00:00:12 Speaker 1: I guess I grew up on a Hey Everybody, episode one four coming at you. Uh. It is a beautiful day here in Montana, and I'm joined by Pat Durk and say, hey, Pat, nice talking to It's good to have you on. Um. It's long, long overdue. If you if you don't know anything about Pat, shame on you get bastards. UM go over to the metator dot com and and find his contributor page. You'll have hours and hours and hours of wonderful reading of all the stuff that passed on over the last How long you've been writing for me to either Pat? Just almost two years now, that's all I think. I think I got my first assignment from Steve and may have really may have two thousand, so now just two years. That's awesome. Where we also have new hearts. Say hey, Spencer, he Ben he Bent the baritone badass. We're gonna we're gonna get to I was just reading your article Spencer about three toes. We're gonna get to the legend of three toes here in a moment. But there there's been a lot of people out of your neck of the woods, South Dakota that have pretty awesome nicknames you know as you as you wrote in the article. So I'll let you go through that later. But you need to think about if the baritone badasses, it's something you want to stick or not to think about it. Um. And then we have Phil first Crap in the Woods, Taylor, Hey buddy, Hey Ben, how's it going? God? Are you ready for what's about to go down? Not at all? Let's do it? Okay? Well, I was just telling everybody before we hit record here that we were inundated, as one might expect with first Crap in the Woods stories Slash My Dog Eats Human Feces stories. As much as I love reading both of those, I'm a little I'm a little worn out, a little burned out. I tried to read them all, so thank you for everybody for sending them in. Um. Phil, how's the how's it been on your end? You've been getting a lot of feedback because I've been really just taking over your life, so it's a big deal. It's not quite taken over my life yet, but um. I went for a beautiful hike this uh this weekend in the Galaton Canyon. Posted a little little Instagram story thinking I would just put some good content out there in the world. Instead, I was just inundated with um replies along the lines of, Hey, why didn't you take a ship up there? Or hey, go take a crap behind that tree. So I'd like to thank you and thank the audience for this. Yeah, I'd like I'd like to also thank them. Please forward me every single one of those comments. Uh, this is what keeps me going during quarantine. It's this kind of chattered. We have a lot. We have so many emails Pat Durk, and we I don't know if I can't even read them all. Um, there's so many. So there's like thousand words stories. There's a bunch but um Bryant Lummon wrote in and he said that, um, I'm gonna have to summarize as many of these as I can. But he was taking a ship in the woods, his first ship in the woods in Wisconsin, and uh, your neck of the woods there, And he went to squat to take the ship, and he forgot that a lot of times when you take a ship, you also urinate, and so he peeed into his pants. While he had cleared the back end, the front end wasn't clear, and so, as he says, he started pissing directly into my pants that were around my ankles. He said, I was able to redirect and minimize the damage, but I still had to drop a few wet layers when I got back to the car. Luckily, it was getting warmer and they weren't really needed by that. So that's really what we're going through. Pat, You've been telling me, if you you got a few gems from this genre, you want to lay one out there, you can leave it. You can leave the names out if you wish. Well, the first one that made me laugh was I was telling I got to kick on a Phil story that I was telling my wife about it, and she, uh, I said, you know, yeah, Phil, I'm guessing Phil, you must be about late twenties. Well that's right, twenty nine, okay. And I said something like, yeah, phils late twenties and has never taken a crap in the woods. And my wife got this thoughtful look in her face. You know, she's sixty one, and she says, yeah, I don't think. I don't think I have either. So that kind of shocked me because I've taken them. You know, when when the kids were around, we used to go up to Canada every summer and go fishing, and we used to make bathroom breaks quite often. You know, I've dropped them off in these islands and then when you go off the girls in the woods and come back, and I kind of assumed that would happen at some point, but apparently not. Another one was again involving my daughters. I used to always take I'm up to the Michigan's Upper Peninsula, which is about four hour drive straight north of me, and I'd cooked there and spend the weekend with them scouting deer and looking for places to hunt. And there are pre schools when I first started doing that, And I brought them home and came on from work one day, and my wife was somewhat amused, but also that irritated that. Um we lived, we still lived on Main Street in that tongue called Amoral, Wisconsin, which is west of ostaf you know Wisconsin geography at all. And yeah, apparently my daughter has decided to go to the bathroom out there in the front lawn of our yard on Main Street. And I was kind of proud of them, but my wife wasn't all that thrilled. So I kind of explained to them that there's proper places to go outside, you know, and there's improper places to go outside, and the yard is not a proper place for this kind of kind of stuff. So yeah, that was that was my my of a film story. I mean, Phil's Phil story. Really, Pad is bringing people together. So many people have realized through this that both their dogs are you know, don't need help, they are normal, and and you know, people having these realizations that they have never crapped in the woods either. I got a lot of those two, a lot of those on a lot of those messages on Instagram, people like I never thought about that, I've never taken a ship in the woods before. And so it's really a story of you know, coming together around a tough time to to talk about these issues, you know, and be open about what you're doing out there. Spencer, you got anything to add here? My favorite story wasself like this buddy's uncle and they were out for opening day of deer hunting and there was this weird shifts that I feel like happened maybe like fifteen or twenty years ago. We're prior to that, every deer hunter hardcore or like amateur or really casual or otherwise everybody wore like these one piece jump suit bibs that were made by Carhart or Dickies or whoever. Um, is that familiar to you guys? Or was that like a regional thing where I'm from. Did everybody at one point just like wear these giant one that was coming Especially I remember in the seventies and I started hunting, those are really common. Yeah, And when we started hunting, that's all we wore. And that's like funny more about um, you know, like I can't imagine that's ever going to show up in a first light website, is uh, you know, the the whole one piece bib suit. But anyway, that's just like what everybody wore. And it's worth knowing that for this story, this uncle had to take a crap and um like did his business and finished up and went to pull up his one piece thing and flung his sat over his head and also just threw feces like all over himself because he didn't account for the fact that, uh, he had just taking off this entire layer of clothing that was right below and then that's where someone been landed. So that was a different time certainly, all right, Well, Spencer, like I don't. I've never had any emergency situations like that, but you know, everybody's had had their story, so it's good. Like I said, it's like gathering around a campfire. UM, with that camp fire as a pile of ship UM and Phil's case, So thank you. I just want to say, thank you. Phil. We're gonna let that go. Thanks for all the emails. Keep sending them in. UM, we may do a whole podcast where we just read these. I tried to count. I've been trying to count since we hit record and that we're up there, We're over a hundred emails and a lot like some of the I could just read you some of the Phil's poopy predicament, Phil's first pile in the woods, Phil's dog problem, canoes, shipping, and friendship. So there's just so many, so many great emails in there. So I'm sorry I can't read them all. But we don't want to cover too long on on on this topic. Less we turned into a whole different podcast. UM, so this is the It's it's an easy transition, um. Michael Michael Skall wrote in this Michael Skall wrote and he said, and the title of his email was would you eat it, um, and you may know of this area. Another wisconsinite pat He said, I he owned some land in the Poplar River near Poplar, Wisconsin. Okay, he's way up there in the hinter lands. Uh he found, he said. Every day I drive over the river twice on my way to and from work. One evening, as I crossed the bridge, I noticed two dark subjects hum hung up on a snag in the river below. I had to investigate what was going on. As my dog and I went down closer, I saw that this was to jake turkeys that had been dumped off the bridge. This is not an uncommon sight, but when I pulled them to the shore, I was disgusted at what I saw. That Jake's were simply rested out, breasted, and then tossed out. I thought ran through my head. These cannot be but a day old, because they weren't here this morning, and they were in the cool water of the river all day. I wonder if I can save the legs. His question to us is what would we do? Would we take the legs and cook them up and eat him? Um? I think he actually did what he wanted to know? Is he just desperate? Or do we think that's a good idea, Pat, what do you think about that? I am my initial reaction, they say, when this must have just happened. Huh, yeah, I must have just happened. Didn't say exactly when, but this year in the spring. My my first reaction is say, definitely take them, um, at least take them and then check them off. But I'm guessing that it's still be in good shape, you know, because it's been pretty cool. That's some really mad waters are still running cooled up there. I'd say it's a pretty good chance there is still good all like, guess that would be my my my answer, Spencer them me too, Spencer, Yeah, I think it's I think it's easy to be like, oh, yeah, I would have done it. I would have taken them, for sure, but uh, it would be difficult to come upon an animal that you don't know how long it's been there or who put it there, or will might be in that water and be like, yeah, I'd take it. So I'm not real confident that I would. And I'm somebody who's all four taking road kill or if someone has excess game that they don't they're not interested in cleaning themselves or gutting. I'm all for taking that, but that would be a tough situation. Uh, And I would really commend him if he did do it. Well, here's his story, he said. I decided I would remove the two sets of legs and take them up to the house for closer inspection. I cleaned them up the best I could, but they had a very pale color from being in the river for eight hours. That night, I put all four in the crock pot and let them cook all night while I slept dreaming of my own turkey hunt that would be coming in the middle of May. In the end, I did eat a few bites of meat, but the smell of the cooked meat was not as I remember. In the end, his dog June, enjoyed a few nights of cooked dark turkey meat with her kibble. That's uh. Until then, keep powder dry and your whistle with Michael skull Um, I I like the I like what he did there. I'm all for it. I feel like he You take the meat, you examine it, and then if you feel like you can go through the next step, you cook it up, and then if it's not it's not to your liking and there's a dog running around, it's just fine. It's better than better in that case, and sitting around in the woods, uh, in the river. So I'll give you some credit there, Michael. But I appreciate the question because I think about that pretty much every time I crossed any piece of road kill, UM that's visible from the road, I think about it. I've taken him before. I do that a lot. But you gotta you gotta look and ask those questions. Now, Phil, since you're a non hunter, Um, have you ever eaten road kill? This may be in your next big story that you need to tell us. I know I have not. I have not eaten roadkill. I haven't had the opportunity. UM. Yanni was telling a story about how someone hit h moose near his house and he just got the whole moose and it was a pretty good condition, and we talked about that for a while. UM. When Yanni told that story, I think I brought up the fact that when someone asked, well, would you, at least coming from a non hunters perspective, the idea of eating roadkill, just the word roadkill just kind of like sets off an alarm and you're like disgusting, horrible. Why Um? But then when you actually stop and think about it for a second, it's like, well why not? Is that? I guess it is the better question? Um, but I haven't. I have not yet know. Okay, Well, it seems like it would be harder for me to do than than crapping in the woods, though I don't know, Phil, you just gotta You're just not looking for it right now. You weren't looking for the crap in the woods, You're not looking for roadkill. So your next thing you gotta do and service to the podcast to bring us the content that everybody loves so much, is grab us a wild It doesn't matter what the road kill is, um, Spencer. Do you have like a favorite road kill treat that you can kind of, you know, titillate fills palette with the only road kill I've eaten it would be pheasant. I've had a handful of pheasants that I've hit that flushed up out of the ditch while I was driving in the fall, crushed him they were dead, and took those home andy them. But anything any ven sanitary game bird, I can't go wrong, I don't think. Okay, well, Phil, you'd be the one to look at. When you see one, you text me, I'll come over and we'll help you out. All