00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is me eat podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten 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 light, Go farther, stay longer. All right, everybody, We're coming from Michigan's Upper Peninsula the u P and uh. Here was Sean Weaver, who has been pain right now to be recording up stupid podcast in the cold gray light of dawn on the duck hunt, right at sunrise, recording a podcast. It's just it's just it should be illegal. But the way it worked out, like Phil's here all the way, all the way to to to take his engineering abilities on the road, that's true. Did you have fun yesterday, Phil out dock Hutton. Oh yeah, no, it was a blast. Especially. I mean, we'll get into it later. But seeing those boats here we're using and everything, it was something I was not aware of. You weren't aware a layoff boats, not at all. Yeah. Um, the last time we were this is a different experience because the last time we were on the road together to record a show, we got to go to a tiki bar. That's true. Well, here's the thing. I was planning on going by myself. I wasn't going to subject you to that. And then for some reason you and cal Rourke, Denver, your your wife all decided to join. Uh and it was embarrassing for you to witness me in that in that sort of space. But was it your birthday or my anniversary? Was my wedding anniversary? And we shared a drink out of a pineapple? It's pretty covid people. Yes, it was the birth of COVID Yeah, that's it was February. It was the fane. Well, yeah, we're at the National Wild Turkey Federation. There's no way of knowing, but us sharing that drink could have you know, it could have spread it. Yeah, it was the pineapple. Okay. So Phil's here, joined by Sean Weaver and also Dylan Grapes Michigan Native Lake State University. Did you graduate alone? What's your study? Fishers in wildlife? You did? Man? Everybody I know that went there did that. I haven't used it yet, but I got it. Well, no, you use it like he use it like a like what it was meant for? Man? Yeah, you got a major in duck hunting. You don't feel that you ever killed Have you ever killed a duck? You wouldn't have killed if you hadn't gone to Lake State and learned something. Um probably not, Probably not. I've forked out a lot of money to kill one extra Yeah, I'd like, yeah, I want It makes me returned to a thing that uh, Pat Durkin said, I think on this podcast where he was talking about what he Pat Durkin used to be the He us to be the editor of Deer and Deer Hunting magazine, and so he got to spent a lot of time with him profile a lot of like sort of the most famous big bark killers on the planet, and he gradually became disheartened because he said that somehow many of them, um as polished as they are at killing deer, would be incapable of telling you what kind of tree their tree stand is in. And he wanted it to be otherwise, right, you know, But it's good that you got like a fish and wildlife deal. Yeah. I enjoyed it, and it brought me to this area that I'd really never explored a whole lot. And I got four years to drive around and look at all sorts of ship and so you start, you started. Yeah, I I came up here in two thousand and fifteen, was my freshman year. And then, uh, you did it because of the hunting potential. The bid then for me was that when you lived on campus, at our public safety you could like check in your shotgun, so you could if you lived in the dorms, you could put your gun at the public safety and then you could go in and check it out, go hunted, and back in. And so you lived in dorms. Yeah, my first two years. See when I was up here, we got a waiver somehow or another. They had like a let a sign off you could do that. They had to approve if you want to live within the first two years. But I did the dorm dorm life for two years and then moved off. It's interested to this place. I'm glad to hear that lake, the Lake state and the up still sucks in hunting fishing kids from downstate because me and my brother, uh, they both wanted to do fishing wildlife. So we all did community college, which we call like thirteenth grade skiing community college. UM, and then they came up here. I came up and did one year. But I was like, I wanted to be a writer by that point mostly, so I only did one semester here and then went back down state where you could get like a writing whatever the hell? Yeah at Grand Valley. But then we hung out here. If this is our primary hangout for years up here to fish, steel ahead, yeah, everything else man, hunting, deer, Yeah, there's all sorts of If you just kind of get out and you know, explore, you can find all the fishing and hunting opportunities you want. Oh it's amazing, man. And it's like a thirty minute drive. It's not. You're not ranging like you find out in the West where you gotta go few everything four hours. Yeah. No, that's a good spot. Man. So so now you're you're a waterfowl guide yep, but you work out in Kansas. I died out in Kansas. Um for bid Kansas Outdoors And then, um, what's that place we're out of, Hutchinson? Um do you recommend it? Oh? Yeah, really good? People? Would you tell me if you didn't recommend it that that'd put you in a weird spot? As long as Ben's not listening to the podcast now, I I uh last year is my first year. UM. I really didn't really enjoyed it. UM. It was completely different for me. UM coming from Michigan where you're hunting honkers and going out there and you're hunting lessers and specks and snows, and that was just completely different. UM. So I had to there was a big learning curve. UM. I'm sure I'll learn more this year too. But there's a lot of birds. Everybody at the at the business does their part. Everybody works hard, and so that was clients on birds. But that was your first year. I'm just I'm confused. So last year was your first year guiding there or first year as a guide ever, um, first year guiding there, And I did a few controlled uh pheasant hunts here in Michigan as branches um, but that was about it. And then obviously out there is like four and a half months of guiding, so it's a grind UM. And then I come back here and this year I have a good buddy uh kind of central up that runs bear hunts, and I went out there and I helped him run bear clients UM in September, and then I ran a few hunter hunts up here too. So when you're doing the bear clients, you guys are it's it's like draw tech eggs, but you're running. You're running baits in September YEP. So it's all we have a point system for our bear tags here, um, and then we run. We took on twenty clients and we run thirty five different baits. UM, so we stay busy. Do you just get big bears? Um? We had a lot on camera. The biggest bear we killed us three hundred pounds, which for mission, our average black bears a pounds. That's a good bear. But we had a lot of pictures, you know, four or five pounders. But when you get clients in the stand that have never seen a bear before, the smaller ones is always trying to come in first. When that one watchs then to them it looks like the four hundred pounder and they shoot it. But we didn't have like when I lived in Lower Lower Peninsula, we didn't have bear hunting. There was just there was bear hunting a little bit north of us. We didn't have bear hunting where we live, so like, bear tags weren't really on our radar. UM. Well, my brother Danny started going to school up here. He right away drew a bear tag. So we started going out and U shooting carp with our bows, which isn't the best. Baby didn't really know what we're doing. And I had a big freezer already used to freeze like muskrats and stuff during trapping season. We filled that thing up with bags of carp um that we shot with our bows. And so he started. He started a little bait stationed up here and right away killed and I remember he had a nice one. He killed like a two pound boar um right away. And then my other brother when he came up here, he got a bear tag and he went and did like the thing where you go around and get expired. Yeah, you know, remember it so funny. He came into a case of bugles. You know, it was like little bugles. Yeah, put him on your fingers or you get cheese. Like I remember a guy used to when I was working for doing a millwright work for Ronnie Bam, there was a guy that he had who had had too many d u s and couldn't drive anymore. So I was like his basing his chauffeur because he knew how to do a lot of the jobs. So I became like I had to drive him around because he couldn't drive, and that learned how to do all of it. The stuff he did. His favorite treat on Friday night driving back from the job is he get bugles in a thing of squirt cheese in black olves. And he liked to fill that bugle up with squirt cheese, top it with a black olive and eat it while he's going down the road. And you can imagine he had a drink accompaniment. So anyhow, like my brother wander around out in the woods, and I even have a picture of him, like he's like standing there with like all these