Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 512: The Texas Hog Hunt, Live
Transcript
- 0:08Speaker 1: This is the meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
- 0:13Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listeningcast. You can't
- 0:18Speaker 1: predict anything. The meat Eater Podcast is brought to you
- 0:22Speaker 1: by First Light. Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands,
- 0:25Speaker 1: or scouting for el First Light has performance apparel to
- 0:28Speaker 1: support every hunter in every environment. Check it out at
- 0:32Speaker 1: first light dot com. F I R S T L
- 0:35Speaker 1: I T E dot com. All Right, everybody, but we
- 0:40Speaker 1: got something really special for you. One, we have a
- 0:43Speaker 1: outdoor podcast, meaning our podcast, today's podcast was recorded outdoors.
- 0:48Speaker 1: It's the only podcast you can get where someone gets
- 0:50Speaker 1: a hog in the podcast, So stay tuned for that.
- 0:54Speaker 1: And then there's something even more special at the end
- 0:56Speaker 1: of this very special podcast, because we're gonna be releasing
- 1:00Speaker 1: for free a chapter of me Eater's American history, The
- 1:04Speaker 1: Long Hunters, which covers that little slice of American history
- 1:08Speaker 1: that occurred between seventeen sixty one and seventeen seventy five
- 1:12Speaker 1: when fellas like the famed Daniel Boone were making their
- 1:15Speaker 1: living hunting for white tailed deerskins in the First Far West.
- 1:19Speaker 1: So the chapter we're going to stick in is called
- 1:22Speaker 1: gearing up. It's about the blade tools, firearms, and other
- 1:27Speaker 1: implements employed by the famed Long Hunters. So enjoy the
- 1:32Speaker 1: show and at the end again listen to chapter seven
- 1:38Speaker 1: of Meat Eater's American history The Long Hunters. If you
- 1:41Speaker 1: like it, and you will, then you can head over
- 1:43Speaker 1: to Audible or Apple Books or wherever you get your
- 1:45Speaker 1: books and pick it up. It's an audio original, not
- 1:48Speaker 1: available in print, only available to listen to enjoy. All right, everybody,
- 2:00Speaker 1: welcome to the show. It's a little different because we
- 2:04Speaker 1: have to keep it at a very low volume, which
- 2:08Speaker 1: is gonna make it hard if I get fired up.
- 2:12Speaker 1: You know. The comedian Mitch Hadberg observed that he didn't
- 2:17Speaker 1: like camping because when he got in a fight with
- 2:19Speaker 1: his girlfriend, it was hard to express his anger because
- 2:21Speaker 1: he couldn't slam the door and he had to just
- 2:24Speaker 1: try to zip the tent real hard. It's like, fuck you, this.
- 2:31Speaker 2: Guy like hanging up on smartphone.
- 2:33Speaker 1: Now, yeah, you can't slam it.
- 2:35Speaker 2: No, I just can't throw it.
- 2:37Speaker 1: In the old days, you'd be like, well okay then, mom,
- 2:41Speaker 1: I'm coming home right now. You can't do that anymore now,
- 2:45Speaker 1: And so if I get fired up, you won't know.
- 2:48Speaker 1: The listener won't know, because here's the problem. We're actually
- 2:54Speaker 1: hunting right now. We've done shows ice fishing and you
- 2:58Speaker 1: can talk all you want, but this is a hunting episode.
- 3:01Speaker 1: We're hunting hogs in Texas. You could say, yeah, it's
- 3:09Speaker 1: in Texas. Everything's always open, so you know, when they
- 3:14Speaker 1: say you could probably think of other examples. Chris Gill,
- 3:20Speaker 1: when Boardin's Kitchen Confidential came out, they said, a rare
- 3:25Speaker 1: glimpse into kitchen culture. And I'm trying to think of
- 3:29Speaker 1: other documentaries or whatever books a rare glimpse. You can't
- 3:35Speaker 1: think of any examples. I mean almost any documentary, a
- 3:39Speaker 1: rare glimpse into you know, a rare peak behind the curtain. Yeah,
- 3:45Speaker 1: this is a rare peak into a Texas hog hunt
- 3:48Speaker 1: or deer hunt. Because we're in Texas, we're about the
- 3:50Speaker 1: South Texas as you can get. We're on what you
- 3:55Speaker 1: just do not I'm just looking at levels here you
- 4:00Speaker 1: mess it is, don't pass the cod where's it way?
- 4:09Speaker 1: Oh yeah? Yeah? And Karn, remember that you got it.
- 4:16Speaker 1: This this rare, this rare glimpse into a hog hunt
- 4:19Speaker 1: involves a rifle borrowed rifle that we've determined. Uh, you
- 4:28Speaker 1: can't adjust the scope. No, it's maxed out. It's maxed out.
- 4:32Speaker 1: So you gotta you gotta, you gotta a little high,
- 4:37Speaker 1: a little of the left on close pigs, Oh, sorry,
- 4:42Speaker 1: low and right on close pick it hits high left. Uh.
- 4:46Speaker 1: We're about of South Texas. You can get. The nearest
- 4:52Speaker 1: major town is Brownsville, which is a crossing. There's a
- 4:57Speaker 1: crossing into Matamorris, Mexico. We're closer to Raymondville. We're on
- 5:04Speaker 1: a chunk of Eeteria, which is a very old, very
- 5:12Speaker 1: large ranch that has been you know, Eeteria is portioned
- 5:16Speaker 1: into different owner.
- 5:18Speaker 3: It says on this chair eighteen fifty eight. Yeah, we're
- 5:22Speaker 3: sitting in the Uteria chairs from eighteen fifty eight.
- 5:27Speaker 1: And I'm I'm buddies with a gentleman that whose family
- 5:36Speaker 1: owns this part of this ranch that we're on. And
- 5:39Speaker 1: we've been down here. This is a third time I've
- 5:42Speaker 1: come down for the White Tail Rut. So it's a big,
- 5:46Speaker 1: big place. A lot of it's a big place. A
- 5:50Speaker 1: lot of Texas properties are managed for deer. This place.
- 5:59Speaker 1: You wouldn't really say that. So there's no feed. They
- 6:02Speaker 1: don't they don't do any kind of feeding. They don't
- 6:04Speaker 1: have any deer feeders out, they don't have any kind
- 6:06Speaker 1: of deer blinds. It's not fenced, ah, but it gets
- 6:15Speaker 1: hunted a bit, but it's just real, you know, they
- 6:19Speaker 1: run cattle on it. But it's a real chill, relaxed,
- 6:25Speaker 1: very cool property. And we've come down here a few
- 6:29Speaker 1: times right before Christmas, which is when the peak rought
- 6:33Speaker 1: down here is going on, and we've had extraordinary success
- 6:39Speaker 1: rattling bucks down here during this week, great success rattling
- 6:45Speaker 1: bucks the week before Christmas. This year, we mix it
- 6:48Speaker 1: up a little bit because we brought down a DSD.
