00:00:00 Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Welcome to episode number nine of The Hunting Collective. I've been O'Brien, and this week we are joined by none other than Jesse Griffis. He's the owner of Die Dowey Butcher's Shop and supper club here in Austin, Texas, the author of a book called A Field, a Chef's Guide Preparing and Cooking Wild Game that is absolutely one of the best field guys you'll ever pick up. It's it's more than a recipe book. It's more than a book to learn about how to cut up meat. It is quite frankly, a coffee table book for anybody who eats meat. So before I go any further, I will tell you that what first drew me to Jesse was that book. I have. I have it. It's amongst the must reads in my house. I flipped through it every time I'm thinking of a recipe or I'm thinking of something I need to do in the kitchen, and Jesse is always have the answer in that book. I also want to connect with him just about his his ideas around food and how we find it. Jesse's supper Club here in Austin, Texas is all locally sourced When I say locally sourced, I mean everything from the salt to the garlic, to lemons two limes, to the meat to the vegetables is all sourced, locally, grown or killed locally, and in the in the region of Texas where we are located. So he's got a lot to say about that. He's got a lot to say about why we go hunting, why he goes hunting. And he's also a guy who takes nine hunters out into the woods. They shoot hogs, and he teaches them how to butcher the entire thing. So we learned a lot in this conversation. I really enjoyed connecting with Jesse. He's an interesting guy, down home dude with a lot of great insights, and I enjoyed it. So without further ado, Jesse Griffith's Episode number nine. All right, Jesse Griffis, thanks for joining me. Yeah. Absolutely, we're here in uh the YETI flagship. We're gonna do it outside to be really authentic here in Austin, but it's wendy. So it's pretty wendy stuck in a green room drinking beer or canned wine in your case, in my case, so Austin, Texas you're a business owner restaurants or have a lot of history here. You're telling me when you first came to town. Yeah, yeah, What was it like when you first got out of here? Oh? You know, I mean in my perspective at the time, I was just a line cook, you know, looking for work. Um, and Austin had that had that glow. You know. I came from North Texas and I just thought this was the coolest town. And I mean, obviously I stayed here, so there's something going. But uh, you know I got down here, I really liked it. Um. I was able to you know, fish in any direction on my days off, and I think that really sealed the deal. Being able to go to the hill country are up to you know, the big reservoirs or anything. There's just endless, endless places to go out here, and so uh I stayed. I stayed. Well, I mean, you've you have a restaurant here was becoming pretty famous Die Dewey. Yeah. Um. And I guess that spends right into how you do things over there. I mean you take ingredients from the region and build pretty fantastic dishes from what I've my experience. Thank you. What do you feel like it's unique about this place. That's the region. Yeah, the region. Culinary wise, what's I think it's you know, it's kind of it's kind of a sleeper. You know. We always compare it to northern California, where the modern theory of of low coal sourcing started. You know, I mean local sourcing is is quite possibly the oldest uh concept known to man, maybe the second oldest and uh of just eating food that that comes from around where you live. And so but it was popularized in you know, the seventies and eighties and in the Berkeley and San Francisco, and they really kind of pushed it home. And UM, I think that the ideal of being able to do that in Central Texas. It looks pretty bleak here sometimes. Um, but if you travel in in three hours and in direction, you've got you've got so many options. You've got the you've got the Gulf to the east, you've got the hill country to the west. Up north, it's black land prairie. Um, there's dairy farms, lots of agriculture up there. And then you go south for three hours and um, they're growing mangoes. And so really we're kind of at the epicenter of this really kind of a beautiful part of the world. It's a bit hot weather is um, you know, a bit inconsistent. I know everybody thinks it there whether there's crazy, but everybody else is wrong. Yeah, we were just sitting out there on the porch. The wind was like a hard east wind and then it was a hard west wind, and it's it's it never can make up its mind down here. Um, it's a it's a drought. And I'll let you know, the way we get out of a drought is always the same way. It's a flood. Flood. I've been here, you have been here three years, and like, is it you know what's when's the thunderstorm season start? When is it typically January through December? Yeah, we've been getting into the last a couple of months. But see, you have to have this knowledge of this from growing up here one a north north of year obviously was in the States still, and then sourcing all of that your ingredients from all these different places in the state. You have no choice, but they have knowledge of where that's coming from, then why it's good and what makes it special, and then why it's gonna work for you. I mean, is that is that right to say? I mean, you just have this it's knowledge that read just because of you have to use it to feed people, right, And I think it's you know, you can look at it two ways. I mean, you have you have to be so flexible with how you get everything. And you can either be put off or burdened by the fact that, you know, limes went out of season early this year, which they did, so we don't have limes right now, um, or you can kind of celebrate the way that that works, whereas last year we had limes year around, like it was just a great year that the lime trees just produced. We we never had any slow down. And you know, I just look back on two thousand seventeen is being the best lime year ever. Um. And this the the knowledge of of when things come and go in the how how simple that is, and when to celebrate, you know, like we we put flounder back on the menu the other day, and it's fun to explain to the staff that flounder leave for a while. You know, November December, they're they're starting their migration out into the into the gulf and then early spring, you know, right about now, maybe the last month or so, they're re entering the bays and so we're starting to see flounder again. And so I mean it's only about a two three month gap where you don't see them, but when we tend to serve flounder is in October and then again in the spring, you know, and it's just like there's a seasonality to everything, you know, and I think that's really fun. Or pelagic fish or Farrell hawks, you know, it's like they're real hard to come by in the summer because we get to get them trapped and so um they don't survive in the traps past eight nine am, and so nobody traps them. So we really we start socking away a lot of Farrell hog late spring, knowing that it's about to get tough, and we serve a lot of those things. So but I absolutely love it. I love the conversations. And a lot of people don't understand when we say that we're locally sourced, that we go all in like we don't have onions, Well, we don't have onions. We don't have bolb garlic right now out, we don't have limits, and we don't have limes. I just mentioned it's more profound. But we just opened a tak area, and so when we don't have limes at the tak area, it's a it's a it's a hard conversation. And sometimes you can have a line with this, well we don't have any, and then they're like, well I saw lines at the store. What's your problem. I'm like, well, it's just not the way we work, you know. It's just like our our food is is supposed to be a very acute and direct representative of what's available right here, and we don't have to burden anybody else by taking their resources. We don't know what the lime industry in Mexico really is, what the what the impact is, how they treat their workers, you know what? You know what that land might be better served as the lime industry here. You know, in South Texas, we know the farmer, We know where those lives are coming from, and we can feel really good supporting them. And I think that getting beyond this ideal, if we deserve to have whatever we want at all times, is incorrect. Do you feel you have any good stories about There's a lot there we can talk well, we'll talk about a lot, but it comes in my mind, like giving to get stories of relationships with these farmers or growers and people that you really appreciate that that have had tough times and you kind of flow with them as they provide you these ingredients. I mean, there's got to be many, many of those, you know. I've I've developed a lot of relationships over the years with with farmers. Um It's definitely changed my ideas about life in general, because there there are a certain bunch they are they God bless them, but they complain all the time because they have a lot to complain about. They have to deal with the worst of it, especially when they're doing it right. If they're not, you know, using pesticides things like that. There really is a lot of pestils out there that's gonna get reported on these days. Uh, you don't see that in like the hard land pandering commercials for commercials. God made a farmer and he's yeah, I mean they are there. I mean, they're they're definitely the most wonderful peovil. They're hard, hard people. They have a hard job and uh yeah, dealing with the you know, the the ebb and flow of it. And you know, we've just learned to to just accept it, you know, like, oh, are you going to have this? Oh, yeah, we should have that through July and then you know, may might roll around be like that was that was the last to that does the last the garlic? I mean like really like, oh but she told us that and yeah, but they got other things in their minds, um, And I understand that. I don't know if I can think of a specific story right now, but there's there's a lot of just give and take. But we keep our menus very much in flux for that reason, and we keep our food really simple also for that reason. So at any point we're able to take, um something