0:01

Hey, what's up. This is the Meat Eater podcast

0:04

recording. You know, this is the first media podcast

0:07

we ever recorded not

0:09

on the road. We're in my

0:11

office. I'm on the road, that's

0:14

right. Yeah, this

0:17

is the first media podcast ever recorded

0:20

where where

0:23

I was not I

0:26

Steve Ronnella, was not on the road. I'm

0:29

joined here, as

0:31

is often the case by Janice Patellos,

0:33

who is on the road. We're in

0:35

the Pacific Northwest, Um,

0:39

overlooking the beautiful Lake Washington and

0:43

in a little office and

0:46

fixing it due somewhat of a special episode

0:48

of podcast here. Because there's this thing

0:50

that happens. We get, we get like like you

0:54

know, the media podcast, right. The name comes from

0:56

the fact, the

0:58

word media comes fact that that. Um,

1:02

there's a show. I do, a television show called

1:05

Meat Eater. Um, hopefully you've

1:07

seen it. If you haven't seen it, hopefully go check it out. But

1:09

but I'd like to think if I didn't do a television show called

1:12

Meter, I maybe still have a podcast by

1:14

the same title. So there's these these things that

1:16

exist. Um, you know, they

1:18

they they circle around each other

1:20

in some way. You know, I don't know why I'm

1:23

explaining that to you. But anyhow, I'm the

1:25

people watch this show, the show

1:28

called Meat Eater, which is arguably

1:30

um the

1:32

next to Apocalypse now, Godfather

1:35

One, Godfather too, and

1:38

Strange Brew um

1:41

perhaps the best thing to ever be filmed,

1:43

And people watch

1:46

this program and they

1:48

always right in with these like hunting

1:50

questions. And what

1:52

you notice over time is that people keep

1:54

like people ask the same questions. So something about

1:57

the show or something about the

1:59

subject of I think probably the latter,

2:01

Like something about the subject of hunting um

2:04

brings up these perpetual questions

2:07

that people always ask. And

2:09

a lot of times I have what's cool about

2:11

having the Honest here and the Honest as a producer on

2:14

the show but also a lifelong

2:16

hunter, former guide,

2:18

all kinds of stuff like that. A lot of times I

2:20

will defer some of these questions

2:23

to your Honest because they you

2:25

know, they he can speak

2:27

to them with some authority. So

2:30

for this episode, what I want to do is is, in

2:34

some way, it's like answering questions that come

2:36

in all time. But it's more than

2:38

just answering questions for some particular dude

2:40

out there. You know, It's not like, hey, Bob, here's

2:42

the answer to your arcane esoteric

2:44

question, because these are things that are just on

2:47

people's mind all the time when it comes

2:49

to particularly the big game hunting um

2:53

in order to give a little context, and we're just gonna, I'm just

2:55

gonna start rolling into these and then we're gonna do

2:58

a bunch of them as much as we can in

3:00

an hour. And so this is just like a like a

3:02

big game hunting discussion.

3:06

And one of the first questions and

3:08

we get all this time is like people

3:11

always right and asking what's

3:14

the best bang for your buck hunt? And it's usually

3:16

a dude who lives somewhere east

3:19

of the Mississippi River grows

3:22

up. You know, he's a hundred white tails off his life

3:24

on small game off his life. He's

3:26

been saving up. He doesn't have a lot of dough. He's

3:29

been saving up, and he wants to figure

3:31

out, like what is the big wild

3:33

West hunting trip he's gonna do.

3:36

What's he gonna hunt for? And

3:39

where is he gonna go? And this is his

3:41

big chance to you know, experience

3:43

the vast, beautiful vistas of the American

3:46

West. And

3:50

yeah, you can feel he's don't

3:52

even paying attention. He's working on a side

3:54

project on his computer, um,

3:57

which is the completion of Yeah,

4:01

yeah, I actually I want to throw it in real quick. The reason

4:03

you honest to tell us is in

4:06

my office right now, as

4:08

we just pulled a

4:10

five day Uh, I don't wanna

4:12

quite call a bender because there was besides

4:15

the bottle of beer here and there. You

4:17

know. It wasn't like the old stories, you know, Jack

4:19

Caraway getting all hopped up on pills

4:21

and you know, writing for days on a big

4:24

continuous piece of butcher's paper. But we

4:27

did just spend five days, you

4:30

know, fourteen fifteen hours a day,

4:33

um,

4:35

putting the finishing touches on volume two

4:38

of The Complete Guide to Hunting,

4:40

Butchering and Cooking Wild Game, which

4:43

will be released in

4:45

the fall of two

4:47

thousand fifteen. This coming fall

4:50

with spiegl and Growl, the division

4:52

of Random House and imprint with Random House

4:55

Beautiful Books. And we've been just busting

4:57

our asses on getting this thing done. That's why Yanni

4:59

is here. We finally turned it in last night. So

5:04

all that research and work it makes us

5:06

even better boned up. But we didn't quite finish it because

5:08

Yanni's messing around something over there.

5:10

But yeah, so this this question is this pre new question, like

5:12

if you're gonna go out, you're gonna go out west and do something

5:15

you want to go do a wild West hunt. What

5:17

are you gonna do? I'm

5:20

gonna take the I'm gonna give the long

5:24

d I'm gonna give it a long answer. We're

5:27

gonna give an answer for the long thinking,

5:29

detail oriented dude, and I'm gonna

5:31

give an answer for the impulsive

5:33

dude. The long

5:36

thinking, detail oriented dude will

5:40

think of a couple of species to interest

5:42

him, and I would suggest, if you

5:44

really don't have like a Western experience with like

5:46

good availability, a good chance for success

5:48

and action, um,

5:53

I would think about mule dering elk. Do you

5:55

disagree with that? You No, not at all. I

5:57

would think about mule deering elt. I

6:00

would think about the following states

6:04

from the south working north. I would

6:06

think about Arizona, New

6:09

Mexico, Nevada,

6:12

Utah, Colorado, Idaho,

6:16

Montana. It's good to mention that he's

6:18

asking about affordability as well

6:21

well. I would give him the long, detail oriented answer.

6:24

So let me let me go on a little bit. So so I'm

6:26

just named it the western states. Some states

6:28

that would rule out Like, if you're a dude from the Midwest,

6:31

you know, or the East or wherever, and you want to do a

6:33

Western hunt, this is gonna this,

6:35

this will this will piss some people off. But I wouldn't

6:38

spend a ton of time looking

6:40

at Washington, Oregon,

6:44

California. I just want to spend a bunch of time

6:46

on those states. It's long ways

6:48

to go. Yeah, add to the gas

6:50

bill big time. Yeah, it as to the gas build also,

6:52

It's just like, uh, I spent a lot

6:54

of time looking at those states for a bunch of reasons. But the long

6:57

detail oriented dude, I would pick, you're gonna

6:59

You're gonna pick couple of species, and I would

7:01

start doing some

7:03

research in

7:06

publications such as Eastman's

7:09

what's the Eastman's one called Eastman's

7:11

Hunting Yeah, and Bow Hunting Journal, Eastman's

7:15

Magazines, and Hunting Fool

7:18

Magazine, and start doing

7:21

some research on what are the premier

7:24

low pressure mule

7:27

deer and elk units in a handful of

7:29

states that seem attractive to you. Like, let's

7:31

say you decided I'm gonna do like you got your

7:33

heart set on the Northern Rockies, so you're gonna be like you're

7:35

thinking Idaho Montana.

7:39

Let's just say you love the looks Idaho Montana. Never

7:41

been out there, you want to go up there. Get

7:43

Eastman's and get hunting fool and

7:46

start reading through those publications and finding

7:48

low pressure draw units

7:50

in no states and then

7:52

start applying for those units. Because if

7:54

you know you want to go sometime in the next five

7:57

six years, start

7:59

applying for like the cream of the

8:01

crop top pick units. And these are not secrets,

8:04

you know, these are widely known things.