- 6:52Speaker 1: Listeners will know Dave Smith decoys because Dave Smith was
- 6:54Speaker 1: on the podcast. We brought down a DSD deer dy
- 7:00Speaker 1: So it's like a fight postured buck, and over the
- 7:07Speaker 1: course of three days we rattled in over thirty bucks.
- 7:11Speaker 3: There's a little uh lizard eating some sort of caterpillar
- 7:17Speaker 3: right here on this.
- 7:18Speaker 1: Oh right there.
- 7:20Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 7:24Speaker 1: He's no, he's not always different.
- 7:26Speaker 2: Shot up.
- 7:26Speaker 3: I just wanted to meet some sort of caterpillar seasons
- 7:30Speaker 3: probably in I.
- 7:31Speaker 1: Know it's Texas.
- 7:35Speaker 3: Was I saying, sorry, how many bucks you ruddled?
- 7:37Speaker 1: Oh, rattled in a lot of bucks. But this year
- 7:39Speaker 1: we used this decoy. We actually had two bucks come
- 7:41Speaker 1: in and level the decoy, come in and attack the decoy,
- 7:45Speaker 1: and all those bucks come in virtually probably every one
- 7:49Speaker 1: of those bucks came in and bristled his hair up
- 7:52Speaker 1: and like postured, and whether or not they got nervous
- 7:55Speaker 1: and laughed or whatever, but in some way or another
- 7:58Speaker 1: acknowledged engaged with a decoy, which is pretty fascinating, and
- 8:04Speaker 1: got a coat pigs. And now we're recording the show,
- 8:08Speaker 1: and so we came out to we're out in a
- 8:10Speaker 1: big pasture and we came out to a spot where
- 8:14Speaker 1: we're in like a corner of brush. This is real
- 8:17Speaker 1: brush country. We're in a brushy little corner and some
- 8:23Speaker 1: mesquite looking out over an open pasture. There's a bunch
- 8:28Speaker 1: of cattle out there. There's some horses somewhere around here.
- 8:32Speaker 1: I can't see him right now, and a lot of hogs.
- 8:36Speaker 1: We picked this corner because a lot of hogs come
- 8:38Speaker 1: through this corner. We've noticed, and we got our DSD
- 8:42Speaker 1: buck decoy out there. Even though we're not really actively
- 8:45Speaker 1: buck hunting right now, the pigs are are they rapping
- 8:50Speaker 1: around there about around the corner. Oh shit, So just
- 8:53Speaker 1: to give you a flavor, Seth's gonna go ahead hit
- 8:56Speaker 1: a little rattles. Seth's gonna take a couple actual horns.
- 9:01Speaker 1: So we got a couple. When I'm holding here, our
- 9:04Speaker 1: two horns off a four point buck. So I'm two
- 9:09Speaker 1: horns off of Michigan eight, and we bone sawed the
- 9:15Speaker 1: eye guards brow tis off it to make it more
- 9:18Speaker 1: comfortable gripping and se It's going to do a quick
- 9:21Speaker 1: little rattle session here, just so you can get the
- 9:25Speaker 1: flavor for what's going on. H. Did you bring your
- 10:04Speaker 1: grunt to? No, you don't have the grunt to. No, Okay,
- 10:14Speaker 1: that's the rattle sash, Now, Seth give your formula. How
- 10:17Speaker 1: you think about it.
- 10:22Speaker 3: I just rattle for a bit like that. Every once
- 10:24Speaker 3: in a while I give a couple of grounds. But typically,
- 10:28Speaker 3: like if they're within earshot, they're they're in like shooting
- 10:34Speaker 3: range within seconds.
- 10:36Speaker 1: Yeah. Like, so as long as you just heard him rattle, Well,
- 10:40Speaker 1: we'll get to an area and we'll creep into an
- 10:42Speaker 1: area and get set up and like park creep into
- 10:48Speaker 1: an area and get set up, and usually I would
- 10:53Speaker 1: see half of the half of the bucks that show
- 10:55Speaker 1: up show up before you've completed. Oh yeah, you're first
- 11:00Speaker 1: rattle session, yep, And they run in and then they like, well,
- 11:05Speaker 1: pump the brakes, maybe forty yards anywhere from ten to
- 11:08Speaker 1: fifty yards from where the noise is, Yeah, to try
- 11:12Speaker 1: to get a read out the situation. It got to
- 11:14Speaker 1: the point where like when Bucks didn't show up, we
- 11:17Speaker 1: were like, what's wrong? Yeah, it was.
- 11:20Speaker 3: It was weird when we had nothing show up.
- 11:23Speaker 1: So I do that.
- 11:26Speaker 3: Depending on the setup, but typically three different times I'll rattle,
- 11:31Speaker 3: I'll have a break for about a minute, and I'll
- 11:34Speaker 3: rattle again. And I would say, I don't know, twenty
- 11:42Speaker 3: five percent of the time, Bucks would come in on
- 11:45Speaker 3: the second one, and then I would take another break
- 11:49Speaker 3: and then rattle for like a third sequence. And I
- 11:53Speaker 3: don't think we ever had Box come in on the
- 11:55Speaker 3: third sequence.
- 11:56Speaker 1: No, a typical sash. We probably don't sit in twelve minutes. Yeah,
- 12:03Speaker 1: it's like something still might happen, but it's like I'd
- 12:05Speaker 1: rather just go to a new spot.
- 12:07Speaker 4: Yeah, that last session yesterday, the third rattle worked, I think.
- 12:12Speaker 1: Yeah, oh that was that was the crazy. Yeah, but
- 12:15Speaker 1: okay it did. You're right, but what's funny is one
- 12:20Speaker 1: also came in within seconds. Yeah, you know, that was
- 12:24Speaker 1: just pure chaos. At dusk last night we had a
- 12:27Speaker 1: rattle set. We had our best rattle session at dusk
- 12:30Speaker 1: last night and called in four bucks. Now these are
- 12:34Speaker 1: not big bucks. They're like nice bucks, but they're not
- 12:37Speaker 1: a huge box. We called in four bucks last night
- 12:40Speaker 1: and Seth got one with some stickers on him. So
- 12:42Speaker 1: he was a ten point turned thirteen. Yeah, like a
- 12:46Speaker 1: Michigan ten that had three kickers, a genuine thirteen pointer.