right, okay, got it? Moving on? Moving? Are we get there? But get there? Pat, you have any insight there? We should move on? Ad alright, good. I was just I was just thinking, though, I have to say before I forget that one of the most pleasant surprises in podcast I listened to it was the way you have developed Phil into the celebrity. He's just a guy that I joyant. I'm sure Wan piled his job. He wasn't looking forward to looking little down the road and thinking that he's gonna be one day assuring all these varied stories that you've been pulling on at him. But yeah, as a fellow journalist, I felt there was a story that needed to be told. Pat. I felt somebody had to tell this, you mysterious, mercurial young man's story. H and everybody thought. Most people thought when he first came on he was like a forty five year old man. Um who knew that his he had the tastes of a forty five year old man, yet uh was much younger and more handsome in person. So um, well, well we're peeling back those layers of the onion. We're gonna keep doing it. Okay, Phil, you're good, Just say good good, Thank you Patters for kind words. He never thought anybody would be drawing his face. It was not in the job description, that's for sure. It's one of the great joys in my life. Um. All right, Well, we gotta get to the reason why I wanted to have both you guys on Spencer and Pass because we've been saying this a lot more recently. But I am committed to sending more of you listeners over to the meat eator dot com only because I read almost everything that goes up there, and um, it's some of the best parts of my day of reading some of this content. So I am committed to making sure that you lazy bastards out there listening are taking up more of your free time and spending with us here a meat eaters. So that's that's my mission, and I need you guys to help me convince them, you know, convince these people listening, these holdouts that aren't doing it every single day to go and check it out. So I think we have to really great pieces that that you guys wrote. Um, that'll that will help with that mission. So I'll let you lead off, Spencer only with the fact that you wrote about your home territory, the story of Three Toes, the Killer Wolf, the most the West, most of the stories, Notorious Livestock Killer. But within the article you started listing off some of the names of legendary bat had asses that kind of came from that era and that part of the world. You want to kind of give a rundown of some of those folks and why that they all kind of coalesced in that place. Yeah, in the late eighteen hundreds, the Black Hills of South Dakota, specifically like Deadwood, had a gold rush, and at that time, South Dakota wasn't yet a state, and it was about the furthest I think east you could probably go without having a state, and so it was lawless country and there was this attraction of gold that brought in all of these like really classic old Wesse characters. He had wild Bill Hiccock, Calamity Jane Colorado, Charlie Utter, crooked nosed Jack McCall, who is the person that killed wild Bill hiccock. Um. You just had like this real collection of characters. If you've ever watched the HBO series Deadwood. Those are the kinds of people, um, that you're dealing with around that era. But the most savage outlaw of them all didn't show up until thirty years later. And that is who we're going to talk about. Three Toes of the Wolf. Did you? Did you mentioned Potato Creek Johnny? I don't want to. I don't wanna miss him. He was a great one. Uh. And if you ever do go to Deadwood, South Dakota, there's the Mount Marayah Cemetery where a ton of these Old West characters with these really colorful names are buried. Uh. It's like one of my most favorite places in the world. It's a really cool place, Uh to look back on that history and and know that you're still close to all those types of people. Yeah. I went there one time and got blackout drunk at a casino and lost a bunch of money. I missed the cemetery part, but I enjoyed the town nice steak So three Toes Uh. He kind of arrived on the scene in nineteen twelve, and he was known in the area because of his infamous pop print that only had three toes rather than four, and the story goes that he lost a fourth Toe a year so prior in a ranchers trap. Three Toes was the last remaining gray wolf in the tri state area of northwestern South Dakota, southwestern North Dakota, and southeastern Montana, and he really caused havoc for about a decade there. Now there was a lot of credit given to Three Toes for being this bloodthirsty killer um. He would take out entire corrals of sheep, He killed cattle, he killed horses, he killed pigs. By the end of his reign, like his thirteen year run of terrorizing the area, he had supposedly cost fifty dollars in livestock damages, which today, accounting for inflation, is about six dollars in damage. Now Three Toes had this really evasive history. Everyone in the area tried to kill a wolf because he caused so much financial damage. There were stories of people pursuing him for a hundred forty miles before they lost him, two miles before they lost him. There were stories of mid pursuit chasing Three Toes. He would take a break in a corral, he slaughtered fifteen sheep, and they kept going. Uh. The legend grew to the point where he had once hid in or near a horse carcass so that the people would pass by him and to keep going. He was so intelligent that if the chase was getting close, he would intentionally scattered livestock so that they would obliterate his trail, so then he could leave the area and they wouldn't be able to follow his tracks. So uh, three Toes had wit, and he also had athleticism. He had supposedly jumped down like thirty ft banks to get away from hounds. He had cleared twelve foot clear twelve foot banks to get away from hounds. Um. So it was the wit and the athleticism. It got so bad where the state put a bounty on him five dollars, which today confiflation is like thirteen dollars um. And as all these cowboys failed to catch him, finally the U. S d A Called in their greatest wolf hunter in the country, and this was Clyde Briggs. He came up for New Mexico and he had a reputation for catching the uncatchable predators. After about three weeks of interviewing cowboys scouting out the area, he finally settled it on a ranch and he set this like really exhaustive trap line, and he ended up catching three Toes. I think it was on July twenty three, UM nineteen. I believe that was the date. By that time, three Toes was well passed his prime. Supposedly he had been, you know, at least thirteen, fourteen, fifteen years old. Now wolves in captivity like their max range is seventeen or eighteen, so this wolf was was way way up there. Clyde Briggs decided he would spare three Toes temporarily, and he had tied him, put him in his car, and he was going to drive him to the town of Buffalo, which was only about ten miles away or so. But on the way there, three Toes actually died. Despite the wolf being six ft long, he was only seventy four pounds. And the sheepherder slash writer in the area, who a lot of these stories kind of come from, he had written about the wolf and this is what he said about it, said, call it a broken heart or what you will. Something of this sort is what killed the old wolf. He was resting easily when found. His wounds were superficial, but there was something in his grand old spirit that could not broke capture, and nature more merciful than he had ever been, granted him his release. So that is the story of three Toes. It's like a single tier situation. I feel like, you know, I'm like an animal rights actors, right, I'm like, oh, I got three toes Um. That's that's really a cool story. And there's a lot of good what's the good literature people can read around because there's a lot of good Um you mentioned sheep um. I'm sure there's a lot of other things people can step in. If you go to the mediator dot com, there's a lot of links in that articles that will take you to other places that you'll be able to read about three toes. Um. There's a lot written about him by Cutic go to magazine, which is a great job of covering these old stories. And then there's actually a statue dedicated to three Toes at Buffalo, South Dakota where there's this whole long, uh basically life history of three Toes and and all the places that he made his kills and all the damage he caused, and they're talking about that ending there you go. Um, I imagine at any rate, you know, if you're not going to the meeting. You're communre missing out on this stuff. You had another story that you told on the live stream the other night, Spencer that you can also find our website about growing Morrell mushrooms. Or the first guy that ever figured this out? Yeah, um, there was in nine I think it was a student at San Francisco State University who had done the unthinkable. He successfully harvested lab grown Morale mushrooms. Now this is a reputation at moral mushrooms have. You can't grow them, um in a lab, you can't form them. And that's what makes them so damn valuable. Uh, is that you have to go out in nature and get these things. And it really makes him an enigma. Anyway, this grad student, he had cracked the case and he figured out how to grow them. But three months before his patent was granted, he was murdered in the middle of a night at a city park in San Francisco. Um. So, this grad student he left behind like a super lucrative contract with Domino's Pizza, his patent, his public knowledge. Anybody can go see it and try to replicate it. But like most patterns, are patents that are have some secret formula. He obviously left some things out, and so this man who was had the only knowledge in the whole world of how to grow these ungrowable mushrooms was then murdered. Uh and nobody has been able to crack the case since. And you know, to the long legend of South Dakota Badasses. This is Spencer and his wonderful voice as he tells you stories of ship you've never heard before. The baritone badass crooked knows Jake, what was that? Creator was Jack Nicole, Tato Creek, Johnny Staty Creek, Johnny the badass Baritone Spencer neuros. Well, thanks for that, and please continue on earthing these little tidbits and delivering us to them every week on the website. We very much enjoy it um. And a lot of this stuff is part of this series called Barroom Banter Um. And the whole idea of the series of barroom banter is to make you sound maybe not book smart, but you'll sound really educated and interesting from a bar stool. So that's the kind of information you're gonna find within this series. And that's most of my knowledge I find out. I don't really know anything. I've memorized a lot of things. Um, I've written things down on my hand to read during the podcast. I don't really know ship beyond that. So um that's why that's why the meeting dot com is good. I did get you know this reminds me An email spencer on the topic of growing meat. Um uh. Frequent emailer Andrew Lennards wrote in an accused Phil and I of being involved in a conspiracy. Um, and I wasn't gonna read this, but bringing that up, I think it's worth so, he said. On January tenth, you wrote about the uprising of lab grown meats, followed followed up by talking about On an episode released on January the following week, you fed your co workers fake meat, where you also talked about the future of lab grown meat and its ability to take over the world, citing some statistics you mentioned. Within ten years, it is believed that seventy of beef production could be flipped to the lab grown variety. It was challenged by not only yourself but also Mr Ronnella. I think that conversation was the tipping point. Fast forward to this week and meat processing facilities are on the verge of shutting down. What better time for the lab grown meat industry to step in and begin their ascent to the top, and seventy percent doesn't seem that far fetched, now do they. I don't write this to blame you, but out of concern. It seems awful fishy to me that you bring this up mere months ago, and whyam here we are now? Either you're in on it or someone is is in on it too. Could it be Phil Mango, Barry Kay Gilbert. I hope it's neither of these two have nothing to do with the other, but in this day and age, you can't be sure the test tube meat and makers will stop at nothing to get to stop gass cal farts from ruining our atmosphere. The other option in this whole scenario is that staying home for so long has really gotten to me. Only time will tell. Take care Andrew Leonards, So I don't know. I don't know. Phil. Do you have any official comment? You're the pr head of the podcast. Okay, Well, I just want to say that if anyone looks at my travel records or my stock portfolios and noticed that I made a mysterious trip to Wuhan at the end of last year, or that I sold often bought a bunch of stocks. Just don't even worry about it. It's not a big deal. Um. But anyway, I just like to say that I'm doing well and I'm excited to retire at Phil God Phil all right. Well, I don't know. I really don't have any official comment other than this is possible. Uh, it is very possible that people will be eating a lot more lab gurnd meat in the very short short future. So Andrew, please keep on top of this conspiracy theory. I'd like to hear where you can take it from here. Very entertaining. But Pat, you have one more thing before we get to Jesse. Griffith's our great friends and restaurants toured down in Austin, Texas. We were talking about with him. We talked last week about what was like to run a restaurant during this time. His restaurant is fully locally sourced down there in Austin, Texas, so he has unique relationships with ranchers and and everyone who brings the food in for his restaurant. So that's a great conversation coming up in just a moment. But before we get there, we're gonna let you rounded out Pat with a story of a different type of vasectomy. Um phils looking to get the human vasectomy here pretty soon at the at