8:06

Basically, it's the things with the minimum

8:09

percent chance that you're gonna draw the

8:11

tag, and start applying for those tags

8:13

for five or six years, because you might

8:15

just get lucky and hit

8:18

some sweet unit, hit a

8:20

tag for a sweet unit, and when that happens,

8:22

you'll know now is my time to go, because I'm gonna

8:24

have a fantastic hunt. And it also narrows

8:27

down because any tag you draw like that asking me for

8:29

a very specific little chunker ground, and

8:31

you'll know to hammer down where you're gonna

8:33

go hunt. You can start starting maps and all

8:35

that. Now, if you're just a

8:37

guy who's like I'm going this year, man, I don't care.

8:41

I would think that the first thing you want to do is

8:44

pick your

8:47

species. And

8:49

again one quick interjection on that

8:51

note of those points and whatnot,

8:54

A lot of states, Um, it

8:57

doesn't really matter if you're actually already choosing

8:59

the particular unit. You

9:01

can just be collecting

9:04

points. And that's probably the most important important

9:06

thing that you need to be doing to be thinking about this

9:09

grand adventure in the future, is just collecting

9:11

some points. So when you do have your penny saved up, your

9:13

ready to roll, you've got these great options.

9:15

Yeah, I want to give a quick crash course on bonus

9:17

points in big game tag draws. It's a

9:20

really complicated subject. We have a ton of information

9:22

about it in the complete guide book that we're working

9:24

on. But the

9:26

way to work is, like you put let's say you want to put in

9:28

for a unit, like let's just pulling out of Like

9:31

the premier multary unit

9:33

in Montana is to seventy.

9:36

Okay, it's in the upper bid root. If you could have any

9:38

mule deer tag in Montana, you'd want unit to seventy.

9:41

Now, the odds of drawing

9:43

unit to seventy or single percentage points, okay,

9:46

especially for a non resident, you're just not gonna do it. Montana

9:48

has a bonus point system though, so every year that

9:50

you put in for a tag and

9:53

you don't draw, you

9:55

get a point added to your name,

9:59

and Montana squares.

10:02

Well, let me back a minute. You get a point added to your

10:05

name. That means the second year you put

10:07

in, your name goes into the hat two

10:09

times. But what Montana does now

10:11

is they square your bonus points.

10:13

So let's say you've applied two years

10:15

in a row unsuccessfully

10:17

for you to two seventy. The next

10:20

year you apply, you have two bonus points.

10:22

Your name will be going into the hat four

10:25

times for your bonus points in

10:27

a fifth time because you're filling

10:29

out a new application. So right

10:31

now, for instance, I'm sitting on you

10:34

know, I think twelve bonus

10:36

points for bighorn sheep in Montana,

10:38

I apply for the same unit every year six eight

10:41

for big horns. My name will be going into

10:44

the hat this year one forty

10:46

four times. I still

10:48

will not draw that tag. Mule,

10:51

deer and elk are different, though, because there's

10:53

a lot of opportunities. So the long thinking

10:56

guy, we'll start right

10:58

now this moment accumulating

11:02

bonus points in a handful of states. I

11:05

put in for every state, but

11:07

I am able, like I hunt a lot more for

11:09

variety of reasons. I hunt a lot more than most people. I

11:12

put in for like pretty much every Western state. But

11:14

for you, pick

11:17

a couple of states that you've always wanted to visit, or better

11:19

yet, where you have some family or friends or some

11:21

connection, some

11:24

connection to resources and logistical support,

11:27

and start putting in for tags

11:29

every year. There's no reason not to do

11:31

it. It costs a little bit of money,

11:34

but just do it now. Let's

11:36

say, but that's not the case, and you want to go this year or

11:40

as soon as possible. Pick

11:42

your species. I would suggest

11:45

elker mule here, and

11:48

then narrow down into what state

11:50

you want to hunt. That's

11:52

the first thing I would do. And I

11:54

would think, like for affordable states

11:56

and availability of tags,

11:59

and you want to go for mule deer, elk.

12:04

I'm gonna try to narrow it down a little bit and say that

12:06

in Johanna's correct me on this, I

12:09

would say Montana,

12:11

Idaho, Colorado,

12:14

Wyoming, mule

12:16

deer, elk, availability

12:18

of tags, good hunting

12:20

potential. Yeah.

12:23

The only problem with Montana is they

12:25

have increased their prices

12:28

a big time for the nonresident hunter. I

12:30

want to say that your upwards

12:32

of eight hundred dollars, even

12:35

maybe being close to nine hundred. If you want to

12:37

do the combo tag, you're

12:39

gonna wind up being shocked at what tags

12:42

are gonna cost. Another states like Colorado is a cheaper

12:44

state to hunt. Yeah, right now, I think you can hunt a boil

12:46

in Colorado is a nonresident for about

12:49

five and that's

12:51

definitely one of the cheaper states. Idaho might

12:53

be a little bit less. They might be in the four's. Um.

12:57

Yeah, Montana, you're up there eight somewhere.

13:00

It's a lot of money. And what you gotta look

13:02

at is you gotta look at how you're gonna you know, this

13:04

gets into the whole their subject is when you go do this, how

13:06

you're gonna save money, Like you're gonna

13:08

drive camp out of your truck, public

13:11

land, all that kind of stuff. But the tag,

13:14

it's gonna be expensive. And there are a thing that guys run

13:16

into on a promise. This is like

13:18

Colorado has some over the counter

13:21

ELK opportunities, right, Idaho,

13:23

Montana has some over technically

13:26

like they basically have some over the counter

13:28

opportunities because

13:30

of something I'll explain where you're you're supposed

13:32

to put in for a draw every year, like you

13:34

have to apply around June one or

13:36

late March, and in around June one you

13:39

apply for a tag for the following

13:41

fall. Oftentimes there's not enough

13:43

applicants to fill. You have a lot of quantity

13:46

of tags, so the leftover tags

13:48

are sold basically in the over the counter

13:50

way until the until the quota

13:53

runs out, until the number of tags for

13:55

sailors sold, and it usually happens sometimes

13:57

in the late summer. Sometimes it doesn't even happen until season

13:59

starts. So when I say over to counter,

14:02

it's not technically over to counter, but it's basically

14:04

over the counter availability. Um.

14:07

It takes a little bit of research. You can get to find

14:10

yourself with some great tags. If you do

14:12

that, you find those undersubscribe units

14:15

um, and they should be that you can't buy

14:17

them over the counter. So the guy that's not doing any research

14:20

is not finding that tag, not getting into that

14:22

unit. So with a little bit of research, you can really get

14:24

yourself into some good stuff. Yeah. So, um,

14:27

I'm gonna try to get even more detailed. Mule

14:32

deer, I would say,

14:36

uh, Idaho not but

14:39

not the Panhandle for

14:41

availability, inexpensive

14:44

all that kind of stuff, mule, deer and idahole.

14:46

Not the Panhandle. Um

14:48

Colorado you gotta put in for mule your tags

14:51

and some of the better units take a couple of years to

14:54

draw. But Idaho you're just gonna get the tag. Montana

14:57

a more expensive tag. I

14:59

think about the eastern half of the state for

15:03

elk um

15:07

Idaho in Colorado,

15:12

yeah, if you're not playing the long game, Colorado

15:15

is hard to be for the uh, the

15:17

short game guy, because there

15:19

are lots of elk there. It's something

15:22

like two and fifty elk in that state.

15:24

There's two seasons that are wide

15:27

open over the counter. You just show up and

15:29

buy attack so you can decide the week before that

15:31

you know you want to go elk hunt. There's a

15:33

lot of opportunity there. Randy Newburg

15:35

wrote a great article I think it appeared in

15:37

Bugle magazine where he

15:40

lined out how to basically go on this

15:42

affordable western elk hunt in Colorado

15:44

for a thousand dollars. And I think he did

15:46

it leaving Wisconsin

15:49

or Indiana one of those Midwestern

15:51

states. Um driving out, you

15:54

know, car camping. Uh,

15:56

obviously you only drink water and you eat

15:58

Ramen noodles. But even with

16:00

a six dollar elk tag for a thousand

16:02

dollars, you want elk hunting for a week. I

16:05

used to do stuff. I've lost touch of

16:07

it now, and sometimes I feel like I need a reality

16:09

check, you know, because the

16:12

way, like, you know, just the way I'm able to

16:14

hunt, like doing a show and stuff. You know, you just

16:16

you stop thinking about money in quite the same way.