- 12:50Speaker 2: There's a cold deer, yeah, super cold here.
- 12:53Speaker 1: Then this morning we went out rattled again and I
- 12:57Speaker 1: arrowed one. I errowed the seventh buck that came in
- 13:01Speaker 1: this morning. Yeah, I'm anywhere else.
- 13:07Speaker 2: That's like, it's insane, it's just crazy.
- 13:10Speaker 1: How many sets do we have this morning? Was it
- 13:14Speaker 1: this morning? Yeah? Was it four? I'll tell you. I'll
- 13:16Speaker 1: pull up my stats three or four. So here's my stats.
- 13:24Speaker 1: On day one we did nine sets.
- 13:28Speaker 3: Four.
- 13:29Speaker 1: On day one we did nine sets, We did nine
- 13:32Speaker 1: rattle sessions.
- 13:34Speaker 2: Oh yeah, there are two bigs right.
- 13:35Speaker 1: And rattled in seven bucks. On day two we did fourteen.
- 13:41Speaker 1: We were being turned and burned and burned we did
- 13:44Speaker 1: fourteen setups and rattled in sew thirty six. Yeah, we
- 13:52Speaker 1: rattled in twenty one bucks due way better. We were
- 13:56Speaker 1: cranking that day everything from four ki's four keys still
- 14:00Speaker 1: a little basket.
- 14:01Speaker 3: Tends and and changed the strategy as far.
- 14:05Speaker 1: As got it figured out. I'll talk about that in
- 14:07Speaker 1: one second. Then today we killed a buck on the
- 14:14Speaker 1: seventh setup, which was seven setups, and killed the seventh
- 14:21Speaker 1: buck on the seventh setup seven seven nice today today. Yeah,
- 14:29Speaker 1: we tried a bunch of different ways of going about this. Uh,
- 14:33Speaker 1: this a little strategy talk. If you want to try this,
- 14:39Speaker 1: we would set up together, okay, so the rattle guy
- 14:43Speaker 1: and the bow guy next to each other. The problem
- 14:48Speaker 1: you'd have is is you know animals like you know
- 14:50Speaker 1: when people say with turkeys that when you're calling to
- 14:53Speaker 1: a turkey, that turkey knows what tree you're under. Yeah,
- 15:00Speaker 1: and he knows when he hears it from two hundred
- 15:02Speaker 1: yards away, he knows what tree it is and what
- 15:04Speaker 1: side of that tree you're on. I read a good
- 15:08Speaker 1: line and Little Big Man where a guy was talking
- 15:10Speaker 1: about how good someone is at tracking, and he said,
- 15:13Speaker 1: when he looks at the ground, he can tell what
- 15:16Speaker 1: birds flew overhead, so they know where that noise is
- 15:26Speaker 1: coming from. So when you rattle and the buck comes
- 15:31Speaker 1: busting in, he knows exactly where to look. He knows
- 15:33Speaker 1: exactly where he's looking, and he might see the decoy,
- 15:37Speaker 1: but he's looking from the decoy to where the noises
- 15:40Speaker 1: from the decoy to where his noises. He sees the buck,
- 15:42Speaker 1: the decoy buck, but he also is like, well, where
- 15:45Speaker 1: is the thing that was fighting? So then we started
- 15:50Speaker 1: trying to spread out by a bit. What happened? I
- 15:57Speaker 1: was just a big fat black hawk right our outer cles,
- 16:01Speaker 1: right there, all right there at the tree edge. That's
- 16:05Speaker 1: I don't know. Can you get a shot? I don't know.
- 16:06Speaker 1: Oh you know, you mean the other side of the
- 16:08Speaker 1: thing or our.
- 16:10Speaker 2: Side, our side?
- 16:11Speaker 1: How many yards he's walking out?
- 16:13Speaker 5: I'm bad at estimating.
- 16:15Speaker 1: He's like at the tree line over there here. Let
- 16:19Speaker 1: me give you a range finder. Just poke out and
- 16:22Speaker 1: range him. This place is crawling with pigs right now,
- 16:26Speaker 1: like you wouldn't believe.
- 16:31Speaker 5: It.
- 16:31Speaker 1: Measure twice. Karn's gonna go get a range on him.
- 16:38Speaker 1: I flipp it the other way. There you go. So
- 16:44Speaker 1: what we eventually hit on was if there's any appreciable wind,
- 16:49Speaker 1: like we would want to go here here. When we
- 16:53Speaker 1: first started doing this, we would always think, Okay, you're
- 16:55Speaker 1: gonna approach the area with the wind in your face,
- 16:57Speaker 1: of course, and then you're gonna rattle like like just
- 17:01Speaker 1: like setting up with a predator call. When you set
- 17:03Speaker 1: with the predtor call, you want to win in your
- 17:04Speaker 1: face and you're looking into the wind or crossways knowing
- 17:09Speaker 1: that that kyote is gonna come and want to get
- 17:12Speaker 1: down wind of you, but you're looking up when because
- 17:14Speaker 1: when he gets down windy, it's gonna be too late.
- 17:16Speaker 1: You're trying to catch him work in his way to
- 17:18Speaker 1: get down wind.
- 17:19Speaker 5: It's like between one thirty and.
- 17:21Speaker 1: Okay, that's pretty far. I mean for for our iron,
- 17:25Speaker 1: it's pretty far. So get shot them shooting iron so
- 17:32Speaker 1: uh ah. But that so we eventually hit on was
- 17:42Speaker 1: when those bocks come into that what's wrong? Oh right here?
- 17:47Speaker 1: Oh shit, crin, How do I plug my ears? My
- 17:51Speaker 1: eyd bones on easy easy rest Undernea's kate up up
- 18:00Speaker 1: chamber the round chamber of the round she did.
- 18:03Speaker 2: He's definitely keyed up, but he's not going anywhere.
- 18:11Speaker 1: Oh ship. That's the first time trends ran off.
- 18:20Speaker 3: Are you sure that that might be the first time
- 18:22Speaker 3: there's ever been a big Hunter in podcast?
- 18:25Speaker 2: That might be that just might be.
- 18:29Speaker 1: You might have to Did you see what kind of
- 18:31Speaker 1: hits she got on? I couldn't tell.
- 18:34Speaker 2: He didn't go down. It was a oh, yeah, we
- 18:38Speaker 2: might have to do a little interimation.
- 18:40Speaker 1: All right, we're at the pause for a se.
- 18:44Speaker 2: Don't ask me. I got no idea what they can
- 18:48Speaker 2: and can't do. That's why this, this shot has been
- 18:52Speaker 2: fun because we've just been seeing so many bucks doing
- 18:57Speaker 2: buck stuff.
