Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 039: Maverick County, Texas. Steven Rinella continues his discussion with ranch manager, wildlife biologist and hog trapper Ben Binnion, along with Chris Gill and Janis Putelis from the MeatEater crew.

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Ep. 039: Maverick County, Texas. Steven Rinella continues his discussion with ranch manager, wildlife biologist and hog trapper Ben Binnion, along with Chris Gill and Janis Putelis from the MeatEater crew. · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This is the me Eater podcast coming in you shirtless,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: severely folk bitten, and in my case, underwear listening to podcast,
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: you can't predict anything? All right, everyone, We're we're jumping
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: into part two of a two part discussion out of
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Maverick County, Texas about uh, two things that that uh
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: intrigued me a great deal over the last few years,
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: which is Texas white tales case like big giant boxing
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Texas and the culture around that and how they're produced.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: And also um sort of a writer on that, which is, uh,
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: big giant Texas pigs. What's up a wild pigs? Why
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: is it that wild pigs are gonna come kill us? All?
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: We got way too meet wild pigs? But then don't
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: will let you go pig hunting? And what happens with
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: all that pig meat? What's up with shooting pigs from
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: helicopters and all that kind of stuff? Um, same gases
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: we had on the last episode talking about white tail
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: bucks and and growing white tails and wildlife biology and
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: ecology and all that white tail systems, um Ben Bennon.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: All Right, So I don't want to worry out. I
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: don't want to wear out my welcome but I don't
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: want to talk about pigs for a minute. I'll always
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: talk about pig. Okay, I know where to start. Well,
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: we've been doing down here what I can't like. Some
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: months ago, Janese and I were down here, not not filming,
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: We're just down here Glad handing Hank, socializing, and we
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: got the app with Ben here about white tails, and
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: he shared with us a piece of information that for uh.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: For pretty much his entire adult life, dating back when
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: he was in high school, he's been involved in trapping
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: wild pigs and selling wild pigs to a slaughter facility.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: Now on the lay little groundwork. If I say something
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: wrong or something that contradicts your understanding, jump in, honestly,
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: do some big background stuff. All pigs outside of Africa
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: are one species. So whether you're talking about a razorback
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Eurasi and wild boar Berkshire, those pigs are all Whether
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: he's in Siberia or Texas, or California or Hawaii or
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: the Philippines or Poland or Romania. No, no, No. Sous
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: scraffa a highly variable species, but one species. They have
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: a lot of variations, but just like dogs, pigs come
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: in all kinds of shapes and sizes. The ancestral pig.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: The ancestral pig is the what we what you here
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: referred to as the Eurasian wild board. Many many, many
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: years ago, the Eurasian wild boar was domesticated and moved
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: around the world kind of in tandem with human beings.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: So Polynesians had Eurasian wild boars that they got somehow
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: or another through trade or through catching them, and introduced
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: them to a lot of islands in the Pacific, and
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: they spread this animal around. They made a domesticated version,
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: many domesticated versions of SEUs scraffa, many domesticated versions of
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: the Eurasian wild board, the ancestral wild board. Meanwhile, the
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: ancestral wild species continue to exist. To understand that, think
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: about cows cattle. Cattle that we know today are cows
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: we know today are a domesticated version of an animal
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: called the orix. The orix is extinct, so the actual
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: real thing that was domesticated no longer exists. But we
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: have cows. In the case of pigs, we have the
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: kind we made and the kind that was there, and
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: they have morphologic differences. You can look at them and
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: see characteristics either their peer like you can go to
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: places and you'd be like, it's just a pure wild pig,
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: no characteristics of of breeding from human manipulation. And then
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: you have like a potbellied pig which shows a tremendous
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: amount of human manipulation. And in all the gray area
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: between those things. The first people that brought pigs to
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: the news. So the pigs lived just about everywhere, but
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: not in the western hemisphere, so there were no at
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: at the time of European contact, before anybody from Europe
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: came over, there were no pigs in Alaska, Canada, Lower
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: forty eight, Mexico, Central America, South America. Sus scraffa was
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: not in any of those places. It came to be
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: in those places. Initially the initial burst from the Spaniards
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: and the Spanish would do things such as bring pigs
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: and put them on islands out in the Gulf of
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: Mexico and have sort of be like a larger where
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: you could have him out there. No you could go
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: catch them. Pigs would swim to shore. Um people would
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: just lose track of pigs, and a guy like Daniel
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: Boone's day, you would go out if you were going
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: out to to settle in the wilderness. You might go
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: out with pigs and just cut them loose, knowing that
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: they would fatten up around there, and you can kind
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: of just go find him and almost go hunt up
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: your own pig that was out fatting itself on the landscape.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: And over the years we introduced many domestic varieties. Then
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: in the twenties, people started to capture the ancestral Eurasian
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: wild boar specimens of wild pig. Hunt clubs would capture
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: them and bring him and cut them loose on the landscape.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: So when you look at what's going on in the
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: US now, you have some pigs that are essentially an
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: uninterrupted line from wild versions from the Eurasian wild boars
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: that were just brought here, caught a wild pig, didn't
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: manipulate it through selective breeding, and cut it loose. You
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: have escaped like feral domestics. And of course there's nothing
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: preventing these from all inner breeding. And so you have
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: this great mosaic of different sorts of pigs running around
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: on the landscape. What you just do to my thing?
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: Oh did I turn your you're in down? Yeah? The
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: guy Tom, the host I saw you might I thought
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: you might be man, you might be making yourself death,
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: but really need to turn into the rest of our stage.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: He said, the stage is talking about pigs. By this
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: one lay some foundation because I think I feel as
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: though it's a not very well understood thing. I didn't
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: understand any of that before hearing it. I just saw
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: these are all just the same kind of pig run around.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: They all broke loose from some facility a bunch of
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: years ago, and then he just took over Texas. There's
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: been wild pigs in Texas since I did not know that.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: Probably an uninterrupted, uninterrupted line yeah somewhere, yeah, and supplemented
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: along the way through all sorts of things, like just
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: some guy, you know, like you got ten pigs, and
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: also you wake up and you got nine and one
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: of them. My old man one time went in on
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: a pair of pigs with some one and one pig
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: got away. Like this guy had property. He said to
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: my ole man. He goes, I'm gonna buy two pigs.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: You pay for all the feed, and I give you
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: one when they're fattened. So my man paid for all
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: the feed. One got away, and then the guy's like, oh,
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: the one that got away, that was your one. So
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: there's a wild pig somewhere running around in Indiana. I
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: don't know if you survived. Um, pigs are expanding and
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: you feel that. But you say, your whole life down
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: here and this is like a this is a great
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: pig habitat, Like wild pigs have been a part of
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: your life for your whole life. All right, So now
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: you talk about pigs, you can't give me something a
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: little more narrow down. What was your first did you
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: first start dealing with? Well, let me ask you this first.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: What's your perception of pigs. I'm the good to bad,
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: ten being satan and one being um, you know, like
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: a margarita. I mean I could I don't know if
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: I could put a number on it, but I mean,
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: pigs are it's more of a love hate. I love
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: trying to control the numbers and uh. But at the
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: same time, and I love just trying to annihilate every
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: single one of them because that's what you know. They're
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: They're so so terrible for the natural habitat. But at
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: the same time, it's, uh, if they were gone, I
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: don't know what I do, you know, So, I mean
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: it's it's uh. I found that again in again with
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: people who are involved in wild pigs. Is there's an
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: industry around controlling I think people have given up on
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: the idea of eradicating wild pigs. It can be done
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: on islands. I think it can be done on islands
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: of a certain size. You can eradicate pigs unless you
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: got some sort of disease like swine collar or something
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: like that that came in and just wiped him out with.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: That would still be site specific, you know, to an area. Yea,
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: even on like the Hawaiian Islands, they're considered too big
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: for it to be even possible to eradicate pigs, but
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: you could. But pigs have been a successfully eradicated from
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: very small islands. Other net, it's not gonna happen. So,
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: but there's an industry around controlling pig populations. So here's
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: a good place if you start explain the fecundity of
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: a pig, the reproductive abilities of a pig. Uh well,
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: uh I guess uh sal is like in this in
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: this part of the world. They you know, depending on
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: the habitat, their direct reflective their of their habitat. If
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: they have a lot of food and our good forage
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: and plenty of water, and they stay healthy. Sal Can
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: usually have two litters a year, and uh, you know,
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: these that we have here usually have probably four to six.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: You know, I wouldn't say, you know, less than eight,
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: but in some areas they're gonna have twelve and fifteen,
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: and usually they're gonna raise you know, the vast majority
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: of those that a high percentage I would say reach,
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: will reach a year of age or whatever, will become
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: six months six months of sexual maturity. So in six
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: months of sexual maturity, so one sal can put off.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: So it's not all lands to a sour put off.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: In a year, twelve offspring, six females who within six
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: months are able to breed and put off. Yeah, the
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: same number of offspring. Now, compare that to what a
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: white tail deer can do, right, and white tails are
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: gonna breed once a year and possibly on a good
