking. Yeah, from Spencer's crime desk. Yeah, So this is all the information we have right now. Um, We're gonna keep updating the media dot com as things become available. Who knows, by the end of the day, they could have a body, they could have him in jail. We could know more about his mental state now. And another important detail on this is a lot of people have asked why didn't crab Tree shoot Vowel. Um, there were plenty of guns around, he obviously had like that opportunity to do it. And Um. The host of the podcast who had talked to Crabtree again said that the gentleman that survived this didn't even have the heart to shoot the guy self defense. He even tried to help the third party that has wanted, which is Vowel. He even tried to get him to shore, which sort of further confirms that there was just some sort of some state of confusion by Vowel when this happened. You know. Uh. An interesting thing about how it was handled in the how it was handled in the media would be that because there was no there's no no actual connection to these problems that people talk about at Real foot Leg, these like overcrowding, competition, all the tension there. They would like the articles would be like, oh, there's double homicide at Real foot Lake and then didn't have this sort of tone where like, oh, you know, by the way, a lot of disputes on Real foot Leg about blinds and who historically had a blind and now that the public land hunters are there and they're hunting, just to know a little something to keep in mind. That was how it was presented. Yeah, making the connection, but but the glue isn't there. Hey, this is Spencer new Heart And since we recorded this podcast, there have been new developments on the Real foot Lake double homicide. On January, the Tennessee Bereau of Investigation announced that they recovered the body of David Vowel in Real Foot Lake. According to the Tennessee River Valley News, Vowels discovered by a hunting guide in an area locals referred to as Grassy Island, a spot not too far from where the incident took place. Although autopsy results won't be back for a few weeks. Nick Barriss of news Channel five heard from sources that Vowel died of an apparent drowning. High lake levels from heavy rain caused authorities to temporarily halt the search, and District attorney Tommy Thomas said the water temperature was thirty nine degrees. This is a developing case that we're gonna continue to update you on. Head over the meat eater dot com for more on this story. I gotta follow up for how excited are you to go uh fishing with me on Monday? And why is it that your wife will not go? Um? And I told you that we would wind her and dine her, and you still said she will not go. I'm excited to go. My wife just is not interested in in hunting and fishing in general. To take offense when I said we'd wine her and diner um, and I'm I'm cool with that. My wife has zero percent interests in participating in ice fishing. Ice fishing off to call her, talk to her about what it's like to be out in the cold and dark huh at night fishing and how she might enjoy it. And you didn't even want me to give her a ring? No, No, I am I'm real satisfying. What you don't understand here is it's very cold and dark. I'm real satisfied by her lack of interests in participating because I would rather be zero percent than like, dude. I am not saying to trust me, trust me. I am not saying that she ought to be should pretend to be. I just was looking for a little clarification. I have tons of friends where their spouses or boyfriends or girlfriends or fiance's have like that third year, that forty interest in participating in stuff, but then they get cold, they get tired, they don't want to wake up in time, and it just like makes the experience worse for everybody. My wife was that way at one point. If we've been together for over a decade at this point, that at zero percent. It's been that way for the last five years, and we're both very happy with that. Arrangements. Speaking rocks at risk of fostering of jealous fractious work environment here, I'll point out that my wife got a nice set of earrings from Spencer's wife out of rocks he picked. They picked so the Karan and so it did to the field A pair Doug get ear rings over there, buddy, I don't but I uh, I understand, um and and sympathize with Spencer might sympathize the wrong word. But my wife is not interested in hunting at all either. I mean, she's an artist. She's just like, this is what I do, that's what you do. And um, other than the eating of it, you know, it's it's really not a thing. It can be a little hard sometimes because the amount of time that I want to spend at it, and she's like, well, you're gonna go and do that. I'm gonna go and do something else. But um, I guess we get enough together in this time. So but Doug's wife will garden circles around you, that's for sure. Doug didn't get ear rings, but I did send him some other rocks the other day. Oh yeah, man, And and uh, garnering all kinds of favor with me, Spencer is and and almost to the point where I'm forgiving him for some of his transgressions about Wisconsin. But but yeah, and they're probably displayed. I guess. I actually I posted a picture about about him, a couple of garnets and some petrified wood, and um, it's really interesting going to your mailbox and actually I guess they came ups. But you pick up this thing and Tricia's like, what is in here? I said, what's a bagger rocks? She didn't believe me until I opened it up, but there it was banggar rocks. You guys going rock picking on not yeah, Doug, not rock dogs, Like did we talk about this before we did? Doug heard rock picking. He got excited cause he thought they were going out into fields picking rocks to make a farmer's life easier. And he's like, that's awful. Nice to them dogs Like Doug, you know, doesn't enjoy rock picking, but no recognize it as something it needs to happen, and there's there's a great value in it. And actually, uh, the flint rock that we haven't here in in the Driftless area um in particular in our township, my father always referred to as Westford diamonds. So so I'm looking forward to Spenser coming and picking some Westford diamonds someday. But rock hounding. You guys are going rock hounding on Monday before we fish. And then she's going on home. She's gonna go home, and I'm gonna get ice fishing and uh, like I said, are