off or had something on. It's just we'd like to be really flexible with it. Um. You know, we celebrate you know, blue crabs when they're in season, and crawfish and oysters and things like that that are uh seasonal, see dudes. Um, And then when they're gone, they're just gone. And people people are pretty accepting of that. Yeah, I mean, use a good word. They're celebrating. I mean you you're celebrating the seasonality of the place you live. And I find that, like we talked about this before on the podcast about how strange. It feels sometimes for me to like walk through the meat section at because being a hunter and I'm just eating elk and deer and turkeys, walking through that meat section now just feels I feel out of place. If it doesn't feel the place I don't visit, I wouldn't know what to look for if I was there. Um, if I a steak, it's when someone else serves it to me, beef steaks, someone else starts to me at a restaurant. So there's just this familiarity and it's, as you will know, the best meal has a story. And I've been when I've eaten in your place, and I was like, this is a story to this. I mean it's not written on this paper, but you damn sure know that this is. This all had to come together in some confluence of events for me to eat this thing, which is a different feeling, and it's on I mean, it's really what keeps us going. It's it's hard to I mean that that. I mean, I'm not gonna try to garner sympathy, but it's just it is a struggle, more so than other restaurants that can just make a phone call and and it all appears the next day. Every every dish has to be composed one little item at a time, and things change a lot. You know that, you know when you're again with Ferrell hogs, when you're dealing with that as they can be any size. You know, you might get a twenty pounder, you might get a pounder, one might be lean, one might be a big fatty sow, you might get a big bore. And so we have to you have to be clever and how you aggregate those items onto your menu to kind of like put it all together so that you do have a moticum of consistency, because if you don't, then I mean you have to have a little bit. I'm just saying enough. Otherwise everybody just gets confused with servers don't know what's going on. Uh. Staff just they can't follow it. But um, I think that you do have to be able to be just extremely flexible with it. And I think the celebration like what you're saying. You know, if you eat strawberries, you're around, it's not special in March when they come on and they they get that first four or five days of consistent sunlight and they turn into candy. Uh and you just don't. You're not as excited about a strawberry, and you should be excited about a strawberry. Would be very excited about asparagus. It's only in season for about three or four weeks, and we, to my knowledge, get all of the local asparagus because I've got a guy, got an asparagus. Yeah. I don't know a lot of people to have asparious guys, but that's I feel like that's you gotta have that. Yeah, And that's as far as you're that's all you're gonna know. I got this guy, I meet him in an alley, Give me a couple of duffle bags, will asparagus. We go our separate ways. Well, I think that it just it strikes me that all of that and and for me, hunting drove me to garden, dream to get chickens, and jove me to do things that I just because I saw the feeling of eating a backstrap something I just killed. If I could do that, well other stuff, why wouldn't I? You know, I don't have Most people don't have the ability to to source everything. I mean, it's just not it's not tangible. But you can't do some things that you feel like people have. Yeah, I'd say we. The other subject is that you you teach a lot of people, take them out in the field, non hunters or hunters, shoot a hog, take them back to your place, and teach them how to butcher it up. I think that's also a problem in this country where even for hunters, nobody has a problem coming to your house. But like, can I borrow up deer steak? Then they go eat a deer steak and they tell somebody, I eat a deer steak. That was awesome. But do they know how to do it? You know? Do they have that skill? Yeah? I think that's special all the way around. From knowing where your lives come from, to know one where your garlett comes from, to know one where that meat comes from, and also how to take care of specifically a meat part of it, right, and I think education is is a key part of it. And with attitudes that are I'm not gonna say changing, let's just say swirling. As far as uh, where food comes from, what guns are for, what hunting is, I think that it's a there's definitely, uh, there's a there's kind of a moving line as as far as who is doing these things these days. You know, when eight years ago in Austin it was a little different. Um hunting was was definitely perceived to be kind of in the realm of gun culture. And uh, it's since shifted a bit in the inappropriate direction. And it's I love seeing that or fishing or whatever. You know, Like you said, you got chickens, and it's like, once you spend a year eating just fish and venison and um eggs from your chickens, it's really hard to go back to buying that at the tore because you you notice the way that food sits with you. It's not the same. Yeah, I was saying before that. My I apologize to my wife all the time because I've becomes sort of a dick when it comes to our like our finer cuts of meat like tendoins and backstraps. If she cooks it up and it's not quite what it should be, or if she leaves it in too long in the baby's crying and she overcooks it, I get I've become a little bit indignant, like, honey, I can't go get that again. So she said said to me a couple weeks ago, you're kind of an asshole when it comes to these these nicer cuts, they maybe, yes, this is a Catharsis for me. I just I'm talking to you about it as a way to kind of send to get it out there in the public. So I change. But do you ever feel like that's a restaurant? I mean there is such pressure to to use every little bit of everything. Yeah, I mean it's a beat green or um, you know, a quail, you know. I think you know if you have Lione cooks that are spent years and other restaurants and there they can throw away a part of a chicken. But it's it's that was a life, you know. And I have no problem with tell him that either. And that was a life. You know. How I know that was a life is because um, you know, and I'm not I'm not boasting, but I mean it's just an observation that I think about all the time. I have taken a lot of lives, um a lot, and be the most of them are blue girls. But um, beyond that, I mean a lot of them are pigs, you know. And it's uh, it's it's profound. And you don't tew that away. Um you give you give people who are opposed to, you know, eating animals a lot of fodder by mistreating at one second, it's just disrespectful to the animal. I'm sure you know they don't really care if they're getting eating there prepared well. But um, it is incumbent on you to do that. And so absolutely it does require a bit of attention. And I think what you were just saying about how the importance that you put on sourcing meat, how it transvers everything else, and I think that it's just it's very disingenuous. Um. Sometimes when you meet someone that's a hunter and they're very specific, or a rancher for that matter, I see this a lot um. They are very um um per nickinty about where their meat comes from. The open the refrigerator and the vegetables don't have the same providence. They're not putting the same import in there. And and I don't get that. I'm you know, I'm not not judging, but I'm just saying I don't I don't understand that. I don't conceptualize I choose one. You really have to go all in. And I think that you know, when you start making these decisions, than resources all around you, no matter what that resources if it's a paperback, all of a sudden you start looking that a little bit differently. You know, there was a tree with an animal. That's an egg that came from a warehouse versus by my backyard, or I purchase from a farmer at a fair price, you know, a real price. You have the propensity to share two as I'm sure well aware when that's something that you have. But it's an egg that you gathered from a chicken that you helped take care of, or a piece of meat from deer do you remove from its body and you killed it? You want to share that with people. That's a more outward communal way to live than it is to just to like, you know, slice up a cucumber and eat it. And you had no idea other than it was the nicest looking one in the basket. Yeah, tell people all the time, what do I do with a big boar? I'm like, you turn the whole thing into theresa and you give it away Christmas gifts. I mean, that's that's a win win right there. You know, you shot the damn thing. Uh, you might as well make something out of it. They tend to make excellent spicy sausages. So why don't you just bag that thing up, make a hundred pounds of Theresa and make a bunch of people happy, and then you don't have to feel any of the you know, guilt not taking it or not knowing what to do with it. Just do the same thing with the whole thing. Got the backstrap, but turn that into theresa whatever, you know, if that's all you can do. But yeah, gifted, and I think there is a lot of room for sharing because I mean, you have that pride. I mean, you know I can tell you let me tell a story about this is amazing, you know how an eight yard it's full run Yeah, and uh rolled it, which never happened to me, but uh, you know it's but I think and it's compelling to them too, you know, and hopefully that will get them kickstarted on on joining in because I love, uh bringing new hunters aboard and also any kind of hunting and fishing with kids. I discovered once once I had a kid, to be absolutely my favorite thing in the world. Yeah, yeah, do you feel like that's part of your you know, you came came up in North Texas fairly humble upbringings, doing just normal stuff and you're beginning in the culinary world was just the same. You know, then you just break in by basically getting the job and learn in your way. There was no you didn't travel to France and go to culinary school. You just kind of figure it out as you went. You feel like you're position in that in that world. Is