the ripe young age of nine. But you have a piece on uh deer vasectomies on the mediator dot com and I think I think it came from Spencer. Did it come from a conversation where you and I were just I am, I am fascinated by this, this sheer stupidity displayed in this realm of of I don't even want to call it science, in this realm of wildlife policy. Yeah, we were at your desk one day talking about deer vasectomies and how we could cover it, and we landed on that Pat was the right man for the job. And after he turned into piece, I think we were correct. We were absolutely correct. So Pat, you want to take us through kind of your your how you crack this egg open? Yeah? I was well, first of all, Ben and Spencer. I really was flattered, And you guys sent me that that assignment because I really hadn't been following that. I knew the people involved. I've been aware of this um white buffalo for at least fifteen years, I guess. But um, like anything I do when I'll take everything that Spencer sends me, read that first and to start figuring out who I know that would be good to comment on this. UM. Also, I follow enough of the research to know what else has been done in the terms of animals and trying to use the human um solutions to various animal problems. And you know they've they've tried things like in the past UM basically I sterilizing the females, finding you know, they tranquilize the females, take out the ovaries, the tubal ligations, these kind of things, put them back out there and see what happens. I hope the control is the dear herd. But time and time out, these things don't work. But this one was print because they targeted the mails take you know, trying to get in all this sectomies and they wanted to get like of these books UM given as we call it, the Big Snip. And it was interesting that just in the background reading Ben was one of these one of these issues that so often you see cities doing things like this and they do it without really um knowing what the results might be. They don't call experts. First of all, in this case, the people involved in New York. You know, they had pretty good, um, pretty good background from different researchers at Cornell University and elsewhere showing that the odds of this working out we're not good that um it's not even though Staten Island this is where we're talking about it, and just said that earlier. It's um Staten Island in New York City, and it's about two miles by swimming across the river from or across this um uh Inlet from New Jersey. And basically in the eighteen hundreds they wiped out the deerford in Staten Island. They all whatever it was there was gone. But then um, as all these urban areas start growing deer populations. While someone start trickling back into Staten Island in the their bouts start swimming across, and I think it's by the by two thousand fourteen, they had a population of about eight hundred deer they estimated, and so they had a growing problem. So they started looking at how you solve this problem, and they basically were told time and again that I'm the only way you can control a problem deerford like that is by lethal controls. You can do it by sharp shooting and do it by bow and arrow If do it by bow and arrows, using local citizens doesn't cost anything. And these are not new ideas. These are ideas they've been kicking it around, trying, you know, and doing for I know, back in the eighties already, you know, when they started having a lot of urban deer problems, so all the different scenarios been were there. You know, they knew what they're facing, and yet they go ahead and do it anyway. They go ahead and start spending money to get these deer these butts um snipped and as I reported, so far they've've done one thousand, seven nineteen deasectomies and that the population has come down a little bit apparently, but you know there's still deer swimming from Staaten Island. And I think one of the more interesting things that came up, and I was reading on this and interviewing people, was Cornell University up in upstate New York had tried something similar, but with the females and what they found they when they really cut off um, I mean, it's so these these doors couldn't get pregnant. They I think there's the tribal diegations they did well, the doors are still cycling, there's coming in the estus, but they can't get pregnant anymore. Well what's happening was they can't get pregnant, but the shirt can draw in horny bucks and they're like because every time they recycle, going to Estrius in twenty eight days, you know, they there can smell that order and that that that there was pharomonst from a great distance. So they found that the buck population at Colonel University jumped over eight in the next couple of years when these bucks started coming and flooding in there and having this NonStop sex action. Basically, can you imagine that? It sounds like the worst dance club ever, man, the worst nightclub I've ever been to. And they were able to show it too that these this is um, you know, we laugh book if you think, hey that if we're a buck, I'd like that. But um, in the wildlife world, those things don't know, you know, they're stressful. These those lost almost all their the fat in their bone marrel. The bucks were stressed. And the researchers are saying that if this were happening with the herd like in the north Woods of New York and the north Woods of the Great Lake States. Those dead would not survive the winter. They be dead. You lose that kind of stress, that kind of fat loss. But yet New York City, he starts spending money on this, and as they were doing these vasectomies right now that the average cost of each vasectomy in New York City and Staten Island is that I think it's two dollars and eight hundred thirty five dollars. And it's just I guess I look at this stuff, Ben, I think you talk about a first world problem. What where else in the world would people do this kind of thing? And I love over the years, last couple years, why you've been bringing out these different options people take with them vegetarianism or the vegans and stuff. And I go back to um my travels when I was in the Navy back in the seventies, and I still remember walking down the streets in Naples, Italy and seeing rabbits hanging in meat markets and they kept their head on. There's a skinned up body, but they kept their head on. And I had someone with me that could speak a little of tanging, So I asked that as the shop owner, why they kept their head on the rabbit like that, and he explained that, well, that way it shows the customers that these are not cats. And you start thinking about that. I have a brother who has spent all his adult life as a business businessman in China. He knows all about these, um these what they call him what gardens or what they call these places, these wet market Yeah what what gardens are a whole different thing? What markets? What things confused? Here? Tread carefully, They're tread carefully. Yeah, I'm sorry, um, but my brother's time and this and this goes back. This is again not a novel thought. But back in the eighties when Thomas coming home and on vacation and whatever, he would talk about the real world of China, the real world of Taiwan, and he would he went into that part of his life as a as a vegetarian, and with another year of working over in China, he thought that the vegetarian lifestyle was the most bourgeois thing he could think of to do, just totally choice matter. Were only people who have wealth cant Tho's kind of choices? And he quit. He quit the vegetarian life delicacy and most people the world do not have that choice. And I look at New York City in this case and I think the only reason this is taking place is because these people have money and they can't confront basement and they created that. Carl, Welcome to the great concluding concluding thought. Carl was the first guy talked to in this article. But Carl, as we all probably knows, frequent gust on the Meeting podcast and he's been a number of my articles. He's a uh doctorate what life management. But you know, you got pointing out that you know, white tail dear bro the involved as a pre species, They've always been hunted, They've always had short lives, and so why not do we want trend them into a zoo animal by by doing this contracept is on them? So I um, I'm not sure that's a great summary of my article, but if you have any questions, I can probably flesh all parts that left over. I think it's just interesting. It's one of those topics, like many of the ones we try to address here, that have so many like different parallel conversations, are offshoots that takes you into different realms of thinking. And I like the last time I try not to do this too often. But the last time I interviewed a hardened animal rights activists who I'm sure it would be in favor of this over you know, what they would say is the senseless killing of deer. They would much rather see these of sectomies. In fact, I think I talked to him about that. He was also at the same time talking to me about bodily autonomy. You know, this this idea that that these animals deserved bodily autonomy, that we were inflicting upon them not only suffering, but we were making choices for them as to how they lived and died. And that just shows you know, I'm sure this, this scenario, and these deer vasectomies are born in some way out of that idea that there has to be another way to adjust the natural order of things to fit our own psyche in or whenever they started in. So it's it's as as it's is borne out by your peace and by looking at the science and just looking at the results. I know that you have an incredulous Mayor Bill de Blasio in your piece where he just refuses to admit that this ain't working and that he's spending and spending money, and he's spending time trying to save horses from pulling carriages for for tourists. But like, you know, there's this this idea that if we continue down this this road, that eventually will be able to through technology or through advancement, kind of control these types of natural cohabitation issues. And you know, for those of us to kind of have an eye on the natural world and are looking around with a critical eye moreover, this just seems like bullshit, UM, And it's nice to you know, it's it's that's why it interests me and why Spence and originally talked about it, because I just think it you know, it's born of the idea that these animals have rights and there's other ways that we can address you know, what are our predator prey issues? Um to any biologists or any any wildlife manager. So it's it's just a it's a pretty deep like the your piece is a great job of just kind of presenting the story as it is, UM. But there's you know, you can write a series of articles on what this really means, UM, how a practice like this comes comes about, how it's allowed the surface in the way that it's surface um, you know, kind of the type of politician that supports it's a little bit, it's it's it's obvious, but there's some some nuance to it that I really enjoyed. So thanks for that. I think you know one thing I um, I mentioned it just in a phrase passing through the article about um, you know this is this this was being when this article was being worked out? Was this when the COVID nineteam was blowing up in New York City? And you can't help but wonder when this when we get through COVID nineteen, if in the future, when this kind of project comes up to people to stop and say, is this really how we want to spend our money? Is this really, as a society the best approach? These are things, you know, we have other things we've gotta be working on here, but you know, who knows. I I couldn't help but reflect on that a lot they're doing. Spent all us, all us millions all this time, and here we didn't have. We're seeing a whole few things we're really ready for. You think while we found time for this though? Yeah, yeah, you talk about that luxury and that you know, those modern uh, the modern abilities we have to kind of go down these luxurious roads, whether it be this or something else, and those things are kind of those ideas are kind of shrinking now because we know what well, we have to be prepared for something like a pandemic, and we can't really, um, you know, be frivolous with anything because there there's this idea that there's a crisis around every corner nowadays. Um, And so it looks like to be you know, like I um, I think we've all seen articles in the last few days, last week or so about how many people are looking at no you know, looking at different ways to get meat because you know, they've been hit with financial losses, they don't have jobs. They're trying to find other ways to get meat in the housinet. I guess I'm thinking I'm reading those articles. You don't hear anyone saying, man, it's a good time to take up vegetarianism, it's a good time to switch to vegans because no, I think in times of crisis, I think people tend to go back and uh the real world and what are real real solutions here? So yeah, I'm I was getting drunk last night and working on a piece that addressed some of that, and I could find I had a nice title worked up but included like zombies and more hunters and gun buying and wildlife management during the apocalypse. So be looking looking at for that tornado of a piece that I'm working on right now for for the website. But yeah, you're right man. This this this uh do your vasectomy thing that we've been thinking about well before COVID ninety kind of slides and a strangely into you know, the current the current way of thinking, and people are thinking, well, what's you know, what's an efficient use of our time? How can we be self sufficient? Um, they're not thinking about deer for sectis, that's for sure, unless you know, Spencer comes out with some story about like four toes the dough that could couldn't be couldn't be caught and her ovaries were made of iron, you got anything like that. But but I like how on this podcast we've covered the