you guys going after bourbon again? Oh, we can't talk about that top secret. Sorry. Alright, SOE hit this deal. This has been sitting and this has been sitting in our art to do list for long ast time. Are you equipped? Because I'll see your name there. Um, there's this fella from Louisiana that rode in. Um. He's a archery hunter. Um he was. He had this, I would say, a hit list bucket. He had had his eye on for quite some time and had a bunch of trail camp pictures of it and tried killing it with no success. And then one day it showed up on his neighbor's trail camera with it's antler flopping to one side. Mm hmm um. His neighbor showed him the pictures and he he didn't think that it was the same buck that he was after until a couple of days later showed up on his trail camera and then he realized, you know, that's the same buck that he's been after, and it must have been hit by a car or something, and it broke a chunk of like, didn't break his antler off, it broke the skull below the pedicle. Um, so he had just had like a flopping nailer. And so the guy like it actually had like movement, like when it walked, it flopped. If you look at the pictures of yeah, if you look at i'm a saw, Yeah, it looks it's a nice buck. It's a damn nice buck. I'm sure, yeah, I'm I'm sure it would flop when he would walk. It looks flop. He's probably painful. So he Oh my god, can you imagine man, having your skull cracked? This happened, this very story happened to me in Yanny. But go on, Um, so he like he he made it like he he really wanted to kill this buck to just basically put it out of its misery. Um, which I don't know if the thing would live or not. Man, they can survive so much. I've seen elk man, I've seen l killed up from broken skulls. I killed a wild hog one time that had broken his lower jaw clean and it had fused back together. Really I shouldn't say clean. It was so broken and fused up and whatnot that I don't know why I said broke it clean, look like a broke like I mean like broke the jaw. Yeah, you know why, I think I thought it was broken broken clean, because it healed at an angle like a hockey stick. And I was like, there's no way that would have happened if it had been Yeah, yeah, makes sense. Um, why are you looking incredulous when I say that? I'm no, I'm not. I trust you. You were there for the pig. I don't remember. So he made a liar. So this this guy made it is like personal mission to try and kill this buck, put it out of its misery, try to get it because it's a huge buck. Well yeah, I'm sure that too, but since it's suffering, he like really wanted to get it now. Um, he says, fast forward several days, he got his opportunity, made a fifty yard shot and watched it expire. Um, so he has this nice buck with a floppy handler. He wanted to get it mounted. Um. So he got it mounted and he had When he had it mounted, he had it put back normal, like like you know, the buck was the whole time that he was getting pictures of it and had all this history with it. Stupid, stupid, stupid, And he wants our opinion on that because he's getting a lot of flak from He's getting a lot of flak from friends and colleagues and just he says, even random strangers just as a knock at the door, Like, Dad, someone's here. I don't know who it is. Um, yeah, apparently people are giving them ship that people are getting because he didn't mount the bucks. Here are you? I got the grocery store. Somebody's like the guy, I recognize you. Yeah. Um. So yeah, he's catching a lot of flak from for mounting this buck how it was before he broke his skull. He his argument is that he was putting it back into its state of glory. Listen, man, that was a huge mistake. I would put that buck mount out in the road in hopes that someone hits it and knocks it back to how it's supposed to be really yes, or I just hit it real hard with a bat. Why is that supposed to be that way again? Because listen, I've never got well, no I have. I've gotten some rugs and things. I've never gotten a shoulder mount of something made up but ever no, but okay, how about this, how about you get a buck. I've never got a shoulder mount what would it take for you to get shoulder mount well, when my I would like to get my eight fathers. He has a fawn, a dear fawn. He had a wild pigs, but that my brother took. He has a a little ship and buck mounted. He's got a bare shoulder mount mounted. He's got a pig shoulder mount mounted. I want all those mountains, but I don't want one. I don't like that. I think that I don't think they look cool. And you would never ever say you killed the state record white. I'd do what I would always do. I'd get the skull cleaned up and put it on my skull shelf. I just thought, like, I don't think they look cool personally, I don't think I don't want to like make it be back to how it looked. Well in this case, he should. I'm not like like like I'm comfortable with its deadness, right, I'm comfortable with his deadness. Do you know the painter um Tell's her name as painting skulls and bones and whatnot Southwest Santa Fe. You think she ran around painting uh dear looking all normal uh schools. So here's the thing. If I wasn't gona get one, And I said to the text and hers, oh yeah, if you don't mind, you just make them look a little bigger. Like the point is, it's how you got it. If you are going to do it, it's how it was when you got it. That's what you're memorializing. When you get a fish stuffed and they don't even use the fish. When you get a fish stuff, you don't change it to have it be like, you know, like, oh yeah, if you don't mind adding a few pounds on there, Like I feel like he must have been a lot bigger when he was spawning, when she was spawning last spring, So let's make her look fat. What was her glory? What would you do in this situation out of stuff that thing so fast, with that antler cocked over to the side. You know, you wouldn't have stuffed it. You would have just don't always do, and boiled the skull, and you would I like one would have like a four inch chunk of skull attached to it, and it would be quite Everybody would ask you have a story to tell a lot? Yeah, I know. In fact, I have a different way to look at it. We go ahead, Spencer in twenty I shot a buck in late December with my muzzleloader that dropped in his tracks. He didn't move an inch from where he was standing when my bullet hit him. What month December? He dropped