bugles, but he'd always have a box the bugles under his arm and he'd be eating the bugles. But then he's like dumped him. Then he dumped some of the box into the bait thing. But it finally becomes the first day and he comes out there with a He goes out there with a bucket to add the bait pile, right, and he goes and dumps the bucket on the bait pile. And he's getting situated in his blind and realize that ship I left a bucket at the bait pile. So he says he spins to look and there's already a bear standing there and that was his bear. Nice just like very productive. Did he did he topped the pile off with squirt cheese and all it. No, No, I don't know. That was a different guy straight that would have brought him, would have brought in the big ones. But yeah, man, it was a whole other world, you know living up here. Man. Yeah, yeah, it's uh eating, get away from people, and it's kind of nice. It's quiet, hum and there's lots of wildlife, lots of good opportunities to get out, even if you're not like in hunting fishing, if you just you know, you want to hike, you know, it's a qualmenton falls is right here pictured rocks. I mean, there's a lot of good seeing sight to go, you know, to go and look at Yeah, and I did up here what would have been almost like unimaginable where we grew up hunting. Is as soon as I moved up here, I got one day, I got too deer with my bow. And one day which should have taken three years, taken three years in some of the ground we used to hunting, you know down below. Yeah, it's the deer hunts definitely not what it used to be, that's what I've heard. But our our wolf population is getting pretty big. I remember cutting my first wolf track up here, um and being very surprised by it. Yeah you know, but now yeah, but in those days, it was like thirty five what do they talked about, like thirty five deer per square miles and stuff. Man, just it was unbelievable, and the bad winnard coming. They'd be like yarded up and starved to death everywhere, and it was wild. Yeah, yeah, we've got you know, obviously we ran all the bear baits and uh, it wasn't uncommon that at least one of your baits every night had wolves on it. Yeah, and we have pictures like three four wolves and one trail camp picture on your baits and they'll they'll rip them right open, move all the logs right out of the way, and oh yeah, they'll run the bear right off. Huh. That's interesting. Sucks for us. But you don't do any fur trapping to you. I do not. Um. The buddy mine that owns the company, his name is John ron Um. What's his name, John ron huh um enough, uh, yeah, that's like a weird thing, Like it's not his fault, man, it's a weird thing parents do now and then you know, therefore I think of Jonathan Ron. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if his full name is longer. I know his dad is also John Ron, So he's like Ron John Shirts surf shop. Right, He's he's a junior, but his company is you Per Outdoors nine oh SIPs and he does his big things bears, but he does he actually takes uh trapping clients and basically the clients will come in and try up with him and like run the line with him, and then they get to kind of see how it's done and like the ins and outs of it because they're because they're doing like a class, they want to learn it or they want to experience it both. And then, um, so they try to see how it's done, you know, what to look for, how to do it, um, and then hopefully they get something and then um, he'll take te him you know, tannent and everything. And then they did to take the belt back with him. Yeah, so he's just trying to get into that. And then he just got his captain's license. Um, so he's running started next year, he's going to start doing uh late trout j in on late Superior and then uh Walleye trips as well. Real go get her. Yeah, he's he's really good, dude. When I took when I was in high school, you'll know this name because of where you're from. When I was in high school, I took a day of trapping lessons for two and fifty bucks from Mark June, who when for prices plummeted, he became like a big deer guy, like a big white tail started doing like white tail products and all that. You know that name Sean Yep. Yeah, day at trapping lessons. M I I personally have never relayed on it, but I know it's it's been around here. I was gonna ask you if you're allowed because back in the old days, you were allowed two river rotters here per year, and you're only allowed one river otter per year in the southern part of the the the northern half of the southern part of the state. So it's cool because you can catch two up here. Yeah. I don't know if it's still too or if it's down to one, but oh, SHAWNA wanna returned to something. Yeah, this is your second time on the show. Second time. The first time you were on the show, we were with your friend who blew his toes off with Danny to toe Morrison who blew his toes off in a layout blind. And what's funny about this is yesterday we were hunting and layout boats and I, at first I was trying to figure out, like where I wanted a shotgun delay. Um, I thought about your friend blowing his toes off, layoff, aware of like, all of a sudden I should not put Then I put it together that you would not only blow your toes off in a layout boat, but you would then sink. And so then I was like, oh, that's why one would never ever third barrel inside the boat. It'll be bad news. Yeah. In thirty five water joined also by our very own sitting here the first person to ever uh be on this show. In birken Stocks, Robert Stocks introduceself Max. My name is Max Barta, and um, I'm a camera guy. Are those actual burken stocks? Do you? Um? Do you tend to side with the like? Do you have a lot of conspiracy theories? Do you think kem like our cam trails and stuff like that? You just like them. They're comfy, They're like crocs but more fashionable. Is that right, listen? I have Yeah, I like him. I'm not down on him. I think it's great. Have you tried them before? No? I never have. Kind of what's that you can put them on for a while to day. If I put them on, I start going right on, right on. You don't know what's working. You're like, so your longtime production partners with Sean um it's been about I think this is our fifth year working together. Sex. Yeah, working together, So you don't you don't you know what you need to realize. One thing I like about Sean, and it makes me like about you, is how loyal Sean is. Yeah, we didn't know each other, but when we're trying to get Sean to come work for us, Sean was like, there's just only one way this will happen, and that it's Max comes to to the point where he legitimately would have not come work for us, who always asked? I definitely. So I was either like, either Sean is the most loyal dude on the planet or Max is the greatest dude on the planet. But either way, either way it seems like a win, right yeah, No, I mean, Sean, I have been working together, like we said about for six years, and we found out right away what worked and what didn't. We just stuck with it. So and you guys have done the you guys have done a lot of the waterfowl work together, but also predator stuff. Yeah, we've been chasing fur and feathers for a long time. Is that the main is that the main thing you guys work on though, Yeah, you know, part of like working with Max and me wanting to have Max come along is there's few not a lot of people can handle the road time of traveling chasing ducks, and like we've been on the road for two and a half weeks now, there's not a whole lot of production people that, like, I want to be on the road chasing ducks for two and a half weeks. I think they think they do right until it happens. You guys ever getting big, huge fights. Oh there's arguments here and there preview one for me, I don't I don't know. Max broke my tailgate. Hits my tailgate, you know you could tell he was pretty upset. No, it's just like, yeah, it was just like I didn't break that tailgate handle. You broke that tailgate handle. I think it broke itself. Sean, lay out what we're working on here. We're working on a new show called Duck Lore. We're in Michigan hunting ducks, hunting divers on the Big Water, and we're putting together a whole new waterfowl series and Shawn's at the helm. At the Helm, you get to see him every single time. We're covering all kinds of different ducks, different places, really gathering the waterfowl experience across the whole range of places. Started in Texas. Now we're all the way up here in Michigan, which seems backwards for the migration. Yeah, we're did you stop along the way um North Dakota and Nebraska, so we're on trip four. Then you're gonna head west from here. We're gonna talk more. We'll talk more about that in a minute, but a couple of updates. The House of bodities. So the auction House of Bodies run to group three. Now, well, when you're listening to this, run a group three. We're a couple of days ahead of the schedule here because right now we got what kind of how do hell do you say, Daniel's dog. We always been