16:19

But to give you a sense, I mean the kind

16:21

of hunts we used to do. I want time. Took

16:24

a greyhound

16:26

bus from Montana

16:28

to Alabama to hunt ducks, and I broke

16:31

down a shotgun and put it in a duffel bag and hit

16:33

it in the duffel bag. Drove a two

16:36

and a half days on a greyhound bus

16:38

because I couldn't afford a plane ticket to Alabama

16:41

to hunt ducks on public land, and

16:45

it took me two days to

16:48

get back home on the bus.

16:50

So you know, I've

16:54

done cheap hunts. And it's like the

16:56

way to cut down your costs is is just like

16:59

self denied, you know, privation.

17:02

I think there's some expenses you're

17:04

not gonna get around. You're not gonna go hunt without the tag,

17:06

right, you gotta have the tag. That's

17:09

gonna cost money. What is the negotiable

17:11

stuff and the thing? And I also mentioned that I

17:13

got a guy book on the head. I think I also mentioned

17:15

my guy book. Is you gotta look

17:17

at I'm getting into some life stuff here. You

17:19

gotta look at like where where where are you

17:21

spending your money in your life? I remember

17:24

one time watching the guy pull up and to pull

17:26

up to a trailhead in Montana

17:30

and he pulls up, you know, brand

17:32

spanking new pickup truck, and

17:34

he pulls out a twenty dollar pair of binoculars

17:37

and starts glass and for ail k out of his truck window.

17:39

I remember thinking that, dude, is guy. His priorities

17:42

all wrong, you

17:45

know, all wrong. He

17:48

might have bought that big hunting truck, but then

17:50

he burned up all his money

17:53

on something that was like a large measure

17:55

of vanity project. So I think that

17:57

it's like, I don't mean, you know, in

18:00

aid privacy here, but I think, like, so

18:02

often where's

18:04

your money going? Like are you like what are you spending

18:06

your money on? I understand

18:08

the tags are expensive, but there's not a guy I know

18:11

that I couldn't go into his personal financing

18:14

and find the money necessary to buy a big

18:16

game tag if he really cares about that. All

18:18

Right, we're gonna take a quick break. We'll be right back to

18:20

talking about big game tags in a minute. Yeah,

18:25

I just reread the question, you know the

18:27

guys. Yeah, but I'm not trying to I'm not trying to pick

18:30

that dude out, No,

18:32

I know, I just just want I just want to specifically

18:34

answer his question, you know, before we get away

18:37

from it. Oh. Um, but I

18:39

agree with everything you're saying there, But

18:41

he's con prohibitive for a guy with a young fa Yeah,

18:43

he's got he's got a young family. And just what

18:46

came to mind, because I know a lot of guys actually

18:48

go hunting with young families on this particularly

18:51

big game hunt is a Wyoming

18:53

antelope hunt. It's a nonresident

18:55

you can get

18:59

and then your family. Yeah, you can't

19:01

probably your family in the late summer, right analopns.

19:04

You do not have to get up early in the morning. You

19:06

can get up, get the family going, roll out

19:08

there at ten o'clock, go hunting,

19:10

leave the kids at the truck for a little bit. Whatever

19:13

has to happen. Um

19:16

but uh and for antelope does

19:18

or even a bucking wyoming, you can probably get

19:20

it done in two days, two days of hunting, and

19:22

the tags are cheap. Right antalope

19:24

tags in Montana, I wasn't even thinking about.

19:26

But you know, I want to move back and we can't spend all our time. Now

19:29

here's the second mold. Like this is one of the second most

19:31

common questions that ever come in, is like, what's

19:34

a good all purpose rifle, both

19:37

in terms of caliber and everything else? Reasonable

19:40

price, reasonable price?

19:43

You know this question comes in.

19:46

I swear every day and in a couple and every day

19:48

a couple of times in some different way. Let's

19:51

start with the caliber part, like what's a great all purpose

19:53

caliber. There's a movement

19:55

right now in shooting,

19:58

in hunting to go with

20:01

lighter calibers. This has

20:04

to do with recent they're

20:09

sort of ongoing technical

20:12

improvements to ammunition. Ammunition

20:15

is becoming more reliable, the

20:18

materials work better, they're bonded in better

20:20

ways. The bullets themselves. Yeah

20:23

yeah, but bull yeah, I mean bullets

20:27

are getting well, they're getting pushed faster, and

20:31

they're performing better. They're

20:33

able to withstand you know, very

20:35

high flight

20:37

speeds or you know feet per second,

20:41

high musclevelosities. They

20:44

hold together better, and

20:46

this is leading to like greater

20:48

efficacy on part of the bullets. So people are

20:50

realizing they can get away from some of the high

20:53

recoil shoulder

20:55

busters and shoot these faster, flatter

20:57

shooting, smaller caliber

21:00

rifles with high quality bullets in them.

21:02

I don't really want to get into

21:04

that, but like right now, sort of the hot

21:07

new caliber

21:10

among long distance shooters and stuff is everybody's

21:13

you know, talking about how great six point five

21:15

millimeter rounds are. Right,

21:18

everybody used to shoot, you

21:20

know, point to eight for like seven millimeter

21:22

stuff, and thirty caliber stuff was sort of always

21:24

like the go to calibers

21:27

for all purpose, you know, general

21:29

purpose, big game rifles. People

21:32

are getting away with that in some way. I'm

21:34

sort of a throwback or

21:37

traditionalist or something,

21:40

or just a guy who likes to stick with things and I'm familiar

21:43

with. But when I'm thinking

21:45

about and it's

21:47

like, I hate, I almost hate this conversation

21:49

because it's so dependent on your your personal

21:52

experiences. I

21:55

often tell people if I had to

21:57

have one gun, that

22:01

I could for the rest of my life, and I had to pick it right

22:03

now, Like what's your caliber for the rest of your life? And

22:06

you hunt all your interests in all

22:08

forms of big game in North America, I

22:12

would pick I had to pick one

22:14

rifle, I think that I

22:16

would pick a

22:19

seven millimeter m mag if

22:22

I was ruling out. Um,

22:26

if someone came down and said you can't have that

22:29

one, then

22:32

I would start wondering, do I want a

22:36

wind mag or just a two seventy

22:41

And I would start vascillating between those

22:43

two. Now, there's a lot of like there's a lot

22:45

of ways to achieve the same thing. Like when you say, like

22:47

you know three mag, there's three

22:50

Wind mag or three Chester short magnim.

22:52

You can get those same muzzlevelocities

22:54

and trajectories and bullet weights with other

22:57

guns. But those are just ones

22:59

that come to my mind. That's what you'll find

23:01

a lot of in my gun

23:03

cabinet is that kind of stuff.

23:06

And I'm like an old timey Elmer

23:08

fuddy kind of guy for thinking that way, But

23:10

that's what I like. I tend to also like a

23:12

rifle. UM,

23:14

My goal isn't to try to

23:16

get away with as much as I can get away

23:18

with. Like I'm not the kind of guy who's gonna

23:21

go out and hunt mule deer with

23:23

a two forty three. It can be done.

23:26

People do it. I remember meeting the kid. He's like, this guy,

23:28

tell me, oh, yeah, my kid just killed elk with

23:30

the two forty three. Later I was talking to the kid.

23:32

He's like, yeah, I shot at nine times. I'm

23:35

not saying he couldn't have done it cleaner, but I'm just but

23:38

I like to have. I like to,

23:41

you know, have plenty of gun,

23:44

plenty of bullet, plenty of

23:46

speed, and plenty of weight. And

23:51

you know, that seems to be a

23:53

fading perspective. It seems to be now this competition

23:56

to like get away with as much as

23:58

you can get away with, like shrink it down as watches

24:00

you can shrink it down. And

24:02

also, at the same time, I think you're gonna shoot things

24:05

from farther and farther away. So I'm gonna

24:07

use a really teeny bullet this

24:09

borderline already, and I'm gonna toy

24:11

around this idea that I'm gonna be shooting stuff at seven

24:14

yards with it. I'm

24:17

not that crazy about it. I'm

24:19

done talking about him. I'm gonna be honest talking about it now.