- 18:58Speaker 3: Yeah, doing buck stuff, doing doing stuff that you rarely get.
- 19:03Speaker 2: Just oh, second shot. I wasn't ready for that.
- 19:12Speaker 1: Yeah, don't.
- 19:15Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a second shot. Assuming that's the same pig,
- 19:20Speaker 2: potentially a different pig.
- 19:23Speaker 1: I'd say it's dead now.
- 19:25Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we're probably pretty Probably should send an
- 19:30Speaker 2: email to Phil, yeah, letting them know, Hey, Phil got
- 19:35Speaker 2: to chop about Trucually not much longer here, we're gonna
- 19:40Speaker 2: come back, folks, I tell you chuckle that podcast feel
- 19:43Speaker 2: that it's probably not usable, Like what is al Michael's
- 19:47Speaker 2: Do you know if they can't go to commercial and
- 19:50Speaker 2: there's like a player down or something, they got to
- 19:52Speaker 2: just talk you know what I mean.
- 19:55Speaker 6: Game, So they like start talking about stats and stuff
- 19:57Speaker 6: and whatnot. Yeah, you got any stats on hand? Well
- 20:00Speaker 6: the impressive stats. Oh, here's Steve. Steve's come back. Steve said,
- 20:04Speaker 6: already box old Steve. Here, Steve just picked up a
- 20:10Speaker 6: nice bullet casing here they come.
- 20:13Speaker 1: Sure they have a story, So do we have a
- 20:17Speaker 1: dead pig or what's gonna tell?
- 20:19Speaker 2: Tell your hunting story, Krent nice Corinne, Yeah, well we'll
- 20:24Speaker 2: get to it. I'm curious about that second shot because
- 20:26Speaker 2: me and Seth we're not ready for it.
- 20:29Speaker 1: That makes three of us. Every day I vowed to
- 20:35Speaker 1: like start getting real serious about hearing protection. And I'm like,
- 20:42Speaker 1: I'm in the middle of being like, okay, you know,
- 20:45Speaker 1: get a good that's the experience that I that the
- 20:50Speaker 1: other day. I'm giving her like a motivational speech.
- 20:55Speaker 2: Where's the pig there?
- 20:59Speaker 1: It's it's uh, we just left land for now. Yeah,
- 21:03Speaker 1: we'll go get in a minute. Okay, tell your hunting story,
- 21:06Speaker 1: crin Well we got the first part.
- 21:08Speaker 5: Move your mic closer, as anyone who's observing on YouTube
- 21:13Speaker 5: could tell that I had just abandoned my seat.
- 21:16Speaker 3: If you're not watching on YouTube, you should pause this,
- 21:19Speaker 3: and yeah you should.
- 21:20Speaker 2: You should hit a computer.
- 21:21Speaker 1: Wait till you get home and watch on YouTube. Don't
- 21:24Speaker 1: say that, finish this and then rewatch there you go.
- 21:28Speaker 5: There It is as I was ranging two or three
- 21:32Speaker 5: different pigs, one just was like way too close and
- 21:37Speaker 5: then I just kinda couldn't.
- 21:40Speaker 1: Help it and I threw a bead.
- 21:43Speaker 5: I didn't I didn't make the best shot, even though
- 21:46Speaker 5: it was really really close.
- 21:47Speaker 1: It would have died.
- 21:49Speaker 5: I mean, it's I guess part of Yeah.
- 21:51Speaker 1: She's far back. We found it standing back in there.
- 21:53Speaker 1: We went in there, dirt, found a little blood, and
- 21:55Speaker 1: we went back in there and was standing there, and
- 21:57Speaker 1: then I was trying to explain Krin where the head
- 22:01Speaker 1: wasn't She apparently already knew I hadn't put my hearing
- 22:08Speaker 1: protection in yet.
- 22:11Speaker 2: And that second.
- 22:14Speaker 1: Gave me a nice muscle break to the to my
- 22:18Speaker 1: mostly impaired.
- 22:20Speaker 7: Earlsive I knew, I knew it was a head off
- 22:30Speaker 7: to the.
- 22:35Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 22:35Speaker 3: I feel like if you if you're at the point
- 22:37Speaker 3: where you're telling Krin like what she needs to be doing,
- 22:41Speaker 3: she already knows.
- 22:42Speaker 1: She's already she's already doing it. Yeah, I think, Yeah,
- 22:45Speaker 1: I'm going to graduate her in my mind up to
- 22:47Speaker 1: that position and not like I'm not like I'm talking
- 22:51Speaker 1: to my son. Yeah, I learned that real quick the
- 22:55Speaker 1: other day.
- 22:55Speaker 3: And I was like, all right, when he steps out,
- 23:02Speaker 3: all right, you stepped out enough for her.
- 23:07Speaker 1: This this is like a pig.
- 23:10Speaker 5: It's so much nicer the other one.
- 23:12Speaker 3: I mean, you think I think every time we come
- 23:14Speaker 3: through here, there's pig.
- 23:15Speaker 2: Do you think there? They could more could come through
- 23:19Speaker 2: now after post guarantee.
- 23:21Speaker 1: It nice so that even though I said, I'm not
- 23:24Speaker 1: like a great uh judge of pigs, you know, I said,
- 23:29Speaker 1: it look like a little bore. It's not big Old South,
- 23:33Speaker 1: but it's like yesterday the one I got, I got
- 23:38Speaker 1: the coveted uh pregnant sow, which is when they get
- 23:43Speaker 1: body fat. Well you don't want one is nursing because
- 23:47Speaker 1: they know that. And that's a stop. That's that feels
- 23:51Speaker 1: like the of the three we've butchered, that feels like
- 23:54Speaker 1: the best one. This one here, that feels to me
- 23:58Speaker 1: like oh yeah, like and feeling it's this is some
- 24:04Speaker 1: lean country here, like I said, there's no there's no
- 24:06Speaker 1: feeders here or anything. It's just lean country. And uh,
- 24:10Speaker 1: the pigs here are just bones. You know, my boy
- 24:14Speaker 1: got a couple one time. Man, they were just hard
- 24:15Speaker 1: to like really get anything off.
- 24:17Speaker 2: But should we get the shooting iron handy? If we go?
- 24:22Speaker 2: If you're trying to get.
- 24:23Speaker 1: A second, I'm good on pigs. Do you need? Do
- 24:25Speaker 1: you want?
- 24:25Speaker 2: I'm good.
- 24:26Speaker 1: You got on pigs green? Yeah, we're good on pigs.
- 24:29Speaker 1: Pigs old, Okay, it's a success.