calling it a drop or something just for short, I'm the wrong guy to ask the dogs kicking ass on the auction house, what's it sitting at. It's currently it's sitting at like it's a good puppy. But you know what, they have four pups. So the way it's gonna work is the winning bidder works with the breeder to select which dog is back like what they want to Uh. Basically, male female will pick on the litter from their perspective, they get to pick because there's four different dogs. So the breeder will work with you to find out what you want. Because someone might want a male, they want a female, whatever the hell? Uh. Anyways, Group three is now launched. We have a so we got a lot of cool friends. We have a signed Pittsburgh Steelers jersey from Steelers linebacker Joe Schobert. He donated his football jersey to the All Action House. Got a bunch of teammates to sign it. That's pretty cool, including the quarterback Ben Roethlisberger and T J. Watt, Joe Hayden. There's a bunch of good names on there. Makea Fitzpatrick, Chase Claywood, Devin Bush, Cam Hayward, ju Ju Smith, Schustern, G. Harris. Anyways, all these fellers signed this jersey, and this signed jersey is up in group three, so all the signatures on it. We got a hand forged carbon knife donated by Cal but made by Riley Kirkpatrick Forge and Sheridan Oregon. It was Cal was supposed to use it for special occasions, but he doesn't he according to Cal, he doesn't have a nice enough special occasions. It's more beautiful than uh, something he should own, So it's going up on there. It's meant for carving large chunks of meat. This is other thing that's kind of this crazy set of things. There's artist David Burgess. Burgess he uh he made these mugs that have everybody's ugly as mug on him. So there's a cow mug, Yanni mugg. There's even like a dirk and mug as a naval captain. All the people's mugs are on the set of mugs. No one in the world has a set. This is like not a thing. These are like one offs. You can get the whole set of ugly mugs by Dave Spencer. Now everybody knows that Spencer Newharst, big Rockhound Spencer. His wife Shelby took There's ship Spencer's always finding out in the woods and made a custom petrified wood necklace, Montana moss egg At hoop earrings, and a pair of Montana moss egg it stud earrings, all being auctioned as a collection for that special someone in your life. We also have framed original art by one of my favorite wildlife artists, Jamie Carmody. Oh she does like you should go look on her phil pull up her Instagram deal. It's unbelievable her work. I was trying to get her. She she didn't want him, not being too happy with it, but I'm trying to get I was trying to get her to have me a painting of wolves that have disemboweled a bison but it's still standing, but they're they're eating the entrails. Came to me in a feverish dream and she's been working on it but wasn't happy with it either way. We have a painting of her of dogs banning up a mountain lion, which is cool. It's it's like you just gotta go look at it. You gotta go look at it. It's an incredible painting. We have another meatcraft or knife and as you know, these are like rare and hands teeth now and sell for a bunch of money. Another meatcraft knife and the main thing. Here's the main draw. Everybody knows Season two of Doss Boat, which includes a boat that my The boat is my childhood mentor, John Gary, my childhood fishing mentor. John Gary, his boat, his nine seventy three StarCraft, which then became my family's boat and then became the Doss Boat Season two boats. But we got rid of John Gary's old horse, Evan Rude. And this boat has been paired with a Honda, a brand spicketty new Honda four stroke forty all kinds of add on, all kinds of customization. You can go sign up right now, go to the auction house of bodies. You don't need to buy anything, but you can just sign up for free. And we're gonna give that boat away. So that's John Gary Slash, my old fishing boat paired with a brand new forty horse four stroke Conda. It's a sweet boat. Everything on it's it's old, but like read one, that's a giveaway. Here's here, let me get you some behind the scenes. What it does is it drives traffic to the arms about it. We want to auction off and that would have been a high ticket item, but we thought it'd be like not fair to people that can't get in on the bidden because of like whatever financial constraints. Um, this way, you just go win the damn boat. To come back to her arts, Jamie underscore wild art. Everybody doesn't wild. He doesn't underscore. It's it's you look at the top about with those pictures of hunting dogs. Yeah, they're pretty sweet. It's unbelievable. Yeah, it's pretty cool stuff. She's got one here with a mallard that I'm a fan of. Ye, it's unbelievable looking. She's cool. Uh, piece of feedback. We hadd on Paul Lewis from f h F Gear, who is a retired police officer, and we were trying to do a segment with Paul like called ask cop because like weird stuff cops do. You could ask like he's retired, he has got no skin in the game anymore. You could be like, why do you guys always right, yeah, do whatever they do. So we're like asking Paul, why do you guys tend to all of a sudden decided to turn on your lights and scirt down the road and then turn him back off again. You know that's the thing they do. Well. A cop from Cheyenne, Wyoming rode in and he said, I was This is to quote him. I was shocked, shocked to hear Paul describe the use of light sirens to get back to the office. He recognizes that Paul was joking, perhaps, but this is a thing that he really wanted to a myth that he wanted to dispel. He's a fire fighter Cheyenne, Wyoming. He's in the officer seat, meaning he's in control of the lights sirens on the fire truck. He's very aware of public perception of this very activity and it always bothers me. He calls it running emergent and then shutting off lights sirens prior to making it unseen. He says, upper case never, so like a Trumpian use of upper case, we would upper case never use an emergent response to get back to the station, to get dinner, to get to the bathroom, or any other non emergency. You could get fired for doing that, and not only it's an inherent danger to ourselves and the public. Here's what he says happens. Someone calls, holy sh it, much smoke coming out of the neighbor's window. Okay. The first information you have is there's an emergency situation. You respond accordingly. Then it's often followed up by the dispatcher cooking, incident under control, shut the lightstone or car crash. Okay, emergency. Then it follows up it's minor. You're still going, but it's not worth mm hmm. All the pomp and circumstance, says, that's why we we trigger turn the shift on. Information continues to feed in, is determined that it's non emergency, you shut it off, and that's why that's happening. This guy hates when this occurs. Oh you gotta feel. But then listen goes on because Paul from f HF has a response, current arranged response. So now we have a debate. Paul says, I would agree with him and that this is something that would not be looked at favorably by the public or administration. Certainly not something we'd stand for normally. And I was trying to add a little humor. It's something that we joke about, but really not do. That's said. That's said. I saw a bathroom emergency happened once in the middle of the night after leaving a standoff with a guy with a gun ten years ago. Times have changed, but he does he does. Uh, he does concede point nine percent of the time. It's because of changing circumstances from the collar. Now, here's another interesting deal. When we are and talking about antelope hunting and and we have an antelope hunting episode up on Netflix right now, and then it we use a game bag. Yeah, we use a game bag on a like a I can't remember putting on a tripod or gun barrel. We can put on the barrel my rifle and waving the wind and um to get an analop's attention. Now, I always felt that the white mattered because like antelo burn blazoned with a big white panel on their flank. And uh, it's not for camouflage. It's for yeah, seeing each other out in wide open you know, on wide open ground. But this guy ran into this uh this historic account. So there's a report, a report on an expedition down the Zuni in Colorado Rivers by Lorenzo Sill Grieves in eighteen fifty one, and the expedition had a naturalist assigned to the expedition named S. W. Woodhouse. He talks about what a pain and the acid is to get within rifle range of Ani back in efty one. They see it coming and they book off, and these guys are, you know, shooting at that point in time. These guys are shooting, uh, you know, muzzleloading rifles. But the way he can't get in, And he said the hunters would just tie a red handkerchief to a stick and creep through the grass holding the red handkerchief up on a stick. And he said that would inspire a lot of curiosity on the thing, or it even come near so that a little bit undoes my whole white thing. Yeah, why does it need to be red? I think that he thinks the bloody antelope is coming and he's like, why is that antelope so drenched in blood? Does he need help? No? I don't know. I think you can see it? What's that? Can they see the difference? I don't. I don't know enough between a red and a white? Well, I mean they could. Is it that much of a difference and through an antelope's eyes that it would be like, oh, I'm gonna go there because it's red not white, or white not red. Well, here's the deal. I thought the white because because it matches the neck, because it was like he's seeing right now, I believe or maybe I don't know that. Maybe this guy I don't know enough about Francis Wharton and who's this other hoser? No, that's not him, Francis Warton, that's listen. You won't believe Francis Warton, s W. Woodhouse in Lorenzo sit Graves, I don't know. They sound like trustworthy names. Do you feel if you can judge them by that? I think I think it's weird, Like if let's say the antelope side his buddy all bloodied up. I'm joking about the blood. Okay, I don't think that he thinks it's a bloody antelope. I think it's like, I think it's just curiosity stuff. But what's funny is when you're reading historic stuff, these are the kind of names everybody has. Lorenzo sit Greaves and s. W. Woodhouse sound like dudes. Yeah, from expedition. Yeah, you can hear those names in like a Ken Burns documentary, like we would never be sitting here, and I would never be like I'm sitting here with that S. W. Woodhouse. It's just because you don't he's dead or can't come on the show. This next story is super interesting. I don't know how we never heard about this before. Canadian guy wrote in, because we're probably talking about stuff to do with bones and whatnot, you know, like making like truck shifters out of your own hip joint when you get your leg amputated. Well, this guy is sending about this dude named Francis Wharton, who also sounds like a guy to be dead for a while now. He was at Little Fort, British Columbia in the fifties and sixties. Missing all his teeth, couldn't eat meat anymore. He goes out and kills a deer and then ends up eating the deer with the deer's own teeth. Made a pair of dentures out of the deer's teeth. I'm curious and ate the deer with those deer's teeth. I'm curious how quick he made those dentures. That's the part. But I don't understand. That's where I smell a fish. I think he might have eight The next year. But I don't mean to take away because there's a photo of this guy and when you look at him, he's kind of got his half smile, he's got what you might call his ship eating grin. And you could tell something's not quite right with his teeth. Right, would you look at me like there's something not quite right with his teeth. It looks like someone took a file to him. He but listen, you can go to a museum and see the guy's damn teeth. He made a full upper denture out of a deer's teeth. The collections manager at the Museum of Healthcare and Kingston has the teeth on display, filed him down, put him into a base of wood, plastic and household cement warm for three years. They describe him as kind of loose, kind of dark and dirty. He must use a lot of polydon. It's a great idea. It's impressive. I feel like eating meat with him hadn't been kind of challenging to his deer teeth aren't naturally like deer don't eat meat, you know. And and these are to be clear, he had to kill he had more than one deer's where the teeth in there because these are just the incisors. Mm hmm. Right, he's got like a whole row of incisors. Look at the set of those dentures, pretty wild looking. Yeah, you just kind of have to know it. Wow, that's great. I like hearing that there's a place called the Museum of Healthcare. Is that something you do? You get, you get like satisfaction And that's sort of like if you want to call it poetry whatever of I of him eating the dear meat with the deer's own teeth, because to me, that just makes me roll my eyes a little bit. Yeah, I like the poetry of it. There's something that speaks to you, like, uh, there's something kind of writer early that speaks to you. But then also, what's my you know, my favorite quote, right, uh? Brevity, No, skepticism, skeptics. Skepticism is the chastity of the Indian. So when I hear it, I need to go to a skeptical place. Which my skepticism drives my kid bananas because everything he tells me, because probably here's the thing with kids, they they mess up every YouTube video they see. Oh yeah, I know, like I was watching the video about it. Guys, mean it's like Mr Money and he always finds envelopes and every envelope he finds has a million dollars in it. And I'm like, well, hold on a minute. You know only at person only half listening anyway, So here people describe YouTube videos to me and then alsoden you get to the end, I'm like, homett what you know? Then he gets piste like you don't believe me. It's like, no, so that don't believe you, buddy, I think you're messing up with the videos about drives me notes. I need to find more envelopes. Oh yeah, it's like everything like I don't like a watching YouTube. Uh. And you might think it's because like I'm trying to protect your kids from the world and all that. It's because they mess up every YouTube video they see. It makes me so so worried to act because I feel like I kind of grew up with the internet a little bit like product was that that like perfect age range where I can kind of tell when something is like a scam or not real or like these pop up like this is all I can I can just point it out. And I'm so scared of putting my kids on the internet because they're just gonna be thrown into the deep end and have no idea what's what to do? No, they have no idea. He'll because he likes to hunt, so he'll be watching he's watching hunting videos. Oh my god, like just the mona. So there's like settings you can use on YouTube for kids to use that. I should well it prevents like, oh you might also like you know, and then they go down up crazy as exactly. Here's a good story. Guy wrote it in about some adults could use that too. Yeah, oh yeah, you know what, there should be a setting you could go into your if your friends kind of a dumbass should go and do like a setting that he doesn't know about that protects him. Yeah, that protects him from stuff he's not gonna be able to apply skepticism too, Like like a little sliding bar of you can turn up or down how skeptical the person is. And if your buddy's like not skeptical, he's go slide that bar way down and it'll he serves them like very plausible fact check material. There you go. Fire no more million dollar envelopes for Max. A guy from Minnesota rolled in with a great trapping story from when he was thirteen, so he was outdoor obsessed kid. He trapped mink, raccoon's beavers of a nearby river and his uh old man, check this out. This is where you gotta pay attention. His old man's a veterinarian. Apparently I didn't know this would it makes sense. Veterinarians have a carcass freezer for all the dead dogs and whatnot, dead cats and dogs, okay, and because when they got to euthanize a dog, they freeze it and then it gets sent to the dog cremation place. Since they had the big freezer, he would store his trapped animals in there, waiting to skin them, or waiting he would bring him in like if he would sell them. Uh, he would sell some of us fur in the round owned it's for a trapping term. He one time goes down to the fur buyer and he's emptying all his bags out and outcomes a miniature Schnauzer in place of his raccoon. Got the bags swapped, goes back home and there is no raccoon in that freezer. So someone he thinks someone to this day has the creamines of their dog, but in fact it's his raccoon probably sitting above the fireplace. Never got it right the fur buyer's face when that, yeah, I got up, came rolling out weird looking raccoon. Here's another good thing that we found. Uh kran drugged us up. You're talking about whether or not you should like like not the morals of shooting collar dear. It's not a more issues the esthetics of shooting a collar deer like I would have and I've I've made this clear many occasions. I would have a very hard time. Not not that I wouldn't be able to do it. I couldn't do it. Shoot a deer of the Colorado or whatever. The collar on it just just to me because it feels um tainted by the hands of man. And it brings up the thing of why is a banded duck cool? To which I just like, I don't know. I agree that they're cool, but I can't explain it. I can't explain it. But a collar deer is not cool. But this guy got himself a doe not only with the collar, but two ear tags, and got it mounted ear tags and collar and a little radio and oh yeah, full on mountain on his wall. I grew up near the U s d A Clinic in Ames, Iowa. And you know, they've got a whole penza deer outside ear tagged and it looks like a runaway got their defense. Well no, but it's got that collar. Yeah, of collars, the extra. So the guy that shot the collared white tailed doe was Roy Winnings of Illinois. He's he's got some hunting land in Moultrie County and he watches dough trumpet around on there for four years wearing a GPS track and collar. Killed her in two thousand twelve. It appeared to him that her health was declining. She'd been tagged by the Southern Illinois University Carbondale near Shelbyville, nine miles away from his land. Okay, so she made it nine miles to his place. Turned out the dough was seven and a half years old in two thousand nine, so three years prior to her to him killing it, she had an annual home range size of one six acres. That's pretty interesting. It just does not seem that big at all when you bump it and you think it's like, gone, yeah, a square miles. When you bump her and you're like, oh, it's like they don't go far. No, not at all, but it's interesting that. But consider this too, though she moved nine miles right, so she's running like an annual home range of a hundred and six acres. But at points of time, what Wasever was inspired to like move nine miles to over the course? You think the human handling could have been that two though, possibly, but I don't think it's if you look at like I'm gonna talk about this dude, Kevin Montieth for men who runs all these these dear coloring projects and wyoming and they act real normal and then they go do something weird and then the agg you know, I shouldn't say at normal, they're in a spot and then now and then for whatever reason, they strike off. We were having on the show. Argument. That was an argument Jason Phelps and Phelps game calls I've been laying out for him the emergent thinking that UM nutrition is more important to antler growth than genetics. Yeah, because Phelps is still like the old like, oh that area's got good genetics, that area doesn't have good genetics, And researchers are turning up that like nutrition UM not only is it perhaps more important but it's more controllable if you look at herd size and habitat quality. And we had Kevin montiethon to explain some of his work a couple of years ago. But I want to recap a little bit because where I'm having like a somewhat spirited email exchange between Phelps and Kevin Monteith from University of Wyoming and trying to convince Phelps of what we're saying. And I'm gonna refer back to something that Monteth discussed when he was on the podcast a couple of years ago. They took white tails from the Black Hills and from eastern South Dakota, so you have go ahead. They actually put them. That was at South Dakota State where they moved to live. So they're taking white tails from a piss poor uh genetics area, Black Hills, and they're taking white tails from a good genetics area eastern South Dakota, right, And they're saying, Okay, so suppose they got this whole genetics thing and they bring them into captivity and have them raised fawns under identical conditions. So here you have the good genetics, dear, the bad genetics. Dear, you keep them separated. So you got the same males and females from the genetics area, but everybody's eating the same ship in the same in place. Okay. Now what they find when they do this as they raise these fawns under identical conditions, the deer are radically different sizes as adults when they're brought there. Okay, but they're only bred within their respective regions of origins. Now, the male fawns made up for more than seventy of the difference in size that originated between the two regions, So already just the first batch of fawns makes up sevent the difference under similar circumstances. The reason it didn't do it all the way is because the in utero effects of it still haven't been born out, Meaning a box potential is in some ways decided by the condition that the dough is in when she becomes ms pregnant. Yeah, like the in utero conditions that that thing will hit the ground with its fate already sealed based on as the condition its mother as she lactated, in the condition that the mother's in as she like developed. The fetus goes on to talk about, well, some areas w where you have different stuff you could have. They got deer where they have. There's a dough that has a very good year, and she puts off a total slob of a buck, But it takes five years for that buck to reach maturity. But what's gonna happen in five years has already been determined by what happened in her belly. So she could have a bad year and put off a buck that will never develop into anything five years down the road. The next year gonna have a great year and put off a buck that will turn into a tanker in five years. But you're not seeing the results of that for such a enormously long time. They had a a buck that was born in two thousand and seventeen following a winner in which his mom nearly died of starvation, but she pulled through and raised both him and his sister. He bore the consequences of that experience, that prenatal experience. He bore it for the rest of his life. When he was a two year old, he had a tiny forky antlers that anyone would have said without question he was a yearly. As a three year old, he was the size of a small two year old. People are looked and said, oh, he had bad genetics. Monty said, it's crap. He had a mom that was barely surviving and did not have adequate nutrition to give him the silver spoon and instead passed on a negative maternal effect that this male will never be able to pull out of for his life. He goes on to bring up this thing, he will never be able to express his genetic potential, meaning genetically he might have the potential to have big antlers, but he just can't and won't. It's called the cohort effect, where in males born in some years on average have larger or smaller antlers than those born in other years, even if they are harvested at the same age and live in the same places. It comes down to what mom was able to do for them. Even more nuanced is each female within each year. Maybe mom raised twin. I'm I'm reading Monty's own email right now. Maybe mom raised twins one year and paid the price for it, and goes into the next year in poorer than average condition. She will have less to give than the mom right next to her that lost her fawns early the year before, and carry is a heap of fat they are liable to produce males with different expressions of potential. And Yep, there are also micro nuances in the ranges they inhabit and the quality of the resources they have access to. He goes on to say that this this applies the horns, not his antlers, but it brings up an interesting that deer hunter will always talk about. They'll be like, it's a good antler growth year this year. M right. You always hear that what you might be seeing is you might be seeing that four years ago was a great year. Mild winner, was a great year for does, a great year for big healthy fat does. That produced a batch of great box that are now coming into maturity. And you're seeing a great antler year as an expression of great times before. So we need to as we talked about this, we need to point out this difference the wildlife student. You'll be able that you'll be able to track antlers. Of course, this as I had to explain to my kids every week. Antlers are a bony material that falls off every year. Different like antlers and horns are different. Horns and animal carry with the exception of the American prong horned horned animals carry their horns their entire life. So they're looking at a population of unhunted big horn sheet in the Sierra Nevadas. They can explain over eighty per of the variation in horn size of adult males just by knowing how fat the moms were in those ranges. Sean's got his hand up, not his hand up, but his hand open, open in a very wonder It just makes me wonder how new is all this knowledge? Because you've heard the genetics discussion for so long, but it seems like, you know, mom's being healthy. Is like with what Monteth's writing here, seems that plays way so much more of a factor than genetics. Why is genetics always been the discussion? I don't know, but but here it's a great point. And it frustrates him because one of the things he gets at is if you're interested in heard health and and you accept uh that and I think you should Courtney, what he's saying. You look at me, like, why do big anglers matter? Right? The cool you know whatever, the cool to look at, cool to hang on the wall, you could look and if you take this work like this work has implications if it is this crazy genetic stuff, and he He never denies that genetic like it's a thing. Yeah, but it's the thing we can It's a thing that we have no ability to influence or control. But he goes, we can't absolutely control quality, not control. We can influence quality of habitat. We can influence herd size. And if you can say that, like and you not say you can you show, demonstrate, prove the big antlers are a function of habitat quality. Right, that winds up being a thing that we can talk about and work toward and measure and like apply the logic to the landscape of how do we measure and demonstrate like a healthy herded here? What's too many? What is how? Yeah? What is quality habitat? Right? And if over time you see that areas that traditionally we're producing big box and they don't anymore. Um, is it that the genetics went to ship or is it that we've degraded the habitat or we're not managing herd size effectively. Do you think at some point those two go hand in hand Over a long enough period of time, like a line of white tails just were malnourished over enough years, wouldn't that kind of lower their genetic potential. No, because it has to be heritable. And Monty talks a lot about like, when you talk about genetics, you have to be talking about things that are heritable qualities. Okay, uh, Remember we were talking with Cal. We're gonna touch on this later. We're talking with Cal about people saying that you're driving with rattlesnakes, that when you kill rattlesnakes that rattle, you are making them more dangerous. You're making rattlesnakes more dangerous because you're only leaving the ones that don't rattle. First, heffle Finger rolled in about that. He goes, well, first, you'd have to believe that it's tendency to rattle or not is heritable, meaning that its tendency to rattle is something that it inherits inherits from its mother or father, rather than its tendency to rattle is based on conditions time of year, air temperature, proximity of threat. Right that, why do you think that it like got it from its dad rather than it has to do with what its physical circumstances are at the moment. So Montith gets into this in this email chain we're having, he gets into this idea of people saying you shot out the genetics. They got overhunted, they shot all the big bucks and now there's no big Bucks genetics to go around to this, he says, quote crap. No, it's like hell no, ship. No, I've never heard of crap. It's a few other words that I've heard before. Crap thinks he's using the university. Uh email deal here, mantape. You understand his position. Man, He's a respect he's a respectable dude and knows what you know. I like it. Yeah, he's know what he's doing. He explains that it takes such an extreme level of harvest intensity that is perfectly selective to achieve that. He says, it's something we will never achieve in the real world. He says, bighorn sheep again, a horned animal that has very selective pressure on small populations, is the one place you could perhaps achieve this, And he points to a paper by a guy named Lachar which he attached to be like, that's the thing you could potentially see, but in the Antler world quote not stinking possible. An't gonna happen. I'm want to recap again. Go ahead, Shawn's got his hand off, Sorry, but I want to I want to, like, not on the antlers, but on the rattlesnake thing. I mean, isn't that what adaptation is? Though, is eventual genetic change to you live or you die, and so like saying that rattlesnakes no longer rattling is just like a fluke and isn't like a genetic adaptation to the ones that rattle get killed and the ones that don't don't it has to happen. Well, we're gonna answer all that because when we get into halfle fingers thing about snakes, we're gonna cover just how many rattlesnakes are out there, um, approximately, how many are killed every year, the factors that lead a rattlesnake to rattle, the impacts of air, temperature, unrattling, Um, it ain't gonna happ mhm. I remember that that was another Black Hills South Dakota like original that was bare they're going to kill off all the rat rattling kind I remember hearing that on I'm pretty sure it was NPR or South Dakota Public Radio years ago. Was a piece they did on really that rattlesnakes and the Black Hills, don't rattle anymore. He also gets into the only really like industrialized killing of rattlesnakes that rattlesnake round ups for instance, So like, where really are snakes dying by humans? It has nothing to do with rattling. They're getting him out of Denny locations. This is not a thing, Tony. We'll cover it. I want to get back to Montee though. He's an eloquent dude. Oh yeah, so it is. Finally, all this comes back to what has become for me a bit of a long term goal in my career relative to impact, and that is I hope that someday when an incredibly large male is harvested, rather than the response being oh, look at those genetics, it is instead that boy must have had a fat mom. He's talking about humans here. No, no, no, I like that, he says. For one, this is a reality. For two, it importantly shifts our focus is something that matters and that we can influence. We will never be able to tip the scale in the unseen and imaginary world of genetics to grow bigger antlers, till that to all them do your farmers. That's a whole different world, though, But the scale we can tip is that of nutrition, both through considering her density and habitat quality, all of which shifts our focus from what is on the head of the animal to what is on the ground to make more headway in the world of conservation, that is where our hearts and minds need to go. You got that. I like it. Dude's good, Okay, ruddy sean, you can explain something the two tier Nebraska duck system. Now, someone might be sitting there at home thinking, why the hell would I care about Nebraska's whatever that means to tier duck system. But I don't know, Man, it's a test plot or it's a test and they're doing South Dakota too. I don't think I like it. Explain it. So, Nebraska and South Dakota are testing a tiered license system where you have a tier one, which is your normal federally set by fly away license um or by fly away bag limits. So you have, for example, in the Central Flyway with South Dkota, Nebraska, you get six ducks a day, and a variety of like species have more stringent more stringent bag limits by species, so mallards you can shoot five mallards a day in Nebraska only two of which can be hands or you can only shoot one pintail. But Nebraska and South Dakota are testing a second bag limit tier or a different license that allows you to just shoot three ducks a day. But whatever you want them to be. It's just they're selling this as to get more people duck hunting. Yeah, and my problems are we really like, are there really like a lot of ducks flying around that no one's hunting for? And I have never exactly and I've never met uh a person that's like I would buy a duck hunting license, but I can't tell what a mallard hen is, so I'm not gonna go. That's what the thinking is though. It's like it's too hard to tell ducks apart, So just sell like a little ship in license where someone could just go kill whatever they want, counted up to three the nets one tier, the other tiers people that uh, well, uh learn what ducks are? What? Yeah, I just think access is such a bigger problem, like having a place to duck hunt, especially in Nebraska, which is like not overflowing with public land opportunity. You know, a lot of Nebraska's waterfowl hunting is like the North Platte river Bottom. That's private least m h. You know across the state. The whole way is leases across that whole river bottom. And so I struggle with like, Oh, there's all these guys in Nebraska or young kids in Nebraska that want to go duck hunting, but the thing holding them back is that they don't know what a pintail looks like versus if they had access to you know, what's the price difference between the two tags. I think it's the same, but I'm not sure. I haven't. I haven't found that. Do you know anyone personally doing it? Yeah, I don't need. The thing that like makes me real reluctant on it is pintails and canvasbacks. I mean, in general, I guess they're going to be less harvest because there's less of them. But man, if someone's all of a a sudden whacking three pintails a day, not not a huge fan of that because they're struggling as it is. Well, it's a four year plan and they're gonna be monitoring the difference of the harvest differences between the two tiers right to see. They're probably looking for us that right because these holders I don't want to call the holders. These fellers what tier The Tier two folks could go out and whack three canvas backs a day. Hens. Yeah, had three hens a day, three pintails day. They could shoot three pintail hens and it's a three day possession limit, right, so they could they could come home from the three day trip with nine hand pintails. And this is an anecdote, but one I'm pretty familiar with. Maybe some of the easiest decoy ducks are typically going to be like a hen pintail or hand mallard. Like when a hunt's going rough, the ducks that still end up decoin are the hen pintails and malle the one of the ones up just landing in the decoys all of a sudden. It is a pilot program. They just say it flat out. The idea behind this pilot program is to allow novice hunters who have not yet properly learned duck identification, the opportunity to go water foul hunting without fear of breaking bag limit laws. They want to recruit new duck hunters. I will say that, like it is intimidating if this does help some people like understand what what it is they're shooting at first light. It's a good thing because when you've shot your one hand pintail twenty minutes ten minutes after legal legal light, and you're real cautious the rest of the morning. I mean, if you can't exactly tell what you're looking at, you let a lot of ducks keep flying. So they got kind of a It's not frequently asked questions because it's like it's this is more like questions they can imagine in the future becoming frequently asked questions. Can you switch tears? Uh, you sign a deal? Can't switch tears if you're under sixteen? Can you do Tier two? Yes? Does it affect goose hunting? It does not. Quote geese are easier to identify than ducks. What will be the effects of Tier two hunters on restricted harvested species? Tier two hunters will be asked to participate in the parts collection survey, So they got to send in the wings from the ducks they harvest. That's interesting about ducks is like a wing tells you everything you need to know to a trained I a wing gives you species gender. You got to send in a wing so they can monitor the species and sects of ducks harvested and determine how much of a difference in harvest there is between Tier one and Tier two hunters. There in lies the there's the rub. If they do that work and there's no discernible difference, then right, yeah, I think in general the tier two hunters, if I was like foreshadowing or forecasting this, they're just gonna end up with like more early season ducks and more hands because inherently someone that doesn't hunt waterfowl and is testing it out is going to be like hunting those early season environment They're gonna end up with probably more more hands, more drab. You know, early season ducks. Have you hunted up in You've hunt in the north where you start hunting early and the ducks are so drab because they don't have their full fall plumage yet. It's hard, it's hard to identify them. You know, that's a whole another point. But Canada gloves off on pintails. They can shoot for a day and ten Mallard's too about see because duck I D is so hard early in the year. You know, Canada's season open September one. Well, ducks are like right at the tail end of their you know, they're they're just coming out of the nest, right, and they've pretty much said, like, we don't expect people to be able to identify hens and drakes that early. So you can just shoot four pintails a day in Canada and doesn't matter sex. So if I'm I guess, if I'm complaining about this ending up killing some extra hen pintails and hen mallards, I have to complain about that too, Well, it's it's it warrants pointing out though that not like waterfowl just just we should explain to the folks a little bit. Most wildlife, most of all game animals are just administered within the state, like each date runs their own program because the state it's dear or kind of it's deer, right, and one state could like totally screw up as dear heart, and that doesn't necessarily immediately impact the neighboring state. Waterfowl does. So waterfowl is managed by the federal government and the state government's who work in collaboration to set limits and right because you can't have one state totally screwed the pooch on it and then have it be that the next date suffers the consequences during the migration. But not only that, but we have international treaties, Like our ducks are managed at a state level. Our ducks are managed at a federal level, and they're managed in collaboration with Canada and Mexico. So no one's really like totally going at rogue. No. I don't want to be the kind of guy that just hates everything new, So I'm gonna I'm gonna back up. I'm gonna reserve judgment on the tier one tier two thing until you see if there's like any kind of like crazy ass harvest difference. Yeah, in South Dakota and Nebraska, there's like things that don't concern me quite as much. But if this was the case in Iowa or Wisconsin, where you can only shoot one canvas back and you get of the migratory canvas back population, stopping at Pool eight Pool nine on the Mississippi River, is that thing? Yeah, So, like the Mississippi River is the big stage in ground for canvas backs in late October early November. But if all of a sudden, like everyone decided to do this, I think you'd have these guys that love shooting canvas backsplate, they'd manipulate it and they'd go to a Tier two license and be like, well, now I can shoot three canvas backs a day. That's a great point, and that worries me. Yeah, you know what when it's a good point. When I was living at Washington State. Um, I know that we're not talking about Washingtontate, but say Washingtontate had this when I was living at Washington State on the coast, you would absolutely do it for pintails, right yep, of course you would, because your duck hunting boils down like around Thanksgiving, it's lights out for pintails. So I'll just be like, oh, yeah, I'm going Tier two so I can just go shoot three pin tails a day because that's all I hunt anyway. Right, I'm out there busting my ass trying to get drake pintails. Uh, single one to get drake pin tail. Now I can go like, who gives a ship that's gonna do Tier two. There's there's locations and states that would have to be like exemptions where you just can't do it. They're in lies the rub that's like Michigan. The Bluebells and the redheads you know, are bluebells dropped till one and November. And if you're hunting Lake Erie Ors, I had an abbe in November. You have a ton of blue bills, So I mean, yeah, you're passing on blue bills. Yeah, exactly. So if you could buy a license and now you can shoot three instead of one, I mean there's guys that shoot a lot of blue bills that are gonna get that license. Mhmm. Coastal Texas. I think the same thing. Pintails and redheads down there, Like those boys just pass on pintails and redheads most of their hunts because they're already limited, like waiting for an extra species to show up, you know. M hmm. We'll see, we'll see. Remember earlier when I said, hey, man, just you might not care about duck hunton, but you should still listen to this. It's because of how beautifully complex the regulatory structure, so complex for wildlife. We have a guy we had on the podcast long ago. Uh. He's a social scientist and he's working on this thing where you you find people who are opposed to hunting or suspicious of hunting, and then you walk them through certain arguments. Not arguments, you walk them through like certain realities and then you ask them how do you feel about what I just told you, right, and they'll tell you, like, you know here in that I feel a little better about it. And they tested all these different things. Um, they tested food, right, they tested uh, financial structures, so like conservation funding. Dude's name was Greg Blaskovic. He explains this whole thing. But try all these different arguments out right, and and you see what like makes people what what changes their impression? One of the things that UH, let me, I want to I want to sauce this stuff by telling you what doesn't I think that they found it's interesting that people are. They're not buying it over population. They don't buy overpopulation. When you're like, if you don't hunt deer, we're gonna be overrun by deer, they don't buy it. Yeah, but think about it too. Who's likely to be anti hunting is people like from a more urban setting. It just isn't gonna like people from They're not from the egg community. So when someone from an urban environment you're like, oh, yeah, we're gonna be overrun by ducks, They're probably like, what, we're not gonna be overrunning I've seen a duck in three weeks, right, It's like it doesn't you know if you imagine like who probably is adversarial. It's like people of the urban sensibility. So when you lay out to them like overpopulation of wildlife, it's just not something they live with. And they're like, uh, just this, this is not keeping up at night, the destroying the tundra. They're like, I've never seen an It's like it's hard for me to like, you know, I can't. It's just I don't buy it or whatever the hell. But either way, explaining um, the regulatory structure like how ship like what we're talking about right now is determined and goes on. They're like, you know, then people like, oh heck, it's cool. You can see that put some ad ease, put some well, especially waterfowl should and would because laws with wildlife as a whole, it seems like it's taken to the next level with waterfowl. It's just that much more complex. I have through my career, like I've had a lot of exposure to, you know, people publishing production worlds who like, do not come from a nature background, do not come from a world upbringing, did not grow up hunting. I have found time and again people being pleasantly surprised to hear that there are rules that govern the taking of game were they thought that in their mind they hadn't thought about it, but in their mind it's just like it must be that you just walk out in the woods and yeah, and they're like and you're like, oh no, check this