Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 202: From the Two Kingdoms of Nature

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Ep. 202: From the Two Kingdoms of Nature · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This is Me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: bug bitten in my case, underwear listening podcast. You can't
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: predict anything presented by on x Hunt creators are the
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters. Download the Hunt
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: app from the iTunes or Google play store, nor where
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: you stand with on x Okay, it's gotta start out
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: with a correction, but it's a weird correction because the
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: mistake hasn't been made yet. It's a preemptive correction kinda.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: Do you understand your eyes? I guess. But it's all
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: messed up because we're all of that. We're dealing with
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: all this happening in the future, which none of it
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: has happened yet. Man, it's like back to It's like
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: that Michael J. Fox movie Back to the Future had
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: always said, never apologize in advance. Oh well, glad he
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: is he alive over here? Uh, glad he's not. Here's
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: what happened. I was talking about a new I was
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: talking on a show that we haven't released yet about
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: a gentleman. It was like a meth ring, a drug ring,
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: um and a couple of these gentlemen within this meth
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: and phetamine ring, turned on one of their associates and
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: tied him to a tree and spread bacon all around him,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: um so the bears would come and eat him. And
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: then the guy got his hands uh and rolled looped
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: up with bacon and was able to pull free. Do
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: you guys know about this story those years? That's the
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: reason why many years ago the mistake happened. Where I
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: was talking to a journalist, and I don't know how
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: it can't how it happened, but I felt that the
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: journalists I was talking about was telling me that he
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: wrote the story, and he said that he likes to
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: repost it. He likes the story so much that he
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: reposted every year on Facebook. But it turns out it
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: wasn't the feller I was talking to. He was talking
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: about another writer by the name of John Craig, who
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: covered this trio of gentlemen involved in UM this ring.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: And what happened was they like turn on their associate
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: and drive him off out in the woods, and they
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: got and they gotta, I don't get this pistol. They
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: got a twenty two pistol they had to fix because
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: the cylinder was loose out and so they put a
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: drill bit in there to hold the cylinder in place,
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: and they go out and go to shoot their associate
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: with the twenty two and the two misfires. It's like
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: out of a movie. They go to shoot him out
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: in the woods and the two misfires, and then one
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: of the guys starts arguing to it's must be divine
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: intervention and so they shouldn't shoot him. So then he
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: takes the pistol and points it off in the woods
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: and pulls the trigger and the pistol goes off, And
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: then they have a conversation and decide not to shoot
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: their associate and uh. Instead they tie him between two
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: trees and then hang bacon around on the limbs because
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: they stopped at a convenience store which we used to
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: call party stores. Uh uh, tie him up between two
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: trees and hang bacon around like Christmas ornaments and give
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: him a good pistol whipping with the twenty two and
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: leaving there. But eventually he frees himself. I kind of like,
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: how even these folks leave a little bit of space
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: for God in their lives. Where was the can? We
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: guess it's not that I'm telling you this is talking
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: to us God's looking down upon them. They have a
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: guess which state? Take a take a take a stab.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: Come on, you're a bunch of people with this. I
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: think lick Skillet Wyoming, wasn't it. No, it's I'm going, Um,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: we're going to Mississippi. Just say, Michigan, what type of bears?
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: Did you just give away the answer? I'm going to
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: New Mexico. No, these fellas. It was reported in the
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: Spokane paper. But I believe these fellers are Alaska doing
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: these things to each other and in Idaho. Oh. They
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: grew up in the woods. Peterson thirty nine said he
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: grew up in the woods near Orient, Washington, sometimes living
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: to tepee, so he was never afraid bacon would cause
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: animals to eat him. That's a line of the story. Shoot.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: I knew I had it made when they brought the
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: bacon out. But the headlines a great headline. Duo tried
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: killing man with bacon, Helmett duo. That's a hard duo.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: I was gonna duo tried killing man with bacon. Suspects
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: accused of using pork to lure animals after gun failed
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: man I fought I'd find headline writer in a hurry.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: I think Johnny Knoxville wore a bacon suit on Jackass
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: one time. There's another headline, bizarre case. Bizarre bacon case
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: ends in a nine and a half year man. This
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: guy is a horrible headline writer. I hope it's not
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: John Craig doing these bizarre bacon case ends in nine
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: and a half year rap no punctuation. Victim was tied
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: to trees surrounded by bacon as lure for predators. But
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: the real problem isn't that I've screwed up. The real
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: problem is that we're talking about something that happened in
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: n Why is that a problem? Just is a long
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: time ago to be covered news from Well at this
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: point is that it's just an old thing urban legend.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: Happened a few days after the anniversary of the battle
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: a little big horn. Uh, let's move on to something new,
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: something fresher. Yanni pick it up with the with the
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: woman I'm in love with Lola. Oh that's what they
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: called her. Well, it's interest. Think she's the site the
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: archaeological site is in Uh, she's gonna take me a
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: second to find it. Is this story pre this is
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: brands Well, it's kind too. It's either depending on how
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: you look at it, it's either brand spiketty new or
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: it's thousands of years old. The site is on a
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: Danish island. But you haven't said what the site is.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: I know, well it's okay, I can think. I can
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: set the space first and then talk about what's going on.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: I said, And we're gonna find out how Loland got
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: her name because the site is on the Danish island
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: of I think you would pronounce it Lawlin because it's
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: l O, l l A and D not Lowland. This okay,
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: keep going, I'm waiting for This is not how I
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: would lay it out. We'll go ahead. So at the site,
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: they've had a they excavated a piece of chewing gum
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: many years ago. It's a piece of it's not really
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: chewing gum as we know it. It's birch pitch that
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: folks used to use to uh like, make tools and
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: they needed some sticky substance in there to hold something
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: together right. And they also found that folks used to
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: chew on it. They think that people are chewing on
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: it to just soften it up prior to use. Now
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: he's doing a good job. Well, um, so what's interesting,
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: and I really like and this is why everybody should
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: just leave arrowheads and ship in the woods when they
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: find them that they pulled this out thirty years ago
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: and it's just been sitting in a museum and the
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: author assumes are a lot of people like museum. Uh
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: not the curators themselves, but the people that uh, you know,
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: handle the budget would say, why the hell are you
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: spending money to store this piece of pitch? Just a
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: black piece of junk. Right. Well, thirty years later, the
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: dude extracts a whole human How do you how do
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: you say? Genome out of it? And we put together
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: this picture of a girl that was at this kill site,
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: and um, look, Paul Harvey here, man, he's doing a
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: great job. She was I like to start alone and
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: then get better as I better and better. I'm on
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: the edge of my seat and already know what happened.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: Um and uh yeah, So it turns out she was
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: at a like a tool making hunting's type site. And uh,
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: what's cool is that they can with this DNA coming
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: out of her mouth, they can also see what she
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: was recently eating five thousand, seven years ago, that's right,
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: and uh, she was had recently eaten hazel nuts and
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: the mallard duck. When I told Jesse about this, who's
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: with us here today? Jesse? Yeah? When I told him
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: about this, I told him dark skin, blue eyes had
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: just eaten mallards and hazel nuts, and he said, I
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: like her, my kind of cow. Yeah, you might have
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: to make a new dish for the restaurant, you know,
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: the Lola appetizer or something. It works some I bet
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: it works. Mallards and hazel nuts be delicious in there somehow,
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: not far from where my ancestors come from. This is
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: like due north of Germany, kind of at the south
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: western tip of the Baltics. See, yeah, it looks like
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: a little there's a picture of the actual thing. It's
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: like a two centimeter long gabba picture of those big
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: league chew If big league choose black, I think I
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: gotta no big league choose too big. It's definitely like
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: a chew big it's big league choose however you want it.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: That's true. But well, look there it is. It's a scale.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: It's it's it's roughly two centimeters maybe two and a
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: half centimeters. Why so, you're right, it is actually more
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: like a like someone taking a big way to big
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: league choose. It's like if you gave my kids. Yeah,
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: black black Gabba just looks like a black guy a
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: chewing gum. But they're able to pull all that information.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: Lactose in tolerant. Which what's interesting about the lactoleson tolerance
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: portion of this is they're interested in it helps you
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: put together animal husbandry because once people um started domesticating,
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: started using domestic cows and getting milk, then you see
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: lactoles those cultures that adopted milk, you see lactoles tolerance
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: in those cultures. So Hunter, and there's a painting of her,
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: a beautiful painting. I'd hang it out my damn wall. Uh,
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: dark hair, blue eyes, got a lot of animal hides on.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: She's got a little fish trap basket, she's got her
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: fish spear, she's got a couple of drake mallards. But
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: you haven't even shown me the profile. Pick there is
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: right there. You need to get that picture and have
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: it say on the bottom wanted nice yea some mallards.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: You know how she down in those birds? I wonder, Yeah,
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: I'd love to know. Man, she just snuck out to
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: him and got probably got on with that spear. Okay,
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: another news story. We've covered us a fair bit. And
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: if you were looking down, like if you were looking
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: down from outer space and you were watching what's happening
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: on Aisle Royal in Lake Superior, you would have a
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: sad had laugh. So as we reported, you know what,
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: I honest gonna assume that everyone listens to every episode.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: And so they've been following the saga of Ile Royal,
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: but the wolf. They brought new wolves out to supplement
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: the last two wolves that are on Isle Royal, which
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: Ile roy It used to be Caribou and Lynx. Even
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: in you know, even in the somewhat modern era, like
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: even there, I think it was in the early it
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: was like a Lynx Cariboo island. Then through unknown things happened.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: The thing froze, things walk out, leave, It became a
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: moose wolf island. Uh, there's wolves there for like a
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: relatively short period of time. The wolves started not doing
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: well from inbreeding because it's on an island and they
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: can only get out there when rarely when the thing freezes.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: So then the moose started building up real good. I
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: propose you just have a hunting season and people go
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: out and get some moose. But they thought, well, let's
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: bring more wolves out, so they only have two of
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: the original wolves left at crossed out on the ice,
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: and they go catch a bunch of new wolves and
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: put them on the island. And guess what happens right away?