- 24:31Speaker 5: Yeah, now we can do the puck.
- 24:44Speaker 1: Oh yeah, where was I? Where was I talking about? Oh?
- 24:46Speaker 1: Our setups? So this is our findings so far on rattling,
- 24:50Speaker 1: which we've put in a fair bit of attention to
- 24:52Speaker 1: at this point. So let me recap. I got a
- 24:57Speaker 1: little rattled.
- 24:59Speaker 5: Yeah, sorry, you still hear that ring?
- 25:01Speaker 1: No, not that kind of rattle. Well, I was explaining
- 25:05Speaker 1: that we would at a time set up together, but
- 25:09Speaker 1: they were two keyed in, so then we would try
- 25:12Speaker 1: to get a little distance between the rattle and get
- 25:16Speaker 1: a little distance between the rattling and the spot. And
- 25:19Speaker 1: our thinking was our thinking was we were kind of
- 25:23Speaker 1: wanting to look into the wind because you were looking
- 25:26Speaker 1: at areas that you hadn't already put odor to, thinking that,
- 25:32Speaker 1: you know, if the ones that are behind that are
- 25:34Speaker 1: down when aren't coming, so you'd look up, you know,
- 25:37Speaker 1: and we're approaching into the wind too. So we're approaching
- 25:40Speaker 1: into the wind. Imagine we've disturbed what's behind us. We're
- 25:43Speaker 1: now calling to things that we haven't walked through and
- 25:47Speaker 1: to things that haven't gotten our odor. And so we
- 25:49Speaker 1: would set up like that. What we kept finding is
- 25:53Speaker 1: it's thick enough country that they're playing that wind from
- 25:59Speaker 1: a little way out, and they're showing up consistently downwind,
- 26:05Speaker 1: making their kind of like almost like running into a
- 26:07Speaker 1: down wind position. And then they stop. Often they stop
- 26:12Speaker 1: when they see that decoy. They pump the brakes on,
- 26:15Speaker 1: which is good because if you don't have the decoys,
- 26:17Speaker 1: sometimes you find they just run through it, never stop.
- 26:20Speaker 1: So we eventually hit on this idea where the rattler
- 26:23Speaker 1: sets up down wind from the rattler. The rattler sets
- 26:30Speaker 1: up up wind from the decoy. So the rattler is
- 26:35Speaker 1: forty thirty forty would you say, thirty yards twenty.
- 26:38Speaker 3: Yards apparently set up, Yeah, theyware from I would say
- 26:41Speaker 3: fifteen yards to thirty.
- 26:43Speaker 1: Yards, yep. The rattler is fifteen to thirty yards from
- 26:46Speaker 1: the decoy, and the rattler is the decoys down wind
- 26:51Speaker 1: to the rattler, and then the archer wants to set
- 26:55Speaker 1: up fifteen to thirty down from the decoy, which when
- 27:02Speaker 1: that buck comes in and he's and he's staring at
- 27:05Speaker 1: that When that buck comes in and he's staring at
- 27:08Speaker 1: that location where that rattling is or registers the decoy,
- 27:12Speaker 1: he's in your zone, you know, and it sticks, so
- 27:17Speaker 1: you can't you know, you can't see everything. You kind
- 27:19Speaker 1: of got to pick your lanes. But he's likely to
- 27:20Speaker 1: come in and stop ten yards fifteen yards from where
- 27:24Speaker 1: you're at. What's funny is you'd think, well, what happens
- 27:27Speaker 1: when the buck stops between the archer and the rattler,
- 27:31Speaker 1: which is exactly what we did today. I actually had
- 27:35Speaker 1: to take my shot before I wanted to, because if
- 27:40Speaker 1: he took another step or two, I would have shot
- 27:42Speaker 1: Seth with my bow. Yeah, it would have already be
- 27:47Speaker 1: a bloody arrow. I'm glad you didn't do that. Yeah,
- 27:50Speaker 1: it would have gone through the deer and then into Seth,
- 27:54Speaker 1: which whatever, you know.
- 27:56Speaker 3: No big deal, a second pass through just would have
- 27:59Speaker 3: went through the guts, all right.
- 28:03Speaker 1: Yeah, So but it worked beautifully. I think that that
- 28:09Speaker 1: is the system for rattling in thick country, running, running
- 28:12Speaker 1: and gunning, rattling in thick country. And you know what
- 28:16Speaker 1: it winds up being. It's you know what, it's so
- 28:18Speaker 1: similar to It's so similar to Jason phelps elk hunting strategy.
- 28:27Speaker 1: The way he likes to hunt bulls is hell. If
- 28:32Speaker 1: he finds a bull betted or finds a midday bowl,
- 28:36Speaker 1: he likes to sneak into like where that thing is not,
- 28:38Speaker 1: where that thing can't ignore it, where it can't ignore
- 28:41Speaker 1: a bugle yep. Like he's not going to go three
- 28:44Speaker 1: hundred yards to check out a bugle. He's just not.
- 28:47Speaker 1: He might bugle and return, but he's not gonna get
- 28:49Speaker 1: up and go, and he's not gonna get out of
- 28:50Speaker 1: his bed necessarily and walk. But when when you rip
- 28:54Speaker 1: a bugle fifty yards, he's gonna get up. Yeah, you're
- 28:58Speaker 1: in his face. And for like running and gunning rattling,
- 29:05Speaker 1: all you're really trying, Like what you're doing is you're
- 29:08Speaker 1: standing those bucks up and they're bounding in. I don't
- 29:10Speaker 1: know what they're coming from one hundred yards. It's an
- 29:13Speaker 1: interesting strategy in any situation where if you knew you
- 29:17Speaker 1: had deer, you knew you had a buck betted anywhere, Illinois, Michigan, whatever. Yep.
- 29:25Speaker 1: If you knew you had a buck betted, that you
- 29:27Speaker 1: might approach like that. Get in there with a buddy,
- 29:31Speaker 1: get in there and be like when I rattle, get
- 29:35Speaker 1: ready yeah, because we're in his zone. Yeah, and he
- 29:41Speaker 1: might be like, what in the world's going on?
- 29:42Speaker 3: You know, it'd be fun to try that in other
- 29:45Speaker 3: places than here, Like then.
- 29:47Speaker 1: It's not gonna be as good. It's not gonna be
- 29:49Speaker 1: as good as here because there's so many deer and
- 29:54Speaker 1: the buck to do this seems like there's more bucks
- 29:55Speaker 1: than dose. Yeah, there's not.
- 29:58Speaker 3: It's probably equal, but there's just definitely seen more bucks
- 30:02Speaker 3: and it's like prime time all that.