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: year she's gonna raise two fons. And how old is
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: you gotta be to start down here? They they they
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: can breed it's six months and have fawns at a year,
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: can they really? But that does not happen very often.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: It's gotta be fawn like a dear born in May. Well,
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: our our fawns are born in July even but which
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: is even later, which doesn't make any sense to that,
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: but they rout in December. They rout in December. But
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: so it's feasible that what it could be possible that
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: one could become pregnant. Usually what happens with that is
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: is it's a it's a fawn born early, say June
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: comes into and then that fawn will come into season
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: or u estrus in uh February and be bred in
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: February and usually and that's what that gets back goes
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: back to the dear part of the of the discussion
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: as far as Mother Nature's way of saying, screw you,
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: because if you get the habitat on point and just exceptional,
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: that's what happens. Those dose are healthier, they breed a
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: little bit earlier, they have fawns a little bit earlier.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: Those fawns have a tremendous amount of milk and uh
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: grow faster, and then all of a sudden they're coming
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: into season and then they're having fawns. Well, that's a
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: baby raising a baby, So her spring is set back
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: because that offspring is gonna be if she's born brand
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: in February. She's gonna in turn have them even later.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean, conditions so good that you're
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: deteriorating their the that's exactly right. Health and quality of
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: the animals, that's exactly right. But go ahead, well I
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: was gonna say, you know, if you want to touch
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: anymore on that or go back to the jump into
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: I'm just trying to make the point out how quickly pigs. Yeah,
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: in the absence of control, that's a that's a word
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: a lot of people have a struggle with. But in
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: the absence of the control that pigs can become the dominant. Yeah,
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: they will take the creature on the landscape, they'll take
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: over everything. They I think they they're saying right now
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: that you have to you have to harvest se of
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: the existing population to have a negative effect on that population.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: And this is the thing that I find the people
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: who grow up who's whose frame of reference come from
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: outside of wild pig country, such as myself, becomes hard
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: to understand that there's just a generally accepted thing in
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: and in wildlife ecology or wildlife management, or let's just
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: say it, generally accepted notion and environmental thinking is that
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: we should give precedence to native animals, So we should
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: promote the like the the endemic species of the Western
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: hemisphere or whatever particular area we have, and instead of
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: having like a homogeneous world occupied by just Norway rats
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: and Eurasian pigs and Eurasian pigeons in English sparrows, that
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: we should try to uh create an environment where native
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: wildlife can thrive. And doing that in places where pigs
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: were introduced long ago or recently involves trying to really
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: knock back and control non natives, because non natives aren't
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: from this system, and a lot of the things that
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: might step in and control them in a natural way
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: don't function, don't work. You know, English sparrows. If you're
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: in a grocery store parking lot and there's a bird
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: pecking around under your car, that's probably an English sparrow,
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: which was brought to the US to control, uh, thinking
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: they're going to control insects, and then you wind up
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: having a huge bird problem. And English sparrows almost drove, like,
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: for instance, the Eastern bluebird to extinction because they're a
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: cavity nest and they all competed our native bird and
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: the things that held sparrows in check where they came
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: from weren't didn't apply here. They they got here, absent
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: their predators and exploded. So's the general thinking that we
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: have an obligation to to cut pigs out as much
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: as we can, because we will lose many native species
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: and particularly native ground nesting birds types of vegetation if
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: we just let pigs go. Because they're voracious eaters. They
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: eat everything all right, from grass to bird eggs um.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: And you've been heavily involved in that, controlling pigs on properties. Yeah, uh,
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: all right, Now tell me about just how you got
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: started and doing that. I guess, uh, you know, whenever
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: I was when I was growing up, we hunted, hunted
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: white tails, and pigs are always like a like a
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: like a side bonus, you know, because there was there
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: was no there's no laws, no limits. You could I mean,
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: all you have, if you have a hunting license, you
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: can kill them. So when we'd be hunting white tails,
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: and and I'd be sitting there with my dad and
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: we'd say and he says, well, you can't shoot that
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: one because that that deer is too young, that dear
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: is not big enough, this and that and this and that,
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: and then a pack of pigs comes in. He says,
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: here's a rifle, start shooting. There was no you know,
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: didn't matter. And that's kind of what got me all
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: fired up about them, because you can do whatever you want.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: You can you can kill ten of them if you
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: want to. And it was that kind of that greed,
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: you know, and that hunter greed. It kind of started it.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: And uh so, here's something you can go hunt whenever
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: you want, right, you can go hunt them any time
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: of the year, whenever you want. All you gotta do
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: is have a license and somebody to say, yeah, you can,
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: you go on my property. And most of the time
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: everybody would say go ahead. For wild pigs. They wanted
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: to get rid of them because they were so detrimental
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: to grazing pastures for cattle, to cattle feed yards where
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: they're trying to feed them out, for for meat production
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: and for for the native wildlife, for for quail and
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: dear direct competitors here. Uh So, that that's kind of
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: what got me started in in kind of my uh
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: my love for for chasing them and in trying to
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: get rid of them or trying to kill him. I'm
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: not really trying to get rid of them, but it's
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: just fun to try because, like you said before, you're
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: never gonna get rid of Eradication has been I believe
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: it's been sort of like in an academic sense, the
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: idea of eradicating wild pigs has kind of been ruled
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: out right. It's not like notwithstanding some technology that might
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: come out that would be probably very dangerous to deal with,
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: which would be like some kind of disease that we
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: could introduce, or it's probably it's probably gonna happen. Right.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: They're mostly just trying to, I think, just control their distribution. Now.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: That's trying like they keep their range within Texas in
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: the southeast and not let its spread all over the
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: United States. I think that's like, yeah, controlling um limiting
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: growth of range and then controlling within that range, because
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: part of limiting growth is probably controlling within the range. Yeah.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: And uh, the I guess the the ranch that I
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: grew up on that I mentioned earlier where I learned
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: everything I've ever known about white tails. Uh had river
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: bottom seven miles of of a major river, and any
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: in Texas, any any major river had held pigs. Because
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: his Riparian habitat, but also because floods carried pigs and
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: dispersed them into other areas. And yeah, flood well, floods,
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: you know, people would people would have a farm, you know,
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: in a in a pen of pigs next to the river,
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: and floods and they just washes them down the river.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: So then it just populates further down and further down
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: until it's, you know, until they're everywhere, so that they
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: expand long river corridors. Correct. Yeah, that's a lot better
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: way to put it than what I said, better to
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: explains how it could happen. Yeah, but uh but so
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: that's kind of what I grew up on, and uh,
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: aerial aerial gunning didn't wasn't really uh a method whenever
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: I was younger, as far as shooting them from the helicopter,
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: and uh so the only real way to uh, the
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: only the only options people had to control the numbers
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: was was by hunting and trapping. Those are the only
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: two options. And shooting with a rifle from a you know,
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: from a sitting position or you know, just set setting
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: up on a field, or or or even spotting stalking,
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: you get one pig or two pigs in a night
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: and that's a good day. But it had not it helped.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: It did not help have any impact on population control,
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: whereas trapping we could or you could, you can catch
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: multiple pigs. It wants family groups or whatever. But whenever
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: I was younger, my stepdad had two traps that he
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: would use to try to control control pigs. So I'd
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: go and help him and my mom set these traps.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: Explain one of these traps real quote, Um, there, Well,
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: they're exactly what we're using right now. So there are
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: square square box trap made out of metal with a
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: gravity door that it's on a hinge it falls, Uh
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: you know, you put it basically you put a stick
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: under it with a with a trip wire and uh,
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: they hit the trip wire pulls a stick out from
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: the door the door. Gravity pulls the door down and
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: closes and traps and pigs. And then these are made
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: out like welded six and four inch welded welded angle
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: iron is the frame with with like cattle panel welded
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: inside the frame of the of the angler. And what
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: are the dimensions those things? Eight ft? But yeah, most
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: of them are eight to ten ft long and four
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: or five ft wide and usually three or four ft tall,
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: just just to demonstrate the efficacy. Talked about how many
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: you've ever seen get caught in one trap at one time?
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: I guess, uh, I've caught I've caught thirteen or fourteen
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: on several occasions. How do we have today? In one
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: seven at seven and one um the other day? I
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: get that gives you an idea, yeah, and the other
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: the other day and in an eight ft long trap
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: I caught I had five pigs over a hundred pounds.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: Because you say numbers and then people are like, oh,
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: they're all babies. Well I had I had five over
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: a hundred pounds, so and then four that were forty pounds.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: How many do so? Today we checked eight traps and
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: handled how many pigs? We had thirteen thirteen pigs today?
