Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 874: How To Start A Bison Ranch

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Ep. 874: How To Start A Bison Ranch · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:08
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  Speaker 2: That's f I R.
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  Speaker 1: S T L I T E dot com. All right, man,
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  Speaker 1: Joined today by Matt Skogland from north Bridge or Bison
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  Speaker 1: a private Uh like a like a buffalo rancher.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly. Yeah, I'll tell you.
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  Speaker 1: The first thing I want to tell you about is, Dude,
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  Speaker 1: the the hangar stakes that you gave me, you give
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  Speaker 1: me off those animals is like is I hate to
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  Speaker 1: say it because uh, I should be saying this about
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  Speaker 1: like deer meat or something.
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  Speaker 2: But dude, that is some of the best stuff in
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  Speaker 2: the world.
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  Speaker 3: Man, I know, it's so good it we we eat
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  Speaker 3: a bunch of them and it's like the flavor texture.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, they're just so good.
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  Speaker 1: Hey tell people, because that's not like if you're cutting
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  Speaker 1: up a deer, right, hanger steak isn't not on the menu,
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  Speaker 1: you know what I mean, like like tell people what,
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  Speaker 1: like it's it's.
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  Speaker 2: An off cut.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's it's funny. So it's this. It's this
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  Speaker 3: steak that hangs suspended right in front of the tenderlines.
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  Speaker 3: And so early on I would, you know, I kill
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  Speaker 3: a buffalo, got it, take it to Amsterdam and meat
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  Speaker 3: chop our butcher, and they'd be like, where's the hangar.
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  Speaker 2: I'm like, guys, like, what are you talking about?
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  Speaker 3: And they're like, you know, blah blah blah blah right here,
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  Speaker 3: and I'd be out there by myself. I'm like, I'm like,
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  Speaker 3: are they messing with me? Like I cannot find this thing?
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  Speaker 3: And I add to YouTube it. But so it's it's
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  Speaker 3: hanging and it's suspense, and it's it's covered in like
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  Speaker 3: fashia skin. It doesn't look like anything. And if you
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  Speaker 3: didn't know, it just comes out with the gut pile
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  Speaker 3: and it's kind of like attached to like the liver
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  Speaker 3: and the lungs. But once you once you know, you
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: take it out and there's one per animal and it's
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: called a hanger hanging tender. What is that thing's purpose?
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  Speaker 2: Man? I don't know. I've wondered the same thing.
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  Speaker 1: It easy to find out what it does for the animal,
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  Speaker 1: Like if he was born with no hanger, would you
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  Speaker 1: know it?
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  Speaker 2: That's a great question.
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  Speaker 3: I know. It's just just this weird muscle, just literally hanging.
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  Speaker 2: And they used to call it mooment.
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  Speaker 1: Hey, Phil, if you get a minute, like when you're
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: over there, do whatever you do over there?
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  Speaker 2: Sure, what like purpose does it serve the hanger? Yeah?
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  Speaker 2: Like what is it doing for the animal? Sure? I'll
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: do some quick research.
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  Speaker 1: We should all know this. Just I think it's just
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  Speaker 1: meant to be a good thing to eat. It's like
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  Speaker 1: a gift from God to humans exactly.
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  Speaker 3: Literally, it just hangs there and you cut it out,
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: cut that tendon out, and you got two beautiful steaks.
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  Speaker 2: So when you the ones? What let me let me
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  Speaker 2: explain why I'm talking about this.
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  Speaker 4: We do.
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  Speaker 1: We did a dinner recently here at our office and
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: I called Matt. I was I was looking for some
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  Speaker 1: of the like added value product or some of the
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  Speaker 1: not standard products that would come about.
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  Speaker 2: You know what I didn't hit you up for? Is
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  Speaker 2: it some tails man? Oh?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, So he he gave me some marrow bones. Okay,
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  Speaker 1: some hangar steak heart, try anything else. We had some
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  Speaker 1: shank pieces. Oh yeah, yeah, shank pieces.
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  Speaker 2: And we cooked all this stuff up.
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  Speaker 1: So we did this big meal of all like sort
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: of the non like non typical, non standard things from
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  Speaker 1: from one of your animals and the hangars. We just
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  Speaker 1: marinated them yep, and grilled them and then kind of
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  Speaker 1: cut them against the grain. Dude, it's the like it
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  Speaker 1: is a it is a perfect food. Yeah, that's amazing.
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  Speaker 3: And the thing that's quo you can. I've done it
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  Speaker 3: multiple times where I'll kill a buffalo, got it, and
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  Speaker 3: just grab the hanger for us and we'll eat it
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  Speaker 3: for dinner, you know, six hours later. Perfect like so good.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, tell people, Tell people specifically what you do, like
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  Speaker 1: like what your business is like, how you make your living.
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  Speaker 3: Totally so pretty straightforward. So my wife Sarah and I
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  Speaker 3: and our kids out on Greta we started our Bison
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  Speaker 3: ranch north Bridge of Bison. We started it from scratch
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  Speaker 3: eight years ago and we're located.
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  Speaker 2: Has that all it's been?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, Well you're kicking ass for eight years?
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  Speaker 2: Has it?
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  Speaker 1: You've just been doing it eight years? Eight years?
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  Speaker 3: Wow? And so yeah, we're up in the Shield Valley
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  Speaker 3: thirty miles northeast to Bozeman, and we it's pretty simple.
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  Speaker 3: We raise bison as well and then sync with nature
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  Speaker 3: as possible. We're all about biodiversity. And then we sell.
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  Speaker 3: We raise them for meat, sell one hundred percent direct
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  Speaker 3: to consumer, and then every byte and we sell by
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  Speaker 3: the quarter half whole bison and then everyone we sell.
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  Speaker 3: I personally field harvest each bison, so no live bison
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  Speaker 3: leaves the ranch field harvested two yesterday and yeah, so
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  Speaker 3: I kill them on the ranch, bleat them, gut them,
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  Speaker 3: and then ultimately take them to our butcher Amsterdam meat
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  Speaker 3: chop and then we either deliver it to the customer
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  Speaker 3: and then we ship all over the country and that's it.
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  Speaker 3: We keep it super simple. How do people go, like,
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  Speaker 3: like how do people come find you? Yeah, our website
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  Speaker 3: so literally just Northbridge of Bison dot com and then
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  Speaker 3: like shop meet and shows what options are there. So
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  Speaker 3: there's quarter half hole and then an all ground by
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  Speaker 3: an option, and then a primal blend, which is ground
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  Speaker 3: bison with some heart and some liver, oh okay, which
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  Speaker 3: is yeah.
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  Speaker 2: And that's it.
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  Speaker 3: So yeah, we keep it like we were obsessed with details,
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  Speaker 3: strive for excellence. So we don't want to get spread
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  Speaker 3: thin chasing shiny little objects, so it's raising buffalo as well,
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  Speaker 3: and then sync with nature as possible and then really
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  Speaker 3: trying to provide our customers with the best red meat
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  Speaker 3: they'll ever taste in their life.
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  Speaker 1: Well, like, walk me through, like how did you how
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  Speaker 1: did you get interested in? Do you? I mean like
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  Speaker 1: like why that animal and not sheep or cattle or
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  Speaker 1: totally goats, you know, or drafts or something like like
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  Speaker 1: why that?
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  Speaker 2: Right?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah? So I guess to like to back up. So,
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  Speaker 3: so I'm born and raised in Chicago, zero background and
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  Speaker 3: agriculture whatsoever. Uh, And then we moved to Bozeman eighteen
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  Speaker 3: years ago, two thousand and eight, and I spent ten
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  Speaker 3: years doing environmental else work for conservation organization. And the
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  Speaker 3: main issue I worked on was bison, focused on wild bison,
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  Speaker 3: mainly the bison population around Yellstone National Park and just
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  Speaker 3: you know, fed, fell head over heels in love with
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  Speaker 3: the species.
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  Speaker 2: So you were doing that as an attorney.
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  Speaker 3: So no, so yeah, so what went went to law school,
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  Speaker 3: had a short stint as a lawyer, realized very quickly
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: that being a lawyer was just not for me, and
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: but had this, you know, you were.
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  Speaker 2: Doing like normal corporate law dog and exactly.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, so did you have a billboard on the side
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  Speaker 1: of the highway.
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  Speaker 3: Scoland gets tough for you, you know, I love it, No,
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  Speaker 3: we know. So I graduated No. Five, kicked the ass,
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  Speaker 3: uh graduated, oh five, clerked for a federal magistrate judge
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  Speaker 3: in Chicago for a year. Incredible, amazing guy. We're still
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  Speaker 3: very close. He married Sarah and me, and then I
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  Speaker 3: went really yeah. And then I went to a big
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  Speaker 3: firm for two years, which I knew wasn't for me
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  Speaker 3: long term, but it's a good place to start.
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  Speaker 2: And then we were just what kind of law was that? Just?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, corporate litigation, big firm, just a grind like suit
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: and tie in it. But you had you kept a
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: suit and tie behind your the door to your office
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: in case a partner called you at like two o'clock
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  Speaker 3: and it was like, hey, go to court, and you're like, shit,
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  Speaker 3: I gotta throw a tie on. And then we were
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: just we were dying. I'd fall in love with Montana
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  Speaker 3: Northern Rockies a long time ago, and we were dying
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  Speaker 3: to move out here. So we we and eight we
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  Speaker 3: were just like we were getting married, and we just
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  Speaker 3: felt it's now or never, Like, if we don't do
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  Speaker 3: this right now, life's just going to get more complicated.
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  Speaker 2: You have a kid, and so.
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  Speaker 1: You'll get all dug in exactly, everything will be a
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  Speaker 1: pain in the ass.
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  Speaker 3: And so we so we we quit our jobs, got married,
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  Speaker 3: moved to Bozeman. Friends and family thought we were batchit crazy.
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  Speaker 3: We were like, now we're just we're doing it. We'll
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  Speaker 3: figure it out and uh. And at that point I
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  Speaker 3: knew I was I did not want to be a lawyer,
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  Speaker 3: and so I get this was a dream job for me.
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  Speaker 3: It was uh, non litigation policy. So it's like the
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  Speaker 3: perfect job for a former lawyer. And the main issue
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  Speaker 3: I worked on is bison, So you know.
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  Speaker 2: Like like let's talk about that. Let's let's talk about
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  Speaker 2: that issue.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, because you talk about like around the park, right, Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: So I just want to I want to. We've talked
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  Speaker 1: about this one hundred we talk about this all the
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  Speaker 1: time on the show.
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  Speaker 2: YEP. It's like a.
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  Speaker 1: It's a subject I'm deeply interested in. You you're gonna
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: know more about it than me, as much or as
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: much about it as me as more and you're gonna
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: know different aspects. But when when you're talking about that,
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: I'll just tee it up and you can comment on
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  Speaker 1: where you want. Is there's this just never ending conversation
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  Speaker 1: right right. It was like, uh, I moved I moved
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  Speaker 1: to Montana in nineteen ninety six.
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  Speaker 2: I think it was nice.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, ninety six, it was being talked about then, it's
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: being talked about now. It's basically, what is the relationship
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: what are the relationships between the states of Montana and
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  Speaker 1: Wyoming with the bison herd that resides in Yelso National Park.