24:23

It's a very very in depth subject,

24:25

that's for sure, and we certainly don't have enough

24:28

time or I don't have the experience

24:30

and knowledge to really really uh speak

24:33

to it too. But just speak in your own

24:36

Like I said, it is a personal thing. You've

24:40

been in. You've watched a hundred elk in

24:43

your career, right

24:46

right, and in our camp. You know it's gonna

24:48

toy contradict what you just said. But in our camp,

24:51

yes, you pellet rifles. No, the

24:53

one rifle every guy in our camp

24:55

used to always like drop

24:58

his shoulders, drop his head when it walked the

25:00

camp when it was time to go l Connie with a new group

25:02

of clients was a seven millimeter Remington magnets.

25:06

Personal experience like not big

25:09

enough. Uh yeah, you

25:12

know, too fast, too small, and yeah it

25:14

just didn't whatever. We just had bad experiences

25:16

with that caliber and whatever.

25:19

You know, that's just how it went. It just happened to be that

25:21

way. You know, it could be a total how does your

25:23

brother saying like we're just getting fulled fooled by randomness,

25:25

Brothers, My brother is a cologist,

25:28

but he's a statistician. Um.

25:32

Even more technically, he like he's does

25:34

a type of work or a discipline or something called

25:36

basie and analysis. I could be screwing.

25:38

I hope he's not listening to this, but he's a statistician.

25:41

He's really big into the

25:44

science of science, or he's big into, you know,

25:47

how scientists approach things, how scientists

25:49

think, how their influenced, what they're biases

25:51

are. And one of the things that

25:54

he's interested in, too, is his idea of being fooled

25:56

by randomness. Like you're out fishing

25:59

and you got are all fishing a pumpkin

26:01

colored grub for small mouth, and someone

26:04

puts a black grub on and hooks

26:06

a fish that he's like, oh,

26:08

they're hitting black, and everyone switches to black.

26:11

He thinks that those situations are ripe

26:13

for being fooled by randomness. Um.

26:17

But anyhow, so yeah, back

26:20

very quickly to calibers without

26:22

going into the rifles themselves. Um,

26:25

I'm I'm even older, more

26:28

fundier traditionalist guy

26:30

than you. So I'm gonna go with to seventy

26:32

and the thirty six multiple

26:35

reasons, but always find ammo for it.

26:37

And uh, those calibers have been killing stuff

26:39

for many, many, many years. Um.

26:43

But my takeaway, or

26:45

what I'd like the listener to takeaway would be,

26:47

is to pick the caliber, use

26:49

a premium bullet, whatever caliber you choose,

26:52

use the best bullet you can afford, and

26:54

shoot the caliber that you can shoot comfortably

26:57

and confidently until sick of these

26:59

guys to make their whole decision based on recoil.

27:03

Well, it's a big deal. So if if you listen,

27:05

if he has to funk up, it's such a

27:08

it's such bullshit because guys

27:10

say that, oh yeah, man, I can handle that going.

27:12

I'm bucking up. And you watch him shoot, and the guy

27:14

pulls his head of foot away from the sculpt before

27:16

he pulls the trigger because he's got the flinch him so bad.

27:19

So you can't say that he's he's

27:21

got I don't mean buck up physically, I mean buck up psychologically.

27:25

Okay, Well that you know that takes time

27:27

and practice. But what I'm saying, whatever it is,

27:29

if you some guys, maybe just or or

27:31

any person. We shouldn't say, guys, some

27:33

person might never ever be able to shoot

27:36

a thirty caliber um,

27:38

you know, magnum rifle. It just might

27:40

not be in their things, small framed, just

27:43

they don't have the you know, my kids starts hunting,

27:46

I'm gonna, yeah, I'm gonna have him

27:48

home with the seven mm a weight I think recoil

27:52

issue. Yeah, So I'm not saying, but

27:54

listen to seven M I was talking about the seven millimeter

27:56

remake, and again it's like there's so much personal

27:59

bias. Right, I just

28:01

happened to own very

28:04

nice shooting seven

28:07

millimeter round mag shooting

28:09

like one sixty grain bullet

28:11

at about three thousand

28:14

ft per second mulciplocity,

28:17

and it just shoots good for me,

28:19

right, and I've had some good

28:21

hunting experiences with it. So therefore

28:24

I'm extolling this caliber based

28:27

on just a very small thing.

28:29

I happen to own one that I've had good experiences

28:32

with and that I like, could I have had

28:34

that same rifle chambered in a different

28:37

round and taking it on those

28:39

hunts and had those experiences. Absolutely,

28:41

And if that was the case, I'd be talking up that one.

28:45

So Janice is right there. If kicks,

28:49

like there's kick, I

28:51

have a three that

28:53

kicks like a very slow kick.

28:57

A seven milliment around meg kicks you like

29:01

like getting kicked in the face

29:03

by Joe Rogan because we're just watching

29:05

him kick a kicking bag the other day. It's like, that's

29:08

a seven millimeter ram meg and it's

29:10

so abrupt and fast that it gives

29:12

you a headache. And all

29:14

those things can be managed a little bit. You know. There's also

29:16

a big fat of very lightweight what they

29:18

call mountain rifles. If you're packing on

29:20

a rifle the only weighs seven pounds, all loaded

29:23

up with the scope on everything, it's gonna

29:25

kick and bark and want to jump that

29:27

same rifle. You know. The heavier

29:29

stock or heavier this that that comes

29:31

in at ten pounds is gonna recoil a lot

29:34

less. And my my seven

29:36

mm m bag with a scope on it is

29:38

twelve pounds nine ounces, right

29:42

heavy. But you like my brother Danny

29:44

said, he's got an old Ruger Ruger

29:47

Model seventy seven. It's

29:48

a thing weighs

29:51

a ton um.

29:54

But he said, man, you as you lay that thing over your backpack

29:56

and you know something's gonna die. It's just like

29:59

right, a heavy right folds just

30:01

settles in. Yeah, you're like he

30:03

was just talking about that, you know, just like you lay that thing up

30:05

in your pack and you get nestled in there and it's just like

30:07

that thing is just there's no doubt

30:10

where that bullets going. And those light

30:12

rifles. I had a rifle.

30:14

It was too light. I couldn't

30:16

shoot it. I never felt good mhm

30:20

in a real world hunting scenario. That's

30:22

a big thing. Not a lot of people talk about there's this big push

30:24

for light rifles. Is it's like it seems like

30:26

a recoil thing to me, this big push for light rifles.

30:29

People are talking about carrying them around. But the reason I'm

30:31

carrying mine around is I'm hoping to shoot

30:33

it at some point and if

30:35

I need a couple more pounds to make that thing

30:37

feel good when I go to shoot it. And the

30:40

vast the bulk of the shooting I do,

30:44

and I hunt, you know, Western hunts

30:46

a lot, the bulk of the shooting I do

30:48

is prone. With my pack.

30:51

What was the word you use the your day for certain kind of rests

30:53

improvised? Is shooting

30:57

prone with an improvised rest backpack?

31:01

Why to jackets your buddy's

31:03

shoulder or whatever? And doing that,

31:07

I find the little bit of weight on

31:09

that rifle makes a huge

31:12

difference Okay, we gotta take

31:14

a quick break. We'll be right back after this message.

31:18

I don't mind toting around some extra pounds.