to the ground, and when I got up to him, one antler had popped off, and he wasn't how you got him, Well, I don't know if he died before the antler popped off or not. There there was a tight window there where I can't assess what exactly happened. So what would you mount it with the antler back on him? Yes, because that's how it was when I shot at it. Oh, all right, so it was when I shot at him. Oh, also a remy one time he shot elk and the fell over nailer fell off because it slid down the mountain, busted at antler. We're with him for that one, I do remember. Yeah, I'd be like, in my mind, you can screw that back on because it wasn't. That's how you got him was with his antlers. Now, what if you shot a deer saying like October with your bow and he runs off. You made a bad shot in the guts, he runs off. You know that's reasonable. You never find him until until February you find him. But by this time squirrels have chewed up his antlers. They're now bleached white. He doesn't look like he was when you shot at him. Are you going to restore him? No? But you know what the you know how I said, I want to get my old man's buck. So my old man he this buck was like not a big buck, but it was big for at the time, because you don't see like you never saw bucks had lived past their first year. So what we thought was an enormous buck wasn't. It was just I can't remember it was. It's like a white tail. He got it stuffed. Here's the dirty secret. There was a dirty secret. He told anybody about it. So the old man is sitting there in what we call the pine plantation on the Zlot farm, and the old man sticks a deer right below him. Okay, so there's no exit. The arrows comes into like into his back and no exit. Wound right in the lungs. It runs into the corn and he's like dead deer. Okay. In our tracking of that, we could never find a drop of blood. Were now looking back on it, I think that we basically were like sitting like sitting on that deer, sitting around that deer. But we just in the corn somehow didn't find it, even though we like circle all around it because the farmer then went to harvest that corn field and found the deer. Uh, my old man questionable or not. My old man took the head off that deer, went out, got the head off that deer and got a cap from someone and stuff the deer. And that's your city. Is in my mom's living room at the minute. I'm sitting here talking to him. She puts a Christmas bowl around its neck at Christmas. It's sitting there right now. So he did reconstruct the buck. He didn't recover that buck. But we know that we should have ended like we just missed it in the corn. It doesn't make sense we missed it. I later went, I was with my brother. We later went and looked at that buck, the headless buck, and I looked at there. I can see a possums tail wiggling around in there, and there's a hole in about four inches across. And I put my hand here and hauled that possum out by the tail and took a photo of it. In that buck and like over time all the details went away and it became like the old man's buck was it? You know what I mean? But that like it became like, oh there was a dad's big buck. It's like kind of yeah, that's a whole another rabbit hole. I don't know, if we have time, I have a way to look at it. So he gets his buck mounted because he wants to remember it how it was before it got messed up. So you have a dog, right, and you spend lots of time with this dog, but for some reason the last month of its life it ends up getting sick and then dies. Do you want to remember that dog for the life you had with it before it got sick or the last month of its life when it was sick seth bringing the heat? I like it. Here's the deal man dog shaking his head on the big screen. So so the dog analogy is it doesn't work because this is the wild animal and uh, had that deer or not had its horn busted, that guy may not have gotten it. So that I agree with Steve on that, Yeah he shot him. Yeah, I mean if had had its wits about it, he may not have gotten it. I mean, the only it sounds like the reason he got it is because it didn't have its wits about it. Yeah. You know, I shot a one idea one time, and everybody thought that I got it because they had one eye. But I pointed out that it's good I was in my face, in my direction. Yeah. Um so my taxidermist or the guy who does taxidermy around here is a friend of mine. When people ask him to fix an antler, he won't do it. He's like that he's got that screw. He said, Now, I won't do it. That's not the way you killed the deer. And then, of course the other thing is when you do get a deer stuffed, the only part of it, I mean, it's it's hide, but the the is the skull cap. So the ones I kind of feel like you do, Steve, I'll probably never get another one another shoulder a mount because they just don't look like the deer that was killed. Yeah, but the standard, the standard looks awesome, man. Well yeah, but it doesn't look like a deer that was running around. But it's a great piece of taxing. It's just an average buck for around here. Um anyway, Uh but uh, but he was big. I mean, his face and everything was bigger. I mean, when they do those measurements and they cut stuff off every deer that I've seen stuffed and that I was able to compare it to in life, they just don't look they don't look as good, they don't look as big to me at least. Here's the one way. Think what you should have said, Seth, Well, you should have said this. If I was doing what you're doing, I would have done this. I would have said, let's say you're married and you love your spouse like and you're married fifty years, most beautiful um spouse you ever late eyes. I'm trying to make this so it's everybody can appreciate it. I'm just saying, spouse, most beautiful spouse you ever laid eyes on, loved her your whole life, him her, them, spouse, spouse and then they develop a heinous uh facial problem that kills him. Uh. They very much wanted to have an open casket. This is what you should say. They very much want to have it. Always had said when I die, I would like you to have an open casket funeral. Yeah, the mortician comes to you and says, Seth, how are we going to roll here. I could fix it right back to her glory, him to his glory, or I can leave it the way it is. That's what you should have said, yep, not making some dog and then you would say, then you would say fix it, implying that this deer