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: They kill the old They kill you Rich, the new
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: wolves kill the original two. That's in the news. Anything else,
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: Johnny Seth, got any uh, any thoughts on any of that? Nope,
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: that's it. That's it. Ok. Thanks killing wolves great? Um oh,
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: I think that's it. Any more news. I want to
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: talk about the Gator band in California, but I'm not
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: quite there yet. You good n oh, good man. Let's
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: talk about Texas. Okay, let's do our introductions. Go ahead. JT. Hey, JT.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: Van's aunt fishing guy here in Rockport, Texas. It's about it. Yeah,
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: how many dates? But you don't live here. I live here,
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: umslat Yeah, I kind of. I kind of my great
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: a little bit um Texas born and raised, seventh generation
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: found fly fishing back in the early nineties. This is
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: one of the first spots I came to to chase
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: redfish with my new fly rod. It was just kind
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: of blown away by the habitat and freedom to explore
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: these marshes. And I've got a wife and kids I'm
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: not totally sure I want to raise here. So I
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: spend a couple of hundred days in a row sometimes
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: down here, and my family comes to visit me. So
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: you're down here working your ass off, and yeah, moving
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: back and forth. Yeah, my wife held down a job
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: for about eighteen years with Apple, and uh recently convinced
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: her to quit to be with our boys full time.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: So she's homeschooling, taking on a whole new life. And yeah,
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: so we've got a lot of freedom. You know, there's
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: some things in the works down here that I'm just
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: letting play out before really build a house. I had.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: I had set up pretty um permanent in a canal
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: house on Copano Bay, and then Hurricane Harvey kind of
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: wipe that out. So now you guys have seen my
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: little rental, which is pretty sweet, kind of small to
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: raise a family of foreign but super convenient, all bills
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: paid right on the water. Um, So I want to
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: try to hold onto that place and kind of figure
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: out the next move. Yeah, we caused some crabs basically
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: in your yard. Yeah, my front yard. It's pretty neat
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: sunrise every morning, a bunch of redhead ducks. Um. Yeah,
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: so you know, and ship, I'm getting older, so I
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: gotta make up my mind. And uh, I like meeting
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: dudes that are like a little older meets That helps
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: me picture healthy picture because you're pretty surprised still standing
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: up on that doormat in the air, pulling around all day. Right. Um,
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: I think if I if I was more sedentary, I'd
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: be in bad shape at this point. That keeps young
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: and healthy. Then the tequila knocks me back down a
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: little bit. You get a little better, and then did
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: you take the top off? And then Jesse Griffiths, Hey,
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: you've been on the show before. Yeah, a couple of times. Yeah, man,
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: a few words tell remind everybody. Yeah, Jesse Griffiths, I'm
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: the chef or die do a butcher's shop at supper
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: Club in Austin. We also have a little takarea and
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: we run a hunting and fishing school called the New
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: School of Traditional Cookery and go around state actually everywhere
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: and uh kind of show people how to cook butcher
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: and enjoy their game more thoroughly. And you were on
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: an episode I think it was called you want to
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: talk about shooting hogs or something like that, people can
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: learn about more about your thing there. Um, this kind
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: of came what we're doing right now down here kind
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: of came out of that experience, right because we decided
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: we were down here and went to your restaurant and
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: we covered that meal pretty extensively. Right. I think I was,
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: you know, talking up talking up nil guy, talking up flounder,
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: and so we came down. That's what we just did
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: is went um nil guy hunting. Yeah, it was a
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: good time lay that out for people, like what the
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: basic groove of nil guy is. Oh, they're brought over here,
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: I believe the nineteen twenties um and to the to
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: the coastal big coastal ranches in Texas, notably the King
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: and they've become very native down there there. I'm out
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: and I'm sorry that's improper just callumn native. But I
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: think they've native ized a bit. It was assimilated. I
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: was scolded by a friend of mine who's a biologist, uh,
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: Mike Rule, who I had put a thing on Instagram
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: or had a picture of a nil guy and I
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: had mentioned your I used your phrase where they've been
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: accepted as honorary natives among locals, and he took offense.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: But let's call it a cultural native native ezed or
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, I think to to the point
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: that there's a there's a Spanish word for an Indian
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: antelope now and that's the valentine, and that's what they're called.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: So I mean, I think that speaks a lot to Uh,
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: they're kind of their acceptance into the vernacular down there.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: So what's there's a I think there's a bunch of
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: things that whether he likes the word or not, I
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: think there's a bunch of things. There's a bunch of
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: introduced species in this country that were introduced. They're not delaterious,
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: they're not trouble causing, you mean like Europeans. Yeah, while
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: I wasn't going, there's a good point. Yeah, we're definitely
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: like a delaterious We're a delaterious species, uh, not trouble
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: causing and great local acceptance meaning no one's looking to
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: get rid of them. When I say that, meaning like
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: wild turkeys in California, Idaho, Washington, Montana, Wyoming, pheasants in
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: all over seek a deer around Chespeake Bay, Nil Guy
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: down here. It's not native. But people can't point to
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: like a damage, Like they can't point to some huge
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: problem they're causing, and people dig them and want to
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: eat them. Yeah, I think there's I mean, there's a
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: lot of value to them. They they're almost a currency
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: down there. They're eating extensively, even if people don't have
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: the access to to hunt them, which is a bit
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: controlled and it's it's it's its own issue because of
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: the big ranches that they habitate. But uh, everyone down
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: there eats nilgai and it's like a preferred protein for
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: for everybody that's lives in like south to Kingsville all
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: the way to the borders. It's because there's such a
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: giving animal. They're huge. I mean there's six hundred pounds
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: and so it's something that is fairly available as a
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: game meat. When you look at them, it's like you're
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: looking it doesn't even make sense for a minute. The
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: shape of them, yeah, or the color. Yeah, blue buck
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: they're like people call him what blue bulls. Yeah, they're
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: very They got a low ass. They have a real
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: like angular upward pitch towards the shoulders. The head seems
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: too small. The next seems too long. They run kind
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: of like a giraffe. No, that's a good way to
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: put their gate. Big sons of bitches, big um. You
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: know when I put a picture of Anil guy up
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: on Instagram at Steve right now, Uh, there was a
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: there was a little bit of a there was a
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: little bit of most people are like, oh, that's cool,
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: love to do it someday. But there's a little grumbling,
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: a little grumbling about almost be nice, must be nice.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: Oh well, I can tell you it doesn't take helicopters
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: and uh, having a big fat, you know, your own
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: TV show kind of budget to go hunt a Neil guy.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: Because we actually hunted with a dude that helped us
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: out that runs No Guy Hunts down there, same ranch
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: that we were on, and he has other ranches that
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: you can it in on his No Guy hunt is
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: less than three thousand dollars. Yeah, you can't get a
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: hunt anywhere out west for that kind of money. That's
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: what they charged for one. Yeah, I think he said
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: it was like fifty something right around there. You know,
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: so who knows what You could get a cow and
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: it'll go I mean, and that's one thing that I
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: think about a lot is not. I wonder how that
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: affects the population because almost no one is shooting the
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: cows um, which is exactly what I would want to
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: go after. I mean they're not as big, but I
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: mean I mean, judging from the meat quality of a
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: giant bowl, uh, a cow that's that size and you know,
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: having the qualities of the typically pertained to the female
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: of the species, I think there'ld be incredible meat and
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: you probably find a better, more budget hunt that way.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: And there is one UM drawn hunt that the Parks
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: and Wildlife offers on the Laguna Atascosa that's right down
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: but I've heard it's uh, it's it can be a
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: bit crowded because I think it's such a desirable thing.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's a freezer filler right there, so everybody's
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: putting in for that hunt. But I mean it is limited.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: But I mean that's gonna You're gonna go back to
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: um a hundred and fifty years of the historic land
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: distribution down there, and that it's it's divided amongst a
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: handful of huge ranches, some of the biggest in the world.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: And that's where those nil guy stay because they have
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: relative safety there. Uh. And that there's controlled hunts for them,
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: and then that's where those populations have set up. And
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: it's just it is what it is, and so it is.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: It's not a limited resource because people built fences around them.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: It's just it's a limited resource because they've settled in
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: this very unique part of the world that's historically controlled
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: by just a handful of families. I just typed up.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: I just typed up a thing. I just went did
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: like a general little Google search, So for how would
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: this be. It's costs more to hunt a high fence
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: nil guy than it does the hunt a free range
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: nil guy. It was guaranteed. So you can go shoot one,
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: you can go shoot depend up. You can go shoot
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: depend up one for thirty bucks. You can shoot a
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: real one wild wandering around for fifty nil Ghai cows
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: price on a request. Yeah, so it's presumably less expensive. Absolutely,
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: And then you're gonna get and then you gotta figure
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: coming home with. Uh, let's say you did the bull hunt.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: You're coming home with the two pounds of meat. Yeah. Yeah,
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: they got a good they got a high yield. The
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: high yield animals that like it's called the labban. No,
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: it's not like the laban smirk is different, Like it's
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: like if you were like this of proof, Yeah, if
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: you were the vocaliz Yeah, the face he made that's
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: like a cow call. Yeah, a lot? There was how
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: many lot? How many are there in the wild? Just
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: you know, uh, I don't know. I think that the
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: surveys on the ranch that we were at or around
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: two thousand just on that property, which is a relatively
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: small property. We did a fair amount of research. Just
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: it's looking like Texas Harbor is around between thirty and
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: forty thousand. I mean we I mean how long from
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: less than twenty animals that rut we're brought from a
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: zoo in San Diego onto the King Ranch, I believe. Well,
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: but they that did happen, But there's also been more
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: that were bought from India. What's interesting too, is that
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: they don't they can't really spread north there at like,
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: at least on our continent. They're at their most northern
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: range in Texas. So much so that on the ranch
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: that we were on, they said when they had a
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: really bad cold winter a while ago, all the old
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: guy actually migrated to the southern end of the ranch, where,
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: unfortunately for them, there was there's a high fence on
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: the neighboring ranch, and so they got stuck there and
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: we just drove down that fence line and you could,
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: like if you just looked into the bush's ten twenty yards,
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: it was like nilghai skull after nil guy skull. And
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: without even looking, we found what three four very literal
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: running away from a north wind ran south. They ran
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: south to escape it. How how wildly like terrifying that
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: cold must have been to them, an animal that just
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: doesn't recognize cold, and and their their base instinct was
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: just to run away from it. They had someone the
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: powder horn, but they didn't do well up there too
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: far north. Yet. You know what's funny, man, I'm in
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: a live chat right now with someone at a place
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: that this is classic. This is like I want to
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: get into this little bit like how Texas is the
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: lowest of the low and now also they of the
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: high in terms of just like goodness. Here, I'm I'm
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to live chat. I'm live chatting with Samantha
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: at a place that has a hunting blind. You can
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: hog hunt from our hunting blind that holds ten people.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: This blind has a TV that receives live game camera footage.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: A poker table air conditioning in a fully stocked bar
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: sounds like a house. This is in Texas. It has
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: to be the only the only mistake in that is
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: the word hunt. If you call it what it is,
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: then it's pretty luxurious situation. Um still wait for my reply.
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: Uh so layout for like like layout how one can hunt?
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: Can I tell you this though? You know the poop piles,
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: like the poop and piles you showed me this the
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: circular latrines. Yeah, they make a pile. Llamas do that.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: They mark their territory by making poop piles. They're all over.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: Let's do a really good job of describing the poop problem. Okay,
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: you describe some live chatting with the I'm live chatting
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: with the poker table. Oh yeah. Asked her how she
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: described no guy that trees? She doesn't have No, she
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: doesn't have no guy doll a like a party in
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: this blind or they got all kinds. It's like one
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: of those places where they have everything in the world
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: chained up on a mark. Or is this high fenced?
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: I can hunt anything I want. It's probably like a
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: luxurious a bongo action video on a wildebeast. I can
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: hunt an Arabian orcs. Is there a tiger on the left?