is too much to share what you're talking about, like this passion and for the food. And I think every probably every chef has passion for the food, but this singular passion for not only the food, but where it came from and how hard it was for it to get there. I mean is that? I mean that's obviously not every restaurant in this town doesn't have that idea. No, And I think you know, just to that last point is my real passion is where the food comes from. I have two chefs, Janey and Gabe, who work at the two restaurants that are both better cooks than I am. And I'm I'm very comfortable and happy to say that, but um, I I know where to get this stuff and I love I like teaching them where to get that. And then you know, the beginnings when you when you have to kind of work your way up or when you when you're when you teach yourself a lot um, it definitely makes it more attractive to turn around and try to teach other people. And it also gives you that perspective like I I didn't hunt when I was a kid. I I fished and I didn't. I mean I have been a lifetime fisher. Yeah, hunting I came to I don't remember, it was ten or eleven years ago, so later in life definitely. But I think it's, um, it's been very positive for me to have that uh, that adult entrance into the hunting world, and then I can understand better adult hunters, like the questions they have and then you know the concerns and this and that, and so I think from an empathetic perspective, it's it's been really good for me. That's a great word to empathy. I found the same for me, like talking about hunting, and people just want to be spoken to with in real terms, like this is what you're gonna experience. I'm not going to give you the bullet points that you know, these conservation groups or somebody wants to of you. It's not what you learn hunter safety. This is this damn thing is complex. And I think to the point you're making, it's harder to teach kids that because you can't present them with the entirety of the picture in the beginning. You have to give them like small prism, like hey, look at this thing. Climb up in this box and shoot this thing, and we'll start there and then we'll get to it eventually. Whereas somebody's thirty five years old just start signing. You can give him the whole thing, like, here's all of it, and it's complex, sense, it's crazy, and you might cry, you might laugh, it's gonna be crazy. And then for you just to connect the food to it, which a lot of folks don't um. Even I am very guilty of taking. You know, if I get a deer and I don't have the weekend to to process it, take out the good cuts, you know, cut the steaks out of the hams and take the rest of the butcher let them do it. And even there and I feel I feel bad. I'm like, man, I'm well, you're still getting it back. Yeah, I mean, it's still coming back. And it's like if you could, if there was enough time of the day to really have that entire connection. You would. I would, um, but the adult too. You can go to them, especially from our perspective, and say what what do you want? What is it that you want on this? Well, I've got a family. I've got five people in my family. I would really like to be able to provide them with meat for the year. I'm like, okay, well that's gonna be a challenge. Um, you know, do you have a place to hunt army? Do you have a place to process this? Do you have a freezer? Freezer? And you gotta good a freezer? Um, things like that. But and to be able to go to them and then like, oh, yeah, well what do you can't eat? Will they eat anything? Will they only eat burgers? I mean ground or sausage or this and that? And then like and I think most of them are like, oh I thought that, you know, you have to do this, And I'm like, no, you can make this work for you. You can go in there and uh totally get out of it what you want and just and have that comfort, you know, because I'll do these classes where we might do fairly uh complex butchery sequence, you know, and like is how you cut the chops and there's this steak and that steak and this roast and that roast. And people be like, well what do you do? I'm like, well, grind most of it, make a bunch of it into a like a breakfast sausage. Um, make hot dogs and uh, it's very very simple what I do because that's my my needs. You know, my daughter will eat like the ground. Yeah, I mean endlessly. I've got a lot of buddies that are like that. So just do you want to take the steaks? Take them because you and your wife love that. My kid will eat the ground. That's it at a lot of levels. So you've I mean, you're taking how many people a year hunting that I've never hunted before or at least have like not a whole lot of experience doing it. Well, that's our our public classes we do. We do public and we do private. So most of the private classes that everybody has been before, because we're typically being brought to a ranch and nine times out of ten it's we're dealing with hogs. We have a hog problem. We need to know what to do with these hogs. Um, come out to our ranch for this weekend. We roll out, we cook all the food. We you know, you know, show them a few tricks and cleaning them just to you know, make the whole process go a little bit better. Um, we teach them how to butcher, cook, package all that. But the public classes where anybody can sign up, just one person if you want to come along. Usually you know, a group about six seven people together. Um, you know we're doing about uh three hunting and two fishing a year. We're not doing as many as we used to do. But and about half of them are new hunters, so you're looking at about ten probably new hunters, which is not much but uh definitely the best, the best experience to sit in the blind with the person when they shoot their first year hog and it's on the ground, they get it and they you know, they've sealed the deal and they know now how to go about it, you know, and you you want to instill confidence, you know, we don't we don't want to hide any of our secrets. We want to give you everything that you need to know to get out there and do it, down to where to hunt, how how to get on land, how to how to talk to a farmer that may have a hog problem, to to get on that land and help them with it and nothing fancy. You know, we're not we're not trying to teach people how to do a week long trek in Wyoming for elk. You know, we're we're talking down home, getting mostly city people out there and uh connected with the hunt. And these days, I'm I'm just really I stay pretty focused on hogs because it just makes so much sense. You gotta pay a lot fair dear LEAs. Um. But hogs are you know, and no input, invasive, highly destructive animal that's breeding at a rate that you know, we we don't even understand. Right it's it's gonna be bad. We're in there. We're on like the golden days of the hog problem right now. Uh. And so in my mind, teaching people to get out there and and source hog and and work, you know, work towards at least controlling them a bit is uh that's good work. Well, it's damn delicious. That's so good. People don't understand. I mean, I think they even Hovelina's to some extent. People see the animal, it's smelly, it rolls in its own ship, and but that's what a domesticalg does the same. I think the eighty ninety pound board is you know, one of those that's some of the best meat you ever gonna It's utterly misunderstood, and I've I've heard all the myths. I've heard all the you know, the tricks and everything in order or or people just leave them lay because they they say they're terrible. And it's the best meat I have ever had. UM has been fair long. And you know, I remember one night we were sitting at the at the restaurant and we've just gotten in some uh some whole fairal hawks and they just looked beautiful. They were coming off of uh some really not I mean really good land out in the hell Country, and they had a lot of fat on them, but not too much. They were intermuscular fat, the marbling. And we cut these little steaks off the shoulders, which is my favorite, and we grilled one up and it was profound. I was sitting there and I called her it was my dinner, but I was like I was calling everybody over and I was like, just try this, try this, and everybody walked up. It was like, that's amazing. I've never tasting anything like that. It was so good. UM, And you know, we're I'm I'm working on a second book right now that is dedicated only to fair log. Wow, it's the elephant in the room. Everybody wants to know how to deal with them. We used to do venison classes and people would just like, well, what about a hog? What about a hog? And it's just every every class. It's like I felt, I felt like I spent half my time talking about pigs. It seems like the perfect storm too. It's an animal that Wait, they're plentiful, there's no seasons, you can hunt any which way you'd like. Um, people want you to kill them, and they're delicious at almost all levels. Why not? Why not expand the palette so you can serve almost every purpose imaginable for wildlife. I mean you're taking and uh basi species off the land and you're eating it and it's delicious. Ship like that is? How's that not the best equation from teaching somebody that. I would love to have a very civil dialogue with a vegan about farrell hawks, because my first point is they're eating your food, they're rooting through your figures. Yes, they're polluting your water supply. We could probably find a vegan pretty quick. I bet we could go outside and yet hopper and hit one in the head. I mean, which I don't advocate lightly. They're usually pretty weak, they might fall over injured. But yeah, I mean, I think that's what a beautiful way to teach people and what like. There's no I often think if you were to continue to promote, promote and promote, say, elk is the most delicious thing, and everybody in America suddenly wanted a piece of that, me be in trouble. But not with Farrell Hawks, not for I mean, how many was the three Sounders a year? More than that? Um, you know, probably a little more than a round two. But I mean it's just I mean, sexual maturity at five or six months, just station, three months, three weeks, three days, um. And then litter size. You know, you've seen him roll down. The litter can be anywhere from two to twelve. So it's it's hard to it's hard to guess. But I