had said that he would want to be mounted right, had said to his buddies, he said, listen, everyone knows sometimes you don't make it through the run. Should I fall? I was doing general? Should I fall during general firearm? Let it be known. I don't want them when I said this happened to me in Yanni. This is embarrassing for me. We're hunting deer one time and I see a buck coming and it's in the brush that deep I'll never come out before I go on, brushed very much obscured my vision. I see a deer coming that has such huge antlers that there's actually antlers coming out of its chin, like so much antler that there's antler blow. It's jaw. I believe, I said, here comes a buck of a lifetime. Yes, But it was in fact a forky that had got hit by a car and one of its antlers had become dislodged. Yeah, I just saw like times. Yeah, if there's a time by its chin, there must be ten. Imagine how many must be on top of its head. Hard to see in that rude But I'm telling you, oh, I don't have much to say about this. Uh this here talking point and story other than I feel like it's a little trivial and you know, we should all be so lucky that we can, you know, have fun talk about this. But like Bradley, I think you should do whatever you want to do with that damn button and all those people is tell him to f off. Don't worry about straight desk, right, I want to worry about the random strange. Uh. Yes, Spencer primed me up for this especial when I had a little chit chat the other day. W D. Yeah, I think a lot of people are Um. I heard from Karin. I heard from Krin that you wanted us to not beat this one to death. You didn't even need to hear from Karan because you were also on the email. What I said is that through data on our website, there's a bit of exhaustion from our readership about c w D. It's hard to get them interested. So I said, there's probably a little bit of the same sentiment among podcast listeners. That's what the email said. Well, I'm sure, like you're sure, uh not filling Dug's bucket. Du During, It's very very important that we do continue to talk about it, even if it has been beaten. But what Spencer prime me on that, I had no idea that was going on, which is the exciting part. Maybe you should say this to the end, Duck. But I heard that Spencer it was basically calling out Wisconsin deer hunters, and you were none too happy about what he had to say about you, guys. Oh, I'm I'm I'm I mean, if Spencer's got evidence that somehow the Wisconsin deer culture is all about trophies and entering him into a record book, great, But um on the previous podcast he talked about that within uh uh and was saying, well, Wisconsin calls itself the big buck capital of the world and or other people call it that, Field and Stream or whoever calls it that, and uh, you know, it's because we have more Boone and Crockett, Pope and Young Books bucks registered than any other state. And uh and he said, oh, it's because people in Wisconsin are braggadocious and they want to be in the record book. And I was like, well, I know, well right, and being from Wisconsin and being willing to take a look in the mirror, you know, Um, I thought, well, you know, Spencer has probably got some real good information on this. So I asked him about that, and he goes, oh, I never I've never hunted in Wisconsin. I only sent us spent an afternoon at a wedding in the state, So but what do you But I talked to the bride's uncle who's a deer hunter. So anyway, I just was like, well, I guess, um, I don't know how else you decide who you know, where the big buck capital is if it's not by the number of bucks and so you know, like that lion in Caddy Chick, how do you measure yourself against other golfers by height? Um? The same thing? How I mean, how do you how do you? How do you do that? And I mean it's it's there's a lot. I mean I love to have Spencer come out and and uh, you know, show him around and uh and I hope he does that and I can kind of show him why the driftless area is home to send so many big giant bucks. I I can see, do you, Doug? And I I will now refer to Wisconsin as the big Buck State. But I felt justified in our conversations because, um, after that podcast dropped, you were instagram messaging me, you were emailing me, telling me random strangers and uh, dog wanted that title, and UM, I felt as though it showed that there is that culture in that mindset there and taking pride in the record book sort of thing in Wisconsin. Okay, but that's not we're here to talk about. We leave it at that. A guy wrote in, uh, kind of laying in about kind of laying in about what hell is his name? Just give us first? I remember guy from southeast Minnesota. I don't remember his name practically, neighbors were Doug because Dugs from southwest Wisconsin. And that's an that's an important point where he is and where we are very similar in topography. You know, Dear heard all of that. So he he lays in, like, let me tell you about c w D. Yeah, And I knew in reading it. I was like, I just feel like a lot of this stuff he's telling me, he's not accurate. But I didn't have the time to get into it, but I felt it was like interesting enough that I wanted to. I was like, Doug, you'd take a look at the email. You read the email, and then Doug was supposed to explain what he's saying, because I feel like this is probably like a commonly held thing if you somehow don't know what we're talking about. We're talking about the deer and elk, the servid, the dear family version of like mad cow disease um which is spreading every year into more and more dear herds across the country. It's got people pretty worked up for two reasons. One because it could wind up potentially we don't know yet, being real problematic for dear populations. Um that they won't live long, you won't grow huge box anymore because they're all dying. Or that someone would want up getting sick for dear meat, which that from dear meat, which has not happened, but it definitely like keeps you up at night thinking about it. No one wants to be the first person. No evidence that has happened yet. Thousands, tens of thousands of people have eaten c w D infect the dear meat, but it's still like, I don't know, it just makes you nervous. So with that dog talk about with this guy take it. This is like Joe blow America out there saying like, here's why CWD is so full of ship and and and what does this sort of take on