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: H h which a couple of those traps were. And
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: that's a few hours of work. Yeah, yeah, I'm up. Yeah,
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: I had today and yesterday and I've I've trapped eighteen
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: days this spring, had eighteen trap nights, and I've caught
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: uh one d pigs as of today exactly one hunter
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: exactly one h was ninety nine, but then I remember
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: we had one yesterday, so that's a hundred and how
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: would you trapped since you started trapping, since you started
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: keeping track four thousand seven or so. So now we'll
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: go back. So your old man had a couple of
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: these traps. Yeah, he had a couple of these traps,
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: and uh and it's just like, I'm sure what you
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: experienced trapping up north. Uh, that whole catching or or hunting,
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: you know, trapping is just a different way of hunting,
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: and uh, where you can set something up to try
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: to trick an animal and then you go check it
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: in the next day to see if you see if
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: you're you know what if you could outsmart him and
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: catch them. And it's it kind of started out like that.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: So I'd go with him to check them in the
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: morning and you pull up on that trap and there's
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: a hog in it, and it just you know, it's excitement,
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: and uh. Well then I had a mentor. And in
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: whenever I was a little bit older, when I was
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: first centered high school, there was an agricultural teacher who,
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: uh who trapped hogs also. So I I go on
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: the weekends and I go with my stepdad and trap
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: hogs with his two traps and catch one every once
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: in a while and we'd shoot him just two more
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: than it is more just to get try to get
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: get control on the population. So uh, the sagg teacher,
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: he started, Uh. I started talking to him, and he says, yeah, well,
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: I uh there's a U. S D. A inspected uh
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: slaughter facility in my hometown that I didn't I didn't.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: I mean I was thirteen or fourteen at that time.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: I didn't know about it. And uh it had opened
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: in their early nineties, I think. And uh they would
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: buy live wild pigs and uh, you know, and sell
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: them they or they butcher them under us D inspection
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: and then sell them meat, mostly to other countries, a
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: lot of Europe Europe European countries. Um that they sold
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: all over the world. So these guys are buying wild
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: pigs brought in by trappers, slaughtering them under federal guidelines
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: and then they can sell them the public consumption. Yea,
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: they're exporting most of the meat, but they it was
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: all for human consumption. And you like wild game in
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: the country, like, you can't sell wild game. You cannot
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: sell any kind of wild game. Yeah, so when you
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: walk into a restaurant, you I'm talking to you the listener.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: When you walk into a restaurant in America and you
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: see um venison, for instance, on the menu, or you
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: see quail on the menu, one or two things is
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: going on. It was either raised a farmer ranch under
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: like a livestock conditions, okay, raising a farmer ranch and
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: slaughtered as like a game farm. Or it was important
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: because most venison when you go into a restaurant, when
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: you buy venison, what you're typically buying typically is you're
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: getting red deer raised on a ranch. In New Zealand,
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: if you go and see elk on a menu in
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: a restaurant, what you're doing you're not buying elk. You're
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: buying yes, it's an elk genetically, you're just buying a
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: farm animal brought upon a farm. Um. That the fact
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: that you can't buy a wild game is part of
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: what saved American wildlife and it was part of a
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: big suite of wildlife laws. It went into effect in
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: the nine thirties when we were about running out of
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: wild animals and we're countering the impacts of commercial hunting,
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: market hunting. The fact that used to have like absolutely
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: unregulated hunting, and you would go out and shoot as
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: many animals as possible year round to elm into markets.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: So in New York you go down you buy Mallard
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: ducks and quail and passenger pigeons which are now extinct,
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: and deer meating no no, no, not buffalo tongues, stuff
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: killed on the wild and sold um pigs as a
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: nonnative or are a whole other category. However, you don't.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: We don't sell um hunted wild pigs like you can't
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: when you go into a restaurant. You're not getting hunted
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: wild pigs from America. It's pigs that were walks through
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: the door of a slaughter facility, right, that's correct. And
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: how did that? Like? How old you needs that started
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: to do it? You know? I mean I was. I
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: guess I was fourteen because I built that first trap
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: and that was my that was a shop project and uh,
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: metal shop, metal shop, and uh and I needed it.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: I needed a project and uh and I said, I'm
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: gonna you know, my my stepdad has two traps, I'm
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: gonna build a third one. And that's when he wilded
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: the penny onto. No, No, that was yeah. I wasn't
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: a good welder back then. I can't. I couldn't wild
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: it a penny on anything. But now that's my new ones.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: But uh yeah, so that that old that original trap.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: I wanted a third trap and I was gonna start
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: that was gonna be my new economic venture for myself
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: for side job in high school. Was I was gonna
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: start trapping pigs and selling them to this facility and
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: making a paycheck. And that's that's kind of what started me,
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: is that that was that was an idea that I
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: had because this uh, this uh shop teacher, the metal
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: shop teacher, had built this fancy trailer where he could
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: run him up a shoot and put him in a
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: trailer live very easily. And all these traps that he
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: had built were the rights, the same size and all uniform,
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: and he could, uh he trapped these pigs on the
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: weekend and then go sell them and he'd make you know,
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: a couple hundred bucks a week or a hundred bucks
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: a week back then or whatever. And I saw that,
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: and I wanted to do it. Don't wanted to try it.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: So that's what got me to build that first trap.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: So then I started trapping with three traps and a
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: cattle trailer that I pulled behind a single cab forward
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: ranger that was not meant for pulling any kind of trailer.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: And I pulled hundreds of miles a week. And at
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: that age, well it I guess I started. I started.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: Let me back up, haul on your own when you
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: became Yeah, haul on my own. When I was sixteen.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: From fourteen to sixteen, I got my mom to help
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: me load the pigs in the trailer and then she'd
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: drive them and I'd ride the passenger seat to the
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: the sail the butcher plant and I'd sell them. And
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: then and she was basically she she drive the truck
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: and back up the trailer and then I'd load the
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: pigs and then are we talking about back then? It
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: was very small scale. When I was first started out,
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: I'm talking like I'd get a big, a big, uh
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: big company check for twelve dollars. It was yeah, yeah,
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: are two or three small ones. They weren't worth much
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: and uh and most of those checks were less than
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: a hundred dollars. And I was not making a dollar
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: a profit. I mean, I was way in the hole.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: But it was fun and I was getting money back
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: and it was just in the ranch. The prop when
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: you're like a kid that age, you play video games,
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: you don't make ship back. Want to ask you about
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: that games? Right? Yeah, exactly, and uh in the in
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: the property owners would be they they paid my corn
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: bill or my bait bill with no problem because I
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: was getting rid of pigs for him, and uh so
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: they kind of escalated from there. And then sixteen, I
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: started driving, and then I got got into shops metal
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: shop a little more and started building more traps. I
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: built my own trailer when I turned seventeen, which is
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: the trailer we used today, and then I used that
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: I built that shoot about the same time. And uh,
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: when I was eighteen, I graduated high school. Uh and
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: went straight into college three days after I graduated high school,
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: and uh, we happened to the little summer break they
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: give you. I went into summer school, summer summer college,
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: just because I wanted to. I hated school and I
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: wanted to get it over with. And you hate school,
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: take a different appron show off. Well, yeah, I I
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: hated school, so I went right back. Well, yeah I was.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: I was literally out my senior year summer. I was
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: out of school for three days and I went right
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: back into summer school. I had academic scholarships and uh
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: for for summer class. Actually, so I went right into
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: that to summer school, and I'd have class from like
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: ten to three during the day, so I couldn't really work.
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: I didn't couldn't have a nine to five job on
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: the ranch or on the on the is. I moved
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: in with my mom and my stepdad to live with
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: them through the first year of college, or actually it
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: was the first year and a half because I went
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: to summer and uh so I had trapped, and they
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: didn't the ranch, the property owners didn't care. They wanted
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: to get rid of the pigs. Say let me trap,
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: So I I ended up building trap after trap after trap.
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: At one point that summer. Uh when I was eighteen
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: in college, I had twenty eight traps that I was
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: running from. I was eighteen and nineteen. There was a
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: one year period and that's when I started keeping count.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: That's whenever I realized that, hey, something magical is happening
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: and I need to start writing this ship down and
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: being volumes of hive, volumes of pigs. I learned how
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: to do this stuff right, kind of deal, And that
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: first year I trapped eighteen hundred. Then you're making money
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: then I was. I was making I was making like
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: four grand a month in college. And and this was,
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: you know, twelve years ago in trapping pigs, and uh,
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: and I didn't have the property owner paid my corn
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: and paid most of my fuel because I was getting
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: rid of pigs for him. So I was. And he
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: just still didn't run out of pigs. No, no, it
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: oh because after I caught that eight hunter that first year,
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: I never got more than four hundred after that in
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: one year, So it went way down. Like I got
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: all the dumb ones out of the way that first year.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: So you went into it just an unexploited resource. Yeah,
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: no one had been going after him, poor Tom that
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: nobody had touched him. Yeah, And they were just they
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: were all naive and would go in any trap. You
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: didn't have to think about it or anything. The ones
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: that are left on that property, the big ones will
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: never be trapped because of me. Something happened where they
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: got out or something, you know, and they're then they're
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: smart now they will never if they see a trap,
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: they're gonna leave. What's what's the biggest wild pig you
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: ever trapped? I got five? Right now, I've over three pounds.
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: So can you speak to and you have a great
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: amount of authority on the subject. No one's gonna question
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: your authority on the subject. Can you speak to for
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: once and for all the whole like pig zilla bullshit?
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: Like when a guy comes out and says, I killed
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: in the eleven or no, let's not even give him
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: that I killed an eight hundred pound wild pig. Will
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: you tell listeners what that man killed? It was a
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: domestic pig, straight up domestic pig. Those you know, feral
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: pigs don't get that big on you know, natural food. Yeah,
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: someone was feeding that pig and protecting that pig and
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: raising that pig up so that someone could then shooting
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: with a gun and say they killed eleven hunter pounds
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: or whatever giant they probably he was probably in the
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: wild and the in the hunter may not have known,
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: but he didn't grow up and get that way. He
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: was turned out for in my opinion, So of all
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: of that four thousand, what are so out of four thousand,
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: seven nine five wild pigs you trapped not in high
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: fence pig raising operations, but wild ass pigs born in
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: the wild, running around doing wild pig stuff. The biggest
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: one was I think it's three seventeen. There you have it. Yeah,
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: heater podcast. And now now I now I killed the one.