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: Let me check. I can hunt an impala? What about
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: a draft order one for you. I can hunt Texas
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: doll sheep like hunted Thompson's gazelle, water buffalo. Will the
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: beast zebra? Should? I ask her? I don't want to
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: mess with the lady. It's a phenomenal No lions. I
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: only put in a question. I ask you any lions. Okay,
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: let's get back to me. Yeah. So no, I was
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: because guiding got quite a few people from Texas. They
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: would come to Colorado a lot, and uh we you know,
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: somehow always gets not always, but over the course of
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: the years, numerous times I heard about these animals Nil
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: guy and everybody. If they tell you about nil Guy,
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: they're gonna tell you about their poop pile. They know
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: they don't well that's that was my experience. They tell
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: you about they'll take you can't bring them down. No,
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: you don't want to. Actually hadn't heard that until we
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: got ready for this trip. So people anyways, you know
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: the way it was described to me, I was imagining
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: something that used to it would be big enough to
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: play King of the hill on like Steve would run
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: up there and I run up at room and push
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: him off the edge of the No guy, that train
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: pile there's not quite that impressive, Okay, I was imagining
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: ship pile. Yeah, well, with all due respect, piles have
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: been reported to be as high as ten feet, but
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: I don't know that India has a hundred thousands of
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: these things. Maybe the average pile that we saw was
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: i'd say three to five feet in diameter and you know,
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: only a few inches above the They never got taller.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: It seemed like they just got wider, like the bigger
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: ones were greater circumference. I had a hunt plan of
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: spreading out laxatives and then sitting one of them poop piles. Yeah,
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: that's what That's what I was thinking. But there's so
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: many food piles that it doesn't it's not like, you know,
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: it's not like like a water hole in the desert.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: You know, it's like welly every depending on on the area,
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: but every like yards, there's a there's a good way
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: to some spots, like every fifty yards depending on it's
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: a good way of putting it. But the place we'round.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: We talked about the place we're on. Sure, go ahead
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: and tell everybody about the place. So it's on the
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: kind of just south of the King Ranch. It doesn't
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: extend all the way to the Gulf, but it just
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: occupies a good section of that rolling, super sandy, kind
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: of dune influenced brush country. How do you become friends
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: of those guys? Um, that's a long story. One of
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: one of the friends of our host was sold artichokes
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: the farmers market years ago, and so back then artichokes
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: were a big deal for us and how unique they were. Well,
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: there's there's more. There's a couple more options for artichow.
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: But at the time he had background just you'll only
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: sell stuff in his restaurant from Texas, right, so if
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: they don't come from Texas, so when you see some,
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: you don't have it exciting like an artichoke which has
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: a very short season. We would we would jump all
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: over that and even as olives and ship right yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: name it. Uh So we we would buy a ton
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: of artichokes and preserve them or you know, do whatever
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: it is we could. Um to really kind of celebrate
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: the artichokes. So this guy's like, why are you buying
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: some many artichokes? And it turns out he was from Brownsville, UM.
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: And then you know, we started talking hunting this stuff
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: like that. And then his friend he's like, oh, by
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: the way, I got his friends some land and like okay,
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: And then I go there and they're like, oh, this
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: is this is a very special place. Like they don't
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: really hunt it. No they don't. I mean the deer
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: were they don't bait it friendly, they don't bait it. No,
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: there's no feeders, there's no blinds, there's there's the only
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: high fence is the one that exists on the south
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: side of the property, which is the neighbors. And so
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: these are all very free ranging animals, but very but
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: it's weird to be in Texas and not there's no
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: blinds and no feeders. Yeah, it's it's pretty refreshing. I
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: really enjoy still animals everywhere everywhere. Yeah, there's there's not
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: a lot of hunting pressure me. So turkeys have alena
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: lots of pigs um. And then the deer, which were
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: just they don't get any pressure. And it was fascinating
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: to see what happens with a deer population that doesn't
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: get any hunting pressure. How how just uh familiar they
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: become with with humans. And it was also the rut.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: I mean they were in the middle of it. So
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: the males were acting dumb. Yeah. Uh, I was telling
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: someone yesterday. It's like we didn't really we didn't really
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: go out like hunt a Neil guy. It was kind
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: of like a harvest harvest hunt. Yeah, well, meaning it
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: was there were just so many of them. There were
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: you have to pick them. I mean, you put that
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: in a negative way. It was a good stock I thought.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: I mean, but it wasn't like I was after an hour.
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: I wasn't like, man, I'm wonderful, we'll get one if
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: I know. It's just like, oh I could see now. Yeah,
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: they're they're thick, They're they're like a little wary, like
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: you know, they're a little wary. Yeah, but you kind
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: of get the sense. Yeah I don't want to see.
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: It wasn't like it was like hunting, but no, they
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: were Actually this guy were the most the spookiest animals
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: out of everything that we ran across on that range. Yeah,
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: for sure, they must get persecuted a little bit more. Yeah, Well,
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: the pigs had they been down wind of us, way
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: more sensitive. And you know the we saw you know,
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: a pig, that one pig that ran across the road.
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: I mean he wasn't having it. They know, I mean
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: pigs are just naturally like that. But uh yeah, the
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: no guy, they know that there's pressure on them for sure.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: So could a dude if he wanted to go to
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: that ranch in like book A Hunt for Nil Guy. Yeah,
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: there's outfitters that are allowed onto that ranch, but it's
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: pretty it's pretty limited, I got you, But it could
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: It is possible, Yes, absolutely, there's the there's hunting out there.
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: We went out in the morning and what's the what's
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: the word? I can't? I wish I could sin Darryl
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: h like a road right, Yeah, there's like a two
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: track sendaro. It's Spanish for two track, just a lot
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: cooler than the road sendero. Yeah. So it's the ship
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: out here is low, very thick, very flat. Everything's how
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: highs everything you know, mesquite mesquite high ten. Yeah, but
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: you can't see you can't see ship once you're in it.
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: But there's it's open. There's big openings around here and there,
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: and there's sindarios like roads that cut through it, and
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: the roads through this place or when they used to
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: do uh, seismic surveys for oil exploration. You see that
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: ship in the Arctic too, where don't like grid out
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: on these grid patterns, these road systems, and they lay
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: them out so they could go and do um searching
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: for fossil fuels. And these are now somebod these have
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: been maintained as senderos. And you're ride out now and
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: then every time you get to one there they're straight
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: straight roads and you get some one to look down like,
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: oh ship and you see one across the road. Um,
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: we go out wander around, Uh, not so much, wanter,
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: because we're headed to this big opening. What would you
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: guys call that giant opening we're in. I mean, i'd
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: call it a meadow. I'm sure they don't, but just
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: them Nate they call there's the big one down there,
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: they call the pland grande. That's the big plane. Um,
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: and there's that that it's a couple of miles long
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: and it kind of weaves through there, and there's that
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: low spot that floods out some years, but it was
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: very dry this time. But it's natural. It's not cut. Yeah,
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: and we pull up an air and you can you
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: can see forever, and you take your vernaculars and it's
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: just like white tails and nilghai just scattered and there's
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: bowls running around, the smattering of gazelles. There's one gazelle.
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: One gazelle. Yeah, the one gazelle up near the house.
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: Now we saw more really driving No not he's talking
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: about the os. No, they're like those little guys with
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: not the water bucks, not the water bus. I think
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: that was the same one, the same Thompson's gazelle that
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: lived in the pasture near the house. I think we
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: saw more of those somewhere. Not many, anyways, Lots of
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: credits run around and it's but the weird thing is,
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: it's like I always saw all that ship was like
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: fenced in in Texas, and it normally is, but except
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: for here. That's why, I mean, it's just absolutely yeah,
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: absolutely well, they got crazy Africa stuff running around everywhere.
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: But there's hundreds of thousands of acres down there that
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: are all the fence that all have a mix of
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: these animals on them. So it's you know, I don't
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: know what the proper term is, but there are you
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: know there's orex and water buck and no guy running
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: around out therefore for that matter, farrell hawks and no
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: regulations on them like that. Dude, we were with that
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: part of the family that owns the place. If he
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: felt like he could go out in and shoot a
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: big pile of works, yeah, all of them. You know,
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: there's there's no limit and you're you know, the license,
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: the out of state license, I believe fifty dollars, and
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: now there's no you can hunt pigs with no license
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: even a non residents nonresidents and residents can hunt ferreal
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: hogs with no license. That's that's an absurd Yeah, that
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: wasn't Parks of Wildlife call? You mean, because why not
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: have the state pulls some revenue off it? Yeah, why
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: not educate a hunter and and collect some money for conservation.
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: I don't know why. Well, yeah, but it wasn't. It
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: wasn't Parks on Wildlife's call. You know what I like
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: about Texas when uh they made it. You can shoot
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: pigs from the helicopters. You know, you can shoot him
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: from a hot air balloon. I know, like they cleared
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: up shooting him for helicopters recreationally. But then someone realized
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: that there was like an oversight or a mistake was
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: made and you weren't allowed to shoot him from hot
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: air balloons. So the Texas State legislator legislature got back together,
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: like cleared up that little that little bit of nonsense.
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: So now you can so you can feel them from
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: hot air balloons as well. Well you don't like ambiguity, yeah,
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: uh yeah, but it was fun, man. And then we
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: go out and uh crawled up on one and we're
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: hunker down loan and they're they're running. Yeah, they're running,
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: and they have a long rut, like a couple of
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: months of rut. Right, I'm not I'm not sure about
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: the rut how long it lasts, but they were What
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: was noticeable to me was the color. They were almost
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: black instead of the normal kind of grayish blue. But
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: there they seem to be darker in their behavior. I mean,
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: the way his behavior towards towards you was pretty interesting. Yeah,
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: we were hunkered down and he just caught our movement.
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: But see like caribou do that, in antelope do that.
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: We're hunkered down and he caught our movement. And then
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: so he's so cocky because they don't have there's no predators, right,
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: He's like, it's gotta be a nil gu I'm gonna
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: go beat its ass. And he started coming, trying to
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: get our wind and coming to at us, and coming
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: at us. He calls the distance. He was three hund
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: yards away, and a sudden he's a hundred yards away.
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: And then you have things like about a lot of
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: people warned me about that they can take a hip.
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: I think that's valid. It's absolutely valid. I mean I
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: shot the top of his heart off and he took
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: off like he had no plan of stopping, Like, no
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: plan of stopping. Yeah, the guides are are ready on
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: that second shot to back you up. And what was
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: what was monda shooting? I don't know. It was a
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: It was a big gun. I remember it's a two
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: fifty grain bullet. But I mean they are ready to
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: keep shooting until they don't get up anymore. It's an
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: incredibly resilient, powerful, strong boned animal. Yeah, he was kind
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: of quartered at me and I sort of he was
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: close and just holding dead still, and I had my
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: tripod out, but a shot kind of came on the
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: inside of the show there blade shot top was hard
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: out went through the lungs lodged against the hide, and
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: he just took off. As Doug DRN had said, he
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: was carrying the mail. I think that's something Dug says. Um.
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: I don't understand the reference, but you don't either. Man.
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: Maybe like Express or something on that shirt. I think
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: it was could be Pony Express Haul and ass um
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: and they're they're saying they don't believe they don't bleed much,
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: so they're hard to track. Hide. Yeah, the hide and
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: there's no there's no exit. The big um ran off. Uh.
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: The shot a couple more times and then fell over.
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: But yeah, stout. Yeah, it took three shots, but I mean,
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: I mean he would have been dead with the first one.
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: But I don't know what he was saying. It once
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: it's very hard to find him. Yes, that's been my experience,
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: he says. He goes you when you go a hundred yards.
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: If they hit that brush and they go a hundred yards,
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: it starts getting dicey. Yeah, yeah, like fanning out and
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: looking at Yeah, because there's no blood, it becomes very
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: difficult to locate them. Yeah, if you don't keep shooting
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: at them. Right, And I'm glad we found it, I
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: mean obviously and uh and he was in the field. Um,
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: it was, you know, it was very interesting to watch.