31:21

My twelve pound nine ounce rifle was ridiculous,

31:24

too heavy, too

31:26

heavy. These six

31:28

seven pound rifles, I don't know, they're

31:32

light. Yeah, I think that eight

31:34

to nine is really optimal,

31:36

you know, I mean everybody, And look a lot a lot of

31:38

people that are packing around six pound

31:41

rifles. They could shoot better

31:43

with a seven or eight pound rifle, and

31:45

they could just shave those two pounds off their gut

31:47

and be all the same going up the hill. That's

31:49

a good point, man. I had a rifle that not

31:52

long ago I sent to a gunsmith to put a

31:54

heavier barrel on it. Not because I want, not for anything

31:56

to do with like the barrel, overheating

31:58

or anything. I just wanted more white. The

32:01

rifle never felt good to me shooting

32:03

it. Loved carrying it, you know, It's like carrying

32:05

around a chopstick. Yeah. Lastly, for

32:08

me, on caliber, I feel like you

32:10

need to be able to put that bullet confidently

32:14

in the spot. So again, shoot what you're

32:16

comfortable and confident with, and I would

32:19

rather you put it in the spot that you

32:21

know, I tell you to put it as opposed to

32:23

flinch thems and you know who

32:26

knows where the bullet goes. And then we're just

32:28

hoping that big overrides.

32:30

Uh. You know, bad shot placement. That's the point

32:33

that's brought up so much. Man, I mean, you kill elk with a pen

32:35

knife, You've put in the right place. That's right. Uh,

32:39

let's move on to your best, reasonably

32:42

priced, affordable good rifle.

32:44

No, I want to I want to change. Let's get to that, but I want to change.

32:46

I want to interlude with one that comes up all the time.

32:50

Can you dry age venison and elk and

32:52

stuff? Okay, yeah,

32:56

there's a companies. You don't want to age at all. Don't age

32:58

bears and don't age pigs because the fat isn't

33:00

tolerant. The fat

33:02

sour is bad. And

33:05

not only that, but the fat on wild

33:07

pigs and the fat on bears, well, fat on everything

33:11

sours in your freezer taste a lot

33:14

longer, but it will happen. You

33:16

can put a fatio chunk of bear meat in your

33:18

freezer and pull it out eight

33:20

months later, and that stuff will have turned

33:23

a bluish green color. I'm not joking.

33:25

If you're trim the fat away

33:29

right away, kill a bear, skin

33:31

it, trim the fat away, get

33:34

the thing into your freezer. Kill a bear or kill

33:36

a wild pig, skin it, get

33:38

the fat off. There's a lot of uses for the fat.

33:41

You can render it out and do great stuff

33:44

with it. Because when it's rendered, it's has a great shelf

33:46

life. It doesn't

33:48

on the animal other than that on hoof

33:50

dance. So birds, well,

33:52

we're not gonna talk about births. That's the whole other thing. On

33:56

hooved animals. You can definitely

33:58

age them, the all kinds of thinking

34:00

about how you age them, hide on, hide off.

34:05

Do you recommend it? Yeah,

34:07

if you have the facility for it. Because

34:10

what I was gonna point out, in so much of my life, I'm

34:12

always like thinking of this situation where

34:14

I'm gonna, you know,

34:17

have like a walk in cooler. It

34:19

just never all standless steel

34:22

meat hooks on rollers. It never

34:24

happens. What does happen is you're

34:26

in some hotel room

34:29

in Phoenix, Arizona, trying

34:32

to butcher a deer in a bathtub because

34:34

you're flying out the next morning. Or

34:36

you and your buddy go up and you gotta come

34:38

back home, and you know that at home it's seventy

34:41

degrees out. You gotta work the next

34:43

morning. You got too dead deer.

34:47

You know, it's just not like

34:49

it. Just those those are games. Let's

34:51

talk about. Let's just say you are living in

34:54

um you know a little bit of a northern

34:56

latitude, and you do have a garage

34:59

with a concrete flu or that does stay cool.

35:02

What can we do that? I tell you an anecdote my

35:04

old roommate when I was in h school,

35:07

my roommate killed a calf elk in

35:10

the in the late season hunt. It was a January

35:12

hunt. He killed a calf elk. We

35:14

hung that calf elk in my garage, skin

35:18

off, and never froze

35:22

any of that elk, and ate

35:24

the entire thing with

35:26

it hanging in that garage with the temperature

35:29

hovering a tad below

35:31

a tad above freezing in the

35:33

wintertime it hung in there. It must

35:35

have been an are It must have taken us probably about seven weeks

35:37

to eat that thing. We

35:40

just will. Sometimes you go out there and did field kind of

35:42

frozeny sometimes

35:44

to be fine, and we just ate it. My old

35:46

man talks about my

35:49

dad was born. He hadn't use fifties

35:51

dead now, but he's got some

35:53

old timey experiences. He was talking

35:55

about hanging deer skin

35:58

off until there

36:00

was a quarter inch of mold covering

36:03

the deer, at which point

36:07

they would butcher the deer.

36:10

This calf elk I'm talking about that we had hanging

36:12

there. You could, I'm not joking you.

36:16

You could stick your thumb through

36:18

that meat. It

36:20

was so beautifully like dry aged

36:25

by the end of it. But it was perfect

36:27

conditions. This is in Montana, dry

36:31

cold, sheltered area. It's

36:34

good what I do now, and I want to talk about real

36:36

world stuff. The only

36:38

talk about my my brother Danny's experience. What

36:40

a strategy my brother Danny's. Oh,

36:43

I also wanna say. We had that elkin Kentucky

36:46

and a guy in that case we we're going somewhere

36:49

else couldn't bring the elk comb And that was like one of the only

36:51

times in recent memory I've ever had something butchered

36:53

by a butcher. He hung that thing ten

36:56

days and dude,

37:00

I couldn't tell. It

37:02

wasn't like it was like tender regular

37:05

old doubt right old out. My

37:07

brother Danny, uh

37:10

kills the moose every year. It's kind of like his main thing

37:12

as his main parties. He kills a moose and that's what

37:14

his family eats. Everything else is just extra.

37:19

He don't think about having his freezer

37:21

like I often think, like, okay, falls coming, October

37:23

is coming. I want to have my freezer emptied out all

37:27

of last year's game eating up because

37:29

I'm gonna be filling it with new

37:31

game this year. Um.

37:35

He thinks about it the other way around. He doesn't

37:37

want his freezer to be empty around September,

37:39

which is his main hunting time. He doesn't want his freezer

37:42

to be empty in September. He

37:44

wants to have like if he's

37:46

in't going into a new year. So let's say

37:48

he's fall of this, he's

37:51

following two thousand fifteen. He

37:54

wants two thousand fourteen is game to

37:56

be Peter and Out midwinner because

38:00

that allows the animals this he's

38:02

killed in the fall to

38:04

age in his freezer. This

38:07

is something people don't talk about. They should talk

38:09

about it more. HOOFD game

38:13

ages intend arizes in

38:15

your freezer the same way if you leave something in your

38:17

freezer too long, it can go south

38:20

on you can go bad. Some

38:23

of that decay is good, and some of that decay is

38:25

called aging, like aging is just breaking down.

38:28

He kills the moose in September. He don't want

38:30

to even look at that thing for

38:34

a few months. He

38:37

forgets about it. Butcher's

38:39

it right away. He's

38:41

got that time of year. You got blowflies everywhere.

38:44

It's just like, you know, it's wet, rainy.

38:49

The thing is already coming back a mess. You know. He hunts

38:51

out of canoes and stuff. They come back. They got a moose

38:53

all chopped up in game bags. You

38:55

get home, there's you

38:57

know, meat bees, blowfly.

39:00

Lord knows what it gets

39:02

in the freezer, forgets about it because

39:04

it ages. Then what

39:08

you do, and this is what I do all the time. If

39:11

I'm home for a week and I know, okay, i'm home,

39:13

I'm working from home, I'm gonna be

39:15

cooking every night. I

39:17

don't just do all my thawing the

39:20

morning. I'm gonna cook something. If

39:22

I know on Friday, I'm like Friday, I'm gonna

39:24

make a big elk crost. I

39:27

will thaw that thing out maybe

39:31

on Saturday. I don't know if I'm saying all kinds

39:33

of stuff that violates the U. S d A protocol.

39:35

I guess I don't really care. I'll

39:37

pull that thing out on Saturday and

39:42

and I don't even know this is the right word. Basically,

39:45

I dry age that thing for

39:48

five six days in my fridge.

