00:00:02 Speaker 1: All right, everybody, this is the best news to ever happened in the entire history of of everything. Individual Meat Eater episodes from our new season I'm talking to TV show, not this yere podcast are available for instant streaming and HD downloads right after they air on TV, so you get a new episode every Thursday. There's no embargo you know where you gotta wait a long time to get a new episode. It comes out on TV, you go to your computer. You watch it on your computer, no problem. Head over to meat Eater dot vh X dot TV to instantly watch the new season of meat Eater and h D. Use the promo code meat Eater Podcast at checkout and you get five bucks off any of our previous volumes. Go check it out Prime viewing for you. Hey, this is the Hunt to Eat podcast. Actually that's a lie. It's the meat Eater podcast. But Yannie is selling Hunt Eat t shirts telling about them Jannie Hunt to Eat t shirts. My brother and I started this project maybe three years ago now, really yeah, yeah, it started slowly, we started talking about it, you know. But how it came about was the fact that I love to hunt. I love to tell people about hunting. I love to wear. I wanted to wear a hunting T shirt that represented really the way I felt about hunting, and I really didn't feel like I could find that at Cobells and Sportsmans at the time. So we started making our own hunt shirts. Let many states ago now Montana, Colorado, Texas, and we have a couple just kind of blank hunt Eat shirts, not state affiliated. Now I've always been able to say because I'm always plugging Yanni's T shirt company, his his T shirt Empire, because I don't, uh you know, I don't have any steak in the game, right back me up on this. No, all you get is a couple of free T shirts I guess it called free teachers, and already have two many T shirts. But now that's gonna change because Janni is actually um gonna be working on his design. He and his design team at the corporate headquarters World Headquarters, at the World at the Hunt Eat World Headquarters are gonna be working up a meat Eat or hunt Eat shirt. No, it actually got the design got approved late last night, and uh the graphics guys doing the final artwork on it this week, so I haven't even seen it. But this new shirt is going to be available through me Eater channels and also through Yanni's own Hunt Eat. What's your hunt eat dot com? Yes, sir, h U N T T O E A T. Yeah, don't put the two letter two in there. Someone else already snagged that. Doing main name really find know who? Well, well, it's the same thing with like meat eater dot com. You know, We've tried to contact him left and right, and it's you know, he's got a Facebook page. But it's more it's like hunting for restaurants is kind of is the basis, but there's nothing there, you know. Uh, we're gonna talk about not that now we're done plugging Yanni's T shirt company. We're actually the thing I want to talk about right now, Like the purpose of this episode is to make a gigantic infomercial about the guide book volumes that we've been working on called The Complete Guy, The Hunting Butcher and Cooking, Wild Game, Buying One Big Game, Buying two Small Games. But first I want to like talk about a different aspect of books. And it's because Janice my whole life, like my my whole professional life or hunting life, whatever, both of those lives. People have been telling me to read Jack O'Connor, who is You'll hear many descriptions as the guy. He's like the granddaddy, Okay, the first, the original what's known as a gun writer. Right, he was at out their life for a bazillion years. He was doing like the bulk of his hunting and writing kind of in the post World War two years. Okay, up and up well into the seventies. And if you own a TO seventy, you own a TO seventy because of Jack O'Connor. Right. He it was a great champion of that cartridge. And I was guilty of having never like, despite everybody always saying like, oh, you should read Jack O'Connor, I never read Jack O'Connor. One of these people always tell you about to read Jack O'Connor is because you know, he liked to hunt Cousder and I like CU's dere um. He's also a big sheep guy. So I started reading. Yanni gave me a book. It's like the complete Jack O'Connor, um. Yeah, some sort of like a compilation greatest of I think. Yeah, it's been a very difficult read for me. Why. I'll start out by saying this, I'll started saying, Jack O'Connor, and then I encourage you, listener, I encourage you to read some Jack O'Connor. What Jack O'Connor has going for him is he's a fantastic writer. Okay, he's a he's a great writer. Yes, when you read some of those stories, I feel like when he's talking about even though it's a warm beer because back then they didn't refrigerate their beer when they're out camping. He talked about coming back from accuse deer hunt and like sitting in like a hot tent but cracking this like warm beer, and man, when he describes it, I was like, man, I'm right there drinking that beer with you. Great writer. Um has unique ways of getting into and out of his stories, you know, a phenomenal craftsman of words. But I just like the like gun writer thing is always very troubling to me because, like you get the sense rend O'Connor, that guy wouldn't go on a squirrel hunt without a guide. Do you think, yeah, he's just like he in some ways the old gun writers and some gun writers they're like they seem like trigger men. They are out there to shoot right and everything else to them is just like, besides the shooting, everything else to them is just like details they can't be bothered with, right. But I feel like back in his day's take me out so I can shoot something. That's what I feel like their attitude is. And he's got this thing too, like this like he probably started this, the whole gunwriter thing where he goes he's talking about shooting at these doll sheet and reading's description brings to mind, now everyone's great fear is about long range shooting, like out like long rain. And she was like, oh, people are taking these shots. You shouln't be taken. Yeah, But here's Jack O'Connor like bragging up about taking three yard shots at doll sheep running full tilt, yeah, and he's like aiming eight feet off the end of its nose, gets up there, he's got one in the jaw, one in the ass, one on the back, one through the lungs, and then he goes into that dumb thing gunwriters going to where he's like, okay, so he like fills this thing full of holes taking shots he should never be taken. Then she drags it down to the ground and he's like, oh, in the grain you know, the or the hundred and sixty grain boat tail pushed by fifty six grains of in a blank. Primer really did his job, and like you didn't. It's just ridiculous. It's like when you're reading gun writers now and they always have that part where like we went to wherever to to Africa to test out the new load, and they talk about this hunt like in the bullet. Really it's like really, like that's that's that's not how the test things in real life. So you can't like act like that's a test, right, It's just just making anecdotal observations. And here you're anecdotal observation. It is based off blasting away at adults. Sheeps is running full tilt. He's like every shot the guy takes makes you cringe. He's got, he's got. It was almost a hundred years ago. No, yeah, yeah, so I just feel like it was there was there were different ethics back then. I'm not talking about different ethics. I'm talking about it's just like, yeah, but it's the same people's stuff are saying now. People act like, oh, the old days, right, So people think about Jack O'Connor, right, like the old people didn't take these shots that were you know, people were experienced and and um, you know, like the old one shot, one bullet deal. And now you got these long range guys taking shot nation never be taken. And here's this iconic like everyone's favorite gun writer, right taking ridiculous shots. The guys nowadays don't take. Yeah, people still do take him. But I don't think people. I don't think you'll find many dolls sheep hunters are shooting at full tilt running dolls sheep at three d yards. I doubt it. I think a lot of guys would be like nope. But here's the guy getting famous off that stuff. He's going to take a crack at a doll sheep where there's a U standing there in a ram standing behind the you, and he can just see the crest of its back behind the EU, and he takes a shot seeing if he can't nick it spine. He's taking ask shots, ear shots, and he like he's just shooting. That's what I'm saying. That's how it was. It was okay to do that back then. I still think that now. Maybe not skimming one over the back of a U and into the spine of one is something that someone's gonna try today. But I still feel like people are taking I mean, think about anlo. How many dudes do you think are shooting at running animos every day? I've killed running alo. Yeah. Like, I just feel like now people are discussing that more in a is this okay to do you know, ethics type of conversation. We're back then it was okay. I mean look at Art Young and Saxon Pope. Those boys used to launch. They used to go on hunt trips with like a thousand arrows because they see one game animal at a hundred yards and would just start launching, you know, like a war, you know, just raining arrows. And that was that's, you know, the beginning of the Pope and Young club. Yeah