it? Uh. The first thing I want to respond to is I understand the fatigue. Believe me if I'd rather not UM talk about this either. But I can guarantee you one thing about chronic wasting disease. If you ignore it, it is not going to go away. UM, It's only gonna get worse. And we'll talk about that in a minute. So this guy had a few different comments. One of them was that there's no evidence that human humans have contract c w D from eating meat. Well, that's true. I don't think I've ever said anything else that there is no evidence at this point that it's that spread. So fair enough. But his reasoning was that's why they let you take the meat home, but they don't want you to take the spine and head home. And Uh. The problem with that thought process is that the reason for those UM transportation movement restrictions are to protect the herd, not to protect people. This is a wildlife agency is doing this, not a uh public health agency. The only thing that public health has ever said about it was we recommend you know, c C, C d C and World Health Organization. We recommend against UM and recommend you getting tested and you don't need it if it's positive. The carcass movement is all about protecting the herd in um where you're going to. So that's why they want to properly dispose of the head in the spine where of course the concentrated as well. They know you're gonna wind up dumping at that. You're gonna want taking those bones and it's not going into your freezer, right You're gonna you're gonna don't met the boat launch. So yeah, exactly popular if people are doing that kind of stuff, right um. His second comment was meat doesn't carry disease, and he said, see above, you know the thing about that, let you take the meat. So what this dude, just what this dude was responding to you on this is I was saying like that, I'm full of questions about c w D, Like I'm not. I'm not sitting around and act like I know something that I don't know anything that nobody, nobody else knows, right, I know what I read, um, and I read conflicting things, and I try to sort it out in my head. But I said, when I meet a guy who's like telling me, hey, it's no big deal, don't worry about it, I said, I would like to defeat. Make that guy a burger out of a bunch of c w D infected deer and put some brain and spinal column stuff in there and whatnot, and then if he eats the burger, then I believe that he doesn't think it's a big deal. If he questions eating the burger, then I know that he's like me, and he's a little worried about this whole thing. The guy that wrote in that I sent the dog pointed out, Um, that's why we don't eat the brain and we don't eat the spine because the meat is safe but isn't. Doesn't the ship like it's concentrated in the brain and spine, but it's found in the muscle. Right, That's exactly right. And so he's off on that. He's wrong on that, and there's a there's a study that shows that, and I guess, you know, logically, you can think about it too. Another PreO diseases me had cold is he BSc and people got that right. There was a jumped from cattle to um. They jumped from cattle to humans. UM, and that came from eating the meat. So it's in the meat and it's been proving this in the meat. So UM. I forwarded the study to to Korean and she can put that up or you know, I answered this guy directly if he wants. But there's you know, there's studies that shows exactly um, that that show exactly the opposite. And UM, the one that um that's still happening is the macaque monkeys. And everybody's gonna go, oh, the one that was disproven, well, it's it wasn't disproven. Actually two of the monkeys in Canada were fed only meat from c w D positive white tailed deer from Wisconsin. UM, that's an ongoing study hasn't been published yet. So UM, I would you know, I'm not a scientist, and I would suggest that you know, scientists talk about that more. And there have been some conflicting studies. So did the monkeys, like it was reported that they got the monkeys got c w D from beating dear meat, little chunks of deer steak. But in fact that's what they have. What happened, Yes, it is. There were five months that got it. Two of them had it injected into their brains, two of them were fed spinal common and or one of them was fed was injected in the spine and all that two of them were fed meat only. And who got what? Monkey got it? Those are the five that got it out of the all the monkeys and the monkey did get it meat and the meat. Yeah, I thought that was disgraduated. Yeah, no, and that I mean, the reason I'm hesitated, I hesitate to talk too much about it is because it's an ongoing study. They there's nothing that other than the Montana there was. It wasn't Montana. I'm sorry, I don't remember who that was. But there was a conflicting or another study said, wow, we did the same thing and no monkeys got it. So that's not that unusual, at least in my sort of logical way and in animal husbands way of thinking about it. You know, my cattle, cattle, animals all together. Not everybody gets the same disease, and you know, not everybody necessarily gets COVID. Not you don't no matter what that is, right, So but now you can look into that and um, that study is ongoing and that will that will come up. So that being said, it has not been proven to transfer to humans. UM my only comment about like, um clean, Seth, we're both talking about that, and I've been there with Clay. I mean, hell, the last time you hunt deer hunted out here, we didn't. Uh, I don't think we tested those No, no, we did. We did test them. And I waited to my results before I ate my dear, because I felt that if we ate the deer and then got the results, um my wife be like homett so you thought I saw it was like you saw that it was appropriate to send it for test, But then why do we like if if it if you cared enough to send it for testing, why do we not wait for the test results before we ate it? Like if it doesn't matter, why did you send it for testing? And I didn't feel like explaining all that, so I just waited. Yeah, No, and I think that I think that's a good policy. I respect anyone who is their their choice. Like Seth said he would, I'll eat that burger. Um, I will tell you this. I had a very different experience when I hadn't actually dealt with it, and Spencer has had that situation too. Like there it is. Um when I found out that I had a positive deer, it was