one out, you know, and you'll tell them like, for instance, there is a you know, you're the the end of your muzzle, like the end of your barrel. There's a diameter. Okay, there's like a thickness. They tell you what's too thick and too thin? Right, Yeah, that's a rule. And not only that, but what the projectile is made out of is regulated. They're calling no ship. I'm like, yeah, I'm just scratching the surface bar Every single aspect of it is regulated. Now, As someone who didn't grow up in in this world, that is absolutely true. People just think it's blood lust, antiquated blood lust. I'd say that there's like a decent amount of people. I think that's what hunting is. Damn straight. You don't think that, do you feel? Of course? Not? All right? Uh? Oh, One last thing I wanted to talk about. So now Sean's gonna come on with with regularity, yea, to do duck segments, waterfowl segments, talk about ducks, the kind of ship we're talking about right now, come on, he's gonna tell you something you don't already know. Yep for the most of you, but uh as a teaser to titillate everybody, talk about the complexities that you have right like, you're you're traveling around hunting dark state state state in a truck for the most part, driving from pulling the boat driving. Explain to folks some of the complexities of of managing your kill, managing your take. Yeah, it is so much more complicated once you get into like even moving a duck for starters, has to be wing or head attached, depending on where you're at, moving it anywhere, moving it anywhere except that's final resting place of like your home. Um so not your camper trailer. No, So there's no breasting out birds when you're on the road. And this is something that I've seen very neglected. I guess I would say just in general with waterfowl hunters, that people don't really care about it or know about it until they get written a ticket for it, right, They don't realize that it has to have a wing or a head naturally attached until you get to your house and they're content going somewhere and breasting out their birds, and they've probably done it dozens of times and driven home with you know, no problem. But then it's the one time they, you know, run into a game warden that they all of a sudden they're aware of the and see a lot of these federal offense and a lot of these waterfowl regulations are so stringent because of the market hunting days, because there was no rules around waterfowl in the market hunting days, that once the rules did come about, they were like really laid down. The law really really had to be serious and particular to stop the market hunting. And you actually had certain places that were like holdouts. The Illinois River Valley is notorious for like even when the bird treaties came about and market hunting was no more, they were like, screw it, We're going to keep doing. They were on board, and eventually it had to just be like wardens and federal officers like pushed into the Illinois River Valley to finally put the kabash on on market hunting because they were gonna lose it all man, I mean we're gonna like lose ducks. Yeah, it's amazing, Like it's amazing that we have that we can even sit here and talk about shooting three canvas backs a day because there was a point where they were just on a string. You know, there's almost no canvas backs. Wood ducks as well, and giant Canada geese you know, that's another whole another story. Yeah, it's crazy when you read Elder Leopold Sand County Almanac, um, which he was writing in the es his idea of what it means to see a goose, Yeah, compared to now like trying to get him off the golf green. Yeah, so you can like finish out the round or whatever you play golf. Um, just wildly different situation. And that was in Wisconsin, right, what I meant to see a Canada goose in Wisconsin, which now is you know, one of the better goose hunting states, and like they're everywhere also Wisconsin. Doug during um talking about being a kid, and you saw a deer track southwest Wisconsin, you saw a deer track. You ran home and told my dad so crazy. So um, back on the like traveling with waterfowl, so you have to have them attached the wing and wing or head. But then in addition, you have to have the birds tagged, which is another thing that like people are just so not aware of, is like your name, your address, your hunting license number, etcetera. This you know what the what the bird and sex is. Um, all this information has to be like with the bird as you travel, and the birds have to be separated. Yeah, that's that that can't be frozen all together. That's a rule I violated a thousand times in the field. Is that you're in a blind with a couple of guys, are in a boat with a couple of guys, and you've got a pile of ducks land there, and I am they're supposed to be those birds are supposed to be like that's mine, that's mine, keep on a string. It can't be that there's a pile of ducks in the boat and you have to you know, I think, uh, I think that's been something that for a long time game wardens didn't bother with, didn't prosecute. It was one of those things that was a law that wasn't acted on. Was was like when they show up to a boat, say, okay, you tell me whose birds are Who's right? But now it seems like it's kind of had a almost a renaissance of sorts, or maybe people are just more aware of more cases of it across the country. But in general, party hunting is not allowed for waterfowl period. Like you have to claim what what you shot or what you didn't and it's hard because you have a flock of birds coming in and everyone's you know, together shooting at these birds. Sometimes it can be hard to know like who shot that hen mallard. As a waterfowl hunter, you just have to be responsible of like acknowledging that's the law and making a conscious effort to be like, oh I shot that duck, like that is going in my pile in this boat, or Max, I know you shot that duck, so you need to like claim that duck, take ownership of the dock, not just throw it in the big master prey. And because ultimately, if there's four hand mallards in the boat and two hunters, okay, yeah, there's you know two hand mallards a guy, it'd be nice if that was the law right if it was like a party hunting deal, but it's not. It is a you cannot party hunt for waterfowl. So Max can't go shoot four hand mallards and give me two of them and be like, we're good, We're at our hand mallard limit. It's just not the case. You gotta you gotta keep it separated. And if you're doing a lot of duck hunting, you gotta keep eating ducks. You gotta eat a lot of duck. Boy, do we eat a lot of duck because you can't because possession possession limit. And we you're cooking ducks right now, cooking them in the crock pot right now. We eat duck every day. We gotta find you chili recipe. Yeah, we gotta find he hasn't make duck chili right now. We've already had two trips. Just put all it just legs. Well, you know, you get the birds that are your nice pluckers, right that you want to like keep the skin on and do up nice. Then you get the ones that like, yeah, there's just no saving them chili ducks. So what do you got to tell everybody what you got going on right now? So you caught up hallo peneals. Yeah, it's oh, it's a there's nothing fancy about that chili recipe, but it's good. There's hallo peenose, onions, some chili packets, salary um, green peppers, a bunch of duck legs, a bunch of legs. Is goose in there too. There's some goose in there, and you cook it all down, pick the meat off, fill the bones out, then shred it, throw it all back in veggies. Croc pot yep, croc pot chili. Pretty pretty good after after a cold day on the water. It's kind of like a what you got pot? Yeah, oh yeah, we're just hearing there, just just to close out one of our he's not in the room right now, but one of our camera guys was talking about being it out at a remote uh shack in Alaska, and this guy had this rule that anyone that didn't clean their plate, that food went into a pot and on Friday that was the meal. Yeah, just the scattered leftovers warmed up in a pot. Very very motivational. Zero waste, man, zero waste. I want to try it for a while, just see really what what that ends up tasting. Mike all right, we're gonna we're gonna go hunt. Yeah. Now we're gonna go try to shoot some redheads now that it's totally daylight out. Yeah, it's all right. Divers are a little different than your traditional puddle ducks. All right, thanks everybody for tuning in. Are you ready to let me try those shoes on? Go ahead and putting birds on. Here it is. Let me know what you think. I'm just squeezing there real quick, right on, you gotta lock around, take a couple of right out perfect. Last thing to remember this, check out duck Lore. It'll be on meator on our YouTube channel. Meters YouTube channel. Check out duck Lore. Subscribe do that, Just gribe to the YouTube channel so you get all our ship delivered to your house. All right, Thanks Everyboddy

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