00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is me eat podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, bug bitten and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You can't predict anything presented by first, like creating proven versatile hunting apparel from Marino bass layers to technical outerwear for every hunt. First like go farther, stay longer. Alright, Pat, we're discussing uh. Pat Durkin's here um and Pat writes a lot about death, So this is the death episode. It's like a Halloween special about death than Pat nearing death himself. I was just sharing with us like an old man's secret, laying honest, and my old man's secret that seems to be impressing people here is I got hearing aids for the first time about two and a half years ago, and one of the thing that's cool about them is it's run. They run off an app on my iPhone, and so if I'm in the crowd and the sounds a little bit too loud, I'm gonna hit turning the app, sink my my hearing aids, and then turn things down a little bit and you can actually um then control it too. If there's certain pitches that are bothering you, like from I have grandkids if you can turn down a little bit, because you know, grandkids have they make noises that really irritate my left ear. So so that's really specific. So I'm trying to I'm trying to get better at these things because I when I walk into certain environments, now I'm learning before I go in there. It's kind of like, you know, when you have an allergy, like I do for dogs and cats, I take a pill before I go into people's homes that dogs and cats. So now I walked in my grandkids settings, I just the hearing aid. So that's great. Man, what brand you are? You like a brand evangelists for what kind of you? I didn't know what I have. One thing I found fascinating about those hearing ags was yesterday Pat called me and he was like calling me through his hearing age. Man, the man I was calling Seth's. He let me in and then he answers the door just just as my um my, my phone starts telling me, you know, you can't connect to this guy, leave a message that kind of thing. So ses talking to me face to face. Meanwhile, I'm getting all this stuff on my iPhone. Um, you know, how are you want to answer, leave a message, all this kind of stuff. So somewhere in my recordings is all this self background information. Yeah, my phone, you left a ten minute long voicemail conversation. This made me, This made me look forward to getting there. I got the hearing loss you get from shooting gun. That's what we just the left ear. It's the ear like when you put your cheek to the gun. So my right ears on left handed, and they could tell what what frequency you lose and from being around Yeah, and also like duck hunting with some dude rings one off next to your face. The worst was back in the nineties. Um, it was a common before people really understood them. It was um muzzle brakes, and they eventually got something you could turn them on and turn them off, so it wasn't so bad. But I blasted my left ear twice with those muzzle brakes without really realized when I was getting into and it was like, um, I knew when the rifle went off because all of a sudden, the freaking world is collapsed. He's just no nothing going on in my head, just shock. Yeah, I'm it's hard for me to decide what to do about it. With with my kids, because like we just had youth duck season, right, So I took my boy out and my older boy and my little boy went out with us, and um, I put the big earphones on them. But then they can't hear anything, right, So you're screaming, yelling at him to do something and they have no idea. You're screaming and yelling at him to do it. You know. You know what Kelly I was about. He's like, I can't I can't handle it, Like I don't like being around him that much anyway, you know, But when they can't hear you know what today's technology, they don't like those what they don't like it? Somehow I put them on him. They get they don't like it. You need to get yes, well those like are those like a ear protection to like an earpro No, you need to put ear protection on too. But buddy, I don't know if you ever met Tony Paul's kill. He's he's from Farm Family, Wisconsin. He during the Golf War works over at Vortex Now. He was a marine sniper during the Golf War. He uh in a bunker shooting a bunker somehow like destroyed his ears. Um and he wears some souped up here in aids. But now what he does for hearing protection when he's shooting. He was kind of not supposed to do this, but he just turns them down when he's shooting. He's like, I don't know if that's really making it worse. Hey, let me say something. If we're talking about hearing, you know, my are we what was my right here? I've lost a significant amount of hearing to the point that it affects my life, you know, like you're I can't hear the direction dollars. So that that started happening when I was in the ninth grade, and it's unknown, you know, probably triggered by shooting guns. But but the hearing when I went when I was like thirty five to you know, just a few years ago, to the hearing specialists. They told me if I had come when I was a kid younger, that that a hearing aid would have helped. But basically she was like, man, you're that part of your brain is starting to shut down and you'll probably never get it back. And so I actually have a hearing aid that I never wear because it doesn't help. So point, man, if you have hearing trouble, don't wait until you're like you got you got a legitimate handicap where you can't tell where your dogs are barking. Yeah, if it affects my world, yeah, all my other senses are extremely heightened. Though. That's because people say that, like ship makes up for you read about that, You read about that, Gal helen Keller. Yeah, before we leave, Pat and old Man Wisdom talk, I was chatting with him yesterday. I feel like I got a wedge of sim No, go ahead. Pal was saying that you can't. We're talking about running and arthritic knees and stuff like that, and me being forty three, and how I was feeling a little bit of my knees and all that. All this, I'm gonna I'm gonna abridge the story a little bit. But in the end he says, look, you can't stop aging, which you can't fight it. And then he said, and I'm gonna fight it to the bitter end, this guy. Yeah, And I took that home with me last night, and yeah, exactly, I was feeling super inspired. Yes, you have no choice, Yeah, but you might be having like, no, you do somebody who don't fight it at all. Well, part of the fighting is having the Like I was jugging with Pat before we started about I was like, man, that's some legit old man stuff. To be able to control your hearing aids on your phone, that would be a major inhibitor for most people just technology. I mean, that's that's that's fighting it to the bitter end, might be. And he was getting tattoos, which is I feel like, Oh, I don't know, he's like, he's like he looks like a like a chef from Nashville. Man, go pack, No, No, that's that's silly. I wouldn't do that. Those are right now? Those are pats do you have? That's this guy right here? Pat? Do you have plans for another one? Um? Right now? The only one I get being my wedding ring because I've been we're when we're in any like you've been to jail? Man some more about the jail looking thing, man, tear drops for every looks like you've been in jail. A wedding ring looks like you've been to jail. Bad So Steve, Steve Nixon, that idea Okay, Tracy Crane's here. You have been on a long time a little while. It's been a long time wait when when was the last time the when you were on the turkey episode. No, I think it was after my first deer hunt with you two fine fellas. I believe so, yeah, because because you even blocked it out. Yeah, Tracy got a sideline by having a baby, but you um still sideline. You're still feeling it a little bit. Life never returned so the way it was before. At least I don't anticipate it returning the show. I knew that before. You can go watch Tracy on Netflix hunting turkeys, um crying, crying on their ice fishing like her first ice fishing expedition, crying there too that day, Tracy. Uh yeah, like antelope hunting, your first antelope hunting trip, totally and then like vanished. Well he's still down here, all yeah, if I was, you be down here all the time. No, No, I still work here. No, No, but you're not. You haven't you haven't up mixing it up lately. No, No, not with you guys. She has plans to that people. People wouldn't know this. I wouldn't know it, and I mean, maybe it's not something we want to talk about. But Tracy is like the heart and soul of meat. Eater for sure. I don't know that that's true. That's true because you know, like people might assume that like, well, she's been on the show. I mean people talk to me about the meter shows and they're like or I might say, hey, Tracy's my boss, and they'll be like, yeah, I wouldn't you on the show, And they're trying to connect like where she fits because people only see like the faces of meat Eater there on the podcast, that's what. But Tracy is the real deal. She's like a puppeteer. Thank you. I don't know that way. Thank you, Tracy. Can people can people find out I don't want to say this, but can people find out where you live? Yeah? I mean why would they give a ship where I lived and talked about what my boy did in your yard? Oh, certainly go and talk about that. So I want to give people an idea. Well, I mean, go ahead. I have no problem with that. And I told him he's got to try to lock Did you lock up his permission for this year? Sure? It did. I think he arrived at my home maybe like two weeks ago. It was like, hey, um, can I come back again? Have you given away that spot to anybody else you trained him? Well, no, what's that like? Got a waite till doll right in your yard? Wow? Oh he was tickled. The only thing that will be more challenging for him this year is we took that little that little shack down before we hid. Yeah, where you guys were leaning up against. I don't know. I'm a better hunter. He listened. He did some hard hunts, man, he did some hard hunts, and now his easy hunt. He seem to really enjoy that one the most. It was a good time, all right. Oh here's an interesting thing, man, and it fits with the Halloween. The Halloween special is uh, if you are you worried? This now seth Well, like our new episodes, like we just we just put five we have we launched five new episodes like like season ten Part a UM on Netflix, and and there's one we have a flint Lock episode and in the flat I can't even believe it made the show. But in the flint Lock episode we find a bizarre little haunted snowman thing. I'm supposed it made a show too, but I don't know why they Like I kind of forgot about it. Then the editor found it, and we're like, oh, that's funny. We leave it in there. And it's a little snowman wearing Hunters orange. And I thought it was like a little effigy. I don't know what. It was like a warning. It was set in the middle of the trail and he had blaze orange vast and a blaze orange hat and little sticks for arms and he was maybe like what eight inches tall. They're like little pieces of grass or something. Weird as weird ask little thing and and and it made the show where we talked about it looks like it's like Blair Witch project Snowman out in the woods. A dude yesterday rights in that was his snowman and he was hunting elk. He was hunting elk with his old man. They stopped, made a little snowman, took a picture of it. He sent us the picture and he says then that then they're watching the show and there's their snowman. Yeah. Wow. He had a cow elk tag. Snow here it is. And I went back this morning and looked at the episode, looked at the snow man in the episode, and then looked at this because I was like, I'm double checking, you are questioning. Yeah, he and yeah, I went back and looked. It's identical. He thought he went out and tried to make a snowman to match. Well, I don't know, come on, I yeah, I just I checked. Did he explain him like why they decided to make a little snowman while they were hunting? No? No, you could write him back, you could like do it follow up? Did he cut a piece of his hunter's orange off his vest? I guess I mean that's good? Yeah, yeah, the young and he's open up a open up economy. Do this? Uh? Sorrybody knows that Patsy were talking to him? Sass. Here filled the engineer gran Chester. We're gonna preview Chester's new project. She hasn't got the green light? Out at a confirmation about he hasn't got the green light. He hasn't gotten the green light. I don't want to be annoying, so I don't keep asking me. But I got a lot of good ideas. Tracy, once again to etiquette and uh honest, Uh a quick news on item. This is pretty interesting. We we did a whole episode on a guy that got toxoplasmosis from wild Game, and a lot of people get it from not a lot I mean, there's not a lot of it out there, but people get it from wild game. And toxoplasmosis, as we've covered extensively, is a disease you get from if you're eating undercooked meat and it passes. It has to pass through catship, but a wide variety of feelines, wild feelines, domestic feelines can carry it. They have to shat on a out on a piece of grass. Let's say it makes contact with grass. An herbivore and ungulate whatever can eat the grass can eat the cheat and become infected with toxoplasmosis. So we had a guy from Hawaii, Danny Bolton, came on the show and talked about his trials and tribulations with toxoplasmosis. Then we followed up and covered some interesting research. Um, because this is weird ass deal with toxoplasmosis where it reduces your inhibitions. Okay, So they were doing research in Africa. They're doing research on hyenas and it was cram you remember this. A hundred percent of hyenas who contracted toxoplasmosis were killed by lions. I don't remember if it was they were they got the toxoplasmosis from lions. They got it through feeline. It was it was hyena cubs that were positive for toxic. They all positive hyena cubs due to loss of inhibition, fall