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  Speaker 1: You can't separate all these things totally out. There's this
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: great quote about the park. It's like it's like whatever,
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: it's two million acres of paradise surrounded by reality or
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: something like that. Right, So, it's like there's these thousands,
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: thousands of animals that live within the park, but wild
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: animals aren't good at recognizing like jurisdictional boundaries, and so
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: they're routinely spilling out of the park into surrounding private lands,
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: national forest lands, and there's just a constant debate about
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  Speaker 1: what should the states tolerance for these animals be, what
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: should be their designation currently and you know, pardon me, listeners.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: We talk about this all the time on the show currently,
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  Speaker 1: and it blows my mind. If a buffalo walks out
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  Speaker 1: of the park onto into Montana, it crosses the park border.
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  Speaker 2: It becomes livestock.
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  Speaker 1: Because the state doesn't recognize any real difference between the
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  Speaker 1: owned livestock animals in the wild free roaming animals. An
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: interesting hook here to say that there is a way
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: that this can work out. We've talked about this too
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  Speaker 1: Colorado recently, Pa, I don't know if you just saw this.
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  Speaker 1: Colorado recently passed legislation that says if a bison walks
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  Speaker 1: into the state on its own four legs, it is wildlife, right,
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  Speaker 1: drawing a distinction, and not to like discredit private producer
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  Speaker 1: totally or not to take private producers property from them,
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  Speaker 1: but drawing a distinction between some of these are wildlife,
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  Speaker 1: some of these are livestock, and recognizing that there's there's
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  Speaker 1: two versions, which is a pretty like I don't know,
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  Speaker 1: I was. I was quite pleased with that distinction over there. Sure,
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  Speaker 1: So with that little bit of set up, what aspects
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  Speaker 1: of this did you work on so well? One?
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  Speaker 3: I think so my understanding and I don't follow it
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  Speaker 3: as closely. But in Montana, the dichotomy, if you will,
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  Speaker 3: is that so when they're in the park, they're wildlife
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  Speaker 3: and then they they literally they step over this boundary
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  Speaker 3: that like you said, they can't see. They enter Montana
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  Speaker 3: and and at that point they're jointly managed between Fish,
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: Wildlife and parks they managed wildlife and then the Department
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: of Livestock they manage livestock.
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  Speaker 2: But like old yeah, so.
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  Speaker 3: They're they're I mean, I'm splitting hairs, but they you know,
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: because they have you're correct. So so so it's there
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  Speaker 3: like fish, Wildlife and parks would say that's a wildlife species,
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  Speaker 3: but we have joint management with Department of Livestock and
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  Speaker 3: that's the only species in the state that has that,
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  Speaker 3: And so what what what? What I worked on very
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  Speaker 3: succinctly was expanding the tolerance for yellowstone bison outside the
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  Speaker 3: park in Montana because we've got, you know, millions of
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: acres of public land where bison are not welcome and
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: and and the thing that was cool was we actually
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: made progress. Like it's this issue, like you just laid
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: tolerance zones, yeah.
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  Speaker 2: And they weren't. So when I started on it, there were.
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  Speaker 3: It was there was much less tolerance for bison outside
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: the park, and uh, there was this group of us
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: and it was you'll appreciate this so that so you know,
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: the Yellowstone bison are managed under the Inner Agency Bison
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  Speaker 3: Management Plan the ib n P. That all stems from
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  Speaker 3: a lawsuit but between the State of Montana and the
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  Speaker 3: Feds and a negotiated settlement in two thousand and so
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: it's Montana. What's Montana Fish Whilelife and Parks, Department of Livestock,
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: the Forest Service, the Park Service, usda APHIS, which is
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, and then the
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: Inner Tribal Buffalo Council Nez Perce CSKT, and they they
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: wanted to see more tolerance outside the park. And there
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: was a Congressional review report that came out in like
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: two thousand and six or something, and one of the
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: criticisms was that the IBMP partners weren't getting enough citizen
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: feedback and acting on it. And so they would talk
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: about it. They had three meetings a year Winter meeting. Yeah,
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: I think it's three meetings a year, and they would
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: and it was like three years they spent talking about
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: find a way to get more citizen input, and they
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: were struggling with it because you've got state, tribal, federal entities,
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: and I could see you it didn't come They were
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: acting in good faith, they were just struggling with a
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: mechanism to do this. And there was this one meeting
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: where the former state veterinarian Marty Zeluski, who's a really
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: good guy and a good friend of mine, and he
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: was frustrated and he's like, look, you know, we've been
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: trying this for three years and we're stuck. And he's like,
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: there's nothing to stop the citizens, the people that are
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: concerned about this from starting something. And he said, he goes,
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: you know, if if Matt Skogland, a bison advocate, an
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: Ariel Overstreet from the Montana Stockroers came to me and
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: said we think you should do this. He's like, that'd
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: be powerful if you had wildlife advocates and stock rowers.
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: And so after that meeting, Ariel and I and a
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: few others, this great local sheep ranch of Becky Weed,
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: we formed this citizens working group that the agencies all supported.
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: The former Region three Fisheral Life and Park Director Pat
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: Flowers was a huge help. Mary Erickson from the Forest Service,
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: and we got this just very diverse group of peoples,
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: a couple ranchers, wildlife advocates, hunters, local business owners and
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: gardener and West Yellowstone landowners and we basically and we
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: spent it was a facilitated process for over a year,
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: and we came up with consensus recommendations, delivered them to
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: the agency partners, and they actually acted on it. And
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: so some of them were like they were pretty simple.
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: Like the best example I can give was that the
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: Horse Butte Peninsula north of West Yellowstone. It's this peninsula
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: that goes out into Hebgod Lake and on the east
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: side is bordered by Yellowstone Park. Twenty five years ago,
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: there was a public grazing lease and a private cattle
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: ranch on Horse Butte. The the federal grazing leases have
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: been permanently retired and that private ranch was bought and
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: the cattle are gone. But so you have this peninsula
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: that never has a a cow on it ever, and
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: we're still using tax that we were still using taxpayer
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: dollars to haze bison back into the park to protect
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: cattle that literally don't exist. And everyone agreed, We're like
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: this is crazy, and so stuff like that that we
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: were able to agree on present to the partners and
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: they expanded the tolerance and that was like really satisfying work.
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: And I would say, but now I feel like, you know,
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: I feel like we accomplished all the low hanging fruit
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: and now it's just it's tough.
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: It's a tough issue.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, when you mentioned that that, I don't want to
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: spend too much time on this subject, but you mentioned
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: that like joint management, there has been for sure, like
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: the bringing in public hunts. Yep, right, So they're they're
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: like there are of the animals coming out of the
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: park and whine, there are try hunts. There are public
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: draw hunts. I put in for one of the I
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: put in for there's three there's three different hunt codes
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: or hunt availabilities. I put in for the one that
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: you're never going to draw every year. I put in
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: for that one. So there are and like guys here
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: in the Office of Drawn have drawn the tags and
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: so there is a there is an increased management perspective,
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: but it is not as clean as it's not as
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: clean as what say Elk and Joy.
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, no, not even close. Yeah, No, it's a
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: it's a it's a complicated issue with unfortunately no no
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: clear end insight.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so when you were doing that and you were
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: involved in trying to restore the animals as wildlife, and
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: I think I want to add one interesting point about
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: that is, Uh, when I first got into the subject
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: all these years ago, someone had mentioned like we had
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: solved the problem of genetic extinction, right Like, if you
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: go back to nineteen hundred, there was a real risk
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: of the species going genetically extinct or going through like
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: really terror. You know, it did go through terrible bottlenecks,
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: but there was like there was a time when, like
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: I've made this point for it, there was a time
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: when a lightning bolt could have feasibly killed a significant
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: percentage of all the animals that existed. I mean, they
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: were bottlenecked down. And so people are like, we solve
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: the problem of genetic extinction, right Like, we got different
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: soros herds and conservation herds scattered around like there's no
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: thing that's going to happen.
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: They're separated.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: There's not like some like strain of anthrax is going
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: to all of a sudden in fact, the herd and
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: kill off half the animals known to exist. So like
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: genetic extinction, but they pointed out that ecological extinction that
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: they are like effectively ecologically extinct for sure, They're not
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: a participating member of the natural biome across most of
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: their range. Right, And you would in your work was
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: sort of addressing yeah, that like ecological extinction yep. And
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: then you eventually got into a line of work that's
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: sort of like addresses it from a whole other angle, right, Right,
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: What was the connection between the two things, Like you're
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: working on behalf of wild animals and then you decided
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: to get into into ranching them on deeded land that
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: you own.
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, no, very very well said. And so
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: for me it was, you know, I spent ten years
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: at this organization and just over time the nonprofit environmental
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: policy work. It's it's frustrating because you lack control. And
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: so like the example I always give, you know, there's
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: been this push to restore buffalo in central Montana, in
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: and around the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge, the
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: Missouri Breaks and blah blah, and the state did all
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: this work to tee it up with a very very
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: you know, start with a very small population and you know,
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: and I'd meet with like a state agency scientist and
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: a federal agency scientist and I'd be like, you know,
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: you guys need to do this, and they'd say, Matt,
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: we couldn't agree more with you, but politically that's a
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: non starter. And you go back to your office and
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: you're like, what are we doing? Like they have these
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: public meetings, people write letters, they have this whole thing,
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: and it's a dog and pony show because it's a
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: political decision that whoever the the power that be is
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: at that time is not going to make. And so
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: I just you feel like you're spinning your wheels. And
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: so I just started to get frustrated with that process.
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: And at the same time, I know, and you know,
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: conservation groups are super important. I respect the hell out
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: of that work. I just found it wasn't for me.
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: And I also found, like, big picture, I didn't think.
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: I don't think that that that work really moves the
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: needle the way people think it does. And I say
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: that because I, you know, explain that to me. You
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: see these groups that you know, you get these fundraising emails,
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: you know, donate fifty dollars to save the whales, donate
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: fifty dollars to save the elephants. And so someone someone
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: writes a check for fifty dollars and they feel like,
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: all right, I did I did my I did my
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: public duty for wildlife biodiversity conservation for the year, and
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: then the rest of their and the rest of their life,
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: they don't really think about it. Yeah, And so that
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: fifty dollars, you know, it's like it's like a giant
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: wildfire and you know, putting an ounce of water on it,
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: it doesn't do anything. And so if we're really gonna
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: tach biodiversity, which you know, in the middle of an
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: extinction crisis, it has to come from how we produce
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: things and how we consume things, like through the business world.
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: And I just came that just became very clear to me,
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: and so I wanted to leave the nonprofit world go
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: into the for profit world. And I was really attracted
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: but to food because you know, when you think about it,
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: we have billions of people on the planet and if
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: you're lucky, you get to eat three meals a day.
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: You fact that out across the billions of people on
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: the planet, and you realize very quickly that the production
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: of food has enormous environmental and social consequences. And then
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: very simply, I also, I just like I love all
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: the leopold I love land, and so to be able
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: to like work on a piece of lot, a piece
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: of ground that you can touch, smell, feel, watch it
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: through the seasons, hopefully improve it, increase the biodiversity, and
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: then provide food for people that is you know, amazing
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: for the environment, amazing for them, great for biodiversity. Like
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: that just really appealed to me. And then and and
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: and so I had fallen in love with bison, and
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: and so that's why we you know, there's I always
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: joke like there's some parallel universe where we're doing the
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: same thing with grass fed beef. I just I love bison,
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: and we wanted to do it with bison. And then also,
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: you know we still uh, you know, we've only got
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: four hundred or five hundred thousand bison in North America
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: and so are herd. You know, it adds ultimately, it
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: helps with the long term conservation of the species. But yeah,
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: so that's that's why we did it.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: That's one of the things that I've always admired about
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: the producers and when I and I've always defended producers
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: like you because it helped it. Like it you know,
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: it puts the animals on the landscape and puts the
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: animals where people can see them absolutely, do you.