mean I heard a stat the other day for every hundred people in Texas, there's ten Farrell Hogs. And that's where we stand, right, that's where we stay today. It's probably eleven we're talking national debt that you can have a t numbers are going up saw. I mean, I live right out west of town here and I had four of them in my front yard the other day and I thought, no way, that absolutely absolutely and I thought, I'll get the crossbow out here, go to work if I have to do. Yeah. I mean, I live on the east side. We Um go on the hike and bike trail, um, and see sign out there, and I thought, there's no way that this is hog sign. And then one of my guides one days said that he saw hogs of that exact same spot on the trail and sure enough, I mean you see their track. Uh. It is crazy and it but it just I mean it feels good to hunt him and it's and it's coming down to where that's just my favorite thing to hunt. I really enjoy it. Um. I really like eating them. I respect them a lot too. And it's like I hate the whole I hate hogs. I want them all. I like to shoot him in the guts and all this, and it's like, you know, they're like I think humans have this flaw where you know, like zombies and Nazis are You can kill all you want, of course zombies, but whatever, but like there's this you get this once you give this license to be like, oh well, it's it's it's culturally acceptable to just violently kill these things as much as you want. And those are that picks fall in that category. And I think that's a that's a bit. I mean, you still have to remember that as oppression an animal, and then animal has an interesting story of how it that's where it is. Uh. I do believe that we brought them here? Yeah, so I mean wasn't Maybe you unless you you know you're you can trace your roots back to the Spanish Irish. We were too drunk to pull off that coordination, could have never figured that out. But it is a problem that we brought on ourselves. And so I mean I think that you know, have have a bit of respect for well and you see that in New Zealand a lot they have all these fairal I mean fairal term non native mammals they have there and their get up an alicopter, fly around, shoot red deer like it's going out of style, or shoot shammy and tar and just throw them in a ditch. Like those animals are there now, they're part of the landscape. You put them there. Maybe you didn't, but your your grandfather did. So why not treat them like even if they're even if they're destructive and invasive, why not treat them as part of the landscape and something to go in and manage. And as you you're well aware, as soon as you take the gloves off, as far as don't respect this animal, we don't care anymore. It starts to be playtime. And it starts to be like I can kill it anyway I want, and I throw grenade at it. If I miss whatever blow, it's leg off, doesn't matter. Just the hal like man that like surfaces a lot of the ship that anti hunters think is down hiding there that we're trying to be like, Wow, we're conservationist but not really precise. Yeah, and so it's hogs have tended to like surface this. Uh well, what I can do whatever I want now and just sure do like killing and I don't like killing elk, I'll do like killing these hogs. And wait, man, do you I feel like you feel like that about everything? Um? And so that's a problem I've had with the jumping a helicopter and you know, mow him down or and I get it as a as a control like if your land is completely overrun, which is which is very common, and I don't that is not my land, So I'm not there to make that decision. And I'm not judging, but I'm just saying that the motivations and the the joy taken out of just the wounding, I do have a problem with that, um. And I'm not saying that every hog needs to be retained in order to feed people, but I don't see anything wrong with making it a go. Um. You know, it's like if we don't start thinking about these things now, um, you know, when are we going to it? Would it would be a nice thing. You know, there are people in this state that don't have enough food. There are hogs that are killed from helicopters and they just rot. And I don't have a clear solution for that. But I'm just saying avoiding the conversation or or pretending like, oh, it's there's nothing that could be done in that case, I think it's not. It's not correct. Like much of those things, it's complicated, but it's not. That doesn't mean we're not going to talk about it and examine it, like, Okay, it's currently it's kind of like the gloves are off. That's so that's at some level that's okay, because that's necessary. At some level. We we gotta like make sure we rain that in sometimes like okay, okay, night time tactical halk cunning is fine. But you can palm up in the back of your truck and take him into town, take them to a processor and give him away, or eat them yourself whatever you're gonna do, or shoot them out a helicopter. That's great, but just have an idea what's happened at the end of that. It would be something to strive for. And you know, and that said also, I would never take a running shot on a deer. I will take a running shot on totally agree. I mean that's those animals are different. You would treat them differently because of what they are. Um, it's an entangled one. It's one that I always think like, it's a cash crop for a lot of outfitters. Um, you pay people. You know, if it was really that big a problem, dudes wouldn't be taking your money. They'd be like, come on, it's costing me money. I don't know. If you've got a hog problem, if you charge two dollars day, if you see how you can shoot one. Wait a minute, what are you talking about. Yeah, twenty bullets right here, twenty that should work. So I've seen that how it becomes a bit of a cash crop. Now that's not totally true all over the place, but some people treated like, well, I can make a little bit of money off this, it is still hunting, and it's a grander sense, So I have to charge somebody for it. If if you're doing that, it's simple act of doing that, you're already giving up the eradication idea because that's now you're out to commodity. You don't want to eradicate a commodity exactly. And that's the whole that's like a weird conundrum with our value system. Like hunting provides value fully, ship honeys now provide value to something that we run eradicate. Look at the simitar orics. You know, it's preserved through hunting. Um. You know, people you know got all up in arms because they thought we're going to kill all of them. But hunters don't want to kill all of them. They want to keep them around. Um. And so the complicating factor with hogs is, you know, the state agencies want them all gone in staid. Monetize them in any way through hunting and so forth is detrimental to their efforts. And I know a couple of states I can't name them, but they have outlawed recreational hog hunting and as an experiment to see what happens if you demonetize the hunting of hogs, to see if that affects their population. And I know what the it's not. The rangers aren't just gonna all of a sudden give that up. And I mean, I've never paid down a hog, and but every time I see one, I'm like, it's an exciting experience. Like there's a hog. I'm gonna shoot that, I'm gonna eat that, and I'm excited about that. Yeah, I see a whole hog. I'm like, I see a fifty pound hog. I don't see like a cute little fella. I see that's a whole hog. And I can put on my trigger, I can close that and thing covered in bacon, ironically covering bacon, go back in the house and come back, and it's delicious. Like that's what I see. And I think if if other folks would see that, And I don't be interested being a text and what you think about Havelina, because I start now that I shot and eight If you Havevelina, I think the same thing about that when I see when I'm like dinner boom. Yeah. You know. Yeah, there's limitations on those though too. Yeah. And I mean as game animal and not as prolific. And you know, like I said, it's like all of my hunting efforts are pretty much. I mean, I go, I go to the deer store once year, and like, I just want to knock down some big does as fast as I can. If I saw fourteen point buck walk out, I take a picture of it and show it to somebody that cares to be like, I saw him over there. If you're interested, I think he might be there, but I am not. I don't care. Um uh you know, shoot a few does, shoot a few ducks. Um. And beyond that, it's just it's gotten down to being hogs for me, and that's great. That's I look forward to reading that book because there's a lot. There's a lot that I think people need to know. One about the history of the animal, and too about like where it stands out and where it stands to go in the future, because it's certainly isn't entangled in Texas is like the flag way, We're gonna set the standard here, um, you know, in control. And it's such an interesting environment because you know, privately owned state has uh it's it's helped the hogs quite a bit because there's these vast ranches and they have these hogs huge areas where they can go, huge sanctuaries that that they can they can be untouched and breed. Um. And then they're fed corn almost year round in a lot of places too. So um, you know, the problem is exacerbated by the almost cultural climate of Texas. So you know, I find it very fascinating and I really want to be able to delve into it. And I think that this project that we're working on, you know, we're trying to approach you know, cooking them in a in a way where kind of empower people to to look at their an individual hog and be like, oh, I can get this in that out of them, instead of treating each hog as the same animal, because you know, thirty pound the pig is not the same as a two hundred pound bore. Yeah, I'm I had a Texas rancher telling me not too long ago that any any hog ever throws in a ditch like like you said, I probably are going to cut the backstraps out him at night, but I'll figure something out. But you know, those hundred forty nine pounders suck succulent sixty pounds of ruins. No way, I can't have it. But that's you know, insane with Haaveolina's guys like, well the little skunk pigs and can't eat those. I'm like they stick. I'm like, well, yeah, they stick, so do hogs. But you just peel off those glands and they're above their hip and they