- 30:06Speaker 1: But it could, it would be. It would be something
- 30:08Speaker 1: that I would try in other in other situations. You know,
- 30:11Speaker 1: it's something I would try in other situations. Is running,
- 30:14Speaker 1: gun running, gun rattling. I'm gonna trademark that turning burn
- 30:19Speaker 1: rattling turning burn. Yeah.
- 30:22Speaker 2: What's also cool being on the ground that close to him,
- 30:25Speaker 2: You know, it's different than being up in a tree.
- 30:27Speaker 2: Being up in a tree is cool too, but there's
- 30:28Speaker 2: just something about being on eye level with them. When
- 30:30Speaker 2: they come in, it's pretty it's pretty cool.
- 30:32Speaker 1: You didn't see every hair that's standing up. Yeah, yeah,
- 30:36Speaker 1: that's That's one of the most surprising things is if
- 30:40Speaker 1: you look at the Dave Smith decoy deer decoy, it's
- 30:43Speaker 1: meant to look like bristled and he it's got a
- 30:47Speaker 1: really interesting texture to it. But when those deer come
- 30:50Speaker 1: in and they see that decoy, it's just like they
- 30:53Speaker 1: can picture a turkey coming in and seeing a strutter decoy.
- 30:56Speaker 1: What's he gonna do? He's gonna yeah, he comes in.
- 31:00Speaker 1: He's like, right, he comes in at first like picture
- 31:02Speaker 1: of Tom coming in where he's like, sure, hope no
- 31:06Speaker 1: one tries to kill me, Sure hope, no one tries
- 31:08Speaker 1: to kill me. And then all of a sudden he
- 31:09Speaker 1: sees a decon and he's like, oh yeah, you know,
- 31:12Speaker 1: forgets everything. Feathers pop out. Like these bucks come in,
- 31:16Speaker 1: they see that decoy and they they go into full strut. Yeah.
- 31:20Speaker 1: Oh it's wild, and they have such a strange They
- 31:23Speaker 1: cock their ears back, they start tipping their head. Two
- 31:27Speaker 1: of them started kicking dirt even works. Two of them
- 31:31Speaker 1: works scrapes or made a scrape. They're like drooling. Yeah,
- 31:37Speaker 1: licking their lips man a lot, and then they like
- 31:40Speaker 1: they look like my kids going into McDonald's.
- 31:42Speaker 3: They they go from like a normal a normal deer
- 31:46Speaker 3: like walking in so like stop see the decoy.
- 31:50Speaker 1: And then it's like slow motion all the way in,
- 31:54Speaker 1: all his hair standing out and they shiver it tay
- 32:01Speaker 1: jammed down between their legs like a G string. The
- 32:04Speaker 1: second time I used that, second time I use recently.
- 32:08Speaker 2: Yeah, not every day.
- 32:11Speaker 1: No, I go months of I'll talk about a G string.
- 32:13Speaker 1: And I've had two occasions in the last hour. Was
- 32:16Speaker 1: it related guitar? One of them one just the joke,
- 32:20Speaker 1: the joke, not my joke, but a joke I heard.
- 32:23Speaker 1: I was trying to I was messing with a guitar
- 32:26Speaker 1: and remembered a person a former podcast guests who will
- 32:29Speaker 1: not identify, saying that the only instrument I've learned how
- 32:33Speaker 1: to play was ah and I was telling that, sharing that,
- 32:39Speaker 1: and then use it again. Out his tail tucked in
- 32:44Speaker 1: like a G string, hair puffed out, shaking, head cocked in,
- 32:52Speaker 1: a lot of lip licking, yeah, and coming at it
- 32:57Speaker 1: from all angles. And here's another thing from the surprise,
- 33:00Speaker 1: Like you picture two bucks fighting that they're gonna hit
- 33:04Speaker 1: heads right, Well, if you have a decoy that's stationary,
- 33:10Speaker 1: you see what the buck would prefer to do because
- 33:13Speaker 1: the decoy can't turn to face it. So the buck
- 33:18Speaker 1: kind of gets like, are you really honestly gonna let
- 33:21Speaker 1: me do this? And the buck pulls up alongside both
- 33:24Speaker 1: bucks that attack the decoy because it's not turning to
- 33:28Speaker 1: meet them right in the ribs. Yeah, like he's trying
- 33:32Speaker 1: to stab it. Yeah, he's like, if you're really gonna
- 33:35Speaker 1: let me do this, I'm going to give you all
- 33:38Speaker 1: eight of my times into your rib cage. Is what
- 33:40Speaker 1: both those bucks did. It's like that.
- 33:42Speaker 3: It's like the buck knows where it needs to hit
- 33:44Speaker 3: the other buck to kill it.
- 33:45Speaker 1: Yep.
- 33:46Speaker 3: It's like if you just let the deer do its thing.
- 33:49Speaker 1: It's like they're like just trying to kill each other. Yeah,
- 33:51Speaker 1: but no buck on his right mind and his right
- 33:53Speaker 1: mind is going to actually let another buck do it.
- 33:55Speaker 1: So you think they always meet head to head, But
- 33:58Speaker 1: he pulls up alongside, and and they pull up alongside,
- 34:03Speaker 1: and they stare and one got his head really close.
- 34:06Speaker 1: But then they when they charge, there's no announcement like
- 34:09Speaker 1: when they snap and go for it. It's out of
- 34:12Speaker 1: the blue.
- 34:14Speaker 2: I feel like that first one kind of pulled up
- 34:16Speaker 2: and almost looked the decoy in the eye for that
- 34:18Speaker 2: kind of turned and like eyed eye with him and
- 34:20Speaker 2: then went for it.
- 34:21Speaker 1: I think our decoy eventually started to smell too much
- 34:24Speaker 1: like seth from Carry Carry when they started to get suspicious,
- 34:30Speaker 1: and then we took Uh. A guy that uses the
- 34:33Speaker 1: DSD deer decoys is telling me, when you kill a buck,
- 34:36Speaker 1: take the tarsal glands off that buck and rub it
- 34:42Speaker 1: into your decoy and then just stole the tarsal glands
- 34:45Speaker 1: under the decoy. So we got some buck glands, then
- 34:48Speaker 1: the dog stole them.
- 34:51Speaker 2: That would have been cool to see that reaction, like
- 34:54Speaker 2: pre rubbing it and post rubbing it.
- 34:58Speaker 1: More. Yeah, there there was one buck today that would
- 35:01Speaker 1: look like it was going to mix it up with
- 35:02Speaker 1: that decoy. And Uh, my take on his body language
- 35:07Speaker 1: is he was not buying that smell. Yeah, I agree.