two extreme ends of like wildlife management. In three toes case, you had cowboys killing the very last gray wolf on the Great Planes, and then in the deer respect mes thing, you've got big city politicians trying to save white tails when there's more deer on the planet than there's ever been at any point in the history of the Earth. So it's uh, they're funny contrasting scenarios, with a lot of antipomorphizing going on in both cases. And then we have Phil lone engineer and Bozeman looking on the streets for a squirrel or some ship to eat for dinner. Yes, please, I'll be wearing a bright orange vest and a helmet with flashing lights. Just please steer clear, thank you. I'll think of some sort of contest where you can draw Phil or I don't know, sing a song about Phil anything anything. You're just gonna drain this well dry. And by well I mean Phil content. People are gonna people are gonna be sick of me because you said that I've admitted it. I've I've admitted it, Phil, that I'm addicted to it. I would snort it off a table. I I just it's it's such an addicting I love contests. I love contests about you. Um, I just I'm I'm I'm open about these things. So people just you just have to deal with it, you know, or get you know, you could get another job, but it wouldn't be as fun as this. It wouldn't be as fun as this. That's true. There's any consolation, Phil. I've been in UM comedy events all the years, like able discussions kind of discussions, and it seems like it's a group of hunters and trappers and danglers, and there's one person there who's an anti hunter or a non hunter. They almost always start turning that person for their perspectives. And so in many ways you're serving the same function and a much flattered larger audience. Now, so yeah, that's that's true. We talked about this before, Path, but we've had people right in saying they don't want me to hunt so that I keep my my fresh virgin prospector Yeah don't. Yeah, don't ruined sweet Phil with your murder in the deer and such. All right, all right, Phil, Well we'll look forward to next week's report on and maybe even an article for the Mediator dot com about your your road kill journey. Start to finish narrative about three thousand words, that's what I'm looking for. So that's sign. Thank you Patrick, Thanks Spencer um As I said, two of the best to do it on the Mediator dot com, So go there and check it out. If not, I don't like you, so stick with it. And now, like I said earlier, a great conversation with a great Jesse Griffiths. You heard him on this podcast before, you've heard him on the Meteator podcast. I think he's gonna be an episode of Metator TV coming up. Um, it's a great as as we look at perspectives during this time. Jesse has one of the most unique pieces of that puzzle as a restaurant tour who already you know the ethos of Dai Dewey. His restaurant in Austin was already locally sourced. Everything came from a garden or a ranch or a farmer within his region. And so he has kind of a doubly unique look at what's going on right now. And also we're gonna argue about peas, So enjoy Jesse Griffiths. Jesse Griffiths, what's up Many, Nothing new this the last time we talk. Everything's pretty steady down here. Well that's good. That's one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you, because because your report from down there was was pretty great. But before we get to all that, you're you're in the restaurant, Die Dewey right now, you're in your in your place. Yeah, yeah, I've I've been here about five weeks for the most part, kind of hunkered down here at the restaurant. We're open, we're converted mostly into a grocery store doing I'll take out you know. It's just it's been been quite the pivot. So I've been here. I've been here a bunch. Yeah, you're not sleeping there, are you? Okay? All right, all right, well yeah, I was gonna say, I bet you did well. Tell people like, well, we'll give folks a minute here if you want to return to our earlier podcasts and listen, We'll let you go back and look into the th HC catalog and find our earlier podcast with Jesse and we're back. Thanks for listening into that. Um so, you know, you know a little bit more about Jesse and what he does. But the reason I wanted to chat with you among the trade and a few Turkey stories here in a minute was just to kind of get as a as a restaurant tour and somebody who's who's kind of created a specific niche down there in Austin, like what it's like to to run a restaurant right now and in specifically your situation. Yeah, I mean I think you have to preface it too by how ongoing the situation is. And at no point do I want to profess to know what I'm talking about. Are the mild successes that we've had, um may or may not carry uh So, I mean it's it's definitely an interesting time. Uh We We had two restaurants here in Austin, one being a butcher's shop in full service restaurant that was open for launch and dinner in a little taka that was open downtown in a food hall. Food hall was the first to close down, just because it was a really large space and could accommodate a lot of people, so that that got shut down pretty quick, um in early March. And then we are able to carry on here because we are we have a pretty strong grocery component already being a a small butcher shop, but when we carried some dry goods and other things like that, and then um, for some reason, when when we designed this restaurant, I insisted on having a takeout window but at the end of the bar, which for the last almost six years made no sense to me at all um in retrospect, and then one day it's like a shining beacon and I was like, oh, now that makes sense, um, And now we can hand bags of food out this takeout window for a contact free transaction, which is which is part of the vernacular these days, which is a really strange thing. I feel like some people have handed me some liquor out of that window before or something. Yeah, probably a beer. Yeah, it didn't get a lot of traffic. That thing gets used now and I'm glad we have it, but we sell it's it's it's strange how our our our fortunes change. And I'm I sell. I sell butter out of a window, and because butters butters of a commodity these days, and along with the something we never thought of, which was yeast, we sell yeast for making bread and we just put it on the on the online menu. People are it's insane how much yeast we sell, the little things that if you had time traveled a couple of months back and we're like, yeah, man, uh, you know, two months from now, you're gonna sell yeast out of a window, And I gotcha. But you know, overall it we've had no choice but to adapt. Um, we've had um moderate success, which I think can in context and small business in general, because sometimes just mean survival. So we're surviving, and we had to lay off a vast majority of our employees upwards of forty people. But we were able to hire back five people yesterday, so it was a money us a celebration, and we brought five more people back. So I think we have a total of sixteen people working now who are working hard on bringing the rest of the back as soon as we can. Has that been, you know, going through that been? I mean, I know what you put into your your restaurants, and I know you what you put into your food, and we'll cover some of that in a minute. But like, I'm sure that was emotional for you going through that. It was terrible, UM, laying off people that have worked their asses off for you for almost six years or more. UM, heartbreak. I mean that you can't really put into the words. But on the on the flip side of that, I will say that making that phone call yesterday and saying you're coming back to work was it was a nice people you know, it's joyous. Yeah. Not, well, we won't Lnker too long on this on the crappy times. But I mean, what are those what are those folks that got laid off? Are they do they go straight to the unemployment Have they have they been okay? Have have they been struggling or or are there any particular stories you want to tell. I mean, it's it's an obvious struggle. They going to receive a pay cut. I mean, there is federal help that came down the pipeline really quick. I'm not gonna say it's the most efficient thing, but in the circumstances, I think with the number of people that were laid off that we have to give some credit. I mean, it's just it's unprecedented across the board. So yeah, they are, they are suffering. They don't have they've lost a lot of their income, but there's unemployment and some and some additional money available to them on a weekly basis um. And then these new loans that are going out supposedly too small businesses. UM. We were fortunate enough to uh to receive one of those, and so that's been informative and us rehiring people. But you know, I think that yeah, there's a lot of kindness happening out there. I think that people are are being very forgiving. I think that coupled with that, you're not really are these personally out spending a lot of money right now? Um, it's a little easier to save money. So I think that that's gonna at least mitigate, uh, some of the financial losses that many people are seeing right now, but by no means to do, I want to diminish that with what they're going through. It's our top priority to bring our people back. Yeah, that's a that's that's unbelievably tough. And like I said, we've we've had a lot of people on our show since we started. We did a daily podcast for a while and then back to our weekly So the last couple of weeks and um, it's hard to find I haven't found any situation after hearing a little bit from you via text that seemed as real and it's it's just damaging as as what you're going through on a daily basis, you know, just from just from the economical standpoint, obviously health being what it is, but um, it's it's good to see you guys are standing up and still doing it. We should just cover that, you know what died do we you know, was um before all this still that to some extent now, but what what maybe set it up to be um a little bit more successful than other places given that, you know, like you said, it's not a time to push that in anybody's face or gloat about. It's just a reality. Yeah, I mean tomorrow might be a new day. But UM, I mean beyond beyond having the grocery aspect and the fact that we we had a butcher counter that was that was huge because there was a run on protein. Um. I think more so the kind of ethos that we've always stood by have become really profound these days. Um, the connectivity between source and user has has really been highlighted and you can't you just can't get away from it right now where um, we're noticing more just how quick it is that we can get product in when supply chains start to break. So UM, we've always bought our chickens from Jane, We've always bought our eggs from Chris, and we've always bought you know, vegetables from a variety of people. And when this started happening and everything was just confusing cluster, uh, we we realized that, you know, making that phone call and getting that that product in that day or the next was was it was way more profound because Um, first off, we didn't know when we were going to need things, and everything was very up in the air as far us how busy we were going to be. UM. And so the ability to make that call and have that person come and then cut that person to check immediately UM felt really good. It's very basic transaction and it felt UM it felt therapeutic or like like almost healing. UM when this this, I mean, everybody knows. This seemed to have come on very quickly, and we we had to go into a mode where we were just trying to use product up for a long time because our our business dropped by maybe within a matter three or four days, and so we were sitting on a lot of things and it at the time it seemed like we were never going to bring anything else into the restaurant. So that first time him where the chef and I were talking and she's like, we're at a chicken we need chicken. And at that point, at first I was like, we can't spend any money. We can't have any chicken because we can't spend money, and I realized, bubbles, we'll sell those chickens. I'm not I'm not a very strong business person. I don't understand I don't understand transactions very well. Um. But so that first day when we need a chicken and we called Jane, we're like, Jane, bring us chicken. And She's like, yes, no problem, I've got chicken. And she came and in the whole transaction happened, and it was it was great. I mean, there's something just so small that to see the money going the other way where you know, our neighborhood came, showed up, I bought some food for us. We had a little bit of money. We took that money, we invested that in some chickens, and then we sold those chickens. Uh. And then we gave that money to Jane the chicken farm. Uh. And so that felt really good. Um. And you know, out of all the heartache and suffering that this whole things is bringing, I think that there's a lot of amazing lessons grounding u interactions that are happening and refocusing us on important things. And the same thing could be said for you know, my my freezer at home. I mean, not to digress, too much from restaurant situation. But you know, I think everybody is looking at that, you know, those backstraps and ground or frozen fish or whatever and your freezer right now with a lot more respect. You know. I'm just like, oh, wow, that's one meal, two meal, three meal, four meal right there, you know, like you can you count it in it and it makes a big difference. And every one of those meals that's in your freezer is a meal that you don't need to tap out of the supply for other people. And I think that that's that makes a big difference to Yeah, I mean that you're you know, what you've been always been about and what Die Doe we was always about prior to this was kind of like it was proximity, right, it was. It was being able to touch and feel things, and and the hypothesis always being that that makes better for