39:52

I don't care. Like I it

39:55

makes it more tender, and

39:57

it makes the texture nicer to

39:59

dry ryot because you know, it's wild game more

40:01

than like when when you thought a wild game out. You

40:03

know, it's like when you freeze it fresh and

40:05

stuff, you notice that it bleeds a lot. You

40:09

know. I've also heard it

40:11

that's a big part of off flavors.

40:13

And that's why you should do what you're talking about,

40:15

is because when you're letting it sit like that, you'll see

40:17

that it does release some more of that blood.

40:20

You get rid of that blood. Sometimes that blood can

40:23

is where that the texture gets. I'll

40:25

let it sit, I like, ideally, I

40:28

like to let it sit until a

40:30

little rind forms on the

40:32

outside of that block of meat, and

40:35

then I trim that rind

40:37

off and that stuff. Sometimes it looks so beautiful

40:39

under there. But

40:43

yeah, let's say I just live and I and I

40:45

have this. I have this just

40:47

to answer the question, I live in

40:50

some place. I hunt near there. I

40:52

got a boatload of money. I go

40:54

out and build myself uh

40:58

factory spec meat

41:00

aging walk

41:03

in cooler. Yeah,

41:06

there's not a thing that I kill outside of wild

41:08

pigs and bears that I wouldn't go hanging

41:10

there for a couple of weeks.

41:12

For as long as I could. I'd monitor it closely,

41:15

but absolutely unhang everything. Just to answer the question,

41:17

yeah, my quick answer is at

41:20

least to twenty four hours because

41:22

and again I'm no expert on this, because but

41:25

from what I've read, that's how long it takes

41:27

forga mortis to set

41:29

and then leave those

41:31

muscles and so um.

41:33

And I've had that. I've eaten meat that was, you

41:36

know, too fresh. We talked about that a lot on the

41:38

show, because we're eating meat right there in the field and sometimes

41:40

that too fresh meat needs to be pounded with

41:42

a rock to make it tender. And so I

41:45

give it. I try to give it at least twenty four hours from

41:47

when it hit the dirt, which isn't too hard. Usually

41:49

by the time you get home it's been that long. I want

41:51

to hit U super quickly. They're gonna go back up to the money wanted

41:53

to get. What's your opinion on hunting wolves. I

41:57

think wolve should be managed like big game, managed

41:59

like all big game. UM,

42:03

don't push them to the point where

42:05

their viability is threatened. Same way I wouldn't

42:07

want to hunt elk until their viability is threatened. It's

42:10

a renewable resource. There's

42:13

hunter interest in it. If you

42:15

can allow some extraction of the renewable

42:17

resource without damaging the viability of

42:19

the resource, I think you should do it. Yahny,

42:24

Well, now, don't you want to talk about wolves? Boys? You were

42:26

you were hot from one of these questions. Oh,

42:29

we just we're gonna finish up on the caliber

42:31

rifles thing. If you want to talk about like a model, you

42:33

know, a maker and a model of

42:35

a good affordable rifle, that's pretty

42:38

should be able to answer that in a couple of sentences.

42:40

But what is affordable less

42:42

than a thousand bucks? Um,

42:48

I guess there's a couple of tiers. Let's let's let's do one

42:51

less and one under a thousand. About

42:53

that, I don't

42:56

know. I mean, I just buy so few

42:58

like I just don't buy rifles. I

43:00

have rifles that I've always had. I have

43:02

rifles that I've gotten from friends, and I've had rifles

43:05

that I've gotten through work, So I can't.

43:07

I don't really know, like I would be a really I would

43:09

be really bad hunting equipment prices

43:11

right because the peculiarity

43:13

of my occupation

43:16

in in life. You know, I

43:18

don't know what stuff costs. It's embarrassing.

43:20

I mean I know what stuff costs, I don't know what that kind of stuff

43:23

costs that much. What you tell me, what's the good five rifle?

43:25

Is there a rifle? Yeah? I believe that

43:28

it's I think you can get a Remington's seven hundred

43:30

in like the bottom tier

43:33

that's right at that price mark.

43:36

I want to tell a red Aster. There's also a Ruger American,

43:38

which I think comes in right at that price mark. And then

43:41

when just a model seventy, they probably have

43:43

one as a more of a

43:46

plastic e composite stock on it. It's seven

43:48

nice synthetic or a nice wood stock um,

43:52

but all three of those makers

43:54

too. You can get into that seven ellar

43:56

range and get yourself a really nice rifle that

43:58

will last many, many years, probably

44:00

many generations, as long as you take care of it. I want

44:03

to tell Remington Model seven story. My

44:06

old man. He died in December two

44:08

thousand two. In

44:10

two thousand he

44:13

bought a brand spiggotty spangety

44:16

new Remington Model

44:18

seven Hunter. I remember at the time, I remember,

44:21

I feel like it cost him, you know,

44:23

four or five bucks at the time he

44:27

dies, I don't even if you ever shot anything with this thing. He

44:30

dies, and we have this little drawing where we put

44:33

uh me and all my sip, my

44:35

brothers, and all my half siblings and stuff.

44:37

We wrote down

44:39

the name of all his guns. Like he got

44:41

a little pieces of paper. On each of the piece of paper. He wrote

44:43

down the name of one of our old man's guns

44:46

and put him in a hat and started drawn the

44:49

pieces of paper out of a hat to see who got what. He

44:51

didn't specify any of this in his will, you know. So

44:55

I drew this new Reming

44:57

to Model seven, left

45:01

in my minds for years. At some point I

45:03

got it and brought up to my cabin in Alaska, and

45:07

never really shot it carefully. I mean, we sighted

45:09

it in by by shooting it at old oil drum,

45:12

just to make sure it was kind of right on. I

45:14

took it up a mountain shot a blacktail

45:16

deer. Uh took

45:19

it out in the boat on salt water. My

45:22

brothers shot at blacktail deer with it. This is a thirty

45:25

OT six model.

45:29

Then I hung it on the wall in my cabin,

45:31

which is the wettest, rustiest, nastiest

45:33

place on the planet, and I just sprayed

45:36

it down with w D forty, but didn't

45:38

do anything to the boar, you

45:40

know, the inside of the barrel. And UH

45:44

left it up there for a decade,

45:46

for almost a decade, to the point where

45:48

you look down this barrel and you

45:50

could barely see down it the boar.

45:53

So rusty took

45:55

that thing home, cleaned it up, and for the first time in my

45:57

life, probably the first time in the gun's life, took it down

45:59

to a rifle range to shoot

46:01

box ammo, to

46:05

actually, like on a bench, shoot this rifle.

46:08

Oh, this is the one that I cleaned out. Dude, Oh,

46:10

Johanna's cleaned it out right. Let

46:12

me tell you. I'm telling you the

46:14

first twenty patches that came out

46:16

of the bore. I

46:19

don't know if I can say it, but it mean it looked

46:22

like diarrhea. I mean, it was

46:24

just brown, goopy

46:26

soupy, and I was almost

46:28

scared to fire the thing. Yeah, Joanna's

46:31

even expressed fear about firing,

46:33

and He's like, I don't know what's gonna happen that

46:36

rifle. Of all the rifles I own, and I owned

46:39

some expensive ask

46:41

custom rifles, if

46:43

I had to go out right now to

46:46

shoot and someone said you gotta shoot me the tightest group

46:48

you can shoot, I would take that rifle. I take that rifle

46:50

the range and shot three shot group after three

46:52

shot group after three shot group that

46:54

were two touching

46:57

like be like two touching and one just off

46:59

of touch. Yeah, they were pouting about half

47:01

inch to three quarter inch groups, which is

47:04

just that's that's

47:06

an abuse model seven hundred shooting

47:10

box AMMLE. So

47:14

I don't know. And I'm a guy who owned some expensive

47:16

as custom rifles, I

47:19

don't get that kind of group out of so. You

47:23

know, I know a lot of guys like t K three

47:25

lights, but those are more expensive. That seems

47:27

like a very popular out of the box gun. You

47:32

just gotta shop around. Man. If I was really going to

47:34

buy a new rifle, I don't. I don't think I would buy new.