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: I got to watch that whole thing play out from
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: about a hundred fifty yards away in the brush line,
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: and it was it was pretty exciting because he hit
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: he hit that wind line like right when he got
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: down wind of view, his posture change and that's the
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: moment you shot him. It was I don't know, for me,
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: it was pretty exciting to watch. You know, you guys
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: sell a lot of that new restaurant we do, so
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: there's a there's a harvest is allowed of them, um,
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: and they go down there with professional shooters that have
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: state inspection come with them. And now those boys they're
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: shooting bulls too. Yeah, I mean I think they're shooting anything.
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: They're going down and they're getting both yea of pay
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: in the ranch a per pound price and you know,
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: I really like and they shoot it down then the
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: inspector checks it as they got it. Yeah. Yeah, they
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: have that electro tender rising. They hook it up to
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: a car battery basically, um to initiate the bleed out
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: of it. And really high quality meat. And also it's
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: I like serving that it's uh, and and we can
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: call it an invasive it's in one animal gives up
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: so much protein and it's a it's renewable, I mean
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: because you see how many of them there are. And
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: so I think it's a very good meat to serve
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: so in in both restaurants. That's what we use for
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: our you know, basically like in the venison role, right,
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: there's no guy almost predominantly. Yeah, I don't know, is
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: that accurate. We can talk about this some more time.
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: Can you call it venison? No? I mean it's an
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: antelope so but it I mean, like I said, the
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: venison role, you know, where of the lean um nicely
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: flavored wild game meat, and it is truly wild. That's
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: another thing is that we're able to give some people
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: something that's wild and it's not even hitting corn feeders.
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: I mean, this stuff is grazing. So from every aspect,
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: I think it's a very superior meat. It's a it's
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: grass fed, it's uh, it's not hitting any corn Like
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: I said, um, just really helpful meat. I wonder if
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: part of the thing about why they're not super um
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: popular or not because they don't they don't throw a
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: big dramatic horn. Right, you know sure, I mean when
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: I say popular, I mean like it's not you know,
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: with people that just want head for the wall, I
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: don't know that it's on there. They're that excited about
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: it's a little head. It was like a mountain fils
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: a mountain, like basically like a thick mountain goat horn. Well, yeah,
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: I mean an elk represents its size with its antlers
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: and no, guy absolutely does not represent how big it
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: is with those two horns so sharp sharp, Yeah, there's
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: something to that. Uh, tell everybody about what we cooked
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: with the well, how kind of like what we cooked
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: with the nil guy when we're when we're doing it. Well,
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: we did um, you know, we we had all the
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: really good fresh cuts. First, you know, we did the heart.
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: We did made a cevich with the heart. YEA better
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: explained that, man, because people are gonna be real curious
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: about that. Yeah, it wasn't. It's not like a true
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: cevicha where we're gonna cure the protein in in citrus,
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: but more of like a cevicha flavor where we're just
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: tossing the We we cubed up the heart. We cleaned
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: the heart real well took off the outside. We can
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: never do, yeah, because I wanted to make it supertender
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: for for a raw preparation like that, and uh tossed
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: lime juice. No, I'm sorry, we used to. We use
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: Valley limon for that because we bought a little roadside
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: stand because we're in the middle of citrus season onion
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: chilies to launch row radish avocado. I mean you can.
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: You can really vary it at that point and put
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: whatever you want in there, and you add tomatoes if
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: you want it, or you know, fresh peppers and whatever,
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: and then served it on chips um just a cevich
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: but made with the heart. We made some boot in
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: out of the liver, which is I think it was
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: new to you guys, where you cook the liver and
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: grind it and mix it with rice and it's pretty
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: highly spiced. And then we bake that into a colachi
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: and we bake that into some you know, dough, which
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: is pretty traditional Central Texas check food. We poached off
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: a tongue or the tongue. I thought that was pretty
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: good and just simply pan fried that fried after We
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: don't want to mention about the hearts of echa, which
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: is weird is um. Yeah, super tender, and you eat
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: it and you feel like you were eating fish, but
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: you weren't. There's no fish. It's the flavor record like
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: the temperature, the favor. It's on a chip and you'd
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: be like, oh, yeah, it's fished. Yeah, but then you're like,
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: but there's no fish, but it's just had the mouth feel. Yeah.
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: And then we get here in the first thing j
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: T makes for us, it's that Cevicha, which was very
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: good with red fish. How long does the heart stay
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: in lime like moments? Yeah, it is. It's just like
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: it's just a Cevicha flavor. More than that, we had
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: what else, um we delivered? We had the uh so
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: the tongue poached it until it was tender. Yeah, I
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: think about six hours with just bay leaf and salt
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: and then peel slashed, paired. Yeah, uh, the skin off it,
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: slice it in generous slices, bread and bread crumb, flour, eggwash,
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: bread crumb, and then pan fried that and you could
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: do butter, you know. We used large of course. Uh.
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: And we had the tenderloin, which cop out to say
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: it was fantastic, But I thought that tenderloin was just
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: was truly an incredible and it was done over open fire. Yeah,
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: cooking over mesquite. Um. You know, we made made some
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: sausage to yeah lay up the sausage. Yeah. I made
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: a little sausage that was bound with not a little
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: actually was quite big in a large casing, bound with
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: the ground corn, tortillas and charred onions, a bunch of
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: different chilies, cinnamon, and then we smoked that over mesquite.
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: I thought that turned out pretty good too, and a
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: little bit tasted like a tortilla. Yeah. Yeah, it's going
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: to have that nice little massa flavor in there and
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: it acts as as terrific binder for a sausage. Um, amazing.
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: Bone broth to Ginger, Yeah that's right. Oh yeah, explain that.
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: That's good man. Yeah. Well yeah, we we took a shank. Uh.
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: He was feeling a little down. Do he was feeling
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: a little down. He's having a battle store throw. Yeah, yeah,
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: that's true. You know why because the bone because of
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: the bone broth. So yeah, Chase, who who's who's here
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: working with me? He he was like, let me whip
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: up some of that that bone broth, and he he
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: took the shank and put some ginger in garlic in
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: there and cooked it down and then we got we
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: shredded the shank to make a little bond me sandwich
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: for lunch because we needed boat snacks. And then took
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: that broth and you know, add a little bit of
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: honey to that and and oh some chili pekin so spicy, uh,
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: you know down and you got that ginger in the
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: bottom of ginger up. Yeah, we'll touch of cinnamon to
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: I guess and what was Yeah, I was centamon little
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: star annis in the in the broth, just to kind
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: of give it some flavor. And it's just super nutrient dense,
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: really good stuff. If that was the only liquid I consumed,
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: I would be all right. Yeah, like you got a
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: final way to make it like an alcoholic beverage out
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: of that stuff. Though, Man, you could add in I
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: think some so toll into that. Probably pretty good. Oh.
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: We ate some various steaks the first day, you know,
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: but they were you know, a little on the on
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: the chewy side with the flavors. Were good, but you know,
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: it didn't have a lot of aging time on it.
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: We were incredibly lucky with the weather and it was
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: so warm when we first got down there, and then
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: the cold front blew through and we were able to
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: hang the animal outside, which which I was pretty excited
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: about being able to keep it cold like that rather
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: than transferring to a to a cooler where I just
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: don't think meat ages as well. That doesn't happen often
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: in Texas. Doesn't know drastic temperature drops, do you just
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: we just got lucky with it, especially that far south.
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: I mean it got it went from eight five to
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: the high thirties. You know that same time could have
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: been pretty grueling even this time of year. Yeah, and
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: it'll probably be back in the eighties sometime this week.
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: And you yeah, you can hit ninety any any month
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: of the year. So yeah, we talked a lot about
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: that that you liked. When you're hanging the carcasses up,
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: you know, like I'm not I'm not big on hosing
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: them down, but I like to be able to. But
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: it was still like cold, dry breeze. We're able to
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: hose the carcass off a little bit, clean it up,
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: just let it hang, and look, it's so nice man
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: dry to the touch. The operative terms cold and dry.
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: So much easier to butcher when it's like a handshake
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: that you're touching, you know, pleasure. I'm gonna have to
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: steal the handshake. That's perfect, you know, a really good
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: way to put it. And I think there's such a
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: noticeable difference when you're able to keep stuff dry like that,
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: there was an effected the meat quality. And then Neil
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: Guy is is one of my favorite game meets. I
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: don't want to say because it's mild. I mean, it
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: has as a pretty definitive flavor to it, but it is.
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: It's fantastic. It's a really good meat. I would uh
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: on the taste. Like the problem is, there's so many
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: things are good, so I was talking about, oh, it's
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: one of the best, that's good whatever. I think that
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: that that, like like nil Guy would be Um, if
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: you had a hundred people, okay, you have a hundred
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: people that have uh, don't eat wild game, and you
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: gave that hundred people uh antelope, mule, deer, nil Guy,
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: and these are not wild game connoisseurs. I would bet
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: that the bulk of them would pick nil Guy as
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: their favorite because it's so like easily approachable. There's nothing
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: that someone's gonna get where it's like they're not gonna
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: have like, Oh, that's different kind of thing. It's just
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: very good mild tender um meet with a lower case
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: sim Yeah, I'm excited to have it down. You got
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: a bunch, yeah, I know, I got to divide it
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: all up. Damn right, there's so sad. Well you got
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: fish too, yeah, but the no yeah, the Neil guy
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: deal man. It's it's it's interesting because it's like you said,
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: how many how many you are in the state, hundred
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: thousands in India and thirty here. That's nothing that Texas
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: likes to do, is uh Texas likes to I like this.
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: It's a good it's a good rhetorical strategy. Texas likes
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: to justify it's bizarre quantity of non natives by throwing
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: out the Texas has more revitalized. We have more rhinos
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: in Africa, more tiger. Wasn't there more tigers here at
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: one point? That's somewhere in anywhere in the world. But
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: just like captive I don't know, pet tigers or whatnot,
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: a lot of tigers residing here as well, but not now,
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: not pre ranging. What I've come to love about Texas
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: is funny because uh oh he's hearing about like from
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: being from the north and now he's hearing about Texas.
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: All you hear like people just like talk. It's basically
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: talk bad about wildlife management in Texas, and so you
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: expect to come down here and have it be like
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: a disaster. But then you come down to Texas and
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: it's like, oh, and there are animals everywhere. So you
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: kind of wind up wandering like what is the problem
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: because it's like everywhere. You know, it's a really hard
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: place to screw up, but it's not from the lack
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: of trying. Yeah, I think that, Yeah, you have animals everywhere.
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: I think that the main gripe, uh, this would be
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: a good Watches transition. The main gripe with hunting in
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: Texas is there's just like the animals are largely commodified,
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: there's a there's a value attached to them. The land
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: is private. A lot of the hunting land is owned
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: as recreational hunting property. And so you people that don't
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: have access to associates family with land, right like, you're
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: just screwed. You're kind of screwed because there's very few
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: people that have There's very few I gather there are
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: very few properties where some guys like oh, I just
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: let all the locals come on, right. It's like they
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: that's not true that no one does that. I think
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: the greatest luxury. You're saying, no one lets no one. Yeah,
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: it's like it's come like wildlife here is like thoroughly commodified.