a better meal, It makes for better food and makes things more sustainable. I mean, that's that's being proven out here, not only in the the way your business could still run, but just kind of like what you were saying, the emotion of being able to buy sell, have this, you know, the distribution be like you pick handing money to someone in them handing your chicken, rather than having to be killed somewhere else by proxy and then driven to you and all those all the hands it has to touch before it gets to you. So that's the one thing and thinking about you and what you're going through that was most impactful to me, because we know everybody can't hunt, you know, not everybody's able to go do what you and I been doing the last couple of weeks and killing Turkey. So it's good to know that, you know, you have there's like an example here for what can be achieved. Yeah, I don't know if it's it's the type of UH model that that can be achieved across the board, but you know it is. It is working for us, and and it just it seems like I hate for such an emergency that really illuminate how important these connections are. But what happened, And you know, we're also seeing a lot of I mean here in Texas, we're seeing a lot of like mid size are are large businesses to UH doing really good things. The grocery chain h g B has been exemplary and how they're handling this and treating employees. I mean, some people might disagree, but from from what we're seeing h g B, which is if you're not from Texas areas, it's a big grocery store. Uh. They've they've behaved in a way that you wouldn't believe was a corporate based model at all. If they gave all their employees a rays within the week going down, they gave everybody two dollar and across the board. Um, they've started putting a lot of local restaurants meals in there in the stores so that you know, people can buy up to go. Since they're supporting restaurants as well, you know, it's doing a lot of safety measures and perhaps sides and stuff like that. So um, it's not always the small models that are. You know, they're the most romantic, you know. And I can talk about buying chicken from Jane, you know that, and that serves us well, But that's ninety chickens a week. We can't feed the metropolitan area. So it's good to see and give credit due also to some of the larger models that I think are out there and doing great things. Um, because it it is I mean, if you're in our industry right now, is about getting food to people. Um, and supporting the people that make the foods so that on the other interness that they're they're viable. Yeah. It kind of amplifies every part of the process, right, I mean, you have to think about It's not that you can just like fill out an order form and get the stuff. You have to think about every little uh uh. You know link in the chain. And my wife worked for h g B when we were um we were there. She was in catering for HGB when we were there, and I always thought they were that chain in and of themselves was they were fantastic people. Um So I'm not surprised at that. I'm not surprised that that's where they would land. But you know, I remember being in die Dewey and just the first time I was ever in there, I was working on an article about your place and kind of how you came came to be there and came to have that. I just remember also like going in there and there's freshnes seasoned vegetables and locally killed wild boar and pompano from the coast, and I just remember like making notes like vibrant and just something something about you know, the walk in freezer at your place seemed like it was just overflowing with stuff. Um, and it always kind of like it's apparent in the food, you know, not to just pour on compliments, but it's and it's like we're just kind of enabling of a lot of it, I mean, which in our food really simply you know, this is not a place that you go and get this super crazy high end stuff. You know, a lot of you know, salt pepper on a grill and you know, simple salads things like that, and that's that's why we try to keep it. Um. Yeah, ingredients and connections do make a difference. I've always said that. Now it's like, I mean, I think people, I think people can really see the difference now. And we've we've learned a lot too from what customers want. Like I said, yeast bandanas merch that those bandanas we bought like a year ago for merch, so like crazy right now, um in yeast and flour and eggs and and milk and and things that you know, I'm I'm actually really happy to provide. I kind of like being this like nice local grocery store because it's it's just keeping the money flowing for now. Then again not to get over confidence. We don't know what the future holds, but we have to keep a level of activity about it, just you know, in humor and whatnot that to keep us just above water and doing our job. It's just just getting food out. Has there been any you know, customer interactions that were notable or just things that I know, I know what they're buying, but just like the feeling that that people get. I know that I've had the weirdest quarantine feelings and kind of some of the exertentraal stuff going to Costco or going to some of these places and just you know, feeling off, feeling like things are are you know, as different as they seem on TV. Um. Do you have any examples of that there? Well, I'll give I mean an overarching thing is there's been an almost universal kindness. UM. I think I hate to describe it as a forced sympathy, but when everybody in the in the world kind of has to take a bite of this sandwich, um, it does force a little bit of empathy. And UM, I think, uh, you know, the restaurant industry has always been what it is. I and people can be possibly a little hypercritical of of things or speak out of out of their knowledge base about I'm just gonna say that talking to you, yelp um. But I feel like because it hit it hit this industry so hard. Again, not to deprecate, I mean, we're not frontline workers, we're not in the e R, we're not we're not l e oh, we're not firefighter's anything like that. But it was at least portrayed as hitting our industry pretty hard. And there's I mean, the customers, almost every one of them has been incredibly kind, even if it's just the way you greet and talk to them and kind of maybe joke around or you know, have try to have an interaction with them. Um. I mean that's a that's a broad based approach, you know. I you know, to see positives out of it, I'd say that just like it has brought a lot of good out of people. I told somebody the other day, you know, I've had a lot of people like call you know, just these are random cold calls, you know, or emails and things like that. You you have a lot of people trying to sell you something that you don't need. And then at the same time, there's a lot of people that will give you what you do. Um, you know, like some of our are a lot of the producers, farmers, ranches and stuff. We'll just find like extra things you know in there, like oh, here's an extra brisket, here's two dozen carots, or you know, give this to your laid off staff, or here's you know, four cases of Rambler sparkling water for your staff. And it's like, cool, thank you. I mean, it's just it's it's been great, you know, in that context of just how kind people can get in these days. You know, we're led to believe that everything is so divided and negative that you know, when something bad happens, then we really do kind of for the most part, band together somewhere. Yeah, I said, it's it's a time for We've been trying to do this here in the show as much as we can, just like get as many different perspectives as we can on this thing, because it is just such a slow moving tragedy that it doesn't have any like defining moments. Something bad didn't happen all at once, and we're left to react for months. Were just like reacting every day, every hour, UM to it. And so I personally try to like do I just ignore the slow moving tragedy and try to tell hunting stories or do we address these things that that we're all thinking, how do we address them? Because everybody's going through such different you know, being in Austin where you are and and being a bosom where I am. It's so for um, you know, we haven't been I was looking the other day. Our county has zero deaths from COVID nineteen so many it feels so different here, um, you know than it does there. So it's it's it's just good to hear your perspective from it. Have you seen just the changes in in the town of Austin too, like what the day to day working is over there? Yeah, I mean, of course, I feel like, um, culturally Austin has taken the lockdown pretty seriously for the most part, that people were proactive about it. And also I mean, it's just it's hard to know what exactly to do in this situation. There's there's a few opinions. If you go on the internet, you might you might be able to explore some of those opinions what's going on right now? And um, but beyond that, I feel like as a community, Austin kind of just locked themselves down. I mean there's obvious exceptions. Um. You know, it's a very outdoorsy community. So people in the streets at night are full of people walking. Um. And our governor was one of the governors that opened up hunting and fishing as as essential activities. Um. And I have never seen my lake and that is my lake by the way, uh so busy. Before it was a parade of kayaks up there. This this for croppy season. Um, you know, the rare morning or evening, I'd get off and go distance. Um, there is a lot of people up there. Um. You know, when you get out of the rural communities just outside of Austin, there's kind of a spectrum that it seems you'll see you see less masks and less gloves, things like that. Um And I don't know how that plays out. Um, you know, it's just this is a new thing for everyone. So it's a real us and then altruism, I guess, yeah, in a lot of ways for sure. Well, i'd like I said, it's just good to hear you know, the you know kind of how elastic what you've built is and what it what it's been able to do. And and I'm sure it will continue with with its elasticity, and hopefully we'll get some more reports from me that you can hire everybody back and um, you know you can be you know, it seems like maybe in the next couple of weeks or months we can get back to some semblance of normal and you guys have less tables or or whatever and get it back. You have any any thoughts about kind of the future of all this, Well, it's I think it's gonna indelibly change everything. Like one means that we need Fable and Fabled coming back, you know. And it's and I doubt it's gonna be one day. You know, it's gonna be as as steep as the transition in was. I think the transition out is going to be a real tape slope. Um. So it's going to affect a way that business is done. I mean, I consider the handshake alone, you know, like what what happens to the handshake? You know, it's like I mean culturally, and then and then going to a restaurant, sitting next to a table that's two feet away, um, a server hands you your food. I mean, these are things that just seem very foreign right now. So I think the transition back into that is gonna is that's the great unknown that we're not even occupying our mindspace with that right now, Like it's We're just gonna have to let that define itself when it happens. Um. I will say that, you know, I feel like take out, like to go food and grocery will be a lasting component. Um. And I'm not sorry are sad about that. I kind of enjoy that. It just hadds more to the spectrum of food products that we're able to offer. And if it services our community better than so be it. Um. So I think it will adjust the model some want. Um. I explained it yesterday and that when do you remember New Coke? Oh? Yeah, okay, So so there was Coke and then there was New Coke, and then there was Coca Cola Classic. And I always felt like, you know, Coca Cola Classic may or may not have been different from the Coke that existed prior to New Coke, but New Coke occupied I don't know how long it was. Maybe it was a year of our cultural collective consciousness. And then at the end of it, Uh Coke was I think maybe a little different, but it was coke cola classic. So when when you have these gaps in in service, gaps in like cultural memory on the on the other end of it, you get to come back and any of those changes that maybe you were thinking about making before all this happened, you're able to make on the on the back end, and there's now like service blit, but it's not it's not incongruous with what you were doing. So maybe we are more take out, maybe we are more grocery and um, you know, dependent on people's financial situations. You know, we are not a cheap restaurant just based on what we what we offer, and so on the flip side of this, were we might have to reevaluate how we're able to feed more people, um at prices that are going to be concurrent with their income. So the situation and and that's something that you know, we can't we can't force that on our producers to drop their prices. So that's gonna that's gonna force some creativity on our end. If if the like mid to high end restaurant worlds takes a hit and it's more like mid range on the other end of this, because that's what people can afford that we're gonna have to We're gonna have to pivot to that. And I can't say that I'm I'm fearful of that. It's going to be a challenge, but it's something that we're just gonna have to do. Yeah, and we've we've talked about over the last six or eight months. I've kind of gotten I know, you've been to Room Ranch some and done some some good stuff there with those those guys. I love those guys down there. Um, we started to think about, you know, consumption as a larger piece of it, driven by you know, the proximity to our food and what hunting has kind of shown me, and then you know, having a garden has shown me, and and really restaurants like yours have shown me on like on the next step up. Do you have any thoughts on a larger consumption