very It was a very different mindset than talking about it in theory. Clay said that he hadn't had any deer tested yet, and they've been in an area and of course the same thing. I've been in a cw D area. It was quite a bit solved. But there's a chance that I've already that I've already eaten CWD positive. But why would you continue that when you have the opportunity to have it tested and at least make an informed decision. Part of this guy's point was I don't want to waste the deer. And my response to that is, you didn't waste it. You took that deer off the landscape, and you took that infectious animal who's spreading casting prions about and spreading it the other deer. You took it off the landscape. So you did a good thing there. And um uh, the other part is you saved that deer from a miserable death. I've been I've seen him now. I've seen not well, we've had pictures on the farm, but I haven't seen a live one that's on its way out on the farm. But I have seen him in other places. It's a miserable death. So you saved that animal from that. Um you know, you look at a picture. I don't want to go down the road of I mean, if if somebody wants to eat it, that is there, um uh their choice, and I respect that. I would say, though, let's not make that choice for other people. So if you're in hunting in a c w D area, get the deer tested. If you decide to eat it, go ahead and eat it yourself, but don't serve that unknowingly to someone else. And I had really questions um uh serving it to uh two kids too, So um that's that. Um what else did he have to say? Oh, dogship doesn't carry the disease. Well that's false also, and I uh said too, and I wanted to. I mean, I've got a mingus U Yanni's dog holds a special place in my heart because he's named for and everything. You know. Oh yeah, I've never met the dog, um, but yeah, because he's named for Charles Mingus anyway. Um, and why would you? I mean, it does happen. Right, there's two there's two studies, one of the coyote and and one of I think it was crows or something. And the point is is what goes in the front end comes out the back end later. We've all heard that before, right. So if you don't have c W D like around your place, and I've been over to Yanni's place, Um, and you feed that dog CW depositive meat and now it's going out and taking a crap and unless you're going out and picking it all up, and they never do. They never get all. The smart guy teaches his dog to go out far enough. But um and uh. And so now you have it there. Yes, it's in very low concentrate sations is going through the meat and all of that sort of thing. But because it is an exponentially growing disease, that's exactly the kind of thing where you can have some control of your environment. And why wouldn't you. Um, So I applaud Jani for that NFL it was just wrong when when it came to that as well. Um. Then he talked about, um, the low prevalence in Minnesota and why are we spending all this time and effort on it um and money. And the short answer on that is perhaps the reason you have a slow or low prevalence and a slow spread is because these management uh these management policies have been in place. In fact, I would submit that's exactly why they have a low prevalence, because Minnesota's got a pretty damn good c w D response plan. And if you want to see something in comparison um, one of the other things I sent Karin and I'll post it on my social media later too, is a time lapse of the change in spreading prevalence in Wisconsin over the last twenty years. And there are I have some markers that's not necessarily on that, but I'll write it into it. Of where we gave up Wisconsin's program didn't when they say, well they didn't see it didn't work in Wisconsin is because we stopped and all we're doing is putting you know, carcasses and a dumpster and we're not really even trying to control population or control disease or anything. We failed. I mean, I would say that you want to learn about uh c w D and what not to do, take a look at Wisconsin, Southeast southeast Minnesota has got the opportunity to control it. What I'm what I'm fighting for in my area is to have a healthy deer and have a healthy deer management. We're a positive of deer tested in this county now. Uh, we have their thirty thou deer in the county. UM you know about about got tested of the sixty five hundred that UM we're killed this past season, and those were positive by my by my place, I'm on the northern edge of all of this, we're down at like four or five percent. I get one a year or two a year, UM. And I you know, I don't want to give too much credence to what we're trying, what I'm doing, but we're killing a whole lot of deer and they keep making them, right, I mean, dear, keep making them um there and so ah, I would submit that the control measures in Minnesota has been doing is what's exactly exactly what is controlling UM the disease they're not And and I can see he's got that exponential growth. He did a nice job on the math UM and so take a look at that UM. But it's an exponentially growing disease both within the animal and on the landscape. And um, I know, folks are I'm sorry, folks, you know that you're tired of hearing about it. But if you don't have it, you don't want it. And if you do have it, you want as little of it as pot possible. I have that little, as little as possible. And so Spence Spencer new heart. He kissed my ass man. Care what he says. Listen. My take on CV, my take on c w D is is what I learned from Doug durn Articulated by Doug durn is, pay for science and time pay for science by yeah, sorry, I was gonna do it the other way around. I was gonna pay for science. Bye time, bye time, pay for science. I think that there's this thing that in the c w D to deny your community. It's like it's wishful I feel like it's like wishful thinking on their part or they're ahead of themselves to be like it doesn't matter. Look, the other direction doesn't matter. Nothing to see here. I'm like, I don't know, Like I really don't know. But if there's the potential for a problem, and if it's a disease, that's spreading around. And if you love deer, and you love deer hunting, and you love eating deer, why would you not want as much information as you can get your hands on. It would be wonderful if in five years, ten years, someone is able to say, oh, look, weirdly, it winds up for all these reasons that seemed perfectly plausible, it winds up not having population level impacts, Like something happens within the herd dynamic and we don't see catastrophic collapse of deer herds and turns out, um, this this preon is somehow magically shaped where unlike similar diseases that afflict cheap and unlike similar diseases that afflict cattle, um, we know for a fact now that it can't touch humans. I would be like awesome, because that's what I wanted to hear all along. I'm not like rooting, I'm not like cheering on c w D. I hope it's bad. I hope it kills people. It's like, that's not what I hope. I just want to find out, man, I don't want to like look the other direction, which is what which is what seems to be what they want you to what what the deniers want you to do is like not even look. Okay, right, well you're bad for looking. Actually. Um. In defense of my friend from southeast Minnesota, he's like, you know, I'm not a denier. I know it's a problem, but it was a sort of relative um was his point. And and and I think that what I see and feel and and hear from people is that the denier the deny rs are few and far between. Now it's now a question of well, how bad is it or how bad can it be? And um, I kind of my friend Mitch Baker has said a few times that I'd rather we did as much as we couldn't find out we did more than we had to, then find out we didn't do enough and have a disaster on our hands. And again, if you look at that, um, And I'll just give you some anecdotes. Um, a friend of mine who's got a property about four miles south of ours killed, they killed a nuven buck on his place. It tested positive. If he wouldn't have killed that buck, it's never gonna be a big giant buck. It would have been dead at two and a half years. Right. His neighbor had four out of five bucks test positive. I routinely get messages from people who are saying six out of eight. UM. The hot zone south of US, about twenty five miles is over fifty in bucks, over thirty in does and rising. Um. We still have plenty of deer because we I mean you guys have been here. We grow deer like crazy. You know, one point four one point five does fawns per dough. We can keep producing. We have sixty deer per square a mile. UM, So we're not gonna run out of deer. We're just gonna have more and more of them. And we already have that that are diseased. UM. And I think I sent you another note from one of the members of our sea deck. He killed three deer in his yard this past year. That we're just standing there and that we're emaciated and went through all that is a horrific disease. UM. You know, animal rights people should be concerned about it. UM. Using my example of the of the number buck getting it, and he's never going to be a big giant buck. If you want big giant bucks. We need to control this disease. If I can keep disease in my area at five to even ten percent at this point, I'll consider that a victory. Um. And you might find this an interesting detail because you know, you guys know the farm up there on the big Ridge where you killed that giant turkey at that time, with with dirt myth down there and bottom, all five of our positives have come in a kind of a line right there in that little bit of acreage because dirt myth have been down there could but there happens to be a big population of dear you know that that kind of stay up on near there, and that's sort of on the fringe of it. So you know, the scientists that I've talked to about it have said, well, you know, don't read too much into that, but anecdotally it's it's really, uh, a little unsettling and kind of internet thing, you know. But that said, Um, we had, you know, it was a little weird deer hunting this year because of covid um and um, but my brother and his nephew came hunting for the first time in a couple of years, which was great. Um. We just did things a little bit differently in terms of gathering in the house and you know, and all of those sort of things. Um, and uh, you know we killed um like I said, uh, sixty three sixty maybe a sixty six hundred deer in the county. It was we're backed up like this year. Um, even with that positivity rate, you know that deer hunting in Wisconsin has a good future. We just need to do more, you know, we need to continue to do more about this. And I'm inviting as we're sitting here, I mean inviting Spencer to come out and learn all about it. We got a letter. We got a letter one time complaining about Doug. It was some dude and Doug's area complaining about Doug bringing down all the property values by talking about c w D too much. The powerful casing over your real estate lobby was like land ever since Doug buys it up? Man, Yeah, thanks, thanks a lot for the report, Doug. You'll be a hundred fifty bucks. It's in the mail, I mean truly is in the mail. And then you set cash. Is that correct? Oh yeah, yeah I did send cash. So, oh you have somebody out there written around in your mail. But I'm a little bit afraid of man. Yeah, he's gonna be like, yeah, I gotta run. You're white and i'd be there in the next day or so. Yeah, I'll just tell Katie that Doug during sent me a letter for some reason Steve's house. Don't open it, thank you, dog. It's interesting to me how we treat uh, we talked about CWD and treat it as I think as a society and look at very similar to how we look at climate change. You have that same sort of like deny or people that are like don't even look, yeah, don't even look, you know. But and I'm in the same way you described as kind of where I've settled on climate change. I don't know, but like I'd rather do too much and find out we did too much than you know eighty years down the line. Go oh remember all that not looking? Oh yeah, you you're you get criticized if a biologist talks about changing animal patterns, uh, which you know you can demonstrate with great clarity and precision. It's like bad that they brought it up. I think you're criticized for bringing it up. Your favorite like a favorite talking point amongst CWD deniers is like Wisconsin's management of it and how they didn't get rid of it um or maybe not even slow it down. But there was a CWD expert um that told me years ago. He's like, Wisconsin is not a good example because the c w D whore left the barn many years ago. Not only is that horse out of the barn, but that horse already died, like it was just too late to get in and make a huge difference. But other