taste as good as anything I've ever tasted. Dad. Um, you know we've been told you know when we we were on a ranch. We worked on a ranch for about five years for public classes, and the last two years they allowed us to take some all Dad, and you know my favorite conversations, Oh you know, hey, you ever had all that? No? I heard it's inedible? Did you try it? No? Okay? Good? I shot down a scientist. Are you not a theorist either? I shot one down in Del Rio and the cook was Mexican and he would not let me in. They said, well, we don't cook that here, like will you kill it here? Were cooking herely, so we don't. The cook doesn't allow it in this kitchen, like not even I said I'll cook it. I would like. They said that he doesn't allow the meat anywhere near his kitchen. That's how And they were at some level and all that outfit or so I cook cooked it up over the open fire and it was terrible because it was I didn't really care at that point, but um I talked to him and he said, oh, they stay stink, they smell, they're nasty animals, face of animals. Like that doesn't mean all that can't be good, that's true. I mean, but you know people tend to also shoot the biggest male. Yeah, it's like which it's like an old ram too. Yeah. Yeah. Do you feel like people like yourself that are, you know, really in it for the culinary aspects and in it for the wild food? I always asked, you feel like unburdened by not having to worry about what's what's on top of animal's head. I mean, they're absolutely I feel like, you know, you feel like you're getting it right somehow, or other people got it wrong. Uh, you know, I really don't care what other people do, and you know, if they if they are really into that, then I support that. I think that's wonderful, you know. But personally, you know, this last year, we we do a deer hunt, me and and three of my friends. And it's our it's our freezer filler. We go out and we shoot deer, we get it all together, process it, and we divided amongst four families. Um. In years past, we've always hit it uh perfectly when the does are really active, and we've always it's in South Texas and the doughs are typically just huge and beautiful and super tasty. This year, the deer had already bachelored up when we went down there. We went down there about two weeks later than we normally do, and we ended up just shooting WESLEYE. Spikes and I just really noticed the difference in the meat, you know, and I just I kind of I missed my does, you know. I mean, I like my ladies and I like a big lady, big run, and it's just it's not the same. And to me, that's, uh, that's what it's all about, you know. And I of course I enjoy hunting, I love it, um, but I enjoy you know, at the end of the day when the four of us come back and we've got four or five, maybe six does on the ground, and it's like, that's a good day. Man. When I was a kid, skinning parties, like hunting was great. Killing an animal was always a big event. But just four or five guys in a garage for two years, strung up was the best part of it for me. I look forward to that more thing. Yeah, I love it too, you know, and just you know, peeking under there, seeing how much fat they've got, seeing how good your shot was, um, and just looking forward to that, to that deer. But yeah, no, you know, I love you know, listening to like Stephen Ronnella reading his books and stuff like that. But it's um, and I think this is really interestingness. I'm not that kind of hunter at all. You know. I was talking to a friend of mine the other day and we we are very much on the same page. And that well, I'll back up. He it out the other day to a local creek right after a rain. He nailed three big channel catfish. He drove twenty minutes from his house. He went out there, he got those channel cats. He brought him home his family is rabid for catfish. I love catfish too, I mean, and and he was telling me this, and I was like, Duddy fucking hailed it. Like that's that. That is it right there to me and to me and him, and we really see eyed eye. Some people want to fly to Alaska. I don't. I want to. I want to travel the shortest distance to get myself dinner from my own region. I just think that there's like I think that's where all the romances and luckily everybody else's you know, wants to travel. But man roommates is such a good word. But I I, you know, I was hunting pigs. Um. I had a little spot about five minutes from where we're sitting, and I had a lot of pigs up there, and we managed to kill two out of there. And it's I mean, we're talking right outside the suburbs. By the way. I got checked by the sheriff one day and he said I was cool. Yeah, that was scary anyway, But to me, that is the best to be able to, like, you know, drive out there, shoot a pig, get in the cooler, take a shower, and be sitting down for dinner at eight pm. Um, that's really what I want, you know, And it's not this uh not this long torturous hunt. But I mean, I see the beauty and that, but really I am I am mostly in it for the food, and the more efficient I can be about that, the more excited. It's funny that I see, you know, we talk to people that do it for all these different reasons, and there's some people that I know that do it for that personal experience, that arduous journey, the bettering of self and like the animal. Yeah, the animal at the end is great, the meat at the end is great. But they wouldn't None of that would be a special if it was there was this like journey, this hard journey that was all about perspective and challenge that kind of that's awesome. I'm glad there's a spectrum of people that somebody like yourself be like, I'd rather not mess with that. I'd love to give catch a catfish that's just as beautiful. And I think the romance for a place that is right in front of you, he's a little bit more intense than the romance for a place that's far away. And I think that is that's key to what you're talking about I mean, like you can take your kids, can understand because of that catfish, what it means when it rains, what it means when the spring bloom starts, what these trees mean, what those trees mean, what that al hoot means, what that turkey gobble means. Like that is I have a small sun and I walk outside him. I can't wait to tell him all, like how all this is connected to what who he is and what he does as a human. And you can't. I mean, you can come back and talk about a caribet, but you sure you can't show anyone unless it's Christmas times. Yeah, now I think that's that's really that's really profound, and that's you know, that's why I love it. You know, I got to go on a grouse hunting Idaho and it was amazing, and you know, I really loved it. But you know I would have been just as I be catching you know, some croppy in minutes northeast. He would have been absolutely absolutely And that's you know the people. I think we tend to add value to more beautiful animals. We can tend to add value to elk. I think we probably also had value regionally tannials that are more plentiful, you know, turkeys and teer and such. But for me, when I think about, like what's the most regal animal, I'm like, oh, man, the wild sheep. Like I've never I've seen like a few wild sheep out in nature before, And I think, I why not have the same respect or the same admiration for a catfish absolutely that lives where you live and does basically is a part of your daily existence, whereas this sheep there's very little I can do to affect that sheep's life and vice versa. Yeah, and so you what you're touching on is exactly that, Like you can reach in that water and touch that catfish whenever you feel like if you're good at noodle and yeah, in a in that sense, you feel like when you're teaching, when you're taking somebody through all of the just killed and they're cutting the meat out, they're dissecting it, you feel like they're that romances is there during the process, they're feeling out as they're doing it or is it just like yeah, paint by numbers at that point. No, No, they're they're they're in it um And I think it's it's The most fun part of my job is we know the hunt. I mean, I think that's where the real adrenaline build happens, you know. And I remember I do a Parks and Wildlife hunt a guide and uh do uh cook dinner and then do a little class the next day out at Inks Lake, which is really fun state park around here. Um, they close off for hunting, and so it's I don't know, there's something really exciting about going to a state park that's closed for hunting. And so it's you feel like you're just you're getting to pick all that for a bid to step over the rope and you're like, yeah, like the deer that we're on the playground, you know what, all of a sudden. But it's available to new hunters and it's to expose them and uh it's you know, being able to sit with them when they shoot their first dear. And man, I you know, I don't know, I mean, my heart is just racing when when I see that deer walk out and you're like, oh, that is your dear, I know it, that's your dear, And I'm like, take your time, and I'm just trying to be cool because if I'm not cool. That guy is not gonna be cool. So uh, it's I just I love it, I really really love it. And then in the cleaning when they you know, when they you know, they touch it for the first time and they realize it's hot not cold, you know, and like there's all these these little, these little steps that they gotta take, and then the guts and it's like us a little stinky, Yeah, but you'll get better here in a second, will be fine. And then you know, kind of work through it. And then you show them all the different cuts and what you can do with it and how to you know, get the most out of it. And you know, again have that conversation it's like what do you want? Well, I don't know, Like what do you like to eat? This is do you have a blank slate in front of you? You like, if you like sausage, man, you just hit the jackpot. So, uh, you know all those things and and no, I I there's such a tangible excitement with with new hunters and also teaching life long hunters how to cut and do things a little better. Oh. I never knew you could take the rib meat off of a deer and make anything worth while I'm absolutely you can, um, because yeah, I think it's a hunter, even if somebody else. All the time you learn that in little pieces. You don't learn it's one sitting You're like, oh this is kind of cool. I'll do this one time. I'll do that next time. That's still learning. I'm still learning, absolutely, And every animals a little different and he just you know, it always changes and I love that and I'm always you know, try this out with that, you know, see if that's good. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but it is the beauty of it and UM, but it's yours. Yeah. Food wise, is there anything that you know there's a lot of people out there that shoot a deer? Specifically, dear, i'd say, venison, Is there any tips that you've learned that are full proof that you just think people need to know because I'm interested in that, like as I cut up an elk or cut up a deer. Is there something that's a universal that you've seen that that always works and that people never do? Um? You know, I think there's yes, there is, UM and I think that specifically with venison, is people battle silver skin too much? UM. Silver skin, it's collagen, it's gonna melt into gelatine if it's cooked at a consistent, you know, pretty relatively low temperature, you know, like one nine or over for a long period of time, let's say three, four or five hours. So all those pieces the deer, like the shanks, the neck, things like that, that have a lot of silver in them, um, use those to your advantage. Just cut those off in big pieces and slow cook those. Don't try to bone them out and then clean all the silver off. You're wasting your time. And also what you're doing is you're undermining the base fact that that silver skin has a quality, that quality being gelatine, gelatine being a richness also nutrition. So take those shanks and those neck pieces and just cut those into big chunks and slow cook those and then let them meat fall off the bone instead of trying to go in there and meticulously trim all that silver out so you can get it to your grinder. There's other cuts on that animal, namely the hams, the shoulders, um, that are going to be way easier to put in the grinder, And in fact, you can just throw them right in if you have a powerful grinder. You don't really need to even worry about cleaning them up at all. So what we've done there is is not only getting more nutrition or in flavor out of that animal, but you're also doing a lot less work. It's kind of this lazy approach, but I feel that people get frustrated, like, oh, it takes so much time to trim all the silver silver out and I'm like, I spend zero minutes backstraps. No, absolutely got to take it off, Yeah, exactly, exactly. Any any muscle that doesn't get worked a lot, like your backstrap, your tenderloin has to be quickly obviously. Um. But uh, that silver can go into stock, you know. Of course, if you're not dealing with chronic wasting disease, there's the big asterisk right there. But you can take that silver in all the bones and make make stock out of it. That silver skin won't convert again into gelatine in your stock, and so there is zero waste coming off that animal. Yeah, clean up the backstrap really well. Um, but those those those legs. Basically, when I say shank, I mean from the elbow to the wrist or from the knee to the ankle. A lot of guys shanks becoming I mean, guys like Remmy Warren step Ranella, and that's what shanks are. One of the first things they're looking at. Shanks, tongues. Tongues. Yeah, it's great. You know, these cuts, these off cuts, they're so good. And I've always on venison, I've always been a big fan of the belly or the flank meat, the the belly on the you know, taking it off in the whole. Yeah, the whole rib section. Cut that off. Um. At worst, you can take it and grind it into a really beautiful stew or chili meat, but it needs to be cooked for a long time because it contains a lot of silver skin. It won't make a good burger, but diced or ground it's gonna make excellent chili because, as I said earlier, over time that collagen breaks down into gelatine and it becomes it's a textural thing and it has a really nice flavor. So um, you can take that and and make a whole bunch of different things. In my first book in the field, we roll saw osagen, egg and breadcrumbs um around. We roll the belly around that and then braise it for a very long time, and I mean a very long time six hours. You know, croc pot low of and with lots of tomatoes, you know, lots of acid, and then you come in and slice it and it's perfectly tender, and people are, I try to cook that before it was tough. It's like you didn't. It didn't break down. You know, these are wild animals. Their legs had to break down. Your prime example would be the breast of a turkey versus the legs of a turkey. How often do turkeys run? How often do turkeys fly? That's how long you got to cook each one of those. Conversely, I wish there was a rule, would be like how long do you think this thing fluid? That's only gotta cook it? And I'm I'm I cut the legs and thighs off every turkey I killed. Fact, I just killed one in Florida a couple of weeks ago, and I eat one breast delicious. Got that down. Don't need any help with that. But legs and thighs, Like, what the hell do I do? You've got to cook them for a very long time. They need to be I would say, close to submerged in the liquid. Croc pot is going to serve you really well. And any kind of acid is also going to serve you well to be it. Tomato would be a classic um um. Just you could sear the leg off and throw it into a croc pod with stock onions, sorry, carrots, whatever um you want to put in there, tomato, maybe a little wine if you if you want to, and then you're going to cook that until it's tender. How long, I don't know. I don't know how old your turkey was. I don't know how hot your croc pod is. So uh, it will get tinder, I promise you that, but I mean it's gonna be a a very long time. It could be seven hours. I tend to just go overnight with that stuff or before work. And croc pod is because you don't have an open flame and so you can just put stuff in there and let it go. Um. But a lot of complaints about the tougher cuts of game are they are tough. And if they're tough, it's because they they first off, weren't cooked in a moist enough environment, and secondly, they weren't cooked for long enough to actually break down that collagen has to break down reverse he here, yes, sure, I'm I'm an old dog. You know, I see pictures online all the time of successful reverse sears. I'm I'm a traditionalist. Um. It's kind of like a shooting big deer. I don't care what you do. I'm just gonna cook. I'm just gonna cook the This is so easy for me to do it this way. So um, you know, I might eventually come around to it, but for now, I love You know, a venison backstrap is just goes into a marinade of olive oil, salt, and pepper um, and then it goes on to an extremely hot grill, and uh, it's seared hard on three sides. I feel like a backstrap has three sides, and that's triangle to it. And I I like to see her the most, you know, so medium rare, maybe a little bit north of that. You know, I'm pushing medium. It's fine with me. I tend to like meat a little more cooked, um than than rare. A medium rare. So you throw it on there, and you have you ever oven it or at all, just cast iron or a grill or you know, just like a very hot charcoal fire that is ripping hot. How do you what's the best way to get that crust that everybody's always after because I've I've had some steaks for guys, Like I've got that awesome crust, but it tastes like pepper and salt oil. Well, there's no fat in that. You're gonna get um more of that. Like I said, that marinatee of olive oil and not a lot. I mean, just rub it with olive oil. But that's really going to help it. Um. You know, a smaller game animals, like if I was to grow a quail or dove, I usually am going to incorporate something sweet in there to expedite that carmelization process. So a little bit of honey in with the oil will help that char on the outside before the interior is overcooked. And so just adding a little bit of that in there. Typically with the backstrap, it's thick enough where you can get and if your fire is hot enough, you can get a good enough steer on all three sides before the inside has ever cooked. And so you don't need that kind of that honey crutch. So then your your rest for as long as you want. As long as you want, yeah, minimum ten minutes. But I mean, I I think that food is great at room temperature Um, so you know, ten fifteen minutes, it will become pretty tender if you let it, you know, sit for fifteen minutes and then then slices against the grain and then just medallion type. Whatever you do beyond that is up to you. Beautiful, pretty hungry? Now is there any other it's trying to think of all the questions I have. These are mostly my questions. So I'm sorry everybody listening. You have to deal with what I freaking want to know? Um ribs? Yeah, like, how do you say you should? You know, in this local environment, you shoot a deer, you have a full rack of ribs to deal with, and kinds of good size of deer. It's healthy. You want the rib meat. You're taking it on the bone. I assume you want. You're talking a standard rack and rob standard racket deer ribs. Always just get back to deer, because that's sure. This is what I do. Um, and it's and it's good and it's you know, I mean well, I mean it's I don't know. It's two thousand and eighteen. You're gonna piss off somebody no matter what you do. We're here to piss off. I'm gonna comments section to this. Oh yo, yeah, I can't wait. Give it to them, give them to it types of dumb sh it already, So don't worry about that. I've already whacked a vegan in the head with a yetie hopper. So here I go. That's good product. And I'm gonna tell somebody to boil ribs. Holy sh it, I didn't say boil. I did say boil. But that's what the comment section, that's what the comment outrage is going to say. I'm going to simmer those ribs until the tender and it's it's the reverse. Here is what it is. It's crazy. So what I'm gonna do is, I'm gonna take those ribs and i'm gonna take a very highly seasoned mean water. You know. I'm gonna put some bay leaves and put some salt, some garlic, tender whatever whatever you want to put it there again, free country. So and I'm gonna cook those ribs at a simmer, not a boil, until they are tender, um, not falling apart tender, but just tender. And