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: I killed the one that was bigger than that. I
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: killed one with my dogs. I caught one with my
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: dogs that without guts was three forty and he's still
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: not eight. No, he was four. That one was four
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: ten live and that was he. I mean, I have
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: pictures of him and everybody says he's seven hundred pounds
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: or whatever. And you what do you think? Do you
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: think that pig was just based on your impressions of
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: location and condition, you feel that pig got that big
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: in the wild. Yeah, he was just a flute. It was.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: It was an outlier. It was it was a year.
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: I killed him in October and it was an exceptional
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: uh fruit ear as far as the prickly pear fruit
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: and the mesquite beans, which are both nothing but pure
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: starch and sugar. And that's I have a feeling I
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: I attributed his size to to that. I think he
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: had the frame, a huge frame, and he just packed
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: on the pounds that that particularly a lot of body fat. Yeah,
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: what a what impact do you feel? Um? Let me
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: try to find out where're putting this? So in this country,
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: when do people start feeding corn to deer? Man, I
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: don't know, Uh, Scott would know more than that. Way
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: before me, Yeah, people were using corn feeders to attract
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: and manipulate dear longer than your life. Yeah, yeah, I mean,
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: I remember I remember guys talking about using using corn
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: in the seven a niece in in you know, without feeders,
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: just pouring it on the ground. And I know earlier
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: we were saying that wild pigs have been here um since,
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: But did the practice of corn give us the the
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: wild pigs we know now? The numbers of wild pigs
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: we know now? I think, I think, I think it's
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: a It's a definitely a contributing factor to the because
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: I I feel like we have, even on this place,
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: we have an artificial population that we created with through
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: feeding through feeding deer. Yeah, because it because it creates,
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: it just creates healthier, healthier females, which in turn produce
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: more young um in the absence of corn. This is
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: a two part questions. And the absence of corn, what
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: are the pigs eating and if and what percentage of
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: their diet is made up of corn that they're scrapping
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: out of deer feeding deer feeders. I don't I don't know,
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: uh man, I don't know if I could even answer
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: that they eat so much. There's such a variety in
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: their diet as far as they eat anything from rotten
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: fish that came you know, that died in the creek,
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: to you know, to two birds, to bird nests, I mean,
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: to the fruit the natural fruit that's produced on the
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: prickly pear and the mesquite in the mesquite trees. I mean,
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: they there's such a such a variety. I don't even
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: know how to everything. Yeah, they just they eat everything.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: So I don't know how to answer, you know, what
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: what percentage of their diet would uh would deer corn be?
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: Because I even do they are they subsisting? Are there
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: pigs that subsist exclusively on deer corn or do you
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: always find some native vegetation or native matter? There's always
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: something different in there. There's always something different in their guts,
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: and they're they're simple stomach, so they don't they don't
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: when you open up, uh, when you open up their stomach,
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: most of the stuff in their stomach is not fully digested,
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: so you can tell what it is, and it's there's
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: all sorts of things in there. So if no one
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: if again the situation I keep jumped into. I know
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: it's a really complicated situation, but let's like all people
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: ceased to exist, people all die. Um, do you feel
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: that there'd be a crash and pig numbers. I think
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: they would slow down. I don't think. I don't know
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: that they necessarily crash, but I don't think that they
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: would increase as as fast as they are now. All
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: there was this is ah, this particular property before I
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: got here did never fit and there was pigs here
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: and they're running cattle and they're running cattle but there
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: and you guys when you came in here, though, I
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: remember saying that when you came in here, there was
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: a shipload of picks. There was a shipload of pigs,
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: very few small pigs like babies, which meant that they
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: reproduction wasn't there, or they hit this hit capacity and
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: weren't putting off big litters. Yeah, I don't know, don't
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: put the brakes on like that. I think pigs dispersed
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: before they would do that. I think they would disperse
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: into the next you know, and and before it ceased
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: to reproduce, they would just just move. And in our
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: neighbors are neighbors, all of our neighbors all the way around. Uh,
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: they put tons of hunting pressure on. So that's why
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: I feel like that's why they were concentrated on it.
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: So when you came in, this property had never had
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: corn feeders on it, even a few years ago. No, No,
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: maybe a little bit, you know in December that somebody
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: might have came in and spread a little bit of
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: corn on the road, but not enough to make it different.
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: But it had a pile of pigs. Yeah. And another
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: interesting thing about corn you were telling me about is
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: that right now, dear could care less about corn. Yeah,
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: they couldn't care less about corn, right right, dear, deary,
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: deary eat what they need. Um. The reason that corn
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: works so well in the wintertime is because there's very
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: little natural food, so they dear turn to corn. Uh
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: this time of year. There's so much natural forage for
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: them in the in the brush, in the in the
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: brush and the brows and the forbes that we have
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: growing right now, especially after rain like we have like now,
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: when it's so green, they don't have any desire to
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: come to corn, even though it's like crip candy to them.
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: They'd still prefer natural brows. But the pig likes corn. Yeah,
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: it pigs gonna take corn because it's easy way out.
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: And then, uh, explain talk about the bait you'd like
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: to make into a trap. Yeah. I used two different ones.
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: I Uh. I use just straight up sour corn, which
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: is just corn with water and it just ferments and
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: and turns rotten and it stinks. Oh yeah, and uh,
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: that one's that one is good. But the one I
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: prefer is, uh is a little mixture that I've come
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: up with. I read it in an article in a magazine,
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: uh several years ago, and kind of touched touched it up,
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: you know, manipulated it into my own sp now, and
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: it's uh, it's a hundred pounds of corn, fifty pounds
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: of milo, uh, twenty five pounds of sugar, three packets
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: of Baker's yeast, uh about ten or twelve packets of
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: raspberry jello, and uh three canisters of tropical punch kool aid.
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: And mix that up in a hungry and I'll go
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: get some if you want something, and uh, mix all
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: that up in a fifty five gallon drum barrel and
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: uh fill it with water until the water is about
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: ten inches over the top of the grain, and put
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: a lid over it and uh with a small pinhole
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: in it, and it uh let it ferment. Let it
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: ferment in a six pack of beer just to speed
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: up the fermentation project. It smells. It smells exactly like
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: strawberry strawberry Hill Boone's farm. That's how they make that. Actually, yeah,
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: it just filter out all the other stuff. Too much
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: time did the need for cooking. Uh two weeks two
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: weeks this time of year, which is we're in We're
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: in the end of May right now with about ninety
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: degree days, so uh, two weeks of summertime in the
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: sun is primo is prime Um. You can use it
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: earlier than that. The really, the main reason I use
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: that stuff is to keep non targets like deer and
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: turkeys out of the traps. They don't like that stuff.
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: But it also pigs can smell it from such a
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: greater distance, and you the deer in turkeys don't even
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: bother your traps or come up to them, whereas if
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: you use regular corn, you're gonna have a bunch of
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: bycatch of in in stuff that I don't want to
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: have to explain to somebody. As far as catching a
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: deer turkey, which isn't legal. You have to turn them
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: loose and it's not good. Yeah, so best puts on
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: in there. They're not gonna eat. What was your bait
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: like prior to find this recipe? Uh? I used corn
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: whenever I was in high school, just straight just no,
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: just straight corn. And I caught a lot of deer
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: really yeah yeah, and I and that was not sitting
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: well with the property owner. So I had to figure
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: out how to do something different. And that's whenever I
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: switched to uh, to sour corn, to just straight sour corn.
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: And I I think I've figured out that I found
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: that recipe right in that time frame of that of
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: that first strong year round eighteen nineteen, whenever I hammered
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: that how much does it make? How much does it
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: cost to make a barrel? Of that? It's a it's
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: about a hundred dollar bill to make a barrel. And
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: but that's a hell of a lot of bait. That's
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: enough bait because I use it. I use it in
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: in you know, very small amounts in tandem with something
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: else or with with the sour corn or the regular corn,
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: and I'll uh so it'll last. It'll last me an
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: entire trap season, which an entire trap season for me
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: right now is about two months um and I usually
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: do that in the springtime when it's still cool. Uh wintertime,
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: I don't have time because we're doing the deer deer stuff.
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: They don't have time to mess with pigs. Summertime, it's
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: too hot and they die really quick. They overheat because
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: they can't still stress. Yeah, they stress out super super fast.
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: And uh So I usually try to trap somewhere between
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: February and the end of May. I usually try to
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: do a sixty day sin in there. This year I
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: didn't quite I only had eighteen trap days. But that's
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: actually about you know, thirty five to forty work days
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: as far as moving traps, prebating and everything. How many
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: pigs did you pull off the first year he trapped
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: this place, and how many pigs you pull off this year?
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: It's that first year I had about three fifty and
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: then this year I had a hundred. It's slowing down,
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: the yeah, it's they're slowing down. Yeah. I like the
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: way we're going right now. If I could do a
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: hundred a year consistently, I'd bet that it would satisfy
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: my bloodthirst without eradicating them. So I'd be happy with
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: a hundred a year. Walk me through the sale process. Uh,
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: you load these things are trailer and driving down a
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: real wild picks. Yeah. Yeah, and you get some serious
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: looks driving down the highway with with a bunch of
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: wild pigs in the trailer. So yeah, so what he
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: does he backs up a trailer. You got the trap,
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: and you get a little shoot that's like a splice
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: between the trap and the trailer with a ramp in it. Yeah,
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: back it up, back the trailer up to the trap.