47:38

I would spend a bunch of time on gunbroker dot com

47:40

and stuff like that. That and a great

47:42

tip. Find a dude who's got a custom rifler is

47:44

some kind of souped up rifle that is old lady is mad

47:46

about him halving and he's gotta sell it. Yeah,

47:48

and the used gun racks

47:50

at all, the Sportsman's and the Cabellas

47:53

are great places to be looking. You kind of

47:55

need to know what you're looking for. Um,

47:58

but they they have quality stuff and they're

48:00

not gonna They're not gonna just

48:02

have junk in there. But what a guy told me once, and

48:04

I was in there perusing the guy that worked

48:06

in the gun library or whatever, I

48:09

forget what I was looking for. I was looking for a dear calibern

48:11

It just happened to be November.

48:13

So he's like, man, it's just it's just you're looking

48:15

for that to seventy or whatever. It's the wrong time

48:18

of year. You should come back about

48:21

January, because what happens after big

48:23

game season Now everybody wants to go

48:25

hunt coyotes, environments

48:27

and stuff. So everybody comes in switching

48:30

out their six is there two seventies

48:33

or just a short magnums and

48:35

they want the two hopped up

48:37

to forty three or the hopped up you

48:39

know, the little bitty guns to shoot you know, uh,

48:42

coyotes with, and then the same thing happens again.

48:44

They do all that in the summer, and then they

48:47

drop off all those vomit guns and one so

48:49

it's kind of never ending cycle. I want to read it.

48:51

I want to read a question that cracks me up. This

48:54

is a good guy I don't know, Chris Rao.

48:58

Okay, this kind of this in some way

49:00

to me, really expresses everything we're talking about here.

49:03

He says, I noticed you switched

49:06

to the two seventy WSM Winchester

49:08

short mag. So it's like a two seventy, but you know,

49:10

a short version of two seventy short

49:13

action version in lieu of the long

49:15

action seven millimeter mag. I have a

49:17

two seventy w SM, and I absolutely

49:19

love it. I was wondering what ammo

49:22

you are shooting or handloads for elk. I've

49:24

taken eight bucks and probably

49:27

a dozen hogs here in northern California

49:29

where I live, few more, four

49:31

mule deer out of state, and two elk. But

49:34

I'm always looking for new information about hunting or

49:36

components in my hunting gear. I hand load

49:39

and have taken all these animals to date

49:41

with one bullet on

49:43

forty grain nozzler accupond, all

49:46

with one shot from thirty

49:48

to sixty eight yards. From

49:51

my handloads there are fairly fast

49:54

at three thousand one d fifty

49:56

feet per second on the chronograph and very

49:58

accurate. But everyone

50:00

is telling me to switch to Burger or Barnes.

50:04

I'm the kind of guy. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

50:06

But I'm always willing to experiment with new

50:08

things. Thanks for your feedback, dude,

50:10

I would like don't

50:12

do I wouldn't change

50:15

anything. That's

50:17

a great bullet. The occupon

50:19

only probably are getting with the occupon is it's it's got

50:22

letting it. So if you're hunting, you know in more and more areas

50:24

are gonna eventually be going lead free. You

50:27

might run into trouble there. But

50:29

for a guy like that with that track record

50:32

to be sweating this stuff kind of shows

50:34

you the poor state of affairs were in when

50:36

it comes to people acting

50:40

like these little things are gonna

50:42

fix problems. The dude could obviously

50:44

shoot he's ambitious. Don't

50:50

change anything. Yeah,

50:52

it doesn't sound like he's got any problems with his brig

50:54

No, I don't care everybody's talking about

50:56

no. Nope, way to hack on Barnes

50:59

and Burger. I of Barnes and Burger bullets. Here's

51:03

no when it comes in all the time. What's your painting on camouflage?

51:07

I don't see you wear a ton of it. Um,

51:13

I'll tell you what. Here's a couple

51:15

of things about camouflage. Absolutely for turkeys,

51:19

Absolutely for waterfowl, always

51:23

mostly had to toe and

51:27

that not a lot of times. It's not just the cameras

51:29

is important self. It's just covering up your

51:31

white, flashy

51:34

hands or even if you have darker skin, just

51:36

the oils and our skins. You know that

51:38

that it tends to shine, so

51:40

that needs to be covered up and muted. Yeah, So

51:42

like it's almost like camouflage. It's

51:45

funny because I think when people I'm guessing when this

51:47

guy says it, what he

51:49

means is like like garments

51:53

with camouflage, garments

51:56

with camouflage patterns on them.

51:58

My wife's taken off, not

52:01

that she's here. She has ducked in to say AUTI, Um,

52:05

he saw about garments with like printed camouflage patterns.

52:07

I'm guessing camouflage. Yeah,

52:11

I mean you can go out and hunt ducks with just earth tones

52:13

on, of course, but you gotta

52:15

be careful about blinds and camouflage yourself

52:18

with vegetation, with material.

52:20

But to to to get through this question,

52:23

if I'm going hunting for waterfowl

52:28

or turkeys, I am very serious

52:30

about wearing camouflage clothing. I

52:32

have get this could be a fool

52:35

by randomness, but I don't think it is. Remember one

52:37

time when I first became a believer in camouflage.

52:40

I mean, my brother Danny, or hunt ducks in Michigan,

52:42

kept flaring ducks out of our decoys on his little

52:44

pond. And I had a gray

52:47

hoodie on light gray whitish gray

52:49

hoodie on my hood

52:52

and I had a duck jacket on, like a duck brown

52:54

coax. We're hunting dead grass,

52:57

dead dead grass and cat tails.

53:00

A bit of my hoodie was sticking out. We kept

53:02

flaring ducks. Danny's

53:05

like tuck that hooden. I

53:07

tucked that hooden. Stop flaring ducks.

53:10

It could be fooled by randos, but I've seen a lot

53:12

of stuff like that happen over the years, particularly

53:16

face shine you're

53:18

blowing birds, and then someone puts

53:20

a face mask on and you quit blowing

53:22

birds because your face is

53:25

just like oily and shiny,

53:28

so covered up. I

53:30

wear camel, and I don't know. I can't tell

53:32

you this empirically. I wear camel bow

53:34

hunting because

53:37

why not. It's just not that hard to get

53:39

camel. It's like you're never gonna regret having Like

53:41

I can't imagine a situation where I would

53:43

regret having camel on, Like, oh I would

53:45

have got that thing had I been wearing solid

53:48

colors. It just isn't gonna happen.

53:54

Sometimes. I do think that with some of the camel

53:56

patterns that are very very dark,

53:59

that at a distance grater of even

54:01

ten fifty, you start

54:03

to look like a black bear. And so in that case I'd

54:05

rather just be wearing like a nice light gray

54:08

or or that first light dry earth,

54:10

because even at a hundred yards I might look

54:12

more like that light rock on the hillside

54:14

than that black bear. I don't

54:17

care. I don't worry about it. Hunting, um,

54:19

I don't worry about it. Rifle

54:21

hunting for big game, I never wear

54:24

all. Growing up bow hunting, white tails, we didn't wear a camel.

54:27

My mom would stitch us clothes out of wool.

54:30

We'd wear that. We'd wear army surplus

54:32

wool earth tones. My dad always hunted

54:35

muted earth tones. You

54:37

know, he blended good. Um. We used to just wear

54:39

mostly because I do a lot of mountain hunting. For

54:42

years and years we did all of our mountain hunting and mountaineering

54:45

clothes. My

54:47

especialty was going into good wheels and stuff

54:49

like that, Salvation Armies in

54:51

high end mountain towns. If

54:54

you can go to a good Will in Bozeman, Montana,

54:56

or Jackson, Wyoming, Aspen,

54:58

Colorado, you're gonna

55:01

get all kinds of like great mountaineering

55:03

type clothes. And I

55:05

would hunt that stuff, high

55:08

quality stuff that I would get for cheap. Had

55:10

I found awesome camel Jackson there, I would have bought

55:12

him too. But you know, um,

55:17

but if you have it, you're not gonna regret it. Just

55:21

if you have a good camera, wear it. If you don't have a good

55:23

camera and you like can't afford good camel,

55:25

I wouldn't stay home about it.

