00:00:00 Speaker 1: Hey everyone, Ben O'Brien here again, and today is a good show. It's a really good show, so thanks for hit and play on however you listen. We've got two of my favorite people, first of which is Charles the Rabbit Man Rodney. Now you'll know Charles from The Hunting Collective. His last episode which is recorded about a year ago. In fact, we talked about his life, we talked about his time. So if you if you don't know Charles Rodney, Charles the Rabbitman Rodney, go back, hit pause right now, go back and listen to that episode and then come back. We'll really appreciate that. If you do know all about Charles, you're gonna love this. This discussion. We had a little Q and A with the Mediator fans and Hunting Collective fans about rabbit hunting, and then I allowed him asked him to give a stump speech to convince everyone to go rabbit hunting. I think it's great. I think he's great man um one of wonderful human beings. Hopefully you can stick around and listen to him. Before that, the Man, the boss Man, Stephen Rennell Luh joins the show. We talked about rabbit facts the rabbit rut. We talked about a lot of things rabbits in Australia, and then we also talked about race and hunting. It's been a controversial topic for us here at Mediator, but one we want to lean into as intelligently and thoughtfully as we can. Hopefully you'll stick around for that conversation. And then we took some listener feedback and answer some questions there as well. And at the end of the show you're gonna get a couple of clips from listeners talking about our performance of the show. One's about me being a hipster and one's about Game of Thrones, So please stick around for that. But before we get to all that, we're gonna talk about Federal pretymium ammunition. Now we've we've in the past year, we've been talking a lot about Federals t s S turkey load tungsten. Uh. This is just different material on which to make the pellets to kill the turkeys. But there's another material out there, copper, that's just as cool and just as innovative, and Federal makes a line of ammunition called Trophy Copper and it's accurate across really every gun platform I've ever shot it, and I've shot it in thirty ot six, I've shot it in to three. I mean, I've shot it across all of you know your major calibers, and I have experience with it going back many years, and I've always found that it penetrates deep man. It'll punch it the hide on a deer or a tough mule deer, or a moose or an elk. I've shot all of those things with the trophy copper over the years. And it's a copper alloy construction, so it delivers he's weight retention. If you see this thing going through ballistic gel, you're gonna have a a slack jawled reaction. So it's it's designed for all the things that we're getting ready to hunt this fall, elk, deer and cheap. But I'll be using it for bear season, and so I have a bear hunt coming up with my dad. You're gonna hear it next week from my dad a little bit on the show, and we're gonna got on a bear hunt here in Montana. We're gonna be uh lougging along trophy copper to see how they perform. If it's so good, is to get a shot. So head up Federal Premium dot Com check out Trophy Copper. It is cool, real cool. So, without further ado, another episode The Hunt Collective coming at you. Let's go. I guess I grew up on an older road, a pedal to the medals. I always did what I told until I found out that my brand new closed a game second hand from the rich kids next door. And I grew up. Bath, I guess I grew up. I mean, there are a thousand things inside of my head I wish I ain't seen, and now I just wanted to a real bad dream of being and like I'm coming apart of the seams. But thank you Jack Daniels. Hey everyone, welcome to the Hunting Collective. We're gonna add this one. Five nineteen. We're here in the Meat Eater headquarters with the man himself, Steve rinellas exactly right, the well, I'm the man, though I thought just maybe you declared it for it's yours. Therefore people have been yelling at that, like across parking lots at me. I'm the man. I'm the man that'll probably never go away. Maybe that's a good thing. I don't know. Started the start of some different version of my career. But in this episode, we're gonna talk to Charles the Rabbit man Rodney Um a good friend of mine for a while and just just an incredibly interesting human being. And you've listened to the original podcast We Together, We're interesting. What's your review that that of him is is just a hunter and a man and who he is, it was fascinating. One of the fascinating fascinating things about it is, Um, it's kind of hard to express a little bit hard to express, is it. It's uncomfortable for people to talk about race. I should say for people like growing when I was growing up, was very uncomfortable to talk about it was it was comfortable to talk about race if you were talking to people who were your race, right, But it would just never happen. It would never happen that you would have a discussion about race. Um. The the the like I would be in a situation of sitting and having a conversation about race with an African American or a Hispanic person one because exposure to that was so limited where I grew up. I just grew up in very much like you know, a very white area. Um, but not not not monolithically, you know, we had we had ah you know, I mean like literally like a handful of individuals in my high school. But it was just everything was unspoken. So now to um, yeah, to hear that, and to hear particularly like people discussing race little bit in in the realm, in the realm where I'm really comfortable, which is in having to do with hunting and outdoor activities and in those kind of relationships. To sort of have that discussion a little bit and hear someone how that discussion is pretty refreshing, And it still feels a little bit like I still like, for no reason, I still get a little uncomfortable. Yeah, and it is, and I think, you know, we will know, like in the context of this conversation, the cultural sensitivity is way, well, it's way more intense than it was when you were a kid, or even when I was a kid. I remember as a kid talking to my dad about African Americans being in you know, in our town. He'd like, I remember in high school when we had the first black kid in school, Like I remember that, and noways struck me like generationally, how that's gone, how that is tracked? Like I'm one generation of mood from from secreation, you know, and when you talk to somebody like Charles Rodney who loves what you and I love in a way that you and I like the same passion we have for like all the it's all he thinks about his rabbits. How he got to that. You can go back to that episode of the podcasts and listen. But I can have the same outdoor sensibility with someone who grew up in the secreation is South and has such a different life experiences of you. It's interesting to me. It's a completely different path, like a completely different path to stuff. Yeah, it's it's interesting to me, and that's why I like. It's not the only reason I like the man, but it's like one of the you know, the reason that the conversation is interesting. I've told his story. It's not really a story, but this observation I think before um publicly, but my dad was raised up on the South side of Chicago and Little Italy, and he grew up with all these stereotypes that are that are largely gone now. UM where he had impressed, like like he had this thing that he didn't like to go to a yard sale, held by a person who was a Hollander, because everyone knows that Hollanders. I think there's stuff is a lot more valuable than okay um, watch out for people of Polish descent, because you know, everyone knows that they like to they drink too much. But they didn't make a nice parodi and so and it was just insane because but he was like when he was growing up, you couldn't go, like you literally you couldn't walk, You couldn't go from Little Italy into the Irish neighborhood. They would kill you, or that was his idea, and we would kill like if we found an Irish guy, we would beat him up. And so the fact that like it was just even in my own lifetime, he still hell these things and no one even knew anymore because just sort of the American melting pot had, especially in our particular area, had just like done away with all this stuff. But I just grew up around. Yeah, that's like vestige of that of of thinking like that, like the old immigrant, Like everybody that tribalism, everybody that's thirty, thirty, forty years old has parents that were somehow and like in the perceived norm now racist. Oh horribly. But but here's the thing too, is he would, um, he would form opinion. You know, he was a well intentioned dude and his heart was in a pure place, but he would he would at one time, like everyone, he would at one time carry these like really old arcane um generational prejudices. But all it would take to undo all of that is one positive interaction. So like, let's say he had this idea that let's say he had to say that the polls people have posted that, like everyone knows they drink too much. But then he would if he met a pole, I was like, you know, I never had to drink my whole life. Then he would be like the poles, those are good people. Because it was so easy, too, it was so easy to undo this package of prejudices that he over there. He's a good guy, and so he had some really funny like um he I don't want to get into details because it's so dated and so contentious, but he had some There was some prejudices that were more widely held in my lifetime, things that in started where I grew up, semi rural Michigan Um prejudice that were still wildly held and you could express in a very matter of fact way, he would contradict those you know, he was like, oh, everyone, you can't trust the Hollander. But all this talk about this this ethnic group that people don't like, I mean, that's all bullshit. Because I met a guy once that comes in from being a contangous old man. Yeah, that's also a little bit, right, who you really want to watch out where as the Hollanders. But I don't want to be racist like everybody else. I'll be racis my own way. So yeah, having not been around it and in just to here like to be to take part or listen to conversations of that that that touch on, because like race touches every aspect of life and we and it's dude, there's so much I'd like to say that as hesitate to say. But where I grew up, there was like there was a way, there was like a way we thought it was, like there's a way white people fish. There's a thing that white people fish for. There's a way black people fish. There's a thing black people fish for. These things don't mix like crazy stuff, well even when you review them, like I don't even understand where it possibly came from. But it's just you inherited that viewpoint, and I think it's like what we're trying to do as a brand in this show, your show whatever. It's kind of it's not take those on in a way just to be controversial, but because they're culturally significant, like they're significant for the number of hunters, how people get into it, like how we all see us as a community significant in that way. In fact, Pat Durkin has a piece on our website entitle is Hunting Too White? In which it's not. It's not. It doesn't really talk very much about cultural differences, but just the numbers behind how we go forward as a community and where we are. In fact, um, you start looking at where Charles Rodney you grew up in in the like the plantation region in the south of the Mississippi Delta. In that region, like like you just said, rabbit hunting was culturally like a black thing. And then you look at like the upper echelon white folks, the plantation owners it was quail hunting or other things like that. So there was this like racial divide. And as I was reading on this and researching, it's like, oftentimes the the black families that were running the plantations would be also caretakers for white children, you know, the children of the plantation owners when the plantation owners are off doing whatever they would be doing. And so a lot of the cultural significance of rabbit hunting was transferred from the black families to the white children of the plantations. And so when you start reading that, you start realizing kind of like the intersection of hunting and and race in a way that I'm comfortable talking about, pretty comfortable talking about it, and it's it's a conversation I think that's worth having, but just just talking about racial and racial prejudice. Racial's device for the for the sake of the topic. It's not something I'd bring in. But when you read it that way, it's pretty strike. You're familiar with, Uh, you've moved with the Mong, like during the Vietnam War, UM when we were running you know, now it's public knowledge we were running clandestine wars and Laos and Cambodia, UM, the US was allied with a mountain tribe called the Mong. And after we withdrew, I mean, I'm way over simplifying or kind of long complicated story. After we withdrew from Southeast Asia, uh we Relo. The CIA relocated a lot of Mong to the US, and there's certain communities, a big Mong community in Minnesota, there's a Mong community in Montana and elsewhere. And historically in their homeland they were avid hunters, their hunter gatherers, and the hunting tradition really stayed alive in the US. So you have among the Mong, you have really high hunting participation rates unlike any kind of like like something like we don't see in any other minority group in the US. We were recently in Missouri talking to it like a well informed, you know, well intentioned person who was saying, how uh. He was describing the situation in which sort of this army of Mong will come down and they like pass through Missouri and into Arkansas, raping and pillaging wild game. Large encampments of people kill every last squirrel, take it to sell like that, to sell the market, and it's just like so fanciful. Like so you're saying, there's a large roving encampment which is intensively rural market hunters because if everybody knows, how better this day but telling you like it's just like a matter of fact, But have you been to one of these encamped no, but I heard about them. But it's also that that's like fucking intensely ironic in the way that they came to be in this country. Like we do make such generalization, such statements, and I am always and sometimes guilty of mental masturbation on topics, but like that, when you get down to that stuff, it's like that's the core of what really matters, like how we interact with each Oh, you know, I've trafficked, Like I don't wanna um you know, not that I don't want a dog on it too much, but I'll just say that we trafficked. And as a kid, just from exposure every every stereotype, every stereotype, and it's only just matter. Then you get out and kind of see the world a little bit, and that's that's ironic. When you start to travel as a hunter, you start to not only like especially you and what you've been able to do. I mean, and I've been around to a little bit, but like you start to the more you experience hunting, the more you get that like the experience of the actual animal in the pursuit is displaced by other things like culture and nature. You know, once you've killed a X doll ram. You're less fancy the idea of actually just getting your hands on one, and now you're looking at the environment, the culture of the people now, so that the more veteran you get in the hunting, in the hunting sense, the more you think you're able to, like to really look at the other end you get around, like who hunts them? Why do they hunt? Yeah? Yeah, and so that's yeah, we'll hear from Charles Rodney. Um again, go back and listen to the previous episode Dad with Charles. Before this one and this one, we get into a lot about rabbits, because this is all this man thinks about. Um, he's in his his late sixties and he's retired and he just hunts rabbits. That's all he does. He runs beagles. In fact, if you're aware, I don't know if you're aware of a magazine called Better Beagling Magazine. He's a big time writer for that. He mails me copies of all his articles and they're really damn good. So check out Better Beagling Magazine. You've got some Charles Rodney stuff in there. To close off the conversation, I went, I wanted to find some numbers just to kind of like, so we would understand that the divide, the racial divide and hunting, and one very simple one is the US Fish and Wildlife did does a national survey every year. In seen they estimated that there was two D ninety seven thousand black hunters in the US, which is about three percent of the total hunting population. The national percent is just of African Americans. So just folks know, like it's that's just where we are, just like women, we know it's a smaller A third is likely, Yeah, a third is likely. Um, So, just so we all know, and not to token eye or or do anything around Charles, but just it's a great time to bring that topic up. And again we like sometimes dance around these are important issues. Being interested in that is, I mean, it's just whether or not you're it's kind of like, are you interested in American history? Because understanding American history comes down to understanding demographics. How do people comment, Like how do people come into the u US and where do they wind up? Yeah. Yeah, And in the case of Charlid, it's it's, it's, it's. It signifies a lot of the American story, but it also it also differs a lot from our American story. Um, you know a lot of like why do we not why don't we talk about the rabbit rut like we talk about the white tail rut because everyone's like funck like rabbits or or those types of things. That's the thing we all know, but like we don't when I talk about rabbit hunting. Maybe we do, and I just have never heard it that there's not a term of like we're hunting him during rabbit the rabbit rut? Why does the white tails? Turkey is the only bird. Turkey is the only bird where you like are factoring in breeding because there's not much you hunt in spring, well blue girls like you can hunt blue grouse in the spring, so then you're playing off of the rut. But a lot of the way a lot of hunters are like not all hunters are naturalists. So you're interested in their behavior, um to a point, like how to how to exploit it to get them? So the rabbit rut, I could like, embarrassingly, I couldn't tell you when they Yeah I didn't. I couldn't tell you when when they rut. But if they rutted during rabbit season, maybe people will know about them more. I'm just my guests. I don't know. They do rut from January to Marsh and they do run doing rabbits. Yeah, they do rut three rabbits, so that that there goes that theory. I have no idea. I couldn't have told you when a rabbit breeze, I know, I mean obviously they birth in the spring. I don't know how long the gestation period is. It's like twenty eight days female. Uh yeah, yeah, because they have there's those terms altricial and precocial, and they have altricial young meaning helpless, blind, hairless young. Right, yeah, so I have a thing here. Um, the average life expects me for rabbits that survived to leave the nest is only about fifteen months at birth, younger, fur less, blind, and way less than one ounce. But you know that the hair it's precosual. Yes, they're better developed. Yeah, so this is all my just because just playing off old Charles. This is the Eastern cotton tale, which has some other different names, the Florida, the Florida cotton tail, Eastern cotton tail, um. And I found that there was twelve subspecies of the Eastern contentail, but there's not a lot of research on what those are, so much freaking interbreeding. But yeah, so if you're looking at the rabbit rut, they run at dark. Yeah, they're they're crepuscular in their activities, so they're dawn and dusk rudders. So it's not not so so different than the white tail. I feel like if you saw two rabbits chase each other, you might just be like, oh, those rabbits chase each other. Yeah, well this is it. So the males and females, I'm just like I said, I had to do all this research because I wanted to know the males and research the males and females will avort or chase each other, race, run, and sometimes fight is a part of the mating ritual. So you're seeing it's not so dissimilar from a white tail in a lot of ways. Um, but we don't when when your rabbit hunting, you're not looking for that. You'll play the don't play the rup So maybe we start something here that's interesting hashtag or something. Um, what else is there? Other? Like you should asked Charles next time you talk to him. Because they hunt late in Mississippi, they do. They start late and hunt late into the winter. You should ask him, like, does the hunting get different during the rut? I will because he talked about that last time we hunted in Maryland. Just kind of like what you're what you're seeing? Um, But it's mostly because you're driving on with dogs. You're not seeing natural movement. You're just seeing they might turn up in different places. That's right, We're gonna get there, you know, and you'll see that a little bit on the old media or social media is the longest lived wild rabbit on record was only five years old. So you're you know, you're not. You can't that. You can't do the white tail comparison. There A funny thing about things that don't live that long is like somehow you have visioned um. Things that don't live very long, there's less of a value. Humans put less of a value on the life. Will you imagine how flies have days, mosquitoes days and people are very very casual about it, and like a rabbit, he just doesn't. I mean there's other factors too, There's other things how we weigh out, like what we really care about. But you could also there's an interesting correlation between longevity, meaning an elephant in a whale. People are real concerned about their well being. This is just me and the wanting that, like wanting destruction of something like that, Uh, is very upsetting to people wanting destruction of something that if he's a year old, he's super old. Feels less. People are less inclined to care about it's the less inclined to care about the circumstances of its death. I wonder if that's because we can relate more to things that live along. Yeah, I'm sure, Yeah, I think that's what with predators. I think somehow we relate to predators more. Um, we're bouncing around here, but like it's not rabbits, see people are Is there a time you feel like when people are thinking about rabbits? I just don't think it's a big enough deal that people are thinking about it. I was like, can you talk about rabbits like the spring people think about rat Like in the Midwest in December January, everything ends and then everyone, not everyone, A lot of guys will go out once or twice. But it's it's like people think about because there's nothing else to do in the dead of winter, and they'll ditch it as soon as the lakes, freeze ice fish. I love rabbit hunting though I love eating them. Yeah, I love I love everything about it. Man. We had a thing around the Super Bowl where we would go, well, did this would Old Charles Roundey a few times, go kill a messer rabbits, cook up fried rabbit legs for the Super Bowl and to be like this best fried chicken ever had, Like that's fucking rabbit. So it's I love it. I'd do it if I lived in Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot of run around here, although there's some distributed around Bozeman. Yeah, they're around you got There's a lot more in other places on the stage brush countries, there's a lot more of them, a lot of raptors here to kind of pick them up. The way it's been explained to me is um when we didn't have any game, when when big game in this country was you know, largely removed and waterfowl was so down. It's like people there was a lot of focus on hunting scrolls and rapps, like you hunt scrolls and rabbits because that's what was around. You talked to Kevin Murphy about that. It's like when I was a kid we didn't have like, we really didn't have turkeys, we barely had deer. People hunted small game. And then as and as we recovered turkeys and deer, you know, they're bigger taste, you're more dramatic. You kind of get into like big ones. There's like trophy ones and big ones, and everyone just sort of switched. And then enthusiasm about scrolls and rabbits just went down, down, down, down down because there was kind of these you know, higher grade game animals to go after. But you know, my old man was doing hunting the late forties and uh, they were just they were rabbit hunters, the hunter rabbits, my dad did say. My dad tells me, he's like, dude, I you know, small game rabbits and squirrels, and like when there was back where I grew up, pheasants and other upland game, that's what they would do. And then they'd hunt deer one day, two days a year when opening day rifle season, go shoot you a couple of deer and then go about your life. And at the same time, they weren't shipped for predators, no, And that that's why I mean, we're hell on predators. So there's a lot of rabbits, and people weren't clean farming yet. Farms were dirty. You had a lot of yet big wind rows, a lot of crops got left on the ground. Big animals were gone because people shot him and at him. Predators were gone because everyone knows if you see anything that eats meat, shoot it. Well. Yeah, the poliforation of the columns or rabbits, Yeah, proliferation of the Kyo past the Mississippi River on into every other every place in the damn country has a has a ton to do with it. And now I know, I was doing some looking around about rabbit populations and it seems like they're at the time that you're speaking about. They were on the rise, but they stabilized over the last couple of decades. They seem they seem stable in many regions, fluctuated regions that have high predation, but like as as a whole, I to feel like it's a very stable situation. So I think you've got tons of ups and downs. You can just if you're familiar with an area, you'll watch the cycles play out, and the cycles are well documented. But it's funny most I mean, I don't think there's really any Americans. I mean there's some very few Americans don't live within a couple hour drive of a shipload of rabbits. And they're tasty and they're fun. It's fun to hunt. You can get your kids into it, you can get I mean, you know, old Charles Rodney takes out year old guys and they go walk around and the bagels push up a rabbit. They shoot it. So I mean he's talking too about his distribution to rabbit meat. Yeah, yeah, he shares with the community. In fact, we cooked some when we were there hanging out. So I mean, it's it's I don't understand. I guess I do understand that, you know, living in the in the Inner Mountain West, it's like why it's not why Elk is more exciting. I get it. I'm with you, I understand, But just just to reiterate, like if you came, if you got an extra day and you want to go rabbit hunt, man, it's it's you're gonna have a good time and you're gonna have some good meat from the end of it. In the North, I don't know about the South. Something that's familiar with it more days. What where I grew up more days out of the year are rabbit season than not. Yeah, it's usually it's usually rabbit season and you're allowed five a day. That's dude, you can just live off rabbit meat. It opens in whatever hell opens September fifte and runs like in the march. If you would come to my house and you would eat a little fried rabbit leg, you would want to hunt. You would want to kill five a day for thirty days a year. It's delicious, little potato salad, a little green being cast wise. It's great. Hunters, chicken hunter, hunters, chicken. Um I met. I once met a guy in New Zealand who was he was a rabbit man down there. He worked on one of these big sheep stations. I was out there with the remy warren hunting, followed deer and we came across we leave, and we came across this dude who was riding like a dirt bike and he had a big helmet on with a spotlight on top of his helmet. He had gloves on made of rabbit high and we we came up on this guy with what the hell is going on? We get out we started talking to him. Turns out He is the paid rabbit hunter on the sheep station, which in our parlmans be like acre piece of property. They run sheep on it and there's fallow deer and bunch of other non natives running around. There are so many rabbits on this sheep station. It's in the South Aisland, New Zealand. This guy for the last I can't want to I was making some notes twenty six years I think it was the time we were there. Was killing over three rabbits a night as his job. So he would start when it got dark and the end when it got light because the grazing competition, because of grazing, and they would literally they would put up a fence on the sheep station and the rabbits would literally chew it to the ground and one day they would dig it out and it would fall over. That's how many rabbits were there. This guy for twenty six years. He had a book of every day how many rabbits he killed every day, every work day for twenty six years. That was his job on this ranch. And he had killed like over two million rabbits and time with a roll around with a twenty two and a shotgun four ten and a twenty two and he had a little scabbard on each side of his dirt bike rolling around just boom boom, not picking him up, not do anything with him, just shooting all night long. Yeah. And then you go to the owners of the sheep station. They were like, yep, the rabbit shooter, Like the what now the rabbit? Zero predation, zero predation. And so I was looking that up. I didn't find a whole lot about New Zealand. But it's the same in Australia. And in eighteen fifty nine there's a guy, a landowner there who put twenty four wild rabbits from England and he released him so he could hunt them. So it's like, what the hell, maybe they'll will This would be great, this would be great. They put him in, put him in the Australia and then by the nineteen twenties, seventy years later, there was ten billion rabbits on that on that island on the continent of Australia. Like rabbits, like fan like rabbits. You see rabbit proof fence, Yes, they have actually in the story, the government recently has built over a thousand mile long rabbit proof fence. Yeah, there's a movie rabbit Proof Fence, and I'm just telling your listeners here. It's about some Aboriginal girls right to get taken away, Australian Aboriginal girls to get taken away and sent to be educated, taken away from home and sent away, and they escape. They wind up in this abusive environment and they escape and they hit the fence and they know the fence runs through their community. I think it might be based on a true story and they recognized the fence. Yeah, and it's just their journey. Like you mentioned a book not long ago, and good books follow the river. It's like follow the river, but follow the rabbit proof. The journey is just know if they follow that fence, that must they assume correctly that it would lead to their village. Follow the rivers one of my I think I've read that thing like six times. But yeah, follow the rabbit proof fence. But that's it just struck me as I was doing my rabbit research that that that stat And then so you ten billion in nineteen twenty and then um down to two point five million, no doubt, sorry two million around now. And the government it spends millions of dollars um every year trying to curb the rabbit problem in Australia and so so just be glad we don't have that. H Is it popular to eat him there? It doesn't sound like it from what I've seen. It wasn't. It didn't like I said, I mean, if if if it's me and I'm shooting three, if I'm the rabbit shooter in the New Zealand sheep station, I'm gonna say some of the meat. Oh, you get a little sick of it, I know, But dude, there's I mean, there's something you could do with it. A picture that like in Southeast Asia there are country us are people like to eat rat. Yeah, you know, everybody's oh it's a delicacy, but people like to eat rat. Now, if you're here in the US and you meet a guy and he's like, oh, he's a rat exterminator, you're thinking, well, obviously he's not eating these rats. He's a rat exterminator. Someone in some other part of the world will be like, man, that's great, that's great. Imagine all that rat meat. So us thinking like that's the best announ Yeah, So for us about some guy in Australia, they we're like, oh, yeah, those are pretty good. Eat you should be eating us. Bro, you get five a day. He's like, well I get three a night. Nope, nope, don't even don't even All right, that's enough about rabbits. Um you could get on on that subfing the subject of rabbits. I felt like that was a good analogy. Is a good way to end it. Um got a couple were This is the first episode ever of the show where we're actually I didn't play him. It just didn't play him. For Steve, We're gonna start including I've been asking you guys all to send in some real quick, one minute long kind of comments and reviews of the show. How are you having people submit those? Well that just talking their phone onto like notes, send your voice and just just kind of send email me that And I've got se said, here's how you gotta do it. I just told him that's how you gotta do it, because I feel like we could have set up a voicemail or something. But you know that the recordings sound good. Yeah, they sounded good to you. Played for me the person that one person that put quite a bit of thought into it. Oh, and it was like very articulate, maybe like if we ever give a listener a podcast, this guy might be in the running. You'll hear that later on, you know, if he was winging it or not, because it sounds it sounded like he had thought it out and it was based on our Game Thrones conversation. It was a conversation about television TV and he really thought it out. You're gonna play that later. That's gonna come at the end of the show. So from here on in the history of the Hunting Collective, you that will play a couple of those at the end of every episode. That's a good idea. Go out, go out with a bang, or go out with the lease. And I do would encourage you. If you don't like the show, please please put that too. But all the ones I've got the far positive, so sprinkling the negative one or two will play those. Um. But we also got some email stuff. I did set up th HC at the mediator dot com and you guys have been flooding it. Uh. I think well trained by Steve to flood email inboxes with good commentary. Um. And last episode we had, we did nail about women and hunting, and my big thing was kind of like, hey, women, hunting great. Let's not go down the insta Instagram hunters is the hunting with pink and all those types of things. Let's really try not to generalize the motivations of female hunters and or pander to them to get them to come over and go hunting, or normalize what we do. UM. This guy, Dan Daniels wrote in He's Like, he's a father of five. He's got um three girls and two boys, and all of them enjoy hunting, fishing, And he says, I have a little personal perspective that I want to share with you. Try not to be too dismissive when discussing the power of pink as it pertains to hunting and girls. My eight year old wanted to came out jacket so badly for her birthday. I figured that it would be an you get, but she specifically wanted a camera jacket with a little pink in it. She's proud to be a hunting girl, but doesn't want to be tomboyish. It was important. It was important enough for her to mention that. To me. When I think about it, there are plenty of men who truly cherished the fashion component of camera clothing too. UM, it's a good point. But it's like as we try to discuss women and hunting, there's lots of there's lots of in roads here. There's lots of complexities and nuances and things to things discuss. I feel like I get taken the wrong way in conversations about pink you from the comedian David Chappelle. Oh yeah, okay. David Chappelle gotten a lot of trouble for making some jokes, making transgender jokes. Um. And he later clarified something where he said, this is Dave Chappelle talking. If you want to go, he's go ontix like trying to as best I can articulate the perspectives when who's not me but someone else, And he had he was sensitive to the criticism obviously, and he's got a bit in one of his stand up routines where he says, um, I feel that everyone should have the right to live they want the way they want to live, and be safe and secure and be fully protected by the law. I can still think it's funny something like that. Uh. I when we talk about when we talk about like if my let me put it this way, if my daughter, who probably will very soon, when she she caught wind of camp pink camel, she would want pink camp if she caught wind of it. Everything else she wants to have that color. She when she finds out about it, because she has a regular camel jacket. What she loves, she'll find out about it, She'll want it. I will get it for her. Okay. When I talk about the pink or like the the shrink it and pink it or that, I'm not talking. I'm not criticizing people's desire for it. I'm just criticizing how we came to be in a situation in the big way, like culturally, how we came to be in a situation where we're sort of like debating pink. That part is strange to me. That did It's like that that Like I think it's so bad that I came like articularly perspective. I'm not if I see someone wear in hot pink hunting, I'm not like, oh, I wish bad things would happen to you. I'm more like, wow, that is so strange, Like this thing like that, this color it became like a gender color, and the conversation is infiltrated the honey world. It's just funny to me. Well, and so we and you've talked about in your podcast a good bit. There's laws where people are was at Washington stage or something. They're just the governor, which who is not a hunter, just signed in the law the ability. We're hot pink. I'm glad he did it. It's still funny to me. It's just funny that like, yeah, but they're like, oh, governor today, we have you know, and here's a sign your docket and you explain all like security risks and everything going out. Oh and by the way, a bus crash. We need you to sign this here law. You know, he's probably like, uh, come again. Now. I feel like this all comes down to, and I really do feel it comes down to, like us trying to address the issue of women and hunting in any way that we can, and if we create more things that might attract this young lady or your young lady girl, and and that at that age, it's like if we create more of those things, will get more of them, right. I think that's the equation that we're thinking about, And that's what I what I feel when I wanted to say pandering, Like if we're saying if we create more like, oh, women weekends and all. But as I've talked to, you know, women about this and just just kind of like broke it down to him, like I don't know how to approach you about this, so hopefully this can be a good conversation. They're always saying like, I love women's kinds, I love women weekends. Huh. I wish there was more of that stuff. I wish there was more women um shop owners in the hunting space, and more women retail associates at big box stores. I wish I could spend more time with women because it's more relatable. I was, and in this case, my daughter really loves pink Camo, But then there's other women are like five. I just want to be a normal hunter. I just want to be I just want to be able to walk on a room and have a conversation just like with you and not have to be talking about this stuff. That's kind of a little bit what I'm getting at. There's two final points. One, I almost want to stop talking about it because we had a we recently did an episode, an episode of live episode, and we had six men on stage, and we had six men and we're talking about pink and and female hunter participation, and Anthony Lecada pointed out, once they're six people. If there's six individuals talking about that, some of them women, you've got six, you got six. The numbers, I would point out that, Um, had there been a woman there, we would have in terms of percentages of hunters, we would be overrepresented. Yeah, we would have had to at least have the tenth represented, so we would have overrepresented. But that's good. It's good to overrepresent. So in a little way, I'm like, Okay, I'm gonna hang it up and only talk about when i'm talking. But when we've talked about it, when we've had women on to talk about it, they also expressed this thing that like, uh, that's not what like pink, isn't the thing that makes me not feel welcome. A thing that makes me not feel welcome is guys. And there's a lot of them. There's nine of them. To me. Carmen van Bianchi, we had around You Go Listen as a media podcast episode. Carmen van Bianki came on and we were kind of talking about her becoming a hunter and she said there's two um that she was sort of typifying her in her actions with the men in the woods. When she's by herself and she runs into guys, there's what in the world are you doing here? Dismissiveness, and then there's um, little lady, let me help you find your way back home there, you know, and she's like, it was rarely, like no one would ever just meet her and say, um, how's it going? He seeing any she said, it was always different. Yeah, I mean I was always like, wow, you're here, girl out in the woods, which is really only gonna change as more of them because most people aren't hip to these conversations we're having about how we ought to act. People just generally are going along with how people act, and so until it's like common to run into women, you can't expect most people who aren't like really aggressively engaged in cultural dialogues to just be a little bit surprised. Well, that's it. So I had three episodes ago. I had Dr Livy Metcalf from the University of Montana, and she's a social scientist, and she had did a whole study on women's motive nations and hunting and most of like and and a lot of that was like what are the roadblocks and she starts listening out the roadboxes. It's most things you would know, it's mostly I have to do with the current group of people that are doing the thing, predominantly doing the thing, and their predisposition to be either like complacent about your existence, dismissive about your existence, or pandering about your exactly like those those realities. That's exactly what you're saying. It's like, that's this person did a whole study about it and basically came to the obvious conclusion that, like, there's a whole lot of different Like there's a whole lot of men that don't understand what a woman would want when she steps into the ring to be a hunter, you know what else goes on, and don't even know how to navigate this. I can go I'll go home with guys all the time, guys my age. It would be like being married. It's just it's a weird thing, and I can't really explain it's it's I don't even know if it's horrible that it's this way. But if I were to meet, if I already become friendly with um, like a stranger, I mean, like a female hunter, and we become friendly, it would be there's like a there's an obstacle in saying, hey, right, she's married, I'm married. There's this a cultural obstacle to me saying, hey, do you want to go away for the weekend to go honey? It's like it should maybe it shouldn't be it shouldn't be that way. I'll just come out and say it shouldn't be that way. But it's just exists. Man, Yeah, it's just it's just there. And I don't I'm not like, I don't know what to do about the fact that's there, but it's there. There's a thing that's there when you say do you want to come with me and my body and and spend a weekend out married person of the opposite spend a weekend out fishing. It's just because then there's a lot for people to unpack, or a lot to unpack. There's a lot to untangle, not only the two individuals that are taking part of the honey, all the people around them. They're like, did you discover three days into the wilds of wherever? With two dudes? It's not even your own sensitivities. It's not like you're not like, oh, I can't um the temptations of the flesh would be too much for me to handle. You might be like, dude, I'm interested no one but my wife, But what's her husband gonna think? Yeah, I don't know my wife. I've done some of that, Like you've done that taking new folks on. My wife knows. She's like, what's my wife? But my wife's like secure, Like we're secure enough. My wife's the same way. But it's like, but there's not I can't imagine a whole lot of situations where it's like that. And then yeah, and then you got some dude he's like, oh, bro, you asked my wife away for the weekend. It's just like a funny. It's just you know, it's like, it's just it's complicated, dude. It is. That's that's that's that could be the name of this podcast. It's complicated, dude. Um. There's another guy that wrote in his name is Dylan lacquer l A A k E r U. S. Army. Thanks for your servis um you I recently heard share something with through your please. I met a woman who wanted to get a book signed for her husband who's a pilot in the military, and I wrote, is that the awesome thing we're at and in the and she's explaining he couldn't be here, you know, he's he's stationed overseas. She wants to set in the book and in there I wrote, thank you for your service. I think I think about it, like and I said to her, you know what I'm gonna ask you something, Uh is that do? Is that get a little old for people? And she says, you know what's funny you bring it up? For for for some service members it is because it's Um, he feels that he wouldn't say that he's doing a selfless thing. He made a career choice. Um, it's it's his profession he's doing. He does it because he loves it, he loves his mission. Um, it wasn't just a selfless act. Like it's the thing he wants to do and believes in doing. And it's not, Uh, he doesn't feel the needs. You don't need to thank him. Yeah, these are of these. And then I asked I turned around and asked another because I was with it. I was actually with a guy from the Navy, and I floated it to him and I said, you know what I heard. That's kind of like messing me up because I run around saying that all the time. And he was like, yeah, it's kind of a thing, this kind of thing where we don't need I don't need that all the time. Yeah, I'm fine just being that I'm here, I'm in the military. Um, we can just be, we can have a normal interaction. You don't need to thank me. Well, this guy, this guy is a biologist in the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers and Environmental Planning, So I don't imagine there's a whole lot of danger involved in that particular. Thanks for your service and environmental planning, bro. But people I'm sure you way more than me, but they like thanks for what you do, you know, thank you for your podcast or thank you for whatever. And I feel the same way. I'm like whatever, you know. But I realized But he I caught myself because I realized, this is like the thing. Yeah, it's just the thing you met someone had a moment. Yeah, And you're like, well, dude, man, it sounds like you've been through some really challenging sit you Asians like, I want to like, honestly, thank you for what you did, and I know you did it for your own reasons, but that has implications for my life. And that's like in our country, you know, our country sent you to do something, thank you for going and doing that, because that had to have been off or great or whatever. But it's differently just being like flipping like I thank it for your service, which I just do. And now I questioned myself. I think it's I think they could see it as very flippant and like as a way to kind of get through, Oh, you're in the army, thank for your service. Let's talk about something different rather than like where were you at, where did you serve? What did you do? As a way to just kind of skip skip over whatever details are in there, whatever murky details might be there. So then the dude later got this book and he probably looked at it, rolled his eyes fucking ronella. Um, all right, let's see this guy wrote in and I'm not gonna read the whole thing, but if he made some very very good points about folks have out in your pockets. And I wondered And when I read this, I immediately thought it. I was like, well, I wonder what Steve and think about this. He's talking about uh in in it's talking about why don't we have more people on the podcast that differ specifically differ from the way that we think about things like why does it seem that you know, he he brought up my conversation with how Herring and Shane Mahoney and others. Why does it seem that we're always kind of drawn to or having people on that either agree with us or that we're exploring topics that we agree on. Um, And he said, I would I would have, really, I really want you and I have talked to others about your show. Really wants you to can look at the other side, which I'm going to do. And I don't even know if that's I don't even know if that's a really legitimate observation. I want to ask you, okay, us say you're watching ESPN, do you feel that they should have a lot of people on who hate sports. No, it's like the people they like sports. Yeah, they disagree about little asked, Oh, I think this is a great quarterback. Oh no, he's nothing compared to this quarterback. But the fundamental allegiances, it's a good point, are there because you deal you're you're sort of like taking for granted. Um, you're sort of like taking for granted, like some baseline you taking. There's some baseline things that people are gonna agree with on baseline things that people are gonna agree to. But I don't know how specific is getting. But I have conversations all the time on the show with people who I don't see, I die with, but our differences are kind of drowned out a little bit by our similarities, even though we spend a lot of time focused on the differences. But it's it's a conversation, it's not a showdown. So if you're watching the kind of news program where they where their producer will go find the most too diametrically opposed individuals in the draw, there is to watch these diametrically opposed individuals face off in a violent interaction. Or if you go on YouTube like watch this, you know, Jordan Peterson destroys liberal professor. Well, people love that. They love that video of you and the v people love it. So the thing that you show so people, yeah, people like it. It's rewarding to people. But typically conversations are such that UM, Typically conversations in person conversations tend to be where there's a civility. UM there's a civility which you kind of dance. You sort of have a little bit of dance around things that you don't agree with, even to the point where you might even joke about things you don't agree with. But it's just a different format than setting up showdowns. Yeah, and I think you had I'm having Robert C. Jones the Vegan. Well that's the that's like a case of diametrically opposed. Yeah, so I'm gonna have that conversation. You had him in Stars in the Sky, um, and I thought his contribution to that was great to kind of set up, like I think a lot of people that watch, well, that's what he's talking. That's what the guy writing in diametrically ap poll's perspective. He exactly asked for that, like get a vegan on, get somebody that And you had somebody that is is pro state land transfer wrong? And Rob Bishop and so that's what he wants more of. And but even then he's he's he's the face yea of land transfer. But sitting and talking to him, if you were passively listening, you wouldn't have thought, Man, these two are at each other's throat because there's a civility of conversation that you almost have to listen carefully to catch where we're different. We just had a wolf biologist on, and there's some things I don't see eye eye on with the wolf biologists. But we didn't turn into a fight. Yeah. And I think people are trained, like you said, by Network News and the way that they And there's a thing in sports now at brace Embrace debate and where people just get on and yell at each other about topics for and like intentionally disagree he shouldn't have won the HIG. That's whole shows about that. In fact, ESPN and other things. I was just trafficked in that for something look for it. Yeah, it's just like playing a big cast. Yeah, it's playing on people's basis, basis based or instincts. It's like, oh, a black guy and a white guy and educated like are gonna yell at each other about sports? You know. I think that's the show. And it just seems you know, it seems played out to me, and that's just not I don't think that's how your personality is. That's not how mine is. I don't walk in the room somebody disagree with him to go run at him and try to argue it out. I'm gonna come my similarities first, and I work my way towards what we gotta cover that might be different. Rogan head on Joe Rogan had on the Joe Rogan experience, he had on the CEO of Twitter, Jack something uh not Dorsey or Jack Dorsey. So there's a lot of he got. Joe got some blowback he did, you know, because he didn't um push him hard enough on certain issues. And I remember I was reading a writer who was I can't remember who the writer was. The writer was talking about this minor controversy and the writer explained, like, Joe Rogan is a conversationalist. He facilitates facilitating a conversation and allowing people to come speak for themselves. That's not if you're asking for like hard hitting journalism. It's not him. Don't go look at a gifted and professional conversationalist. It's just different, you know, Like he comes with a different set of obligations. Is like, you're not sitting down like I'm gonna call this guy out. It just doesn't flow like that. And I'd have had people in personal conversations and in our industry say like I don't understand why you don't have If you don't agree with somebody, why you else go at them like because that's just not me And it's a conversation, Like I don't. If it's a debate, I'll set it up and tell you what it's going to be. And in fact it's a debate, I'll probably be the one moderating and not the one in it, just the way that I am. But it's it's not a I appreciate him pushing for it because I think some people just want to hear too, like educate to people on a subject, show down and kind of see which one wins out, and that's kind of that's fun sometimes to go this is not what I would to be involved in. Last thing, Adam Schumacher, Right, and you do you like peas? Steve? Are you food? The food? Yeah? Not the letter? I don't. Just I know you hate him, Yeah I don't. I don't have a strong well. I grow them, and when you get uh homegrown peas, it's fun because you grow them, grow anything. If I didn't grow peas, I could go honestly months without eating peas, and I can't think of having ever. I should say ever, in the last several years, I can tell you that I've never walked into a store and walked out with the peas. But I grown because it's like things that grow. And you live in a spot where it's like peas grow there, and it's it's easy to grow them, so you grow them and eat them. You eat Hi because you grew him. Yeah, you're growing him because you want to eat. Peas grow because you just want to grow ship. And I'm not diametrically posted the existence of the pe just to taste of the texture and its inclusion and anything that I like. It's been years I bought. Yeah, perfect, you're on my side. I'm putting you on my side. I buy carrots, lots of cats. I rarely walk out of the grocery store, not with a carrot. Really, you're always having a carrot. Kids like carrots. I do. The cucumber always a cute because I grow cucumbers. I like to you can say cuke, I like that, should you? But p I never go to the p ile. We're sitting in the Pea Canary District post. It's very ironical. Um, all right, this guy, this fella here, I asked Anthony Locado. I had him on a couple episodes ago. If you could only do one thing for the rest of your life, hunt or fish, like you had to pish fish. Yeah, that's why I knew you were fish. But this kround. Yeah, this guy, I said, maating that exactly, was like, dude, Uh, Anthony said, hunt and it's because of food. He's like, bullshit, dude. I assume the current season harves strip in Germain. I can only hunt a few months of the year, and granted a couple of deer can last a long time. I go fishing every day of the year and the theoretically keep myself on protein. No problem. Ye, fish year round. Yeah, I just wanted to get some kids. You can fish as your an old you can fish as an old man. You fish a little kids, fishy, it's good for you, it's good to eat. I'm assuming fishing also includes like, uh, got you crayfish, crab trap and I'll give you. I put that in there any water based a doubt in my mind. Yep. So this this Adam, Thank you, Adam. I I agree with that, even though I'm not a big fisherman. Although I feel like ice fishing might become a thing that I like, like maybe five years down the road, you'll talk to me and I'll be like an expert ice angler depends on how cold winter gets. Damn right, All right, Stephen, we're gonna go. We're gonna transfer the conversation all the way over to Maryland to Mr Charles rod Need, the rabbit Man. We're talking, rabbits, were cooking, We're doing a bunch of crazy things. One of my favorite humans. And we continue this awesome conversation with Charles Rodney right now. And you're gonna hear from a listener who explains why some shows go to ship and so I don't. Right after that, and then somebody and a guy who is I don't know if he's arguing for me being hips or not, but he's given some warnings. You're saying, I'm not Kip sure. I like this guy. Here we go. I guess I grew up on an all day brow. Charles Rodney, how are you, sir? I'm doing fine. We're here and uh in my home back of my home state, and you're stomping grounds. It's glad to be here there. I could smell on cooking on the stove, something pretty delicious. Yes, I'm cooking a stud Louisiana style rabbit for Ben. You know we're gonna eat that along with some Louisiana cooking cooked red beans. We got a salad, and we got a whole Louisiana pecan prolins. Hey, folks, I'm I'm sorry to tell you this, but it's good stuff. And you know, only Ben and I and my wife will share in this. And a lemon meringue pie because he's a special person. And my wife made some homemade lemonades, fresh squeeze, and a and a vegetable salad. So we're gonna peek out a boy. We would me this may be a real short podcast, but we might have to adopt human Keith. I'd stay here with you. I stay here. You've got some room. I probably i'd sleep on the floor for that kind of There's three rooms there, and three grown kids grew up here and they're gone, so we have an emptiness. As they say, I'm like a grown kid, that's for sure. Well, thanks for having me back in your home. We last time we chatted, we're sit at this table and it was episode number thirty of The Hunting Collective. An now we're in the sixties, so you're But as a return guest, I would say our conversation was one of the more popular ones that I've had, and I think I could determine why. But I there's some some elements of it, and we're talking with Steven Ronell about this before. There's some elements of it that are just interesting, like your upbringing in Louisiana. You're growing up in segregation, coming to where you came to and speaking rather inspiringly about bringing people together and what you did for a vocation. Um. I think that's why people love it. And you're also just a badass rabbit hunter. But beyond that, people loved it. So I just wanted to start by letting you know that well, good good, I appreciate it. I I read many of the comments that were on Instagram and they were all positive, and people had all kinds of great things to say that they'd love to meet men. I could be the guy down the street that D see every day but didn't know that did this stuff, and and that that was real cool. Those comments made me feel real good, and they came from all over the world, believe it or not. Uh too distinct. One one from a gentleman in in in England, and another one from a gentleman in New Zealand, and a bunch all over the states here. So that was pretty cool, now, it was. It's great to see. And I think we we think about rabbit hunting is down the list of things to do as a hunter. A lot of people think of elk and white tails and and and anything else. But I can tell people we talked about this last time. It's hard to have less. It's like, it's hard to have more fun than and run around in the fields with you and your beagles, I mean, And and it's it's hard to find meat that's as tasty and plentiful as rabbits. That is true. You know, people come in hunt with me, and the lists gets longer each year. My wife keep telling me only one person, Well, the list is probably pretty well been cut off. I got about four people I met this past year, and I told him I would take them out one time. But many of these gentlemen and we all respect what the other one does. You know. Uh, some of these guys go all over the world hunting all sorts of things, and that's great. And a friend of mine Jeff Crane who was on the program, uh some time back. Jeff just came back from Mexico and he's trying to kill the top six turkeys. I think to call it the world the World Slam, and he got he got one in Mexico, I think called the Google. So he's got to go to the Yucatan. He told me to get one more. But when Jeff comes out and hunt with me, he comes to hunt and have fun. And he's a great guy and he's a great shot, as well as many other people who come out and they say, I've hunted all sorts of things. I didn't know this stuff was this much fun. And they have as much fun or more when they missed a close easy shot than the one they kill and the I d and I tell people listening Carle sart of my motto, My aim is for you to have some fun, for us to myself and the dogs to bring some rabbits in front of you, for you to hopefully get a shot if you're paying attention, and if you kill, it's on you, and if you miss, it's on you. And we're gonna get teased. There's a lot of teasing there is. It's it's like anything else. It's good teasing and and and so forth. And the guys, Uh, the guys under understanding, and they appreciate it, and some of them look for it. And then they teased me about some of my antics. A couple of guys said, we come out half the time is to watch you. He said, it's like a like a TV program or circus, because I'm working the dogs and I'm yelling and talking to the dogs and they're responding. And somebody said, how do you get the dogs to listen to you and to respond to your commands? I said, because they're good dogs. They're they're pure bred dogs. They're well trained. I work them in the offseason. I talked to him in the yard when they and the pens, and they they're treated well, uh with with with the dog medicines and good food. And I've bought good dogs from quality people, and they work and they perform and they aimed the pleas. So a lot of guys just come and enjoy and many times some of them don't even want the rabbits or eat the rabbits. So but we have a great time and and we're safe. So that's a cool thing. Now, let's give some the folks because we've got I figured for this, for this podict. We've got so many questions that people are asking about rabbit hunting specifically for you to answer. Um, but I have one thing we need to do. Just imagine that I would miss a rabbit, which of course I never have done. Did I not? Did I miss anyone? We were together. I think you that hunt we had, uh, you went over your limit, but we were still within the possession as a group. And I think you did excellent that day. You you killed five or six out of fourteen, and that is good. That's real good, that's excellent. If I, if I did miss any I probably it was probably the m O or what. Just imagine though, if I was to miss something, miss a rabbit, why why would you say to me, like what what would be your way to chide me? For? Well, if that rabbit came at you, and yeah, we saw him coming, and it's your shots, So he's coming on your side, your little territory on the side of the field. Because each of the hunter's got a territory to shoot for safety, for safety of the dogs and safety of the other hunters. So if we're watching and the rabbit is running on near you, depending on how fast he's going, and you miss him and say, oh, man, what's wrong. The barrels crooked? There's no shelly. Now you forgot you bought shells without pellets in it. Uh, something like that, Uh, what's wrong? You need to get your eyes clean. Didn't get enough sleep? Where my contact? Yeah? Yeah, So they'll talk and and if you try to answer, that only gets more teasing and so forth. Uh. And I say something like I don't see you're shooting Charles. Yeah. Well, A lot of times guys will say, don't talk about me missing. You missed two? I said, well I do. I've been doing this for sixty one years, and and I do. I miss some close one In particular, most people are gonna miss the one where he's coming straight at you. You're standing on a pathway and he's coming straight at you looks like a hundred miles per hour, and you're shooting at him and you're unloading, and he's still running and he runs right past you and you miss. And and that's the hardest shot because as he's running, you need to drop your barrel down and shoot low. You're shooting and you're shooting over his back and so forth, and then and then Charles is right on you, and I'm seeing everything. They're not gonna forget it, and oh no, I don't forget it because I I write these up in stories and I get I get chastise. And guy said, I don't think I missed that many, you know? And I said, yes you did. I was standing right there. And write for a publication called Better Beagling. It's Better Beagling and Hounds and Hunting. Hounds and Hunting. Uh is the main magazine, but it's too magazine, and they recently merged them together. It's a joint when the first section is Hounds and hunting and in the second section in the same magazine it's a monthly and it's Better Beagling. And they write about gun dogs, they write about field trials, they write about raising dogs, beagles, and so forth. And you're you're a regular columnist, pretty regularly write six to seven a year. And they could be about the dogs. It could be about somebody I single out as a person and and UH right about, Or it could be about certain hunts. When we have some great huntsom one you usual hunts and I seem to remember pretty much everything that goes on, and I write up a story. The stories are usually anywhere from two to four pages long, and I describe it, and you you have you have a photographic memory or just really good because you can remember even now talking about the hunt that we we did together another hunts of folks that I know you'll call out details that I don't pretty I'm I'm pretty good. I can remember how we started on that hunt, and where we started, how we worked that property, and and it was l shape and so forth, and I remember when we went and we let the dogs loose. And I don't think you remember this, but there was about sixty deer that took off running in the opposite of us. Looked like somebody had to track the trailer full of when we parked the truck and they just ran. I mean, I never saw that many deer at one time. I don't hunt any animals other than rabbits, but I see I remember, and I remember the terrain and there was a pond there, and how it sloped and so forth and et cetera. So yeah, I do pretty well. I guess you can say it's pretty well photographic. You keep journals at all. I don't keep any journal in the field because the action is too hot and heavy. But I memorized it, and when I come home, either that day or the next day, I write little cryptic notes, and I'll write about the land, what the land looked like, the cover, the weather, Uh, did we walk over from a spot? Did we drive over? And well, I'll talk about that, and I'll talk about the first rabbit and what the dogs did, who shot it? How many shots? I can remember that, and as we go on, I'll remember, and I remember who missing then. And sometime I have written articles where I've individualized eighteen or twenty rabbits. Some guys had multiple kills, some guys had one or two. And then sometimes I lumped the whole story in it just the pen I just to give it a little bit flavor. But I do. This is all I do. So I I have a good knack and a good memory for all of that. You certainly do. Well, let's get to we have. We're just looking at him. You and I like hundreds of questions from people. A lot of them are repeats, but we'll try to get to the ones that that matter. And the first one that The most common one we were just covering it is how do I rabbit hunting no dogs? And I think that's probably most people don't have dogs or access to dogs. I think that's why people love hunting with you so much, other than the things we already mentioned that the dogs are such an additive to rabbit hunting. So, but how without dogs would you go about it? When you're hunting and you can't hunt without dogs, particular, if it's say four or five people and you're hunting, say in a in a grassy field or or briar patch, where you're gonna have to kick them up. You're gonna have to don't leave any brush unturned. You're gonna have to kick him all because he'll sit there and you'll walk right by him. So you kick it, your stump on it, you walk through it, you shake it, you make noise, and you gotta be paying attention. And you're walking in a line. There he goes, and somebody will see him and shooting. You gotta shoot quick and go check. Now the difference in with a with a with dogs dogs will dogs will run the rabbit and if you miss him, they're gonna run him and he's gonna come back. But when you're hunting without dogs, you gotta try to get him on your first shot or two, and you're not gonna You can't be afraid to shoot. You gotta shoot. If you see the brushshake or something, you shoot because there are no dogs there. There's nobody else there that you can injure, so you gotta shoot quick and then you check. But the key without dogs, you don't have that music, You don't have that dog to pick up that scent and chase that rabbit and bring him back. You gotta kill him and not be afraid to shoot on your first couple of shots. And then you turn around and you come back, and you walk through the cover again, because most time you spook up the rabbits the first time and they'll hop aside, and then you go back through the second time, and then they get up and so forth. Is there. We've had some people ask about solo rabbit hunts. If you're just walking around by yourself, you've ever done that? I try not to my wife with dogs, all without dogs without dogs probably just are you're walking around? No, I I don't do it, uh uh. I really never did it much when we were growing up, we didn't have access to any kind of dogs that we have today. We had a couple of yard dogs that would get a rabbit or two, and we used to walk in the fields. There were fields that we we farmed or nearby, and we would walk on some of the ditches and we'd walk through the through the grass in the bar and we might kill one or two. And uh, but I don't do it now. I don't even go out with the dogs alone because my wife give me the blues and as a safety factor, there are holes, their logs and stuff you can slip and fall, So I don't go by myself. Always go at it with at least one person, but most time it's on the average of about four bars four Well, I mean, this question comes up a lot. What brush do they like to camp out in specifically, and why do they go to specific places? I say they they like briars and and honeysuckle. And it's even greater if the briars and the honeysucker are in a mix because they can crawl underneath those and it's a good hideaway from predators. In Maryland. Here we've got a lot of flying predators. I mean, we were. We're headquarters for a lot of uh ball eagles, golden eagles, particularly Maryland eastern shore. You see and you see a lot of crows and a lot of owls and hawks. There are a lot of redtail hawks and other hawks that that flies around and they can spot one. So the habbits go under these, under these briars and honeysuckle, and those predators cannot get to them. And even the land based predators like cats, feral cats and foxes, if they catch them out in open then they'll get them. But if they if the rabbit could beat them to those briars, it's so thick that fox is not going to hardly go in in. The hawks and the flying predators cannot get to it. So they've got great cover and they can live right underneath those burs. What else we got here? Oh? Best? What's the shotgun that people should be using them? I would say on the average the best gun probably for most people, would be a twenty gauge twenty gauge. The chokes could be modified or improve I like number six shots high brass shell. They reach out for a buddy like seven and a half. He said, They spread a little bit but the pellets a little bit smaller. So a twenty gauge with about a twenty six in barrow would be great. Now I shoot that, plus I also shoot a twenty eight gauge. A twenty eight gauge is nothing but a sweet machine. It's light, is lighter than that twenty, it's smaller, and it's got great knockdown powers. And a number of my buddies have in the last year bought because they like mine and so forth. But it's a good gun. I would stick with those. With those two. Now, if you're really really good, take a four ten. I was gonna say, now you're in the Charles Rodney, Well, I use it. I have a couple of four tens, independent on where I'm hunting, who I'm hunting with, I'll take a four ten, and do you know, I killed just as manute with the four tens as I do with the twenty or twenty eight. It just depends, uh, when you're hunting. If if the rabbit don't come on your side of your little corner and he runs on the other side and other guys can shoot and they seem boom dead, that's okay. So you go to the next one boom. We run to them again. Hunting with some guys. One day we kill um eleven rabbits. I made seven shots, seven single shots. I kill seven rabbits. Went one other time with some guys we kill six rabbits, shot sixteen times and kill one rabbit. And I was shooting the twelve gage that was back in the day. But kind of stay away from the sixteen and the twelve. They are a little bit big, and they'll tear the rabbits up and put too much pellets in them. And I'm smelling rabbits cooking, so don't tear them up. Uh. Somebody named bean tids, as she said in the UK, we use sub twelve pound air rifles. Do you think that makes us better rabbit hunters? Smiley face. I'm I'm not familiar with uh that uh gun. But I hear a lot of people from reading. A lot of people are using a variety of pillet guns to hunt. Read it, and I'd say, if it, if it works for you, and and you're good at it, and you enjoy it, continue to do it. The one thing that's great about it, you'll only have one pillet in it or one hole in it. If you hit it. Uh, So I would say go with it, if if, if you feel good, do it. The United Kingdom were support you over here from now you do what you need to do over there. Yeah, A lot of people are asking about what else they're asking about here they are a lot of people are asking about how many dogs and why beagles or the two things. So first, if you were running, let's let's cover how beagles and then why the number they do? Beagles are short, they compact. Now beagles come in different sizes. Uh. The average size of thirteen fourteen, fifteen inches fifteen and fourteen a little bit big. If you're hunting in water ground wide the area more open space, say like some open fields than that big dog would be better. But I like the thirteen, the twelve, the thirteen inches. They're small, they're strong, they're compact, they're tenacious, and they will go under those bars, under those honeysuckles, um and other grasses and under logs and on tree tops, um and under tree tops and search for that rabbit as long as that scent is there. And they're gonna go and they're gonna work so they can. They're strong and they're gonna go under So that's why any they have a great nose for the rabbit scenter because this is what they are bred for and this is what they live for to hunt rabbits. Now the number wider number, I use six. I like six the six dogs. I have Hank at sell him. Hank is my best dog. Why is the best? He's the most tenacious. He's stick Him and Rattler they stick with the scent line. If the other dogs lose the scent line, they work it, they come back. It's like a mathematical problem. Half of the people can't figure it, but they stay there and they figured it out, and they figured that scent line and they work. It's strong. Then I have another dog named Blue, So Hank and Rattler. Rattling is eight, Hank is seven, Blue is five. Blue is a blue tick and Blue is a jump dog supreme. He's working all of the covers. When we say a jump dog, he's taking the lead. He's kind of like if if you if you have uh if those in the military and you have a lead person leading the troops or something. He's up front, he's knowledgeable, he knows what he's doing, and he gives command back. So Blue works to cover. He's all over. I mean he's moving, he's checking every every cover, every piece of cover. Then the other three eat or Sam Sam is three, Buckshot is four, and bo Zo is five. Like he's the same age as Blue. Now they're a backup team. They're coming strong. They're not ready for leadership rules. They're a backup, but they're good backup. They work hard and they'll jump a rabbit every nine then, but they give that support and when you're going through, when they're going through the cover, they all together. Sometimes I tell people they can run close on a hot scent. Close together. You can pull a blanket off of the bed and throw throw it out and cover all six of them. I like six because they give a lot of noise. They get the rabbit up, and they pack good and they cover a lot of ground. There are some guys who use more. There are some guys who said, well, because of whatever reason, I'm I'm getting up in the age, I can't watch him. I'm a US too. I know some guy to use one They hunt basically want or two people to use one dog. They go through real slow. They use a some people use a slower dog. Some guys hunt we hunt with three speeds a dog slow, medium and fast minor medium. They're gonna go through pretty fast. They're gonna work to cover and they're gonna be at a good fast pace when that scent is hot, and they're gonna bring him back. A fast dog, they're gonna go through real fast. You better get set up real fast because they're gonna turn him. They're gonna push him out of hearing, and he's gonna come back after you like a bullet. And a slow dog. You can almost walk with the dog. That's no fun. You just leave. Yeah, that's a slow one. Yeah. And you don't mix them. You want all to be one speed or not. You don't want to have a medium dog and too fast or slow dog in the pack because that's not gonna work. You want them all together. And when you when you're talking to a breeder, can is that how you do with you breed in there? They breed into them certain breeds of dogs. Now all of my dogs are pure, but I'm not one to follow all of those various bloodlines like you. You read some of these magazines and some of these field trial those guys know those bloodlines and they can quote you so many generations back. This is the great grandson of such and such and such and such who was a field champion, who could do all sorts of things. That is great. I just don't follow it. I have good dogs, and they're pure bread, and they do what I want them to do. So uh, it's bred into them, Yes, it is bred into him. Uh. Into their speed. And some dogs, some of the bloodlines innately have that that fast speed already in them. Somebody's asking what the rabbits really love to eat. Rabbit mainly a grass eater. They'll eat grass right now in the summertime, there's a variety of grass out there that they eat. Um, all kinds of little grass that's growing up. They're like clover, a variety of other little green grass. Now when it comes to wintertime, they'll they'll eat whatever little grass and leaves they can find. They'll even eat the twigs if there's nothing else. You can go, say on a hedgerow which nothing but a big wide ditch, or into a area where lots of rabbits and you look at the base of all the little trees, and they've eaten the bark off all of the little trees. And we hunt on a couple of nurseries because they eat up all the people. Uh trees, and and this one fella I met, he gave my buddy and I permission to come in his archer. They're like six acause you say kill them all, just don't shoot the trees and say, well, if you shoot a tree, you're not doing as much damage as the rabbits because they're eating. He's growing peaches, pears and apple and they they'll eat around the tree and the tree dies and so he loses money. So when it gets cold, they'll eat the saplings and little twigs. You'll see them cut just just cut right two inches off the ground. Let's see what else we got. We got a lot. We gotta go quick because we got we got so many of them. Um, let's see here. This one is, Can you train for rabbit hunting by trap shooting? I would say no, I'm I'm not a trap shooter, but I just four days ago I attended an event where a number of people I know we're trap shooting. So no, you cannot train for that. Because the dogs are trained at an early age. Their trained with their mother or with their father, or in a training pen enclosed pin of a few acres that has covering the grass and bras and stuff, and the young rabbits in there, and they'll put him in there and they'll train him gradually like that, and they and you can take a dog and go out into the field, but they need that scent, so that trap shooting is something that's flying in the air. Now, I wouldn't try to break a dog from being gunned to to gun a dog what we call it gun to make the dog aware of the gun by shooting trap, because that you'd make him gunshot. Because when you're training a dog, you need a live rabbit. And he's running a rabbit, and he's a certain distance away, and you shoot while he's on the scent line. In a way, you don't want to shoot close because he now hears the shot and he gets scared. But when he's on the scent line and you shoot, you can shoot at a at the rabbit at coming back, or you can just shoot in the air if you're doing it in an off season, so he doesn't pain attention to the shot. He might not even hear it. It sounds just as if a branch is breaking and he keeps running and he doesn't pay any attention to it. Here's one. Are there diseases to look out for or certain types of rabbits you should not eat? I hear of various diseases because in in the Hounds and Hunting magazine they talk about diseases and dogs. They talk about diseases and rabbits, and these are These are writers that come from people who are training the field, from various veterinarians who study all of this. I don't know of any disease. I've not run into any disease. Uh. There are many times I will clean the rabbits with rubber gloves, and sometimes I don't. But I've been doing it for so long and I forget to put the rubber gloves and I haven't gotten sick, and I don't. I haven't run into any There are diseases that I've read of, but personally or any of my buddies, no, we have not run into any it. This is this is one that came up the most well in the Q and a portion of the show with this. Where do I find rabbits? Well, you can find rabbits pretty much anywhere. Most people say, come in my backyard. Well, we can't hunt in your backyard if we don't want to go to jail. You can find rabbits pretty much anywhere in in in farm land, park land, open lands where there a lot of cover, hedgerows that are intermixed with little trees, briars, honeysuckle, grassy fields that may have clumps of of of of grass growing. Um A good place you can find them when when people are finished cutting their soybeans and their wheat, if they're cutting them in the fall, they're gonna come out of those fields. They live in those fields and they're they're eating some of the seeds and stuff, and when they cut them, they're gonna go to the next body of cover, which could be they're not going to go into the open woods because they're not gonna live long. They can't survive. The predators are going to get them, so it's gonna go to the next available cover. Big briar, patches, honeysucker, big clumps down trees, old branches, trash piles, things of that nature that's in in the woods. Even old cars that's been there thirty forty years. They'll they'll live there and as long as they have a lot of grass and briars and stuff in the mix. So that's where you're gonna find the bulk of them. All right, I see one here now, I think that's pretty funny. So we're gonna add a bonus question. Go ahead, actually looking looking good? Oh, smells goods good. And as you go you just add a little water to keep it from stickening too much. Bonus bonus question that I like this question. Rabbits are so cute, I can't kill them. What do I do? Then? If they're too cute, tell them Charles, then you should stay in the house and don't go honey, leave him for the rest of us. Yes, um, my wife says. I've been telling her and said, baby, why don't you come and go on? She said, not in this lifetime. She said. If I kill anything, I'm gonna sit by the tree and I'm gonna start crying on the first rabbit. I said, then you need to stay in the house. So if they're too cute, that's great to think that they're cute, but this is not for you. Okay, they're not cute when they're They're not cute in the pan. They're delicious in the pans. So if if any of those things you think are too cute, then um, don't her it yourself and make yourself have a stomach ache, headache, then leave that to other guys. We're not cruel people. We're just people that are passionate about this and we eat everything we kill. One fella I take a couple of years and his wife thinks he's going goose hunting. He said, Charles, don't send me any picture, don't put my picture, and don't send me anything on my phone, and I can't talk about it. She thinks I'm goose hunting because she thinks rabbits are cute, goose and deer ugly, so he can kill all the roles that he wants. I see whatever whatever coming coming over a good time. That's the allure of rabbit hunting. It's so great that guys are willing to hide it from their wives just to do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, all right, I'm gonna give you the floor here. Well, thanks for everybody who wrote it with the questions. We do appreciate those questions, and I appreciate you guys ask him. Sorry, we can't answer them all if we had, if we had, I just feel like a hundred questions there's too many. I don't want to wear you out. We gotta eat. You gotta be yeah, you gotta be able to put that sauce on the rice, and we gotta have a meal. So I'm gonna I'd like to give you a chance here, and you take as long as you need to, because I think you're the perfect person to do this. You know what a stump speech is that that a a politician might give Lincoln, Lincoln Douglas standing on and shake their fists at people. I wanna give you a chance to do that about rabbit hunting. If if just imagine that I've never rabbit hunting, or imagine there's a lot of people who listen to this have never rabbit hunting, and you need to convince them to pick that over anything else. So I want to I want to give you an opportunity just to give the most inspiring rabbit hunting stump speech that you can think of off the cuff. So I'll give you a minute to think about it. But then but then you know, clear clear throat in your mind, and just give give them, give the people arousing. Okay, I'm ready and go. Many of the people who hunt with me have been first timers. Uh. Some I've never hunted anything before, and they heard about rabbit hunting. They heard about me, and they get rabbits from And many of the fellas that come hunted with me. And there are some ladies. I've taken some ladies hunting. Okay, they've never done this before, but they have hunted a variety of other species, great waterfowl. People go all over and hunt waterfowl, dear elk, mule deer, caribou, turkeys, they do it all. But they've never hunt rabbits, so they want to do it. So I tell people, this is something that you're gonna have fun. It's gonna be fast moving, it's gonna be exciting. It's gonna get your adrenaline going. Uh, your heart's gonna raise. Your eyes are gonna be going like a windshield wiper, because when the dogs are bringing that rabbit back, you don't know where he's gonna pop from. Out the left side, out the middle of the windshield, on the other side of the windshield. He might come in behind you, he might come in at your fast he might come in. What happens with a lot of the newcomers, they see him and they're scared to shoot, or the point and they point the gun barrel, the point the finger. I said, why you didn't shoot? You're running too fast. He went behind something. So once they get the drift of how to do this and how to shoot and how to lead the rabbit, and once they kill that first one or miss that first one. Missing the first one, uh, it sticks with you more than when you kill one, because you remember that. And he said, man, I can't believe I'm missing me. Ran right on me. He stopped. I shot, and he took off, while a rabbit can stop on a diamond turn and run the opposite direction. And he's listening to you. So there's a lot you do. You gotta you move. I tell them when to move, where to stand. I put them in clear spots, and the watch and the pay attention and not talk. And please leave those cell phones someplace else. Okay, just when when somebody's gonna call. You know, if you got an emergency, that's different. But leave them. It's gonna be exciting. The action is going to be fast paced. When the dogs get him up, I'm gonna tell them he's running this way and he's coming back. Stand still and watch and guys are amazed at how quick those dogs are, how attentive they are to the scent line, how far and how rough they push them. They'll down in a gully, on the briars, on the logs, run across water as long as that scent and in some cases when they run across water, that rabbit leaves a little scent above the water. Believe it or not, I'm not telling a quick one. They can smell that air scent and they're pushing him and one dog sometimes will go on the set of water is twelve ft wide. One dog will go on the other side and he'll he'll figure it out that rabbit had to cross hank or rattled or blue and all you get that one bark and the chases back on. So it's the excitement, it's the fast paced, is the action, the adrenaline flooring. You don't get that in most of the other hunting things. Now, I've never I understand from the deer hunters when they see that big buck coming, they get excited the adrenaline or you see that big moose or the eneloope. So but you might wait all day for him. In hunting rabbits, if there are plenty of rabbits. We've been on a hunt three years ago. We got fourteen. The action was hot and heavy, hot, and his barrel he had a side by side twenty gage. The barrel was hot because he was shooting smoking. He wasn't afraid to shoot. There are no scared shells in the field. Shoot and go and check. When you shoot, it only takes one or two pellets and knock a rabbit on. So you rush over the way you shot your check. If he's down, you'll see him. If you and you stand still, wash the grass, the grass and shaking is shaking that rabbit maybe moving a little bit. So you walk over and you put your foot on a knife. He's crawling at a fast pace. Then you try to shoot him in the head. If you go over there and you don't see anything, the dogs are gonna come and they're gonna pick that sent up. If they go ten feet, then that rabbit is still running. So there's all of this excitement that you're gonna have the passion for it, and you're gonna want to do it again. And all of the fellows that and ladies too, they want to do it again. And said I didn't know this was much. I had so much fun, Charles and so forth. And they said, well, let me let me pee, you let me do this. I said, no, I'm not an outfit. I'm not a guy. I don't want anything. This is my passion. So uh and I have countless stories, but I'll tell you one. We were hunting on the same property that been hunting on on a friend's phil Hones family on Maryland Eastern Shore. We're not hunting. There was a different little section, was an open section, and there was a long patch of briars, maybe for the fifty yards. And so I told a fellow he had a ruga red label twenty gauge over and under. So I said, go stand on the end. I'm gonna put the dogs in right here, and there's rabbits and then they're gonna run them towards you, and you just stand still in wait about five feet in. Whoo, whoo, whoa, whoa, whoa. I said, watch him, he's coming. He was down there. And we used to offer for various organizations. We used to auction off rabbit hunting trips, just like a lot of organization offer fishing trips, elk hunting etcetera, etcetera, bear hunting, and he bought it. And so he went down on the end and the dogs was running bam bam. He came with one rabbit and a a smile about big as a tractor trailer on his face, and he said, I said, how did you do? How many of you get? He said, I killed one, I shot at one and missed him, and the third and ran by me. Three rabbits ran by him. So he was happy. So we went back, put the dogs on the scent line one by one, and we picked up the other two. This man was just as happy as he wanted to be. So it's the excitement, it's the passion that you're gonna get for it, and the thing about it, the good thing. I'll use the word addiction, addiction. You're gonna get addicted, you're gonna get bit by it, and you're gonna want to do it again, even though if you get a little scratched up, you're gonna wanna go again, because the excitement. If they got rabbits there, it's gonna be exciting, and you're gonna tell everyone. And like I said, I've taken many many people who said I haven't done this in forty years or thirty years, or when I was a kid, or I never did it before. So you're gonna be pumped up and you're gonna want to do it again. Be careful with this like a drugs rabbit. Take it right, all right? That's the speech? Is that it? I thank you, he's done. He lost his voice, folks, he lost his voice. That's that's it. I want you to know, Like if if you can take a snippet of what it means to love and be passionate about something, to take that last about six minutes of Charles Rodney talking and listen to it over and over again. Maybe it's not rabbit hunting for you, maybe it's something else. But if you can bring to what you love the passion that this this man has, you're gonna be better at life. You're gonna be better at living, and you're gonna have a whole lot of fun outside. Let me say yeah, go ahead now in your areas, find somebody that you trust that's a reliable rabbit hunter. If you want to try dogs, somebody with good dogs who are willing to take you out. That's somebody that's trustworthy, gonna take you on some good spots and gonna let you do some shooting and gonna teach you. I feel that I'm half hunter and I'm half teacher, and I don't mind because I'm passing up something along to other people that we hope we'll be here for generation to come. So find somebody reliable, because if you find somebody that's not good at it, that they want to do all of the killing because it's their dogs. You know, It's like the little kids. It's my ball and if I don't get to play, I'm gonna take my ball and go home. And if you find those type of people, then move on to the next person and find somebody. There are some people. There are lots of people out there who would love to take you out um and teach you and and teach you safety and let you enjoy this great passion of ours. So find them. They're they're they're there. You just you might have to look a little harder, ask around. And there are loads of guys that are doing this, but you don't You don't hear enough about them, that's right. Charles Rodney is the leader of the Church of Rabbit Hunting, and I am happy to be in his congregation. And you don't have to put anything in in the collection play when you come to our church. Okay, and unless you want to give us a rabbit or two, yeah, we'll take that. Yeah, take that where. We're gonna go over to the stove over here. We're gonna finish up our our meal and we're gonna have some. Judy will be home soon, I imagine should be, and we're gonna have what it seems like a wonderful meal. I hope I don't. I mean, is there a place for me to take a nap when we're done? Yeah? Now, if you take a nappy, it's like the old motel six. It's it used to be what twenty eight dollars. And we'll turn the light off, so i'mn have to charge you. The meal is for free. Charge you for the room, all right, I'll sleep outside. No, No, you can sleep inside. We got plenty of room. I might stay a while. I think I might stay. Well, I had to go back to Montana. Eventually my wife might get mad. But tell him about the meal. Well, well, so we're gonna you'll you'll have seen hopefully on the meat eat or Instagram account. We're gonna show the meal. But we've got the Prayleans correct can Louisiana Picorn Prayleans. And that's I think I start from the end of the meaning and go forward. Now the preluds you said you told me only eat a few at a time, Now, that's right. They're very rich, rich. They might they might send you to the bathroom a little bit earlier. So I probably there's that. It looks like there's like fifty um over there, probably twenty. Okay, well, I'm I already eating one. I'm gonna eat at least five. I'm gonna give you something to take for your parents. I will take as many as you get. We got lemonade. We have nice homemade lemonade, homemade lemon pie, lemon ring pie that I make. You're you're you're saying it's not you're saying you weren't very happy with it, or it wasn't as good as you normally. I don't bullshit. It's gonna be delicious. I probably probably eat half the pot. We're gonna have red beans and rice, rabbit salad. Who knows what else we'll get into. My wife might make some biscuits when she come in. Oh, boy, that's that's that's another thing. If we're gonna add that to the end of your rabbit stump speech about how you can eat these delicious critters, that is that is correct. We eat everything we kill, and my wife and I don't eat many of them. But in my group, the people that hunted with me last year, we kill over two ten and about the same last year, even though the weather was lousy, but we hunted in between the bad days and after the bad weather, before the bad weather, and we had some great spots where we went double digits, so the numbers ran up, but most of them. A lot of the people come, they'll take one or two, and there's a couple of people want more because they give to their neighbors and a bunch of other older people. I take all that's left, and I'll have maybe thirty five to forty five in the freezer. They're clean, they're wrapped up, their label, and I have a list of about thirty five people who want rabbit that I give rabbit to every year. Manities, older people who grew up eating them, various parts from various parts of the country, some of them a city people. Uh So I give them away and I enjoy giving to them. So everything gets eaten, and that's a great treat. If we can find them. Somebody's going to eat him. That's right. Yeah, we're about to eat him right now. Let's go do that. Charles. All right, thanks for coming on the show. Another quite welcome. You're welcome any time to come and chat with me, and we'll find some maybe find some rabbits in Montana. You probably will. I bet there's a few out o. There's rabbits. There's rabbits there and a couple of buddies that come out there and and hunt some of the larger game. Telling me to see them in Montana, in Colorado. If I find him, I'm calling you. Yeah, all right, Charles, thank you, thank you. I guess I grew. That's it. That's all another episode of the show in the books. Thank you to Charles Rodney, Thank you to Stephen Ranella. You all should go rabbit hunting, even if you can't go with Charles. Boy, you should be inspired by his passion for rabbits, his passion for life. What a human being. I spent some time with him and his wife Judy at their home. We, of course, as we as you know ate a good meal. I got to see Charles. If you donize that Charles dresses up like to the nine to go to church. I mean he wears like a lime green a lime green soup jacket with a fedora. I mean it is, it is. It's fantastic. Uh, He's a fantastic man. His wife. Thank you Judy for having me in your home and taking such a good care of me when I stopped by to visit. I really do appreciate appreciate that, and I appreciate all of you. UM. I want to stop and say, we're always at the end of these shows talking about what to buy, where to go, how you can help out the podcast. And you guys all know that you can go to the Mediator store, sign up for the Mediator newsletter. You can go to itune and give this podcast a five star rating, like over a thousand of you already have. UM, you can go right, you know, put a written review in there and tell us what you think. You can go do all those things. But but beyond that, UM, I'm feeling pretty grateful and thankful after my recent podcast recording trip. I recorded seven podcasts in five days, and I'm just feeling thankful for one of the opportunity to talk to all of you, but to the opportunity to meet and bring you the stories of these people that need to be told. And and in the beginning of this podcast, I said it shouldn't be about me, Um. It's called the Hunting Collective because it's about our collective experience and and each week presenting a new experience to add to the collective so we can all get a better idea of um, where we are and what we're doing. So I truly believe that's the mission of this show. That's my mission, and I'm thankful to go every day and try to get it um and try to make a thoughtful conversation happened all around hunting and some of these very important issues. We don't always get it right, uh, that is for sure, but I I always want to have the conversation and I'm never going to I don't want to self censor based on um, you know, the controversial nature of a topic. I just want to dive into the things that are important and try our best to discuss them. So please keep sending in your reactions to th HC at the media dot Com. Send please send your audio clips one minute, two minutes, pick your phone up, hit the notes, hit record talking too it, give review our show or some topic in it, and let us know what you think. So, without further ado on that, we've got two listener feedbacks to end the show. And then you're gonna hear a little old number seven as always going forward. So once again I'll end this show by saying I'm grateful, thank you, Hey Ben. A couple of things for you. First, love the podcasts, been listening to it since it started. Um, when it comes to being a hipster, you know, if I were you, i'd be pretty worried too with all this attention on people calling me a hipster. But I say it comes down to utility. So if you're wearing flannel to stay warm and not as a style statement, you're good. If you're wearing a beanie you've got a beard because it serves a purpose, then you're not a hipster. If you're just wearing it out so you can show off for the ladies and drink your ironic craft brew, then yeah, you're a history show some love to the East Coast man. I love to talk to you. If you ever look into do an interview with this Joe blow outdoorsman here in South Carolina. Keep up a great word, hey Ben, and the Hunting Collective Mountain Marketer are here to explain why Rinella is wrong about Game of Thrones but correct about most episodic drama. It all comes down to endpoints. If the narrative has a defined endpoint at the beginning of production, the show will be good. If the show does not have a defined endpoint, the networks and the writers will ultimately milk the production, drawing it out, murdering the cohesiveness of the narrative in the process. Think about shows that have really jumped the Shark, Orange is the New Black after season one, they should have just stuck to the book and killed the series would have been much better. Lost totally got lost in the process of whatever it was they were trying to accomplish, and the ending wasn't even real. So if they start with a defined endpoint, they can stay on track. The question for Steve is what does he think about the Adventures series. I don't think it's hard to argue the Game of Thrones is better than The Avengers in every way, and they're essentially the same thing. They're essentially long format episodic narratives. They're just distributed differently, one stream, the others showed in movie theaters first. Anyway, hope this helps with your office drama. Great meeting you, Austin. I'm on Instagram at m t N Marketer Mountain Marketer. Love the show. Keep it up, Dennis, see you. Whiskey got me drinking in heaven and I know I can't stay here too long because I can't go a week without doing run, oh without absolute run, drinking out, run absolutely wrong, drinking in Heaven

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