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: It's like there's a value to it. If you want
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: to add it largely, you're gonna pay me to come
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: get it. And you're if you want to go on
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: my land, you're gonna pay me to go on my land.
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: And so the frustration that people have is you don't
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: know anyone, and you don't want to jump into the commodity,
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: the commodifying not the commodity. You don't want to like
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: jump into sort of the transactional nature of Texas hunting
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: where it's like do you want to hunt your pay?
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: And that pisses people off. I get I get a
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: lot of inquiries and people contact me and like, in
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: the past week, I probably feel died three or four
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: of them. Uh hey, I just moved here from blank
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: and I don't understand where I go hunt? What what
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: are my options? And it's like, you know, we always do.
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: It's it's hard, you know, uh public, but you know,
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: it's it's crowded and it's a process to get on there.
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: And I always I always recommend, you know, start with hogs,
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: you know, because your best chance of getting on a
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: place for free or cheap as if you're helping with
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: hog control and like you know, but even that we've talked,
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: but even that's a fallacy because you go online and
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: you'll see like help Texas is over with hogs, and
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: it's an ad. It's an ad for you to come pay.
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: So people like, if it's overrun with hogs, and hogs
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: is such a problem, why can't I go hunt hogs
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: without paying for it? But it baffles people. Man, It's
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: like all they really no one you know up in Montana,
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: Like there's a lot of guys in hunt kyles. No
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: one in Montana. There's cattle ranchers, sheep ranchers that don't
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: want coyotes. No one in Montana is paying or Wyoming
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: or wherever is like paying to go hunt coyotes because
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: people legitimately m or all the opinion that the Kyle
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: some people are legit like have the opinion kyotes should go.
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: It's not transactional. It's like, oh you wanna get kyotes,
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: please go ahead. But here's like psych pyke, I don't
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: really want to get rid of them. I'm just trying
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: to sell you some ship more coyotes than people up there.
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: Probably in Wyoming he counted it out. I mean, there's
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: huge population here in big cities. Probably just don't even know.
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: I don't have the first thing of of hunting culture
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: in them. Yeah, it's from where I'm sitting. It's one
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: of the best places to hunt. With a few relationships
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: made and in the privilege to be able to access
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: you've got. It didn't come from that because I was
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: I was really the first person in my family to
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: hunter fish. Um. But by being nice to people and
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: making relationships, UM. I don't think it takes money or
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: or status to find some people through relationships that you
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: can go especially hunt pigs, but even get a deer
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: um and and those tend to be pretty high quality
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: experiences because a private owner of land takes good care
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: of it. You're not running into trash on the river
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: banks and stuff like that. It's it's definitely a double
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: edged sword. Yeah, we've gotten a lot of you know, well,
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: just through the work that we're in and but It's
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: like everything with us is just it's different. Like I
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: always kind of caution people UM like like doing what
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: we do, it's just you're in an alter You're in
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: a whole different alternate reality the business that we're in
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: UM where people talk about like how do you scout,
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: like what you're scouting? Like how do you scout for stuff?
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, I can tell you how we use
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: to scout. We scout like everybody else where, and I
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: still know how to do it. But you'd scout by
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: like traditional scouting things. You might make a trip out
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: and go look and you know, you look online and
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: get on on X and get on Google Earth and
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: do all that. But after you build up such like
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: after you build up such a network of individuals that
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: you know that hunting fish a lot. To be absolutely honest,
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: for us, scouting is a lot of being on the
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: phone because we're always one phone call removed, if that
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: would be the most would be like a phone call
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: removed from someone who is a expert in that area.
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: You know. Back to that point, I would say small
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: town Texas, Rockport, all the way to the Panhandle, all
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: the way to West Texas, and all the way down
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: south where you guys are. If you if you're living
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: in a town of only several thousand people, I guarantee
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: every kid in that town, whether their landowners or not,
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: has an opportunity to hunt. Small town Texas, there's just
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: it's just such a tight knit community of people that
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: everyone's gonna know somebody that you can go on to
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: somebody's land and have access, maybe not on your own,
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: like just the combination to the gate, but even that's
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: super common. But if you start talking about Austin and
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: you just came here, you took a tech job, and
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: you don't know anybody yet, it's gonna be tough to
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: figure out, but not super tough. And if you've got money,
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: there's a ton of like lease opportunities where you don't
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: have to own land. You can pay five grand a
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: year and partner up with some other members and have
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: access to you know, thousand five thousand acre place. Treat
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: it like your own, put a trailer out there, put
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: some blinds and feeders up. And I think that's also
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: where that culture comes from, because I call it harvesting.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: There's very little stocking you can do in Texas unless
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: you have access to a giant ranch. I've got three acres,
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: and how it's filled not far from here. If I
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: break one twig, my dear jumped the fence and going
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: to other people's land, and they might not come back
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: for a couple of days. So you have to set
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: up a blind in a feeder to attract those animals
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: onto your place. And and if you're a working man,
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: you only get to hunt that saturday. You don't want
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: to go out and waste that opportunity and chase your
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: animals away by doing a bad stock on them, you know.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: So yeah, I balanced, Like I said, I was trying
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: to get to the point where you look from a
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: from a perspective of being in a place, it's like
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: a like always have lived in public land, states like
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: a lot of public land, a lot of acts. Is
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: like you know, I've lived in Michigan, Montana, Washington, right,
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: all these places that we're just like a ton of
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: places to go. So you look down here and you
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: get the sense that it's a disastrous in some way.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: But then every time you come down here, it's just
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: like being here is different than viewing it because you
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: come down here and you're like, oh man, just a
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: lot of wildlife, a lot of space, a lot of wildlife. Yeah,
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: and it doesn't feel uh, it feels like in so
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: many ways it's enviable. Remember earlier I was promising a
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: good segue. Holy sh it. You guys got a lot
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: of public water, yes, and you can hunt up to
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: the high water mark on a lot of those rivers.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: That's that's an untapped resource. A lot of people don't
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: think about. You can, you know, take a canoe down
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: a river and shoot a deer or a pig on
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: the bank, and it's it's almost impossible to go five
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: miles down any one of our public rivers and not
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: see animals. You can hunt. Um, but I was talking
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: about fishing. Yeah, if I if you lived here, like
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: if you want if you move here and had that
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: like tech job you're talking about, dude, just fish tons
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: efficient like described kind of the area where you work. Um.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: So down here in Rockport, it's basically, um, the middle
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: Texas coast. So I think we've got something like fo
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: miles a shoreline. It's almost smack dab in the middle
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: of the curvature of our coastline on the Gulf um
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: very shallow estuary system. That's separated from the Gulf of
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: Mexico by a protective barrier island, So the longest barrier
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: island in the world. It's separated roughly every sixty miles
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: by a pass to the ocean, and so there's nowhere
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: you can get to the Gulf of Mexico except for
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: these these pass. Ransas Pass is one of those. Yeah,
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: and that's a jettied system where barges and barges and
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: tankers come in. But it's also the main artery for
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: the recruitment of larva. So most of our species sheep
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: had drum, redfish, blue crab, all the minnow species, and
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: shrimp of three variety pink, white, and brown. All you
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: guys get you guys, get clever with name and shrimp down. Yeah. Yeah,
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: the white shrimp is kind of gray. The brown is
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: like a tan. But yeah, anyway, the all those fish
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: and and and critters have to migrate out the passes
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: to spawn, and then their eggs come in with current
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: and filter back into all those grass shorelines where we were,
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: and they hide out until they're big enough to swim
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: freely on their own as adults. I want to make
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: sure people, I want to make sure people are getting
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: this right. So there's the mainland of just flat out
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: the mainland of Texas, and then there's the mangrove sort
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: of border in the marsh. And then how like if
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: you're going to go, if you're going in a straight line,
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: you leave the land and you want to head out
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: to the Gulf of Mexico. How what does the distance
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: you travel? Typically in most places, what's the distance you
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: travel before you hit like what would be like waves
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: on a beach, right, if you're a good swimmer, you
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: can make it to the Barrier Island. I want to
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: say probably five miles is the maximum distance from the
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: mainland of Texas going due east until you encounter the
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: Barrier Island. And I want to say the Barrier Island
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: at most is probably three to four miles wide before
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: you get to the dunes and then the Gulf of Mexico.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: So that Barrier Island gets that big. Yeah, but it's confusing, right,
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: So when we went to the Barrier Island, um, from
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: the outside shoreline, it looks like an impenetrable body of land,
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: but small creeks lead into big, expansive, shallow back areas
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: of marsh, just like on our mainland, so they're kind
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: of mirror images of each other. It's almost like if
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: you cross sectioned the Texas coast on the mainland side
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: and flipped it over, you'd have the marsh on the
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: other side as well. So UM, yeah, it's just this
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: incredibly um resilient, muddy bottom um clean watered estuary system
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: that we have that's very prolific, very abundant with life,
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: like our biomass, Like you can't run your fingers through
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: the sea grass without coming up with, you know, a
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: handful of criters. So very productive estuary. And how far, um,
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: how far do you roam? Like as a fishing guide,
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: I know the coast, I would say every little creek
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: and inlet and back area for for about forty miles
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: to the north and about sixty miles to the south.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: Um it accumulates to at this point my life's work
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: just exploring and navigating all those little channels. So from
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: the Laguna Madre um that we have, we have um
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: Teddy Roosevelt designated the National Seashore, So we have this
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: National Seashore bird Island which starts in Corpus Christian goes
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: down to Mansfield, Texas. UM pretty incredible beach. That's maybe
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: one of the longest stretches of undeveloped beach in the country.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: And on the inside of that, like you can walk
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: over the dunes and be in the bay, or you
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: can fish on the ocean side. Um so yeah, just
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: a ton of opportunities. I tend to focus within twenty
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: or miles north or south of Rockport on a daily basis,
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: maybe fifty mile round trip. Yesterday, I bet we put
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: in about forty miles if you added it all up
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: and followed our tracks. But I go that extra distance.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: It was duck hunting season where we are now, so
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: the land just at the island, just adjacent to where
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: we are sitting, was loaded up with air boats and
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: duck hunters. So I took us a little farther north,
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: hoping we would be undisturbed by other people, and I don't.
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: Did we see a person yesterday other than ourselves? Yeah? Not.
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: Once we got back in where we were fishing on
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: a weekend, there's two bows parked at those us on
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: the outside. Yeah, so we we did the We did
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: the purtiest thing. People are pretty wide. Uh you give
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: people a pretty well, you don't have that guide like attitude.