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: Know what I mean?
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: And it's like, but it puts them on native range,
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: Oh dude, you know what I mean. Yeah, I couldn't
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: agree more with that. Like, there's so much fear around
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: bison because they've been gone for so long and so
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: people are just scared of them, right, Like I joked
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: like early on, I'm like, people think that bison are
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: gonna like go down and rob the bank like with
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: a with a with you know, like they're just evil.
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: And then they're out there like for on our ranch.
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: They're out there, people see them and they're like, huh,
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: they're just doing their thing. And so yeah, that that's
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: a big I think about that a lot. Like a
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: big thing that that we I feel like a big
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: service we provide is just comfort familiarity with the species
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: that most people either never see or they're like it's
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: only in Yellowstone and so yeah, it's it's it's making
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: people more comfortable with bison back on the landscape.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: And it was funny because I have a deep suspicion
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: of suspicion in some cases dislike of the captive.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: Servid oh industry.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, okay, Like because raisin, deer, raise an elk,
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: those aren't absent from the landscape totally, do you know
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: what I mean? Like, those are like ecologically viable creatures
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: that are that are sort of like culturally ingrained and
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: have people that are willing to stand for them. There's
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: organizations that defend their habitat right bile just to work
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: on their behalf. There's this whole like infrastructure of deer
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: and wild deer and elk support. I've always view the
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: bison thing different because they're otherwise absent. I think it's
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: you know, I know it fluctuate fluctuate maybe by like
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: a part of a percent over recent years, but ninety
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: four or ninety five percent of the animals in existence
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: of the bison and existence are privately owned. If you
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: scratch those off, you you have you know, there's what,
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: like I said, like half million of the animals. You
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: you like, scratch away the privately owned ones, and you're
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: looking at a ninety five percent reduction.
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: No, it's just like you've reduced it next to nothing. Yeah,
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: I'll take a step further. I mean, one, I couldn't
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: agree more. I hate game farms. And it's funny I
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: quote you all the time because when we met years ago,
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: when you spoke at the Montana Bison Association conference, you
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: you laid it out perfectly. You were like, I hate
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: game farms, exactly what you just said. But bison is
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: this weird this it's this unique thing where it makes
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: sense and we're not a game farm, we're a ranch,
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: but where you know the importance of private ranches for
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: buffalo and so yeah, it's like ninety something like ninety
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: five percent of the population of bison North America are
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: on ranches like are on ranches like ours. And then
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: even the conservation herds that are out there, the majority
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: of those, almost all of them aren't wildlife. Like to me,
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: a wildlife species, I know you would agree. Is it
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: goes over the hell it wants to go? Yeah, And
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: so like whether it's Custer, wind Cave, Teddy Roosevelt, these
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: various parks, they're ultimately fenced, they're managed. They you know,
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: they round the bison up, and even Yellowstone right like
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: they're not allowed to freely roam and so if you really, like,
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: if you really want to split hairs and say how
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: many wild bison are out there? I mean it's a fraction,
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: percentage you have.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: I recently did sort of a round up of of
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: well I tried to define wild Yeah, and it'd be
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: like something that can cross political boundaries totally right when
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: you get down to hers that are allowed to cross
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: political boundaries without without management status changing as they cross
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: political boundaries. I mean you get into like small handfuls.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: There's a handful in Alaska that can cross political boundaries.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: The Henry Mountains, I mean, you know, yeah, the north
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: rim of the Grand Canyon. There's something can cross political boundaries.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: But and you could go on and name a few,
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: but I mean we're talking about handfuls of animals.
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, tiny, tiny number of animals.
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and they're you know, they're doing some super cool work.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: We had a guest that I'm talking about that they're
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: doing some really cool work in Alaska. I that one,
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: you know, to bring in uh like a sort of
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: phenotype eco type of the animal called the woods bison
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: bison into Alaska, which is cool work.
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: But how like.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: When you decided to go down this path, like, how
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: did you even start getting into it?
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: Do you know what I mean? And what was that?
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: What was the sort of capital investment required? Yeah?
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: No, So it's it's a funny story. So literally, I'm
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: not exaggerating because I worked on bison, Yellowstone Bison. I
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: have a I had a Google alert for Yellowstone Bison.
• 29:57
  Speaker 3: One day, I get a Google alert that there's a
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: Bozeman Daily Chronicle article on the National Bison. The National
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: Bison Association had just had their summer conference in Big
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: Sky and they did something at Ted Turner's Flying d Ranch.
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: And that's the producers. That's like the producers Association.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: Because there's national I don't know if it's even National
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: Bison Society active, I don't know either way. Yeah, National
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: Bison Associations of Producers organization exactly.
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: And so it's the article just said that they had
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: their summer conference in Big Sky and that demand for
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: bison meat was growing they were looking for more producers.
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: And I literally read the article and I was like, man,
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: I'm like that sounds so cool. Clearly not for me
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: as a kid from Chicago, but for somebody that's going
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: to be awesome, and I just wonder, I wonder. I
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: went about my day, and and then a couple months later,
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: it was still like kicking around my brain and I
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: was like, I feel like there might be something there.
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: But I was like, you know, to like give afo
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: this great life on a ranch, and because they haven't
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: been domesticated, shipping him to slaughter is like super high stress.
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: So it's like an ethical humane component to that. And
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: then all that stress negatively impacts the quality of the meat.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: I want to tell you a story about that. You
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: will share your own. But yeah, when I lived in
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: Miles City for a couple of years, yep, and I
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: lived next to a guy that had a slaughter plant. Yeah,
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: some days he was inspected. Yeah, get like some days
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: on his schedule when he was federally inspected, and some
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: days on his schedule, and he did custom slaughter. And
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: I remember telling me, man, he he used to try
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: and it quit bringing in bringing in bison for custom slaughter.
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: You said, they're just too crazy.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I mean I like to try to
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: bring them into his facility. He had had to change
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: a bunch of stuff. It was like two chaotic un
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: bring them into his facility and then and then shipping
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: them was very tough.
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's just exactly super high stress. Also lots
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: of bruising. You know, you throw a bunch of bison
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: on a truck and they're whether it's intentional or unintentional,
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: they're goring each other.
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: A lot of bruising. He mentioned that, and he eventually
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: just got done with it.
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, a lot of guys do that, and so so
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: I was like, yeah, I just I don't want to.
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: That's just each to his her own.
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: That's not for me.
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: And then I read this this amazing book, Buffalo for
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: the Broken Heart, this memoir by Dan O'Brien, who who.
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: You know, a lot of people bring that book up. Man,
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: it's an amazing book. He started wild idea a buffalo
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: in South Dakota. Huge hero of mine. And in that book,
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm Avid Hunter. And in that book he
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: talks about so he pioneered the modern day field harvesting
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: of bison, which you know you've seen it because you
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: were up on the ranch with your kids that one
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: day when I field harvest had won. Oh and then
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: obviously the Clovist experiment. But it's basically just instead of
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: you just reverse the process. So instead of shipping him.
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: To slaughter like yesterday, I just drive out to wherever
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: they are that day and it's a headshot with a
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: copper bullet from like twelve yards and it's instant, like
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: as ethical and humane as it gets.
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: The meat's amazing.
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: And so when I read, literally when I read about
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: field harvest in that book, it was an instant light
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: bulb moment. I was like, I didn't know this existed.
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: This is the way to do it, and I know
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: there are people that are going to resonate with this
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: because I just kept meeting people that were like, I've
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: seen food ink, I've read Michael Pollen. I'm done with meat, ye,
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: and I don't hunt. But if my neighbor kills an
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: elk and gives me thirty pounds of elk, I'm like,
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: oh my god, it's like the greatest thing ever. I'm like, oh,
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: so you're not done with meat. You're done with like
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: the factory farming hell that you see in documentaries, which
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: I totally get. So Dan O'Brien's book is what sent
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: us on this path. And then my next step was like, Okay,
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: I know absolutely nothing. So I literally went to Google
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: and typed in Bison Wrenching Consultant and then there's amazing
• 33:57
  Speaker 3: guy rolland Cruz who lives in Bozeman and it's just
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: a general like regenerative ranching consultant. It works a bunch
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: with cattle ranchers, a bunch with bison people. And we
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: met for lunch and Bozeman and I was telling him
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: my story and you kind of cut me off, and
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: he's like, you should I teach this holistic management workshop
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: on a bison ranch.
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: You should come to it.
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: And I took it in two ways, One like this
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: would be very beneficial for you, and then two is
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: like a test like are you a dreamer or are
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: you wasting my time? Or are you serious? So I
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: went to his I went to his workshop, and then
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: I came back like all excited, Like to Sarah, I was.
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: Like, we we got to do this.
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: But I and I still had this like uh, you know,
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: insecurity or just kind of you know, anxiety around it.
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: Of like I just thought, if you didn't grow up ranching,
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: you couldn't be a rancher. But I'm like, we'll just
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: keep putting one foot in front of the other Yeah,
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: that's pretty reasonable.
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: It is, man, And you.
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: Know, you something that I wish I had, I kid,
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: but I didn't mention it. If if if you you
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: folks listening, have ever seen our YouTube video where we
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: worked with some anthropologists and archaeologists to do an experiment
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: with using stone tools to butcher that that was mass place, yep. Yeah,
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: So I should have made that connection because because people
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: love that video and.
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: That was one of your animals on your place yep. Yeah.
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: And then we got to eat all that meat. That
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: was good.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: That was that was that was that. That was such
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: an amazing day. I'll never forget. Like that morning I
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: said to Sarah, I'm like, look like I don't know
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: what time would be home, but like eleven midnight.
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: Like these the boys are gonna be working with headlights.
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: Just that.
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: I'm just like that, that's the deal. And like four o'clock,
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: you guys were.
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: Like we're good. Yeah, I could believe it.
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: Bones were crystal clean, like it was. It was so impressive.
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: That good.
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: And the other point you made that I wanted to
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: comment on is like not growing up around it.
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because that's the thing.
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: When I had out with buddies of mine that grew
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: up around livestock, be like like cattle guys, horse guys, whatever.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: When they look at something, they see a thing that
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: I don't see totally do. I mean, like buddies of
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: mine that grew up on you know, they grew up horseback, right, Yeah,
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: I look at a horse. I just see a horse,
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean. I'm like a horse. Maybe
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: I'll get like and then it's got an old vibe
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: to it, or I might get that it's got like
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: a somewhat unpredictable vibe to it. They look at it
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: and they see like its whole history totally.
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: They see the history of its parents, you know what
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: I mean.
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: They like they just see things not to mention it.
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: And like with cattle, like you know some cows standing there.
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, it is a cow standing over there.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: They're like, something's wrong with that cow. That cow's got
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: whatever the cow is this the cow? Like you can't.
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: I've always felt you you'll never catch them.
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: Nope, you'll never catch up to them.
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: No chance not to mention, Like, you know, they could
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: be standing there and you know, the truck breaks down
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: and they're like, I've got bailing twine, a toothbrush, a
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: cana w D forty and uh, a tin of tobacco. Yeah,
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: and they'll they'll fix the truck, like like mind are neighbors,
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: They're amazing humans and like and yeah, I'll never you know,
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: I will never have.
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: Their level of knowledge.
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you'll never.