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: So you can't be you're not logging these things out
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: in the middle of the desert. I mean you're setting
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: it like where you can get a vehicle to it, right,
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: you have to and then open the door to the shoot.
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: Pig runs out of the trap into the chute into
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: the trailer. Double door on the trailer. So you load
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: more multiple hogs at one time. Yeah, So you have
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: some up in a holding area and then you got
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: an area they run into, and then you let those
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: in and yeah, basically acts like a storm door. Um,
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: honey tup? What honey tup? That's what they call him
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: in Alaska. Yeah, before you go into the house where
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: you take off your boots and then drive down the
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: road to go to the place. Yeah. I usually what
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: I'll usually do is I'll hold them up. I have
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: a pen that I have a shade and water in,
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: and I'll hold them until I can get about, you know,
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: enough for a paycheck. So I usually try to get
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: ten or more and uh if I get Sometimes that
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: takes two days. Sometimes it takes five days. I don't
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: ever let them sit in a pin more than five days.
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: If I only have to, I'll still take him in
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: after five days, just just because I don't like having
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: to mess with them in a pen as far as
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: taking care of them. And they don't want to feed them,
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: and they don't want you to feed them out. They
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: want them. They want them as wild as they can be,
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: because they're selling them as wild, but sell them as
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: wild boar. If they're castrated, they will not buy them really, yeah,
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: because it affects the flavor of the meat. And what's
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: the minimum weight they'll accept right now, it's forty pounds.
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: That changes forty pounds live weight. I think they call
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: it uh. I think it's uh. I can't remember. It's
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: it's all kilograms, but it's forty pounds right now, and
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: sometimes they moved it up to eighty, so it has
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: to be a minimum eighty, but right now it's forty pounds.
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: But right now for a forty pound pig, they're giving
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: you seven and a half cents a pound for a
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: forty pound pig, which isn't even worth your time. And
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: then what's the next what's the next step up? I'd
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: have to I have to look. I think it's it's
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: it's forty to eighty is seven and a half cents
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: a pound, eighty two hundred is twenty cents a pound,
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: and then a hundred and one and up is thirty
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: five cents a pound, and then one hundred to one fifty.
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: You get you start into head bonuses, so they give
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: you a bonus for per pig. Uh, So like a
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: hundred to one fifty is a five dollars on top
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: of the thirty five cents, So i'd be forty dollars
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: for a hundred pound pig, and then a hundred and
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: fifty to two fifty is a ten dollar head bonus
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: hit thirty five cents. Then to fifty and up is
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: a fifteen dollar head bonus plus thirty five cents a pound. So, uh,
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: what is that? You get like a hundred and ten
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: dollars for a real big one, um, whereas a little
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: one you're getting three dollars, you know, So it makes
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: you know you always want the hundred pounds plus. I
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: call those moneyhogs because you're getting forty dollars from money off.
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: For a hundred pound plus you get forty dollars. So
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: all these ones that are not worth not of sale price,
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: you just dress them out and bring them to families, right.
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: I usually give them way to families in need. A
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: lot of families that I give them to. That's the
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: only meat they get for the year. They can't afford
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: to go to the store and buy meat, and they're
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: not on government assistance, so the only meat that they
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: get is coming from that cooler down there. And you
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: bring them to a dressed out, bring them to them
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: dressed out, and they'll bring it in their kitchen table
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: and set on their kitchen table and work on it.
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: Just a gut it out pick yeah, the whole family.
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: It's like it's it's it's a lot like the native
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: villages up north. It's just everybody gets involved and nothing
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: goes to waste. The ones you can sell, you bring
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: down there and you pull up in your trailer, and
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: those things are getting slaughtered that day. A lot of
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: times they're getting slader that day, depending on what time
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: I show up. But I think they buy right now.
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: They're buying nine nine o'clock in the morning to noon,
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: and they butcher into a five that day, and and
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: uh they try to do three hundred a day right now. Um,
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: they operate Monday through Friday, and they're doing about three
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: hundred a day, or they try to try to reach
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: at least three hundred a day. And so I'll back up.
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: I pull up there with my trailer, back up to
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: their to their uh offshoot or their unloading shoot, and
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: I unload all my pigs into that. It's like a
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: holding pin. We shut the door, and it has a
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: scale on one end that has uh uh kind of
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: guillotine doors on each end, so we'll run one pig
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: in at a time, and it's a balance scale that's
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: gonna trip people up. He doesn't mean guillotine legs, not
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: cutting the pig. Yeah, it's like a sliding door slid. Yeah,
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: so it's a sliding door on each end. So so
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: it's like it's like it would be like a square
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: box where you open one in, the pig runs in.
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: You close that in, so you have one pig and
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: close in the box and then it's it's sitting on
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: a balance uh balance scale and uh with with counterweight suit.
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: So that's that's how the scale works. And you weigh
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: them individual pigs, one at a time until you weigh
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: them all. They you write down the weights on the
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: sheet and then the whoever is weighing signs the sheet
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: and then sends the sheet up to the main office.
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: And you go up to the main office and they
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: cut you a check right there. Yeah, and they write
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: down they record the location the pigs are trapped. How
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: many days it took you to trap them? Uh, I
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: can't remember. There's a there's a handful of questions if
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: it was a wooded area, open area or farm land.
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: What do they care about that? I don't know. I
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: don't I think it's just survey stuff. But it's a
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: it's a sheet you fill out every time. This is
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: this is what it Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's not
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: it's not you wouldn't all this open h for sure.
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: They're they're talking about like open fields for open And
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: the most you ever hauled into one trip, I uh,
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: that day I caught my best day, I caught forty
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: seven and I hold them forty seven that day. They're
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: all big enough to sell, and I hauled them in
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: a goose neck trailer. Forty seven big enough to sell them. Yeah,
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: So that was a fatass check. Ye, it was an
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: eighteen hundred bucks or something. I think it's about it's
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: under two grand. What's your reaction down at the slaughterhouse
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: when you roll in with forty seven hogs? There's been
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: and they have a hard time getting enough guys trap picks. Yeah,
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: as much as you hear about all the pis, Yeah, yeah,
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: because it's it's a lot of work. I mean, it's
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: he's y'all saw just you know, y'all saw just a
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: couple of days worth, and and that's on a you know,
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: that's it's a lot of work for people, and they
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: just don't you know, in the in the people don't
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: like that kind of people don't like to work a
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: whole bunch, not that kind of work, not that it's yeah,
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: not that kind of They don't want to go get
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: stinky and then go get you know. They don't want
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: to use bait that stinks like ship to catch hogs
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: that then throw water and it smells like ship on them,
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: you know, I mean it's yeah. So here, here's the
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: observation to have about picks. This is something I've struggled
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: with for a long time. Oh, no matter what source
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: it is, whether it's newspapers, nightly news programs, outdoor television,
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: you get the sense that, holy shit, wild pigs are
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: gonna kill us all but timing Again, I hear from
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: people who say, man, would I love to go hunt
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: wild pigs? It's so expensive? Why is it? Why do
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: people Why are people able to chart for pig hunts?
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: You know? When that's changing, I don't know if that's
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: that way anymore. Yeah, they're they're not that expensive down here. Um,
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: but you go online and typing pig hunts, the top
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: thousand hits are gonna be you paying someone to hunt pigs. Yeah.
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: Meanwhile you're getting paid to hunt pigs. Yeah, what's going
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: on there? Do you understand Do you understand the question?
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: You know, maybe not ask the question. No, Chris, you
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: haven't said it word. Ask my question. Uh. Why is
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: it that you could get paid to trap a pig,
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: but if you want to shoot it, you gotta pay
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: to do it if you don't have land. He wants
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: paying attention. Yeah, why are there not farmers out there
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: with a big sign that says welcome hunters because the
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: general public or idiots and they don't want them on
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: their property for the most part, the people. Yeah, exactly,
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: that's a great way to put it. That's what it is. Yeah,
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: it's gotta be uh. And and it's just the commercial
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: The people that are selling the pigs, they're doing it
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: for financial game for themselves. They're buying pigs, importing them
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: into their property for sale. There's very few people that
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: have pigs accidentally that are selling pig huns. Oh, yeah,
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: because that's the thing you were telling me. Are you
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: able to talk about that? Did some guys A whisper
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: to you that some guys track pigs and some don't
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: place the higher for pig huns? Yeah, yeah, I mean
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: it's it's I've been approached about it several times, and
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: I've done it a few times back a long time
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: ago and beyond the statue. Yeah, and I don't do
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: it anymore just because it's a it's ethics things to myself.
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: But there's laws against transporting live wild pigs and turning
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: them loose alive for even for any purpose. Well, uh,
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: it's illegal, but it's not a game animal. So the
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: Game Department does not enforce that law. It's a uh,
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: what do you call it? A federal thing. Yeah, it's U.
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: S d A. But it's uh, there's a it's U.
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: S d A in enforced, but they don't have someone
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: that actually enforces it even though it is a law. Um,
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: but there's I can't remember what it is. The Animal
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: Health Commission is is kind of a big part of that.
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: So if you called them and said, hey, man, can
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: I bring a bunch of pigs over and sell them
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: to a guy who's gonna then sell them to hunters online?