level about how this might change us how we think about eating, whether we do dive in once we can all you know, the economy comes back and maybe we can afford it to more locally sourced food. Do you think more people will take up the that sustainability model that hadn't thought about it before. I guess the question is do you think this is going to teach us something? Yes, yeah, I mean I think that you know, you know, plants, starts and mulch and soil have probably hit record sales this spring. Um. You know, the third branch of our business in stc which is New School of Traditional Cookery, which is our hunting school where we literally take new hunters out and teach them how to hunt fish, butcher, cook preserved package, so forth. Um, it was put on hold obviously we we suffered a huge loss in April, and and moving forward, we don't really have anything scheduled because this is so unclear as to what's going to happen. But that said, I do anticipate a lot of interest in people learning how to be more self reliant because you look at those lines at the grocery store, and especially in a state like Texas where the the opportunities and resources do exist in and I mean I think in a pretty good situation for most people. Um that I think people are going to be more interested in hunting, fishing, gardening, having a chicken coop, self reliance in general, just life skills. And then you saw that how many people are just there at home and they're cooking and there's the sour dough bread epidemic that's that happening right now too. It's just like but I mean, everybody has the time to bake, and it's also going to I think the beautiful thing about that is that it teaches people that were previously convinced that cooking is this chore and it takes too long to do, right, I've now seen kind of the beauty in it, and then with a little planning and dedication of time to it because it's absolutely worth it. I think um that that moving forward, you're going to see a lot of people that are very interested in growing a carrot and then cooking carrot or um. You know, being able to even ride your bike to a pond and catch some bluegills and have those with your carrots um and then because in the past that might just be some kind of romantic notion and now it's like, well, you know, pretty cool. Or the fact that it's you know, springtime here in Austin and there's low quads and dew berries and mulberries and Nepali's popping everywhere, and people don't want to go to the store and I'm like, hey, there's literally fruit trees right over there everywhere. Right you have it. It's free. Not only is it free, but I mean either they have to go in a door, you have to wear gloves. You know. It's it's pretty cool. Um, you know. And before, like I said, it was just like this. Oh. I mean, you know, I know it's out there. I don't think it. Can you really eat that? Is it's safe? I'm like, yeah, it's safe to eat a mulberry. You know, you're gonna be fine, um, unless you're on that's somebody else's land, especially in Texas. But no, I think that there's some some great lessons that are going to come out about this, and it's like all those all those activities are gonna be done for less ironic reasons. That's a great that's a great point because I think, you know, the foodie movement quote unquote, or the the field distable movement. It feels like the New York Times writes a different like hipster hunter article each year. It seems like they just recycle that narrative like here's a guy you wouldn't think that would go kill something, um, and they just and they just roll that out and roll it out and roll it out and now it's you know, like you said, it's less like it's not ironic anymore to think of how to source something where it comes from, how to get your hands dirty, because that's that's more utilitarian than it is just the novelty of doing it, um, which is I think a lot of people were like, I can get my meat at the store, but it's way more rich um an experience to go do that. But now it's like, well, those it's not just for the rich experience anymore. It's it's more practical to go and get it that way. Um. And it makes more sense because we now know how fragile our structure, um are you know, our food sourcing structure is, and how quickly it can break down, you know, based on supply and demands as simple as that principle is. Um So, So it's it's a point well made, not I imagine UM A lot more people like you're the would you call yourself the croppy master Roy? I love them, They're my favorite and I'm absolutely not the master luck every once in a while and I'll tell you what, man, are we ready to shift? Yeah? This is that was my That was my like there's nothing more annoying to me then that that guy that's like, I like catch Croppy And I'm like yeah, and then he's like, oh, I mean my granddad used to go out. We kissed like two hundred in an hour. Uh, and we were just on a bear hook any time a year. And I'm just like, you're lying, that is not that is not my Croppy experience. You know, there's there's days where we we'll get after him a little bit, but there's also days where we catch two and uh, I'm I mean, I'm obsessed with proper Um. They're they're a big I mean locally we we have i mean good populations of them around here and a lot of them live up in my lake. Uh And uh, we get after him quite a bit. We go after only in the spring, but I don't have a boat, so it's a very seasonal thing for me too. It's a definitely February March, maybe a little April um situation on Croppy. But uh, many they give me fits. Uh. You know, we'll get out some days and then you know, you never know either you just don't know, Oh it's gonna be great today. And then the guy next to you is like I should have been here yesterday. They should have been here yesterday. Yeah. Yeah, like we we did pretty good on them this year. We we we kind of took a chance and went earlier than we normally did. And I think that I learned a lot more about their their habits this year and just kind of this you know theory of the spawning and waves where the proper don't spawn at one time. I think it's like a two month thing and it's just you. You're playing the numbers. They're up in the creek, they're at there down deep. But those those glorious days where they're coming up into two ft of water and they're just smashing jigs. Um, that's when those conditions are just perfect. And so you kind of you just have to like sus those days out and and it can just change from day to day and and you know, a light rain or moon or or wind and parametric pressure, anything can just totally shift on you. And uh and in turn that slam dunk trip that you had planned and they're like a one croppy trip and you're like, I even keep one croppy, yeah, holding I wore cargo shorts. That's nice. Um are you, what's your set? Are you You're not throwing minnows and bobbers, are you? Uh? At night? So well, there's two different ways we do it. And we'll go at night with lights, which is possibly one of my favorite just ways to fish. It's just like you know, me and usually one other person. We use the long rods, you know, we're ten ten eleven foot rods. Uh, and then a little supersensitive stick bobbers and live mennows under lights at night that I mean when they're when they're going. That is a lot of fun. You catch some white bass like that too, maybe catfish here and there. Then the other way we do it, it's just during the day is you know, just go out and get up in the in the feeder creeks or in brushy snooze on the lake and fish jigs typically a Jigen Barber situation um for them while they're up shallow. Uh. And I had time I owned James. It's another thing that I'm pretty obsessed with. I love time Jakes actually sell them at the restaurant. You can get right out the window, get your yeasts and your yeah uh so yeah chicken bober Well, I love it. Um, you know, I've got into I can't remember. Years ago it was turkey season and I was catching cropp eas in Lake of the Ozarks and we were eating We're finding morrell mushrooms, and I just remember that's like, does it get any better than that, like seasonally? No, Nope, Morrell's croppie and turkey. It's a confusing time of year because I mean you could throw hogs into the mix right now. Um, they're they're kind of on the move. And so yeah, me and a buddy the other day, we're just like, what do we do right now? It's a tough one is tough. Uh, But you know in Turkey, I'll they'll they'll captivate you pretty good too. They're easy to get kind of wrapped up around. Well, I know that's like you got it. We had to cover crap. Well, we can't leave crappy without getting your tips for cooking them up. Sum give us, give us a couple of hot tips for that. Yeah, I mean crappy. I love them. Um. They are one of my favorite freshwater fish. A lot of people put them number one. UM. And I'm a big fan of white bass too. Some people think white bass are terrible I don't understand that. I think white bass are great, and we catch a lot of those together. I mean there'll be a lot of days where bass and cropper you're kind of lurking around the same areas in Texas and uh a crappy you know, fried always uh, fry fish. There's a lot of different methods you can do. I think cropper are very good. It's just a very straightforward um corn meal. I like that the mustard buttermelk trip where you do just like mustard, yellow mustard and buttermilk. If you don't have butter milk, just use milk whatever. You just kind of thin that out and then just dress the fish in that um just enough to coat it, and then roll that in. Find corn meal. Uh. Steve and I have discussed this something like to find corn meal because course corn meal will burn. You need fine corn meal or a massa corn meal mix if you have access to massa arena, which is the dry super fine massa um, and then roll it in that fry it, fry it hot um. You know, not even cut a filet and half more surface area for more crispy. Kind of depends on what you what you prefer. This year, I did a lot of beer batter on Crappie, which is definitely kind of a little bit harder to achieve and make it really really good. There's a couple of tricks making a beer batter. You have to keep it super super cold. So my beer batter would be rice, flour and flour and then a beer whatever, beer doesn't matter, just you know, mix it up with whatever. You've got a little bit of baking powder gives it extra fluff. Um, put a little bit of honey in there and that helps with color and caramelization, just to drop. And then you just the fish in a little bit of flour and then you go into that beer batter, and that beer better has to be fairly thin, maybe a little thinner than you think. Um, and then immediately go into hot oil. And if your oil is not hot, you're you're gonna have a disaster because it's going to absorb that like a sponge. But if your oil is hot, I mean probably three seventy three, six seventy goes into that hot oil and it will immediately kind of start to puff and get crispy, and you need to fry until it's nice and crispy. And another trick, it's kind of Japanese temper. A trick is to take a little bit of that batter and as that fish is fried, you drizzle that batter on top of the frying fish. And what that does is that adds more layers of crispy cooked beer batter um onto the fish. And when you nail it, it's it's phenomenal. It's really good because I mean, most people's complaints about beer batter is that it's too thick and doughy. And when you can get your beer batter to be crisp from where it's touching the fish to the outer edges of it, that's when you really achieve like that perfect like fish and chest. Yeah, there's nothing nothing better than like that moist, flaky fifth flesh with just the right amount of christminess on the outside. Man Um, there could be a debate around like once you got the perfectly fried crappie, really any type of fish, Like what's the I grew up with cocktail sauce. Man Like, that's the thing that I that I always go to. Um. A lot of people are sprits and lemons, and there's there's there's a million things you can do. What's what's the what's did Jesse Griffiths go to? I'm I love condiments, so I mean anything cocktail sauce is. There's not anyone that I'm gonna be like. I can't believe you did that. I was hoping again, I was holding. I was hoping to be like cocktail sauce we're gonna talk about. I think there's an ingredient that, uh, cocktail sauce is great. I am. I'm a fan of Vans based sauces, and I think that, you know, you can throw together any kind of like ur SATs um sorry tartar sauce, uh pretty quickly and are a room a lot style sauce and don't don't get you know, don't overthink it. You know, if you like those kind of things, just take some mayonnaise. Let me throw some whole grain mustard in there, and then whatever pickle you've got laying around. I don't know if there's a pickled green tomato or a pickled green bean, or a pickled whale egg or or just a standard you know, kosher dill, and just chop that up real fine, throw it in there. Maybe throw a little raw red onion in there, any kind of herbs that you have, parsley, tarragonum, cilantro, anything like that. Base are also you can throw in there, and then citrus things like that. I think that, you know, I hate recipes. I think that people get hung up on it and and it, and it intimidates them to not want to experiment with what you just got laying around. But a lot of these concepts you can't go wrong. Fried fish with delicious sauce it then and you're all good. And so I mean, yeah, I think I would lean towards the mayonnaise based sauce, but cocktail sauce I would eat that all day. Oh man, I'm I'm all over it. I think we gotta go. We gotta talk about Morrel's. Um. You know, if you just by the bye, if you want to get all the information on what we how we think you should, you can find them. Go to the meteor dot com. We got a lot of articles there. But um, once you found them, the I think the key input here from you is like, what's the what are some of the ways that you cook them