prey to a feeline because they got closer to lions and their normal behavior might otherwise. Uh yeah, So it's like this weird parasitic result where and it was brought up that like that at by distributing toxo plasmosis around makes his own job easier because his prey base becomes less afraid grooming them. Like you're like, yeah, creating easier prey base. I guess there's no better way to put it. Then we had to sing where there's an article that someone sent us and we covered about heightened entrepreneurial ship. Entrepreneur always say that word wrong ship, entrepreneurial behavior. That's a good way to put it. Heightened entrepreneurial behavior on people who have had toxico plasmosis risk common. How did they How did they study this? I can't remember, But here's the thing. There's a new article out National Institute of Health. Oh, you guys know the that Movie's Secret and nim H animated move mouse right? Yeah, is nim the National Institute of Mental Health. It's about rats to get like experiment in it on it becomes super smart and somehow they don't explain the movie. They wind up with a magic gemstone Nationalist. So this is National Institute of Health and and I m H is the National Institute of Mental Health. Yeah, that's a real thing. That's a real thing based in the Pheasant, Maryland. That's what my wife was telling my kids when we were watching Secret and Him last night. But but just to be clear, the institution has nothing to do with with the movie. It's like a fantasy movie. It takes true in the wood. That's who's experimenting on the rats, is it. Yeah, they injected rats with a lime green with a lime green serum, and one day the rats can read the instructions of how to unlock the cage. Okay, deep, But check this out, National Institute of Health. A report out by them that increased risk of traffic accidents and subject with latent toxo plasmosis. A retrospective case control study got me and pat are turned it down. Our hearing aids worldwide. Thirty scent of humans worldwide have latent toxoplasmosis. Huh. And they're going to the methods and all that garbage. So Danny bolt but with a weird deal about Danny Bolton who got toxoplasmosis is he already has no inhibitions because he he he teaches off road driving to Special Forces soldiers. So now that dude, it's gonna be a hazard. He's gonna be a hazard to himself and others. Where are your seatbelt? Danny? Um? Another parasite news. Uh, we had a guy right in to remind something about this, and I want this is I'm taking dead serious, is when Yanni and I had trigonosis. Um. We're doing a lot of reading up on how long you it's not very clearly understood how long you remain trick pause. Do you still have your trick pose T shirt? I do. We had these trick pose trick pose T shirts brought up, made up, but then someone pointed out that there's a venereal disease. What's it called. I don't know, there's a trick venereal disease? So we had what we got trick on nosis. We had trick pose shirts made, but then someone could the wrong way. I know. That's why that's second round that's the second. Because it looked like you were announced into the world. People didn't take it the right way. Maybe you should put those trick pose t shirts in the auction house of odys. That's a great idea. I don't know. I have made mine into the rag bin man. No, we should resurrect it. By the way, the sexually transmitted infection is called trickleman. Yeah, so you run around, trick go down to the barn. A trick pose t shirt man sends the wrong mess. But so uh. Someone pointed out, like back then, that was six years ago, be honest, and the literature at the time was unclear about how long I even read in various like government things, how that was unclear how long a human or how long a pig. In fact of the it's like five to ten, right, Yeah, And I was saying that at the ten year mark, I wanted to find someone who was curious about this, and I would happily submit an example. Do you remember the epidemiologist that we had on that we talked to with this about I tell this story all the time because I think it's so funny when you sort of proudly sprouted up in your seat and said, yeah, you know the honest and I have trick on osis. And he's like, really, when did you get it? And we said, and he goes, now it's gone by now, and I just remember your shoulders kind of slump. Yeah, he no longer had trick a nosis. I don't want to get your gut. You think he still would test positive for it? Well, a guy was reminding about how we ought to get serious about checking that out, and Kran was reading up on it, and you can actually there's a you can call the Infectious Disease hot line at the c d C correct and you could submit a biopsy and they'll run your test. So what I want to do is get however you do that, we could take him right here and mail them in to see what happens. It's like a little hole punch. Oh you gotta take a chunk of meat that they're saying you can send you in. My am, I right, I'd like to see that. I would love to do it. The bear that gave us trick nosis when when we when we went through the c d C because it's a CDC reportable disease and they took some of our bear meat. Uh five, I remember calculating it out to five hundred thousands cis per pound, incredible because it was hundreds per gram. Yeah, it was like eight hundred per gram muscle tissue, five hundred thousand cysts has chickenhosi has not got a little bit of a bad rap because I think most people think they think it's worse than it is. That's right, Like they think that if you get it, you're I mean, it's just gonna like toast your whole life. But I mean it's it's like you said, you just kind of felt sick for a few days and that was it, and then you would have got over it and never even known you had it in your natural over it. What happens of the time with ricken nosis infections is it because you don't know. Nobody cuts two and two together. If I didn't, if I hadn't had if we hadn't been in communication, because we worked together, and four of us hadn't gotten it, and we hadn't been together in a month, and we all got weirdly sick on the same day, and my brother didn't drink beer. With the state epidemiologists in Alaska, we wouldn't know that it happened that bad after all, had a little light bulbit went off in her. Uh, inhibits No, I would love to send it in. I think that's an inhibitor for people psychologically for eating bear meat. It's the thing, it's the question I get all the time, what about trick? What about trick? And I'm just like, man, it's a non issue. Number one, you'll probably never get it. You'll eat bear meet your whole life and never get it if you just practice general safe handling meat practices. Tricking uses dies instantaneously in the low hundred and forty degrees instantaneously, and so it's like, it's not that big big deal. No, it's not. When I bought one of those stupid pills, but I was too late to take it, and the uh, the what do you call them? At a drug store, the pharmacist she was saying, I'm not telling you what to do here, but I sell you know that that pill is seven dollars for a dog. She says, but I don't know about the dosing all that, but that's a seven dollar dan worming pill and uh. And then she went on to tell me that when she was in the Peace Corps, they were when they were working in equatorial Africa. They would go into a village and they would just d worm everybody, but without even asking questions under the just knowing that everybody they all had worms. So she just they just that was like part of the course. Check your teeth, give your d worming pill. You know, very widespread. Most people don't like you get it. You don't know you had it. So trick isn't like um line at goes in her ground and comes backwards away. It goes away, and then your meat stays infected for some period of time. You carried the cysts for some period of time. Yeah, unless something eats you know, your flesh, and then the process begins again. We need to get a Yeah, we need to get a little core thing that pulls out point two to point five grams the human skeletal muscle tissue. Maybe you should go to that. Well, hey, I'll tell you I know how to like I had on your toe. No, but listen to this. I had ah, I thought I had a war in my hand one time, and this dermatology just like kept freezing it and freezing it and freezing it, and it wouldn't go away, and Eventually she's like, I wonder if that's maybe not a war I still have a little mark from And she took one of those little cores in corded all out of there and sent it to a lab and it was a foreign substance was stuck in my finger, but zero pain. So that that inspired you to maybe do it on your own next time. Yeah, I definitely want to do it. Uh E m T wrote into the interesting thing he was writing, and you know when you like do a joke to your kids and you like eat a bug or a little minto or something like that. This guy, he he's a paramedic and they get a call down to a lake and it's because the guy is choking on a whole live fish. Gets down to a popular fishing area and he arrives on his senior as a man standing next to the roadway and you can visibly see a fish's tail sticking out of his mouth, coughing up a red, frothy blood. Tried to swallow a bluegill. His wife said he had been drinking quite heavily. Tried to impress his kids by swallowing a five inch bluegill in its dorsal spines got stuck in his throat. In the emergency room, he gets to cough and finally hacks up the fish lands on the cop five inch bluegill. I think about that. Not very smart. Wow, at least his kids are super impressed. Though, Yeah, here, this is this is helpful that Tracy's here because this is part of the reason tracys here's uh the book of Chatikit So Chester, Uh, what has been offering to the audience to produce a book of outdoor etiquette? He wanted to do a book a fishing etiquette? Yeah, but I think I think it could be just outdoor recreation. Hunting would be even better. Specialize specialized. That's that's not even that's not even remotely true. I mean me, eater specializes in the greater outdoors. When it comes to a book like a book like that, do not want to specialize? Well here, well then okay, then you got to hear clay out. No, you go first tell me specialized. Hey, I have made I have made a living through niche niche however, we want to say it through niche media. But the Honey magazine would be very specialized. So I just think for for Chester, I know Chester, I've been around Chester. I feel like he's going to be a specialist more than this. This broad market guy. It's just my it's just my interesting. I would say, you're you have potential to maybe be a broad market guy. Thank you, Tracy. I think you're not looking at the right way. Here's here's why the Book of Chatticutt should be broad based. Because if you did Chester's Book of Fishing Etiquette and marketed that book, okay, like if we self published this book, we market the Book of chettict and it's fishing etiquette, and then you're like, oh, then we'll do a whole bunch of more books down the row where it's like Chester Round, this, Chester Round, that, Chester Round, trail hiking, whatever the hell. I feel like if we just did like the Book of Outdoor Chetticutt and it covered all facets of outdoor etiquette, you would sell a shipload more than if it was just Chester's Book of Fishing Etiquette. Maybe not. I think that's inaccurate. I think that's ever. I guess I need to get dialed in on how serious we're actually being. Just might wish it was a joke. DA Pipeline absolutely considered. I brought it to Tracy Chester needs to advocate on his own idea. I would like to just have a chance. I can see the cover of the book. Okay, in in the town I'm from originally in Arkansas, there's an insurance agent that's real well known. He's an old guy, real just inviting looking guy, and there's huge billboards of him all over the town holding his hands out like this, Like he just holds his hands out and he's kind of got an awkward smile, like he's got insurance settlements and welcome to the town. And then it tells his insurance agency. I see a cover with Chester with his hands out like cheiko fish in his hands, just just just like listen to everybody. Everyone thinks this is a joke, but I think that is a lot of people out there that can benefit from it. You go to every trailhead, every boat ramp, every hike in trail people don't know what's going on, and they need something like a little bible that tells him what's going on. And I think it could really be awesome. On the first page, when you're walking your dog and you're going up the hill and your dog, uh, goes to the bathroom and you bag it and you set it alongside the trail. I know you're thinking that you're gonna grab it on the way down, but you won't. Won't. A lot of people don't. It'll live there in a bag on the side of the trail. That's the most infuriating thing. Put that in that damn book. I will let me just paint a picture for this area really quick. So imagine you're floating down one of the popular rivers in Montana. It's July, it's five degrees, beautiful day, and it's a Saturday. We got tubers floating down the river. We have recreational rafters, we have fishing guides, and if for people that don't know, you put in at a fishing boat ramp, you'll float downstream and you'll take out at another boat ramp. That could be five miles, that could be ten miles, doesn't matter. So you're floating down the river having a great time, and you pull up to the boat ramp and there is a line of about six angry fishing guides waiting at the boat ramp, and a bunch of tubers with their cooler sitting out and beer cans and whatnot, and everyone's upset. What do you think the problem is, Steve, people are blocking the ramp, yes, so, and people are pulling up to the ramp not prepared to do what they need to do their getting there, pulling up and then preparing. Yeah, so people really know what that means. They're like, what, well, there's a loading and off floating area at these fishing access points, so you should be way a ways. I think you