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: Catch no chance. And I and I respect the hell
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: out of them, like so much. I've learned a ton
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: from them. But but the interesting thing, so when we
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: were when we were going down, you know, I literally
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: I can't. I would say to Sarah, I'm like, I'm like,
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: I think we can do this, but but I feel
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: like there's something someone's not telling us, because like, if
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: you don't grow up ranching, you can't be a rancher.
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: And I kind of feel like we can and uh.
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: And then I met a couple guys who were like me,
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: no no background whatsoever, and they were like, you're gonna
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: make mistakes, like, but not having any background in agriculture,
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: there's actually there's a huge advantage to that because you
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: have no no bad habits to unlearn, and you know,
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: there's no like my last name is Scogland, there's no
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: like this is the Skogland way of ranching.
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: This is how we do it.
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: We just say, like what's best for the animal, the
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: land and the business will do that and so so yeah,
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: so we and and I I mean we could have
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: a four hour podcast about I mean, I burned a
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: truck to the ground, I broke my ankle, the bison
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: got out, been stuck in the mud rolled afore.
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: I mean, I can just go on and on all
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: the things you screwed up.
• 38:45
  Speaker 3: All the things Like I remember early on laughing with
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: with with one of my neighbors. I was like, after
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: one of my you know, epic you know screw ups,
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: I was like, I'm like, I think you guys have
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: a bet down at the bar of when the Scoglands
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: are gonna go bankrupt. I was like, and now I
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: think there's a second bet of when when's Matt gonna die.
• 39:06
  Speaker 3: And there was another time where a neighbor I did
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: something and I was telling my neighbor about it, and
• 39:12
  Speaker 3: he looks at me, dead serious, and he goes, Matt,
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: I'm concerned that you lack agricultural caution. He goes, what's
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: your wife's cell phone number? I think we need to
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: have her number, and I look back those cattle producers.
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: The one was a cattle producer. The other one is
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: he rebuilds cars and trucks. And but I look back
• 39:34
  Speaker 3: those first couple of years and I'm like, it's I
• 39:37
  Speaker 3: feel like it's a miracle.
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: I'm alive.
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: But but again on the flip side, and this, this
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: has talked a lot about. This has talked a lot
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: about currently in ranching because a lot of ranches are
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: being passed from you know, the older generation to people
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: our age, and there's there could be some tension where
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: it's like, well I'm going to mix things up and
• 39:57
  Speaker 3: the parents or the in laws or whatever, like, no, no,
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: We've done it this way for one hundred years, you're
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: not changing it. So so there's definitely some advantages to having
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: no background in agriculture. But yeah, I was I felt like, yeah,
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: I just felt like we were missing something, that someone
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: wasn't telling us, something that that summer of twenty eighteen
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: we were getting started.
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: But yeah, we've we've learned. One thing you were probably
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: missing was land.
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah so that's so so so so so Yeah. So
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: I came back from the Holistic Management workshop all fired up.
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: You know, I write a business plan, and Sarah's all in,
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: but she's like, she's like, no offense to the rest
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: of America. It's got to be within an hour of
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: Bozeman because our community is here. And at that point
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: we have two kids and at that point our daughter
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: had just turned one, our son was like four, and
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: and she was like, I'm just not starting over in
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: Colorado or eastern Montana or wherever. And so I looked
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: for land and like the dream died very quickly. But
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: I'm a stubborn person because.
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: You couldn't find any You couldn't find anything.
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: Oh, just so it's impossible.
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: It's just like so expensive, so expensive. I just came
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: back from a state I don't even to name the
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: state and.
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: Like that's where you need to go. Yeah.
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: No, it's like I was like, I finally like it's
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: like a awesome area. And then looking at land prices,
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: I'm like it hasn't gotten crazy.
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah no, So we were lucky. This is so this
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: is like March of twenty eighteen, and I'm stubborn. So
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: I just kept looking online and looking online, and then
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: I came across this ranch broker's website and there were
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: these three parcels up in the Shield Valley, which was
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: our that was our ideal area because we love it
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: up there. It's beautiful and as you know, I mean,
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: it's hardcore ranching country, you know, so there's no threat,
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: not a big threat of like subdivision that sort of thing.
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: But when I came across this website, the prices were
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: so low and the website was a little, you know,
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: kind of low tech. I was like, I was like this,
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: this has got to be like ah, this got to
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: be from like two thousand and four. And the guy
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: just never took it down. And but so I called him.
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: The name was Don Vanonmin. So I called him expecting
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: to like, you know, this number has been disconnected, and
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: he was like Don Vannermon and I was like, holy shit.
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: And I was like hey, I'm like.
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: And I was like Don, I'm like, uh, I'm like
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: these I'm on your website and there's these three parcels
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: up in the Shield Valley. I'm like, are those for sale?
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: And he's like you bet you. I'm like, can I
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: go look at him? He's like, whenever the hell you want.
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: I was like that Saturday, took the kids up expecting
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: to find like a toxic landfill in the middle, and
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: we got there now played out and I was like,
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: holy shit, like this is spectacular. So we came back
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: and I was like, Sarah, I'm like, next weekend, we
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: got to go look at this. And we you know,
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: we did our due diligence, So we kept looking online
• 43:03
  Speaker 3: to see if something else made more sense. That was
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: that that our land. It's the only land we looked
• 43:10
  Speaker 3: at in person. Nothing ever, nothing else even came close
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: to make us go look at it. And by late
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: May we were like, you know, and this was pre COVID,
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: pre Kevin Kostnery Yellowstone TV show, but even then we
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: were like, the way Bozeman's going, if we don't get
• 43:27
  Speaker 3: this under contract, all this work goes up on a shelf,
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: and the way Boseman's going, it's never coming off that shelf.
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: And so we got it under contract and got as
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: long a closing date as possible. We're able to pull
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: it together and get across the finish line. But if
• 43:43
  Speaker 3: we didn't get that, like if we had, if we'd
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: waited a year, two years, there we would reach we
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: wouldn't be sitting here like it was. There was we
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: found a needle in the haystack in twenty eighteen and
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: we're damn grateful for it.
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah. You know what I wanted to tell you about
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: is random night.
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: A month or two ago we went down to Cody,
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: Wyoming and we gave a talk about We gave it
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: was in we were in coordination with the Buffalo Bill
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: Cody Museum, and we went down the road do because
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: they needed we had needed a little bit of a
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: bigger space, went down the road to like a there's
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: a hotel, the big convention area, just like a community thing. Yeah,
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: we gave a talk about our Buffalo Hide Hunters audio
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: work called the Hide Hunters. Uh. There was some dude, Like,
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: there's some dudes there that were real anxious through the
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: whole thing, Like they were there for the comment section.
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: You know, Like you know when you get you ever
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: address an audience. Yeah, so you'll sometimes if you know,
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: you're kind of like doing your talk or whatever, you
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: become aware of certain figures you know, that are on fire.
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: And it was like a guy, that's there's three of
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: them that were there to to to challenge me as
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: an outspoken advocate, as an outspoken Buffalo advocate, right, like
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: I just I routinely bring up my conviction that we
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: should be doing more and more places to welcome the
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: animals back as wildlife, Like I bring this up.
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: He wanted to challenge that. What was surprising to me
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: is they were producers, huh.
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: And I always felt that there was like producers, bison producers,
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: bison ranchers, and I always felt that like that that
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: bison ranchers were first and foremost like enthusiasts for the
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: species and they got into it for love of the animal.
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: But but they don't. He didn't.
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: They don't like that talk, which I thought was so weird.
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: And he kept saying if my animals got out and
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: telling me all the damage that like school children wouldn't
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: be safe if his animals got I'm like, you know
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: the kind I engaged him for a while and that
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: I said, I'm just gonna like, we're gonna have to
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: have other people ask questions. I engage them for a
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: minute on it, and it was sort of like, I'm like,
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: I'm not aware of anybody suggesting that your animals be
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: let go. You're making your you're setting up a straw
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: man argument about your animals getting out and attacking school
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: children on the road, like, that's not what we're discussing.
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: But was surprised by that perspective among the producer community,
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: which I think is an exception rather than the rule.
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: But one of the biggest things that I'm bringing up
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: this whole convoluted story to ask this question of like
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: you have once you get land, you're not keeping them
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: in with like three strand barb wire, right, So so
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: you like, when you you got property, you you have
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: to be thinking about how to like really confine them.
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, that's a I mean, that's the thing
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: that was that was part of this guy's deal is
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: if they're out right, how you're not gonna stop them
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: from going anywhere totally? You know.
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: It was kind of his argument, right yep.
• 47:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, No, So we when we got the land under
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: contract at the end of May, with the closing date
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: in September, I went into what I called sponge mode,
• 47:30
  Speaker 3: just trying to absorb and learn as much as possible.
• 47:33
  Speaker 3: And I got to visit different ranches, got to visit
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: one of Ted Turner's ranches and they're this this great rancher.
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: He actually had bison and cattle on different pastures up
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: in Molt, Montana, north of Laurel, and he connected me
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: with a fencing guy that he had trained on his fencing,
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: and that's what we put on our place. And it's
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: awesome our so our fencing people look at it and
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: they're like, this keeps buffalo win Like are you like
• 48:02
  Speaker 3: because it's it just looks super weak. It's uh, our
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: perimeter fence, five wire high tinsel all wildlife friendly, so
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: prong horn can go under, deer elk and moose can
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: go over, and the middle wire is hot and it's
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: ultimately a psychological barrier like they touched.
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: That explain some of that terminology for people like like sure,
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: oh yeah, yeah under like talk about that.
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so okay.
• 48:30
  Speaker 3: So so you know prong horn iconic species in the
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: West that uh uh you know, second second fastest animal
• 48:40
  Speaker 3: on earth behind the cheetah. They live, you know, their
• 48:43
  Speaker 3: defense mechanism is their speed. So they like to hang
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: out in flat, open country and see what's coming and
• 48:49
  Speaker 3: they'll outrun it. And for whatever reason they they they
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: can they can jump fences, but like a lot of them.
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: Don't know that.
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: You see it now and then.
• 48:59
  Speaker 3: And so they all under fences and there's a lot
• 49:02
  Speaker 3: of work being done to remove the bottom wire on
• 49:05
  Speaker 3: ranches because in big winters they'll find dozens of prong
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: horn dead prong horn piled up in the corner of
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: a of a ranch or public round whatever because the
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: snow drifted there and they can't crawl under the fence
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: and they don't know then go over. So our fence
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: so high tinsel. It's just a smooth wire and it's
• 49:29
  Speaker 3: got a flex to it, so deer, elk and moose
• 49:33
  Speaker 3: can jump over, prong horn can crawl under. I see
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: mule deer do both, like they sometimes crawl under and
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: sometimes jump over.
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, becausey'll get a little dug out areas, and they'll keep
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: using it and use it and it'll eventually get like
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: a little trough under their exactly yep.