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: I can be aggressive, yeah, and going back to it. Um,
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: I I call Austin home. Um, but I would rather
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: be in Rockport than Austin, and for all intensive purposes
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: I live here. I spend you know, two d fifty
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: days out of the year in Rockport and the other
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: the other times a year. If I do go to Austin,
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: it's the trade out gear, get a rifle and my
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: camo and get straight to a buddy's ranch to hunt.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: Like I don't spend any time in Austin. It's a
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: very busy place. Not my scene. I tend to love
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: to be away from people, although it allows me to
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: love people being distant from them, right. But um, I
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: live on this. I live on this, h on this
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: kind of motto that there there shouldn't be a needless
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: behavior of my own that has a negative consequence on
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: someone else's outdoor experience. And if somebody's courtesy, whether it's
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: intentional or based on ignorance, affects my day, then I've
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: become very upset to the point and probably even confrontation,
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: because do you have to protect this out here? You
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: have to make sure people understand that to approach you
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: is going to have consequences because if they were to
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: if someone had come in there just to scout around
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: and motored through the water, we were in. We worked
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: really hard to be where we were, and the water
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: so shallow we can't just kick up anywhere and go
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: to a new spot. And so yeah, if I see
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: a boat in a little creek that person had that
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: he got there first, I'm going somewhere else, even if
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: I want to be inside of where he is, super
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: bad and there's other places to go. And your specialty
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: is site fishing for redfish, that's right. Yeah, I think
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: redfish are one of the friendly there the fisherman's front.
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: So like you know, you could rack up twenty grand
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: chasing a permit and might not get your first permit
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: depending on your skill level or your luck that day
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: and next co Belize, Florida, Keys, wherever. Redfish belong in
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: the Gulf of Mexico, there, Texan Um. They stretch up
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: the up the Atlantic coast quite a ways, but they're
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: unique to this part of the world. You can go
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: other to other countries and find bone fish and tarpan
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: and gulf the Gulf coast and its culture um and
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: be in the Texas Coast. There's no other place I
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: could I could really feel the connection to my heritage
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: and appreciate an animal that much. It's like, you get
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: a view of the Texas Coast if you go to
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: the beach in Galveston. It's kind of muddy, murky water.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: It's not a beautiful place as compared to the West Coast,
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: you know. But when you get in there and you
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: and you, and you become intimate with that abundance of
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: life like in our marsh, Um, it's hard to shake that.
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: It's hard to go somewhere else and be as happy
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: as you are here. But but I do have a
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: big problem with the way Texans perceive their entitlement to
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: use that that as as they see fit and into
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: in my in my opinion, abuse that that country. Um,
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: I would be happy forever in Rockport if I felt
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: like we appreciated what we have here. But I don't, really,
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: I don't feel that way. I don't feel like as
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: a culture, we put enough importance on stewardship and conservation. Um.
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: You know, and people are pouring into this state and
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: we're basically showing them, look, you can come down here
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: and do whatever you want. It's a grocery store. Just
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: keep your limit every day. Um yeah, I would love
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: to see and I'm doing my part to try to
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: educate and try to spread the news that this is
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: super special and it could go away. You know, one
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: hard freeze this year and all the fish we saw
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: would be floating upside down. Right. So it's delicate, it's fragile,
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: it's beautiful, and it deserves a lot of respect. Gig
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: and flounder, this is not this is not your preferred subject,
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: you know. Um, I love under You saw me last
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: night on that on that fish tray. I mean I
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: was glued to the flounder. I like to put a
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: little more work in. I like to to uh. I
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: don't like to be on noisy fan boats yea. Um,
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: but I think everything when I when I think about
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: the beauty of something, I usually picture a father and
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: a son waiting together with you know, with with spears
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: over their shoulder in a flashlight at night. Um yeah,
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: the guide, the guide thing kind of takes me away
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: from But I love flounder. Yea. So we went out
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: flounder gigging, which I was like real curious about wanting
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: to do uh. Part of it comes from in the
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: like in the north. You know, there's not opportunities to
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: for spearing in the in the north, and freshwater opportunities
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: for spearing game fish or spearing like really good fish
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: to eat or shooting them with your bow, like very
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: very limited, no, just because of legal structures, regulatary structures,
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: like there's like very like strict method to take stuff
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: and generally any fish that people really want to eat,
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: our game fish even down to where like bluegills and
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: perch or game fish right crap ees all this stuff
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: like listen to game fish and generally speaking, um like
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: it's like native game fish and Jerry speaking, you don't
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: jab him with anything, you know, there's somebody there's notable
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: exceptions like you can spear pike through the ice and
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: some various things like that, but Johnny like you can't.
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: You don't do it. So to hear that you can
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: go out and gig flounder, which everyone knows like flounder
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: good eat is it's enticing, it's fun to go and
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: so there's like I don't know if you'd called a
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: fleet here, but there's a industry around flounder gigging and
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: you're gigging for southern flounder. And we went out with
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: a guide that uh, that's what he does. I don't
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: know how many, a couple hundred nights a year, UM,
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: and they rigs for it. Man. They got like these
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: guys got big ass, wide welded aluminum boats UM with
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: a big deck on the front. And they got light systems.
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: They got one light system that goes underwater, like a
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: submerged light system. Then they got other light systems that
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: shine down in the water. And they got an outboard
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: for traveling from spot spot but mounted on a like
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: basically like it looks like a polling platform. Above the outboard,
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: they got a small fan motor, no shroud on it,
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: but just like it looks like a helicopter or like
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: an airplane prop on a fan motor, and they can
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: use that and drive over what like five six now no, ple, Yeah,
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: you can cruise with that fan motor over let's just say,
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: I don't know, exaggerate twelve inches of water, UM. And
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: he got these bright ass lights and they can control
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: that fan from up front. He's got a throttle in
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: a in a steering switch and everybody's line up on
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: the front and you got a big, gass, heavy weighted spirit.
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: But it's only like a four time spear. Knew the
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: whole thing's five inches side to side. And I don't
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: know what it is in a flounder's head, but they
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: don't spook. They get in the silt. They're incredibly hard
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: to see, like some of them. I'm I consider myself
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: like good at spotting fish. I was blown away by
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: that guy's ability to spot fish. We would have passed
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: man easily. Six of the fish that we did get,
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: we got nine. I feel like I would have saw
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: two or three of them. I saw the first one.
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: I was like, oh, it's a piece of cake. But
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: then I would not have saw. I would not We
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: would just roll over, not have seen because they don't jump,
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: They just let the boat go over. But your cruise
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: along these bright ass lights and you see these very
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: subtle uh indicators. It's of where a flounder would be
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: laying under the mud. The easiest thing, well, yeah, the
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: easiest thing to see is where he's not. Because when
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: he leaves, it leaves a very it leaves a bed
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: that is a depression. But when the flounder lays in
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: there when he's actually present, he makes it level like
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: he assumes like his body basically assumes assumes the level
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: of the what's the word the Yeah, he his body
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: assumes the level of the sea floor. So it's all
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: just color and maybe like subtle lines around the edge.
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: But then when he leaves, it leaves a flounder thick
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: impression of a flounder in the bottom. You can always
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: tell where he where he's not but holy ship, and
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: then they change colors. So we found one over oysters.
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: They had a way different pattern exposed pattern, and they
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: can turn light, they can turn dark, and they get
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: and they're good because when they're in there, they're flipping
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: in and they actually get that silt to come back
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: down on top of them. But when you do see him,
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: so you're cruising along, it's only like air pushing his
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: boat along. And whoever his giggin has got a gig,
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: and then the dude opt the guy's got a gig,
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: and he used his gig. He can like jab his
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: gig into the bottom of the sea floor and use
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: the handle to stop the boat because he can immediately
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: like throttle back and there's not a lot of force
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: and he can just like stop the boat and even
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: back it up, and then the flounders laying there and
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: other stuff is hard to gig. But the flounder you
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: just you got all the time in the world, and
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: you get above it and hit it in the gilt
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: cover and then up into the boat. And there's other stuff.
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: It's like much more difficult to hit the stuff that's
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: not pinned to the ground. I mean, it's really the
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: best way for flounder. And you can catch them on
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: rotten real they are very difficult fish to grab. If
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: you can imagine flipping on the on the like a
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: red fishing and just get them behind the head, pinch
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: them and lift them up. But the founders, like it
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: goes ballistic out of the water. And so I mean,
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: can you imagine how good the Indians had it here?
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: They were like torchlights. Oh man, Yeah, I would like
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: recommend I would definitely recommend um that people check it out.
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: The noise might the noise might get to you. Like
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: I like a lot of times I go somewhere and
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: do something and I'd be like if I lived here,
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: would I'd be way into this, you know? And I
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: feel like I would if I lived here, I would
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: strive to find a more peaceful way to hunt flounder.
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: You're walking, you just have a I mean, they make
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: flounder lights now that are really um they're light like
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: l eds, and you just hold them and you rig
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: them up to a twelve old battery and you put
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: in your backpack and you go out with a really
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: light gig and you're not gonna cover the water and
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: you're as well as in a boat. So maybe you're
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: gonna get one or two and night. But um, I
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: mean for me, that's I mean, that's a pretty nice experience.
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: You go out in the bay and it's just dead
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: quiet and you're just walking around, and you know you
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: have a successful night is when you gig a flounder.
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: But you could probably use J. T. S U tactic
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: too and go to places where those those air boats are.
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: The giga boats are not small, and I'm sure that
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: there they are limited to some extent, and there's probably
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: water that holds flounder that they're not getting to you.
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: That's a good thing that you could probably as a
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: guy in a small rig that was gonna go wait,
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: you could probably find some good stuff pulling around for
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: red fish. During the day, you see a bunch of flounder,
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: and what they'll do is that when you spook them. Um,
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: you know, they pretty much hold their their ground under
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: lights at night. But during the day, as the boat
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: goes over them, they'll quickly get out of that spot.
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: And then you see them kind of flutter their fins
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: and get back into that and bed themselves in the
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: soil twelve feet over and it creates a huge plume
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: of silt. And I mean, you could just start, you'd
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: find him right, you could give him during the day.
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: Um yeah, I don't condemn that method. It's highly effective.
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: So the only thing is, like you gotta watch regulations
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: make sure the population is doing good. But it's a
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: delicious fish and if you're going out and spearing it yourself,
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: I'm all for it. If I didn't come on the
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: water every day as an occupation, so if I get
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: a day off, I'm not thinking, Man, I'm gonna flounder
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: all night. Right. Yeah. The way and the way I
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: would picture doing is I would picture getting my canoe,
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: putting some shop lights on the edge of it, putting
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: two or three car batteries in there, and putting my
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: kid up front. You know, it works really good. Looks
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: like two kids up front and one of them gets
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: the right side and one of them gets left side. Yeah,
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: do you remember those? Uh, they don't make him anymore.
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: It was the best kickboat in the world. Hobie Cat
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: made like a double pontooned like like, it's got a
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: real comfortable seat on it, and it's got even a
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: little rack on the back of it. And we had
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: these things called the fishing pal down here, which we're
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: basically like a giant styrofoam pontoon thing six ft tall
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: three and half feet wide, and a platform you could
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: sit on in a kind of a crossbar to put
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: your feet on, and you can basically just sit on
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: that thing and crawl around in shallow water with a
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: powerful head lamp and a little spot and you could
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: just do it from there. Then you're not walking. If
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: you see something, there's an alligator in the weeds, you
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: can pull your legs up and beyond this thing. Right. Um,
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: you're not as exposed if as if you're waiting around.
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: But what's cool about them is they tend to want
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: to be on a pretty hard bottom of sand, and
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: so that's easy weight fishing um flounder habitat because you
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: guys saw there's some places down here in the back
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: marsh where if you stepped out of the boat you'd
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: be to mud up to your thigh and you're pretty
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: much stuck. Um and flounder don't tend to hang out
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: in those areas. So we think about all that seth.
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: You know, it was cool, the gigging, the noise of
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: that motor got old quick. I think, Yeah, I definitely
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: recommend anybody goes bring yourself bringing some of your plugs. Yeah,
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: were you all not wearing headphones? No, it wasn't that bad.
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: It's just a lot, man. You ever like bow fish
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: out of a boat where you're the guys running the
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: lights off a generator, just that same thing. Yeah, it's
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: like it's already like your world's already shrunk down to
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: what's lit, which is fine, like if it's quiet, you know,
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: like I was talking about, like the rig on talking
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: about you put a couple of car batteries. You got
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: limited time. So you know, you've got a couple of
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: car batteries, you're gonna get an hour light off each battery.
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: So it's like we're not gonna be able to go
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: for long. But you're out and you hear everything and
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: hear birds, are your frogs, your things splashing in the water.
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: It's like you just hear you hear raccoon walking through
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: the mud, you know, and so your world shrunk down visually.
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: But in an audio sense, it's it's like more it's
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: like enhanced, the more expansive. But in these rigs like
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: bow fishing with a generator, do net gigging on an airboat,
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: your world shrunk down visually and audio is gone. That's crucial.
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: I think that. Yeah, it's like if you're trying to
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: torture me into telling something after a couple of hours,
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: like all right, if I here's what happened, just let
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: me off this boat. Silence, silence except for the sounds
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: of nature, water bugs, critters, birds. I mean, silence is
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: one of the most important elements for me doing what
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: I do. Remember this musicologist reading this musicologist who was
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: talking about, um, you can't use someone, you can't appreciate
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: music or anything until you appreciate silence. Like you have
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: to respect silence to like understand that there's an interruption
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: in it. You know. It's just it's like it's fundamental
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: to like have for a sound to be nice, you
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: sort of have to recognize the absence of sound, or
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: he did a better job of articulating it, but just yeah,
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: it's not Jesse. Did you feel us sounding grateful because
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: you took us out flounder gigging? No, not at all.
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: I mean I think it was you know, you came
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: down here. I think you know to to do some
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: specific intangible things. But also I think that, um, in
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: a way, I was kind of playing Texas host a
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: little bit too, for sure. And I feel like, especially
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: when we got down here to the bay, you know,
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: we we got to experience kind of the big ranch
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: historical and cultural heritage of South Texas, which is truly unique.
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: But we get here and um, I mean, I'm not
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: gonna say that I intended to do it beforehand, but
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: what ended up happening is we experienced probably must drastic
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: spectrum of of bay experiences between j T where it's
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: stunningly quiet out there and you're pulling, you're moving through
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: the water without making a sound, and and then you
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: were looking for this fish and there's the the approach
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: is extremely delicate. Um, the way that the fish has
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: cared for after it comes to the boat. I mean,
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: j T allowed us to kill some fish, which I'm
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: really appreciative of, and I understand his perspective on it.
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: And I'm I'm a I'm a bona fide fish killer
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: and and I'm and I feel very respected by him
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: letting me kill some of some of his fish. Oh man,
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: it's your it's your total right. And I enjoyed the
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: hell out of it. Yeah, but the way the way
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: that I mean, I've never seen a guide gut our
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: you know, probably apologized to the fish first, thank you.
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: I'm not apologetic. I just and you know, there's a
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: community of rednecks down here that when there was very
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: few people here, they they they perfected ways to be
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: most efficient in how to pursue these fish. Airboats, flounder boats,
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: those things belong here, just like the oyster, the cactus,
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: the rattlesnakes. This is a tough and hospitable place. And
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: to survive down here in the past took a lot
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: of grit. And for someone that they would label, um
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: some hill country sort of liberal over romantic sized philosophical
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: guy like myself, I get it. That would irritate me. Too.
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: If someone like that showed up, and I love those guys.
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: Some of my best friends down here operate airboats and
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: they operate flounder gigging boats. I was attracted to that
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: tough culture. Um. And the last thing I want to
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: see happen, the very last thing I want to see
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: happen is for a bunch of young fly fishing guides
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: to start popping up who don't have that history with
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: this place, who don't have, um, that real connection to
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: this marsh. I would rather see airboats and my friendship
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: with those guys allows both of us to understand and
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: influence one another a lot more than if we had
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: contention in and animosity towards each other. You know what
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: people should go do? Um that was and me. We're
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: on the first episode of doss Boat, right, so we
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: did a fish and show. If you're going you, it's
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: just on you. It's free on YouTube. UM, go look
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: our look up our fishing show dos Boat. You can
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: do that right now. You can go. What we're doing
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: right now will be a show later, UM will be
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: one of our like you know, Flagship met Eater episodes.
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: But if you want to like write this second go
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: look up dos boat and me and JT fish and
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: have a couple of debates about killing not debates, conversations
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: about fishing with bait, killing fish, site fish, and just
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: like get a little bit of like a like a
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: mini exploration and you see the areas JT fishes. Um,
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: you're not a numbers guy at all. I lose count
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: after three or four. But do you would it? Um?
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: Do you think it's helpful or not helpful? If I
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: was to say how many fish we caught? I don't
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: think it matters. Yeah, I'm happy to share, like I
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: can say that. Yeah for sure. I don't know if
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: it's harmful to you as a guide because there's an expectation. No,
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: not at all, not at all. It's all about ability
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: and you guys, you guys came with ability to fish,
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: and so we were very successful. We I mean we
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: we site fished like like casting like specifically casting flies
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: to fish we were looking at. We caught five yesterday
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: like that, but then we just went to some spots
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: with spinning tackle and artificials that the whole gang of us,
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: I mean we caught inect well and excess of sixty
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: fish probably more. Yeah, there's times that those That was
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: a specific condition, Um, and that's where just got all
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: the accumulation of failure and learning for me. Um. We
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: had a condition where for the last couple of days
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: of northern was blowing directly into that bank, and what
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: happened was it pushed a lot of water into that
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: back area. When we started actually in the morning, came in.
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: There was current moving with us as we went up
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: that system, and we saw active fish when we looped
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: around and finally we're on our way out at the
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: very end in that creek, the wind had slacked and
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: so um current simply from an EBB so there was
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: no more force of wind d wind. It's like a
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: wind drive current, so it's relative whether it's it's produced
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: by wind pumping water up into and when when the
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: wind slacked. Did you notice at the end of the
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: day was pretty calm, so all that water they pushed
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: in there now was flushing out. So those fish came
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: in that creek and we're facing that current without current
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: that that creek is a ghost town. Yeah, And we
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: were casting up I guess yeah, because the current wasn't
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: outright the current current was going out, so we were
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: we were casting down down current, retreating and retrieving up
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: current because everything faces and moves into current. Even the
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: shrimp are are looking for a little any zoe, plankton
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: and stuff they eat that's coming out of those back areas. Yeah,
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: you know, like people talk about getting one in every cast.
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: There must have been ten eleven casts when I had
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 1: one on every cast, but I actually had h if
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: I took ten cast, I actually had eleven fish because
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: at one point in time I took a fish off.
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: It was fiddling around and had my uh jig hanging
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: in the water, and one grabbed it. So I was positive,
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: ten casts eleven fish. Yeah, that doesn't hand very often.
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 1: We should have a little late to the party. But
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: it was so quick and easy to get onto that,
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 1: Like by my I don't know, fourth and fifth fish,
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: I was like watch this, okay, this one on the
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: drop and it's like a season hit the water as
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: long as you had your line tired enough where you
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: can feel it hit. As that thing's dropping through the current,
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: it's like boot there he is. You know, you don't
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: even have to like it's like, you know, the good
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: fishing makes up for less than one percent of the
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: actual area out there. Oh, this is giant, vastness, and
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: so you have to learn conditions that attract fish. That's
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: one thing I wanted to bring up. And then I
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: want to talk about cooking fish a little bit. Is
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: you um eat You guys has like I hopefully realize it.
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: Each of you guys has like something. You're very very
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: good at um. I'll start with you j T. Where
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: if if I go fishing with you right people, if
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: you didn't know better, you would make the mistake of
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: just thinking that there are fish everywhere. But I've been
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: fishing enough to know that if I just came down
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: here and rented a boat, I would probably spend a
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: lot of days being extremely frustrated. I realized this without
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: having done it, I would be really frustrated. I'd be like,
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: I don't get it. I thought I was supposed to
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: be good down here. There ain't shit. It's all fished
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: out right because you just be trying to figure it out.
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: But you've been doing this for so many years, you
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: just make you make this. It's like this optic this
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: like this illusion that everything is just loaded with fish.
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: But then we took the boat over a course of
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: a bunch of miles and stopped in specific spots, and
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: those specific spots were filled with fish. And one day,
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: the second day, we went out and you went to
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: a spot and it wasn't what you wanted, and some
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: light bulb off in your head and you're like, based
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: on that, I'm not seeing what I want here, it
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: must be that I need to do something else. Yeah,
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 1: And then we went to that something else, and so
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: I saw you like not screw up, but I saw
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: you go through your calibration process where you like, I
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: want to check this, Nope, that means this, And then
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: it was just game on the rest of the day. Man,
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: it was really fun. It's fun to watch because, like
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: like I said, you'd have to know if you just
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: came down from somewhere and didn't hadn't done a lot
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: of exploration, you'd come away with the real wrong impression.
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: Anybody's gonna pound them. Yeah, saltwater, you know. Um. I
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 1: love fishing in the mountains for trout, and for me,
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: that's a lot more about just the surroundings, you know,
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: being in the mountains, feeling the air, the beauty and
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: the clarity of those rivers, the cold water, um, the entomology,
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: how it all works. Um, I don't need to stick
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: anymore trout. I do love trout, I appreciate trout. I'd
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: rather see my my young boys. That's gonna be. We're
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: gonna walk some creeks in Colorado and Montana and put
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: on big dry flies and you know, um, but down
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: here the learning never stops. It doesn't learn. The learning
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: doesn't stop in the mountains either. But there's a complexity
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: to this that I keyed in on early on, and
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: I would go to spots and treat those spots like,
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: why isn't something happening here? It looks perfect, everything's like
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: all the the equation that didn't make sense to me.
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: But a spot is the last place she saw fish. Right,
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: Conditions are what you have to learn, and um, you know,
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: I've got a system now that makes me feel really
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: confident when I go out in the morning with someone
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: different every day, I don't have butterflies and like, oh
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: my god, I hope I find fish for these guys. Um,
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: I just have to follow my my go through my
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: little handbook and follow the equation and I'll end up
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: on them. You know. You know, it's funny to talk
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 1: about the conditions saying we had some guys on one
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 1: time and we're talking about it very difficult, basically over
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: the counter, big horn, cheap hunt and uh, they're talking
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: about the trouble that happens when you're hunting last year's
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: Like you can't hunt last year sheet. You know, you
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: can't fish for yesterday's fish man yesterday and to it
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: is it changes that fast, especially this time of year. Um,
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: you can't be like they should be in here, they
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: were here yesterday. And I've got a ton where every
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: time I go to somewhere I think should have fish
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: and it doesn't. Oh man, that's just the perfect opportunity
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: to go back to the books and figure out what
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: what element I left out of that equation. And there's
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: a lot of randomness to it too, Like they fish
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: don't sit still, so those those fish move around. They
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: might be over here, they might be over there. But
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: if you, if you follow the rules of those conditions,
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: you can limit of the spots on the first couple
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: of steps being the tide, the wind direction, the water temperature,
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: what bait is present, what the fish are primarily feeding on.
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: When you when you isolate those factors, then it's gonna limit.
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: It's gonna take the map out of the equation, right, um,
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 1: And that's kind of what it's spent the last twenty
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: years trying to figure out. I think the coolest thing
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: I saw yesterday, um was we're watching a red fish
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: and he's going to eat something, and he like charged
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: up to eat something so shallow he almost had to
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: like back out. Yeah, like he had to like flop
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 1: his way. It was had to like flop his way
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 1: back out and chase a big group of mudment was
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 1: up onto the mud bank and had to wallow him.
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 1: It wasn't like quite like he was like a ship,
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 1: like he knew what he was doing, but he very
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 1: much had sort of like how cool are they? So
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: a red fish is just like super predacious, super aggressive.
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: But as you approach that fish, if you drop a
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: penny in the boat, it's over. So it's this very
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: um difficult stock where everyone has to be totally no
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: shuffling of feet, no like moving your stance, no vibrations
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: in the boat. But if you get that fly or
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: that soft plastic there and he he mistakes it for something,
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: you know, for a piece of prey, they're just damn
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 1: nail it. Yeah. That at one point he kept saying
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: like talking about how the cast has to be very
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: precise and saying it's all food. He doesn't care. It's
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: like he's a lazy Southerner. It's just all food. And
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: you said you need to make that thing lately on
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: like a mustache, right, and when you did that, they
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 1: were just without hesitation. Good fish are very enjoyable and
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 1: if you get good at casting a fly rod. Um.
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: You know, think about this, if we were looking for
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 1: keeper fish's a lot of those, you know, forty or
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 1: fifty fish we caught at the end of the day. Um.
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: Not many of them were of keeper sids. So what's
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: the what's the legal fish? Yeah, and there was a
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: bunch of like sixteen nineteen and three quarter um. But
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: with a fly rod, all the fish we saw, they're
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: all foraging and even shallower water, we're all big fish.
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: And there was sometimes I'm like, not that closer when
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 1: get that one a little farther on the right. That's
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: interesting point that up in that like twelve inches of water,
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: it is big fatties. Yeah, because they know they're not
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: gonna get hauled off by a bird. So yeah, bird
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 1: predation um and Jesse back to the You know, they're
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: there in a world with the right amount of human
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: beings and the right resources for those human beings to survive.
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: Keeping fish is a much more pure there's a perversion
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 1: to what I do. I harass these fish. I stick
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 1: them in the mouth and put them back with a
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 1: with a slight wound in their face. Um. And and
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: those fish are commodity to me, So I exploit those
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: fish for a living. Um. The individual who wants to
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: to feed his family by going fishing on their own
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: and keeping fish, that's as beautiful and as pure of
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 1: an outdoor pursuit as I can think of. Um. You know,
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 1: I I protect those fish kind of for selfish purposes,
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: you know, because I want to go catch those same
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 1: fish again. Um. But but I'd just like to clarify
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: that that I think it's a beautiful thing to harvest
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 1: your own food. And what both of you guys are doing, um.
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: And the way that you teach people is really awesome.
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: And you specifically Jesse, like take Canna a working man's approach.
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: You're not having fancy gear, fancy guns and just going
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: out with your granddad's shotgun and learning how not to
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 1: not to not to hunt and fish on your own,
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: but how to cook on the level that you prepare
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: those animals. That's the highest level of respect towards nature. Man.
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: That's just like class act. Buddy, both of you guys
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: cheers see on that. That's what I was gonna butter
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: Jesse up about the minute I had one, I'm gonna transition.
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna pivot with one thing. I forgot to mention. Now, Now,
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 1: when you're in that flounder gigging boat, you're like up
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: against you're tucked up against the mangroves, so you're up
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: against the shoreline and there's all these mullets and schools
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: of dolphins come in and they know and they come
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: in and hunt with you. Where anytime you're on the
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 1: shore of the dolphins show up and they just parallel
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 1: the boat. They know those mullet got to make like
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: a deal where the mullet want to get out and
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: you'll see those bullet like getting out and they'll know
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: those dolphins are there, and uh, and they'll kind of
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: like veer a little out of the way of the boat,
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: and damn with the dolphins, they'll come back and they'll
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: come back. And now then when those dolphins just be
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: like one of them make a slight mistake and going
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: just deep enough water and then whamp that cool thing
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: about that whole thing dolphins And they would they would
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 1: come up and they would turn on their side to
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: look to and then like you could see their heads
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: like they'd follow a fish. They you'd like you'd watched
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: them for like ten minutes, they'd follow fishing, and all
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: of a sudden, for whatever reason, they're like, oh, that's
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: the right one, and they take off after and they
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: can't turn their heads like if you picture dolphin laying
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 1: in the water belly down, he can't look right and left,
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: but he can look up and down. So when they're
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: parallel on the boat, they turn and pitch so their
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: bellies facing the shore, and then they can bend their
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: chin down at a right anle and staring at those
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: mullet man and look at you often wonder what their
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: level of understanding is. I mean, they're super smart at
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: it was. We spent a long time. I don't know
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 1: if it's new ones coming in, but a long time
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: with those things. I mean you could have I could
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: have gigged one for sure. Don't think that it crossed
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 1: my mind. I was just being like, man, a fella,
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 1: could I wonder if it always comes up that taste?
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: Like I know that they harpooned him in Indonesia. Uh yeah, Okay,
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 1: So now that I talked about the dolphins eating, here's
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 1: a good transition. How about me eating your food? Because
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: I was gonna say that, Um yeah, Like I like
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: to cook, and I've cooked wild game for a long time.
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 1: And if I have, like if I've added anything to
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 1: sort of why if I've added anything to wild game
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 1: conversation in America would be kind of like a celebration
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: of it. And also I've I guess I've found out
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: things you can do, like ways to take a lot
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: of things and make them into other like dishes, you know, like, oh,
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: you can make corned beef. Everybody knows corn beef. And
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: I'll be like, oh, here's a really cool way to
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 1: take a beaver and make to corn it, or like, oh,
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 1: there's like pickled herring, but you can catch some little
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 1: shitty fish out of your lake and make like something
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: that's like really cool and it's like pickled herring, you know.
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: I mean, like I guess I've done that a fair bit.
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: But um, you're like whole it's almost like be hanging
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 1: around with you almost like I'm not going to talk
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 1: about uh it makes me almost not want to talk
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: about cooking. Yeah, but I mean you've got all this
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 1: you just got like you had like a way different level. Man. Well,
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: I mean maybe maybe, I mean, I'll take that compliment.
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 1: That's very kinds. It very much applies to down here.
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: You know, like like what we've got available, and you've
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: you've seen game all over the world and in different
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: animals in Big Game. You know, I've never really handled
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: elk or or a moose, or a beaver or or
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: or a walleye things like that. I mean, so you're
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: you've got those experiences too. But I mean, I think
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: at the end of the day, but we're both trying
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: to do is put um these wild foods that you
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 1: can go out and attain into comprehensible and familiar forms,
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: because I think that's what appeals to people the most,
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: is you know, trying to get people away from thinking
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: that dear is something that you only eat on a
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: special occasion or it's sorts something different when it should
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 1: be Tuesday night dinner, and and and if if you
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 1: have that mentality when you go into it, that you're
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 1: gonna you know that I'm gonna eat red fish for
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 1: dinner tonight because I'm taking back a couple of plays
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: and I'm really looking forward to that and it's making
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: it a day to day thing. And at that point
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 1: you tend to steward that that resource a little better,
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 1: be more concerned about conservation efforts. I mean not I'm
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: not trying to, like I take a jump to a big,
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: big picture, but that that's what I like to do,
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 1: is convey the eating of it is something that's not unattainable, um,
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 1: and that if you do you can be creative and
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 1: clever about it. But uh, I try to just take
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 1: things that are familiar, just like what you were saying about.
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 1: You know, corned beef, you can corn a goosebreast, same thing. Um.
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 1: Just take those ideas and you know you're gonna have failures.
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: But if we can convey that to the hunting and
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 1: fishing public, then I think that we've we've done our
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: jobs just to convince them to to celebrate it and
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 1: not view it as as something strange or oh, my
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 1: family doesn't eat that. I mean That's that's a big
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: component of it too. It's just like, if you put
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: into familiar forms, then you're gonna get the people that
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 1: you're also not I mean you're you're the eater, but
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 1: also the people that you're feeding. If you can put
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: it into familiar and recognizable forms, that tastes really good,
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 1: and then you can introduce that really nutritious and you know,
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 1: well caught or or killed animal into their diets too.
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: Does the New School of traditional cookery? Uh, should people
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 1: come look you up? Or you got like you booked
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 1: way into the future. We're booked out for the year,
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 1: must say the year, the season. We're starting up with
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 1: spring bookings. Um, you know, I would love to get
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 1: if anybody just got you know, six buddies are going
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: on a turkey hunt things like that. We're gonna start
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 1: looking to book those. And then we're also going to
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: look to start booking fishing, you know, and that will
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 1: mostly be coastal trips. But we can come down here
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 1: because honesty, fish cooking seafood is, if I had to say,
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 1: is really my favorite. I mean game get you know,
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 1: the big animals, they get all the play. That's the
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 1: romantic side of it, But I mean I'd love cooking
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: and eating fish probably the most. Yeah, we had a
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 1: really really good meal last night. Of how many varieties,
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 1: I think we had six, fish said, well, we had,
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 1: let's rad them off for everybody. So last night we
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 1: had a meal that was comprised of stone crab, blue crab,
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 1: sheep said, drum, black drum, redfish, sea trout, flounder, flounder,
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 1: southern flounder. And when we're out gigging flounder, we gigged up.
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 1: We gigged up to Pompa No. Two, sheep said, in
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 1: a few black drums. That's where that's where the spearing
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 1: skills come in handy, Yes, yes, all right, man, So
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 1: people can go find you, then do your class. They
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 1: learn how to cook wild game in the way that
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 1: everybody's gonna love it, new school traditional cookery. Go to
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 1: your restaurant die do A D A I D U
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 1: E and Austin. It's all on the same website. A
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: lot of information there. But then he's on Instagram. He
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 1: won't change it to what he should change it too.
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 1: He's not at Jesse Griffith's, He's at Sack Them Sack
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 1: a lot spell it s a C dot A dot
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 1: L A I T mean sack of milk means milk bag.
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 1: It's what they call crappy and East Texas and Louisiana
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 1: they do ye. And then J T. Van how do people?
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 1: Do you have a website or what? I know you
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 1: on Instagram? You're active? Yep, website J T. Van Zant
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 1: dot com and at j T van Zant on Insta
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 1: you want to catch some fish? Yeah, buddy, the do
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 1: the knows the landscape. Let's go side him up. Put
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: a fly in front of painting mustache on him. Jt'll
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 1: tell you what he's happy about. He'll tell you what
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: he's saying about. You'll show you a bunch of fish.
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 1: I'll share myself with you. I expect you to do
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: the same, and we'll appreciate a resource together and uh,
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 1: former friendship. I don't want to beat this in too much,
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 1: but bring your own sandwich. I provide ice water, bring
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 1: your own sandwich. Do not make that mistake. Okay, thanks guys,