should just call them. They're not necessarily fishing access points, right, they're just boat ramps. They're just public access yes, right, boat ramps. He's trying to get like an editor gig on this book. I think anyways, you you load your boat up, you take your boat. It's important because it's not like anybody has more right to be there than anybody else. A fishing guides on any more right to be there, because it's not like a fishing boat ramp, and the tubers are like, but if you won't go on next, it says fishing access site. That's you pays for it. Fishermen pay for it, not that it's just for the book. Can't be hierarchical, yes, it can't be like if you're on a horse, you're more important than a person on foot or whatever. But let me finish really quick. I'll sum it up. So you you load your boat up and there's a line of people waiting. You pulling behind that line, get your life jackets ready to get your kids in the boat, get your cooler all set, get your plugs in, and then you wait in line and everyone takes their turn unloading and off loading. And you know, people just don't know that, so little little bit a little bit. And as we discussed lots of little things. When it was a horse coming down the trail, what is proper etiquette exactly when you have a backpack on when you have a dog, you go down the trail, get off the trail, but go downhill instead of uphill so you don't spook the horses. Wait for him to go by. Yeah, Or like when you walk into your duck hunting spot in the morning and someone's there, what do you do? I like, I like the ideation. I like the idea I think would sell. But six years from now, ten years from now, you still have six angry guides at that boat landing, of course, and I just existential stuff into this, like what does it really matter? I don't know. Book of Outdoor Chetickotte. That might be a little long. We'll figure it out, pat it might it might drop it down to just four or five. What do you think, Tracey canna green light this thing or not? Absolutely? Chester, you don't need to wait. You don't need to go through the normal process. You absolutely need to go through the normal process. We make no exceptions. I'm I'm compiling some stuff. Great news. Nobody think you just did a lot for yourself. Buddy, Are you gonna have guest riders? I'd like to ride. Definitely. I don't want to give away all my ideas here because I've got some good ones, but definitely some some help. You could do the horse or mule on a trail. Absolutely get out of the way and don't and don't forget me, because I'm sure I'll have some ideas perfect ice fishing etiquette. And you've got just a regular employment agreement. You're on contract over here. I mean, I'm assuming just regular employment agreement. It really ended talking about employment agreements on the show. Well, I don't want people having good ideas and running off and doing them on their own. Um, I'm not gonna agree over I don't like I don't like this. Okay, Yanni's good, yis It's time for Yanni's book report on play the tune, Play play the Yanni's book report promo report. He's gonna do a book report on an article which is the best kind of book report and it is a exploration of animals and pt s D. Yeah. But what what this book report is gonna turn into is that I was gonna be discussion about how some journalists and reporters treat wildlife topics um and how they're like anti hunting bias shows through. But the basic just this article which you can find on Noble magazine. It's Noble magazine. But they're they're they're covering are going. Um. Everybody knows the classic snowshoe hair and uh links cycle that we talked about, right, Links populations go up, snowshoe hair populations go down, and they sort of follow each other. And for a long time, everybody just thought that it was just based upon more predators eat more rabbits hairs than they go down, and because there's not enough food for the for the links to eat, than their population crashes. Less predators the hair population goes back up. Well, now they're doing some research and figuring out that it's not quite that simple that there's this basically PTSD in these animals is causing like just a more nuanced version of the cycle where because and when there's a high predator population, the prey not only are they getting eaten a bunch, but they're so stressed out and they're like living and hiding so much that the females are producing fewer and lesser young So that in itself is sort of increasing, you know, right, the lack of um of the prey population and causing it to go down. And so they're studying all this. Um, let me own is a good minute for me to interject something anytime. Um. A researcher in Fairbanks did some work on snowshoe hair links cycles and they pointed to, you know, plant toxicity. So willows being a primary food source, uh, plants respond to grazing by increasing their toxicity. So they had done a bunch of research about you have low hair numbers and plants aren't putting as much willow doesn't put as much energy. You ever bite a willow limb that like that taste? They don't put as much energy into producing it because it's not being heavily grazed, and they put more energy into growth. Um. The low toxicity allows snowshoe hairs to start consuming more willow. They consume more, they have bigger broods, they become numerous, willow starts cranking out shiploads of plant toxicity. It becomes a toxic food source. That's what he says. That's part of why I felt this was inexpertly reported. Well, I think it just points to that it's like it's a there's it's more nuanced than they thought it was, right, which is a great thing about science where constantly you know, learning more and more about it. But here's where it gets a little like tricky. And what I didn't like so much about the article is that they started talking about some elephants, and they said that elephants were decreasing in numbers in certain parts of Africa, and that it was basically due to culling, um, habitat loss and and um poaching. Right then, the next sentence, the writer said that a lot of the young elephants had watched their family members being slaughtered. Right. Well, that word is you can use it in a butchering sense. He slaughter animals at like a butcher house. Or it's like to slay or a massacre or to demolish completely right those three things. Sure, poaching is a pretty bad deal, but legal calling um is not that you know, it is what it is, right, and habitat loss is certainly not slaughtering. So that got my blood pressure up a little bit. Um. The other thing I didn't like so much is that they have a Are you looking at the article now, Steve, Yeah, I'm skimming through and I'm looking at the illustrations reviewed. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. The last thing effected trauma, Clay. You can see this too. It shows basically what's going on on in the brain right as there's some trauma, and then there's like a little flow chart that goes down and shows like how much um uh oh yeah, the neurogenesis, what happens, and then how much you forget like kind of correlates to how bad the trauma was, right, and it sort of shows down that like, the more there is trauma, the more the animals remember this, and then you know, the less they're feeding and the less healthy they are, and in the end there's less offspring, right, Well, the their versions of trauma are startling, sudden, sound like thunder, and then the next two versions are a hunter and a kneeling position. He's not really quite doing it right because he don't have his elbow on his knee. He's just another thing, right, How when did we become super predators? Is that a thing? Are we like no longer the equivalent of lions and alligators and now we're super predators? Him missing the deer is him missing the deer is more trauma than the lightning. But then when he hits this hear in the ass, which again you just like portray hunters, just like it's terrible right that that is their version of like the fear plus physical trauma, where I mean they could have chosen to have a lion or a mountain lion jumping on this uh what looks to be a mule deer doze back, but instead they chose to use a super predator shooting and hitting her in the rear. End um that that caused a whole bunch of trauma, a little bit of offspring. But just like we talked about the hairs and like your willows, what is cool is at the end, they're showing that like, fewer offspring produces also not only less prey, but more abundant vegetation um, thus allowing the population to have ventually rebound uh, you know significantly. Do they get into in here, do humans who suffer PTSD have lower reproductive rates? Well, that's another thing they didn't get into. They start this article is a tough one to do a book report on because they start they start, you know, comparing this PTSD and animals to human PTSD, and the sort of the question is like, is it just is PTSD just a human thing or can it be for animals too, because you can't really ask the deer, hey, are you how you feeling? You know, since Steve shot you in the button you ran up um. And some people say, look, it's just it's totally a human thing because you know, we can talk about it and it's in your head and it's it's not an animals but whatever. People are going to continue researching and go on. But yeah, there's a lot of things that they say are the outcome in animals from this PTSD, but they never relate that to the human likewise, and human Yeah, yeah, I was kind of lying us that I read it, I skimmed it. Did they get into dread? You know, like one of the arguments I've heard from World War two dread that were dread r E A D. They did not in World War two. Um, after after the battles of Anzio, this guy did some things, a doctor, it's really cool, research into the wounded, the wounded men, and he found that a lot of things they thought were pain while they were riding around so much and screaming and hollering, a lot they thought was physical pain they were um expressing. And they found in some cases, many cases that just by ministering a sleeping and drug making them sleep, they quiet down and they get better, you know, they start relaxing a little bit, and they started to realize a lot of stuff that we think is pain is actually dread. These guys knew what was happening, that that with their leg gone, with any number of body parts missing, part of their head missing, what they had to look forward to the rest of their life and just just driving them nuts. And that was agonizing. And then then this doctor was saying, Chris, some people would argue today, you know, eighty years later that that maybe animals had that capacity to some degree, that to look forward with dread. And that's the thing I've often wondered myself, But I think I have a hard time believing a white tailed deer with life expectancy in the wild of you know, even even in an unhunted population of ten years, that they could possibly have developed the kind of emotions and forward looking things that we humans are capable of. So that's what I when I hear a PTSD, I think, jeez, I don't know, I can see it, because you know, because there are there are things like in the in the breeding world with the deer deer breeding world, the deer farms, they do find that by put a fence up with black backing so they can't see in the outside world, so a coyote coming along the edge of the fence line won't bothered them on the inside. That they can generate bigger antlers when they reduced that stress from the outside world. That that that researcher from University Wylming, Kevin Monteth, remember that episode we had Landscape of Fear. But he kind of like he he debunked that a little bit. Was the idea that by bringing wolves into the Yellowstone ecosystem, that you were creating a landscape of fear kind of resimber with the top bother that you were like inducing PTSD on this whole population of elk and and behavioral changes and did he was he into that? And I can't remember what the hell he said about that. We even named the episode after the landscape of fear, Like what that like inducing that amount of stress of elk? Just watching like elk after Elk, after Elk, after elk get killed, like after wolf, I mean, after wolves came to Yelstone. You had elk herds declined by it's enormous amount of death to behold. Wouldn't wouldn't that, though, be a natural process of an animal adapting to predation That would actually make them stronger, more able to survive. So so I mean just no, But they're saying that's what they're saying, that PTSD is natural and then it makes a hyper village vigilant animal and those that it's it's a good thing. It allows the species to continue on because if you don't become hyper vigilant, then you end up being holes. I was gonna say, grow up in Pennsylvania where you they have like the highest hunter density per capita out of any other state. Um, they're getting shot at all the time. They have super high and I most years does seem to have twins. I've seen dose with up to five fonts and many times triplets. Like I don't know. I would think those deer were would have a high high amount of stress with the amount of people out there shooting at him stuff. But they're still pumping out pons. Hefflefinger quoted Stephen Gould, Um, what does it remember? He's like, there's there's a lot of stories that are just so stories where you think there's like a thing going on, but there's actually not and it's just a it's a just cell story. Alright, Clay hit Us on the Old this is my favorite news article to come out in six months. Have you done have you looked at this? Oh? Yeah, man here saying things that will happen, and like a lot of people all texted to me and many people text to it's fascinating man. Well, So in the White Sands National Park in New Mexico, they found some new footprints. So White Sands has the largest number of fossil lives human footprints in North America prior to this. So it's known that there are places where you can go see all these human footprints, and they're on this ancient lake oh tero O