• 49:46
  Speaker 3: And and then when I say the middle wire is hot,
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: so it's it means it's it's electrified. So we our
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: whole fence runs off solar and that middle wire is
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: hot and it and and when a if a bison
• 50:00
  Speaker 3: touches it, they get shocked, and they're super smart, so
• 50:03
  Speaker 3: they learn to avoid it. And then that behavior is
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: passed on down through the herd. So they all avoid
• 50:10
  Speaker 3: the fence. But I say it's a psychological barrier, because
• 50:14
  Speaker 3: if they wanted to run through it, they could run
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: through it, like like we put our arm through through
• 50:20
  Speaker 3: a spider web. You know, it would take nothing. So
• 50:22
  Speaker 3: I always say, like, if you really want a buffalo
• 50:26
  Speaker 3: proof fence, you need like a fourteen foot brick wall,
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: because any even if it's barbed wire woven wire, like,
• 50:33
  Speaker 3: they could bust through it. But the great thing you
• 50:36
  Speaker 3: have going for you with bison is their herd instinct
• 50:39
  Speaker 3: is so is still so strong. You know, it's tens
• 50:42
  Speaker 3: of thousands of years, hundreds of thousands of years of
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: evolution have programmed into them safeties with the herd. They
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: always want to be together, and so it ultimately comes
• 50:52
  Speaker 3: down to your management. As long as they've got plenty
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: of grass and water, they're not looking over the fence
• 50:56
  Speaker 3: line and they want to be together. And it's funny
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: because this time of year is when we have issues
• 51:02
  Speaker 3: because the grass is starting to grow. They're excited about that,
• 51:06
  Speaker 3: and the youngsters, like yearlings, they'll periodically get on the
• 51:10
  Speaker 3: wrong side of the fence, and I would think that
• 51:14
  Speaker 3: they were like when I was sixteen it's like whoo,
• 51:16
  Speaker 3: I'm I'm going to raise hell and you know, go
• 51:19
  Speaker 3: explore and it's the opposite. You can you can feel
• 51:22
  Speaker 3: their stress. They're they're walking the fence like how do
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: I get back to the herd because I'm I'm I'm
• 51:28
  Speaker 3: vulnerable by myself. So yeah, so so again, And that's
• 51:32
  Speaker 3: like another example of like people were skeptical of our
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: fencing and now they see the bison on the right
• 51:38
  Speaker 3: side of the fence they're grazing, they see me field
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: harvesting them, and they're like, yeah, we're cool with this.
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: How big is a bull?
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: So you know, a big mature bowl is is well
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: over two thousand pounds. They're they're they're they're massive and
• 51:57
  Speaker 3: and their heads. I had to I had to. I
• 52:00
  Speaker 3: had to. I had to field harvest a big bowl
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: last Memorial last year of Memorial Day weekend by myself.
• 52:07
  Speaker 3: And it's their heads must weigh like two hundred pounds.
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: Like just they're massive animals.
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: And no separate fencing for those.
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: No, we just we we run it as one herd
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: year round. Yeah, just you know, because and the thought
• 52:22
  Speaker 3: process there is from a from a land health standpoint,
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: If you zoom out, you know, a thousand years ago,
• 52:31
  Speaker 3: you know, we had tens of millions of buffalo, tens
• 52:33
  Speaker 3: of millions of elk, pronghorn. So the entire West evolved
• 52:37
  Speaker 3: with grazing animals, removing animals from the landscape, totally unnatural.
• 52:42
  Speaker 3: Like the West evolved with animals full stop. Can't argue that.
• 52:47
  Speaker 3: But the way that they the way that they grazed,
• 52:50
  Speaker 3: like the Gallatin Valley, they you know, thousands of animals
• 52:53
  Speaker 3: would have come in here and they would have grazed, pooped, peed, wallowed,
• 52:58
  Speaker 3: just just made a mess of the place and then
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: and then left for a long time.
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: So the West of all.
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: To the point where mythologies, like native mythology grew were formed.
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: Yes, around where do they go? Where do they go?
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: And in many cases, if you look at like like planes, tribes,
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: in many cases you see there are literal interpretations of these,
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: but then there's also these stories is parable.
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: But it's that they went into a hole in the ground.
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: Yep, yep, right, they went into a mountain, because they
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: would be so gone, yeah, you know, and yeah and
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: then all of a sudden they're back, right, and yeah,
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: it would inspire like mythologies to explain like where do
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: they go?
• 53:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I'm endlessly fashionated by that stuff. Like your
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: buddy Dan Flores been on here has his own media
• 53:50
  Speaker 3: to podcast, like his book Wild New World was like
• 53:52
  Speaker 3: that just blew my mind, like just over and over
• 53:56
  Speaker 3: and it's inching. I was just reading, I mean, I'm
• 53:58
  Speaker 3: a little late to the game and finally reading Braiding
• 54:01
  Speaker 3: sweetcrast amazing book, and she just the chapter I just finished.
• 54:05
  Speaker 3: Because the other thing with what you're talking about was
• 54:07
  Speaker 3: it was like where did they go?
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: And it was like how do we get them back?
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: Like what do we do?
• 54:12
  Speaker 3: And I was just reading that some tribes in the
• 54:15
  Speaker 3: Pacific Northwest had the same thing around salmon where they
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: would light light light the grass on fire on a
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: cliff along the ocean, basically sending a signal out to
• 54:28
  Speaker 3: the salmon time to come back, which I thought was
• 54:31
  Speaker 3: super cool And I didn't know that.
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: Man, I gotta tell you, this is such an old
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: This is like from way back in the earliest earliest
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: days of this show of this podcast. Is probably one
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: of my favorite segments we ever did is we were
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: interviewing a mccushy. He was from the Mcushi tribe in
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: South America in Guyana.
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: Huh.
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: And it was the second time I had gone down
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: there and hung out with them. The first time I
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: went and spent time with the Mkushie, they hunted a
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: lot of tape here. They had a white lipped tape here,
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: So there's three They're sorry, I'm not tape here. A packery,
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: so we have like a havelina is a collared packery,
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: there's a chock owen packery, and then there's a white
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: lip packery. Huh okay, the white lip packery lives in
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: his huge herts. So like you know, like collared packeries
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: or havelena is you know, you like a big group
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: of those a dozen, twenty whatever.
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: White lip packory would be hundreds, got it.
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: And they would periodically have white lip packery move through
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: their village areas and they would harvest a whole bunch
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: of these white lip packerys. They hadn't seen you in
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: a long time, he was telling me, and he's telling
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: me this on the podcast. He's explaining that there's another
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: village that that's very jealous of our village, and they
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: trained a shaman and that sham has apparently locked our
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: white lip packreas into a mountain.
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: Huh.
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: We are training up a new shaman who's developing the
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: skill set necessary to unlock them from the mountain to
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: bring them back, and he's just like telling us all
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: about this on the show.
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: So did they have it be that?
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: It was like that, you know, which you imagined to
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: be an ancient wisdom totally on a thing like a podcast.
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: Always just struck me, as Jemmy, I want to go
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: like refine that bit and talk about but it was
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: the same thing.
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: I was like, where did they go?
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: Where did they go? How do we get them back?
• 56:43
  Speaker 3: And yeah, and like the creation stories, I just find
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: all that stuff like so interesting, fascinating.
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: I got y' all messed up.
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: Can you talk about how you gallop that that grazing
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: practice there and not there?
• 56:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So they'd come in, make a mess the place
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: and then leave for a long time. So the West
• 57:00
  Speaker 3: evolved with high intensity, short duration impact followed by a
• 57:05
  Speaker 3: long recovery. So we have our ranch, so we're trying
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: to they call it biomimicry, just mimicking nature, and that's
• 57:10
  Speaker 3: what we're doing on a vastly smaller scale on our ranch.
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: But we have a cross fence and a whole bunch
• 57:16
  Speaker 3: of different pastures and then the herd just moves around
• 57:20
  Speaker 3: and so whatever pasture they're in, every other pasture is
• 57:23
  Speaker 3: being rested. And this time of year it's particularly important
• 57:26
  Speaker 3: because we've got all sorts of nesting grassland birds, waterfowl,
• 57:32
  Speaker 3: sandhill cranes. And what happens is you create this mosaic,
• 57:37
  Speaker 3: which is what would have happened a thousand years ago,
• 57:39
  Speaker 3: where you've got stuff they haven't hit yet, and by
• 57:43
  Speaker 3: you know, late June, that grass gets pretty tall. Stuff
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: they grazed, you know, maybe a month ago and that's
• 57:48
  Speaker 3: like medium, and then stuff they just hammered, that's like
• 57:52
  Speaker 3: a Walmart parking lot. And because the entire West evolved
• 57:55
  Speaker 3: with this for birds, depending on whether they're you know, nesting,
• 58:01
  Speaker 3: raising chicks feeding, like, they use all those different habitats
• 58:04
  Speaker 3: differently and so so yeah, so so so that's what
• 58:08
  Speaker 3: we do in our place. So we run it as
• 58:09
  Speaker 3: one herd year round. So wherever the herd is, the
• 58:12
  Speaker 3: rest of the ranch is being readed. So the bulls
• 58:14
  Speaker 3: always stay with them, yep, yeah, and and and and
• 58:17
  Speaker 3: do they are they.
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: Like even though in captivity, are they still following that,
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: like they're running in June and July, or do you
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: wind up having calves drop in year round?
• 58:28
  Speaker 3: Or when we when we started, we we had we
• 58:31
  Speaker 3: had some calves dropping in the fall.
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: But now.
• 58:36
  Speaker 3: We they've they've now they uh, we've gotten to a
• 58:40
  Speaker 3: point just naturally where uh, yes, that are our herd
• 58:46
  Speaker 3: acts the exact same as Yellstone. So they they the rut,
• 58:50
  Speaker 3: They breed from mid July through the end of August,
• 58:53
  Speaker 3: and then they calve mid April through the end of May.
• 58:57
  Speaker 3: They shed their winter coats in the spring, grow winter
• 59:00
  Speaker 3: coats back in the fall, and then the and then
• 59:05
  Speaker 3: you know, so a bison herd, it's a matriarchal society.
• 59:10
  Speaker 3: So you've got a lead cow that calls the shots,
• 59:12
  Speaker 3: and there's a whole pecking order there, and the bulls
• 59:15
  Speaker 3: fall in line. But once they're like three four five,
• 59:20
  Speaker 3: they leave the herd and kind of they're like, I'm
• 59:22
  Speaker 3: my own man now. And and so we saw that
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: on our place where you know, the herd would be
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: here and then like the breeding bulls would be like
• 59:32
  Speaker 3: four hundred yards over here, and then you'll, I think
• 59:35
  Speaker 3: you'll find this interesting. So when we started, we had
• 59:38
  Speaker 3: breeding bulls because that's how you do it, and the breeding.
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: The breeding bulls are the ones that cause problems, not
• 59:44
  Speaker 3: from a safety standpoint, like they're they're like, I mean,
• 59:47
  Speaker 3: I've never had an issue with one of our bulls,
• 59:50
  Speaker 3: but because they they have this, you know, I'm my
• 59:53
  Speaker 3: own man mentality, everything's going great, and then one morning
• 59:57
  Speaker 3: you wake up and they're like, I'm walk into the
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 3: crazy mountains today and nothing's going to stop.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: He's striking out looking for just.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 3: What you know, and then for us it becomes extremely stressful.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 3: The big thing for me, it's not like losing a
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: bull or like the economic consequence of that. It's that
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 3: we have great relationships with our neighbors and we take
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 3: that very seriously and we've earned their trust. And so
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: if bulls start leaving and walking all over the neighbors rightfully,
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 3: so it would be like, what's going on, Matt, Like
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 3: have you lost control of your animals?
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: And so and so.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 3: While I was kind of struggling with this a year ago,
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 3: I'm always reading, listening to podcasts, trying to stay on
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 3: top of the best available science around modern day ranching.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 3: And I listened to a podcast with one of Ted
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 3: Turner's ranch managers, and he was saying the way on
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 3: a couple of Turners ranches, they've moved away from breeding bulls.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 3: And the theory is, with breeding bulls, it's unnatural because
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 3: it's humans selecting the animal for what humans like. And
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 3: so bison, they're they're sexually the mature it. They're sexually
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 3: mature it too. So they got rid of all their
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 3: breeding bulls and they leave they let all the two
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 3: year olds in there and just let nature work it out.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 3: And the theory is the biggest, strongest, highest sex drive
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 3: bulls are the ones that are going to breed, and
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 3: that's who you want to breed. So when we had
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 3: so when our last breeding bull, well.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 2: How is that not if he's a breeding bull? Why
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: is he not a breeding bull?