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: They would say nope, but no one's gonna actually stop
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: him exactly exactly. And a guy when you go online,
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: he's like night Vision pig hunts. He's buying those pigs
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: for I'm a trapper. Most someone putting him into his
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: Penn facility, then telling Joe Blow from online, we got
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: a serious pig problem down here in Texas. Come down
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: and get a you know, all dressed up in tactical
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: gear and come out and shoot these here pigs that
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: is bought. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, that's what it boils
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: down to you because questions about that. Here we go,
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: now that you're exhausted, there's a there's a there's another
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: man in the room. I'm not gonna identify him because
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: he's just hanging out. Maybe he's actually cooked this dinner.
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: He's having a cold beer. Um, sir, does all of
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: this sound like this? Does all of this you're born
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: and raised in Texas, worked in law enforcement? Does does
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: all the stuff we're talking about sound accurate? Trap and
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: relocated to a ranch, but they have to go directly
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: to that ranch. The ranch has to be inspected by
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: the USDA inspector to make sure that the pigs that
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: are relocated there cannot get out of that forever fans.
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: And if it's a board, has to be castrated before
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: they get released. That I thought it was. It was
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: castrated bore is only no females? Yeah, Okay, So people
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: can hear that, so sum that up. Well, so we're
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: just saying it and to integrate what he was saying
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: to what you were saying and the whole picture. And
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: I know, and I know exactly what he what what
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: he's what he's talking about, that there is a there
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: is a there. The sale of pigs for commercial hunting
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: is possible, but the facility that the pigs are turned
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: out and has to be inspected to be considered pig proof.
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: And the only pigs that are allowed to be transported
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: and released for hunting are castrated males. Females are not
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: allowed to be released for hunting purposes. So you go
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: into a place and shoot a pig and it doesn't
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: have any nuts. That's what I was gonna say. Something
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: that's going on, you bunch of money, and he will
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: up to your nutless pig and you're like, how'd that happened? Yeah,
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: you probably could have got a better deal going to
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: hunt one of my brother's lambs. But again again, nobody
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: enforces that. You know, there's no division, there's no but
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: no division to enforce that that law is being followed.
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: Do you believe that, sir? He's nodding, yes, the law
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: are are are our experts are law enforcement. Individual is
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: nodding that he agrees that there's not enforcement on that um.
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: But for trophy purposes, you probably get a nice trophy
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: out of a castrated board, right. The castrated boars are
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: are are perfect trophies because the meat is great and
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: they usually there. Their teeth grow differently when you're when
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: they're castrated, they call them barred hard. Yeah, they're barred.
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: So they when a when a when a board has testosterone,
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you how it was put to by me
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: or not how it was put to me. Yeah, go ahead.
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: That it takes their mind off of grass, that it
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: takes their mind off of ass and puts it onto grass. Right,
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: But I'm talking about their teeth for trophy. For trophy purposes,
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: I'm talking about their teeth growth changes when you castrated,
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: when you bar a pig, they the testosterone is what
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: keeps the top teeth growing to uh to sharpen the
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: bottom teeth. So when you when you take away that
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: testosterone influx, their bottom teeth continue to grow without being
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: sharpened down. Which one which is the cutter? When people
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: say that wet is on top, that's the sharp stone. Yeah,
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: and uh, and that's the one. I believe that one
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: stops growing whenever they're castrated, and the bottoms just continue
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: to grow to enormous links. He starts to look more vicious,
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: but in temperament he's not vicious. It's all smoken mirrors
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: on the wall. When you got his mouth open and
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: his hair all standing up. People walking office look at
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: that thing, and little do they know there was a
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: eunuch exactly Yeah, a eunuch who who just thinks about grass. Yeah,
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: it's exactly right. Oh my god, I don't even know
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: what to say. I need to take a break this.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: Like the pig, I think it's someone I think that
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: someday a historian. It's just gonna need to just do
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: like a big investigation and take a very careful look,
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: just like wild pigs in America, and hopefully do a
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: different story than wild pigs are gonna kill us all
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: or so so shot in the eleven hunter pounds super pig.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: But like, it just seems a very rich field to
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: tap into. And it's the thing, it's just a huge
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: resource that we can there's gotta be a niche that
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: we can put it into. Even though it doesn't. It's
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: it's not native and it didn't have one. There's gotta
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: be something that we can you know, we can benefit
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: from it. In California, it's a flat out game animal.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: And see that by a tag. You gotta put that
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: tag on the damn pick. It's like a non residence
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: like seventi five bucks. It's a They don't have a
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: lot of game like you know native game is not. Yeah,
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: actually they don't have a lot of games. It's not
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: a great hunt that's gonna not awful for people live
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: in California. I have hunted in California. It's just like
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: relative to other Western states, it's not a great hunting state.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: They have picks. It's a tremendous amount of interesting picks.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: People like to hunt wild picks. They like to eat
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: wild pigs. I love to hunt eat wild pigs. And
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: they treat like game animal. It's none of this like
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: nin game do whatever you want and uh and treating
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: him like a game animal is it's creating them. In
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: my opinion, it's uh, it's the reverse effect that like
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: you're talking about earlier with deer. Now back in the
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: when the market hunting was going on and we in play,
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: We put into place all these laws to protect, protect
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: and put value on game animals. So people started protecting
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: them and now there's more than there's ever been. Well, pigs,
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: people are starting to put value on them as a
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: hunting animal in commercial hunt commercial commercially hunt them, and uh,
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: that's creating a reverse effect, is there's they're overpopulating, They're
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: growing to a point where we can't control them because
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: there's enough people out there protecting them. Are you aware
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: that a handful of states in the eastern US have
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: made it illegal one or a handful, No, it's a
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: handful and not hunt pigs. Yeah, it's thinking that, thinking
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: that by making it illegal to hunt wild pigs, you
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: would interfere with the introduction of wild pigs for the
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: sake of hunting, because like with California, and they traced
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: back a certain strain of wild pigs they have there,
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: they were brought in hunt. Well, that's Oklahoma is going
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: through a big, big deal about that right now, about
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: a law change about something about hunting pigs at night
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: or something like that. They're thinking that it would help
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: eradicate the pigs, and all it's actually gonna do is
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: create more problems for law enforcement. Um there there. I
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: believe the law was something along the lines of you
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: can hunt pigs at night without a license, And the
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: way the law is read now in Oklahoma, you have
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: to have a license to hunt anything, and you have
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: to you cannot hunt anything at night. So that's gonna
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: cause a whole new can of worms for law enforcement
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: to enforce his laws. And Uh, but no, I I agree.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: I think that's a good way if you really wanted
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: to get rid of them. Two, make it illegal to
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: commercially hunt pigs, to charge people to hunt pigs. That
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: would be a good way to slow down their de
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: incentivised people to shelter pigs, if you were serious about
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: getting rid of pigs, if you were serious about getting
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: rid of not only shelter, but transport, transport, foster the
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: growth of That's exactly right, is helicopter hunting for pigs
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: sport or control depends on who's shooting. Uh, wouldn't exist
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: outside of recreational hunting. Oh yeah, it did way before
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: all they started charging. I'm really surprised they actually Uh
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: Like in Texas that law just passed. Uh it's been
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: recent years that it passed where you could actually sell
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: hunts to the public to shoot pigs out of a helicopter.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: They were doing helicopter cooling before they were doing it
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: was a helicopter like you didn't You couldn't pay somebody
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: to go do it you. You would have a landowner
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: pay the helicopter time and invite guests to do it.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: But it was illegal. You couldn't advertise a helicopter hunt
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: until a few years ago. Um, you couldn't advertise on
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: a on an outfitter's website. He couldn't say, hey, come
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: out and hunt with me in my helicopter. So what
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: gave birth to the helicopter hunt for hogs just, uh,
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: fast way to shoot a bunch of pigs, fast way
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: to shoot you knows. Just the bloodthirst blood thirst of people.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: But it wasn't a control mechanism. It's I mean, it
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: started as control, but people were having so much fun
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: They're like, hey, we can charge for this, you know,
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: let's figure out a way to get this. But it
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: started out like the same way they do like aerial
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: wolf control and Alaska started out like part of someone's
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: job is to go out and reduce the numbers of pigs.
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: A very effective way of doing that is a shooting
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: from a helicopter. Right, It's just like it would be
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: like me starting to charge people to come out here
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: and run my traps. It's similar situation. It's just a
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: lot more fun with helicopter. So, uh, what's meat recovery
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: like with helicopter shooting. I most people that I know don't.
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: They might keep one or two and they run them
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: to a field and shoot them in a field or
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: something so they can them. Yeah, but most, for the
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: most part, they just leave them lay. Just can't retrieve
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: them now because you can't you know, you can't get
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: to them uh in in Uh, you can't get to
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: them with a vehicle. You could walk in and pack
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: them out, but they're shooting, you know, a hundred or
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: even two hundred or three hundred a day, and there's nobody,
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: you know, and if it's hot, there's no way that
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: meat is gonna stay good. Drop a little smoke canisters too,
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: right yeah. Yeah, And I mean I've shot him, I've
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: ran them out into fields, uh and shot him with
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: a with a helicopter with the intention of going back
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: and getting those pigs to eat. And by the time
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: we're done flying for that day. I go back and
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: get them in either the vultures have started or they're
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: they're they're no good. This meat spoiled there. It's too hot. Yeah,
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: it's too hot. Even in the wintertime. If you don't
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: gut something down here, it's not it doesn't get cold
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: in South Texas. Uh, in the wintertime. Even it's cold
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: for us, but it's not cold enough to sustain a
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: ungutted animal for more than a few hours. If that
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: does that, they spoil that fast. Yeah, even in the wintertime.