t e r O. And basically, in twenty nineteen they decided to do some excavation over the top of for whatever reason, they chose a site and they excavated down deeper than they ever had and they found this series of human footprints that are just beautiful human footprints, and they believe them to be uh, teenagers and adolescent kids. And so to give a broad overview of the story, and then I'd like to dive in and and kind of tell the significance of this finde. So we covered, uh, we covered another White Sands foot they called ghost prints, right, I hadn't heard that. We covered another set of footprints came out of the White Sands where a woman they believe was a woman based on the configuration the footprint, was carrying a child her foot. When she had the child on her hip, her I think herd like right foot would go in deeper now and then she'd set the child down the childhood walk aways she'd pick it back up. She came back later down the same path without the child, and in the time between when she went and came back, a giant ground sloth had crossed her trail. Wow. Incredible. So so these footprints pre date her print by a lot. Yeah, And so basically they it was two years ago that they discovered these prints. Just in the last in September, they released their studies of what they believed. And so the way that they date these as they find these layers and inside these layers of sediment and some of its Fossili's rock, but apparently there's there's some where they were able to take grass seeds from that same layer and carbon date those grass seeds and basically that's how they understand the age of these footprints. And so these footprints are believed to be twenty one to twenty three thousand years old, which now has become the oldest known huge evidence of humans in North America to date. And there's a there's a bunch and this is it like full academic consensus, because you remember when they found that site in Chili and the Monta Verda and they're like, this is the oldest known side of human habitation in the New World, Okay, And they everybody went down Like David Meltzer went down there. All the anthropologists went down there, highly skeptical. They went down, they did a site survey, and they came away and said, yes, it just became like it became is established of a fact? Is can happen? Man. That's what I'm learning with some of the study I'm doing right now for some burglary stuff, is how this archaeological these archaeological finds take sometimes decades before it becomes consensus. Actually emailed David Meltzer about footprints, and he he said, if they are what they say they are, this is a very very significant find. But there still is a question of if. But there's also in all the articles out of whack the idea that humans had to come down during these specific interglacial periods, and so there's still some stuff to come. But they it's pretty legit because there's other really legit archaeological people that are deads you know, are saying they're putting their stamp on it, saying this is for real. Um So two years two years ago they discovered these, um they they started knowing they found footprints and white sands like eighty years ago. Uh, there's there's a whole series of these footprints. There's footprints of a of a human stalk what they presumed was stalking the ground sloth. Like there's a ground sloth footprints with human footprints inside of them, or was at least following the path of a ground sloth. Um. So here here's this is what helped me understand it. And Steve, tell me if you followed this line. But prior to nineteen seven, they thought that humans arrived in North America like two to three thousand years ago. This was prior to so that was like in the nineteen twenties, le's and a hundred years ago they thought Native Americans, indigenous people have only been here for like three thousand years, and there was there is talk that that was a mentality that was propagated to kind of justify manifest destiny, you know, yeah, okay. And then in nineteen seven is when the Fulsome site in New Mexico became stamp to buy the archaeological world as legit. And that Fulsom site in New Mexico, I mean, we can talk about that for forever. But stone spear points stuck inside of an ice age species, and you couldn't argue with it, and so they dated that back to ten thousand years. So all of us n it was like, holy cow, humans were here when it was a bison and tick with skull or a bison tick was kill site. They found these stone points they now call them fulsome points, but that rewrote history that they've been here ten thousand years. But what's interesting, Chase either man, they corralled them into a box canyon and them all on the head of the canyon. Yeah, yeah, so they they what's wild though, is that there were multiple other sites that had bison antick with bones with human artifacts inside of it that were not legitimate because they didn't they mishandled them. There were two other sites during that time period, so that that shows you the archaeological world, like they found probably legitimate sites in Texas, Oklahoma, and Nebraska during the same same time period, and we're not legitimized box. Some dude picks up the point and throws into his pocket. He takes you know, it takes a picture of exactly okay, and then can take take some advice from Taylor Keen maybe yeah, yeah, so ven we believe we've been here ten thousand years in the nineteen thirties is when they found the Clovis site, which is in Clovis, New Mexico, is a similar situation. They found this whatever they water draw you've been to, that type wouldn't hadn't been there. And Clovis dated human arrival in the America's back to around thirteen thousand years. That's what I read, is that what you would have said, I've heard man, it was a man with kill site, So eleven to thirteen thousand years Okay. Stepping it back monte Verde in Chile, which was is wild because if if well, that site basically date human arrival into this part of the New World quote unquote to fourteen point five thousand years ago. So that's monte Verde. You only make a sandwich down there. It's like rolls beef sandwich with French cut green beans on it. Holy sh it, is that good man? They call it in Chile or they call it no I had it down there. Um, I could think yesterday about making some of those which is monte Verde. They they ain't they ate ancient potatoes and seafood they found and they had they had, they had rawhide and made out of massidin leather, tighter out of tent steak, didn't they? Yeah, I think, okay, so I'm walking us back. So now we're back to fourteen point five thousand years So in tw seventeen they came out with this with a with a I A. They released stuff on Cooper's Ferry on the Salmon River in Idaho, which dated human arrival in the America's back to sixteen thousand years ago, which that would have been a water and that you know, you could have a whole podcast on this, Steve, but we're going back to the white hands thing. But the Cooper, the Cooper's Ferry site and on the Salmon River in Idaho indicated a water travel arrival because they basically would have come from you know, Camp Chak in Japan and all over there, come around the coast and then basically past Steve's cabin, took a laught on the Colombian River, up the Calambian River, up the Snake River. So that's why um and and so so this these these footprints, if they're they say they're twenty one to twenty three thousand years old, basically date back human arrival and an additional five thousand years. And here's the crazy thing about Like, here's the crazy thing about it is in Uh, it's not the oldest place. Like what are the chances they found the footprints of the oldest What that's like the first person there's all the junk you'll never find. Yeah, I was at I was just the oldest they've found was at the Fulsom site. And I don't want to go into a tangent. Just this week in New Mexico, the Fulsome dig site is probably fifty feet by fifty feet. I'm sitting there with a guy and I said, why how do we not know that there's another bison kill and a whole village like right there? And they go, we don't know. I mean when I was in that it's was it wild Horse Royal? Yes, yeah, I was standing there in the royal mood a little bit and I'm standing there with the archaeologist and there's a bone sticking out of that bank. I wanted to pull that bone so bad. Man, that dude like that was no way. He took a point, he took a GPS cord on and took photographs, and I was like, let's just think, get out of here. I was not gonna pull that bone out of that bank. Oh I would have ripped that thing out of there if you look the other direction. I was just killing me that you couldn't. You couldn't. Yeah, Steve stopped me. If I'm going too long here, but there there now, So so that dates is back to twenty one thousand years or twenty three thousand years. But away now that there and this is all news to me. These are things I'm learning and you probably know more about when you knew about it well, but away now that they're trying to understand how long we've been here. It's based on genetics of indigenous people. So I've got a quote here. Genetics now calculate based on mutation rates and human DNA that the ancestors of the Native Americans parted from their Ken Than East in the in their East Asian homeland sometime between twenty five thousand and fifteen thousand years ago. Um So basically, so they're able to take the DNA data from indigenous people in North America today and say, well, they left their cousins back in Asia maybe twenty five thousand years ago, and they had to go somewhere and they came this way. So now they're more than just like finding stone points in the ground. They're able to understand. And yeah, they don't know where, you know, they don't know the journey, they don't know what happened, but just like they parted genetic tracks, maybe as far as twenty five years ago. And when you start digging through all this stuff, what's so confusing is that there is a ton of places that are not are not stamped by archaeology, is legit. You know, there's a place in California that they claimed for a while was a hundred and thirty thousand years old evidence, and you know they're pretty much like no um. But there's these ancient sites down in South America, like when we're trying to decide where people came from to get to the New World, you know, I mean you heard Taylor Keene on Burgrease podcasts saying that the Cherokee, the Cherokee cosmology, I think they call it just their stories of how their people got here as they came from the South, you know, and uh and and so just it's it's a convoluted world. And it's why I absolutely love it because in a day where we think we know so much, we really know so little. We just humans get so hyped up about all the stuff they know, but really nothing, we know nothing. On that Bargreas episode. One of the more interesting things that you were talking about with the Cumberland Gap, as we think of, like coming from a Euro American perspective, you think of that you went west east the Cumberland Gap, and that you went west on the Oregon Trail. But if you look how the Western hemisphere was populated the first people to do the Oregon Trail, we're probably the other way. Yeah, they're headed east. They headed east through the first humans to that gap. Most likely other directions came from east to west. Uh. One of the biggest things about these tracks that fast states because there there there barefoot and maybe if you're not barefoot, it doesn't hold up well. But I spent some time in Arctic Alaska with some anthropologists and they were talking about that one way the time they felt that the time human migrations through Siberia and into the Western hemisphere um would be that they felt that it had to be it had to correlate to the invention of the eyed needle that you had to have tailored clothing because these people were spending generations in an arctic landscape. Um, but then you find like barefooted individuals in these tracks, and it's like, do they were did that boots in the winter? Do you mean did they prefer to be barefoot? Did they? Did they like insulate their feet? That Ozzy dude they found in the Italian Alps, he had he had some sweet boots made out of three kinds of hides. Lowers and souls are made from three different contents. They wore boots when they had to. And can I tell the story about your daughter and her dream? Okay, So my daughter, she's now in her late teen, she's eighteen. When she was young, she did not wear shoes, Tracy. I'm looking at Tracy because Tracey is a mother. Now. Yes, she she did. She just we could hardly make her wear shoes, you know. And when you don't wear well, I guess, I guess not at all. She And when you don't wear shoes, your toast spread out. Shoes make your feet narrow. And so the track of a human that wears shoes all the time is your toes are like this tight together. Those white sands tracks you can see air between their toes. You're honest. So okay, I was at you honest's house eating dinner with his family and his two little girls. I was telling them about my daughter and because they kind of reminded me of my girls just running around, and I said, my daughter, she when she was little, she wouldn't wear shoes and her feet looked like an indigenous person with river nukele made a foot track on the ground, you'd be able to see gaps in her toes. And uh the girls just kind of listened to me, and they didn't say a thing, like they didn't seem that impressed with my story of Rivers Toast. The next day, Yannese uh Or messages me and he says, Clay, my daughter woke up this will you tell her? You tell him what she said? No, I think you're gonna remember better, But I'm said, his daughter came in and said, Daddy, I had a dream and I and and I was barefoot and you could see the ground between my toes. The story in factors so much that she's out there dreaming about having feet like this. So Jannice messages me the picture and he says, look at the gaps between those toes. That's how I found out