up that you like. I think there's some classic Morell dishes that I'm sure you know of, but like what are the things that are the staples in your mind? Yeah? And that's funny because I think if you were like to ask me, what's the best meal that I've had this year? Are cooked this year? And I would say this is a fear battered croppy with Morrel's and uh, oh, I'm sorry, I made a sorry that was inappropriate noise. We're about we're about to like make a little bit of this segue. So I took Morrel's and made a little just um as you call it them, and there was Karen's and leeks uh in there, a little bit of cream, and there was also a vegetable that we shan't name. Uh, it was the P. The English P was also in that too, because P's and Morrel's are good buddies. Um and uh just a little bit of cream, a little bit of wine, uh, and all of those cooked together and then I served it with the with the croppy about a crop. It was. It was phenomenal. Um. I think Morel's in general, we we have a very short season here on them as in my experience, and it can be as short as maybe a week or two because the conditions as you know, Texas transitions from uh spring this summer pretty quick from winter which is also real just late fall to early summer. Yeah, pretty pretty quick. And so those those those perfect conditions for Morrel's. Uh some sometimes some years are better. This year we found a few. They were all really big though. We got a few meals out. I think if you if you want like the perfect like Morrel Forward experience, my favorite thing is just pasta, Morrel's and partnership, you know, like a combination of those three things. I'm not going to say you have to go out and make your own pasta. Absolutely do not have to. Uh Let's say you know, you clean your morales really well, um in a pan with some butter, and you can do a lot of that, and I like to cook them. They'll they'll they'll lose liquid and then they'll start to cry. That liquid will cook out and they'll start to fry a little bit. You'll you'll go from sensing a bit of moisture in the pan until where they started to fry again, and I feel like that's when they kind of hit their heat flavor. And at that point, um, I will throw a few sage leaves in there. Uh, and then it's just time for pasta and then Parmigan or some other kind of hard grating cheese. I think that's a really nice accent from or else it could be pegory now brought a partisan. We we use Cootihot, which is a Mexican hard grating cheese. We use that quite a bit here. So to keep a little more local, you know, like a local wheat, pasta, Morrel's butter and some cotinho, I think, and that's just fantastic follow red wine and yeah, I mean I I My feeling is moreles just don't need much, you know, a little bit of butter and a little bit of saute or fry and they can go pretty much. Now do you guys? Do you serve them at the restaurant there? On good years? This year? No? Are we We do work with a couple of foragers, um, and we'll have a decent Morrel season and sometimes a good Chantrell season as well. That's about all we'll see here besides puffballs, which are you know, they're they're fine, but this is not a year for foragers bringing stuff into us so and we we really we missed out on that. So but last year we had a good amount of Morrels. And when we when we have and we typically start them just with a playing pasta. It's one the only time we really make postive. But because I really feel like that's the highest and best use right there, just just a vehicle for more. Yeah, I just don't. I don't feel like there's any as I as I think of things, like there's anything seasonally, like a seasonal flavor that that is like a morrel tastes like that time of year, like every everything kind of has its moment, right, But man, when the Morrells should be popping here in Montana soon? Yeah, Oh my gosh, if you ever Yeah, cast aren't skillet and turkey camp full of morels and and just a straight up turkey breast took that thing through. Oh boy, I'm gonna be making noises, gonna be making noises. Um all right, well, well we got a turkey story to tell, and I want to talk about cooking up some turkeys as well. We we've already mentioned the Lagoon that shall not be named? Um the p are you you're a proponent of peas? Are they kind of a middling vegetable for you? Or where where are you at with peace love that I love them and there you know, there's a pea farm out in East Texas and h B cells bags of frozen peas from that place, and that I love take them right out and they cooking. He was throwing into anything. Uh oh, there is What did you just kind of describe, Like, what's what's the relationship between you and peas? Does it go back a long way? Do you feel a special connection to them? Because it can't be the flavor, you can't it can't be that you like the flavor. Is it? Yeah, it's it's you know, it's uh vegetable green, uh springy flavor pair as well with a lot of other things, like I say, carrots or else, bacon, um, butter, cream, lemon. I think peace peas playing nicely with a lot of other things. So so it it's for you, it is the flavor. It's just the yeah. And then like when you bite into it, it just expels all the mushy pe inside and you'll all forgive me because it's been a long time since I had a pee. Um. I always tell the story that my wife this happened the other day when we were going through recipes when quarantine came. I'm like, well, let's look at all recipe books and see what we're gonna make, you know, some family recipes and things that we were looking at, and I came across this shepherd's pie recipe that that my my wife had from her mother. I think, um, shepherds pie my favorite thing, and she wrote on the top of it, he hates pea. And then I was like, I'm marrying that girl. Like she she knew. And I just remember like taking these wonderful bites to get a little bacon in your get a little bacon, a little venissons, mashed potatoes, and every once in a while that pa would would be in there and you would bite down that and everything would just be destroyed. You're saying that, like, I mean those all those good things, like the bacon nous of that dish, the venison nous of that dish was completely ruined by the penis. Penis. Yeah, the peniss is. Uh. I have a child's mind, so that makes me giggle. But yes, the penis is an issue for me. I don't like if there's nothing about it, Like when I look at it now, I kind of like, I kind of like rear back, so we can move on. I think everyone and no, this is a topic. This is a topic. This is a topic that I get. I had I think that like the the Gooom Association of America's I mean an email one time or something they're like, come on, man, there's a dude out there. I can't remember his name, forgive me, but a listener that always writes in he's a pea farmer and a big deer hunter, and he's always like, you better come hunt deer on my pea farm, and um, he'll love penis as as. Yeah, I can't say that's the first time I've used that one. I'm into it, but yeah, I mean I think people generally are intrigued with my my hatred for this this vegetable. So it's okay, okay, one question and we'll move on. Like what about it, since it seems to be so textually based for you, what about a puree? Like if if they were cooked and then in a very expensive blender that was highly functional and then puree with some cream and made into like this very light, um, just green. Maybe there's some mint in there and some butter, some lemon zest, and then have served that with a like a beer battered Walleye file a. Uh do you think that you know you can kind of get on the fence with one. I think it's it's the color too, because peas have a certain greenness well overcooked, I mean, but you can get a very verdant um p color if you just very lightly cook. This could be like an Instagram live thing where I come when we reopen the world, I come to die do and you just have ariad of pea dishes that just that uh, And I'm I'm forced to kind of choose my favorite. I think that would be. I try to think myself as an open minded guy, but I've adopted the anti pe uh stump here branded yourself, branded myself anti p. It's gonna be hard for me to kind of back away from it. Well, I think I sent you a picture the other day kind of kicked this whole conversation off. But just a picture of some rice with a bunch of peas in it, And all I said was thinking of you. I was like, you past that poor rice? Yea, that's uh suffering. We just yeah, um, I yeah, I just did a podcast with a vegan. We never I should have should have asked him about the P thing and see if we could get a good argument. Not only is he anti anti meat, he's prop and I'm anti P So we get a lot of a lot of things to figure out. But okay, well, as I am very willing to let you, of all people, Jesse Griffis, fix a fix me up some peas. Maybe next spring and when we're back to normal, we can kill a turkey and uh and garnish it with some peas. But speaking of turkeys, before I let you go, you killed a banded turkey. Did to the jealousy of all the duck hunters out there who wish they could take part. Well, what happened there? I mean, I don't know if they know this, but killing something the band on it doesn't require any extra talent part. Oh that's controversial, well, especially with turkeys. I mean I didn't know that he was banded. Um, yeah, I was in it. I was in a county southeast to Austin, not a very dense turkey population. In fact, I had never seen a turkey out there until he came in to those decoys. Um, my friend who lives on the property, he's not a hunter, but he's He told me in the spring they will see the gobblers talk to move out there, and we we shoot uh pigs out there. Um and uh my daughter shot a deer out there because it's a it's a dough. You can't shoot those there except for youth season. Um. But we've never seen any turkeys. I think a couple of pictures on camera. But he told me that he was starting to see a gobbler out in the afternoon. So went out there and set up and you know, I managed to do everything right, and he came in from a pretty long way off and came up to those decoys, did everything, and it took me about an hour to get him in. Uh. And I'm awful. H I'm I'm a slightly better croppy fisherman than I am at Colin turkeys. Um. And but he I guess I was intrigued by what these hands were saying. Um. It must have sounded I'm sure it was the foreign language. But he came in and I shot him, and I was very proud of that, and then walked up and he had a leg band. And so the next morning I called the Parks and Wildlife and got a message saying basically that everybody's furloughed and tough ship, we can't help you. And I was fortunate enough to Uh. I talked to colonel of game Wardens, who's a good guy to know, and uh, I messaged him and I was like, hey, man, I shot a banded turkey and he got all excited, um, and he gave me a biologist's number, and UH called and talked to that biologists probably talked to him for about thirty minutes about mostly predation on turkeys in Texas, like what likes to eat them? Uh. And then I talked to the field biologists who had actually participated in the banding survey of these turkeys, and they were a minimum they were they were adults. They were minimum two years old, three years ago in February. So he estimated that the bird was five probably six when I shot. It was a big old bird. And I I didn't measure the spurs or anything. I was more way in the breasts, uh, than than anything I posted on Instagram. And I know you posted it and people were like I want to and I'm like, yeah, I forgot about this. I did cut the beard off and is I think nine or ten inches long again. Yeah, he was a he was a big, big, big beautiful bird. Um, it's all I really care about for an old bird. I don't know, you know what the researches out there on eating old turkeys. But he was delicious. We I had some last night. I ate the tenderloins last night. Uh they were phenomenals, tender, beautiful, mild, perfect. Again another vote for turkey is possibly the best game. I want to say, yes, I I hesitate to like put it in and put it at the top, but boy, it's I don't know, it's like I think it of its seasonally anymore. Like it's not the same June. June isn't the same unless I have a U pile of turkeys legs and breasts and tenders and all the things in my freezer. Sadly enough, I it's it's August or April one right now. I haven't killed the turkey, and that that's probably been a decade since that's happened. So it's starting to get feeling a little feel a little desperate right now. Um but what like when you think about, um, there you go, you're in your office. Hey, we got almost got an hour before it did UM, so you know when you're when we're breaking down. We did this with Daniel prue It the other day and she just took a turkey and kind went through the parts and kind of how how to prepare and what to look for. UM. So folks go back and listen to that. But in your case, is there what's the go to recipes? Um? Just stuff that you just can't do without. Well, you know, I'll and I'll say right off that I I am not a plucker. Um. I skinned turkeys out because the the high use items that I'm going to get off turkey don't require skin and so in the field, does to make any sense to go through that process. Plus, I've I've really learned that the faster that I get that that meat cold, that it It's just like I appreciate the quality of it. UM. I like to to process them pretty quickly. And I'll go in and just skin out the breasts um, and then skin out the legs, pop them out of the joint and then just have two legs to breasts um, and then grab the liver um. The breasts I will make into uh cutlets mostly uh, which is what I had last night. Just a very standard bread and cutlet like a flour eggwash than bread crumb cutlet or melonaisa or scalopini or schnitzel or ton katsu or whatever you want to call it. Every culture has got their crispy fried meat, and I think that that's an excellent use for turkey. You need to make sure that you remove all the silver sinews. They are incredibly tough, even in the breast um or sausage. And people are like, you make sausage or a turkey breast, and yeah, I'm not gonna make just any sausage out of him. There's some more like esoteric, lighter sausages. My favorite one is Boudin Blanc and that confuses the people a lot because they assume that to be a cage and sausage. Boudin blanc is actually a French sausage. It's an Alsatian sausage, so it's got a lot of German influence on it as well as French. So it's bound with bread crumbs and cream um which you will find food and across the world is that it's bound with some sort of grain, uh, and be it rice or oats or or bread. And so this one is made with bread and cream, um, and then really light spicing, a little bit of caraway, a little bit of white pepper and lemon parsley. Uh. And it's very finely grouse sausage. And it's I mean, it's a way to really enjoy turkey. And it will stretch it too, because you're adding in the bread cream and so you know, four pounds of turkey breast will field seven pounds of sausage. Uh. And so it's a good way to take that like really nice turkey flavor and spread it out. And it's very easy sausage to cook as well, because you you poach them first and you can freeze them out poach and then all you need to do is go to a pan or on the grill after that, and it's a that's a fantastic sausage. UM. Other things with the breast fried uh you know, Brian itt, buttermilk it uh, throw it and flour as long as you've got eleven herbs and spices in the flower, it's gonna taste amazing. Uh. And then deep fry that and you know, but that's there's there's no no shame, there's nothing that It's been a while since I've done that, In fact, I've got I've gone to like hunting, glaze, smoked hunting, glazed breast, and all kinds of different things that I've done over the years. I've taken to we should I should get your opinion on the wild turkey court on blue. I've been criticized for that. I don't know why people are like, well, that's that's too simple, or that's just throwing cheese and ham inside of a good piece of meat. I'm not sure why people have there's been criticisms, or maybe I built that up in my head, but I love people get funny about things. So like, yeah, you put cheese and ham in there because cheese and hamm are good good and like turk, he's good. And then waddle those three things up. That's also good and no shame, no regrets. I would dismiss those people as as abject purists and they can go. I don't know what they're doing with their turkey, but I'm sure it's great. Yeah, that's that's that's been my That's when might go too. But I think frying this year I may. I'm starting to get really hungry. Now May May go and fry fry bird. Have you ever made if your ground turkey and then they just just straight up ground? Yeah, I mean make things like meatballs are really nice, you know. And again it's when you're when you're doing things like this, you're not wasting that. I mean sometimes people will be like, I can't leave you ground it, but it's like, no, we're the preparation you make from that ground meat, should you know, really elaborate on flavor of the turkey. So I would like make a meatball that would be something very very light, you know, would have like limit in there. Maybe meant you can even grind things like a rugula or something in there that it's like like light, springy things that are gonna go with turkey really well. And then you don't necessarily have to put that in a tomato sauce. I mean you could make you could take turkey sauce turkey stock which I'll get to in a second, and just thicking that with a little bit of rude like a flower flour and butter rue and just thicking that up and use that as your sauce for some meatballs or serve it over rice. Things like that. Great um, you could take ground turkey and put it on a skewer with grated onion and a little bit of allspice and grill that and get a nice smokey jar on there, serve that over rice with some yogurt, a million things, and um, you know, I just encourage people experiment, but I don't think that you know, don't don't think you're gonna mess it up or listen when people tell you not to put tammy cheese and it's just America, America. Yeah, No, I've I've I very much look forward to. I got a commercial slicer, so I've very much look forward to like smoking a turkey and slicing it up for lunch, you know, for sandwich meat. Simple, yes, absolutely, but so essential to just kind of like daily eating. To have you know, a vaccineled pack of smoke wild turkey. Yeah I did that last year. I smoked a couple of turkey breasts really well. Um. And yeah that those little cheap slices that you can have in in at your house make a big difference, you know, because getting that that thinness is is key. Uh yeah, but give me the turkey stock, your turkey stock thoughts. Yeah, I mean the way I do it um, and I like things to be very simple. Um. I will take the legs and put them in the crock pot with whatever parametric paramatic vegetables I have, carrot, onion, celery, parsley, onion skins, garlic skins, whatever is laying around, and I'll put them in there and I'll cook them until they're falling apart, which is a long time for a turkey legs. You think of the workout that those legs yet, that's why they take so long to cook. Uh. Six hours is probably the minimum. UM plenty of water, really just fill that thing up as much and you can also do it in a pot on the stove. And what I'm doing there is basically I'm gonna cook those legs uh and get a lot as much really good turkey stock as I can out of that because it's very useful to me for many different things, from making rice, making gravies, pot pies, dumplings, soups, anything like that. Is take that stock, pour that through a strainer, freeze it into appropriate um portions for your familial situation. For me, I quart is really nice, and then I take that shredded meat and from there you can do anything you want. Um. You can make some molee if you if you're in quarantine, you have time to toast thirty five ingredients um and then grind them um. Or you can just make simple tacos out of that and you can make egg rolls. Uh. You can put that an aposta sauce. Uh, you know, cream or tomato or uh, like I said, a pot pie or turkey and dumplings, things like that. But I just like to have that shredded meat done to stock done. And it's super simple. But I mean, you can also cook a turkey leg whole. I've got a recipe in my book for like a tomato braise turkey leg. It's really good. Uh. And I like that a lot, but it's kind of it's a that's a lot of food. I mean, a le quarter on a a big gobbler feeds a lot of people. Um. But you know, simple approach, you know, I take those breasts and break them down into portions, back seal those and uh, and then cook off the legs and then I have stock, and then I have shredded meat and everything gets vacksealed a portion. Um. And although we typically I'll eat the leg meat before I have to freeze. But I'm hearing a lot of things I want to do this year. Egg rolls is definitely one of them, good for sure. But yeah, I've done that with turkey stock in the past two and I love it. Um. You know, it's always people. I think it. I think where it just like I think of archery turkey hunting, where people only show the success and not the failure. Archery turkey younging is very hard and there's a lot of failure, a lot of wounded birds um that go part of it. It's the same thing with turkey legs. A lot of people are saying they're cooking them, but you never see the examples of what they've cooked. I think a lot of people are just messing it up and throwing them away. I mean I've it's been a while, but I've thrown turkey legs away before, just just trying new things and trying to get creative and just completely screwing it up. Yeah, it's a no brainer to just poach them in the crock pot like that and then and it's really easy to get those those sin us, those really hard sin us out too, and you just cool, let it cool. Off and strip it right off into your hand, and it's so easy, and you get this incredibly beautiful, rich yellow stock out of it. Um And you know, I think that's just the best way. I love it. I love it. Well. I'm sufficiently hungry. And you got you sparked my interest in um P options in my life, because I don't want to be a chink in the armor, A chink in the armor as weird as my armor seems to be white, white claw and peas um. Well, the white cloth that was up in Montana last summer, that was weird. Yeah, yeah, yeah, um, I guess it's not I never had it when I was in Austin. I guess it's not a big thing down there. Oh, and there's no I mean, and everybody up there drinks that. There's no cultural or there's no divide like I mean, you can be a burly elk guy and drink a white cloth safely. You know, it doesn't it's not like that everyone. Yeah, it's a connective tissue, that white cloth. I remember when I first saw a billboard for it, I thought, that's the dumbest thing I've ever seen. Look at that idiot drinking that I'd never drink that. And then next thing I know, I'm nursing. Yeah, it's midnight and I've I've scorned the whiskey for a Clementine low calorie white cloth. It's like the court on Blurter. Man, it's a pretty country, and he just I know what I like, you know, back off America. Let me do what I want to do, all right, man. Well, I'm glad you guys are doing okay down there, um, and I'm sure when this is all over, you guys will find the positives out of this and there'll be new cool things that you guys are gonna be doing, and you'll have um classes full of eager new hunters and and a bunch of other stuff will be happening. That that as well deserved. So thinking about you guys and knowing it'll it'll get better. Thank you. I appreciate the support. It's nice to have a conversation about some things outside of the current situation too. So that's right. At least we can. At least we can. Turkey and I gotta get out here, and I got too. I'll tell a story at some point here soon. But I got two times that are just just pulling all my heart strings every time I go up and take a look at him. So I gotta go and apply some energy to how I'm gonna kill him. Yeah, go get him, all right, man? Thanks, thank you? All right, that's it. That is all another episode in the Books, episode one four, and we're cruising along into may you know, I have to take a quick pause after we finished recording with Pat Durkin and Spencer Um. Spencer urban dictionary? Is that a Urban dictionaries? That a urban dictionary? Yeah? I think it is. Um what wet garden means and it doesn't mean the same thing as a wet market. Confirmed, So I'm not gonna tell you what it means, but you can imagine, or you can look at Urban Dictionary and find out for yourself. But thanks for thanks for thanks to Pat Durkin for joining us in that unintentional, beautiful remark. Really is one of my favorite guys out there, and Um has a great, great part of the Mediator team, and you're gonna be hopefully with us more often going forward here on the show. And so thanks to Spencer as well for giving us some laughs and some good stories. And Jesse Griffith's UM again, I say this all the time, but I really do mean. Uh, you know, one of my favorite guys on the face of the earth is one of the best cooks. And I look forward to Jesse, you son of a bitch. I look forward to the Great P Showdown of Phil. What are you? What are your thoughts on I know you listen to the interview? What are your thoughts on the Great P Debate? Well, I mean, I think you're wrong. This was established and one of my first appearances on on the podcast. Peas are delicious in every form, and uh, we were talking after the interview with Patton Spencer. How you know we could just pure them and put them on a little rubber coated spoon and fly them into your mouth like it's an airplane land coming in for a landing. I think that might be the way to go. We'll just have to We'll have to handcuff your cut off, your hands between your back and tie you to a chair. Here you care a little buddy, That's fine, That's fine. Like I said, it's just part of the brand now. And that's how I gotta live my life. I'm not I'm not backing down from a fight. So I can't wait to I can actually get on the plane go down there to Texas, maybe shooting access to here and see if there we can cover it in some sort of p situation. Um. But the challenge remains, so we'll look forward to that. But next week on the show, fill is a pretty interesting one. We're about to record here in the next couple of days interview with you know a man named Brett bond Um. You'll likely know Brett, but not from his name. You will know him from photos that went around the internet. Oh, I'd say about two or three weeks ago. It was as viral as viral could be. Ended up being talked about on a bunch of podcasts. Joe Rogan touched on it um this this was a set of photos that went viral, and that set of photos was at B B b Alaskin on Instagram. That's Brett's Instagram. His father was attacked by a bear four years ago and the bear, I don't know how to say this, delicately ripped his face off, um, but he survived. Brett's Dad's arrived, Brett killed the bear, saved his father, and then documented the the gruesome, absolutely gruesome damage with some videos and photos that you will never forget if you see them. Um and so I love a good story. I know you love a good story, Phil. This one is cringe worthy and also something where we can learn from from Brett's knowledge and his quick action to save his dad's life and his dad spoiler alert is is doing pretty good nowadays. So it's an interesting story. It's connected to kind of how our culture has has come up with bear attacks and a little bit of what's happened during the quarantine. Because I must have had about a thousand people share that post that Brett made with me on Instagram. So next week, the incredible story of Brett Vaughn saving his father in Alaska from a Grizza grad attack. We'll see then by back. Because I can't go a week without doing run oh without a rung breaking out, drinking