no, my owd man, that's a good point. My old man was involved in Pope and Young way ago, like in the fifties, right. He was bow hunting back before their both seasons, you know. And he knew this guy from the Chicago because he was big in Chicago bowman, like a Chicago area archery club before he moved to Michigan. I was born and there was some guy at this club called Art Laha. I guess he was some kind of big, you know, big swinging dick figure in uh bow hunt at the time, and he had this video he made or he went went up to Alaska and just shooting, you know. And I remember he pulls up, he's out with some Eskimo hunters off the west coast of Alaska and pulls up on some walrus on an ice flow and puts an arrow into a walrus. And it's like the walters didn't even know what happened, right, He's just kind of curious what had happened. It's like the walrus just didn't even like register the shot. Remember, it's just like a different that's what that was, a real world test. That's pre that's pre Marine Mammal Protection Act obviously. So you might have a point where just like the standards have changed over the years. But I expected, just after hearing about O'Connor all these years, I expected to read it and have the guy who had some reasonable things to say about making the shop, right, Like, here's this old guy, the old guard, right, your master, the original, and you read and you're expecting to hear like just great insights about making the shot. Instead, it's just a book of page after page after page of you know, five bucks came running by and we all just opened up. We got order. We don't know if we had any. Yeah, you were. You went in there with expectations. That was where you messed up. He went in there thinking you knew what what you're gonna read there? Um, But he's a good writer. Yeah, No, I just I feel like he was just a he was I mean, what do you want to call it? A gun writer or a trigger trigger an adventure writer. He just wrote about the hunts that he went on. You know. Yeah, it's been difficult for me reading reading Jack. Well, the reason I gave you sitting on the I was sitting on the couch next to my woman last night reading a little Jack O'Connor. I haven't taken it lightly. I'm reading to damn thing. My brother told me to read it, and you and everybody. Yeah, the other guy still haven't read. Every talks about his Rourke, like, what's his name? Ruark Rourke ar some big African game hunter Robert. I gotta read him too, But I'm kind of you know what I'm not into, like was he right in that same time period? I'll read anything about hunting that was written pre World War One. But I think I'm just not cut out for post war post say post war, I mean post World War two. I'm not cut off for the post war generation of which my father was a member. Who and here's his image right here on my desk, sitting there with a pope and young Colorado black bear that he uh killed. Yanni was commenting on that because there's a pack of hounds there and you can no longer hunt bears and hounds in Colorado. That and his apparel dates that photo. And and before we started recording your Jane was talking about how now you know where we all run around in synthetics for mountain hunting. And he's like, how did you manage all that wet stuff? Cotton wool? Yeah, the dudes spend more time tending to their duds or did they just spend more time wet? Yeah? And it's all relative, you know. It's not like they were any more uncomfortable than we are when we're out there. No, keep mind too like this. He had spent a couple of years hiking from southern Italy up in the Europe during World War Two, living in a hole in the ground. So imagine like, you know, just people who camp a lot can't better you know, so at that way, like yeah, maybe after that, like that generation of guys that fought probably were able to deal with a lot of discomfort, the same way that you and I will deal with a lot more discomfort than people who haven't been camping. You just learned to get you become accustomed to the feeling of wet stuff of Um, watch it, I'm gonna do this amazing segue right now. So O'Connor wrote a book, and we're here to talk about a book that we have that's coming out now, like right now, complete guy to hunting, butchering and cooking wild game. Now, when this whole thing started, I can't remember how it was, just like it became this idea that I had and it's the handful of the guys that I worked with at zero point zero production. We started like putting together this idea of this book because we had been accumulating a lot of great images and and information and had the luxury of really traveling around meeting a lot of phenomenal hunters. The hell you're doing, Honnie sat in a timer um and sold this book idea to the polisher I work with. We just Speakling Grounds imprint at random House and sold this book idea, and I mistakenly put down as we were putting his proposal together, I put down the word complete. So it's gonna be the complete guide to hunting and butchering hunting, butchering and cooking wild game. And I learned over the following handful of years that you should not throw around the word complete when talking about a book, because as we started to outline the project, everything that came up, you'd be like, well, should we have something on this, should we have something on that? And you'd always have to say, well, yeah, because this is the complete guide. It should have been called the truncated Guide the Hunting, Butchering and Cooking wild game, or you know, the basic guide, but no, it's the complete guide. And we worked on it for a few years. By the time it was done, the book came in at seven and fifty pages long. When I sat down with my publisher and she kindly tried to explain that you just can't. It's just very difficult. You just don't really make books that big. So we were faced with this thing of either trimming the book out now. When I wrote my Buffalo book, which is a narrative nonfiction book. Hey, it's like a book that tells the story, it actually tells two stories. Tells a story of very involved hunt I did for Buffalo on a on a special lottery license that I drew in Alaska. Tells that story, and then along with that story, it tells the story of the species of the creature you know, from the ice ages up until the present day. Very dramatic story about an animal. That was a narrative book that came in long. I remember I caught a hundred pages out of that book, and it was pain and full to cut those pages up. And then the book's better, it reads better. It's like I was never writing better. I'll probably I was never writing as good and I'll never write better than I was writing when I wrote my Buffalo book. I now know. Um, I was pre marriage and pre kids. You're smarter. I think you're a lot smarter before you get married and have kids. Um. You don't agree with that, Yannie. No, where's your brain down? It does it? Where's your brain down? The exhaustion and you don't have time to read. Um, But with this book with the guide book. It wasn't like that. Man, I couldn't stand getting rid of the stuff, and so we hit them this idea, we're gonna split it into big game in small game. And it was different than just taking like an exact on knife right or like. It was different than just separating it out. It just changed the whole nature of the project. And that added we had already been over two years anyway. That added another year into it to build old the Complete Guide the Hunting, Butchering and Cooking Wild Game Volume one, Big Game, Volume two, Small Game. A thing that's frustrated me um. The name of the book has let a lot of people to to to like write and ask about like the recipe book, but the cookbooks or butchering books they are that. Okay, the books are that, but they're much much more in that. And the way this thing works, I want you to feel right now like you're watching QVC. You're watching a show, an infomercial show. So just try to get yourself in that mind frame or you're ready to call them with the credit card. Because the way the book works is I have volume one in my hand. Volume one is available now. Volume two will be available a couple of months. Volume one is divided into five sections. Section one, what is an introduction than even section one. In Section one deals with gear, all aspects of gear, with very heavy emphasis on answering the types of questions, and we get many hundreds of them that come into the me Eater website from both new and experienced hunters about gear preferences. So it covers gear up to I mean, from hunting out your back door to hunting in the deepest back country. Around Section two, I don't walk through he's a little bit more to explain better section to his tactics and strategies. Okay, So it deals with the basics of hunting and lays down sort of a working vocabulary of different hunting methodologies hunting methods. We'll talk about those a little bit more. Section three is big game Species and Methods. In this section we have very detailed profiles on fourteen of North America's most popular big game animals from biologic details, how to read, sign best hunting methods, archery, rifle, early season, late season calling, lay it all out animal by animal Section four. At this point that we're into section four, you're into the three page of volume one. So there's three hundred pages preceding this, right, but starting at page three you enter into