about this was through you, honest. That's good. Um. Yeah, Mabel's quite the runner, so she was probably like thinking subconsciously as she slept if maybe, you know, wider footprint would make her faster. While we were talking about a doctor had written into us about removing the guy's leg or bones out of his leg and the guy wanting the bones to make stuff out of and I think he thought that he was fixing to make a truck like the shifter knob on his truck. Well, that guy's kid, A Purse wrote in, thinking I'm pretty sure that my old man is the person you're talking about, and what he ended up doing is making a little robot. So yeah, it's like a robot paperweight out of his own leg bones. So sow's that mystery? Uh? All right? Pat? Like where I want to get into all the like the death articles you've been writing. Um, do you feel that? Do you do you feel that? Have you were you interested that when you're young? Or do you feel like it's like being in the autumn of your life? Or what is it something I love about coming on your podcast? I never know what the hell are you gonna ask me? Um? No? Um. First of all, I wanted to say that before you even touched on that, that I'm not I'm not a person who likes horror movies. I don't. I can't watch scary movies. They just really do not agree with me. So that is not part of my makeup. You know, people ask me that quite a bit. But to get to your question, UM, I think about that, and I trace it back to it does go back to the fact I'm sixty five years old now, and I know I'm no now I'm in the final season, you know, and and um and what what the connection I make? Where I realized this is something that's fast to me all my life is that my um written about this. Media has published at least one of my articles about it. That I grew up in the home I grew up in. My grandmother, my dad's mother lived with us, and so when I as a kid, when I became of an age where I could start interacting with her and having memories of her, I was about now where she was then and what always struck me about hers. She was always aware of the fact she was on her final final in the final season. And but she was not morbid, she was not fatalistic. She was just a matter of fact about it. And one of the things that one of my memories of that time was we would on Sundays after Mass, often not often, but every now and then she'd take us to her her future grave site, just to show us this is where she'd be. And and one of the things that a little kid I used to ponder was she'd say, the view from a pure is so spectacular. It's west to Madison, looks toward mass in Wisconsin. You see the state capital of from the distance. And of course my little mind would think, but Granny, you're in the ground. You know how you can't see you know, you know you'll be able to appreciate this scene. It's a good point, man. I remember having that little thought for a little periscope. But maybe maybe the view wasn't for hers, for the us. That's that's true. And and that's another thing. She was a kind of person who would think, I think things like that besides herself. But she um but she had that that awareness. And I always liked the idea that you know, a theory never knew it's the final season but are you gonna make it to Um Columbus Day, Helloween, Thanksgiving or Near's Eve. She didn't know, if she didn't care, she just you know, went on with her life. It was just kind of a cool thing. Is a little kid to have that perspective that I've never forgotten. And that the thing a little tangible things that that stick with me is she built in this garden. She's a gardener to weigh late in life till she got physically where she could not move around in their gardens, and she was still every time she got a new tool, always painted the handle of red, so when when when she laid it down, she always find it dinner to look around. So to this day, I still have some of her tools out in my garage, those red handles, and I think, here's a woman, you know, eighty five years old at some point, these little claw rake things that she used in these these holes, the red handle thout I still have that. It's kind of cool then. Um. But another thing from my youth that I remember was, UM, I was always when I was seven years old when Kennedy was killed John Kennedy or President Kennedy, And how old seven I was in second grade when when the teacher came in and told us I was done in art class. So I have a real every memory of um, John John Kennedy's death and one of the things that struck me going home was, you know, like they left school, so it's kind of like, hey, cool, we've got to go home. Then you get home and everyone's crying. My dad's crying and my my mom's crying and I and I am really hit me that God, I don't never see my dad cried before. This is fascinating ship. And but I still couldn't. I couldn't understand what was what the big deal was. Man, knew it was a death, but I still don't really comprehend it. And then as I got older, I started reading these. Um I used to love reading biographies, and I said, I still do. And I read these biographies when I was like in middle school. There's still a little more adult now. UM. And I've reading about John Kennedy and one of the things he was haunted by was people dying in their prime and even before they're prying himself that he was really something that really um lived in him, that he I'm really worried about it. And thought about a lot. And now I think it's probably because he was in War War two. He fought in the p T boats up in the Pacific and had life and death experiences. People died in his boat when they Jeffanese trayer cutting the cutting in a half, which when I was a kid, these great war stories that you knew. Every kid my age knew that the Gihnt Kennedy and pt one on nine story. So anyway, the thing that only struck struck me with me all these years later is that when he was in the White House, Um he became aware of this. This poet named Alan Seeger, He was a Harvard graduate like in nineteen ten, and Allen Seeger um wrote this poem, I should I should back up a little bit. Allan Seeger when he came in to college, Um he was, I said, nineteen ten. Yeah, any Um, when World War One started, he thought it was immoral that our country, the US, wasn't over helping France. And he was so taken by that and thought was so immoral that our country wasn't helping France that he joined the French Foreign Legion and he wanted to join the regular French army, but he but he couldn't because he wasn't wasn't from France, so he joined the French Foreign Legion. Well he when he was at war then in like in nineteen fourteen, fifteen and sixteen, he started writing war poems, and Kennedy so much loved this one poem called I Have a Rendezvous with Death, and he loved it so much that he made his didn't make He asked his wife Jacqueline, if she would memorize the entire poem. And it's about as long as I mean, well, I can show you real quick to see you have an idea. It's like that long. Um. He had her memorize it, and then every now and then he'd had that get that mood mood come over him, and he'd asked his wife to recite it for him, and she memorized it, and she recite it for him, and and just a real haunting poem that you know, stuck with this guy. And the final four lines go something like, UM of a rendezvous with Death at midnight in some flaming town when spring trips north again next year to I my pledge word am true. I will not fail that rendezvous. So this guy knew, he had a really good feeling he's not die in that war, and sure enough, when he was twenty eight years old nineteen sixteen, gets killed in this battle over in France. Yeah. And and then another fascinating about Allen Seeger. If you know your music, nineteen fifties, Peter Seeger, Pete Seeger, Walt these famous songs that to this day we still sing, like if I had a hammer, um line a year land as line as my land. That was Peter Seeger was his nephew, Allen Seeger's nephew. And this is but I know what you're talking about. Yeah, So that's those those two stories I think always um resonated with me and and I always saw it later in life and became a newspaper reporter in ashcoh, Wisconsin, back in the nineteen eighties. I always I wanted to be an outdoor writer, and that's where what I became. But looking back at times when I thought, you know, like, I think it's probably have been a pretty good crime crime and police reporter. Because I I was looking back gotten I was an old guy. I think I could picture myself being that reporter. Froho the cops got to know and trust and say, hey, come over here, this is you gotta you gotta work on this one because I find it fascinating. Is it true that I think it is? Uh JFK's girlfriend died in your prime? Yeah? Well yeah, um tell everybody about how you almost weren't a person. Oh yeah, yeah, that's not great. Nice? Great? Straight My grandmother brush with death, yeah before I was even a twinkle. Yeah, and turned my hair and ate up on this one. Listen to this. It's harrowing. Pause. We came into having no Pat Durkin nip and tuck. Let me before you tell this one. I want to remind you of uh, we had a thing UH used to right obituaries. Yeah, remember you you wrote a collection. Pat wrote a piece about hunters obituaries like he collected. You wrote a piece about this right, how the way hunters are remembered, And you found an obituary of a hunter that said, like the guy died at hunting camp but and then it ends with but otherwise it was a successful I think I was one of the first pieces we like shared, so we passed around that obituary piece was great. So those kind of stories do do stick with you? Yeah, um yeah, the story about how I didn't almost I hear today, Um in nine, this had been like January nine, So this is, um, keep in mind, this is the this is right before the depression. Um, my grandmother, the one I just talked about, Um, she was pregnant was my came to be my father and and nine was also your prohibition. And my my dad's father wasn't too keen on the idea of having a fourth kid. You know, they were at the time of one income family, like everybody was back in and he just he was He was a firefighter in Madison, Wisconsin, my grandfather, and so he had this idea that they really couldn't have a fourth kid. And this is the day before this is an era before abortion clinics and all the modern madisine and stuff. So he took her down Tom in Madison. I think it's on East Washington Avenue or maybe West Washington Avenue when these roads heads up to the capitol in Madison, Wisconsin. And one of the parts I like about the story is that the outside of the of the building it said, um, something like, um, news stand, some guy's new stand. And but then when you get inside and that was just kind of a front. Inside was a speakeasy, know when they served drinks. And this is uh during the year a prohibition, so there's no no drinking allowed. So my my grandfather took my grandmother in there and they had a few drinks. And then while he was trying to get her basically get her not not ship faced drunk, but drunk. And then one he had in the right mood, he explained to her as thinking that they really shouldn't have had this fourth kid, and maybe it's time, you know, by just by a matter coincidence here, you know, I'm making this this part up. But um, he suggested to her that they take a little walk to the back end of this building. In the back corner of that building is basically a back door, um abortion clinic, and he wants her to abort what was my father, Chris, They had no idea was my father, but um, they wanted to abort the personally, damn right I do. And and my grandmother, Um, she's a good German Catholic. You know, that was not just not something that she would ever agree to. And she basically I don't know if I get she would have told him to f off, but she she would have probably said something like that and just left and refused. And one of the parts of the story I've always how did they get passed down to you? Though I can tell you that. Let me finish my story and I can tell you the story. Um um So then, so that was January, and then my dad was born in July. My dad, asked, was born in July four. You know you always liked the factor in the fourth of July, um being Yeah, sometimes sometimes I think it's like in August. So it's me like a month old er. So, um, granny's house burned down. And she always told the story about how I always thought if that, if I had a boarded your father, I would have always thought it was God punishing me bringing my house stone. Yeah, and I and I didn't have the didn't have enough sense at the time to ever ask her while she's alive, what did you tell yourself? Then? You know what? What? What was God punishing you for then to burn your house stone? You know that wasn't then because to her kind of thinking, that was always kind of that there's always retribution with with her and my and my other my maternal grandmother the same way. I remember a bunk of my head and i'd door one time I was like four or five years old, Me like smashed my head into a door that was standing open. And as I'm standing, the ball in my head off and her comfort to me about against her breast, she says, that's God punishing you. He must have done something wrong. That's where my mother grandmother was to you know, you got God's always punishing you for something. But the story how I got passed down my dad, My dadd nan gonna make this joke in front of all of us that, um, yeah, if your grandmother listening to my dad, you guys wouldn't be here, and then that he never My dad was never a storyteller though, and so I didn't really hear the whole story until later when um a cousin of my Peggy, who you guys have met on her farm. Yeah, she she's kind of the family historian whom his grandy was getting older. She'd sit down with her and have her um tell a lot of the stories and kind of filling all the backgrounds of these stories. Yeah, one of my favorites. That seems like such a thing that would be slept under the rugs, under the family rug, you know what I mean. Yeah, but it wasn't. It was. It was pretty common knowledge. I don't know a lot of details about that. Didn't know all about this, this three tier building where it went from a news stand to drinking to a backdoor abortion Clinton And I wonder what the fourth section was, just the street. But but yeah, it was, it was. It was an interesting thing. But um, I don't know, I don't I I always thought that, you know, and it wasn't either that. Um. Abortion wasn't the topic that came up really a lot in our family discussions. I mean I remember my mother, my um, my mother, and my grandmother, paternal grandmother discussing it, but never in heated terms, never real emotion. Is kind of matter of fact that you know, this is one of these things that would happen quite often in the old days. Yeah, okay, walk everybody through um with Dirk and on death. We're going to review a bunch of articles. So walk everybody through the one called the Savage Murder of Warden Neil. How's he pronounces the Savage Murder of ward Neil? The faith? This is if I was gonna tell um, give advice to aspiring young journalists, writers, any kind of writer, relay the importance of getting out of your damn office and going out and doing things and meeting people face to face, and that's where your stories A lot of times come from his face to face discussions and phone calls and stuff. UM. I was duck hunting two years ago, and I've kind of forgotten about Neil A. Fave's case because it happened in nineteen seventy one when I was maybe have been fifteen years old, and I kind of had a vague recollection of it. Um. But what I happened to by Green Bay, Wisconsin, and I'm from Madison, Wisconsin, was about a hundred forty miles to the southwest, so I was just kind of vaguely aware of it, and kind I had forgotten about it into my adult life. When I was duck hunting a couple of years ago, I we wrot this um boat landing. After we got done hunting, I was reading one of these placards that you often see him parks because it's near a piece of advice from the old guy. Went stopping reading those historical markers. They're fast the things that we just blow past all the time. So I was reading this kind of kind of came back to me that I kind of I can't remember that, but I didn't know there grew some terrible details of it. But um the story. I did this two part series on about the UM about Neil la Faye's murder and Neil la Faye in that era, and it's kind of it's all what fade of the way now. But in that era, it wasn't uncommon for um um biologists wildlife biologist in the Wisconsin din R to also carry warden credentials. They get a little extra training so they could be law enforcement people. And Neil Neil la Faye was one of these guys who was, you know, doing the double duty as a wildlife biologist and uh in a conservation warden. And apparently he had he had run into this this guy a number of times over the years. And um one night, UM, one afternoon, they think he was out posting the end of this wildlife area and heard shooting back in the wildlife area a twenty too and I thought that was he probably thought that was unusual to be here. In two Roland's going off back in a Marshy area, which is duck hunting in hunters and all that. People don't shoot shoot twenty trees at ducks. It's a shotgun activity. So you want to investigate. And they think they think this Neil, this Neil la Fave was murdered by a guy named Brian who's song who was I think twenty eight years old at the time, and he lived called Seth. You just look at Seth, try to picture that. Yeah, the guy looks nothing like No. No, I actually did not look like Um. But apparently they think this Um who saw it was back there intentionally trying to lure Um the faeve in there because he he has to grudge against him because he decided him for shooting a pheasant offseason the year before, and they had other confrontations, and they think he's just a sick son of a bitch. And I was laying for the guy and they when a had of my story. But when when Um, when LaFave went in there to investigate, then they think her song ambushed him, was shot him repeatedly in the face, just shot him. Is a brutal close range killed the guy and he didn't didn't stud him once and they face. He basically unloaded you know, his twenty to smite on mac rifle into the guy's face and you assume he probably shotim wise fell backward, you know too. And then he goes back out of the marsh and his grandmother lived on the side of the marsh. And when went back there, retrieved the thirty six. His thirty six came back into the march of the thirty six, and the shovel proceeded to this is grew some stuff. Um. He proceeded to blast away at Lafave's neck area until the neck area is pretty much just um meat, and then sliced off the head, carried the head about sixty I think it's like only like sixty seventy ft north of there, buried the head face up, then buried it, and then buried the body back where he had fallen, or he dragged him off low waist I think, to the south and then buried him. And the sad poignant parts of that story is that, um. Meanwhile, after this had taken place that evening, this was Neil la Fave, the warden's thirty second birthday. So back home at the right, Oh, he's yeah, he's more like the killer, the killer cleanly kind of kind of like you know, you don't look like him either though. And so back at back at Neil la Pace home, his wife and his two I think he had two daughters and they're like four years old and two years old. We're setting the house up for a surprise party for him. So they had guests over everything else waiting from to come home. Guy never comes home, of course, and when they all find just figured, well, you know he's not coming back, muscle, you know, break up the party. So um, this Peggy la fave I thought, why he's missing, This isn't like him. I bet she ran had a running with this Brian Who song because it is he. She knew about the guy, and then the confrontations they had. So as you went back to the wildlife area, found his truck, started looking for him, and finally about ten o'clock gave up, summoned um Sheriff's department and they started looking for him. That night, they got people together, a law for some people started looking for him, didn't find him. Some of the guys worked searched all night to find them, never to find him. That night. Next day they reconvened at dawn started um. They basically up a skirmish line. People are a few feet apart and start colombing the wildlife, breaking it down, gritting it out, just like you would do when you're looking for a lost animal when you're hunting. And a bowl hunter showed up just to shoot his bowl and practice as bowling. I thought what was going on and said, you wall, he helps, so he joined instart helping. Well, he happened to be the guy that came across a freshly beat up area and he likened it to finding a fresh scrape at a bucket made. It was kind of circular, kind of fresh dirt and things have been moved around, and I felt, that's weird. And he started scooping into his hands and it's it's this, you know, marshy soil, you know, sandy sand, sand based um muskeg type stuff. And right away found ran in the belt buckle of the phase belt buckle. Realized heck, that's here it is, and here he is, and they so they all gathered and then they got and they got the serious people and there the dirt uncovering the body. While I'm as they've worked their way up, they realized the head's not there, so they stopped, and then they summoned the crime lab for Madison to come up to forensics people, and then they didn't arrive till Um, like in the dark, resumed all the work and right away that the law for some people really went to work and interviewed every unter that everyone in that area that they could find, and started giving out light taking some assigning people to do light detector tests. And of course the only hunter they came across that refused to take the test was this Brian who saw it. You know, he lugged it up right away and was not cooperating at all, and they're pretty sure he did it. And what I the way I led my article that I did for me either about this was I thought it was fascinating that the lead prosecutor Um, I can't pronounce the name Zeidmiller and don Zeidmiller, I think his name is Um. He was a hunter himself and he realized it away, he said, he says to me, and he's still he's still around. He's actually a circuit judge in green By, Wisconsin, in his late seventies now probably close to eighty years old. Now, UM, but he remembered it, thinking that, you know, the key to this crime, selving this crime and making a conviction here is finding that thirty at six. He said that twenty two or a half past twenty two, and that's probable long prior through it in Green Bay. For all you know, never find that gun. But no one's gonna throw away a thirty at six year rifle. And so he UM. They went to work and they this is V one, remember, and this wasn't an era before. This is up being the first time Wisconsin got UM wire tap. Up until at time, wire taps pre much has been been a federal government U S. Attorney General type stuff where you you know, like FBI could use it and UM, but Wisconsin passed a law just just recently that they could UM in in real specific terms, you could use a wire tap. So they they set this wire tap up. Then on on on Brian whose songs girlfriend, and because he didn't really have a place that he lived on his own, he lived this girlfriend and eventually UM put the pressure to him by getting this wire tap and then starting to step a series of UM visiting his grandmother, visiting his aunt, all these people I knew he was close to and and doing search warrants to smoke him out, hoping he would call one of them and let them know that, hey, you know, they're up to something. And they even put a d n R ward and to follow him around and basically pop up everywhere he showed up, to pop up make his presence felt, and eventually who saw made the mistake where he um He called his grandmother and said, don't you know, you know they're they're they're doing, they're up to something. Don't let him find that gun. Don't let him find that rifle. And she said, and they got her on top tape saying you know they won't find you won't they won't find your rifle. And so then when they had that and they took that to a voice identification expert and said, yeah, it's definitely his voice. And they then basically you know, when they went to the grandmother's, went back to the grandmother, played the tape for she. She said, yeah, his aunt was here this morning and she she hasn't no, so they quick drove over to her place. I think they've even brought the grandmother along and said enough enough, you know, you know, give us that rifle and she went in the back and I think, I think, um, she hadn't reburied it yet. It was still like in this plastic case, plastic bag. It was still dirty and stuff, but it was all taking apart, placed real carefully into this plastic bag. So then they did different the blue sticks test on that rifle. It's definitely the rifle that blue you know Voorden Lafave's you know, neck apart. So and then they prostituted them and um and got him. And then so that was part one of my piece. Look the crazy thing about the savage murder of Warden Neil fail Faive, Did I say L five that football player guy Neil LaFave is there's a part two. There's a part two. In part two, you know, ten years later he escapes from prison, big chase, big shootout. Death not over. It's more death to come. We're gonna keep talking to Pat here, but to find that part two and to find everything Pat writes about and Pat writes but all kinds of stuff beside people dying, he writes a lot of news items. Uh, you just go find him and all of his work for us at the Meat Eater Dot com and search up pat, You'll just find You'll find him in there. He's floating around all over. When you're a journalist and you spend your whole life as a journalist or your professional life outside of being the Navy, when you go to like when you go to dig up and you're just reporting on these kind of forgotten stories of wilderness murders and mayhem and whatnot. Um, do you feel that there's not do do you have an obligation where you need to do to contribute original work to it rather than just like rehashing crazy to people, like you're rehashing crazy ship that happened, but not doing anything right. Yeah, definitely, I am. I am. I try not. I mean I still do a lot of Google searches and everything I write, But I still think there's nothing as good as a face to face or a telephone interview. Got you know like this Dale Morey Warden that I had talked about in the article. Um, the stories like that where a man sleeps the pillow a gun under his pillow for months and months and months and then find puts the gun away when he knows the guy is dead. Those are the kind of stories you don't get from Google, you know. And and I just you know again, you sound like the old fart talking about in the good old days and ship. But um, you know the idea of making phone calls and driving over knocking on doors, that's so crucial to being a good reporter and being a good storyteller, a good good, good writer, you know. And I I think, But the thing is, I've spent most of my career behind the desk doing freaking phone interviews. You know. I don't get out from behind my desk enough, and every time I do, you're walking you never That's the fun thing about what I do for a living. And I'm not kidding around this. I get I've gotten some my best stories over the years. In the bathroom. You walk in the men's room. You've been covering a meeting. People are saying it back and forth, and they see a stand that the urinal. They walk over next to you and say, Dirk, and if you want something on this, talk to so and so. Yeah, well you're just standing there taking a leak. Yeah, yeah, I don't know what it is, but you know, it's just But I don't think it's just because it's a men's room. But I think part of it is the fact it's it's off the beaten path, it's it won't be seen talking to you because you know a lot a lot of your best sources