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: What are the best we were over the last few days,
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: Like we we've been talking about meat quality on pigs.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: We butchered a bunch of pigs for meat today. Give
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: some thoughts on like what what's the best? We're the
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: best pigs to eat? I keep from my own, Um,
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: you're real particular. Yeah, I I I keep about maybe
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: one in every three or four hundred. Uh. And it
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: what's the one we're eating tonight? It's one of those.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: It's basically it's a sal female not too old. Uh,
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: extreme excess amount of fat and uh usually they put
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: on that fat about I guess half way to halfway
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: to three quarters of the way through their pregnancy before
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: they start lactating it all, you know, that's when they
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: have the most body fat and they're doing nothing but eating,
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: and uh, I try to I try to shoot him
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: either in the head or somewhere, or in the shoulders
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: or somewhere that's gonna put them down without any kind
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: of adrenaline rush or or any kind of So trap pigs.
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: I'm not a big fan of trap pigs because they
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: they in or dogs dog caught pigs, because they have
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: adrenaline and it's a lactic build up, lactic acid build
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: up in the muscle and it and it makes the
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: meat a little tough, it makes a little gamy. Just
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: get him hunt in a hunting style, in a in
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: a hunting style, you don't know what's going on in
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: right exactly. He doesn't, that's no idea. He's just sitting there,
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: you know, eating acorns or you know whatever he's doing
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: eating corn. And just and shoot him and he's down,
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: and then go up there and bleed him out. And
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: then I I completely skin them and then got them
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: hanging up and wash everything down so I don't have
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: any hair or blood or anything anywhere. It's not supposed
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: to be. I'm not saying that's the only way that
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: you can do it, that's how you do it, But
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: that's the way that I like to do it because
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: I can. And one and every three or four d
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: is where you go like that one is for my freeze. Yeah,
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: that one right there? Not giving it away, you're not
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: selling it right. Why do you skin them first before
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: gutting them? It just makes it a little bit cleaner. Um,
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: because I save every part of that particular pig. I
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: save every single part. I cook and eat every single part.
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: The ribs, the shanks, on the legs, everything the neck.
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: The neck and the gewls are some of the best part.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: But when you got them like we did today, uh,
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: those pigs on the ribs didn't have quite enough fat
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: to to save the meat and uh on the ribs part,
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: I mean you can, you can save them, but you're
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: gonna have to have like four slabs and ribs to
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: make a meal for one person on the small ones. Uh.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: So when you got those in the field, the only
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: thing you're doing is it gets the inside a little bloody,
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: which is the only thing that that's gonna affect is
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: the ribs for the most part. Uh, that's I guess
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: that's the primary reason that I hang them up. So
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: for let's say you're not your guy that doesn't have
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: three pigs to cycle through to pick out the one
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: he wants to And I appreciate this will be the
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: second time I've fed off this exemplary pick. Yeah. Yeah,
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: we get what we have in a night. Uh, what
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: cut you want? We'll cut your thought out. I got.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: I got some shoulders, some shoulder chops, and uh and
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: some some regular loin shops. Um it is when you
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: eat it, it's not a domestic pig. No, No, it's good.
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: It's fatty, but it's still different. It's not like you
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: bought it a whole Foods right right. It doesn't have
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: the marbling that domestic pig has. It has an external fat,
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: but no internal fat. Yeah, and uh, how's that? How's
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: that pig meat coming as you cooking right now? No?
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: I got it in there. I'm waiting on you to
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: stop asking me questions so I can go prepare. Okay,
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: So let's say you a guy who doesn't have the
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: luxury like sifting through three pigs to find the one
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: you wants to eat. Just give me a quick, quick, dirty.
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: What's the fellow looking for in a wild pig? If
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: I would, if it was if it was me and
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: I didn't have the access that I have, I would
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: choose a you know, fifty to eighty pound female that
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: does not have a litter of pigs on the ground
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: so she's not lactating. And uh, a fatter one, which
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: I don't know how you would You don't. You can't
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: really choose them, um, you know what I mean. You
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: can't look at a group and say I want that
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: one and you know that's gonna be the best eating one.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: You have to get him on the ground and get
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: up to him. Um. But if other it with, if
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: that's that's would be my my ideal pig. But the
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: thirty pounders, the thirty pounders that are in decent condition,
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: body condition, those things are I mean, those are awesome.
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: You cannot screw those up. But nobody wants to shoot
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: those because they want the biggest one out of the pack.
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: It goes back to the ego thing. When a sounder,
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: which is a group of pigs like a family group.
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: When a sounder pigs run out, people are like, just
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: how much go to the biggest one? Yeah, I always
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: shoot a medium sized female if a group comes out
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: like a meat hunter, Yeah, a knowledgeable meat hunter is
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: not looking for the giant, right because usually even if
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: it's even if it's if it's a female, it's giant.
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: Uh she's that usually means she's older and its gonna
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: be a little a little tough and maybe a little gamy.
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: And you're saying, a big old boar nuts and tat
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: can just have a stink to it. Yeah, I I've
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: had a couple of Yeah, I've had a couple of
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: them that did not smell like a boar when I
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: was cleaning them. It as soon as you started cooking
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: the meat, the smell would just take over the house.
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: And uh, and that smell every time you put it
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: on a fork and put it up to your mouth,
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: that smell would hit your nose before the meat hit
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: your mouth. It didn't have the it didn't have a
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: bad flavor. It was just the smell that would make
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: it unappetizing. Now, do this rate the uh quality of
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: the mule? Deary buck? We have dinner last night? You
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: know what phenomenal that buck? You never? I would never
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: I've never rated a buck over a five let me
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: give you that that buck. This is like a thing
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: to defy stuff for a lot of people are like, oh,
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: you know, like you can't shoot a big book because
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: he won't taste good. Dude, that buck Listen, I've been
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: told that mule deer. It doesn't matter faun though buck
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: or it is not for the consumption of people I've eaten.
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: This goes sound like a bold statement, but I've eaten
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: thousands of pounds of dear meat and that Johnny's ruddy old.
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: That was some of the best buck meat I've had
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: a long time. Last night that was that was dude,
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: it was good. I was surprised. How good at him? Yeah,
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: he needs a fine cook. Well, you know, I think
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: a lot goes into it though, because it was kills
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: one quick shot. You know, that gunn went off and
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: he was dead three to five seconds later. Cold weather.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: Cold weather cleaned very quickly, you know, Hong take very well,
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: taken care of me. You know, it's also been sitting
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: in my freezer for six months now. Because it's interesting,
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: I've been talking to you know, Clayton, who are gonna
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: see tomorrow, and then you now mentioned the adrenaline thing
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: about a trapped pig, you know verse one that's just shot.
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: And I shot a mule deer that was half the
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: size of that one in Montana and had one of
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: my worst like shooting uh episodes ever. And just like
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: I didn't even have I took off my glove because
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: I'm always telling everybody take glove off before you shoot.
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: You know you're gonna touch that trigger accidentally, And did
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: not have my crosshairs on this buck, and you know,
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: missed him on the first shot because no glove all.
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: And I was just kind of basically just getting ready
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: to get it done. It was like it's on right now.
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: But before I brought my crosshairs to him, you know,
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: miss him completely. He runs. That's the thing that's weird. Anyways, Yeah,
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: it turns into a big shootout, you know, five or
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: six rounds later, and him being pretty stressed out. You know,
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: he's dead. And that buck, I mean, it's even his backstrap.
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: I mean you can take a chunk that's of his
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: backstrap is eighteen inches long and hold it by one
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: end and it doesn't bend, thaw it out, you know
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: what I mean. It's just got so much just lacks
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: of acid build up stopping. I told this story before
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: one time. I know I've told you, but stopping if
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: I told you on this year, format um, and then
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: we'll wrap it up and go click that pig meat.
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: This is my concluding thought. Um. One time I was
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: hunting and shot amulder out a Meldier buck in November
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: on a pretty steep slope with some wet snow on
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: the ground. In the buck slid down the hill out
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: of my view. So he's kind of sliding down towards me,
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: but gets to like a you know, a bench and vanishes.
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: I just think it's slid out of you. I go
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: up there and I started looking around, and I cannot
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: find that buck anywhere. This is an area that has
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: a lot of big sinkholes. It's like heavily roaded um
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: breaks country where you got like a heavily roaded river channel.
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: It makes like canyon country flats up on top. And
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: I realized that there's a hole in the ground, maybe
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: like the top of a barrel. And I find some
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: blood in the snow and realize that that blood ends
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: at the mouth of that hole. Now walking around it's there.