- 35:11Speaker 1: He got close and put his nose out and got
- 35:14Speaker 1: his nose maybe three feet from that thing, and his
- 35:16Speaker 1: hair just flattened out. Yeah, and then he walked off
- 35:21Speaker 1: like he lost all his.
- 35:23Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's it's tough to get that thing odorless
- 35:27Speaker 3: just because you're it's like.
- 35:29Speaker 2: You really got a bear hug it to move around.
- 35:32Speaker 3: It's not that easy to carry around just because it's
- 35:35Speaker 3: like a full sized deer decoy. And I would most
- 35:40Speaker 3: of the time just like throw it over my shoulder
- 35:43Speaker 3: because I was also carrying other stuff, rattling antlers and whatnot.
- 35:50Speaker 3: But yeah, I think it if maybe if we had
- 35:54Speaker 3: like some sort of spray to like spray it down
- 35:56Speaker 3: real good, yep, and then rub it down with the
- 36:00Speaker 3: uh with the tarsal glands.
- 36:02Speaker 1: Yeah, I think if you took a bottle of rubbing
- 36:04Speaker 1: alcohol and gave it a little rub down and then
- 36:06Speaker 1: tarsal glanded it, it'd be bad ass. Do they bottle
- 36:09Speaker 1: that tarsal glen scent they make? They made sense, yeah,
- 36:14Speaker 1: but I kind of it's just much more bad ass
- 36:16Speaker 1: to rub it with your own deer man.
- 36:20Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a good if you're in a spot where
- 36:21Speaker 2: you can get a doll or you like an earn
- 36:23Speaker 2: a buck state or something, you know, like get the well,
- 36:26Speaker 2: the dolls don't have the tarsal glands though, huh.
- 36:29Speaker 1: No stinky ones and those bucks. Oh we you know,
- 36:32Speaker 1: we should clarify because you don't come on the show enough.
- 36:34Speaker 1: Chris Gills here, Hi everybody, and Dirts here and Karn
- 36:40Speaker 1: of course, seth. Uh did you notice how many of
- 36:44Speaker 1: those bucks stank? Yeah, like when a buck comes through
- 36:50Speaker 1: and then he leaves, it's his it lingers, Yeah, it
- 36:53Speaker 1: lingers in the air man and that buck that I
- 36:56Speaker 1: had kind of to scare because I thought I was
- 36:58Speaker 1: gonna hit us to smell it. The whole time he
- 37:00Speaker 1: got close, I was like, Bud, you gotta take a bath.
- 37:03Speaker 1: Just a stinky buck. Yeah.
- 37:05Speaker 3: I smelled the drop tinme buck that we were after today.
- 37:08Speaker 3: I smelled him real good.
- 37:11Speaker 1: He was sanky. A lot of different personalities though, yeah,
- 37:15Speaker 1: a lot of different a lot of different responses. It
- 37:19Speaker 1: felt we didn't have enough a huge sample size. But
- 37:21Speaker 1: it felt like bigger bucks were less likely to commit suicide. Yep,
- 37:28Speaker 1: you know makes sense. More likely to check stuff out. Yeah,
- 37:32Speaker 1: more likely to check stuff out, seth. You remember you're
- 37:36Speaker 1: familiar with Saint Anthony to find something right, Okay, check
- 37:40Speaker 1: this story out. So when we just did the live tour,
- 37:43Speaker 1: a guy told me the story that I met at
- 37:46Speaker 1: the live show, and then he emailed the story because
- 37:48Speaker 1: I said, email me that story because it's a great story.
- 37:51Speaker 1: We're talking about what explained Saint Anthony. I had never
- 37:53Speaker 1: heard of this. I honestly don't know what Saint Anthony.
- 37:58Speaker 4: He's the saying of lost items.
- 38:00Speaker 1: See, that's what it is.
- 38:01Speaker 3: I always growing up, if I lost something, my grandmother
- 38:05Speaker 3: would always say, you gotta say, Saint Anthony, say anthy,
- 38:09Speaker 3: police come around. Something's been lost and cannot be found.
- 38:12Speaker 3: And if you say that, it's like a little prayer
- 38:14Speaker 3: type thing.
- 38:15Speaker 1: Oh mokw something.
- 38:17Speaker 3: And if you say that, you'll you'll find whatever you're
- 38:19Speaker 3: looking for.
- 38:20Speaker 1: Well, let me back you up on that. This guy
- 38:23Speaker 1: uh long, it's kind of the convoluted story.
- 38:26Speaker 3: But the.
- 38:28Speaker 1: Quick of it is, they were out checking trail camps
- 38:31Speaker 1: a couple hours from home, lose the truck keys. Oh
- 38:36Speaker 1: so this guy and his body loser truck keys. And
- 38:39Speaker 1: they look and look and look and look for the
- 38:41Speaker 1: truck keys, trying to call someone. And you're proposing to
- 38:47Speaker 1: their buddies that like you, how about you make a
- 38:50Speaker 1: four hour drive.
- 38:52Speaker 2: Oh it's a tough sell.
- 38:53Speaker 1: Yeah. Anyways, they go all the way back to the
- 38:57Speaker 1: where the trail camp was and the tree stand was.
- 38:59Speaker 1: He says, real thick grass and vegetation back and forth.
- 39:02Speaker 1: Can't find it, and he does the the Anthony prayer.
- 39:07Speaker 1: The guy that didn't lose the guy accompanying the guy
- 39:10Speaker 1: that lost his keys, that's who's telling me the story.
- 39:12Speaker 1: He's accompanying his buddy. His buddy's lost his keys. He
- 39:16Speaker 1: does his Saint Anthony prayer. They're looking, and all of
- 39:21Speaker 1: a sudden, the guy's phone rings. The guy that lost
- 39:25Speaker 1: his keys phone rings, so he stops to converse on
- 39:30Speaker 1: the phone, and while he's conversing on the phone, realizes
- 39:34Speaker 1: that there's his keys. Now, who do you think it
- 39:40Speaker 1: was that called the man his buddy Anthony? Exactly? Man,
- 39:48Speaker 1: God is good? Exactly? Oh man, is that? I heard you? Exactly?
- 39:56Speaker 1: And I know hold honor that buddy? Ye something about
- 39:59Speaker 1: oh yeah, something about that. At the end of this episode,
- 40:03Speaker 1: you are going to hear chapter seven for free. You're
- 40:11Speaker 1: gonna hear chapter seven of me Eater's American History, The
- 40:15Speaker 1: Long Hunters.
- 40:16Speaker 2: I'm very excited about this.
- 40:18Speaker 1: Oh you should be.
- 40:18Speaker 2: Oh, I'm like, from what I've heard, very excited.