states, New York, Illinois, Missouri, they have a chance, um to like make that difference where Wisconsin didn't go out. You to to the c W to the denier's credibility, to their credit. Here. Uh, it's been around all those years, right, and Doug still has a big, huge, giant bucks running around in his place. I couldn't believe a picture of a buck he sent me from the wet spot. Yeah. Well, you know, just an average deer around here. You know, when the big couple of the world, but a little buck man juice down there and see what turns up. No, and and and that's important. I appreciate that. Actually this is the deer hunting is really good around here. I mean, there's a reason people come to Richland County. And he's trying to drive you see her, trying to drive the values. He's trying to restore property values now. But I've acquired all that landed on building the back up and you know it's a matter of fact. Um. But uh. And the way to to uh, I mean, just keep doing it, keep enjoying it. And you know, this is an an interesting point. It's very different than what you guys are dealing with. What you guys deal with out there, But pent of our county is considered deer habitat mhm um and that's about um fifty uh square miles so but of that is privately owned. So if we're gonna do anything, really we need to either incentivize or force private landowners to do something about it. I'm kind of working on the incentivized end of it, you know. And and um, you know, I try to share my place with as many people as I can. Um. And you're right, and we still have big giant bucks. You know, there's there's some beautiful deer around. Um. Interestingly, also, most of deer that we've had positive The oldest one was a three year old doll. The other ones have been year and a half and two years, two and a half year old bucks, and a year and a half old dough. So you know our older bucks. I mean you remember, Yanni, the last time you were here with with all the all your buddies, all the Levians from from Tooma, all those deer man truck full of deer, including that one big giant buck, that the one eyed bucket, that another honest shot um, and none of those dear tested positive um. And you know there's those deer around. But that's by controlling the disease, we can continue to have that kind of hunting. That's the other end of it. So I mean, I'm trying to do all this stuff. You know, Steve, you and I've talked about oak management, and I'm trying to manage jokes. I want deer around, but I don't want too many. And it's the you know, these things are the same, the same, The reasoning is exactly the same. You know, we're trying to balance everything in an ecosystem. Um. So you know, if I could have have an inanimate object on the podcast, I would have the wet spot on the podcast. It's a magic place, like why are you always wet? Why are you a mud puddle? And why you always go look at you? And I have stilled that thing up. I have actually filled that up with clay and run it over and you know, packed it up because I don't want a bunch of waters. Yeah, he's like a leopard. Don't change his spots. That's what he'd say if I asked him. What you might try now is instead of fighting, you know the wet spot, maybe just make your road go around the way. Watch, just move your road over ten ft and a pond in the road. Now, now you're gonna force me to go up there and take a picture, because that's exactly what I've done. What's what's the fifercent of your county? That's not dear habit? Is it like concrete and water or what? Um? Yeah, the highways in Richland Center our county seat. We have thirty deer in this uh county by the estimates in the population. The human population is about seventeen thousand. So man, uh Yanni. We didn't get our new dog expert. We didn't get to your you'll you'll you'll you'll retain. Yeah, we're gonna talk a little bit. We'll tease it. We're gonna talk a little bit about um blood trailing. Well, it's like a growing thing. I mean, it's been growing It's been around for a long time, but it just be gets more and more prevalent. Is like every group of hunters. My prediction is in in some number of years, every group of hunters, someone in that group it's gonna want to have a recovery dog. Well yeah, I was just thinking how when I first heard about it, nobody that I didn't even know anybody that had maybe even like use the recovery dog to find a wounded deer. It was just like, you know this thing that you kind of heard about. But now I would almost bet someone in this room has used recovery dog to find a deer. Anybody I've been, I've seen one not recover one. Yeah, we attempted in Michigan. Um, but yeah, like I know people now they're like, oh yeah, well yeah, and he's got all kinds of stats we're going to get at. But uh, I gotta I gotta scoop, I gotta scoot al right, buddy, thanks a lot um appreciate it, Seth. It's a good job. I want to get, man, I want to get Do you think it'd be too distracting? Like when someone like when Seth talking about what he was talking about, Remember how I said, I wanted one of those dials that they use when they're testing things on people. Yeah, like how the the how their their interests dial? Yeah, if we had if when like if Seth was talking about something, if we had one that that was like a low like but then as he talks, if I get more interests, I turned it up and then it pretty soon like do you do that would detract from the listening experience. Unfortunately, yes, it could be that the better job he does, you turn it down so like so when he starts out, when he starts, but as he starts kicking ass it quiet and he starts getting pumped up in senive to kick as exactly. But you know, he did a good He did a good job on that, especially like the part when he tried to turn it into a dog thing. Uh huh. Doug was right to compreciate that it was good. Okay, I'm sorry I didn't hear that, Seth. What did you say about dog? Just good? That was philm talking about dog a great looking Just like when somebody says Doug is right, I usually asked him. He's like what what what? Alright, ladies and gentleman, Doug durn far away and a far away disease land. Hey have me on for something that isn't c w D. Sometime I might do that dog anytime. Dog, we have dog on to talk about how to properly get your cheese curd squeaky again if you've left them out so long that they're not squeaky anymore, that'll be dog on curd. Stay tuned