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: You see these holes, you think like there's gotta be
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: dead people in some of these holes from where you
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: go like just like you know what I mean. It's
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: because they're all covered up in sage brush and stuff
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: naturally current, and they'll have an outlet way far away,
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: so it's like a cave. And if you sniff around
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: and look around way down in the cut, you know
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: sometimes fine where all that mud busted out of the
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: ground and washed away down the river. I shined down
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: in there and it shaped like an hour glass and
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: it was thirteen ft deep, and I can see I'm
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: looking through the hole that's the size of a barrel,
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: and it's open like a small room down in there,
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: and I can see the buck jumping around down in
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: the bottom of the deep hole. And not thinking about sound,
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: I was getting dark and I trying to look down
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: in there and down my barrel is too dark for
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: my scope. I shoot and blow my ear drums like
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: you wouldn't believe, because my head's down to the I'm
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: leaning down into that hole and I shoot into the hole,
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: and it just rattled my cage in the worst possible way.
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: By the time I kind of regroup mentally, my ears are,
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: you know, I can't see anything down the whole. I
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: go down and we're camped tent camping on the river
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: out of canoes. Come up the next day and daylight
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: with a big hunker, wrote We took the bow line
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: off the canoe and came up. My buddy held my
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: ankles and I got down in there. I was able
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: to get a lass all around that deer's antler and
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: pull it up out of there. I had never hit
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: it a second time. That my shot that blew my
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: ears missed. That buck was the only wild game animal,
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: the only big game animal I've ever handled that you
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: honestly couldn't not eat the meat. It was so foul
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: and it was frigid. We have had a long, long
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: debate about whether or not about what went out with
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: that bar and we butchered the whole dang buck, and
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: we were like we would cook a piece of meat
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: and then go outside to eat it, trying to rule
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: out that there was something in the house that made
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: him taste this way. And we had a long debate
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: that still is unresolved. Was it because he was down
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: in there, not dead for a long time and just
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: under tremendous amounts of stress, or because he was insulated
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: and soured in that hole. As part of the experiment,
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: my brother wants cut off the hair patch on a
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: mule DearS the cut off the tarsl hair patch on
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: a mule deer and put in a zip lock bag
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: and then wipe that on a piece of meat he
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: was about to eat and ate the piece of meat,
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: trying to replicate the taste of that bart that came
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: out of that hole in the ground. I still don't
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: know today it was what it was bad? But wasn't
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: that was there? Wasn't the tape the eight year and
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: flavored meat. So um, yeah, I I feel as though
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: because it was so unbelievably cold as well below zero
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: that night. Um. A matter of fact, our our river
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: trip ended because the river froze. So I feel it
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: had something to do with just the enormous amount of
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: stress the zeer was under. And it's funny because the
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: story starts to make its own gravy because the thing
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: I brought up, there's a lot of people who will
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: get into hunting, And I feel that people get into
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: hunting and they've some aspect of their life, maybe they've
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: been told the hunt is bad, right, and they get
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: into hunting because they really feel like, deep down they
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: want to hunt, but they want someone to tell them
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: it's okay. Part of the way that they find their
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: way into it is they go like, oh, it's so humane,
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: Like industrial slaughter facilities are um so stressful for animals
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: and it just grotesque, and you don't know what goes
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: on there. And I'll go out and cleanly get my
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: own animals in this super humane way. And he's just
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: happy and living his life. And then all of a sudden,
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: right he's dead. And I look at that case, I'm like, well,
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: that's a direct that that's like a direct contradiction to
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: that line of thinking. And I'm a very experienced uney
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: has done in a tremendous amount of hunting. Right. I
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: don't make a lot of mistakes. I make some, I
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: don't make a lot um I couldn't anticipate a giant
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: hole in the ground that I wouldn't be able to
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: fish my deer out of. But I think that that
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: animal was stressed and suffered to a point that that
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: that was so extreme that it uh ruined the meat.
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: And in the meat processing industry, there's a term of
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: red cutter, which would be a highly stressed out animal
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: that has carcass attributes that make it that they'll pull
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: it off the line. And I think I had a
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: red cutter mule here anything a boy that I think
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: I think that's what happened, not the not the souring
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: whole night. You Southern revs wouldn't know the kind of
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: cold I'm talking about. Ben thought it's kind of another
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: question for Ben orn't does it? Because I was doing
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: some reading on you know, the Wild Pigs and Texas
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: before it came down here. It sounds like after talking
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: to you, that it was before you really came into pigs,
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: that they went from being this kind of like very
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: cool novelty that everybody wanted just a little bit of,
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, by the time you
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: got into pigs, people were already like, please come onto
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: my place. Yes, we'll pay for your corn bay and
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: trap them away. So you can't really probably speak too
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: much to that transition, or I don't know if maybe
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: if you can from like your dad's experience or you know,
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: other people that you knew, But there obviously was a
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: time when everybody was just like pretty much on board.
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: It was like yeah, sweet, like like let's have just
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: a few of these around because it's cool. Right. Well,
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: that's that's how it was. Like I said, whenever I
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: was little, you know, six and seven, eight years old,
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: growing up hunting deer, they were a treat and you know,
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: we we loved and we weren't trying to eradicate him.
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: We just we we shot him and hunted him. And uh.
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: But then whenever I was you know, in that few
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: six seven year periods when they really started, they kind
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: of flipped that page and now they're a nuisance. Before
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: whenever I was on people to some people when I
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: was younger, it wasn't like that. It just that's about
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: that time is whenever I saw it turn a page.
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: And so back to just like paying for a pig hunt.
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: Do you feel like because now, because just before I
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: came down here, I was talking to a friend of mine,
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: He's like, man, I loved to go down there and
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: shoot some wild pigs, but by guy, I'm not gonna
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: pay for it, you know, because I know that they
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: are of arming. Do you feel like that opportunity maybe
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: buy some phone calls or some connection it exists. Yeah,
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: Like for a guy, it's not the average Joe blow,
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: dumbass public guy that you said that the farmer dislikes
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: more than he dislikes his pigs. You make some phone calls,
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: make yourself sound like a like a responsible, good hunter
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: that closes gates, you'll probably get a free pig hunt. Yeah,
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: it might take you a handful of calls, but you'd
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: get Well, let me explain my pig hunt spot. Um.
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: The place I've done the bulk of my pig hunt
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: is in California, Central Valley. And I went to graduate
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: school with a gal whose dad is a large animal
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: vet in California, and through talking to her and whatnot,
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: I became friendly with the father, approached him about pigs,
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: got a very provisional invitation to come out and hunt
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: pigs for a couple of days, was told where to go,
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: when to go there, who to come check back in
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: with right away. I now have a standing invitation to
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: hunt pigs on three beautiful pieces of property out there
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: anytime I want. A matter of fact, in my notebook,
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: I got a note from him explaining to anyone that
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: messes with me to mind their own business. Yeah. So yeah,
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: I did it. It can be done. Yeah, And I
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: didn't do it through my work. I did it through
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: a college friend. Yeah, this guy don't give a ship
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: what I do for a living. You know. It's just
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: like I just took it slow and already did my
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: concluding thought. I got another hunting permission where I started
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: out like, yeah, I started out by hunting squirrels on
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: a guy's place. Event. She's like, you know what, you
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: what I do a little deer hunt in Turkey hunt.
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: You come on out after squirrel hunting, not leaving the
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: gates open and shooting off towards his barn and whatnot.
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: I mean, I've gotten I've gotten gained permission on places
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: down here in a similar fashion, people that I've never
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: met before meet him for the first time, you know, uh,
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: and then just kind of talk to him a few
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: a few times throughout the season, and and that even
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: just just kind of developing a friendship without even without
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: going and hanging out with him, just talking to him.
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: And then there they said, you know you like to
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: you like to hunt, right, yeah, and uh, yeah, you
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: can come out and hunting on my place anytime you want.
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: And it's just you have to develop that friendship and
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: in that trust before they'll just let you come out.
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: You can't just call somebody say you gotta pick problem.
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna come out there and shoot him for you
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: at Chris thoughts, Yeah, I gotta. It's kind of a
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: hypothetical question for Ben, Uh, since you've spent so much
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: time on both species. Say you're like sitting in a
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: blind one night taking photos and you see the biggest
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: buck you've ever seen, and then like ten seconds later,
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: you see the biggest bore pig you've ever seen. Which
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: one would you get about seeing I'd be clicking about
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: a thousand pictures both, Yeah, but which one would get
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: you more? Like? No, I thought you're talking about with
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: the gun you know this camera? Yeah, just just more
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: and more fired up based on how much work you
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: put into it, like scientifically, Like, which one are you? Man?
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: That's a tough question. I think I do the pick
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: just because they're less desired. Really, Yeah, everybody loves big deer,
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: and everybody's always gonna love big deer. Big pigs are
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: they're nobody likes I mean, just nobody likes pigs. Yeah.
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: Last night, Bend was explaining to me the extremes that
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: people go through for big deer, and he said that
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: he's seen people get divorced over big white tail box. Uh,
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: it's your turn out for a concluding thought. You don't
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: have to have one. I don't. I don't have to
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: ask myself a question like no, you just have a thought,
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: a random thought, talk about whatever you want. Just you
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: get a chance to not even be within the flow
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: of conversation. Marital advice is often given it this, I
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: don't think I have a room to talk about that.
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: Uh No, I don't know that you might have some
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: advice on the subject, you know that goes around marriage men. Yeah,
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: I did, could give you merit. You don't have to
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: have a concluon, he thought, No, I don't. I don't know.
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: I feel like i've I've said enough. Well, there you
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: having Ben Bennyon. Thank you for joining wealth of Information.
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: Thank you for having me go cook my picnic. It's
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: gonna be dark asstsssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss