Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 459: Hind Titty

Transcript

Ep. 459: Hind Titty · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listeningcast. You can't
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: predict anything. The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: by First Light. Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands,
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: or scouting for el First Light has performance apparel to
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: support every hunter in every environment. Check it out at
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: first Light dot com, f I R S T L
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: I t E dot com. Chrin. You know how a
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: lot of times we come up with what the show
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: is gonna be called, but then we forget and it's
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: called something.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: Different that doesn't really happen.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: I feel like it does. I feel like a lot
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: of times I'll be like, hey, let's call the show this,
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: and it winds up not being called that. Okay, pind
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: Titty should be this episode. No one's gonna know why
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: for now, but later they'll know. Okay, Tommy knows what
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: I'm talking about. I know exactly what you're talking about.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: Tommy knows exactly what I'm talking about. Joey. We're recording
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: today from the Flagship First Light store in Haley, Idaho.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: What is that, you might ask, It's the flagship First
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Light Store in Haley, Idaho. If you want to find
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: the best hunting gear on the planet, you come into
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: this store and get it. And to give you a
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: real virtual experience of what it's like we have today.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: Keith and Spa should be a spatch ye, but it's not.
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: We all agree it's an.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: Spa and Dom Cooper and between you guys, can you
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: quickly calculate someone walks in the door, what's the likelihood
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: they'll encounter one or both of you?
• 1:50
  Speaker 4: I would say seventy. I've live in here, so probably
• 1:55
  Speaker 4: even more than that. Tom's in here a lot though.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: So there's like a likely that you would come in
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: and they would find you, guys, So after this they'll
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: be comfortable coming in knowing who they're looking for.
• 2:07
  Speaker 4: Just give me a high five. I'm here every day.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: Okay. Now you'll know because one of them has an
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: insane mullet.
• 2:18
  Speaker 4: I've been working on it in a while, man.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: And one of them's Australian. Sure and get it out.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: So you know we've had we had another Australian on recently.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: You guys have been making a strong showing Yep, we're
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: an interesting braid of people. Great this other Australian is
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: a pH in Africa and and you're here, and so
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: we're catching them as they kind of get spun off
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: into the broader outside world. Also joined by Tommy Edson,
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: known as the blue collar scholar, always bragging up how
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: good he does? I meet you? To trivia? He came
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: down lost.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: Then the pause gate scandal broke.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: What was that?
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: Blue collar pause is my new nickname at work?
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: Oh and then we caught when that Yeah that he
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: what The reason he performs well in private is he
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: pauses the show.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna let you finish. Go ahead, Well, oh you
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: want me to go?
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah? You pause, think about it longer, which is like
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: if I could like pause it for a couple of days,
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: a couple of days and like be like.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: It's actually yeah. It was more like, you know, for
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: four days.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: Do you ever do a little research while it's paused?
• 3:41
  Speaker 5: No, I'm I'm working a high play in a fast
• 3:44
  Speaker 5: placed environment. And I was like, but at the same time,
• 3:48
  Speaker 5: I could pause the game, continue with my job while
• 3:51
  Speaker 5: I was communicating with somebody at work and not miss
• 3:56
  Speaker 5: like I didn't know. There's times where I don't have
• 3:58
  Speaker 5: time to stop even for the five seconds and write
• 4:00
  Speaker 5: my answer down. So it's like and so, but then
• 4:05
  Speaker 5: it does, Dick. I got to thinking about it and
• 4:07
  Speaker 5: it gave me a little bit. I thought, does it
• 4:09
  Speaker 5: give me a combetitive advantage? And so then I said
• 4:12
  Speaker 5: something to Joey, one of the guys on the Rodeo team,
• 4:15
  Speaker 5: and I even.
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: Texted you and You're like, oh you cheater.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So Tommy, here here's why we're gonna name
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: here's why the show's gonna called high and titty Tommy. Recently, Doug,
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: my buddy Bubbly Doug Durren sends me a screenshot of
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: an exchange he has a Tommy Tommy has this to
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: say to Doug. Quick cow question. If you're milking a
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: cow and it's a race, which utter or nipple are
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: you going for? Is there something in particular I should
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: be looking for in an utter? We're gonna dive into
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: all that. Let's do because in due time, because I've
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: pointed out a couple of times, we talked about a lot.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: You know, we came out with the shirt. We came
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: out with the wild Cow Milker t shirt. Correct, because
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: we dug deep here. We take our art, you know,
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: we take our spending. Seriously, we dug deep and sponsored
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: Tommy's wild Cow Milk and rodeo team for three hundred
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: bucks and he sent me in. I shouldn't say this
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: because people are gonna start pilfering my mailbox.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't say it. You could, well, you could.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: Say, Tommy sent me the winnings in cash rolled up
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: in a paper, and.
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: You do that.
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: You shouldn't do that.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: No, that's fine. So now they're just sitting on my
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: desk like an envelope of cash that I need to
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: go and find some way to integrate into. I'm gonna
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: hand it off to somebody.
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: I figured.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: That's why I like it, because I like to feel that.
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: Man.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's a good feeling.
• 5:45
  Speaker 5: When that judge hands you that water cash. You're like,
• 5:47
  Speaker 5: there's a picture somewhere in me.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Hobby tournaments you guys done.
• 5:53
  Speaker 5: That would be, uh the third one I think to
• 5:58
  Speaker 5: this is our second year.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, I mean how many uh, how
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: many rodeos you participated in so far this year?
• 6:04
  Speaker 5: I think that's the third one. Oh, this this year?
• 6:07
  Speaker 5: That's holdly, we only do two a year? You do
• 6:09
  Speaker 5: two a year. When's the next one September. Oh that
• 6:12
  Speaker 5: I knew there was more.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: To come, all right, So we got we recoup some
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: of our money and the money is going into the
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: Land Access Initiative, Media's Land Access Initiative, which we need
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: to do. We need to We're gonna get heavy duty
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: on raising some money for that initiative coming up. So
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: we're gonna get into what because we had a lot
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: of questions. A lot of questions came in about I
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: don't understand how that's a thing. What wild cow milking,
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: wild cow milking and rodeos. Oh, I mean people kind
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: of get it like bull ride and they're like, yeah,
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: I've been exposed to that. That resonates with me. Team
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: roping people will be like I've seen that around right,
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: wild cow milking, they don't know what you're talking about.
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 6:47
  Speaker 5: It's like most rodeo events like have a they have
• 6:50
  Speaker 5: a where they originated. You know, you have like tie
• 6:53
  Speaker 5: down roping, calf roping where you tie down your calf
• 6:57
  Speaker 5: and you got to go back to your saddle bags
• 6:59
  Speaker 5: and grab your whatever. Shots go up give, but you
• 7:02
  Speaker 5: had to make sure he was stay tied. That's why
• 7:04
  Speaker 5: the time is set for I think it's five or
• 7:06
  Speaker 5: six seconds. You cow's gotta stay tied while he's down.
• 7:08
  Speaker 5: All these events have like beginnings.
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: Like where they begin from. No, we'll get into the history.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: We're gonna do that pretty soon, and then we're gonna
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: get We're also joining us here in the in the
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: first light store is zeb Hogan. I have two ways
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: to describe you, and they seem contradictory. One is host
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: of nat Geo's Monster Fish Show or the United Nations
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: Convention on Migratory Species Scientific counselor for fish just seems different.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: I would lean into the latter one because it sounds like,
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: really the guy you'd want to talk to you if
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: you want to talk about fish. And then you're also
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: author of Chasing Giants in Search of the World's Largest
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: Freshwater Fish, which is available now.
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: Correct published last month, Yeah, polish.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: Last month and in it and I watched some things
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: Krinn sent me, And what what really hooked me on
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: talking to you is the question of how. Why is
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: the question what is the big what is the biggest large? Sorry,
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: the question what is the world's largest freshwater fish? Why?
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: It takes a book to not quite answer that question.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: It's a rich question, and we're gonna get in a
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: little bit into the richness of that question, which is
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: definitions stacked on top of definitions, and also a a
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: kind of a that that a lot of the the
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: a lot of these fish that might be contenders are
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: in an alarming state population wise. Yeah, it seems like
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: the modern world is not friendly to huge freshwater fish.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: So we're gonna spend time on that. But first off,
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: I want to jump back into what happens when you
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: walk into the first Light store. So what happens when
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: you walk into the first Light Store? I come in
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: and I say Hi, Then what will happen?
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: Man?
• 9:15
  Speaker 4: The First Light Store is such an experience. The first
• 9:17
  Speaker 4: thing I usually want to let people do is just
• 9:20
  Speaker 4: kind of take a grasp what they're walking into. It's
• 9:22
  Speaker 4: really cool. You get the whole first line product. Not
• 9:26
  Speaker 4: anywhere in the world where you can see this. So
• 9:28
  Speaker 4: when you walk in here, we've got a huge line.
• 9:30
  Speaker 4: Even the First Light employees walk in, They're like, I
• 9:32
  Speaker 4: didn't know we sold this much stuff?
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: Oh boy? Yeah, everybody I've been in here with it's like, God,
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: I didn't know that this was all here.
• 9:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's unbelievable. Between the waterfowl, the ladies line, all
• 9:45
  Speaker 4: our Western big game, huge amount of product we can
• 9:48
  Speaker 4: point a customer towards. So it's really cool. What I
• 9:52
  Speaker 4: really like at the store is the ability to like
• 9:55
  Speaker 4: see that customer, talk to the customer, and like figure
• 9:58
  Speaker 4: out what they want to do in the world. Like,
• 10:00
  Speaker 4: we've got a ton of people that are just doing
• 10:02
  Speaker 4: elk hunts and Idaho, but then we get We've had
• 10:05
  Speaker 4: people from every state in the country at this stage.
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: Oh really yeah cool, So it's really cool.
• 10:09
  Speaker 4: You know, we help out people that are doing their
• 10:11
  Speaker 4: first Africa trips. We've got people going down to Mexico
• 10:14
  Speaker 4: for mule deer. We've got all the sorts of waterfowl hunters,
• 10:18
  Speaker 4: bear hunters this spring, We're all over in the store.
• 10:21
  Speaker 4: So I just it's really cool to live vicariously through
• 10:24
  Speaker 4: them and see what they're wanting to do and then
• 10:27
  Speaker 4: to dial in what gear exactly they want. Super fun.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah where were you born? Where you brought up?
• 10:32
  Speaker 4: I was born in Colorado, but I've been an Idaho
• 10:34
  Speaker 4: boy now for most of my life. So I grew
• 10:36
  Speaker 4: up in Idaha Falls for the most part, went to
• 10:39
  Speaker 4: school up at University Idaho, up in Moscow, and I've
• 10:42
  Speaker 4: been in the Wood River Valley now for about eighteen years.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: Oh, a long time.
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 10:46
  Speaker 4: I managed to store up and catch them a backpacking
• 10:49
  Speaker 4: store and outdoor store for a long time, just to
• 10:51
  Speaker 4: block away from the old First Light headquarters. So I
• 10:54
  Speaker 4: was there from the beginning with friends, with all of
• 10:56
  Speaker 4: that crew and watch the brand grow. And then when
• 10:58
  Speaker 4: they came up with the idea of that store, it
• 11:00
  Speaker 4: was something I could not say no to. It's too
• 11:03
  Speaker 4: cool not to work here.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: Uh.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: How many people come in and they don't really know
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: what they're walking into, and how many people come in
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: knowing what they're up to?
• 11:10
  Speaker 4: You know, I'd say a majority of the people come
• 11:12
  Speaker 4: to check out the store. This is a destination store.
• 11:14
  Speaker 4: People do trips around the store. So, but then we
• 11:19
  Speaker 4: definitely have people to walk in here and they do
• 11:21
  Speaker 4: like two or three steps and they there's a lot
• 11:26
  Speaker 4: of cameo in here, and you can see them just
• 11:28
  Speaker 4: do a reverse and walk out. It's just not the
• 11:30
  Speaker 4: right store for what you're looking for. Yeah, So but
• 11:33
  Speaker 4: the majority of people are so stoked to come check.
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: Out the store.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And uh, Dom, walk me through. How did you
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: come to what's the like the Australia the Haley Path
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: to the typical Australia the Haley Path.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 11:46
  Speaker 6: See, it was always an outdoors blug. But I came
• 11:49
  Speaker 6: over to America when I was fourteen and, uh, you know,
• 11:53
  Speaker 6: kid reading a little the Rourke in Hemingway, I thought, uh,
• 11:56
  Speaker 6: you know, I grew up fishing and hunting was the
• 11:58
  Speaker 6: next step?
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: Is?
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: It often is?
• 12:01
  Speaker 6: And I came over when I was fourteen and I
• 12:03
  Speaker 6: went on a pheasant hunt and a coyote hunt, and
• 12:07
  Speaker 6: it was probably the most miserable experience ever. Like you
• 12:10
  Speaker 6: came over as a visitor, it came over as a
• 12:13
  Speaker 6: visitor at the time. Yes, I had an old Model
• 12:17
  Speaker 6: twenty one sixteen gauge that someone lent me and I
• 12:20
  Speaker 6: went on peasant this pheasant hunt and there.
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: Was no dog or anything.
• 12:23
  Speaker 6: And it was on Blm Land in southern Idaho, and
• 12:27
  Speaker 6: I think we got one bird up all day and
• 12:28
  Speaker 6: I didn't have the gear, didn't have the gear at all,
• 12:31
  Speaker 6: and I actually had frost nip on my hands and
• 12:33
  Speaker 6: the one bird that flew up, I didn't even pull
• 12:35
  Speaker 6: the trigger on because I couldn't work the safety.
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: On that little Model twenty one.
• 12:39
  Speaker 6: And at the end of the day, I was like, man,
• 12:40
  Speaker 6: that's a miserable experience. But you know, going back to
• 12:45
  Speaker 6: guys like you know, Teddy Roosevelt talking about this strenuous life,
• 12:49
  Speaker 6: I was like, man, this really sucked, but I had
• 12:50
  Speaker 6: a lot of fun.
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: What is it in me that really enjoyed this? And
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: ever since then, I was.
• 12:55
  Speaker 6: Just absolutely obsessed.
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: With Western hunting.
• 12:59
  Speaker 6: So ever chance I got, every holiday, I'd come over
• 13:01
  Speaker 6: to Idaho and hunt. I nearly got kicked out of
• 13:04
  Speaker 6: college twice because I was trying to do that.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: But were you hunting in Australia too?
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: A little bit?
• 13:10
  Speaker 6: So I'm from Queensland and there's you know, a lot
• 13:13
  Speaker 6: of Queenslanders and Australians listening to this. Know that Queensland
• 13:16
  Speaker 6: does not define any game species of our game, so
• 13:19
  Speaker 6: we have, you know, we have quite a quite a
• 13:21
  Speaker 6: robust population of red deer and fallow deer and shittle
• 13:24
  Speaker 6: deer and pigs. But they're not defined as game by
• 13:27
  Speaker 6: the state. They're defined as pests. So it's a lot
• 13:30
  Speaker 6: of control rather so than managing them as a as
• 13:34
  Speaker 6: an actual asset to the people. So I did a
• 13:38
  Speaker 6: bunch of that over there, A lot of bow hunting,
• 13:40
  Speaker 6: but it just never did it to me in the
• 13:43
  Speaker 6: way that Idaho managers game and the relationship with public
• 13:46
  Speaker 6: lands here. So I knew as soon as I finished
• 13:48
  Speaker 6: finished my education there and finished my time, I wanted
• 13:52
  Speaker 6: to move over.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: Were you involved some kind of ranch and type radio
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: tape activities over there?
• 13:56
  Speaker 6: Yeah, So I always had a bit of a question
• 13:59
  Speaker 6: for adventure. So my mate and I basically worked out,
• 14:04
  Speaker 6: like what weeks we needed to be at college in
• 14:06
  Speaker 6: which we didn't so that we could just scrape by
• 14:09
  Speaker 6: and pass because.
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: We want to do it to cowboy and hunt.
• 14:13
  Speaker 6: That was basically our life over there, and Mum and
• 14:15
  Speaker 6: Dad went too fond of it at the time, but
• 14:18
  Speaker 6: you know, they understand it now. And I was very
• 14:20
  Speaker 6: lucky my old man and my sister actually came out
• 14:23
  Speaker 6: last year and we came on a hunt with me
• 14:26
  Speaker 6: for the first time, and we were lucky enough to
• 14:28
  Speaker 6: harvest and elk together and work our butts off for
• 14:31
  Speaker 6: it and pack it out. And it's a very very
• 14:34
  Speaker 6: very special experience. Have you guys married, No, at least
• 14:37
  Speaker 6: this guy is married for a long.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: You've been married a long time fifteen.
• 14:43
  Speaker 6: His wife's actually he's watched a hairdresser and one of
• 14:46
  Speaker 6: the most highly acclaimed hairdressers in the valley.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: So you got like a revolt going against your wife.
• 14:53
  Speaker 4: She you know, she tips a big game. How she
• 14:56
  Speaker 4: doesn't like it, but she gets a glass of wine
• 14:57
  Speaker 4: in hair and.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: She want to run her fingers through the back of
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: your hair.
• 15:01
  Speaker 4: It's got the Kavorka man, you can't.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: All right, So there you have it. So if you come,
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: if you wind up anywhere in the vicinity, come down
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: to our flagship first light store, only place on the
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: planet right now where you can walk in touch stuff.
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a pretty neat experience.
• 15:18
  Speaker 6: A couple of weird looking dudes get some great products
• 15:21
  Speaker 6: in your hands.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well now they know, now they know, Like it's like, yeah,
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: a couple of alarming looking fellas, but deep down, a
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: couple of hearts of gold.
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: I wouldn't go that far.
• 15:30
  Speaker 4: We like to hunt, man, that's the most important part.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Ever, if you can speak to the equipment, that's great, man. Yeah, absolutely, well,
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: thank you man. Thanks for letting us be down here too,
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: because we had to lock the doors.
• 15:41
  Speaker 4: Oh absolutely, Now, this is a really cool experience. That's
• 15:44
  Speaker 4: awesome having you guys here.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: I'll point out that there was a person out there
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: that wanted to come in who had a pretty very
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: set She knew exactly what she wanted. Absolutely, that was
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: an educated customer coming in.
• 15:54
  Speaker 4: We get a lot of those, Definitely a lot of
• 15:56
  Speaker 4: people they know exactly what they want to put their
• 15:58
  Speaker 4: hands on. They just want to try it on, see
• 16:00
  Speaker 4: what they need. A lot of times we can close
• 16:02
  Speaker 4: that sale right here.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: Yes, she wasn't here to run her fingers through your hair.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: She was here to make a purchase. Oh you never know, man,
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: All right, Tommy, thanks coming down now, help enlighten, enlighten
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: people about the rodeo event called tell me what it's called?
• 16:26
  Speaker 7: Do?
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: I want to make sure I got it right.
• 16:27
  Speaker 5: Technically, our turn our our event is called shoot Cow
• 16:30
  Speaker 5: milking shoot cows.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: Basically you and you want me to just start like.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: The I want to know the history. I want souped nuts.
• 16:39
  Speaker 5: As I understand it, the history is like basically you're
• 16:42
  Speaker 5: loading cows like with manpower instead of with horsepower.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: And you know, basically the way that's.
• 16:53
  Speaker 5: Kind of the crux or the beginning of how where
• 16:57
  Speaker 5: that rodeo event started. What, as I understand it, how
• 17:02
  Speaker 5: it works is your basic rodeo arena, your basic oval.
• 17:06
  Speaker 5: One side is almost always grand stands. The other side
• 17:09
  Speaker 5: is your bucking shoots, and you're where all your rough
• 17:11
  Speaker 5: stock is bulls horses, bucking horses, whatever you have.
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: In most standard proteo arenas, you have six bucket.
• 17:19
  Speaker 5: Shoots three and three with a gap in the middle,
• 17:21
  Speaker 5: may or may not be a gap in the middle.
• 17:24
  Speaker 5: Wild cow milk and what they do is it's a
• 17:26
  Speaker 5: three man team. You have three positions on that team.
• 17:29
  Speaker 5: You have a milker, a mugger, and an anchor. Anchor
• 17:32
  Speaker 5: is kind of self explanatory. Usually it's your biggest guy
• 17:36
  Speaker 5: on the team, and he's a guy that usually is
• 17:38
  Speaker 5: in charge of not letting go of that rope and
• 17:41
  Speaker 5: can in case there's catastrophe, like two guys go down
• 17:46
  Speaker 5: or one guy goes down, the big guy can usually
• 17:49
  Speaker 5: just set down on his bend his knees and squat
• 17:52
  Speaker 5: down and stop a cow or ski around or get
• 17:56
  Speaker 5: drug around. But basically the mugger's job is to stop
• 18:01
  Speaker 5: that cow you at some point. We'll get to that
• 18:06
  Speaker 5: in a second. The milker's job is pretty self explanatory.
• 18:09
  Speaker 5: His job is to milk it. They run six cows
• 18:13
  Speaker 5: wild heifers into the bucking shoots. Usually there's an event
• 18:19
  Speaker 5: of some kind going on, a drill team or a
• 18:21
  Speaker 5: clown show going on about that time, so that each
• 18:25
  Speaker 5: team draws a number out of a hat one through six,
• 18:29
  Speaker 5: whatever durn number you draw. You draw number three. That's
• 18:31
  Speaker 5: your cow, and that's your shoot. Shoot three. You inside.
• 18:35
  Speaker 5: You take a rope alter. Everybody, every team has issued
• 18:37
  Speaker 5: a rope pulter in a clear beer bottle like a
• 18:40
  Speaker 5: Corona bottle. Yeah. Yeah, they're not making it easy on you.
• 18:45
  Speaker 5: You take somebody's got to get in the shoot with
• 18:47
  Speaker 5: the cow, put the rope alter on it, and usually
• 18:52
  Speaker 5: you wait for the event to and they'll go through
• 18:54
  Speaker 5: and announce everybody's sponsors.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: But they presumably they've checked to see if the cow
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: is lactating.
• 18:59
  Speaker 5: Oh yeah, but that's something too as usually sometimes you
• 19:03
  Speaker 5: do get one that's not nearly as moist as the
• 19:07
  Speaker 5: rest of them.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: You know, you'll try it one once in a while.
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: That's what hands my question to Bubbly Doug.
• 19:13
  Speaker 5: You know, I want every upper hand I can get, yep,
• 19:16
  Speaker 5: So I went straight to the man.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but.
• 19:21
  Speaker 5: Then the buzzer goes off and all six shoots open
• 19:24
  Speaker 5: that you will all six guys open their shoots, and
• 19:27
  Speaker 5: six cows come bull dozing out of there, and it's
• 19:29
  Speaker 5: your job to stop them and not get run over.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: And there's eighteen people in the arena.
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: Correct, the rules of.
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: The of the.
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: Of the event are.
• 19:39
  Speaker 5: You cannot touch that cow with your hands until she
• 19:43
  Speaker 5: crosses a chalk line about twenty five feet.
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: Out in the arena.
• 19:47
  Speaker 5: You can hold onto that rope, but you cannot physically
• 19:51
  Speaker 5: touch that cow. Put your hands on that cow. As
• 19:53
  Speaker 5: soon as she crosses the plane of that chalk line. Boy,
• 19:57
  Speaker 5: she's fair game. And usually the go to move is
• 20:00
  Speaker 5: just wrap her up in a headlock and just hang on, man,
• 20:04
  Speaker 5: just don't let go. Okay, but there's a lot going
• 20:07
  Speaker 5: on there too, because your anchor is usually trying. Once
• 20:10
  Speaker 5: somebody gets a hold of her, an anchor will usually
• 20:13
  Speaker 5: try to either stabilize her back end so she's not
• 20:15
  Speaker 5: pivoting around in a circle because a milker is not
• 20:18
  Speaker 5: going to be able to get her. But a good
• 20:20
  Speaker 5: milker can milk her if she's moving, but not at
• 20:23
  Speaker 5: a dead run.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: So so you do you try to snake that teat
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: right down into that beer bottle.
• 20:30
  Speaker 5: You try to squirt it into the squirt it in there.
• 20:32
  Speaker 5: You need one good squirt. The last rule of it
• 20:34
  Speaker 5: is one good squirt. You need one good squirt. Yeah,
• 20:37
  Speaker 5: you don't got to fill the bottle. No, the rule
• 20:39
  Speaker 5: is is that you go out once you.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: Find we just had it. We I'll point out we
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: just had a where we did a deep dive on
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: competition regulations. I was proudish thing. Yeah, yeah, one good
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: squirt isn't gonna.
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: Cut it for me. No, it's not gonna cut it
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: for you.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: How who defines a good squirt?
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: The judges?
• 20:57
  Speaker 5: Because once, once you get once the milker yells the
• 21:00
  Speaker 5: word milk, it's the mugger's position to pull the halter because.
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: The milker has runner back up, back up.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: Okay, it runs out of guy's holding the rope, correct
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: crosses the plane, somebody stops her. Okay, someone grabs it,
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: and someone tries to stabilize it. The milker goes in
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: with the bottle.
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: Yep, okay, get some milk. The rules are that you
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: need one drop to come out of that bottle in
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: five seconds of it being upside down. But you gotta
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: have the halter.
• 21:28
  Speaker 5: That's what I was looking for and sprint all the
• 21:30
  Speaker 5: way across the arena to in front of the grand stands,
• 21:32
  Speaker 5: where there's a judge standing.
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: There with a flag in a rope.
• 21:35
  Speaker 5: When you step into when you step into that ring,
• 21:38
  Speaker 5: she'll she'll draw, she'll throw a flag and say time.
• 21:42
  Speaker 5: You got to turn that bottle upside down. And you
• 21:45
  Speaker 5: got five seconds from that moment for one drop to
• 21:48
  Speaker 5: produce a drip?
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: One drop?
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: How uh, here's the thing I struggle with. How if
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: you put muttons? Okay, picture of dial and mutton busting
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: is here, and bull riding is here? Where does this
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: fit about dead Center?
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: About dead Center? Nor? Yeah? Yeah, it's like it's it's
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: just like a thing where like dudes that like like me.
• 22:20
  Speaker 5: You know, I'm getting on and get into my mid forties,
• 22:24
  Speaker 5: and my only good excuse is that, man, I just
• 22:27
  Speaker 5: missed some good old girk conflict.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: Got it.
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: You know, you can't get away with ragged on dudes
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: in public anymore. You got to get into a rodeo
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: for that.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: Man. Yeah, you got a boss at work. You know
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: when I was a boy, he just went up and
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: just beat somebody up me too. Guys. Now everybody's all touchy.
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: You got a boss at work that's real. He likes
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: to give his business, you.
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: Know what I mean.
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: And the guy at the gas station you know, I'm right, zep,
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: the guy at the gas station that gave you a
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: ration of it last week and.
• 22:59
  Speaker 5: You let it go. But you can let all that
• 23:01
  Speaker 5: girl out in the rodeo arena. What are you laughing at?
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: Cream? It's true. It's so true, man.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: So that's all you're looking for, just and a and
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: a buckle. I want first place, of course. I'm a
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: competitive dude.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: Don't want to win, and you want there to be
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: cold hard cash at the end of right and a
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: sweet T shirt and a sweet T shirt. How did
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: you first become aware of it?
• 23:24
  Speaker 5: A good friend of mine from high school? And uh,
• 23:28
  Speaker 5: they running? Do We compete against them in that rodeo
• 23:31
  Speaker 5: twice a season and they run in other ones. And
• 23:34
  Speaker 5: We've been buddy since, you know, high school. I've seen
• 23:38
  Speaker 5: him do it at the rodeo and I ran into
• 23:40
  Speaker 5: him out to dinner one night at a little kind
• 23:42
  Speaker 5: of local pub, water and whole place, and I'm like,
• 23:46
  Speaker 5: you ever get down and man, I'll jump in there.
• 23:48
  Speaker 5: You need a man on the team.
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: He's in. Uh. I was like, you get down too,
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: I might need I might know somebody else. It's interested.
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: He's like, y'all to just start your own team.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: You only need one more.
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: Like you know what, Joshua point yeah, no, yeah, I'm
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: a beat him for a buckle. I beat him this week,
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: this last one. You did you know?
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know that joke where you say that you're
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: milking the cow. My dad did this to me and
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: you say, hey, did you know there's always a star
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: on the end of a cow's teeth and you go
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: to look and.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: Right in the face. No, I never got that.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: That's a good joke.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: That is a good joke.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: My old man he had a buddy. So he had
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: a buddy that ran that was a ran a dairy place,
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: and my old man and go down there, and the
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: way I remember, man, he'd always be coming back with
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: that milk, but no pasture eyed milk. And like in
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: my head, I'm sure it wasn't true. In my head,
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: I remember that there was grass, it's like moss in there,
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: and we hated it, man, and we would call it
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: cow's milk. He'd be like, the hell you take all
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: the other milk? Kids, you know, like no, not cow's
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: milk all layered out the fridge like like I said,
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: I remember it with like chunks of grass in there,
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: and oh, we did not like that milk. But guy
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: had some of it recently at my buddy's dairy place
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: where super chilled. It goes into that like oh, it's
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: like thirty three thirty two point one degrees or whatever. Man,
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: it is good, dude. Yeah, but when I was a
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: little kid, I was definitely afraid of that milk.
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: You ever take a big swig after that competition?
• 25:24
  Speaker 5: Oh No, it's usually reserved for in front of the judges.
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: But you know, I'd be game. Yep.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: You know when someone asked a question and they're sort
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: of like acting like they're asking a hypothetical question, but
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: you realize they're actually asking a question. No, it'd be
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: like one of those questions. It's like, let's just say, Okay,
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: this guy writes in this big, long letter about recovering
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: a k Craig. If I get some of this wrong,
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: I'm trying. It's a long letter. Basically a dog gets
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: killed and they wind up with a fawn and say
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: also that his wife is producing someone in the family
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: is producing way more milk than their kid can drink.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: Like I remember my wife, she'd have so much she'd
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: be feeding the baby and filling the freezer with frozen
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: bags of milk. So he's like, let's just say, would
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: that be good milk for that baby fawn?
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: Am I getting this more or less correct?
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: You lost me his wife's milk? H Oh, okay, now
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: you got me back.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And I don't know what the're right to him?
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: Uh cholesterrum.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: We haven't replied, Oh, because we.
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: Have an answer or not a real answer.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: Oh half a finger weighed in on it.
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: Oh, he's the man for the question.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: But you know this just came up, and I'm gonna
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: bring it up again. The half a finger brought up
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: a great point, and I feel like raising it twice
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: because how throughout your entire life you have been told
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: if you touch a phone, it's mother will abandon it.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: Like how many times have you heard that?
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: Growing up? Including birds too? You were always told to
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: never touch birds either.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: Halfle finger brings up a great point where he's like
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: half a fingers Like all the collaring research that is
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: done on funds, right, they net them tranquilize and whatever,
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: handle them, draw blood, wave them. If what you've been
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: told your whole life was true, all of that would
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: be in vain because those fauns would all be dead.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: But they're not.
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: That's a good point.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: When you go to a bear den and they work
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: up bears in a bear den, s, what are they
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: doing handling all of them everything? They got them inside
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: their coat. Yeah, I see where they got them in
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: their coat to warm them up. But then on the
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: same hand, you're told your whole life the minute you
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: touch it, it will be abandoned. Helffle Fingers first point.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: The doe wasn't dead. Helfel Fingers first point. The fawn
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: is not abandoned, hundred percent sure of that. Does spend
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: almost zero time within sight of the fawn only to nurse,
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: and then they leave them for many more hours. My
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: son had a new burn newborn fawn in his yard
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: last week against the backyard fence in Texas, and my
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: brother did the week before in Wisconsin. It happens all
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: the time, and they are not abandoned. Stepping away from
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: Halfflefinger for meant to remind bear hunters of something uh
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: I have watched like almost anywhere you go pretty much
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: anywhere you go, anywhere you go on the lower forty eight,
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: anywhere you go on eighties.
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: Ninety percent of Alaska, you're not allowed. During blackbirar season,
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: you're allowed. You're not allowed to kill asau with cubs.
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: Most people in granted, don't get a lot of opportunities. Most
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: people site check it like is it got a cub? Nope,
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: But likewise, in the early spring on their first So
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: those babies are born, right, they're born in February January,
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: and they come out, and that early spring when they
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: come out, she probably has that thing hidden. I have
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: watched sows have a have on an avalanche slide. I've
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: watched sows put their cubs in the brush and go
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: out and feeding that avalanche slide for thirty minutes, and
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: go back in and check on that cub and go
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: back out into the avalanche slide. And you would, if
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: you were just watching her, you'd be like, oh, she
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: doesn't have a cub.
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: Really, well, there's your argument for bay biting right there.
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: There you go.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: Where are that louse? He's leveraging this for political purposes?
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: Don't get me started.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: We want to protect that in this stet. So yeah,
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: is it that risk?
• 29:54
  Speaker 4: I think it's at risk everywhere.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: Sure it is. Oh yeah, well you get Clay nukeomb
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: started on a subject.
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, lusty or to yeah, big time.
• 30:03
  Speaker 4: I was talking to Clay this week about bear hunting.
• 30:05
  Speaker 4: We shot a bear on Wednesday and couldn't find it.
• 30:09
  Speaker 4: I heard a death mone right before dark and I
• 30:12
  Speaker 4: could not find it. And masters tell me it's like,
• 30:14
  Speaker 4: oh yeah, that bear is dead somewhere right in the timber.
• 30:16
  Speaker 4: And got in there that morning with a dog and
• 30:18
  Speaker 4: found it right away.
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: Oh great, Yeah, it's cool.
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: Still good, it's good.
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Back to Heffelfinger. The notion that human scent will
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: cause the mother to abandon it is an old wives
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: tale perpetuated by biologists to keep people from touching newborn fawns.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: Researchers handle fawns all the time, and although they use
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: gloves to minimize scent transfer, the mother does not abandon
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: the fawns. The farmer anecdote is more proof of that
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: maternal instinct is strong. Number three right, Tommy, I'm ready.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: Human breast milk is better than whole milk from a cow.
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: Again see number one above. Don't touch the fon. I'm
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: sure a faun would gain weight nicely on human breast milk.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: But a better use for all that breast milk is
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: the soak dove breasts in it before wrapping and baking
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: and grilling. He says, That's why they call it breast milk.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: I like Jim Dude, he's the funniest guy in the
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: world that he's a fuddice guy in the world. So uh,
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: any more, you'd like to add about your about about
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: your competition, because I got another question I want to
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: pursue with you. H We're coming for buckles in September,
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: are you?
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, Me and the rest of and the rest
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: of the team, Joe Wee, Steve Maby We're coming.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: And what's the buckle saying on it?
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: Usually I think they say shoot cow milker or champion.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: Champion, Yeah, like, but you rest your arm on that.
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: And then here's my other question for you while I
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: got here, Can you give me give me a layman
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: like a like a like a Joe blow, like a
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: Joe blow. Washington perspective on what's going on with the
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: with with the with your Guys Game Commission in Washington
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: funny you ask, can I can I give you further
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: endorsement please. Tommy is the kind of a hunter and
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: fishermen who instead of just sitting around complaining, follows and
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: is involved in his follows and isn't involved in his
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: states wildlife management.
• 32:36
  Speaker 5: Yeah, you keep yourself educated as most as best I can.
• 32:42
  Speaker 5: You said it best when you said Layman's because like
• 32:44
  Speaker 5: I don't. There's a lot I'm very trusting and that's
• 32:48
  Speaker 5: probably a problem given the current state of our commission.
• 32:52
  Speaker 5: Our commission has been a lot of guys that use
• 32:57
  Speaker 5: the word compromised, and a lot of guys use the
• 32:59
  Speaker 5: words infiltrated. But there's definitely some red flags going up
• 33:05
  Speaker 5: about what's going on in our commission.
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: And you guys have a governor appointed game commission of
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: how many folks nine folks nine folk?
• 33:13
  Speaker 5: That way, there can never be a split, you know,
• 33:17
  Speaker 5: typically it's x amount, or it's so many from the
• 33:20
  Speaker 5: eastern side of the state, and typically and so many
• 33:22
  Speaker 5: from the western side of the state. I think that
• 33:26
  Speaker 5: is that way because the western side of the state
• 33:30
  Speaker 5: tends to be standing in a different place than the
• 33:33
  Speaker 5: eastern side of the state as far as politics, and
• 33:36
  Speaker 5: it makes it in the past.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: It's remember it if you looked at it on a
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: map and you imagine it split apart and the parts fell.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: The side that would fall to the right correct leans
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: to the right. That's great way. I'm never going to
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: forget that.
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: That is a good way.
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: That is a side that falls to the left right.
• 33:59
  Speaker 5: There's uh, there's some serious like red flags and question
• 34:02
  Speaker 5: marks being raised in Washington's game commission as far as
• 34:07
  Speaker 5: decision making.
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: Totally ignoring the biologists that are paid to.
• 34:15
  Speaker 5: Do the studies they do to find out to come
• 34:18
  Speaker 5: to the facts we do. We lost our spring bear
• 34:20
  Speaker 5: season mm hmm, but like we don't. And it's because
• 34:27
  Speaker 5: interest groups. People that love animals don't want other people
• 34:31
  Speaker 5: that love animals killing animals is basically what it's coming to.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: The approach they've taken is historically those game commissions have
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: been populated by people with skin in the game. I
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: mean that. I don't know if that's the point. I
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: think I know what you mean. Well, people from fisheries outfitters, right,
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: It's been people who are like who generally have It's
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: been people who come from varying perspectives that would be
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: in support of the general I idea of the North
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: American model of wildlife conservation, meaning that we have a
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: renewable resource that's like that wildlife is a citizen owned
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: renewable resource held in trust by an agency that assesses
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: and allocates the resource in a democratic fashion with an
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: eye toward people utilizing it but not damaging it in
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: the long term. And the new trend there is to
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: be like, well, there should be people on the Game
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: Commission who are opposed to hunting. There should be animal
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: rights people on the Game Commission. There should be zoo
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: keepers on the Game Commission.
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: Correct. Correct, And.
• 35:40
  Speaker 5: Where we're at now is that there's a new draft
• 35:44
  Speaker 5: policy and I think there's some litigation that's been done
• 35:48
  Speaker 5: or taken action against them.
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: As a rebuttal to this, to completely like.
• 35:55
  Speaker 5: Basically rewrite the goal for Department Official Wildlife's Commission in
• 36:02
  Speaker 5: and of itself, it's unfortunate, And look, I'm not the
• 36:08
  Speaker 5: best at when it comes to complaining about things.
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: I'm just not. I'll just find a way to do
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: what I want to do in a manner.
• 36:18
  Speaker 5: But so maybe I'm not the best spokesman. It's unfortunate
• 36:24
  Speaker 5: that now we don't have the luxury as sportsmen in
• 36:27
  Speaker 5: Washington to sit around on our laurels and just complain
• 36:30
  Speaker 5: about it because I as soon as I hear it
• 36:33
  Speaker 5: from somebody that I know for a fact is never
• 36:35
  Speaker 5: sent an email to the Commission, has never done the
• 36:40
  Speaker 5: homework or cited a study. That adds to the fact
• 36:44
  Speaker 5: that we're trying to work under the North American mettle
• 36:47
  Speaker 5: of water wildlife Management. Why are we going away from this?
• 36:51
  Speaker 5: Because that's what we're doing. I shut down and we're done.
• 36:53
  Speaker 5: We don't have the luxury of it anymore. We have
• 36:56
  Speaker 5: to be involved in Washington. We all have to. There's
• 37:00
  Speaker 5: no more finger pointing all the tribes took them all,
• 37:02
  Speaker 5: or all the fly fishermen are getting the best water.
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: We all have to get enough of that shit. We
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: all got to come together. That's enough of it. You know.
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: Well, I've talked a bunch like I'm a believer and slipper.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: I'm a believer in slippery slopes. A lot of people aren't,
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: but I think there are, Like I think I think
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: Wildlife Management that there is a slippery slope. There's a
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: playbook that it goes by. You're generally going to go
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: after Like if you go and pull there. There's some
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: recent polling stuff recently some polling data that if you
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: phrase it a certain way, over eighty percent of Americans
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: support regulated Depending on how you phrase it, you can
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: get over eighty percent of Americans or maybe it's seventy
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: eight right now support regulated hunting and fishing. The minute
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: you put specificity, it goes down. So I say you
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: do you do you support scientific base regulated hunting and
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: fishing and be like, well, of course, And I'd be like,
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: do you support someone using a dog to hunt? Oh wow,
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: I don't know about that, right.
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: Do you support them using a gun? You know?
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: I don't know about that, right, So it starts the
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: specifics peel away, right the playbook and attacking hunting and
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: fishing is to peel out, to peel out the easy parts,
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: meaning you would never go you would never start a
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: group that, you would never start a group that was
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: out in front of whole foods collecting signatures to ban
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: hunting and fishing in Washington State. It'd be a fool's
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: Errand instead you'd go and be like, Okay, we're going
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: to go after spring bear season because there's the issue
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: of cubs. We're going to go after using dogs, because
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: there's a a in my view, completely like a completely
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: bogus argument of fair chase. We're going to go after
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: and then it'll be anything with dogs. Uh, we're gonna
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: go after steel traps, followed by conna bears and snares.
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: We're gonna go right and you you slowly dismantle it. Sure,
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: and if you if you understood, if you went and
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: looked at what the people driving that's private conversations are
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: Their private conversations aren't that they have a problem with
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: the particulars. The private conversation is that they have a
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: problem with the whole thing. But this is the most
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: productive way to go after it. I think too many people,
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: I think too many people that would that would articulate
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: a support for hunters and anglers would think that they're
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: never gonna get that as they whittle away, they're never
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: gonna get to the stuff. I like, right, you mean
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: you're like an upland bird hunter, you'd be saying yourself,
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, but like they're never gonna like come around
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: for me, you know, So I'm not gonna get involved
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: because they're never gonna get to me.
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: That's exactly true.
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, people think that way, But I think that if
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: you look at I think that if you do a
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: case study of some issues in Washington, you do a
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: case study of some issues in California. I think that
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: most anybody that does any extractive use of renewable natural resources,
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: like wildlife resources, would at some point be like, man,
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: I probably should start paying attention to this.
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's.
• 40:26
  Speaker 5: You know, Monday mornings have become my mornings for what
• 40:28
  Speaker 5: I call hate mail. It's not because I'm sending off
• 40:32
  Speaker 5: nasty messages. It's because I hate the fact that I
• 40:35
  Speaker 5: have to sit down and spend twenty minutes on my
• 40:37
  Speaker 5: Monday mornings sending off these emails to these wildlife commissions
• 40:41
  Speaker 5: about this topic.
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: The only thing we can do, man, is just get involved.
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: You have to send off the you have to do it.
• 40:48
  Speaker 5: We have to do it in Washington anymore, because they're
• 40:51
  Speaker 5: gonna come. I mean, predators are up next. Commissioner Baker
• 40:54
  Speaker 5: has talked about it. I hate to name drop, but
• 40:56
  Speaker 5: it's true, has talked about want to do away with
• 40:59
  Speaker 5: coyote hunting.
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: Mm hmmm.
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: I mean.
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: Back last spring when we were having this spring bear
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: just discussion, they wanted to do away with any and
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: all spring hunting.
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and then turkeys, like do you know?
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: And then when that was brought up that I'm not
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: gonna name who in question brought that up, but they
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: didn't even know turkeys were hunted in the spring.
• 41:21
  Speaker 5: That's how far out of our square we have a
• 41:24
  Speaker 5: trying to fit a square through a round hole in
• 41:26
  Speaker 5: the block box.
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I'm sorry, but what's the what's your
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: guys governor's stance been on this?
• 41:32
  Speaker 5: He's pretty silent on it, and he's the one to
• 41:34
  Speaker 5: put Yeah, it's best I can understand.
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: I think he's included in the litigation. I don't know.
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: It's uh, you know, like in the Constitution they say,
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: like the rules to be president, like you gotta be whatever,
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: forty sure, you gotta be born here and in America
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: they should be that you gotta hunt and fish.
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: I agree. If you're gonna make rules on it, you
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: should have to do it.
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, don't have to worry about all this garbage.
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: I agree.
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Tommy, You're welcome. You got any more you
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: want to add? How much money could you win at
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: the best if you did the best, if you did like,
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: what's the possible winnings for the next rodeo.
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: Best.
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, how much money was going that envelope you already
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: sent me.
• 42:15
  Speaker 5: I'm not gonna say more than one hundred and fifty bucks,
• 42:19
  Speaker 5: less than three hundred bucks.
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: So when it's all said and done, we have made
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: money or lost money, you'll make money.
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: You'll make a little money.
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: Good.
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: I don't want any kind of pencil pushers. No, no, no.
• 42:29
  Speaker 5: At the very high end of it. I think the
• 42:31
  Speaker 5: very high end of it. I think we're looking at
• 42:33
  Speaker 5: at least six hundred bucks.
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: Oh double. You're gonna have people lining up to invest
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: in you. Man, good, send three hundred to get in.
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: You can double your money. You can't do that on
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: the stop. I didn't.
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: I gave you that offer. That offer doesn't stand for
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: everybody else. Yeah, sponsorship changes. I might start keeping some
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: of the money.
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: We'll see, all right, Tommy, stay tuned, because you're gonna
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: have a lot to say about this big about this question.
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: Uh Zeb Hogan, host of Gels Monster Fish, author of
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: Chasing Giants in Search of the world's largest freshwater fish,
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: and United Nations Convention on Migratory Species Scientific counselor for
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: fish who came up with that title. Did you make
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: that title up?
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: No, they did.
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: The help title you would be the u n COOMSSCFF.
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's only United Nations group I've ever been involved with,
• 43:29
  Speaker 3: but there are a lot of names like that.
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, got it? So what uh I know, I know
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: you can't answer this. We can't answer this. But if
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: I come to you and I say, hey, man, what
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: is the world's biggest freshwater fish? Tell me all of
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: the hemin and han that needs to go into that answer.
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's how this all started. Yeah, I was
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: working in Thailand two thousand and five. Did my PhD
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: there on uh oh, migratory fish, migratory catfish of the
• 43:58
  Speaker 3: Maekong River. Yeah, looking at the impacted dams on migratory fish.
• 44:03
  Speaker 3: Most fish are migratory in the Maykong, so they're getting
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: like salmon, and so they're moving for what purpose for
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: spawning and also so the Maykong there's a huge flood pulse,
• 44:14
  Speaker 3: so water comes up increases tenfold in the rainy season
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: from the dry season, and the fish they spawn. Surgeon
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: will do the same thing, but they'll spawn during the
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: floods and all those fish get dispersed.
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: Downstream, they spawn up high.
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they spawn not not necessarily the headwaters, but like
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: in the upstream spawning areas, and then the fish all
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: go in the.
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: Floodplain tributaries are in the Meo.
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: In the Maykong or there's like a thousand species of
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: fish in the Makong, so they are they really Yeah,
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: so they do everything, but like a couple hundred.
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: A thousand species of fish.
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so more more species in the Maykong than they're
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: in the United States.
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: What.
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the second most diverse. Amazon has over four
• 44:57
  Speaker 3: thousand species.
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: Huh. That's man.
• 45:00
  Speaker 3: Tropical tropical big tropical rivers have a lot of different
• 45:04
  Speaker 3: kinds of fish and a lot of big fish. So
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: that's how I got involved. I was doing my PHDT
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: there working with local fishermen. The fisherman that I was
• 45:12
  Speaker 3: working with caught a six hundred and forty six pound
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: catfish and you saw it. I saw. This is how
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: I first got involved. So when I was doing my
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: PhD in nineteen ninety seven, I saw a fisherman catch
• 45:26
  Speaker 3: one of those fish for the first time, and I
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: I had no idea that fish got that big in
• 45:31
  Speaker 3: fresh water, Like you see something that big, four hundred,
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: five hundred pounds. The one I saw was like five
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: hundred pounds. I've seen many since then, but the first
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: one I saw was big.
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: And this is hook and liner net net. Okay, And
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: so that's so that's just making a mess out of
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: that net.
• 45:46
  Speaker 3: It's a big net. It it's just the meshes like that.
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: It's just a big only designed for that fish.
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: I s yeah, okay, okay.
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: So it's a traditional they've been fishing that way forever.
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: It's a only during that few weeks only using that
• 46:01
  Speaker 3: kind of net, specifically catching.
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: There after hogs after job.
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And there's a ceremony associated with it, really. Yeah.
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: And they're doing it for commercial purposes, like they're selling fish.
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: They sell it, no, but they only catch I mean,
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: the whole time I've been working with them, they probably
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: caught ten of them. So it's not like you're not
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: gonna make a lot of money.
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: Got it?
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: Got it?
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: So the first time I saw it was in nineteen
• 46:27
  Speaker 3: ninety seven. This is right up in the Golden Triangle area,
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: right where Thailand Laos and Miramar meat, so way up
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: in the northern part of Thailand. First time I saw
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: the fish was ninety seven. That's when I realized these
• 46:38
  Speaker 3: things were out there, got interested, started doing my PhD.
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: And then in two thousand and five, the same club,
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: like the same group of fishermen caught the six hundred
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: and forty six pound fish, and so that's when I
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: just asked the question that you've been asking with it,
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: which is is this the world's largest freshwater fish?
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: And how impressed were they by that fish?
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: They didn't they didn't realize it was the world's largest fish.
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: But I mean were they were they saying to themselves, no,
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: this is the biggest one we've ever heard of, or
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: they're like, oh, that's kind of what they're.
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: Like, that's kind of no. So the guys who caught it,
• 47:13
  Speaker 3: it's a team five guys, and they were on there.
• 47:17
  Speaker 3: They were students on their summer break, like young, young guys,
• 47:21
  Speaker 3: and they barred their uncle's boat, went out. You take turns,
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: so it's there's like one lane where you can drop
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: the net and the fishermen take turns. It's a floating net,
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: so you drop it, it floats down for like a coometer.
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: If you don't catch anything, you pull back in. The
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: next guy goes, next group goes, next group goes. So
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: these guys were young kids, like on their summer break
• 47:42
  Speaker 3: from school, and they happen to catch this fish. And
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: so the club had been keeping records of how big
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: the fish were that they caught all the way back
• 47:51
  Speaker 3: to like nineteen eighty and so I just went back
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: and looked at those records. I said, this is the
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: biggest one they've ever caught.
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: I gotcha.
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: They didn't to them. I mean, it was a big fish,
• 48:01
  Speaker 3: but you know they're all four or five, six hundred pounds. Yeah,
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: I'm with you, And so they didn't realize, and so
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: I sort of said, hey, is this the world's largest
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: freshwater fish?
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: Like is that? Like you were asking, is this specific
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: fish the world's large.
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: Biggest freshwater fish that's ever been caught? And so you
• 48:20
  Speaker 3: mentioned earlier like the definitions, there's only one for all
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: of this work. There's only one definition or only one criteria,
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: which is the fish has to spend its whole life
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: in fresh water.
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but I don't know how fair that is. That's
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: kind of one one of the main reasons I wanted
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: to ask you about it. So let me get kathaway
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: with it. For instance, Sure, Okay, when we were when
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: we were doing our Fishing Game cookbook, we had the
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: fish broken out saltwater fresh water, and it came up
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: with a question of salmon, right, and we debated back
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: and forth. Is it freshwater saltwater? My brother Danny studies
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: salmon the US Fish and Wildlife Service. I said, hey, man,
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: what do you think about it, Sam? Is it freshwater
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: salt water? And he said, you know, it spends the
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: bulk of its life in salt water, but it's born
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: and it dies in fresh water. So if I had
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: to put it somewhere, I would put it like like
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: those key that like key moment. I would put the
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: salmon in the freshwater section, which is what we did.
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: By God, But.
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: Why do you why do you have to choose? Why
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: do you have to pick?
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: Because the cookbooks only we didn't want to make it.
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: We didn't want to make a category that had like
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: bull sharks, salmon and straight baths or I don't know whatever. Yeah,
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: you know in American eels.
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So this, like the criteria is just it's just
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: for the I'm a research professor at the University of Aderina.
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: So you guys like you guys like the off you skate.
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: No, but it's not it's not splitting. It's a simple
• 50:01
  Speaker 3: criteria that fish, that particular fish has had to be
• 50:06
  Speaker 3: spent its whole life in freshwater. That's the only criteria.
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: Okay, how do you know one of them I want
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: to move on from this, But how do you know
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: that one of them big ass cats didn't one day
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: go down and get into brackish water.
• 50:18
  Speaker 3: Well that's what that's what that's what we study.
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: Okay, what happened?
• 50:21
  Speaker 3: They don't?
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: Oh, all right, there you go.
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: I think the interview is over.
• 50:26
  Speaker 3: They just don't.
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: They don't like brackish water.
• 50:31
  Speaker 3: Some fish do. But you know, the point or the
• 50:36
  Speaker 3: sort of the work that I do, and the point
• 50:38
  Speaker 3: of the asking the question was that if you if
• 50:41
  Speaker 3: you just ask, okay, what's the biggest freshwater fish? Then
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: you have white surgeon bluga surgeon in Europe they can
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: get like three thousand pounds.
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: So what's the great lake surgeon? Lake surgeon that they
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: just not contenders.
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: They don't get big enough. But okay, but they only
• 50:56
  Speaker 3: fresh water yeakay, so there's actually they would count for you.
• 50:59
  Speaker 3: Soty River in northern Idaho has a population of white
• 51:03
  Speaker 3: surgeon that does not go down to the ocean.
• 51:07
  Speaker 7: So does the Snake River, Yeah, because of the dams. Yeah,
• 51:10
  Speaker 7: oh yeah, that's another that's anotherness there. But there are
• 51:14
  Speaker 7: some sturgeon that choose not to go to it's just
• 51:18
  Speaker 7: their ecology, okay, yeah, and so one of those could
• 51:21
  Speaker 7: be a contender.
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: Or do you have to not because the species will
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: go to saltwater?
• 51:25
  Speaker 3: The fish just the fish.
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're interested in the individual fish.
• 51:29
  Speaker 3: But as a way to learn about all these fish,
• 51:31
  Speaker 3: like the the reason why this is an interesting question,
• 51:34
  Speaker 3: Like I didn't I didn't know what I was asking
• 51:36
  Speaker 3: when I said, Hey, is this the world's largest freshwater fish?
• 51:39
  Speaker 3: What makes it interesting is we don't know, and we
• 51:42
  Speaker 3: don't know anything about these fish. So there are probably
• 51:45
  Speaker 3: forty species of fish that get over six feet long
• 51:48
  Speaker 3: or weigh more than two hundred pounds in fresh water
• 51:51
  Speaker 3: in the world out and they're over fifteen thousand freshwater fish.
• 51:55
  Speaker 3: So you're talking like just a small number of fish that.
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: Hit me in North America. Hit me with what we got.
• 52:02
  Speaker 3: Alligator gar white white sturgeons.
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: Also back up on the parameter six feet in length and.
• 52:09
  Speaker 8: What was the way or over two hundred pounds either
• 52:14
  Speaker 8: six feet long or over two hundred pounds, and we
• 52:16
  Speaker 8: got go ahead. Alligator gar, alligator gar, Mississippi American paddlefish, white,
• 52:23
  Speaker 8: certain populations of white sturgeon, lake sturgeon. Some people say
• 52:27
  Speaker 8: Colorado pike minnow used to get that big. They don't
• 52:29
  Speaker 8: really anymore, But that's North America's largest minnow. About blue
• 52:34
  Speaker 8: cats blue cat, blue cats and flathead get.
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: Up to about one hundred what's the record these days?
• 52:41
  Speaker 3: I think the records about hundred fifty pounds.
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: So they don't break, they don't break.
• 52:44
  Speaker 3: But you read like old like Mark Twain, or you
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: read old accounts from eighteen hundreds. There are accounts of
• 52:50
  Speaker 3: catfish that big you don't know whether, you don't know what.
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: Like hawk Finn looking at it there and he says
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: it's two hundred pounds.
• 52:57
  Speaker 5: What about What about the old tales about guys in
• 53:00
  Speaker 5: the eighteen hundreds dragon white sturgeon out of the Columbia
• 53:04
  Speaker 5: with teams all, Oh, yeah.
• 53:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true as far as I know. Yeah, I
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: mean surgeon, white surgeon fifteen feet.
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: But those are saltwater fish, though.
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: They're fish that don't spend their whole lives with fresh water.
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: They're they're they're an adamus fish. They move back and forth.
• 53:19
  Speaker 3: There's not there are lots of fish like that, but
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: the ones that move back and forth they can get
• 53:23
  Speaker 3: bigger because they typically when fish are out in the ocean,
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: generally they have access to more food and.
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: God, they're able to utilize marine resources. And yeah, okay,
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: so go on on the numbers.
• 53:36
  Speaker 3: Oh so yeah, so it's just a small number. I
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: think that's it. So, I mean.
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: There's I thought there's fifteen.
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: They're there are like thirty or forty big fish all
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: over the world, Okay, and there we have it in
• 53:49
  Speaker 3: the US we have five or six.
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: Oh I'm sorry, I thought fifteen, and they get really big.
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: So just a small little collection. Yeah, let me just
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: there's the thing I can't move on from because I
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: want to understand it. You know, when you hear a
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: crazy story and you probably know this better then some
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: bull shark go away?
• 54:07
  Speaker 3: The hell? Up?
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: The how far did a bull shark go up? With
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: the Mississippi so like Illinois.
• 54:11
  Speaker 3: I had a book when I was a kid that's
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: had them in the Great Lakes. I think they're I
• 54:17
  Speaker 3: don't want I don't want to say something that's not true.
• 54:19
  Speaker 3: But the book I had when I was little said
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: that they made it all the way up to the
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: way up they will, is there that's unusual?
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, very unusual, right, But I'm just it's a
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: physiology question. Yeah, if you look at a shark that
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: they can go and spend like we're in at least
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: an individual can go and spend presumably months in fresh water. Uh, physiologically,
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: like could two of them go what? Why can't two
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: of them go up and reproduce in fresh water? Or
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: is it or is it open that they maybe could
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: or like, like what what winds up happening to them?
• 55:00
  Speaker 3: Bull Sharks as far as I know, don't breed in freshwater,
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: So it is physiological, but I don't know why that is.
• 55:06
  Speaker 3: They're they're very adaptable. They can live in saltwater, they
• 55:09
  Speaker 3: can live in fresh water. They don't breed in freshwater
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: as far as I know.
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, there has to be some barrier because they're
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: there's not reproducing populations of them up in the Great
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: Lakes whatever, yeah, yeah, or wherever the hell, right, So
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: there's some like reason why it doesn't work, but it's
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: that's not well understood now.
• 55:28
  Speaker 3: But you have another. So three of the largest freshwater
• 55:30
  Speaker 3: fish are freshwater stingrays, which are related to sharks, and
• 55:34
  Speaker 3: the species I study the most is just a species
• 55:37
  Speaker 3: in Southeast Asia get over six hundred pounds freshwater stingray
• 55:41
  Speaker 3: and it breeds in freshwater, so it it'll do that
• 55:44
  Speaker 3: every every every fish is different, yep.
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: And the fact that you can take this is always
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: puzzled me as well. Is that you can take stripe bass,
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: which are right, it's an anagamous fish spent a lot
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: of time in brackish water, can spawn in purely fresh water.
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: But then you can take them one day and throw
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: them into some reservoir and they don't even change tune.
• 56:09
  Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, yeah, I mean some fish have the ability to.
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: It's just I don't know, it's hard to understand how
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: that could be.
• 56:16
  Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, we have and I live in Nevada right now.
• 56:18
  Speaker 3: We have Lahan cut through trout. They can live in
• 56:21
  Speaker 3: brackish water, and so that's actually like they're they get
• 56:23
  Speaker 3: really big in Pyramid Lake near near Reno, and that's
• 56:27
  Speaker 3: actually what's one of the things that's kept them in
• 56:31
  Speaker 3: that lake is that, like we invasive species haven't been
• 56:34
  Speaker 3: able to get into the lake because it's brackish, got it.
• 56:36
  Speaker 3: So they're like rainbows browns in the river that flows
• 56:40
  Speaker 3: into Pyramid, but they can't survive in the brackish water.
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: So that's how they get it for themselves. Yeah, oh no,
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: kidd okay.
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: It works with some fish as advantage.
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: All right, So pick a back up. I can't remember
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: where I left you fish.
• 56:55
  Speaker 3: So the so the book, it starts with the catch
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: of the world record fish. And so what I've been
• 57:03
  Speaker 3: working on for the last twenty years is just trying
• 57:05
  Speaker 3: to travel all around the world together as much information
• 57:09
  Speaker 3: as possible about these big fish because, like you said,
• 57:11
  Speaker 3: like seventy percent of them are endangered with extinction. So
• 57:15
  Speaker 3: some of them are like all the Meekong species are
• 57:19
  Speaker 3: basically on the brink of extinction.
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: Really.
• 57:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And so my kind of where my background is
• 57:25
  Speaker 3: working in Southeast Asia. Maekong has like seven or eight
• 57:29
  Speaker 3: really big species of freshwater fish. And then Mongolia, which
• 57:32
  Speaker 3: has the world's largest trout species. Yeah, what's that fish
• 57:35
  Speaker 3: called timen?
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 57:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah? Is the arapaima airpima's one yeah, yeah.
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: One of them.
• 57:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So it's like a diverse assemblage of fish air
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: breathing arapaima. You know in South America. South America has
• 57:49
  Speaker 3: short tailed sting ray, which you get up to like
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: five hundred pounds. So what it like most people never
• 57:55
  Speaker 3: heard of short tailed river ray, but that's like, that's
• 57:58
  Speaker 3: one of the biggest fish.
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: I've seen in South America. I've seen a bunch of
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: the big ass yeah yeah yeah.
• 58:03
  Speaker 3: And then big catfish they can get up to like
• 58:06
  Speaker 3: four or five hundred pounds that migrate from the foothills
• 58:08
  Speaker 3: of the Andes and then they'll migrate all the way
• 58:11
  Speaker 3: down to the Amazon Estuary and all the way back
• 58:13
  Speaker 3: just like seven several thousand kilometers.
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: Does the surruby catfish get up to two hundred.
• 58:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, uh huh yeah, like in Argentina,
• 58:22
  Speaker 3: are there all over actually, oh yeah, they'll get that
• 58:24
  Speaker 3: big cool fish.
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: And how many does the mekong have to get that
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: the hill criteria.
• 58:30
  Speaker 3: Like seven or eight? So giant freshwater sting right, yeah,
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: giant catfish, child catfish, seven stripe bar wallago catfish, a
• 58:39
  Speaker 3: lot of more catfish. Big carp the world's largest carp species.
• 58:42
  Speaker 3: You can get up to ten feet long.
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: No, yeah, what like what makes that river so product? Like,
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: what makes it so that.
• 58:49
  Speaker 3: It's a big river? No one, No one really knows,
• 58:51
  Speaker 3: because they should. If it just went by numbers of fish,
• 58:54
  Speaker 3: then the Amazon should have more. But for whatever reason,
• 58:57
  Speaker 3: the may Kong has the most and it's like super productive.
• 59:01
  Speaker 3: There's a giant lake in the Mekong called the Tonelysop Lake,
• 59:05
  Speaker 3: which is huge, like you know, one of our great lakes,
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: but it's in the dry season like two meters deep.
• 59:11
  Speaker 3: So it's basically just a big flooded area that the
• 59:14
  Speaker 3: fish all move into in the rainy season and feed
• 59:17
  Speaker 3: and get big, and then they move back out to
• 59:19
  Speaker 3: the river in the dry season.
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: Got it?
• 59:21
  Speaker 3: So no one knows for sure. Tropical big tropical rivers
• 59:24
  Speaker 3: with lots of different kinds of fish, you'd expect to
• 59:27
  Speaker 3: have big fish too.
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So does have had you uncovered since that work?
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: Have you uncovered one that top six forty six that
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: hits the definition?
• 59:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: Really?
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: So the book ends with the catch in two thousand
• 59:42
  Speaker 3: and five, or no, it starts with the catching two
• 59:44
  Speaker 3: thousand and five and then ends with the new record breaker.
• 59:48
  Speaker 3: And what is that giant freshwater stingery? Oh, six hundred
• 59:52
  Speaker 3: and sixty one.
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: Pounds oh barely.
• 59:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean where it come out of, out
• 59:57
  Speaker 3: of in Cambodia. Yeah. And the cool my favorite part
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 3: of that story is that in two thousand and five,
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 3: the catfish was that giant catfish was killed, you know,
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 3: fair enough, but critically in danger species. So that catfish
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: was killed and sold for meat. We were working in
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 3: Thailand or in Cambodia this last year and working with
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 3: the fishermen, and we made a deal with them that hey,
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 3: we want to tag this fish for research, and so
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 3: when they caught it, they gave us a call, we
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 3: went out. We're able to tag it and we like
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 3: are falling around right now, so we know, so we
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 3: know where it is.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: So I want to I want to back up on
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: that catfish. In what form are they selling it? They're
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: butchering it into selling by the poun I mean, not
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: the pound, but you know what I mean, Like yeah.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, in Thailand for whatever reason, So back up a
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 3: little bit. Like in Thailand the meat is very prized
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 3: and it's said to have certain qualities long life or
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 3: I'm not exactly sure.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, on those big catfish specifically.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, have you eaten them? Yeah?
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: Were they good tastes?
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 3: Like catfish. Yeah yeah, I mean yeah, they're good, I
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 3: mean most Yeah, but he can't tell like someone told
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 3: me it was actually like a tourism thing, like it
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 3: wasn't actually like a real traditional belief that it was
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 3: some part of a tourism campaign or something. I don't know,
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 3: I see that. But in any way, in Thailand, it's
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 3: very expensive. So like we were working with fishermen up
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 3: there tagged. We did tag a few fish up there.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 3: One fish would sell for like two thousand bucks, which
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 3: you know that's in like nineteen nineties. That's a lot
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 3: of money. It felt like a lot of money at
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 3: the time.
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: The equivalent of two thousand US dollars.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Wow, it was like twenty thirty bucks a kilo
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 3: or something or yeah, just as flays yeah yeah, yeah yeah.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 3: So it would be butchered and then sold a lot
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 3: of times. The restaurants or you know that even send
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 3: it to restaurants like in Bangkok or like not local restaurants.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: And the people buying it are they care.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: What it is?
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's why it's where so much.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not just like generic fish. It's like the
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: big ass crazy catfish.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah. But in Cambodia. So this is I actually kind
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 3: of shifted work to Cambodi because in Cambodia it doesn't
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 3: have any special significance and in fact, people don't like it.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 3: So in Cambodia it was fifty cents of kilo. So,
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 3: and what I was doing is I was I was
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 3: working with the fishermen. I would compensate them for the
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 3: fish whatever they could get market rate, and then tag
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 3: it and release it so we could follow it.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: Oh really, so you'd buy it off of them.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so, but in Cambodia I could do that,
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 3: but in Thailand.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: It was still exportant. You'd burn your budget.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: So, and then how much of those fish moving?
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 3: They migrate at least six seven hundred kilometers. I mean
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 3: they're making big, big migrations. They'll move out of that
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 3: big lake down in the Maykong and then way up
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 3: into the may Kong.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 2: Are they spawning way up in the Mekong and finer water?
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah yeah, so they'll find like that. It
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 3: seems like they like Rocky, like they the Tony Stop
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 3: and the lower Maykong is all kind of silty, and
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 3: they seemed like they go up in these deep pools.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 3: The Makon can be up to two hundred fifty feet deep,
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 3: so really deep, and uh, it seems like they're like
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 3: those deep pool areas. Say that again, two hundred and
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 3: fifty feet deep.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the Mekong River.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so the Congo is over seven hundred feet deep.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 3: So some of these river yeah really exactly true. Yeah,
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 3: but yeah, but the make make the cool thing about
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 3: the Maykong. I didn't even appreciate this. We we start
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 3: started doing some filming in these deep pools last year,
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 3: so we'd send came cameras down. You get down like
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 3: ten feet are like twenty feet. It's completely dark because
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 3: the water is silty. So you get down like we
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 3: tried scuba diving.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: Sit.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah. But yeah, it's just y'all. I always, you know,
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 3: I'm always seeing the fish at the surface, and even
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 3: when we're doing our research and stuff, we were always
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 3: seeing these fish like they live in a in the
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 3: total darkness. I don't know. I just I just didn't
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 3: didn't compute to me. Before we actually sent cameras down,
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 3: We're like, oh man, it's in The fish are down
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 3: there like doing their.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: Things, smelling and feeling. Yeah, I can't see squat you ever,
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: I'm guessing you never tried to noodle one of them,
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: big son.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 3: So have you ever done that? So I did it,
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 3: like not in the not in the Maykong, but in
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 3: in the US. And it's actually like I I it's
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 3: a like a real rodeo. Yeah, like it's no, So
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 3: I didn't. I just went out with people who knew
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 3: how to do it. But like you dive down, you do.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 3: It's teams, teams, three person teams a lot of times,
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 3: and you dive down and the fish grunt. They make
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 3: a noise when you get close to them, so that's
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 3: and you can't see anything. And so the fish grunt
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 3: and you know, like usually they're under rock or something.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 3: And the people you get around it and then one
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 3: person agrees to stick their hand in the fish's mouth
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 3: and then you just pull it out. But it's like
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 3: a real I mean talking about while cow milking, like yep,
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 3: it's like noodleing. It's like a real real thing.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 7: It looks it looks funny, but but that's not practiced.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: And uh, there's no version of that that you found.
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 3: And no, no, for most catfish, the easiest place to
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 3: grab them is on the mouth. So even in the Maykong,
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 3: like when we handle the fish, we just grab it
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 3: like it's lip. The Maykong giant catfish doesn't have any teeth.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 3: The Wells catfish in Europe, that's Europe's largest freshwater fish.
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 3: It does have kind of teeth, and we also grab
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 3: it by the mouth. But you'll get your you'll get your.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, why did they want that big? Do they
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: do they butcher those big sting rays or is that
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: just bycatch.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 3: Every in the In the Maykong amazon is a little
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 3: bit different. In the Maykong, everything is eaten, so it
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 3: doesn't like there's nothing that they catch that that they
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 3: don't eat. So yeah, so the sting ray would be butchered.
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 3: The crazy thing about the sting ray is that like
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 3: big and this is just human part of it's like
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 3: human nature. These big fish people seem to have a
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 3: reverence for even if it's not like religious, you're around
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 3: a fish that big, and it's just it's pretty special.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 3: And so even though it's not illegal to catch the
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 3: sting ray, people will usually keep it pretty quiet and
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 3: like everything, like catch it at night. It gets butchered
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 3: and you see it in the market. The next morning,
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 3: but you don't. Actually, it's actually was really hard to
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 3: get information about that fish.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: Like there's a sort of taskit and acknowledgement that it's
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: like you probably shouldn't have cut that one up.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but like for our for my I mean for
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 3: my work, I get it. I I workretty much exclusively
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 3: with with fishermen who are fishing for food. So I
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 3: mean that's one of the reasons we compensate the fishermen
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 3: is because otherwise, why would they why would they want
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 3: to work with us?
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: You know, in Guyana, they like there was there's red
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: redtail cabs a couple times that I've been down there,
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: Like they'll they'll kill that one and cook it. Yeah,
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: the srubies they'll kill and cook. But then there's one
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: I wish you probably you might know the name of it.
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: There's a big dark one they called Toro. It's like,
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: a yeah, that's it Jiu. I forgot the other name
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: there's They thought maybe I would know it as Toro,
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: which is like the like from Spanish infusion. Yeah, jau uh.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: They don't kill that one like these like they when
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: we hooked one of those there, it was just kind
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: of and then.
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, those are cool fish there they want that one
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 3: kill h they're they're like more rare, So maybe there's
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 3: you know, there's yah, it's just.
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: Kind of you know, we had all kinds of other
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: fish like no, no, that's not one though, I mean
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: its enormous.
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean maybe they don't taste good. I don't know.
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: Well, I don't know. They just kind of had a
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: different different you know, like there's like a language barrier
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: so you can't really establish what it is, but there
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: was that was something that Yeah, it was kind of
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: like like the same way. I don't know, but I
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: don't want to use the word taboo. There's just things
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: that would seem edible that they don't eat. The same way.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: If you were walking around here and someone's like, why
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: are you not eating that dog? Be like, how do
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: I even explain why we're not eating that dog? You know,
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: with this big ass caffish, there's just not well, let's.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 3: And you bring it up. Like in Cambodia, there's the
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 3: same feeling. So people feel like if they kill a
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 3: giant catfish and it's a make make giant catfish, it's
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 3: one species, there's a belief that if they kill it
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 3: they'll get bad luck, and like it kind of is
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 3: self fulfilling. I've seen it a lot of times someone
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 3: will catch one and then within like a week they'll
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 3: have a death in the family or something really bad
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 3: will happen. And it's hard to you know, it's it
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 3: doesn't seem like it would really be actual bad luck.
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 3: But they always associate if they actually do keep one
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 3: of those fish, sure they always find something drollable. Yeah,
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 3: and they like recognize that. And so we've actually started
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 3: to see the fishermen in Cambodia just with that one species,
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 3: they'll release them on their own.
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: So what like, what could you say is true? Is
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: it always a different culprit or if globally we're imperiling
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: or globally we're damaging and potentially losing giant freshwater fish,
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: Is it just like a different enemy in every ecosystem
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: or is there are there general truths?
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 3: It's mainly dams really, So yeah, that because like overfishing,
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 3: overfishing very rarely causes extinctions, so it'll you could get
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 3: the population down really low. But with fish at least,
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 3: it's very rare that you could like catch the last ones.
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 3: It's just hard, like these big systems. So fishing is
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 3: usually not the culprit in terms of extinction. It's usually
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 3: something that changes.
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: Then it can drive scarcity, but yeah, doesn't.
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 3: Drive like the disappearance. And so like with dams, they're
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 3: it's blocking spawning habitat changes water temperature messes up their
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 3: spawning cues. So you see this like the Chinese paddlefish,
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 3: which is a fish that could get up to like
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 3: twenty feet long, just went extinct like two years ago
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 3: because of three wards.
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: I mean, I didn't know about the damn fish, but yeah,
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: really yeah, so talking about that fish then.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 3: So Chinese paddlefish one of two species of Have you
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 3: ever seen an American paddlefish? Yeah, so they're cool, right,
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 3: I mean, so Chinese paddlefish was a predator. American paddlefish
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 3: are like filter feeders. No, they when they open up
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 3: their mouths, it looks like a basking shark or something.
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 3: The Chinese paddlefish was a predator more like a billfish,
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 3: and it would use it like a sharp paddle, and
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 3: it would use that paddle to hunt, and.
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: It was actually going after catfish and whatever else.
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, probably yeah, carp catfish.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 2: And grew to twenty feet long.
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, kid, Yeah, but the last one that was
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 3: seen was like early two thousands.
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: When they built that big ass dam.
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 3: They built two big dams, Kazuba and three Gorges. Three
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 3: Gorges is the really big one. And those dams just
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 3: made it impossible for the paddlefish to survive to spawn.
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 3: It must have blocked there. They couldn't access where they
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 3: need to spawn anymore.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: And did someone point out that this is a question
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: I've had about the dams we've done on the you know,
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: the dams we've done on the Columbia system and the
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: others were was there someone that said, uh, you know,
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: if you do that, that fish will be gone? Was
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: that a known thing?
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 3: I don't know. I wonder what people knew one hundred
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 3: years ago. We know that now.
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: But no, no, I'm talking no, no, I've asked that
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: question many times around salmon. There was always a way
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: that that there was probably in people's bag that there's
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: always a way people felt they could explain away ways
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: in which it wasn't the end of salmon because it
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: was gonna be ladder, you know whatever. No one would
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: there was no one saying like and yes, this will
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: be the end of King Salmon or in yes, this
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: will be the end of that run. They didn't put
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: it like it wasn't laid out like that sort of arrangement.
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 3: You know, maybe it never maybe it never is. Yeah,
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 3: we used to have King Sammon and Nevada, believe it
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 3: or not. We used to have runs that came all
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 3: the way up to Snake.
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But with these newer dams in China, you know,
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: it wasn't know you would that they would blink this
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: fish out.
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 3: The biologists know, but you know.
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: We tend not to listen to those guys. Yeah, exactly
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: when it comes to they never get invited to the
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: last meeting.
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 3: That's that's true. I mean I could laugh about it,
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 3: but it's true. Like they're stronger interests at play. But
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 3: on the Maykong it's and you know this happened on
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 3: the Columbia too. It's like what you really want. So
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 3: you know, there's just I think salmon populations are like
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 3: ten percent of what they used to be on the
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 3: Columbia or whatever. But Maykong is the same way. Like
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 3: two million tons of fish produced by the Maykong River
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 3: every year. So if you're gonna build dams, Like think
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 3: about that, because there's it's like they're so important, so
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 3: that what you want is like not to be totally ignored,
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 3: but just like okay, hey, we'll take we won't build
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 3: the worst ones. We won't build the ones that are
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 3: going to collapse of fishery or cause extinctions of all
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 3: these fish whatever. So that's I mean, that's and my work,
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 3: that's basically what I do is just to try to
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 3: provide information about all these fish so that like the
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 3: worst dams aren't built.
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: So you can go in and say, here's this, here's
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: this species of fish, Here's what its life history is,
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: here's what it's habitat needs are. If you do this that,
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: here's the price you'll pay. Yeah, do with it what
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: you will.
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And that's happening right now. So in Cambodia, this
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 3: world's largest sting ray is just swimming around. It's actually
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 3: in a small area that's protected by the local community.
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 3: It's right between two of these big proposed dams where
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 3: it lives just stuck there. Well, no, the dams aren't there,
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 3: so it's just swiming around happy. I mean, it doesn't
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 3: know any difference. But so and that's an area where
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 3: hundreds of fish spawn. It supports the whole fishery for
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 3: the Mekong River. And they're right now there's a debate
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 3: do we build these dams or oh, I'm sorry, yeah,
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 3: or protect area. So the decisions that you're talking about
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 3: there that's happening right.
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: Well, where are they leaning If you had to guess,
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: if you had the crystal ball.
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 3: The Cambodian government has said no dams before twenty thirty.
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 3: So that's good. It's good in the sense that they're
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 3: always altern you know, technology improves, alternatives could them up.
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 3: So it's as far as like that type of development
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 3: decision energy, it's always good if it happens in the
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 3: future because things are always improving.
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Isn't it a funny kind of reverse colonialism that
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: we have a little bit where we've uh really effectively
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: developed our country and created this economic powerhouse and all
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: this infrastructure and dams and the ability to generate so
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: much electricity and be global players, and then you then
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: go to the developing world and and uh and say, man,
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: I'm here to tell you not to do the things
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: we did.
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, because you're yeah, exactly no. But it feels
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 3: that way. Yeah, but it's not don't do it. It's like, hey,
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 3: because I mean I'm trying to think of an example
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 3: in the US. I mean, we're starting to bring down
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 3: some of our dams in the US that are like
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 3: the ones that don't generate very much electricity or that
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 3: totally messed up the fishery.
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: We're taking them down fast, and we're putting them up.
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but we had our one hundred years of you know,
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 3: building a lot of good and I don't know good
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 3: and bad dams whatever. But I think what the goal
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 3: is in places that are still developing and building a
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 3: lot of these dams is just don't, like, you know,
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 3: using the best information that's out there, just try to
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 3: make the best you know, like maximize benefit, minimized cost.
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 3: I'm with you, rather than like, hey, you can't do this, rather.
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: Be that you can and if you do it this way,
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: you'll decrease the damage.
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 3: And anyway, like if or biologists, you know, if some
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 3: of it doesn't do much good to say you can't
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 3: do this anyway, I mean, no one listens to just
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 3: say hey you can't, you can't do this. You have
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 3: to say why you have to. I mean fisheries are
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 3: everyone relies on fisheries there, so they like yeah, oh yeah, breakfast,
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 3: lunch and dinner.
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I wanted I forgot. I was gonna
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: tell you about the thing with fresh water salt water
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: are you meet with the Susitna River system in Alaska,
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: so in south like the Seuxsitting that flows out near Anchorage,
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: So south central Alaska. There's this big river system and
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: very important like big salmon runs kay like you know,
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: kings like just everything right, I realized, I don't know
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: if that river gets sac eyes, I should know, but
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: King runs, silver runs pinks. All this stuff goes up
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: this river system and someone and I can't remember when
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: they know when it happened. Uh, someone moved northern pike
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: into it. Okay, So of course northern pike are native
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: to Alaska, and like the Yukon system has northern pike.
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: But someone helped, you know, at some point in time,
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: someone helped pike into the Susitina and there's the potential
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: for it to be devastating to salmon and they've really
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: spread out. And like another thing with how in trouble
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: kings are Kings spent extra time in fresh water kings
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: spent an extra year in fresh water, so they remain
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: for they have a greater vulnerability to this new predatory fish.
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: So there was a lot of interest in how far
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: could the northern spread, right the demographics on the population,
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: how much damage might they ultimately do to the salmon stocks. Well,
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: these northerns, these Northern pike started showing up in different
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: adjacent river systems, and the idea was that people were
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: continuing to move them around. But they can go to
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: these other river systems and look at stable isotope compositions
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: in the fish, and those fish are going into salt water,
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: which no one thought they would do. They're going into
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: salt water being fine and actually entering new river systems
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: from salt water.
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 2: Northern pike.
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: Northern pike are going out into salt.
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think blue.
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: I think blue colandering around and then shooting up new
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: river systems.
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 3: I mean blue catfish will do that too, weren't they?
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: Oh I didn't know.
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 3: I feel like I've heard heard of that as well.
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: And then you're left to be like, well, how the
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: hell did it get in here? Must be those more
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: of those rednecks doing bucket biology. It turns out that
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: fish is like whatever he gets, you know, I was
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: asking Danny. I was like, so do they He goes,
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: I don't know what the fish is trying to do.
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: I don't know what it wants to do, but it
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: does it.
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they spread, I mean they thinks spread man when
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 3: they You remind me of a story and the Ebro
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 3: River in Spain. So a German fisherman took over like
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 3: thirty baby Wells catfish in his VW bug in the
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 3: seventies and put them in the Ebro River in Spain
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 3: where they're not native. And we were there several years
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 3: ago and that's it's now ninety percent of the biomass
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 3: of fish in that river or Wells catfish just a
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 3: normal Yeah.
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 2: That's one of the big ones, isn't it.
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean yeah, I mean you don't need to
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: go that far because the Great Lakes.
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like if.
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: You go back in time on the Great Lakes, like
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: there was like a sturgeon fishery whitefish right, yea dominant
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: species all the way down in Chicago, like dominant species.
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: And it's just been that it's been rewritten and rewritten.
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: Cart were put in there because they thought they'd catch
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: on as food and then all the accidental, all the intent.
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: It's an experimental aquarium.
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, on the Ibro too, so that they were introduced
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 3: there and people it's catching relief, like it's not catching
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 3: release by law, but all the anglers practice catching release,
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 3: so like no one's eating them either. The Spanish people
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 3: apparently don't like to eat them. The recreational anglers just
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 3: like to catch and release. So that's why there's like them.
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 3: It's you get these weird situations.
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Now and then they'll make it that it's like
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: with certain invasives, they'll make it that it's illegal to
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: keep it. Yeah, to return it alive, it's it's illegal
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: to have. It's illegal to put it back. But I
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: don't want to name his name, but you know when
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: they got Lake Trout, they got Lake Trout and Lake
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: Yellowstone and they're very worried about the cutthroats and there,
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: so they're encouraging everybody to go and you know, they
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: wanted people to catch them and kill them. It was
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: illegal to turn one back alive. I had a body
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: that was always down there fishing, and he's talking about
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: letting them go. I'm like well, you know what we mean,
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: you letting them go. That's just let him go, he says. Man,
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: I love fishing there. I don't want to damage that fishery.
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: It's just like people just get whatever we get selfish.
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 5: We had a thing a couple of years ago or
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 5: three years ago, maybe it was a little longer than that,
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 5: when all those Atlantic salmon got out of that net
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 5: pin up up in the San Juans people oh man
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 5: and people were up there just wailing on them things.
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it was like if you catch one, kill
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 2: it sort of thing.
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 3: Easy to catch.
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 2: From what I heard. I didn't go up there. I
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 2: can't say firsthand, but from what I heard.
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: That no one's catching anymore. They all died or got caught. Yeah,
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: they didn't take hold.
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I haven't heard of one.
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 5: We have a similar thing going on in eastern Washington
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 5: with Northern Pike in Lake Roosevelt.
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 2: And I've heard in a couple other places too, where it's.
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 5: Card yeah, kill them on it's kill them on site
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 5: Northey's and uh it's Roosevelt and Banks Lake in eastern Washington.
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 2: That was what I was told.
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: Uh arapaima, that's cool fish.
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's something.
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: Are they all right?
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 3: They weren't, but it's sort of a success story because
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 3: uh there they don't move that much and so it's
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 3: used to be a traditional. It still is, but like
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 3: a they have to come up for air, so it's
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 3: a traditional like spear fishing, harpoon yep. Uh.
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: The boys I was with, like their dads, that was
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: a market fish, trade fish. They'd kill them and salt them, Yeah,
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: for very small amounts of money, and they just don't know.
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 5: Yeah, that's gotta be a tough, tough fish. Do they
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 5: make cowboy boots out of them things? Skins?
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: They would get a dart and they would get a
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: prong into it and then just basically handle it like
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: a whale.
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 3: With it with a line.
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: Just yeah. The goal is to get it tethered, you know,
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: to get a toggle in it, and then you just whatever.
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 2: Nantuckets slowly, Yeah, you just slowly.
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: Once you get a rope on it, you just it's
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: just a drawn out you were in Ghana, Yeah, but no,
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: I never did it, But I'm just saying they were
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: telling me about how they would do it. They would
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: basically that you had come up or you'd find it
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: basking and like the first order of business was to
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: get a toggle in it with some rope and then
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: and then it would would begin the process.
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I think the species in Ghana, so there are
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 3: a couple like scientists recently figured out there's more than
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 3: one species, and the species in Guyana is apparently a
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 3: lot like fatter than the other species. And one guy,
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 3: one biologist works down there, says that he actually thinks
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 3: that they'll get a bigger like a seven hundred pound
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 3: or something. He thinks that he thinks that that's the biggest.
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: It's going to take the record.
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but that's it. That's the thing with I mean,
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 3: this whole project. I always assume, like there's no rule,
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 3: like you could fish, the fish can be caught. However,
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 3: like the only thing is like, okay, where you know,
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 3: where was it? How big was it? I always assumed
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 3: that I would hear from people biologists and fishermen and
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 3: all over the world with stories of bigger fish. Like
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 3: I I didn't think it was going to be me
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 3: going out and trying to gather information. Yeah, I thought
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 3: it would there would just be you know, fishermen like
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 3: talking about catching big fish. I thought that it would
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 3: be like reported, but they're just aren't. They just don't
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 3: get that big.
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: Remind me again right now, the current fresh water record.
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 3: Is six hundred and sixty one pounds.
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: Do you got do you know what you ought to do? Man?
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: Why don't you just get like a little pot of money.
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 2: And start like a global derby?
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So with with sting ray, we're like, I'm ninety
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 3: nine percent sure that they get up to maybe one
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 3: thousand pounds. So it's just what what we were able
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 3: to record and luckily able to like tag and now
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 3: we're getting information about it. But we're I'm pretty sure
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 3: that they get a lot bigger. You know, what are
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 3: the chances is the one that we found exactly is
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 3: the single biggest fish.
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: It's not so no, no, well no that's not that's
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: not true.
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we are most of the biggest fish females that
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 4: you're seeing, Yeah, the sting rays.
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, and apparently that's the same with marlin as well. Yeah.
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 3: Uh yeah, the big the biggest sting rayser females. Interesting, Yeah,
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 3: they typically anchor themselves to the bottom when you're fishing
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 3: for them. Yeah, so they'll you hook into one and
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 3: it'll go down to the bottom and basically fishing forward
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 3: is trying to get it off the bottom. And then
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 3: it also weighs six hundred pounds.
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 6: But there's been many times where we nearly cut a
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 6: snag and it turned out to be sting, right.
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I've had both where I thought it was a
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 3: snag and it was a sting right. Yeah. It's always
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 3: cool when you you just have something that's you're just
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 3: cussing and then it starts to move, dragging the bug.
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 5: Yeah, you don't think there's a great big white sturgeon
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 5: up their land locked.
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 2: Up there, and.
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 3: I'm curious.
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the global Big Fish Derby.
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 2: My money, and I'm biased, but my money's not a
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 2: good old American.
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 5: White Yeah, I feel it because, well, the other thing
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 5: is choos all these records and stuff, like if you
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 5: start a derby, then you have to have rules.
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, why don't we talk about that?
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: About that, about that Lord Hope of blood Socker. The records.
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 3: So I gf a uh all of the records. So
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 3: they're much smaller than like the largest documented fish.
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so like the biggest white tailed deer yeah yeah, yeah,
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: he was killed by a hunter.
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and so I I gf a record for giant
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 3: catfish sting ray pima. It's all much smaller than the
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 3: largest fish because you have to follow the rules.
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's just way different like the biggest whatever.
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: It's like wound up being that just washed up on
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: the beach one day, Yeah, dead.
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 3: Or whatever, which from a like biology perspective is fascinating.
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 3: So like that's I yeah for my work, I include that,
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 3: but you know it wouldn't work for a derby.
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: So your book came out.
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 3: When book was published April twenty.
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: Fifth, how's been going. It has been fun good. Yeah,
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: it's a great book. Did you book events?
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, still doing them. Yeah, it's been great. It took
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 3: U took over ten years to write, so it was
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 3: really it wasn't a.
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: Ten years ago. Did you know you were writing it.
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 3: Ten years ago? I knew I was interested, Yeah, we know.
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 3: So we I worked with Stephan Lovegren, who's writer with
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 3: National Geographic and we've worked together forever and so we
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 3: wrote the proposal in twenty eleven and then spent the
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 3: last ten years just traveling around together.
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: Information here that you know was where was the publisher ever?
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: Kind of be like, hey, what happened to the book?
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 3: There were a couple public.
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 2: I got it.
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: So but I want of landing with University of the Bad.
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 3: Approach, which is where I work, Yeah, which is where
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 3: you work.
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 1: That's great.
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 3: So it all, it all, it all worked out in
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 3: the end. And we didn't know, I mean started out
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 3: asking what question is? You know what fishes the worlds
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 3: are just? And yeah, it wasn't until this last year
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 3: that we found a larger one.
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: So but like I said, there's a question mark that
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: lingers over.
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, they're always there, always will be. And it's
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 3: what I'm gonna you know, it's what I do. So
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 3: I'm gonna keep working on it.
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: And but if you, uh, let me ask you this,
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: if you had and you kind of answered it, but
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: if you had to guess, it's it's if you had
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: to guess, do you think the record will stay with
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: that sting ray species or do you think that or
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: do you do you got a feeling like the catfish
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: is gonna blow it away?
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 3: Or what I want the record to be broken like
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 3: because that's that means healthy?
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: But are you betting on the sting rays? Are you
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: betting on some other things? Like just from your hunt?
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: Come on, you know Tommy's betting on white Stairs.
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 2: I'm betting on Whittairs and I'm going all in.
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I think it's the sting ray, but
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 3: you do. So they're like, yeah, there's these stories from
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 3: way back when of much bigger fish.
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, divers from Bonneville Dam coming.
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 5: Up with these stories, and these dudes, these twenty foot
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 5: sturgeon is bigger around as VW bugs.
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: I grew up with those stories. Man, well and those
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: big calffish eating people.
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, or like Locked Nest Monster, if.
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: It's come on, they'll come on.
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 3: No. No, but I'm saying any like, you hear so
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 3: many stories. Yeah, when those stories turn out to be true,
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 3: maybe not Locknest Monster, but whatever, Like that's good, Like
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 3: that's interesting. It never, it very very rarely turns out
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 3: that those stories are true. But yeah, I hope, I mean,
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 3: I hope someone catches bigger fish next year. It's like,
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 3: if you've been to the Maykong, millions of people fish
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 3: in that river, you you would never believe in a
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 3: million years that the largest fish could occur there because
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 3: of the amount of fishing and other stuff that's going
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 3: on there. So the fact that it's still there is great.
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 3: I hope. I hope there's a bigger fish out there.
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 3: I hope the air pinma in South America. I hope
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 3: they catch seven hundred pounds next year.
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: So I got one last question for you before plugging
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 1: your book again. If you go to the Makon River
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: and I take a crawler leaf worm, put it on
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: a hook and flick it out, am I probably gonna
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: get hit fast?
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 3: Oh not? No?
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: And I don't mean by the giant can. I mean
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: it's a hit in general?
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 3: No? So really?
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So you can draw on a worm and not
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: get a hit.
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 3: There's so many people fishing. So like I went h
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 3: on the river one day and I for like five miles.
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 3: I counted a thousand nuts. Oh yeah, So that's what
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 3: I'm saying about, how it's incredible that these fish are still.
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: They got to put on a type species there.
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 3: No, so yeah, yeah, yeah, South I mean South America,
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 3: it's still I mean they have I forget what that
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 3: species with the prana like if you try fishing in
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 3: South America like prana in a second, it has been
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 3: my experience.
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: Sure, Yeah, you throw that bait out there, you're gonna
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 1: get a hit.
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, because in South America, in a lot of places,
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 3: people are still selective about what fish they're eating. They
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 3: want a big fish, certain kinds of fish. In may Kong,
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 3: it's like, I mean, you catch a fish like that,
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 3: that's that's food.
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: I was in the Philippines one time and we were
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: at a fish market and I was expressing to the
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: personnels with that, like, how could all the fish in
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: the fish market.
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 2: Be so small?
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: Meaning I mean, there's it's all fish the size your
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: finger right and squid And he said, yeah, it's like this.
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: He goes, Then you'll come in here tomorrow and there'll
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: be a forty foot whale shark laying there. He goes,
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: It's just what gets caught, man. He's like, it's what
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 1: gets caught. Wow, if it gets caught, it's going to
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: be here in this fish market.
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: Selectivity is.
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 3: We work a lot with local people fishing and we
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 3: monitor we for the last three years, we've recorded every
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 3: single thing that they catch in their fish trap. And
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 3: these fish traps so it's a it's an arrow shaped
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 3: trap made out of a bamboo that can be like
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 3: a klometer long, so it's you know, like a fight
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 3: net yep. So it's a big wall within like an arrow,
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 3: so the fish get like they hit the wall, they
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 3: swim along. It's in the lake, so yeah, but the
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 3: lake drains, so yeah, the fish have to move as
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 3: the lake drains, and they catch like one hundred and
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 3: twenty different kinds of fish and each trap, they're like
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 3: ten thousand of these traps. Each trap catches a ton
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 3: of fish a year. So it's like so productive. Yeah,
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 3: it's crazy, but it's very much that. You're just reminded
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 3: me that because they like we some days they'll catch
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 3: a thousand of one kind of fish and then the
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 3: next day it's something it's like we're trying to understand
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 3: what's going on.
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: But yeah, it is kind of trying to understand the system. Yeah,
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: like why, well, if you're wondering why, you'll find a
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: lot out. You see that Tommy that's hosting You'll find
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: a lot out in Chasing Giants in Search of the
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: World's Largest freshwater Fish by zeb Hogan with Stefan luvgren
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: U host a National geographics Monster Fish, which covers as
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: well The show right covers a lot of the material
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: in here, but if you really want to read them,
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: book Biology Yeah, it's got a big photo section in
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: the middle. Normally I didn't get around here. Normally when
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: we have people on, I read their book. I'm pretty
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 1: good about it. But I didn't read your book yet.
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: I just want I just wanted to tell you, so
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 1: you have to. I don't want you to talk to
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: someone lame like that's some bitch. Never even read the book,
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: I could tell. I'm just telling you.
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 2: Never read the book. I'd like to.
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 1: It looks good. It's a beautiful book, color photography, chasing
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: giants in search of the world's largest fresh water fish
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: anywhere books are sold.
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 3: Good.
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 1: Look, man, I appreciate you coming out. Thank you, thank you,
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 1: thank you. Tommy, You're welcome and boys appreciate it. Head
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: down to the to the first Light store.
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 4: We'll take care of you.
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: Hailey, Idaho. You'll know when you see them.
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 2: This place is crazy. I'm jealous of the mannequins.
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 3: Plug plug it a little bit morement.
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 2: What do you want me to talk about this place?
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 2: It really is a destination. It's incredible. You walk through
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 2: the front door.
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 5: There's a great, big giant bull laying there with three
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 5: years where the sheds.
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 2: Laying next to it. That's admirable, dude.
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: A rifle sitting right inside.
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 3: You can just come in here.
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: Stick them up.
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 2: But I didn't know.
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 5: It's the women's section that explains why none of them
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 5: clothes look to fit me.
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 7: Well maybe one day, Tom, he's pushing for your job
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 7: down here, man, I might.
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 2: Be politicking my way into something.
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, all right, guys, thank you very much for coming on.
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 3: Man, appreciate it.
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 3: Thank you.
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 2: Oh ride all, ride all.
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 6: On a seal ry shine like silver in the sun.
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: Ride, ride, ride on along, sweetheart.
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 3: Were done beat this damn horse to death, taking a
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 3: new one. Ride.
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 6: We're done beat this damn horse today, So take your
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 6: new one and ride on