55:28

For big game for me, I feel that with

55:31

the cameo and clothing and gear,

55:33

the quiet uh

55:37

Trump's the camouflage

55:40

we sat guiding. We used to have a lot of guys that would

55:42

show up with all sorts of cameo, this, that and

55:44

the other, and it was covered in velco. Nothing

55:46

worse than trying to sneak through the woods,

55:49

still hunting, hoping to catch an elk just over the next

55:51

rise at a hundred yards and then behind you you here

55:55

and that velco this out of the other

55:57

rips open and the guys you know, squeezing

55:59

and just playing with all the gadgets and whatever and being

56:01

noisy, you know, stuff scratching

56:03

against his legs because his pants were too noisy,

56:05

because he was decided to bring out, you know, a

56:08

brand new pair of car hearts elk hunting versus

56:10

like a nice you know, shammi cloth

56:13

pair of pants or um, you know,

56:15

some quiet wool or something. So I

56:17

would certainly go

56:19

go find something quiet to go hunt big game

56:22

in versus uh, something cameo. You

56:26

want another hypothetical, like a not a hype

56:28

not hypothetical. I don't even know what I'm

56:31

so fried out from from our from

56:34

guide book right, um,

56:39

yeah, And he's holding the paper to says fifty five minutes

56:42

here's the interesting question. What's

56:46

your opinion on how hunting is going and

56:49

what trends should we support to

56:51

cry and hunting today if you want to continue

56:53

to see a tendency towards smarter and more realistic

56:56

world war, real world hunting

56:58

for future generation satans of

57:01

hunters and anglers trappers. This

57:04

dude's name actually is hunter. Um.

57:08

I don't like high wire stuff, man, you

57:12

know, I don't like it being confused with hunting, and I don't

57:14

like it taking on tendencies of hunting.

57:17

My brother raises these lambs. He

57:21

gave one to me, my buddy, you know, but

57:24

he said, you know, you gotta go out and shoot the lamb. So

57:27

we went out and shot our lambs with

57:29

a twenty two out in the you know, in his pasture

57:32

there. Did

57:34

I then go and post a bunch of pictures of me sitting

57:36

with that lamb, acting like I was out hunting lambs.

57:41

No, we were harvesting livestock.

57:45

Um. The other problem, I have a high

57:47

wire stuff. Besides

57:50

all that bad ethical stuff paints

57:53

a bad picture. Also just

57:55

too risky. Um

57:58

with disease issues, disease

58:00

vectors packing

58:03

these animals into these you know situations

58:05

and then having disease transmission escaped the wild

58:07

herd. It's not worth the risk. You can give you all

58:10

the economic numbers you want about Oh listen,

58:12

that and this and that. I just don't I don't like it. I

58:14

don't like it wild animals,

58:18

h if you want to, you know,

58:20

I don't like it seeing

58:23

these animals, you know what, those ear

58:25

tags and stuff. It just just like,

58:28

on a personal level, it disgust

58:30

me. I don't

58:32

like it. I hate seeing it.

58:36

What I do like is

58:39

uh, people

58:42

taking great care to utilize

58:45

to the maximum potential the

58:47

resources provided by the animals

58:50

that they kill. Catching

58:54

released angling. There's no real damage there,

58:56

but it's just it's just you know, playing

58:59

with your food to be a catch for these angler. And I still

59:01

end today, but we did a whole podcast on catch

59:03

and release. I'm not gonna talk about it now. Grab

59:07

another question, Joannie. How

59:12

do you cook red fox? Yeah?

59:17

I we cooked coyote not long ago, a couple

59:19

of years ago. I just burned. I did it like how I've

59:21

had I saw how they cooked dogs

59:24

in Vietnam, and I just cooked the coyote like that, burn

59:26

the hair off, and then roast it wasn't that good.

59:28

If I had to eat a red fox, like

59:31

if I was doing it for fun, like people were coming over,

59:33

We're gonna eat a red fox, I'll

59:35

just burn the hair off and roasted just like a roast pig.

59:38

If I just had to eat it, like if someone came down and said,

59:40

you can only eat red fox for the rest of your

59:42

life, and that's what you have to feed your family, I

59:44

would bone all of my red fox out, grind

59:47

them up, and make stuff like chrees, oh and stuff like

59:49

that, strong flavored sausages with

59:51

it. Yeah, you can

59:53

pretty much take any meat like that and

59:56

braise it, which is basically like slow

59:59

simmer cooking for a long

1:00:01

period of time, and whether it's

1:00:03

two hours or six hours. When it's done, you

1:00:05

let it cool, you pick it off the bone, and

1:00:07

then season it. Put

1:00:10

in a bunch of barbecue sauce, and man, you

1:00:12

could probably save that fox. And

1:00:15

that's even better. I take it back when I said I

1:00:18

wouldn't make trees O. I would take my red fox

1:00:21

yank to hide off it, trim whatever fat on.

1:00:23

There is a way, quarter it out,

1:00:26

rub h just a lot of salt

1:00:28

and pepper on all those quarters. Brown

1:00:30

them up in half butter and half

1:00:32

oil. It's just me what I would do. Get

1:00:35

a big pan, brown all those quarters, pack

1:00:37

them into a big roasting dish, cover

1:00:39

it two thirds away with water, put

1:00:41

a lid on it. Put in my oven at

1:00:44

between two seventy and three d degrees.

1:00:47

Start poking it with a fork. About three hours

1:00:49

later, when that thing was such that I could

1:00:51

grab one of the bones and flick it

1:00:53

and all the meat would fly off the bone. I

1:00:56

would shred that stuff up and

1:00:59

I would use it on barbecue

1:01:01

sandwiches. I'd put it on bridles. I'd put it on

1:01:03

tacos. I got some I got some moose meat.

1:01:05

Not that moose is like red fox. I got some moose

1:01:08

meat by freezer, by fridge right now, Like that big

1:01:10

roast I did. It's all set

1:01:12

up in the aspect. I

1:01:14

just keep warming that thing up, grabbing a handful out

1:01:17

and doing stuff with it. I gave

1:01:19

some of Yanni there night we had it on bridles. I'll

1:01:22

do that with my fox. And

1:01:24

if someone did come down from from

1:01:26

wherever heaven outer space

1:01:29

and said you have to eat red

1:01:31

fox the rest of your life, I would I would be a little

1:01:34

bummed, but I would I would figure it out. I'm

1:01:36

not afraid about it. We will make it a point

1:01:38

uh here soon to try to harvest

1:01:40

one during a meat eat or shoot and uh

1:01:43

cook one up, see what it tastes like. I

1:01:46

want to do one last quick because this comes up last

1:01:48

quick, because otherwise I'm gonna miss my flight. How

1:01:50

do you get meat home on on you

1:01:52

know trips? Uh?

1:01:55

When I'm on a trip, flying

1:01:57

or driving or whatever, I kill something,

1:02:00

I take it apart in big pieces, so I bone out

1:02:02

muscle groups. Put those muscle groups

1:02:04

wrapping up in surrand wrapper. Better yet, put him

1:02:06

into receivable bags, zip block bags,

1:02:08

gallon size zip block bags. Big muscle group

1:02:11

stuff. Get into a freezer evey.

1:02:13

I go bang on the door at some restaurant and beg some

1:02:15

dude who's like walking washing dishes on late

1:02:17

night shift to put in the freezer for

1:02:19

a night. Get a good freeze on it. Pack

1:02:22

those bags and the coolers, duct, take the coolers

1:02:24

shut. It'll stay frozen for days in there. When

1:02:26

I get home, I let it

1:02:28

thought a little bit so it's kind of soft. Then I do

1:02:30

my final detail work and repackage it for my

1:02:33

home freezer. Thanks for listening me

1:02:35

Ner Podcast. Make sure to tune

1:02:37

in Sportsman

1:02:40

channel watch the show Meat Eater, Take

1:02:44

Care,