then I'm gonna pull them out and I'm gonna cool them a little bit. Um. I'm gonna taste a little bit and if it's if it's seasoned enough, I'm not gonna season them anymore. If it needs a little salt and pepper, I'm going to salt and pepper them, and then i'm gonna get again a ripping hot fire. Maybe you're doing a mixed girl of a little backstrap a little bit of ribs, great, because you just need one fire on there now. Um, And I'm gonna take a fifty fifty mix of vinegar and honey. Whatever vinegar you want to use, fine, I prefer, you know, an apple cider vinegar is gonna be really good. I'm gonna take those ribs and i am going to brush them with that, and i'm gonna put them on the grill and flip and flip and based and based and based until they get a crust. And so what I've done with the initial cook is I've got them tender, and then with the secondary cook, I've add a little bit of smoke. I've added some char, I've added some sour, and I've added some sweet um. And the reason that you can't go all the way on the smoker with those venison ribs is they just don't have the fat really to self based when they're breaking down. But I mean in order not to just throw them away. This is a really good method. You can also free cook them and then three days later throw them on the grill. You can cook them in your stock pot and then pull them out and then you know use you know, get secondary nutrition out of those bones in the form of the venison stock. There's all kinds of things you can do with it. But for ribs, that's what I do. A hog ribs is a case by case. If they've got enough fat, you can do it for aditional, just straight up smoke on them. Um. If they're super lean, revert to the the pre cook pre cook. Um, we'll call it pre cook for the for this, UM, take you back to there's a dead deer in the ground, skinned, its guts are out. How do I go about getting these ribs off in a way that makes sense and it's quick and clean and I'm not snapping bones all over the place. Clever in a mallet. You gotta get the clever and mallet um very very basic. Once you get the hang of it, you can take down any animal with a boning knife, a clever and a millet pretty much. Um. You know, get rid of the saw and the dust. Instead, you know, a nice sharp clever. I love a old hickory carbon steel clever my favorite. Uh. And then just a rubber mallet from a hardware store, perfectly locally owned, um, locally sourced wood rubber. Yeah all right, so but I think the Cleveland mallet um, you just tap tap tap right to those ribs. Um. You can use a saw saus get a little, they get a little funky and there, um, but yeah, it's the best way to get them off and on a deer. I never made. I never cut chops off a deer. I always take cleaned backstrap. There's too much connective tissue in that chop. I think the backstrap is superior. I had. So there's been some um somebody's mind. They'll go unnamed. His name is John Dudley who posted something through tragorub with with chopped like backstrap chop the bone still in them. Now. Definitely do it is that legit? I mean make it absolutely. I just find there to be a bit too much connective tissue in there compared to the just that pure a really well cleaned um backstrap on the grill. I kind of prefer that experience over it. But again we are in Texas extra for it's it's an extra free here. Are there any um, I don't know why I was thinking about this when we were talking earlier. There anything that anything that frustrate you that you want to talk about? Just not in not in not much time. I got left, Let's go, he said, you gotta pick your kid aub at five. Are there anything like in the hunting in the culinary worlds, because this is a hunting podcast, is there anything that frustrates you that you feel like that? Yeah? You know sometimes I feel like, you know, I read a lot of forums on hunting. I never ever post on there, and I don't feel like my opinion is that valid. But um, I kind of dislike when people say, as we're a hunting community, we all have to be unified on this, and it's like there's no there's no community in the world that has to be completely unified on anything. You know, we all don't have to be of the same mind. Um, I don't have to shoot a kyati. I don't want to. Well, I have a terrible kylotie problem on my land. I'm gonna shot kyotes, Okay, I get that you know, it's I understand that, but um, I don't want to shoot one and I don't and I'm never going to, so you know, and we don't have to be unified. We can have these differences of opinion and you can you can do as you wish on on your land and things like that. You know, I wish that, you know, we I understand as as hunters right now, there is kind of a call for unity because certain aspects might be considered to be under attack. But at the same time, and you know, we we have to have kind of a spectrum of ideals um in order to be you know, plausible, and that will always be true. Hunting will always be under attack as long as it's I mean, maybe there was a time in our society where it wasn't, but like modern sport, hunting has almost always been on attack. For the say, it's been around for ninety years, it's been under attack the entire nightey and it's only intensifying because organization things like that. But your point is well taken, and there's a lot of people in our industry that are big names that are calling for this this you know, out and out unity. Look, I get what you're saying. I get the idea of what you're saying, but that's that idea of this is this you know, this unity that has to be uh in perpetuity. That's more dangerous than a bunch of smart freethinkers with the same goal coming together and be like, how we figure this thing out? Super competent. It's complex. Yeah, I think it's very complex. I think just you know, I mean, of course I'll respect other people's opinions. Is and it's legal, and I'm sure there are many cases where you need to shoot that coyote um, but you're gonna have to do that. Well, Ronnella, he's made the best. If I could come up with a better analogy's like, look, we're all in a boat and somebody's in their shooting holes in it. You're not gonna be like, well, we're all in the boat together. We gotta let him keep shooting holes in it. Now you push him over the edge, like you just say, if you please walk the plank, we would like to plug the holes up and for you to get out. And so that's a harsh, you know, It's I don't feel like I would never tell everybody to like kick out people that do something I don't agree with. But I think it would be much better if we all codified a little bit of like what are the barriers with which hunting exists, and then try to if we can better defind those, then we don't have to so worry about all our conversations being in this weird gray area where you don't agree. You know, high fence being the perfect example of that. Like you live in Texas, high fences are everywhere? Um I would I just drove here from Houston. That's all you see, you know, black Buck Ranch freaking high fence. I mean, I've never been ever. Do you feel like, um, as a Texan you have well as a as a pretty by now you've been here long enough that you could say you're a Texing. You can tell me I'm not. I'm not texting coming from North Texas or something. I'm like, I be called it was from North It's a little bit further north than North Texas. That's not the intense. Sorry, I didn't mean derail no. Um. I just think that how we define that matters, and how we define like if high fence is it could save the Scimitar Horne orics in some way that's important for that animal. But is it hunting now, Like is it just game farming, which is okay because you run a restaurant. You can't just buy you know, Billy Bob's deer from down the street. It's got to come from an approved um game farms at right. Well, I mean that's I mean, not to make that muddy that water, but ours comes they're trapped and so they tend to come either from a coal on them, typically a high fence ranch or escape bees that are trapped trapped. Um. I think that they are definitely a couple of steps more wild than a farm most definitely. UM. As in respect to the venison that we get in the black buck, the psycha, red deer, elk, things like that, UM non native, and I like to think of him as invasive. You know. The same thing goes with the Farrell hogs. They're trapped. UM. But uh yeah, I mean that's a that's a great point, um, I think. I mean, the way I think about it, it's just like we're we're kind of dealing with our situation and high fences exist. I think the jury's out as to the long term effects of what sequestering groups of wildlife can do that. Chronic wasting disease might illuminate that, um a little bit more because um, that might be how it gets here. And but at the same time, you know, we live in a in a place that's got a lot of wild land and it's because people steward it through private ownership, and that is that's a great thing in my mind. And so if you put a high fence surround it, then maybe that's gonna you know, just work in your benefit forward towards stewarding that land. Um. Yeah, there's just there's a lot of argument, and I just I really I really don't know. And again it just boils down to you know, I just do what you want to do. Yeah, I mean, that's that's this is America. I'm not gonna I would never be like, let's regulate high fence, Like you want to have high fence ranch, perfect, go for it. If somebody wants to come there and shoot one of those animals and do whatever they want to hang on their wall or I'm I'm almost I'm fine with that. But what I but I think where we as hunters should probably draw the line is like, look, it's not hunting per se, Like just call it something different, don't try to you know, like there's an elk on the wall in front of us. If if that elk was killed in a high fence and I came over and you were like, how did you kill that elk? And you said, well, you know what, I went out early in the morning, crawled up a hill. There he wasn't a shot him, and there he's on my wall. You're like, well, that's a misrepresentation of hunting. Like that's that's you taking the easy route and then trying to represent the hard route that I took or you took. You know, that's using the aspect of the trophy to signify something that that's false. And so that's that that concept is wrong. So what what