butchering, and butchering covers all aspects of of field dressing, ordering even up to packaging for the freezer. Big game. And it isn't just like how to cut up a deer on a workbench at home. We deal with butchering issues in back country skinning methods for you know, caping heads, black bear rugs, everything, and I'm talking soup to nuts or nuts to kidneys with great pictures back at all, amazing pictures. Because here's the deal. If you normally go on and buy but like what what, here's one thing we're able to do. So we've made like sixty some episodes of me Eater. Plus I've been hunting and swapping pictures of my hunting bodies my entire life. So I have a big catalog images, but sixty episodes of me Eater. And the way the technology is now, we're able to use screen grabs. Okay, so we're able to grab images published published, more quality images out of footage to use to enhance step by step procedures in the book. The other images that well, I'll get to the images of the mint. Finally, section five Cooking Big Game. Now this section is actual recipes. I'm talking you go into your freezer, open the door, pull out a package butchered, and process in the way that subscribed in section four, and what you actually do with it, I mean teaspoon of this, tablespoon of that. Recipes and these are highlight recipes, proven great things that I love to cook. The friends of mine love to cook recipes that we've kind of developed over time by sharing information back and forth, things that were inspired by some chefs that I know that I like to cook. Wild Game was just like great recipes and no make believe recipes. Like a lot of times you open up a cookbook and there will be a recipe like, you know, take some duck com feet and put it on pasta. It's like, dude, that's not a rest because you're not telling me how to make duck on feet or assuming I'm going out and buying it, then I'm putting on recipes Like if that's a recipe, then then you might as well put one in there called peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or butter and bread. You know, these are like real recipes that you build from the ground up, not like so many recipes, like like God bless them. But when I'm looking at a Mario but Tally cookbook, I mean great cook obviously, you know, a great guy, great cook. But a lot of times like basically going down to the town. You're going down to a high end Italian Delhi, buying three or four things, coming home and mixing them together, and it's like you didn't make any of that jump, like you didn't make the panchatta. You know, it's like you're just like compiling things that someone else made for you. This is like real cooking, ground up full balls, from scratch cooking. All that being said, I feel like they're not overly complicated like everyone that I've tried out of here, you know, read through a couple of times, I'm like, all right, I can do this. The restes lay a foundation for just understanding how to work with wild game. Right, if you weren't doing cooked all the things in here, you'd be like, I get it, because if you do, like The Big Sky Roasted Head, which is based off a mountain, my favorite mountain, one of my favorite mountain man books, The Big Skuy by Guthrie Um, he always talked about his characters in this book loved to roast mule of your heads. So we had a great roast mule of your head recipe where you're basically taking like you know, it's it's like a it's a taco dish with some jowl meat. Once you roast the head for that thing, you'll never look at a head, pig, head, any kind of head the same way. Again. You'd be like, man, there is some treasure inside that head. You might not go and make the tacos I describing the book, but you're gonna learn a lot about something that you've been throwing in the you know, out in the woods or in a dumpster for a long time. So it's meid like build up ones foundation. Um, you wanted to talk about top of photographer Jnath. Yeah, Well, starting with the butchering section, I feel like I've looked through a lot of other books have talked about butchering, you know, animals, game animals and whatnot, and uh, it seems like it's like great pictures without having the writing to explain it or vice versa, but not really both together. And I feel like we did a great job of you can read it. And if you don't quite understand that, you look right next to that and there's the image that you're like, oh, all right, that's that's what they're talking about. There's that that pelvit crest you know they need to chop out to, you know, to pull the uh, the guts all the way through the animals. Yeah, no, I think they're good. And we put a ton of embass on that. And like someone on our team, Brittany Brothers, actually, I mean over all those years on top about we worked on this, she was during all that time we're writing this book, is operating and large as like a photo editor to help find and pull out the best images to explain everything we explained here. There's a beauty quality to it too, because we use a uh, very prominent hunting photographer named John Halfer. We hired John when we're doing the recipe shoots, so we rented a house and went up for a week and just cooked and tested recipes, photographed recipes. Halfner did that, So all the food stuff is John halferin working. If you go look up John Halfter, you're gonna see like some hunting stuff that will blow your mind. John halfern shot all that at the same time, just out of the goodness of this dude's heart, he opened up his vast catalog of hunting images and wildlife images. Yeah, it rivals like anything you see in Nagio. I feel like just going to his website and just cruise around and look at his images and um, you'll find yourself just lost and burning time, you know, and just taking to different far away places. Yeah. Yeah, After likes to hunt. Man like, he likes to hunt. But he's even said to me he'd rather he likes to hunt with the camera, you know, likes the photograph wildlife, and so we have a lot of great wildlife imagery in here. Also the gear like so like jump backtop about the gear stuff. We kind of like kick off the gear section with a quote by even though it's just trash talking gun writers, we kick off the gear section of the quote by a gun writer that I do admire greatly, Chuck Hark, the one and only. Let me ask you a quick question, though, Are there any others right now? You can just name off the type of your head that you do admire. Did I admire wore like a gun writer? No? And I'll tell you why I'm gonna read the quote that kicks off the gear section. I'm gonna read Chuck Hawks's quote. Don't be intimidated by anyone's experience, including mine. There have been, and still are a few good writers with vast experience in the firearms field. There are also plenty of plain old fools writing about guns and shooting, and plenty of younger fools as well. Gun writers, especially those who have to produce a regular column, love controversy. That column becomes a beast that must be fed every month. So the columnists is always hungry for something to write about, and controversial ideas generate reader interest in response. Perhaps it is understandable if they sometimes go overboard, Just don't go overboard with them. The reason I put that the head of the gear section, I can't remember who did you find that quote? I don't Chuck Hawks actually contributed to volume two or Truck Hawks writes this great treatise on the double deuce to twenty two, most popular cartridge ever. He writes a great piece breaking down the history and versatility and different ammunition options for a small game hunter of the twenty two, and it was great. He's the most reasonable gun writer out there, and it's funny that his quote kind of like takes a staff at his profession, because it is. It's true. If you open up those things, like you know, like newsletters, you get to be like ten overrated cartridges, ten underrated cartridges, ten sleeper long range cartridges. It's just like what in the world. So we try to cut through in the gear section. It's just all the noise, okay, because to be honest with you, this is gonna make guys cringe, and it's something that people fight about in bars, you know, to be honest with you, a lot of the distinctions to get drawn between calibers that, let me put it different, there's a ton of distinctions and debate happening between calibers that are just like you really can't tell them apart in a hunting standpoint. No, it's just like people like, yeah, I really can't decide between the then the It's all it's fighting over nuances. You're fighting over very little. And it's like if you're taking reasonable shots, you know, if you become aware of your capabilities and you're realistic about your capabilities and you're putting your shots through luans, it's just like people are writing and debating about points that are just pointless. Well, I think they should be taking all that energy to talk about their damn boots, right or yes, yeah, so much other stuff about the calibers where it's the bullet construction or taking time to you know, learn about shot places and wherever it might be. But I think it comes down to just like basic ignorance because people started fighting about caliber's. Yeah, I had a guy the other day that did not know that the thirty six and the three wind mag shoot the exact same bullet. If you choose a hundred grain thirty Cober bullet or eighty grain three Cober bullet, you can put that same bullet and either one of those two cartridges, just put it down, you know, the barrel of the respective gun. But people just look at one that says Magnum behind it and they think, oh, man, you know, I'm just like I'm throwing a grenade at the animal versus just the old Pidley thirty at six. Well, it's just not the case. One bullet. The only difference really when it comes down to shoot that animals, that one bullet might be moving a hundred feet or tunder feet faster that. That's exactly the kind of information that try to put in here is like helping people cut through some of the noise and make good gear decisions without getting bogged down in details. They don't want to get bogged down it. But that doesn't mean that it's like the thing I focused on on these books and we talked about constantly is there not for beginners exclusively, and they're not for experts exclusively. Every page in here is gonna have something that's gonna surprise you because the books give you opinions, right. You get Janice's opinion put forth as an opinion on issues, you get my opinion put forth as an opinion on issues, and you'll get opinions given as such, given as personal opinions from many of the best hunters I've been lucky to meet around the country. The book is full of sections called ways in on where like so and so like Chuck Hawks weighs in on the twenty two Yanni tell Us weighs in on his regiment his yeah, his regiment for practicing archery ahead of a hunt. How would you put it? Um? Yeah, just the preparation the basically the summer prior kind of the year prior preparation. How do you know when you're ready for a bow hunt? Basically? Like, yeah, how do you know when you're ready to go on a bull hunt? For real? Yeah? But I want to make a note on that all the ways in I feel like it's so reflective of how one becomes a hunter, becomes a good hunter on their own because I've had so many mentors, you know, I can just saw the top of my head list twenty mentors that have all been weighing in on me for you know, thirty years, and you just take a little bit here, take a little bit there, and you kind of formulate your own program, you know, and then eventually, you know, you can weigh in on you know, that that certain subject. But that's how I feel like this book is, you know, you can just go through there and you know, pick a little bit from all these different people and then you know, go forth on your own. Yeah, that's the point trying to make again and again, it's like, don't discount the information that you already know to be true. Like I would never say, like, oh, pick this up and drop everything you found to be true, because this is the real truth. It's just different. It just it we're learning hunting works differently than that. Yeah, and the subject is too vast, too ever to do that. I used to always I mean like I saw you shoot run into Carlac bullets, laot, many things were great, love, I've never had a problem, and eventually like grew suspicious of the bullet just because people are talking about other bullets. I'm like, well, there's must be something wrong with my own findings. Don't fall into that trap. Like if it works for you, it works, But this is gonna help you inform your thinking. And it also gets into stuff like even though we're just kind of like laughing about these endless controversies about what caliber's best. We have a big section called cartridge normanclature that breaks down what all these things mean. When you hear people say they were out shooting at seventy four oh five, or you know the difference between the millimeter cartridges and the standard like three oh eight cartridges, the seven six two by thirty nine, Like how to understand these numbers and how to have a conversation with people and when they name things, how do they get what they're talking about? Not just because you memorize each particular cartridge and what it means, but how to make sense out of the numerical system used to describe cartridges. Right, Maybe that stuff you need to be a better hunter, but stuff you just need to be able to process information better when you're seeing it. Um A lot of stuff about rifle scopes, defining the terms that you see when you buy rifle scopes and the terms you see when you buy binoculars, and making sense out of what those terms mean, which ones are important and which ones are not. A section on muzzle loaders, including an explanation of why you should if you're a versatile, well rounded big game hunter. And that's really what the books trying to make it a was a versatile, well rounded big game hunter. Why you should probably think real seriously about getting in the most loader hunting if you haven't already. Yeah, and what look, just looking at that muzzle latter page makes me think of something because I've just looked through the first twenty pages here, and there are companies and brands across the board. I think that's important to note that, like, we weren't held to anybody's check when we were writing this, this was done completely independently um. No company, even companies I have great relationships with. No company had the door into this book open to them. You will find recommendations for things across the board. You'll find images of many different types of gear. It's not it's just not a catalog. Don't worry about that. A very thorough explanation of m o A. What minute of angle means, how it applies to you in your life. Rifle cleaning, A heavy section on archery equipment, making sense of archery equipment, coming through the bs of archery equipment and arrows and broadheads. Field maintenance kits. A heavy section on hunting optics. How to select optics, what they mean, What you need on a backpack hunt. What you can do without on a backpack hunt. How to decide if you want a X or ten X binoculars, and the choice really kind of comes down to that unless you already have a good pair. How to make sense of range finders. Big thing about blade tools. What blade tools you need on backpack and back country hunts? What blade tools you never leave home without? Survival kits and utility kits. I don't even use the word survival kit anymore, because my kit a utility kit, I carry that thing I could be hunting like cranes in Texas or doll sheep in Alaska. I have a little baggy that I switch out what's in it, but just my utility kit. It's my emergency kit. And you can have emergencies such as like a broken gun anywhere. So how to have a kit that you are constantly upgrading and adapting for what you're doing that almost eliminates or can help eliminate the panic you have when you realize that you should have something and you don't have it with you. Maps and navigation tools. A very healthy spirited section on apparel, How to layer your clothes, how to make decisions between synthetics and wolves. Is camel clothing and scent control clothing worth the expense? The answer is more comp located. Then you might think a lot of stuff about staying warm, a lot of stuff about boots, including my opinion that footwear, no foot problems ruin more hunts than any other problem. When I think of people just having a bad time on a hunt or having to call off a hunt, footwear causes that. Yeah, And that's definitely a little more true towards like Western Mountain hunting, even freezing your ass hunting ducks in Michigan. Right, you gotta have the right footwear to keep your feet warming, for sure. Yeah, but yeah, the blisters and issues mountain hunts, for sure. But just like feet problems kill people, feet ruined hunts. What doesn't ruin a hunt is that man, I brought my thirty OT six and should have brought my three hundred. That's just not in real life. That's not a conversation. You hear what you here is, dude, I should have listened to you when you said that I should break my boots in for real before I go on this trip. What a waterproof from probably and know how to do it because my feet have been went for three days and I want to go home. Yanni's wonderful section on waterproof and boots the tools necessary, then a big section specific to back country hunting because it's like I find that many guys, like in my age group, my level interest in hunting that live in the East want to do in their life. You know, they want to do some bad country hunts. Man. They want to go on that Colorado LK hunt, you know, And it's intimidating to like get into like what do I really need? What do you carry? What is actually in your pack on a backpack hunt? And I think that this will help immensely and it's not pushing one product over another. I'm looking at a page here right now. I'm looking at an outdoorsments pack system and our carricks pack system, a mystery ranch pack system, pros and cons of each. But basically it's grabbing good gear that I like and that my friends like, and kind of rather than boring you with the stuff that doesn't work, it's like the stuff that does work for people, Why it works for people? Um, Stuff, unloading a pack okay, how to handle big weights on a pack, how to pack when you're going out that you know you might be coming back heavy with game, Sleeping in shelter okay, Tents, bags, sleeping pads, bibby sacks. Are they a waste of money or not? I would say yeah, I'm telling you why I think that they're a waste of money. Keeping warm at night and you're sleeping bag camp stoves I'm talking for truck hunt, car camping to backpack hunting. Pros and cons of stoves, how to use them, how to manage them, how to pack food for a hunt. A simple way. You can run into a grocery store, run into a sporting good store and go bam bam bam, and know that you are equipped with food for however long you're gonna be out car camping or backpack hunting. Like just a simple fail proof system of grabbing food for a hunt where you're not gonna run out and you're not gonna come back with a bunch of spoiled stuff. You never hate cookwere how to handle fire and water meaning purification of water, how to get fires when you need them despite then you know, whatever the conditions. A very graphic picture of a crushed finger in back country Risks stand Safe in the back country now Section two Tactics and Strategy. Yanni walk them through section too. This was gonna include the highlights, the stuff that like kind of what's in there, some surprising things. I feel like this is where I maybe learned the most because my main hunting career started, you know, once I moved to Colorado at the age of nine, team started guiding alkhins and on the same spot all the time, and it was shown to me, you know, because that's where I had to guide where you I think it came out west and we're not guiding, we're just hunting on your own. And so you just you know, learned a larger chunk and ground and had to figure out on your own how to find these sweet honey hooles that I was pretty much you know, shown too, and so I feel like you did a great job. But really just breaking down like a um a method of you know, looking at maps, talking to people, plat maps and whatever, and little tricks to like go and find your own honey holes, which is you know, that's something that's an important thing I got into with this, and I talking about public and private land, how to get permissions on private land, mainly how to find spots on public land, because I find that a lot of guys have a vulnerability, Like you got a guy likes to hunt. I've had a lot of friends fall on this trap. Man. They like the hunt. They got this spot. They hunt deer, right, nicolare every deer in the over day. They shoot a deer and as their spot. Then all of a sudden something happens. The guy that owns it dies, sells it, his his nephew gets old. Yeah, the guy moved Yeah, that's only happened. Your buddy moves and they never hunt again because they never figured out like how to find hunting spots. It's like, oh, I helped my mother in law's place, you know, and then what do you get a divorce? You have a mother in law anymore? And then it just hang it up because they can't fathom the process of beginning to find hunting locations. Oh man, And I'm going through it firsthand right now, like you wouldn't believe. I'm living that every day. I mean, I moved to Montana, yes, and less than a year ago. It's my first year lived as a resident in that state. I've got a pocket full of tags, and yet I'm looking at these maps and I'm like, I mean, I have places that I'm gonna go and I'm gonna hunt because I've figured it out, But like, I don't have anything on my map circle that says go here, proven location, so you know, and that's the thing to do. I get into is like a lot of like not sneaky, but a lot of things that people don't think about trying totally. And I think that shows up even more in the private land section because so many people I think I don't know why now, it's it's that way when you know, twenty years ago everybody's went knocked on doors. But like people, I feel like, just don't do it as much anymore, and don't think about trying to go and find a free private land hunting spot like they're out there and I got yeah, and I include in here some strategies for doing that, such ASTHM, it's the thing that's worked for me many times. As you get your foot in the door with a squirrel hunting or rabbit hunting permission, yeah, totally that you request in the winter time when that guy's not getting his door beaten down by people, and you proved to be a cool guy who like comes out to hunt squirrels, knows how to respect the property, knows how to close the gates a little bit there, it goes a long way next to you know, guy brings the guy some zucchini bread, right, cook some kind of cool thing with the with the rabbits that he got off the guy's property, brings him by a little bit of that. Maybe even emails the dude a couple of pictures saying, hey, man, I thought you'd like to see um, the awesome dinner I made with the squirrels I shot on your place. And he's thinking that crazy, some bitch ate those squirrels. I like that guy. And pretty soon he's saying to you, you know what, you know, if you you know, we got room out here, you know, if you want to come out and hunt deer, you know, go ahead. Yea. And again maybe it starts with a couple of does, but then two years down the line, you gotta look down the line and look into the future. And next thing you know, he's like, sure you can shoot a buck, because it's happened to me many times. Yeah. I got a guy. He's a friend of mine, but he's a he's a landowner, and I've been out to his place the hunt a few times. And after a while he noticed that I never actually really shot anything on this place. I'd kind of go out there just to kind of like, I'd be like, I'm gonna come up, but I'd want up hanging out and doing stuff with him. You know. That kind of won his heart in a way. I also tell just a couple of actual stories about stuff, but also public land tricks you might not think of, like something I like to do, and I've done with some success now and then is be undercover in interview hikers at trailheads, not telling them what you're actually trying to drive at, but just talking to like, hey, what do you see? What do you hear? You know, do you guys see any blank up there? And you can get some up to date information that if you jumped out and said, yeah, I'm hunting Dad kept quiet. Sneaky little things many of them how to read apps, a bit about using trail cameras, and the main thing how to access areas other guys are accessing. And I don't mean because it's way off in the mountains. It just could be because you know, you're like parking, you know, alongside of power line and your hammer and ducks are in this case big game, your hand, your hammer and deer and some spot that guys aren't hung They never thought to bring a pair of chess waiters with them. And the first thing you gotta do is wait across a couple of big ditches and also realized no one's going over there. They all go into the other direction because it's like they want to get away from the car. Almost almost fought you on publishing that little tip because I know I know guys that do it, and literally they takes them an extra ten minutes of getting up earlier in the morning to in that way. They can put them on across the river, take them off. They stash under a tree, and they have haunting grounds that are just like under people's noses. But people are like, oh, river, keep driving. Can't get across that thing. You know, if you hunt white tail or, you hunt pheasants and stuff, and you don't have chess waiters sitting in the back of your truck, your awn moron. Yeah, A big thing about tags and licenses, just kind of breaking down tag draws. It's the thing people are always wondered about. Breaks down over the counter stuff, How over the counter stuff works, How registration hunts work, how stuff like governor's auctions. Are governor's tags good or bad? We talked about that and kick that issue a long um. I'm talking like in an ethical way. How do you feel about governor's auctions? How you feel or like how to work? Now? How you feel about how to work what's called landowner tags? How to play the points game for dream hunts in Western states? What are the toughest, coolest tags you could possibly draw. M hm. I researched that little piece and that was interesting to me and someone that haunts a lot to really see what are some of the toughest tags draw that you know most of us will never ever draw. But I was surprised to find one on the east coast of the country, and I'll keep that a surprise for you. Then we get into the methods, and it starts off with spot and spot spots and stock hunting, and I feel like this is it's a basic overview if each one of these methods, but there are points where it gets so detailed that I can't call it just a basic overview of spot and stock hunting anymore. UM got a map that shows you a great way to already pick your glassing locations before you ever even set foot in the country. UM. All different kinds of stuff on glass ng how to how to use different methods of glassing, whether it's like how to work or patch ground the pair of binoculars. Like you sit down and here's like three sixty degrees of terrain. You don't glass it like you think you'll just sit down and be like, oh, let start looking around my binoculars. It just doesn't work that way. There's a system, there's a way you break up the landscape and prioritize the landscape and study it and chunks and that's explained here. I mean you mean you right now just lost in uh in reading? Yeah, we're just looking at the pretty pictures binals versus spot and scopes. When is each appropriate for spotting stock hunting? Things like what do people talk about when I say you're gonna put them to bed? Okay? Or how to plan stocks on animals you found? You see them go into their bedding area, you see them go into their feeding area, how to pattern their movements, how to plan stocks according to wind intopography? Big issue. Yeah, actual actual diagrams and pictures showing that stuff, Like, hey, here's a picture. This is actual place that I saw an elk, I made a stock, This is how I did, This is what the wind was doing. And um it just hammers at home, you know when you can see it in a picture like that. How the wind behaves on a mountain like you always have like wind direction right, but the wind gets squirreling in the mountains due to thermals and the structure of a mountain and how to like make predictions about what the wind's gonna be doing and things that override dominant wind conditions. Okay, detailed stuff, but very important. And anyone who's hunting in the mountains, especially the bow, is gonna know exactly what we're talking about. This is gonna make sense of some of the observations they may have had or some of things they didn't put together. Ambush hunting. Yeah, I love our illustration here, and we've got to give a shout out to Pizza Chevski because he did an incredible job with our illustrations. And it's basically just an illustration showing six different ambush points, funnels, pinch points, whatever you want to call them. And you're probably never gonna see exactly what one of these looks like. But when you look at the whole overall illustration ation, you get the idea of, Okay, when I'm in the woods, this is what I'm looking for. This, you know, this would be a great place to set up an ambush. Yeah, like how to anticipate funnels and pinch points. I learned to start thinking about game in terms of funnels and pinch points when I was a fur trapper because in the fir trap you're looking at a grand scale. Okay, how are animals just gonna move across the landscape? But at the same time, how are you going to get them to place their foot on a one and a quarter inch circle a trap pan? So I really started to think about stuff that way. I also started to be like, why do always catch fox here? Not there? And you step back and look at aerial photography and you're like, oh, man, I can't believe. I never realized that this power line or gas line connects all this different agricultural land and the animal can basically run down this power line and hit farm to farm to farm to farm, you know, and and travel on a clear path. And you go like, that's why there's always five there. It's not because like whatever, how the fields laid out is because he got put there by his path, you know, by the best way for him to travel the landscape. So stop on that. Where we at with time about fifty minutes? All right, everyone, I know you're enjoying the Meat Eater podcast, and you're especially enjoying it because it's free. And to keep it that way, we gotta take a quick break to thank our sponsors. Still hunting, Yanni had you don't he worked because Jean he's a still hunter, like he likes a still hunt for elt. And we get into how still hunting is different than just walking around in the woods m hm, which essentially what it is and why I love it is love taking very long, slow walk through the woods with rifle in hand. But yeah, it breaks it down. Decoys and calling another very detailed, you know, long and and again these are the basics in each uh species by species section. We revisit decoys and calling for elk, we revisit spot stock hunting for elk, and you'll actually find more words written in that section, you know, specifically you know, to that animal about spot stockhunning that you do here in the basics section. Yeah. That's the thing that I want to point out about the books, like, if you get into the books start reading them, is you can't just be like, oh, I like to hunt elk, therefore I'll skip ahead and read the elk section. It just doesn't work that way. If you are if you just hunt white tails, I would still suggest that you read the entire book because you will constantly find insights and ideas everywhere in this book, they're going to pertain to your life, your type of honey. As a great example, Jay Scott and Dark Holborn of Cobner Scott alfres A in on judging big horn rams. The way that these guys methodically go about doing this for big horn rams, you could take the exact state principles and apply it to any other animal if you're into you know, judging, you know, uh antler size or whatever it might be. And these guys have to know this because they're sheep guides. And when they get a high paying client that comes in and he wants a sheep of ex caliber, it's these guys that eventually say that's the one you're after. And their livelihood, you know, they're like business depends on their ability to say, like what that thing is. So to hear them talk about how to look at an animal. If you like to hunt bears, and and you don't care about shooting record book bear, you just don't want to be surprised and walk up and realize you shot like a seventy pound one year old female because you'd rather have two hundred pounds of meat. Learning their idea about how you look at an animal, how you compare animals to other animals. How you make these decisions is gonna apply to your life as well. Or you might be in the area where you have certain requirements you have to meet. It's gotta be a brow time bowl. Brow time has gotta be six inches long to be able to kill elk. Elk's gotta be a branch antler bull. It's got to be a full curl sheep to be legal. Right. How to look at animals and not just be blown away in surprise when you see him, but how to look at them you know objectively and make determinations about the size, age, characteristics of the animal you're looking at. A lot about drive hunting. I grew up drive hunting for white tails. There's a big part every year, a few days you spend drive hunt for white tails. How to do a drive hunt, how to try to pull off drive hunts in the mountains where it's very difficult, And then a lot of things. I'm being a backpack hunter. Earlier we talked about back country gear. Here we talked about back country living. How to camp in the back country on a hunt and not ruin your own hunt chances by leaving too much of a footprint. How to deal with grizzlies making the shot. A lot of information about shot placement for Big Game, about actually shooting and marksmanship, different types of rusts. How to aim on animals in a variety of positions. How to decide what sort of hold on an animal you need according to where it is and what it's doing. Shots not to take, how to track, how to you know blood trail, How to look at a patch of blood and cellt tell what you're looking at, whether you did a good job or a bad job. What you might anticipate happening. How to read an arrow after you When you find your arrow after shot, what does that arrow tell you about your hit? And now that it's not just like, oh, what's gonna It's not just like looking into a crystal ball. It's gonna tell you how to behave according to what you see on that arrow. How long to wait, why you're waiting, the risks of waiting, How to make decisions. Big Game section alphabetical. We start with antelope. Each section like this. You like the antilope section. It's got basics. Okay, we have each animal has a bar room banch. We'll tell you something surprising about the animal you do not know. Barroom banter is meant to make you a cooler guy to talk to at a bar. Could you be able to tell you, like, you know what, I'll tell you one thing and you'll tell the person the thing you read in barroom bands and they'll be like, no, ship, Yeah, diet, life and death, how long only live in? What kills him is life and death, Breeding and reproduction? How that goes down for him? Kind of habitats. They'd like telltale signs, they'd like distribution, So it's your classic where it lives. What's cool about that is next to that is hunting opportunity State by state hunting opportunities map. Where it breaks down that animal not just in his distribution, but whether it's what weather. Hunting opportunities in a state are widely available, of limited availability, where you have the animal but there's no hunting for it, and where it's just not present, so it's not an issue. If you look at the big horn sheep hunting opportunities map, it's all limited availability. There's no easy way to get a big horn tag analope, it's split half the state's widely available and we explain what that means and how to go about getting those tags. Half the state's limited availability. You gotta do a draw to get an analope tag. It will help you think about destinations if you want to go on that big Western hunt. Then edibility just thoughts and edibility general thoughts on hunting opportunities, and then hunting methods. So early we're talking about spot stock hunting, ambush hunting, decoys and calling. Okay, those then get applied in a very specific way to each of these animals. Archery, firearm. How to do all those hunting methods? How did that apply? Are the appropriate for the animal or not? If so, what particular things do you need to do to make those methods described in the hunting methods section work for the species. So we get an animal, then we're rolling the big horn sheep big orang sheep. For the hunting methods. The main thing I talked about big orange sheep is I get into some details about tag draws. The only way you're gonna hunt a big horn unless you're loaded, and I explain how to do it if you're loaded. If you're not loaded, how you're gonna hunt big horns. You're gonna win a lottery tag for a big horn tag. This section is basically devoted to that if you have a life's goal of hunting a big horn, how do you start right now? At what age is it too late for you to start? What age is that you should start now? And here's how to kind of begin and how to kind of think about getting the tag. And if you read the rest of the book and learn how to spot in stock and still hunt whatever, you'll be prepared when you do draw that tag, will be prepared for a big one hunt. Black bear long section on black bear, because you gotta deal with coastal hunting, my hunting, hunting, fruit orchards, bait, pile hunting, hunting everywhere from Maine to California, spring and fall. It's a big subject. And our hunting opportunities maps. You know, this information changes because animals fluctuation. The population of these animals fluctuates, and so in ten years, you know these mass would be spot on. But working on the hunting opportunities maps was very interesting to me because you just have no idea. You just always focus on your own state where you live, or your region of the country, and you go, wow, you can actually hunt black bears. It looks like in more than half the states in our country. I had no idea until I worked on making that map. So I feel like out of every section when you look at those, you know just kind of give you more of a um you know, continental, We're not continent wide, but you know, countrywide view of where these animals live and where you can hunt them. Now, as far as like, we got an Appalachian bear hunter got it goes by the name Shing Daddy. He weighs in on bear on how to establish a bear bait station, all his thoughts on that. Then we got Jared Finker, Wisconsin hunter weighs in an archery stand placement for bear baits. So if you're hunting bow over bear bait, how you go about thinking about positioning your stand. We got another guy and Idaho bear hunter Chad Bart weighs in on places stand near bear bait. For rifle hunting, what are the special considerations you have to take into a fact when you're doing you have to think about when you're doing bait pile hunting with a rifle. All very different blacktail deer Okay range from California on up into Alaska. How to work topography for blacktail deer, the difference be a blacktail deer hunt in September and November. How the animals move and use their landscape. Buffalo, A little bit about buffalo hunting, a lot about how to handle big carcasses. That's the thing I think of when I think of a buffalo hunt, is you're handling a giant carcass. So early I mentioned like it doesn't matter what you do, you're gonna find good stuff in all these chapters. I don't care if you hunt moose, cariboo, whatever. You're gonna learn a lot about handling big carcasses and handling big carcasses in grizzly country in this section that you'll be able to apply to any situation you're in. Caribou. Careful detail on cariboo, and a lot about my favorite way to hunt them, which takes into effect the funnels. So early we talked about funnels, pitch points. We get into greater detail with cariboo. How lakes impact cariboo movements, How valleys and valley floors affect cariboo movements, How mountain passes affect cariboo movements. Some tricks to dealing with air carriers and bush pilots when you're trying to do a you're guided cariboo hunt. How to tell a male from a female, which is a lot more difficult than you might think, because is they're the only antlerd animal we have where the females carry antlers here in North America. Doll sheet a personal favor to mine, But again, the chapter has a lot to do with hunting in the mountains and living under very difficult circumstances. How to get in a position where you can put on a lot of miles in the mountains every day without wearing yourself out. Rick French and Alaska sheep God. He weighs in on the dudes and don'ts of dolls sheep hunting, and it is probably you know, it's a couple of hundred words that has more wisdom about sheep hunting in it than anything you're gonna find. We get into elk and Yanni worked tirelessly on the elk section. Break down some thoughts here Yanni mm hmm, including a sweet picture carved into a tree that Yanni found of an elk, which is kind of amazing looking. Yeah, it is great I'm glad, I know exactly Hopefully that tree still stands for quite a while I can go back and look at it. That's in Colorado. A more than likely a um what they call him arbor lifts, a sheep order that they usually come up from South America during the summer in Colorado. Herd sheep come from place all over the place. Uh, Peruvians and uh, I can't remera some me. Anyways, you see a lot of arbor lifts on the aspens in Colorado. And uh, it was funny because where where I found this. This is on a scouting little scotty mission I was doing, and I think like a week or ten days later, we ended up killing two cows within a couple hundred yards of that tree. Yeah, so that thing too. It's like this book takes time for beauty. Man, This book has a nod towards the beauty of the natural world. Yanni gets real heavy into yeah, you know, Yanni was an ELK Guyau's real heavy into calling, how to makes sense a game calls, how to use game call? Yeah, and especially here for ELK, you know. And again the illustrations that uh, you know, we came up kind of with the ideas and then you know, Pete Zachoski was able to actually put him into you know what now looks like art and you really get a good sense of when we when we, you know, in text, talk about the T booning technique and what that means to kind of you know, basically parallel herd, you know, waiting for the right opportunity to to bank in and make a move and try to get a shot. And uh again he put it into a beautiful illustration. Yes, say, we talked a lot with the l khuns where you know a lot of great elk hunters and and I used to be an avid archery l hunter. As you kind of talk about like what's your strategy and you'd be like, oh, we kind of just get close to and wait for something to happen. Yeah, you know, like, well what does that mean exactly? And he honest breaks down with the thing he calls t bowning. He breaks down like what that means when you get into a herd, how you can stay near her without that herd? No, when you're there and what you're doing when you're waiting for like what we call something to happen happen and how to help it happen. Um and mainly just like staying close to elk without elk know when you're there. We have a section called a bunch of things to keep in mind when calling out, just bullet pointed stuff that might not fit into the text, but it's just like stuff you gotta have. And again, ambush hunting is covered in regards to elk. Still hunting is you're covered in regards to elk. All of it's there. Have Alena. It's not a celebrated game animal. It should be this Mainly the goal of this chatter is to make you realize that you are insane if you don't hunt. Have Alina. Big thing on moose. Okay, everything you want to know about moose hunt, Alpine stuff, low country stuff, main stuff, Alaska stuff, how to gauge legality of moose, which is very tricky for anyone who wants to go do a do it yourself moose hunt in Alaska where they tell you it's got to have a fifty and spread or four brower. Times. You have never known stress in hunting until you've pulled the trigger on a moose and then you gotta get over there. And find out if your calculations were correct, how to like think about that, and how to not make mistakes, and a very good definition and explanation of why you should never pull the trigger on a moose If you think he's fifty and that's all you're going by is your estimation of him being fifty inches wide. You need more than that. You need more than oh, he's got to be fifty, um. How not to make mistakes that could land you very serious legal trouble with a confiscated animal potentially a confiscated truck and firearm like how to avoid these kind of mistakes, And that's what information is everywhere in here. How to handle more stuff on handling a big gas carcass, mountain goat hunting, telling males from females where to go, What kind of mountain ring equipment you want on a mountain goat hunt, what's too much? What kind of mountain nearing equipment is gonna get you in trouble? What kind of mountaineering income uh equipment might save your ass? A picture of my wonderful sister in law six months pregnant with a mountain goat she killed, going to show that not anyone canna hume, ountain goats. But someone with the right attitude can do it. No. One of my favorite sections twelve pages that are just packed full of awesome information about hunting mule deer and some of the better ways in not better, they're all great, but great ways in pieces from Remy Warren, Steve Reid, Colorado hunter and guide Remy Warren, Rody Henderson, all guys that kill a lot of mule there just kind of give you, you know, their view of it and how they go about it. And here's yawning with a giant mule. Hear he killed on a public land Colorado hunt not far from a road. Crunch time hunt, high competition, getting Danny's a big thing on wild pigs. Okay, this gets into the politics of wild pigs. It gets into the definitions of wild pigs. Your razors, back, Eurasian borders, feral pigs, wild pigs. How it's all one thing, suits scraffa okay everything spot stock hunting, how to hunt natural baits, naturally