over the years, and it being people don't want to be seen talking to you because I have just enough hatred among my fellow hunters in Wisconsin don't like me for various things I've written over the years where they don't like they want They'll say to me, I don't want to be seen with you in this in this public meeting, and so they'll they'll call me later and talk to me then. So but to get there back to your he gets hate mail about about covering wildlife politics in Wisconsin, get fired up. It's horrible stuff. But but but but that's what's funny about though, is that I save all that I don't I don't read it over and over again. But um, I save all those kind of things fueled by haters patent na the thing. But the thing is I phone. One time I got a farmer in Salt Dakota a couple of years ago, left me and known on my windshield was Matt Me because where I had parked and it was in December and there were harvesting the corn out there, and this guy left me I really, um, we don't want your cheese heads out here hunting in Salt Dakota. You're blocking the rods over doing this harvesting and you know we're feeding the country. You're that's all you're having fun in our dear and really touched the nerves. Yeah, and I really pissed me off. And he didn't bring him some cheese cards and spotted cow after what. I don't know who he was. I mean, I saw this big combine out there and and they went went out. I didn't know it had stopped at my truck, you know. But I don't know if you wrote it, wrote it in the you know, while I'm still in the field, and then left it on the run as he went out or what. But but you know, it was kind of what I was referring to it. What I found funny about myself was that I toward the letter up this note of pisted so piste off that you asked whole and I chucked into the in of the wind. And then I thought and what I got. And then when I got home back to Wisconsin, I thought, kind of save all that stuff. That's kind of like my little um, you know, mentors of my career is you know I have I have a big sign in my office at home where they had they put my name with the ghostbuster um cross across you know, well that was my that's from my sports freighter days. I really column one time, piste up in the local sports people and they picked me when the basketball games years ago. Isn't it funny that electronic communications don't have the weight that like I still have files. I have files of like early respondence. I became I'm friends with you largely because I'm friends with Doug drn I became friends with Doug drnks. Dug during wrote me a letter mhm he might emailed, I can't remember how it was. That kind of that kind of like goes against my point, but I have so skipped that part. I have files at home of like physical correspondence that someone would go through the hassle and I would say, and I still have it like all saved, and I have like all the notes from my books and no all my like kind of records, and then you can enter the electronic age. It just ends. I don't save any correspondence, none of that stuff. Don't say hate mail. Like if you wrote me a hate mail in the mail, dude, I would totally put that in my files. But I hate male email. Zero thing. Now that we work on books through drive Google Drive, I don't have any but I have all my old drafts of books, all my notes of books. And now it's like information is valueless, like that ship. It just has no there's no there's the thing that feels like something to hold onto with it. But at one time we had like a really we have like a death threat. I had a threat against me and my kids and it was an email. And man, the FBI doesn't look at it that way, right, that dude could have written it in blood and mailed it to me. Man, he went to his garbage. Yeah, they took the email like real serious. But I can't take them that seriously. I feel like it was too easy for you to send me the note. Anybody can send it, stupid ass. No, Yeah, I am. I've gotten threatened. You know, I've had a couple of guys way fist under my nose at public meetings. But you know, I think I'm five ft eight. Most of these guys for me, like you know your honest's size and like gonna you out run themselves a bit? You can, but if you can get at the door, I'd be gone. Um, here's here's an I got our question for you about how you're gonna handle this, Like you want to do a thing about the Edmund Fitzgerald. Yeah, what's there to say? Oh god, there's so much to say. If you're a geek. It's like if you're Kennedy assassination buff like I used to be, you could I could write about that stuff all day. So there's like more ship has gone on with the Edmunds captured in Gordon Lightfoot. You talk about you know you'd like the expression um, that expression um making his own Gravyn FitzGeralds just such a rich, rich story. Yeah, it's just for some reason, you know, people I was I've always thought it would be fun to interview Gordon Lightfoot about the whole thing. But um, he's still kicking. Oh yeah, yeah. I saw him in concert just two years ago. I've seen him twice. I've seen him at least twelve times. You've seen twelve times. At least I want to see Gordon Sue Saint Marie, Ontario, and everybody there just watch him do, especially in that town. It's like when you go to see like Marshall Tucker Band. You know, he just like everybody wants to hear him do. Can't you see if it's like Hetty East, they want to hear same, you know, So everybody's sitting there waiting for him to do Edmond Fitzgerald just like you know, buying New Time, right. You might get a little excited about sundown, right, but most of you there for that. And he knows it's coming, man, and he knows that's why people are there. And he doesn't do it right away because everybody's gonna leave. But towards the end he says, um something the effect of he was, you know, it was twenty one years ago this November. If people just stand up, man, the whole place goes ballistic, their cheering before they heard the song. They're just here to remember that Edmund Fitzgerald because people from that town died. Yeah, Oh definitely. It's um one of the things that I always give him credit for and kind of irritase when people say you weren't for Garden Lightfoot seven Fitzgerald song no one to know about the men. Fitzgerald, I think that's true. That's true, I think, but give Gordon Life for credit. That guy put a masterpiece there. I mean he tapped into something very much in the human psyche, that humans are haunted by that kind of stuff like Michigan stea beautiful stuff and wonderful, wonderful images. And I think, yeah, you know, about twenty years before that, UM, this ship called Carl Bradley went down to Lake Michigan and they even had I think two survivors in that when they had like thirty three guys dieing and two survived. When no one wrote a song about the Carl Bradley I'm from there. Yeah. And then and there was actually a Carl Bradley park up up in Munising, Michigan, up on top of the lake. And then UM then also like in nine six on Lake Huron, a ship called the Daniel J. Morral went down with UM. I think one guy survived that, and it was really a sad story because the guy UM went out there and he realized the ship's breaking up, and there was a life raft and he jumped in with four other guys and as a ship broke up, a big wave kind of washed over this thing. I might be getting the story rob and I'm sure someone will look look at my wikipedie and correct me on this. But ended up with only two guys left on the life raft, and the one guy survived was out there for like for over thirty six dollars. I think they know the ship was down for the longest time. Um, it's like thirty three. Yeah. So the moral, the moral, the coolest, A cool story about the moral. I want to know the moral of the story. I pronouncing it's it's spelled Um, it could be pronounced morale for all I know. M R R E L L. Well that was the boat. Yeah, that's a that's a show. They're gonna tell me the moral of the story about. I'll probably get back to that at some point. I'm rambling here. But but the Daniel J. Morral went down. Morale went down in six No one wrote a song about that. But those are the three biggest ships to sink on the Great Lakes. But we don't even know about them, if it's true, because you know, it was a big song right now, hating my kids like that. I mean, I remember in the Navy that That song came out when I was in my first year in the Navy, and it came up in summer seventy six. And I remember when when that song came out, I listened on because I was like light as a light foot geek. I bought almost all his albums that he's ever put out. But when that song came out, came out Summertime Dream in nineteen seventies, six Eyes. When I leave, I bought in downtom Madison brought back, played it that song came on. Holy shit. I remember that because I was watching the news that night and it was the next night and they had a segment on the evening news about this ship going down in Lake Superior, and so I thought I started reading the lyrics through it because he had the lyrics, and inside the album, I thought, holy shit, he's wrote a song about this. And then I started playing masterpiece. Man, there's a masterpiece. Does anyone know where the love of guy? God? That's that's those lines there When people say I want to hear the song, I did not imagine the pot it turning into a Gordon Lightfoot. Well. I admired, I admired good writing and that that song is good. Yeah, he was visited by an angel or something when he wrote because the rest of the stuff is good. Is that that good man up love is kind of annoying, like Don Quixote song his I love it all. I'm a I'm a real, I'm a real Gordon Lightfoot Sundown's beautiful song because all about it unfaithful people and you know, having affairs going around. Danny warhol Is covered record the Dvan Fitzgerald Yeah sht version. Yeah the time when I listen to people do the song, I think you need you need Gourdon Light from his prime singing that song right. But U But you know when people act like they'll they'll read about the Fitzgerald or hear about the Fitzgerald and say, yeah, I went down so fast they didn't have time to to send um an SS and so it happened to well suddenly, So these guys probably didn't know what was going on. I thought, Man, if you think that you've never been a ship, because when you're a ship, you feel every freaking little thing that that's going on. And I remember laying I racked the navy acrossing the North Atlantic. You feel that big ship, right, riding up these big waves and then when it's coming down on their side and you just sit there and you're act wait for it, wait for wait for it, and they're just you can just picture the spray coming off, you know. So those guys in the fifth Yirald that you think those guys live in that ship for months that time, back and forth across the lakes, and they're out there in the worst storm the captain's ever seen, you know. And and they knew the ship had a history of having a weird twist in heavy seas where it would have its nosewood bow wood twist and creek and it was commented known thing about that. Yeah, apparently the captain knew about it, and I'd scared him, and so I could go in the whole thing about why I think if you'd been if you'd survived, why if they had if they have a court martial system for form Great Lakes captains, you should have been court martial, you know. And but m the old cook came to I mean, this ship, this ship had enough things wrong if the guys knew about it, and yet that guy, that captain drove it into the freaking storm, that he should have known better, and other captains knew better. The captain that left port two hours after him, who who was um took his job seriously knew how to do knew how to do weather reports, analyze weather information coming in. He knew this was not a starting to funk with. You know that this is a storm. You go up and you hugged that north western corner of that lake, and and even anchor if you have to drop the hook and anchor. And why there's a song about that guy. That's human nature right there, a song about the guy that didn't go into the storm. The you know in the song he says that they would have made Whitefish Bay if they put fifteen more miles behind her. We used to spear Whitefish and Whitefish Bay. And in the winter when it's frozen, you know, nice always sit you can see quite a ways. You know, it's all iced over. You know, we sit out there. And when I wasn't like busy doing whatever you're doing, fishing and stuff, I always kind of look out thinking of that tune. You know, it's kind of like it's haunting man. I can tell you about that. I'll David. The one thing I want to make sure. I tell you that I came across when I was reading about the fifth zero, because I'm I'm working on a piece right now for meat either about UM November gals, and that this UM you know last year Spencer neat piece about armistic stay storm kill all the duck hunters, and that was November eleven. Well, that fift Gero went down November. UM that the Dad, the Carol Bradley went down November. The um the Morrell went down November twenty nine. There's Halloween storms. I mean you can go through and find a storm at the storm of a storm that comes through that time of year, and and they're they're meaning real gals, and they generate forces of UM like fifty mile winds up the ninety mile hour winds and ways up THETT and the Fitzgerald when the little known pieces. But what destroyed it was that um it had been given this given permission to carry I think, um, three extra feet of iron ore pellets and it's in its cargo holds and so I drove it down to is laying about eleving feet of a freeboard, you know, water above space, above the water level. And so when this thing was crossing the lakes and the storm. It was, you know, sitting three ft lower in the water than what it was actually built for. And these these ore carriers, to people should realize, they weren't built like navy ships and passengers ships where there's all these watertight bulkheads inside the ship. It was basically huge, huge cargo areas. Three