do you do? Not let that person hanging on the wall or making put a plaque underneath, Like yeah, I mean you can't regulate it. There's no way put an ear tag in it. Yeah, but that's it. That's it. It's gonna have an ear tag around the head of But so I don't know how you would regulate that. And that's said. You know, we've got some we've got some clients that bring us down for a class or two a year, and they're high fenced, and it's oh, I think it's it's it's twenty five acres, it's mass, it's massive, and uh, you know they're usually on the last day, you know, we're all done, and like, hey, you want to go killog? And I'm like, I got my pants on, right, and so is that gonna be the title of your next book? I got my pants on, I got my paints on volume two. So and I've gone out there and I think I've sat four or five times, and I've never killed a pig. Um. They just gave me the slip. And they're always confounded by that. They're like, you're telling me you didn't see a pig. I'm like, I swear I did a pig. I saw I saw a horse with antlers. That's for sure the biggest deer I've ever seen in my life. Oh. And I've been like I founded turkeys on hive fence places where like a zebra scared away the bird was going. We hunted two years ago. We had in a place I had tigers and the eland in the front yard, tiger's courts in the cage eland not but I mean I was calling a burden looking up and there's like a tiger walking on the skyline. That's so strange. Only in Texas, Only in Texas. But yeah, I think that this culture is is. It's one. It's not indicative of the rest of the country. I mean, it's the culture down to heres Is. I would say unique. It's it's not strange, it's just unique. You know, both because of the way to land is treated, the privatization of all this land, this giant state private, and then the fact that there's a whole culture around putting fences up around that, what that means and why, Like you said, I'd be more interested in reading about what it does to the landscape, whether it improves by it surely doesn't improve the biodiversity of a place to fence it off, um and just putting a bunch of invasive species in there so just the off chance they don't get out is even more dangerous because they often do get out, you know. Hence you can drive an hour west of here and shoot an access to here in the Lanta River, a free ranging one. Speaking of if anybody out there listening to this, access to access, access access, please contact me I have a have a prejudice against those things. I can I can probably make that happen for good. Oh my gosh, we're getting ready to go three weeks. We're going to Lanai, Hawaii. Um I killed three of them things last year and I'm out of the meat or ready. UM one here in two in Hawaii last year's I'm I'm fully I'm one of the one team. Access. It is the fact that there's not a whole lot of just as somebody who doesn't own any land or doesn't have a lease around here, there's not a whole lot of positives for Texas and hunting. It's kind of just a non sequitor. But access to here, the fact that I can drive in Big Atlanta under shooting access here in an hour away from where we're sitting right now. It's one of the more fantastic developments ever. Yes, the history of eating meat and invasive and so you know, I have to weigh that against my the white tail, you know, which we need to definitely cold their population. But then you know, a couple of factors are gonna put access ahead of that. And then is that how good they are to eat and the fact that they're invasive and highly competitive with that same white tail. So at the end of the day, it's like, you know, we might have a conversation in five years, and at that point, I'm only going to be hunting access and hogs would be fine with that. That'd be a fantastic way to live. That would be if you're at home, you're like, honey, we got oh all, we got all. We got his acts as a hog. I'm sorry to my wife. She buys chicken here every now and then, and um, it frustrates me. And she's like, I just won't white meat. I can't eat red meat all the time. And so this year I've shot one turkey, but my goal is to shoot twelve. If I can get twelve, I gotta travel around to get that done, or beg borrow and steel to get twelve. But I feel like if I can kill twelve turkeys, then we've got to white meat for the year. That's what I I kind of figured, if one last, you know, if one turkey lasts a month, to breast two legs whatever legs and thives being more difficult, maybe less now that you gave me some tips. But that was my other goal was like, can I make lunch meat at a turkey breast freezing and make lunch of meat later. That would be and so bright it smoking easy. I done you. I do that with the honey glaze and just It's one of my favorite things in the world. But that is if you the other great thing about living in Texas. You can shoot four turkeys a year, and if you're if you don't like to eat white meat a lot, that would last year, six eight months if you do it right now. I'm gonna try to shoot two this weekend. Me too. I'll let you know how good. Yeah, I'm gonna shoot four. Come in, I'm shooting four. That's how I feel. And last year I did a lot of hunting with with a bow for turkeys because I was just really into archery. And I still end. But now and I won this mission to feed the family shotgun like a full on I'm not messing. I'm not trying to tickle him anymore. Like I don't need the handicap. I shoot him in seventy and a shotgun at twelve games. It just does everything for me. Have you never had any problems with that? Not the lethality with to seventy versus an arrow liket per second last turkey. I got with that to seven. I gotta set really good shot on it. I lost the zero meat on that day. Yes, yeah, no, that was That was one of the few times. And I love bow hunting and I do it almost exclusively, but I just I was like, what am I doing? I can use a shotgun. I really love to eat these things. Why be less effective? What am I doing? And that was last year round this time when I realized, Hey, I gotta go with the shotgun. I gotta go and the guy we're hunting with this weekend, um my buddy Brennan owns archery country here in town, and so I'm sorry, but I'm coming with a shotgun. Archery country or not, I'm gonna. I'm just gonna shoot every long beard I can get my hands on two years old, three years old. I don't really Oh that's that's the beauty of it. Like I can have that with turkeys. I don't know if I could give that to myself with elk anymore, just because I'm too far down the what's on top of its head game? But I could do with turkeys. Yeah, to see, they don't care like what's one less feather in the fan gonna bother me? Fried turkey? Oh boy, how do you fry in the turkey? I just cut this? This is ya so red neck, but I mean just cut it into strips and probably bryan it. Throw it in a little buttermilk for you know, a few hours, you know, maybe it's like twelve hours. Let it kind tender eyes a little bit and then just bread it, just butter milk. Fry it. Yeah, buttermugging hot sauce if you want, add a little more acid in there, um than just tradge and flour and uh deep fried now, I mean the pro tip would be deep fried and pure beef fat. And then you're really going to be happy about that, changing lives. We're gonna post this at lunchtime, post this right around eleven thirty, really get the viewers coming in. Yeah, well I appreciate it, man, absolute appreciate it. It's been really fun. If you haven't read, or if you don't own a field, you ought to own it. Um, it's fantastic and you wouldn't need another I don't even know. It's not a cookbook. What would you call it? Coffee table book? Coffee to Eat People, Meat Eaters Coffee table Book, because it really is that. I mean, there's it's not just recipes, it's not just butchering and butchering, it's it's every little piece of knowledge you want to have. Yeah, well, thank you. You know, I appreciate that. We can't wait filling to then if you're in Austin, come to die Dowey. Yeah. Yeah. Other than that, appreciate it, man, absolutely, thank you. And that's it episode number nine in the books. Thank you so much to Mr Jesse Griffiths for sitting down with me in Austin, Texas to talk about all the things that we covered. It really was a great conversation and I hopefully you'll be able to bookmark this one when you're hungry and you're looking for a good recipe or some good tips and tricks on how to cook your turkey breasts or turkey legs, or turkey thighs, or venison backstraps or venison ribs. Hopefully that is a great takeaway from this one, but also just how important it is to source your food, not on only your meat, but your vegetables and your eggs and anything you can either locally or from from local farmers or farming your damn self if you can. I think that's something I will strive to do, and I hope everybody that can does. As always, you can go to the Hunting Collective dot com to check out more from this interview and others. Last week we had Sam Sohold and we had Charles Post a couple of great conversations with great dudes, So hopefully you can check out episode number seven and eight respectively. But there's also Ryan Callahan, Steve Ronella, John Dudley, Shane Mahoney, Aubrey Marcus and more. Don't forget Remmy Warren, my boy. All that's there at the Hunting Collective dot com. It's all their own iTunes, it's all their own Stitcher. Will soon be at adding Google Play to the mix and even more to get your more avenues to listen to this thing. But that's it. That's all there is for this week, episode number nine. Next week will be in the double digits with episode number ten. Got a really good guests lined up for the next one, I believe, don't want to let it out of the backage just yet. And then a couple of other really good guests, um and the following week will be at the b h A Rendezvous in Boise, Idaho. I'll be hanging out there Thursday all day and part of the day Friday. I gotta bounce out early. Unfortunately, won't be able to hang a whole weekend, but I hope to see some of you there, and I'll be podcasting with some of the industry's best during those couple of days. So thanks for tuning in one more time. Hunting Collective dot com at Beni B three one on Instagram. Come check us out. Until next time, see you

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