occurring baits for pigs, shot placement on pigs, the trouble you can get in bow hunting for pigs with shot placement. Oh humong guy white tail section because a lot of people, a lot of hunters cut their teeth on white tail hunting. The white tail section more than any other sections, is meant to be a beginner's guide to white tail hunting. Yet we did a little piece on the gray ghost, Steve's favorite, the coups Deer. The white tail hunter Chris eber Heart weighs in on public access white tails. This guy's whole deal, like he's devoted his life. They're killing white tail bucks in places you would not even think to hunt, and he breaks his method down for you. He hunts chunks of land you didn't realize you could hunt on, and it kills dude that no one knows her there. And what I love about Chris is that he does it economically out of an old minivan. Yes, the guy just has a system and he hunts everywhere. And this guy can roll into a new state and find bucks that the guys that live there don't even know where there. As long as you can find, as long as you can afford the tag and some gas, you can do it. The Chris ebra Hardaway. Doug Dern weighs in on his favorite white tail hunting method called the mooch. I don't know. We tease him endlessly. What is that? Because that's a fishing term, you know, it's like banana waite cut plug herring. Your mooch in salmon dog. They mooch deer. Um. It works. It's a fun hunting method. We break it down with graphics. They've killed some giants. Big thing about Jack O'Connor's very own gray goals to cous deer. Why is she gett into hunting? Butcher? And you know he's the one to call it the poor man sheet, which I didn't know until I read that book. And uh, it's fitting butcher and big game, big game in the field. Okay, what's to do in the field? How to handle large animals on the ground in the field? How to gut a deer the right way? You can break all the rules, but you got to learn them first. It's like with writing. You can break all the rules and writing once you learn them. You can break the rules and gutting once you learn them. Here's like, how to really gut an animal? Well, all your shortcuts and gutless method and all that garbage, it's fine, do it well, do it the first few times, and so you know what product you're after, and then you can mess around. How the gut, how to skin how to leave evidence of sex, which is which is a requirement in many states. What that means, the best way, the cleanest way to do it? Field skinning okay? How does skins up in the field? How to skin it under ground? How to skin it hanging in the field. Very detailed photography. A bunch of just random field dressing tips. Twelve random field dressing tips. Skinning big game for taxidermy and tanning okay. How to handle bear hides, deer capes, everything, how to cut away skull plates, handling meat in the field, what not to do, what to do for clean, good, safe, healthy meat. Thoughts on aging game meat, bonus parts, or how to show maximum respect for your prey. How to handle deer heads, dear hearts, kidneys, liver, nuts, tongues, tongues. Yeah, and this stuff is kind of interspersed to and some well those sidebars you know about a you know, a tongue or whatever. And that's you know, the true mediator style. I feel like, you know, when we take to the next level and give you that give you the power to you know, to do more how to handle large Thoughts on handling large from bears and wild pigs. What's it is good for, what it's not good for, how to make it, how to use it. There's another example of that, breaking down a big game animal. So you gotta skinned out carcass. You're ready to butcher. How to break that thing down, how to think about the different cuts, how to freeze the different cauts, how to bone out what bones are good for stuff? How to do something fast because you don't have time and you gotta get your animal in the freezer because it's hot out and you gotta be to work, and you want to do it yourself, but you only got an hour. What to do then that allows you to do a better job later when you're ready to pull it out of your freezer later. It's like a two stage butchering method that I use all the time. Just how to do it fast and right. How to make burger grinding burger okay? How to freeze big game eat a variety of methods, pros and cons for all the ways to put big game in your thing. And finally we get down to the recipes. Smoking hands off deer and bears, making pulled pork recipes, the wild game, making stock from wild game, blade in roast asabuco or braids, shank, how to fry up heart and liver, how to do marinades, how to make veal parmesan with game meat, All kinds of stuff about grilling steaks and marinades and dry rubs and dudes and don't stuff on Burger's jerky, grilling hole loins, making deer heads, all kinds of stuff. I'm making your own fresh sausages and starkoutrie. Stuff about camp meals in the field, preparations of crazy stuff that will blow people's minds. Um a lot of thoughts on burger how to deal with it, some some surprising stuff like mince meat pie with bear lard crust, how to roast a rack of deer ribs out in the field for a great camp meal. It just goes on and on and on and on. That feels pretty complete to me. Here was a complete guy to hunting, butcher and cooking wild game. Okay, I already have my closing thought. And I'm sorry listeners if we feel like we're rushing out of here, but we have a big day. We've got some travel, We're heading to Alaska for a secret project, secret, top secret. Yeah, we're going out to work on a secret project that is not meat either. Yes, we're bringing rifles and fishing poles, but that's for just extracurricular. But it's a part, it's a part of a master plan. Anyways, My clothing on this monster infomercial guidebook plug here is that, Um, I'm not brown nose, and it's gonna sound like I am. But like all Steve's books, it's it doesn't read like some dry how to manual. It is that, but it is intimate and fun to read, and you get to read other people's words, you know, with all the ways in so like. It's not like you're picking up a textbook and prepared to be bored. No, you're gonna pick it up and go man, I can't believe it's not knocked out fifty pages and it's time to go to bed. I want to hear the anecdote about your your brother in this book that you just told me yesterday. My brother called me to say how much you liked it when he got a copy, and he's been reading it to his uh, his six year old as bedtime stories. This kid he says his kids fascinated. Here's the deal. Here's here's my concluding thought. Man, I don't want you to think this is just a big bullshit party. And right now, like I honestly, okay, I honestly, I'm very happy with how these books turned out. I'm very proud of these books. If I wasn't, I would not be sitting here like doing this. I'm not just doing this to sell some books. I really not. It was a lot of work that a lot of people did and it's something that I will look at for the rest of my life and be proud to have been involved in. Eighteen nineteen. People, we're heavily involved in the making of this book. Okay, there's a group effort. It's really like, there's nothing else like this exists in the hunting world. I promise you I have read it. Okay, if it's out there, I've read it. Nothing like this is out there. Um you, I'm like telling you, like in a personal way, you will not be disappointed by these books. You really won't. Um. That's much as I'm gonna say about it. This is the infomercial podcast go by one of you on these T shirts by Complete Guy to Hunting, Butchering and Cooking Wild Game. Volume one Big came available now Stephen Ronella, um enjoy yourselves. Yeah, and you already gave your clothing thoughts, but I guess it. Peace out, take it easy, Bye bye. Hey, listen up. This sounds like an advertisement, but it's not. It's it's it's different than an add. I need you guys and gals that listen to go check out The Complete Guy to Hunting, Butchering and Cooking Wild Game, which is written by myself and some people from the Meat Eater team and a collection of the best hunters from around the country. It's a two volume set, Volume one Big Game. It's coming out in August. Volume two Small Game comes out December. Um again, it's called The Complete Guide to Hunting, Butchering and Cooking Wild Game. It totals about seven hundred and fifty pages of content dealing with gear, tags, hunting basics, advanced hunting strategies, field butchering recipes. Everything you need to know to be a better hunter or to get started in a hunting if you haven't done it before. If I had had this book when I was a kid, it would have changed my life. It's gonna change yours. I'm not joking. You can pre order now Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Indie Bound, Target, Powells, Walmart, wherever books are sold. It's out there. It's beautiful, it's huge, it's two volumes. Do yourself favor, do me a favor, Give this book a look. This episode of The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by the Art of Charm, a pie podcasts about leveling up in life and relationships and friendships at work, at home, and everywhere in between. This is not pop psychology has insights with a practical edge, so listeners can apply something right out of the box every show. Go to Art of Charm podcast dot com or find the Art of Charm and iTunes or Stitcher. Take your life to the next level. M