huge cargo areas filled with these there's like twenty one hatch covers on top. There's like a wheelbarrel froating around full of ship exactly a great description. And that's all they had in between is based with a monster freaking screen like we have here in the room. You know, I mean it's metal. Bit's not going to stop water from coming into aug its compartments. And then, um, the other thing that where I blame the captain for it was that they didn't that they were not serious about keeping the hatch covers um clamped down um as in the navy. So like our old guy again, but there are certain hatches on a ship that are always dogged down, always dogged on, never opened, you know, for water tight integrity. And this this ship they went out there there they had sixteen clamps around each those twenty one openings holding down a five sixteen inch piece of metal. And these hatches, these hatches are about I think they're eleven feet wide and forty eight ft long, and they only had two clamps holding those down instead of all sixteen all clamped down in this. And the investigations came out later that they said this, surely the captain hadn't been good about maintaining the gaskets on those on those hatches or the combing on those on those hatches, and then they common to go to sea with only two things clamped down, which is not just that ship. A lot of those ships didn't do that, so it's real, it's real lack stuff. I wonder why gorda why Gord didn't take any pot shots at the cat that he actually did, you know, like later in in this is really geeky hiding in the song. No no, there's a part of the song though he rewoked about the hatch covers for some NPM the main main hatch quake caved in and the hook says fellas has been good to know you well. Lightfoot felt guilty later in life because that was never really um. Some investigations the initial Coast Guard investigation pretty much blamed the hatch covers that they caved in and Lightfoot. Um either a knew either knew about that or but he wrote his song before the all the investigations. But Um he felt guilty about this was implying blame on the crew and me, I, look as that's not the crew. The crew might not have done their job bettening down the hatches, dogging down those hatches. No, that's on the captain. The first thing you learned in the Navy is that everything stops the captain. Yeah, if they have if they have a clue Asian and the captains in his rack the middle of the night, they don't, They don't throw out the incident that was on deck that that night. They threw out that. They go on and get the captain and he's done because they figure he did not he did not Um put the discipline into his his crew to do things right every time. And I think that's one thing. Um, if you're if you get drilled in the idea that there's a right way a wrong way in a Navy way, you never forget that these kind of jobs are tedious. Bettening down sixteen sixteen clamps on twenty one hatch covers. It's probably all day is probably tedious as hell, but but damn it. It keeps the ship more stable, more watertight, and it should have been done and it wasn't done. So plus the ship to the final geeky thing this is these are ships to that are built before the days of modern computers where they could put a ship model on the computer subjected to waves, computerized watching the ship twists. But you know, they get back to your comment about the sux locks. They built the ships to fit the sux locks, not the other way around. And so they built these ships. They're too long for the for the width of them, and so they created this weakness in these ships. And so like they they one of the um Fish real sister ships. They think they put it on a commission like um later that year because they thought they had lengthen the more because the Fisheral was was for a long time the biggest ship on the Great Lakes. It subsequently got it wasn't the biggest, but still the biggest ship to have sunk on the Great Lakes. Uh, titilate me real quick? Hit me? Was titillation on the you're working on the I don't even know what they are. Bullhead murder murder. Yeah, um hit me with some quick. A guy was a commercial bullhead um fisherman. That's the thing back then that was I go into that in the article that that um like he fished bullheads for commercial meat markets. They that they seeing them, they hook and line. He bought from commercial fishermen. Uh, not just commercial fisher but they day in Dale fisherman he'd buy bullheads from. Then they had had like people would come in and clean them. And this is in southern southern Minnesota, real in Minnesota. Yeah, and so there was a market, there was a market bullhead, bullhead bullhead market. Well, I don't know if there's even flazest on the meat. And then you know, they got them and take the heads off and skin them. It's nineteen so on July twelfth, and they had been investigating this guy because Minnesota had had a law my bag limit on bullheads in that air, because they were being hit so hard by the commercial market, they started kind of clamping down on this and they had a possession limit of fifty. Well this guy was obviously going way past fifty, but you know, but it was still It was one of those things you get dodged because other lakes they weren't subject to that same size, same bag limit, like up in the Canadian border, the lakes of the Minnesota weren't subject to that, but down here they were. Over here they weren't. So this guy was kind of playing with that, you know that this commercial fisherman, well, they find UM tracked down in him. They had enough evidence to go in there and start putting the screws to him. One day. UM. Three guys, three wardens showed up to show him earlier in the day and they didn't have a search warrant, and he just basically told him to get lost. And in that era, the game wardens did not have they did not have uniforms of the Minnesota UM Conservation Department. They did not curry UM state issued firearms. One of the guys had had had his own personal handgun, but he was not UM displaying it. He had tucked away some place. Well, UM, so two guys go over there, he chased them out. They come back later with their basically the lead ward and the lead investigator in this in this case, who had run ins at times with this commercial fisherman and they started putting the screws to him, and one of them asked him, what do you can we see your your license, you know, commercial license. He said, yeah, I'll go get it. So he left this this barn he had a barn that he did all the fish processing in, walked across the yard to his house. When his house came back out the twelve gage, some atomatic twelve gauge, and the one warden says to him, there's no one need to get smart with that thing. And he says, I'll show you who's smart, and he quickly shouldered his gun shot the lead warden right in the chest at like twenty ft away, knocked him across into his garden, his flower garden. He fell dead, swung instant. The next guy who Kenny had him to turn yet shoots him, kills him on the spot. The third warden was now trying to turn and get on there, and he just bang shoots him in the back, kills him. Yeah. The story, Yeah, well, I always say the power of meat eater, Steve. You read a good story and meat eater people read it. And I got people right in the spencer, you know, telling them about this. This nineteen story remind you of old murders. Yeah, yeah, so they they sent the story to UM, sent the story to Spencer. Spencer contacted me and I started working on it. And if on all the old principles and whatnot, that's that's the sad thing. All those guys are so long gone. That's right, I end up doing. I interviewed um uh fisheries guy about the bullhead angle and talked to him about the bullhead angle and how why we don't have bullheads in that kind of quantity these days. And that's an interesting story in itself, good story. And then UM also one of the guys who's like a descendant of this word and whip where I mentioned talked about in the story. The first to lead investigator talked to him a little bit, but he was he's probably like a great grandson or grandson. I didn't didn't really know anything unique to it. So I but a guy in nineteen and I got in two thousand twelve though, wrote a page book about it, and it's not a long book. He used type that you see, like a elementary school type for reading. Yeah, well that's true too. It might be for all guys like me to read that book. But um, I set my doc and on so I can read it without my glasses. That's exactly. So that so that that's what that was tilting enough, But that that's that story. But then the guy killed himself and and they don't really ever know for sure why he did that and why he killed himself why. The only thing they can speculate is that, um, he knew he was losing his his empire basically is no longer going to be the bullhead. Yeah, shoot a few people. Your bullhead empire is gonna suffer. Oh man death with Dirk dude, Thank you. I'm glad things went the way they did in that old speak, easy deal all them generations ago. Man, you wouldn't be sitting here with us, well you know, I wouldn't know what. You wouldn't know what. So that's a good point. We might be talking to. Something more interesting could be. Can I tell the New York Times? Can I tell you New York Times story? Real quick? You want to tell me a New York Times story? Yeah, real quick, because we're done um talking about things that you save. Back around nineteen three d four, my um, my late father in law, said he had good contact at the New York Times, and to get me a job there. All I do is put together a little packet of my material and and my resume and send it out to New York Times, and they'd get me a job. And I thought, I want to do that ship get a chance works of the New York Times. Sure, you know. So I did my package, send it out there, and about a month later I got this like a one or two sentence letter, and they got my name wrong. He said something, my dear Mr Duncan, no jobs. We have no jobs for you and prospect and the guy sent his name. I had a guy there tonight. This is the last story, so you know. You know McCormick Carthy is a famous recluse. UM doesn't like talk to anybody, won't do interviews. UM. I heard a story the other night when I was in Chicago for I was doing a fundraiser event for Theodore Roles about conservation partnership, like a meat and great type yea. And the guy was telling me his story because he knew. He knew I'm a great admirer of the work of Corn McCarthy. And he told me a story about some guy he knows that was going to Santa Fe where Corn McCarthy lives. He's going to Santa Fe and wants to meet him, but he knows he doesn't like to meet anybody, so he writes in this letter saying, like, I know you don't like to talk to anybody, um, but you know if I could just talk to you for ten minutes? Right? No reply? I don't know this true? Does the story the guy told me? No reply? He goes and does his trip to Santa Fe, comes home, time goes by, and eventually he gets a postcard from Corne McCarthy and the postcard says fuck you. He's sends a humor about it. All that's great. I know it's true or not. All right, we'll keep it. You're not gonna retire, are you? Plan sixty six? In January social Security kicks in there. Well it has been IM gonna claim it yet? Really? Yeah, I'm waiting till I'm seventy suing Max off. You're gonna dig in though, yeah? Yeah? Like yeah, says I mnna fight this to the end. You paid in man, Yeah? Yeah, my wife's are you don't get tattoos on medicating all that day? They don't pay for that. And you know, we could talk all day about my ideas on tattoos. So, oh, Spencer new Heart, I don't know if he's really gonna do this or not. But is he doing this? I don't know this idea. Spencer says that in our auction house of oddities to raise money for our land Access initiative, Spencer says he's going to auction off the right to pick a one inch tattoo on him. You can pack whatever you want it to be. Yeah, I told my I told my joining him, I said, if you if you do that, we can do it side by side. I'll do that. Oh you'll get one too, so we can auction that off. Yeah that's great. So we gotta go there. So let's just say they're like a hundred thousand bucks want it, but we're gonna put a little one by one inch penis and balls. You're gonna you're gonna have to just gonna say an anus. But yeah, we'll go with that. Well, if I could, if I could to choose a spot, but you would do it for conservation, for conservation, but I add to choose a spot, it would be someplace visible. Yeah, I went from these pencil size arms. I won't put him on my arm. You could hide it in your butt cheeks that be sensitive. The e spencer tell you what a second tattoo was. I don't want to blow his spot up, but it's so good. He got the Ham's mascot carrying a giant Morrel mushroom. How old is he? Yeah? I think he's thirty. Can we just start a hold another one right now and start in with tattoos? If you have something to add? They were closed. No, we hadn't started. We had to start it and hold another podcast right now. No I can't. I can't next time. Next time, Pat, thanks for coming on. Man. Oh, we'll have to have you back out like he came out. Probably a year ago. It's been two next years already since we talked about that sonar enthusiast to found all the Dead People. We never talked about him. What no, no, no, I'm sorry, I'm confusing by sonar experts. Yeah, that was that was. That was That was because that's what I've written for Meat Eat about an our guy that's phone to get more people like that doing that. Yeah, I have um. That was two years ago. We did that podcast about but Rick kreeger Mass and finding finding the guys. That was a good one. Yeah, that was guys from the bottom of Lake Lake Wing grow Lake Wisa Laibsa for forty six years in the bottom of that lake in that car. Yeah, that was two next years ago. Already, Ladies and gentlemen, Pat Durkin on deaf, Thanks Pat, coming on, Pat making the trip alright, buddy, see you soon.

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