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 3: So because so before I guess, I guess, so the
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 3: exactly the other system. You'd have like a six year
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 3: old bull and an eight year old bull, which are
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 3: literally more than twice the size of that two year old.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: And that's who's most likely to strike out.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: And exactly got it.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 3: And so when I heard that and then this had
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 3: this bull that left last Memorial Day weekend, I was
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 3: like we're done with breeding bulls, and I just I'm
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 3: all about having our ranch and our hurt or be
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 3: as natural as possible, and so that really appealed to me.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 3: And so last summer was our first experiment with it,
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 3: and it was so cool because in June you've got
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 3: all these two year old bulls running around and it's
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 3: like kind of whatever. And then by late July there
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 3: was one guy who I was like, oh, you're the man,
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 3: Like he was fighting off other bulls, like he clearly
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 3: was the guy.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 3: And then and then we work our animals once a
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 3: year in the winter where we move them into corral
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 3: and you know, ear tag the calves and we preg
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 3: checked the females. So I was kind of curious to
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 3: see what this experiment would do. And last year was
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 3: our our highest breed up rate ever. So all of
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 3: our cows that were supposed to be bred, only one wasn't.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 3: And and so now this, you know, letting, letting a
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 3: bunch of two year olds take care of it is
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 3: our past go forward.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of cool.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: Huh, Hey, did you find like when you've had him
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: break out and go, do they want to go a
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: certain direction? Sure?
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: Is it random? It's random. It is.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 3: It's totally random, and and it fortunately, you know, it's
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 3: only happened a handful of times. And I remember the first,
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 3: the big one that we had three breeding bulls. They
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 3: all left and I was like freaking out and I
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 3: called a mentor and he's like, look, he's like, I
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 3: know you're freaking out and you want to go chase him.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 3: He's like that's the worst thing you could do. He's like,
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 3: there's just nothing you can do. And he's like, I'm
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 3: convinced they have a homing instinct and like they're going
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 3: to come back. And this was on a Friday, went
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 3: out Friday night, couldn't find them or didn't see them.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 3: Saturday morning, not there, Saturday night, not there. Sunday morning.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 3: I'm like on the edge of like, you know, panic attack.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 3: Not there Sunday afternoon. There they are, like they never left.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 3: And I was like, you sons of bitches, but yeah,
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 3: and but yeah, no, they have like a homing instinct
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 3: where they they come back.
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: Do you do you get scared around those big bulls.
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 3: No, Nope, you don't.
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: You don't have you don't do anything like you just
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: want you'd walk right up the.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 3: Wow, I should say no with an asterisk, which is
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 3: I do you know I wouldn't like I would never
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 3: walk up and try to scratch one by the ear.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: Sure it would kill me, but you'd be out doing
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: your work. And yeah, I mean I kind of.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: I always.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 3: I've I've been charged a couple of times by our
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 3: lead cow. I mean like like like like she was coming,
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 3: she was coming. This was not a game where I
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 3: had to dive over a fence dive into the truck.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 3: So now I always make sure that the truck or
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 3: side by side is relatively nearby. But you can you
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 3: can read their body language. And yeah, the big bulls
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 3: non event never had an issue like zero. It's the
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 3: it's the old cows that you got to watch out for.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: That's who's coming.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 3: The first one just a funny story. It was our
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 3: first summer and I was doing a pasture move and
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 3: when I move them, I pull them, I don't push them,
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 3: so like I get their attention, and they're so smart
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 3: they know what I'm doing. So they follow me to
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 3: the next pasture where there's a whole bunch of fresh
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 3: grass waiting. But this day there was this wetland and
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 3: I had to get on the other side of the
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 3: wetland to move them across, and I did it on foot,
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 3: and I had zero issues up to this point. And
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 3: it's this beautiful spring day. The whole herd's walking in
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 3: front of me, and I'm like, you know, and every
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 3: day that I'm out there, it's never lost on me
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 3: that I'm a kid from Chicago. Yeah, I'm like, I
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 3: will never get used to it, Like hopefully I live
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 3: to be like ninety. When I'm eighty nine, I all
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 3: wake up and be like this is crazy. I can't
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 3: believe I do this, Like I just you know. And
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 3: so I'm like walking and like the mountains are covered
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 3: in snow and I'm like, man, I'm like I'm the
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 3: Bison whisper, like look at this, you know, and They're
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 3: all I'm just looking at all these butts. And then
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 3: all of a sudden, it like took a second to
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 3: register and this number four is coming like full tilt.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 3: I was like, holy shit, and I ran. I mean,
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 3: I must have run like a three nine forty to
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 3: the fence and I did this awkward, crazy superman hive
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 3: over the fence and she stopped and was like pawn
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 3: at the ground and the first thing I did was
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 3: look up and down the road to make sure no
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 3: neighbors saw because it would be like just hear all
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 3: about that. More humiliation from that. But ever since that,
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 3: I'm like, wow, that was a close call. But yeah,
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 3: it's really the old cow is the only ones that
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 3: that that you have to worry about?
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, yeah? So, uh tell me how the like the.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: Sale process? Sure, like what is a what is an
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: animal that you know? How are you making your determination?
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: Like who's going to stay around as breeding stock and
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: replacement haffers?
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 2: Yep? Right?
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: Like how many? How many calves you get out of
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: a cow?
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: Sure? How do you determine what I'm going to sell?
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: This many? You know what I mean?
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: Like like, what's all that dynamic? Like I guess herd
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: dynamics or demographics? What's that look like?
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 4: So so so we so we we We had a
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 4: significant expansion last summer, which is exciting.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 3: So are you know are we're now trying to figure
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 3: out what those numbers look like. But for the last
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 3: several years, the easiest way to explain it is like
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 3: June one to June one, So June one last year,
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 3: we had let's say, fifty five cows with a calf
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 3: by their side, so fifty five pairs, fifty five yearlings
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 3: and fifty five two year olds. Over the course of
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 3: the year, I field harvest basically all of the two
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 3: year olds, keep a few replacement heifers because we know
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 3: all a few a few open cows. And then June one,
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 3: this year we should have fifty five cows with a
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 3: calf by their side, and then last year's calves become yearlings,
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 3: the yearlings become two year olds.
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: We just do it again, okay.
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 3: And then and so basically, and then when we when
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 3: we work the animals in the winter, any open, non
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 3: bred cow immediately becomes a meat animal.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 3: And for two reasons, or for three reasons. One, we're
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 3: not Ted Turner. We don't have one hundred and ten
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 3: thousand acre ranch. Two, we're working to build just a
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 3: super healthy, self sufficient herd where they thrive on our landscape.
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 3: The cows have a calf in April, May, they're bred
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 3: back in July and August, and they just do it
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 3: year after year. And if any year they don't get bread,
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 3: they're out of here.
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 2: And I mean you got to have something to sell
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 2: to support the whole thing.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 3: So yeah, and then the third one is our demand,
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 3: like we have we are demand ex seed supply, so
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 3: it does.
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so we you have to turn away business.
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 3: Not necessarily not turn away business, but we just we
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 3: always have a long wait list and I do very
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 3: little traditional sales and marketing because we've just we've got
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 3: these amazing customers. We've got this amazing customer base. It's
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 3: very loyal. I mean, at the end of the day,
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 3: I always say, it's like we could have you know,
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 3: the prettiest bison, the most beautiful mountains, cute kids, great storytelling,
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 3: but if the meat tastes like shit, no one's gonna
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 3: buy from us, right, Like, you buy a quarter bison,
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 3: eighty five pounds of bison meat and you eat your
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 3: way through it. At the end of that when you reorder, Like,
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 3: to me, that's a great sign that they're like that
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 3: was worth them going to do it again, yep. And
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 3: so so basically our meat animals are essentially all of
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 3: our two year olds and then open cows and that
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 3: that that that's it.
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, got it?
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: How many how many calves will the cow is a cow,
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: good for it, or you haven't hit that.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: You haven't hit it yet.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, we haven't hit it hit right, But I
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 3: mean when we so when we started it. So our
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 3: bison arrived January twenty nineteen. We bought all of them
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 3: from these two awesome ranches just west a showdo along
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 3: the Rocky mountain front. And you know, and and so
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 3: some of those cows are now like fifteen sixteen years old,
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 3: still having a calf every spring, red back July and
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 3: August and doing It's it's unbelievable.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 2: What about twins.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 3: We've had a few cases. We've had a few sets
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 3: of twins. It's rare, you know, in our case. Yes,
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 3: I've always been nervous because you hear these stories the
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 3: way mom picks one ye, and I've watched with a
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 3: close eye, and to my knowledge, all of our twins
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 3: have made it like the way like when the when
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 3: the when they first start calving, like right now, like
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 3: I was out there last night and we've got you know,
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 3: there are a couple of calves born yesterday. It's very
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 3: obvious to tell whose calf is with which mom. Like
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 3: the moms are amazing, Like those calves are like under
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 3: their chin. But through the summer, once you've got you know,
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 3: fifty sixty calves running around and they're feeling a little
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 3: bolder and they're running, you.
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 2: Can't keep track of who's who.
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 3: Ye, But to my knowledge, like I watched those twins
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 3: very closely early on and then at some point just
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 3: never noticed and never found a dead calf.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: So do you let them self wean? Oh?
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so that's a great You never have to
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: you never have to pull them off. Yeah. It's like,
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: so like, because you're only selling two year olds.
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 3: Well, the main thing is we're just we're not We
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 3: run it as one herd year round, and so there's
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 3: lots of things we do that are like not traditional.
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 3: But I look at it and I'm like, weaning, weaning stressful.
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 3: The science is clear that the longer that calf, whether
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 3: it's an elk calf, a black angus, or a prong horn, like,
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 3: the longer that that calf or a fawn and a
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 3: prong horn, the longer that animals on mom, the healthier
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 3: that animal is going to be for the rest.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 2: Of its life.
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 3: And so I was like, and then weaning is stressful.
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 3: It's time intensive, labor intensive, for you. Yeah, and so
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 3: I was like, why would we wean? So we don't
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 3: wean it all. We just we let mom take care
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 3: of that. And we're not selling live animals. We run
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 3: it as one herd. So yeah, so we don't we
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 3: don't wean at all. We just let mom do it.
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: When you go out to field harvest, one, do you
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: know who, like, because you got numbers and you're watching
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: the whole.
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 3: Thing occasionally but very rare. So typically it's like if
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 3: I'm driving out there in August, like in August, I
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 3: know I'm going to field harvest a two year old
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 3: bull and it's the first two year old bull that
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 3: provides me with the perfect shot. And the perfect shot is.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: Because you don't know who's like, you don't like you're
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: not genetically testing them, you don't know what bowl is.
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 3: Doing what Yeah, yeah, no, just totally, So I just
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 3: drive out and and and so the perfect shot is
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 3: a bull that's like standing kind of on an angle
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 3: like broadside, looking at me ten to fifteen yards away,
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 3: head up, and then I aim an inch above the
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 3: eyes and it's just I mean, when I pull the trigger,
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 3: it's lights out. Like people always say, they're like oh, man,
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 3: you know I love your ranch because you know, the
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 3: bison only have one bad day. And I'm like, oh no, no,
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 3: I'm like, no bad day. I'm like, they're literally standing there,
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 3: like yesterday, this bull he's standing there, grass in his mouth,
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 3: next to his buddy, looking at me. They know me,
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 3: they know the truck just kind of like, you know,
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 3: chewing his chewing his grass, and then it's just instant
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 3: outer space and so yeah. So but and then if
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 3: I have a group of two year old bulls, I'll
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 3: look him over and see like who's the most developed, yeah,
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 3: and pick him out. But it's funny. I've had multiple
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 3: times where let's just say, you know, number four twenty six,
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 3: I'm like about to shoot him, and then he moves
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 3: and then three twenty two walks in. I'm like, oh,
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 3: I guess I'll take you, and then boom, and then
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 3: I'll be out a couple of days later, and four
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 3: twenty six I'll walk by. I was like, man, you
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 3: have no idea, like you came that close.
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 2: So yeah, and then you're you gut them yourself. Yeah.
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 3: So my process is so if I'm just doing one
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 3: drive out, boom drop it, and well i says to
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 3: back up.
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 2: So, part of our thing.
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 3: Is connecting people to where their food comes from and
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 3: demystifying the death process involved in food production and consumption,
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 3: because most places, you know, the death part, it's locked
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 3: in the basement, pad locked, poured over with concrete. And
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 3: in our case, I always I talk about how like,
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 3: in our case, the death is beautiful. You know, It's
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 3: like death is essential to life. And we're all killing shit,
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 3: whether it's for what we eat, what we drive, what
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 3: we wear, the phones in our pockets, like, we're all
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 3: killing stuff. It's just whether you're aware of it or not.
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 3: And in our in our case, that bison like yesterday,
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 3: conceived on the ranch, born on the ranch, lived his
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 3: whole life on the ranch, standing there with his buddy
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 3: grass in his mouth.
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 2: Lights out.
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's as good as it gets. And I
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 3: lost my train of thought.
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 2: What was well? What was I asking about? Yeah, you're
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 2: asking about.
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 3: You've gutting yourself myself? Yeah, so bison drop. Oh. So
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 3: part of it's connecting people to where their food comes from.
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 3: So when I drive out yesterday, I take a picture
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 3: of the herd and then boom drop the bison. And
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 3: then I take a picture of a dead bison on
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 3: the ground, never anything bloody or gory, and make very
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 3: like I, you know, but but very clearly like that's
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 3: a dead bison. And then I lift it up with
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 3: the bale bed, which is a flat bed on the
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 3: back of a pickup that has two arms that can
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 3: go out. It's built for feeding round bails, but it's
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 3: And then I take two six foot toe straps and
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 3: put one around the front legs, one around the hind legs.
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 3: I lift it up and slid its throat to bleed it,
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 3: and then I drive and then drive it to a
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 3: different pasture, cut the head off and save the tongue
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 3: in the cheeks.
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: And then I got, well, you gave me some of
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: those cheeks one time too, Yeah, yeah, Or you.
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 2: Gave me a tongue the other day.
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 2: You know what I did with that? That one, I
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 2: just boiled down. Yeah.
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: I put it in a slow cooker, Okay, so I
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: can slip the skin on it. Sometimes I'll smoke and whatever,
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: but I just did that so I can slip the
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: skin and then cut it and fried it like like spam.
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: Oh oh my god, it's good man. I was crisp
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: in it. I'm bolted, so it's crispy but soft in
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: the middle.
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 3: I'm embarrassed. I've never cooked the only tongue of ours
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 3: that I've had you, I gave you a few extra tongues,
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 3: and as a just kindness of your heart, you cooked
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 3: a couple for us, and you smoked him and cured
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 3: him and you were like, just slice it thin and
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 3: oil with some pan. And our kids like they've grown
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 3: up eaten heart like when I could. Like, our dog
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 3: had an injury a couple of years ago and I
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 3: was cooking him some bison heart to like boost morale,
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 3: and my kids were like, came.
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 2: In the kitchen. They're like, are you cooking bison heart?
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 2: And they just start grabbing at it.
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 3: I'm like, you assholes, Like that's for ed. So they're
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 3: like very adventurous eaters. But I was like, tongue, maybe
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 3: that'll weird them out. And so I said, hey, guy,
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 3: having bison steak, And I sliced it and I'll never
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 3: one of them said they took like two bites and
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 3: they go, Dad, this is meat candy, And then the
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 3: other one said can we eat this every night? It
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 3: was like anyways, so yeah, save the tongue in the
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 3: cheeks and then I gut it and I save heart
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 3: liver kidney hanging tender, get it back on the truck
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 3: drive to Amsterdam. They skin it and they cut the
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 3: tail off, so the it's the tongue, cheeks, heart liver
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 3: kidneys hanging tender and you hand that over hand that
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 3: over that goes on like an organ tree. Ye, and
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 3: then they and then they they skin it, dry, age it,
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 3: cut it, wrap it, et cetera.
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 2: And they and then the hide goes to you sell
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 2: the hide.
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So we have a guy that we work with
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 3: in between three forks in Butte, and he's like he's
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 3: a hide guy, Like he builds boats, tpees, lodges, all
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 3: sorts of things. And so he'll he'll either meet me
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 3: at Amsterdam and buy the hide like fresh when it's skinned,
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 3: or I'll throw it in a bag, put in the
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 3: freezer and he'll pick it up later. And then occasionally
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 3: we get a tanned one back and we'll sell that
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 3: as a blanket, but they're kind of far in few between.
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 2: Then we get back got it.
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I don't know if you ever heard
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: just putt at the fulsome kill site yep.
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 2: The ice age. Yeah, you know, it's an ice age
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 2: buffalo kill site. Yep.
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: In that bone bed, there's no I thought it was interesting.
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: In that bone bed there are no.
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 3: Tailbones, huh, because they did.
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 2: To haul them away with the hides. Yeah.
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 3: No, that the tails you know, it's it's like a shank.
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 3: You gotta slow cook it in liquid for a long time.
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 3: But it's the flavors like ye insane and it's a
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 3: good handle for dragging the hide around exactly.
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So they do that, they cut the thing off
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: that the hide goes to get tanned.
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: And then and then you have but then you have
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: dudes that have ordered the stuff.
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: So yeah, who ships that out? You got you ship
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: it out?
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 2: We do it yeah.
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 3: So so so so we sell by the quarter half
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 3: whole buffalo. We sell one hundred direct to consumer. I'd
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 3: say half our customers are in Montana, half all over
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 3: the country. So yesterday, so we have one employee and Davidson,
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 3: amazing person, huge meat eater fan. He worked two days
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 3: a week for us and he's in charge of like
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 3: the whole fulfillment process. So the way it works is
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 3: somebody goes on our website. They put a deposit down
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 3: for a quarter and a half or a hole and
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 3: then oh yeah, to go full circle. When it's at
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 3: Amsterdam skinned and they cut it down the backbone, I
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 3: take a picture of that, and then the day after
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 3: the field harvest, I'll send those pictures to our customers.
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 3: It say, you know, hey, Steve, I field harvested your
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 3: bison yesterday morning on the ranch. Beautiful spring morning, blah
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 3: blah blah. Few photos attached, and then there's the herd
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 3: on the ground. And so it's just like they you know,
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 3: sometimes people don't reply, but most people love.
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: It so they can see it. Come they can see it.
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: It's like connecting them.
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 3: You know, it's like this is the animal you'll be eating,
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 3: and you know, we're just all about transparency and connecting
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 3: people to the process, and so so yeah, they skin
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 3: it dry agent Amsterdam's amazing, just great butchers, and then
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 3: they ultimately, you know, it's beautifully packaged, wrapped, frozen, labeled, boxed.
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 3: Ethan goes and picks it up and if it's local person,
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 3: he delivers it and then for people around the country,
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 3: we ship on Monday for Wednesday arrival and he takes
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 3: care of all of it and he does a really
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 3: great job with it.
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 3: So it's yeah, so like yesterday he shipped where did
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 3: he ship yesterday? Oh, got shipped one to San Francisco
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 3: and then one to Minneapolis.
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 2: So yeah, we've got it.
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 3: And that was a whole I mean, yeah, a whole
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 3: nother learning curve was like learning how to you know, boxes, insulation,
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 3: dry ice ups and you'll you know, you have three kids,
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 3: you'll appreciate, you know, I mean one as a first
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 3: generation rancher. Like the only way this works is keeping
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 3: our costs down. So people often think we're much bigger
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 3: than we are. Like it's like I do almost everything
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 3: and then Ethan helps out and then we work with Amsterdam.
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 3: So early on we shipped, I shipped. We didn't have
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 3: any employees. I shipped everything out of our house and
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 3: I'd like, I'd go get the meat and dry ice
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 3: from Safeway in the boxes and get everything ready. And
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 3: I remember this one time out uh, and we charge
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 3: like on a quarter. We charged by the amount of
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 3: meat you get back, Okay, And so I was like
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 3: packaging the meat and I turned grab something and then
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 3: I turn around and my daughter is sitting in the box.
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 3: I'm like, I joked the way I wasn't concerned about
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 3: shipping Greta to like, you know, Chicago. But my concern
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 3: was like the next morning having coffee and being like,
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 3: what's that under the couch and there's like four ribbuys
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 3: that she stashed. So we were like, we need office space.
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 3: But anyway, so we just we've we've learned, and now
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 3: we've got it, you know, dialed with great boxes, insulation
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 3: made out of recycled paper, dry ice, and and then
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 3: the only thing is like in the heart of winter,
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 3: if we've got a blizzard coming.
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 2: We'll just we won't ship. We just just we won't
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 2: run the risk of having it having something spoiled.
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So how like how confident are you now that
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: you've got it, Like, do you know what I mean,
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: do you still worry that the whole thing is gonna collapse?
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: Or do you feel like you got it you got
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: to like figure it out where you're comfortable or is
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: anxiety high?
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 3: That's a great question. It's I'd say a lot of both.
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 3: Like when we started it, I mean I vividly remember
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 3: that first year. I would literally be like I'd get
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 3: an email I'd be like, hey, Sarah, we got an email,
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 3: like like literally, or I get a voice I'm like, man,
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 3: that's pretty cool somebody called me. Now, just keeping up
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 3: with the emails and voicemails is almost impossible. So we're
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 3: in a different place, but I still like we are
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 3: not dancing in the end zone, like you're still you
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 3: gotta you know both from a like I guess to
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 3: answer your question, it's like there's two parts, right, there's
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 3: the customer business sales side, and I'll never relax on that,
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 3: like you know, you just I mean what you know,
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 3: businesses fail, like you lose your customer. So I'm just
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 3: like I preach it all the time, like we just
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 3: we really strive for excellence, like from the moment someone
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 3: places in order to when that meat shows up on
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 3: their doorstep, like we just we really provide like an
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 3: amazing customer experience all the way through and then we
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 3: try to provide them with the best red meat they'll
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 3: ever taste. So I feel good about it, like we've
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 3: got we've amazing momentum, great customers, more people finding us,
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 3: but I never take that for granted. And then on
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 3: the ranching side, we've I've made plenty of mistakes, learned
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 3: a lot from it, and uh, it's it's it's it's
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 3: it's way more dialed. But you're still dealing with bison.
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 3: So there's you know, there's still some low grade anxiety,
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 3: particularly this time of year, just like they get grass
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 3: crazy where they're like green grass, green grass, Where do
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 3: I find green grass? And but I'd say from where
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 3: I was eight years ago, it's you know, more like
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 3: a two out of ten, where like you know, early
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 3: on it was it was I was nervous.
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that anxiety takes a long It takes a long
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: time to dissipate, even when the risk goes away.
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: I remember when when I was trying to when I
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: was like set my mind to being a writer, you know, yeah, yeah,
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: intense crippling, intense anxiety about how to make it work
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: and then.
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 2: It works.
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but you still sleep with one eye open. Oh man, No,
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: I know, I like for all the years you sleep
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: with one eye open, You're just so.
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 3: Like, no, it grips you. I mean early on, like
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 3: am I going to fail?
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 2: Oh? Big time?
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 3: And that was yeah, that was like that summer of
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 3: twenty eighteen, what really did it? Because again people thought
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 3: we were totally nuts, but it was like we could
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 3: see it and I'd put so much work into it,
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 3: and it was just one of those things where I
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 3: was like, uh, if we don't like we might, we
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 3: might horrifically crash and burn. But we gotta, we gotta
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 3: try it because if we don't, I'll regret it forever.
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 3: And I and what really did it for me is
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 3: I was like, I'd like, I'd rather go for it
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 3: and fail than never have tried. And that's what got
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 3: us over the hump to jump off the cliff. But yeah, man,
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 3: that that anxiety I've I've had it so bad. Where
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 3: like it was a few it was four years ago,
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 3: and when it was that when those bulls took off
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 3: one of the other, when they came back, one of them,
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 3: he got a taste for the North Bridges and he
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 3: just started going. And there was there was a time
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 3: where he he took off for eight days, nobody saw him.
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 2: I didn't get a single.
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 3: Phone, and I laughed, like at one point I was like,
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 3: you can only have an acute stress response for so long.
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 3: So like like by day five, I was like, I
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 3: don't know how this is gonna end. Like somebody's gonna
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 3: call me from White Sulfur or like Manhattan, Montana. But
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 3: like at this point, I have no idea. And then
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 3: eight days later he came back. But I but like
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 3: when that was going on, I remember saying to Sarah,
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 3: I'm like, I think, I'm I think I think I'm
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 3: losing control of this whole thing. I think this whole
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 3: thing is about to blow up, because I was I
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 3: was just convinced that like he's going he's gonna teach
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 3: others to start going the neighbor We're gonna lose the neighbors, rightfully,
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 3: so they're gonna be like what that you know this
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 3: is you can't do this? So yeah, that anxiety and
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 3: I think you just you know, it's like a muscle.
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 3: You you train it and get used to it, and
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 3: it's just kind of the volume turns down and and
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 3: then each time you go through an event like that
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 3: and come out the other side of it, you're like, okay,
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 3: like that worked out, Okay.
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: But do you do you ever when when that's happened
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: to you, do you call your neighbors?
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 2: Yes?
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 3: Uh, it depends if it's like if it's quick, and
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 3: I think he's gonna come back. I don't, but on
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 3: that one, that one I let the neighbors know. And
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 3: our neighbors are just they're just great, like they they
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 3: just the thing that one of the many things I
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 3: love about ranchers, they have like some of the best
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 3: senses of humor. Like I just think you have to
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 3: because you're dealing with animals and weather and all this
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 3: shit that's outside of your control. And if you don't
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 3: find humor in it, you'll just go you'll go nuts.
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 3: And I remember this, this one neighbor, my one neighbor, Rick,
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 3: who's a great rancher, great guy. This like mud season
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 3: out there, as you know, it's just it's real, and
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 3: it's like the mud. The mud is the hardest part
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 3: of the job. Like it's demoralizing. It just beats you up.
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 3: You get stuck. And this one day I was just
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 3: in like I was struggling with the mud. I was
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 3: just pissed off. And Rick drove by, rolls his window
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 3: down dead pan, looks at me, and it's like, find
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 3: any mud, And it turned my whole day around. I
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 3: laughed my ass off, and so and so no our
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 3: neighbors and so that one bowl it was a neighbor
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 3: that texted me and said, your bowl's back.
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 2: Oh really yeah, And I was like.
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 3: I'm like I'm on it, and so.
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: Do you have any like if that happens, you just
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: do you have to just go shoot him or can
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: you get him back in?
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 3: So early on, so those ones fortunately came back, and
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 3: then that guy, that guy, he became like a legend,
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 3: like at Amsterdam. They they I would you know, they
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 3: knew my I told him my SOB story many times.
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 3: And they're they're the best. Like so normally, you know,
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 3: I have I have dates and times on the calendar,
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 3: so like yesterday it's like, all right, Monday, April twentieth,
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 3: Matt's bringing us two bison at two o'clock.
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 3: And they're very ritt they're they're they're fairly rigid about that.
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 3: I mean, they work with us, like they give us
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 3: a lot of flexibility. But you can't just call him
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 3: on a Tuesday morning and be like, yeah, I'm bringing
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 3: one in there. They have their schedule. And with that one,
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 3: they said, Matt, whenever you can kill him, you kill him,
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 3: and you just bring him here seven o'clock at night,
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 3: doesn't matter.
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 2: We'll take care of you get it figured out.
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 3: And and I remember we were all the whole herd
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 3: was on one side of the dirt road. And one
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 3: night we're eating dinner and I look out the window
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 3: and there's this one buffalo walking on the other side
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 3: of the road.
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 2: And I was like, son of a bitch.
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 3: I was like, otta get in the truck, and we
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 3: drove over and we just watched him, and he just
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 3: he literally like walked to the ranch and took off
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 3: for three more days. And then and then last year
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 3: Memorial Day, that bolt took off and he was in
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 3: When I got there, he was in with a neighbor's cows.
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 2: And the neighbor was not happy.
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 3: And nor would I have been if I was in
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 3: issues and that that talk about anxiety. I was that
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 3: my there's two two neighboring ranchers looking at me on
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 3: a Sunday morning, and they were like, what are you
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 3: gonna do? And my like my stress I was. I
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 3: could barely think, and I was like, I'm gonna kill it.
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 3: Say I'll be back, and I sprinted home, grabbed my rifle,
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 3: sprinted back, hopped in my neighbor's side by side, and
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 3: we drove out and fortunately he walked right towards us,
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 3: dropped him, and then everything shifted like next thing, you know,
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 3: they're taking pictures smiling, laughing, and I felt like and
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 3: I feel like that bought, you know again, just more
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 3: kind of street cred in the community of like one
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 3: of Matt's bulls got out, but he was here in
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 3: six minutes and that thing was on the ground.
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: So on the flip side, have you ever looked out
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: your window and saw that there's a domestic cow?
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, and then same thing. I'll text him,
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 3: and then our neighbors were like, so apologiz, oh yeah,
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 3: we'll come get it. So uh and yeah, I've uh
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 3: and yeah. So it's it's, it's it's you know, it
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 3: took a little while to get there, but we're in
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 3: a good, good spot, you know with the neighbors.
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, good man. Yeah, yeah, Well I appreciate you coming
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 1: on and talk about it.
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 2: Oh man, this is awesome. So but if dudes want
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 2: to order something from you, like there's a line.
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's not.
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 3: We so I field harvest year round. I mean I
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 3: mean right now, you know, every Monday or every other Monday,
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 3: so I always you know, I just get I'm sensitive to. Like,
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 3: if someone placed an order today and you know, I
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 3: wasn't field harvesting regularly and they didn't get their meat
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 3: for three months, they'd be like, dude, what's the deal?
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 2: But what does your do?
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: You does your site tell people when to expect it?
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 3: No, But when they place an order, I get the deposit,
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 3: I see the email come through, and I email them
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 3: the next day and I say, based on our weight
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 3: list in my field harvest schedule, I expect to field
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 3: harvest your bison this week. And that way they're like, oh, okay, good,
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 3: I've heard from Matt he's gonna field harvest it in
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 3: three weeks. So the weight list is never you know,
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 3: like if someone placed the order today, I would definitely
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 3: be able to field harvest in the next month.
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: Okay, So I'm always trying by weight list. Mean, it's
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: not like like your ship twenty four hours later or
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: something like that.
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, No, it's it's it's they place an order and
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 3: then they wait a few weeks for me to kill it,
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 3: and then a couple of weeks for it to be
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 3: dry aged and cut and wrapped, and then they get it.
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 3: So yeah, you just basically suit. We try to super simple.
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 3: I mean, we ultimately consider ourselves an e commerce company.
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: Mm hm.
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 3: You come to our website Northbridge Bison dot com and
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 3: our options are there, place your deposit, I email you
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 3: and what and I guess. Lastly, what's been super cool
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 3: again because we try to really provide that customer experience
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 3: is I have multiple customers who I would consider good
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 3: friends at this point, never met them in person, but like,
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 3: they email me articles, I email them stuff, they send
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 3: me cooking photos. So it's been, it's been. It's been
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 3: fun getting to know our customers.
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, if you want to see if you guys
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: want to see MAT's place, go what well, I can't
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: remember what the name of that video?
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 2: Oh, Phil, what'd you find out about hangar stakes?
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 5: I was gonna hop in here really quick. It helps, Uh.
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 5: It facilitates the contraction of the diaphragm during breathing and
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 5: other throats to okay.
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: Good to know, Okay, yeah, yeah, he'd be fine, he'd
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: be finding out he'd just be breathing. He'd have a
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: labored breathing. Yeah yeah.
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 2: Facility hit me with it again. Facilitates the breed.
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 5: It's a part of it's depending on the animal, but
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 5: that that it's called the legs of the diaphragm or
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 5: the kruer I guess is the Latin Latin term, but
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 5: it's it has to do with like the spinal cord
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 5: and the diaphragm and some esophagus function.
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: H huh there, going straight from film, All right, why
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: did I even want?
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 2: Why did I bring that up? No idea. We just
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 2: knew that we had to cover off on it.
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, we because we didn't neither one of us
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 3: knew what the hanging tender actually did.
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 2: And then the other thing, Phil, can you find out
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 2: the name?
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: Do you mind looking up the name of that video
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: we filmed Matts when we cut the when we cut
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: the bison up with the stone tools, the Clovis.
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 5: Tool, it's called Butchering of Bison with Clovis points and tools.
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that was filmed.
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 6: That's kind of when we main and we knew each other,
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 6: but that's not when we mainly connected can connected to
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 6: met So if you go watch go to YouTube and
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 6: watch that video, type in like meat eater, bison, Clovise
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 6: points or something, you'll find it.
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 2: And that's kind of a little bit of a glimpse
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 2: at your place exactly. Yeah.
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And that was a cool day. That was That
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 3: was such an awesome.
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 1: Day when I was eating my u some parts of that,
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: some of the steaks and stuff we had on that,
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 1: and we had a lot of ground too.
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 2: But I remember a couple of times I hit little
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 2: stone flakes. Oh did you Yeah?
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 1: Oh cool, just a little bit little stone flake.
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 2: That's awesome. That's part of the experience.
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 1: I love it.
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's great. That's great.
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: All right, man, thanks for coming on. Good luck and
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: good luck keep doing your business.
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 2: Man.
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 1: It's been cool to It's been fun to know you
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: and eat some of your stuff and go out there
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 1: and see it all.
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 3: No, I appreciate it. I so appreciate what you all
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 3: do here at Meat Eater, and I love partner with
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 3: you guys. So it's been a lot of fun for
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 3: me too.
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 1: I like that, like you got like that good American
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: elbow grease. Man, let's just in there doing it, you know,
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: absolutely figuring stuff out.
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 2: So I appreciate it. Thank you, Thanks coming on. Cool