- 40:21Speaker 1: It's perhaps one of the things I used to tell people.
- 40:25Speaker 1: The thing I'm most proud of that I made My
- 40:27Speaker 1: best work was my Buffalo book because I was at
- 40:33Speaker 1: the height of my powers as a writer, because I
- 40:35Speaker 1: didn't have any other thing going on in my life.
- 40:38Speaker 1: That's all I was doing is just for two years,
- 40:40Speaker 1: I just worked on that book. My life was really simple,
- 40:43Speaker 1: no kids, wasn't married. It was just different back then.
- 40:57Speaker 1: A big old bull go out and grab hold of
- 40:59Speaker 1: big old bold that.
- 41:02Speaker 5: I actually thought that those were the utters.
- 41:05Speaker 1: That's just one. He's like, he's only got one utter.
- 41:13Speaker 1: So uh so, oh it does got to Yeah, he's
- 41:18Speaker 1: got to know. Damn, he's posting for us. Yeah, so
- 41:25Speaker 1: uh got's a stout looking critter in this thorn country
- 41:31Speaker 1: where so long hunters. Uh. It's pretty. It's really good.
- 41:38Speaker 1: It's really good. I believe it. It's narrated. It's audio only,
- 41:42Speaker 1: so it's not that you people shold understand. It's not
- 41:44Speaker 1: a print book. It's an audio original narrated by myself
- 41:48Speaker 1: and Clay Newcombe, exhaustively researched by doctor Randall.
- 41:54Speaker 2: I'm also excited that you and Clay are narrating it
- 41:56Speaker 2: because when you hear like audiobooks or whatever, and somebody
- 41:59Speaker 2: else is reading it. You talked about that one more
- 42:00Speaker 2: it's like it just kind of it can be a
- 42:02Speaker 2: real good or bad thing for the story.
- 42:06Speaker 1: Here's what we found in working on it is that's
- 42:12Speaker 1: not a close I feel we should get predator call
- 42:14Speaker 1: out and bring it in here. So that's a good point.
- 42:22Speaker 1: That's I wouldn't worry about that yet.
- 42:25Speaker 2: Tell what was I saying?
- 42:26Speaker 1: Oh uh, you know books, A book that's meant to
- 42:32Speaker 1: that's written to be read, is best read. It's best
- 42:35Speaker 1: that you read it. Something that you're listening to is
- 42:38Speaker 1: just different. So when we made the Long Hunters, like
- 42:42Speaker 1: media's of American history is meant to be presented, it's
- 42:46Speaker 1: meant to be read, it's meant to be it's meant
- 42:48Speaker 1: to be listened to. It was like built specifically to
- 42:51Speaker 1: be listened to, which kind of makes it special. And
- 42:53Speaker 1: we do all the narration on it. It's really good.
- 42:56Speaker 1: So we're gonna put chapter seven, which is called Gearing Up.
- 42:59Speaker 1: It's about the equipment used by the Long Hunters at
- 43:03Speaker 1: the end of this episode to further titillate you and
- 43:07Speaker 1: prompt you to go and wherever you buy your books
- 43:14Speaker 1: and pick your copy up, download your copy for listening.
- 43:18Speaker 1: Cats and Schizophrenia.
- 43:20Speaker 2: This is not a This wasn't ready for that. That
- 43:24Speaker 2: was not kind of like that gunshot.
- 43:28Speaker 1: An academic study just came out, I.
- 43:30Speaker 5: Felt when I saw this article, I really thought it
- 43:32Speaker 5: was meant for Steve's eyeballs.
- 43:35Speaker 1: Cat Are you ready for this? You cat man?
- 43:38Speaker 2: No? Very far from a cat man?
- 43:40Speaker 1: You catman?
- 43:40Speaker 2: Dog man?
- 43:42Speaker 1: No cat man here I have, Well, my wife has
- 43:45Speaker 1: a cat. You're a cat man. I'm certainly not a
- 43:46Speaker 1: cat man.
- 43:47Speaker 2: You come around.
- 43:48Speaker 1: Yeah, he's a cat man. I don't touch the cat. Well, seth,
- 43:51Speaker 1: you might be curious to hear this, or not curious.
- 43:55Speaker 1: You might be alarmed to hear this. As a cat
- 43:57Speaker 1: what happened? As a cat man, I had a cat
- 43:59Speaker 1: named the cat. We had a cat named Maud when
- 44:02Speaker 1: I was a kid, and Maud had its babies and
- 44:04Speaker 1: my dad's boot and ate them all. Oh, we had
- 44:08Speaker 1: a cat named Fig and I was like, tell the
- 44:11Speaker 1: story that my dad we tamed a stray cat. My
- 44:15Speaker 1: dad tamed it by leaving fish heads out for it,
- 44:18Speaker 1: cleaning fish and leave the heads out. And he loved
- 44:21Speaker 1: this cat. I don't know wise only cat. Well, he
- 44:24Speaker 1: liked that cat mad too, But he brought Fig over
- 44:27Speaker 1: to his buddy who is a hog farmer, and this
- 44:29Speaker 1: hog farmer has castrated thousands of hogs. He bought fig
- 44:35Speaker 1: over so that that guy could castraight fig. And they
- 44:39Speaker 1: put they cut a little hole in a gunny sack,
- 44:42Speaker 1: put fig in that gunnysack and snaked his little berries
- 44:45Speaker 1: out of the hole in that gunny sack. Well, the
- 44:49Speaker 1: cat fought him off. They he's castraight on hundreds of hogs.
- 44:55Speaker 1: Couldn't castraight that cat. That cat got out of there
- 44:58Speaker 1: were just a little nick and his scrub him and
- 45:01Speaker 1: never got fixed because there's no way there. My desk
- 45:04Speaker 1: just spend money on that. If his body couldn't do
- 45:06Speaker 1: it, it wasn't so that cat just like won the battle
- 45:09Speaker 1: and pro creation. And that cat would leave for sometimes
- 45:14Speaker 1: he'd go on like a ten day hiatus. Oh yeah,
- 45:17Speaker 1: and then he'd come right down the stairs come back home.
- 45:20Speaker 3: I had I had an old barn cat named wild Bill,
- 45:24Speaker 3: and he would do the same thing. He'd go on
- 45:26Speaker 3: like two week walkabouts gone, he'd be gone, he'd come back.
- 45:31Speaker 3: One time I caught him in a foothold by accident
- 45:34Speaker 3: in the fox set.
- 45:35Speaker 1: Oh, I caught my own cat one time.
- 45:36Speaker 3: I let him out, didn't phase him. He'd still go
- 45:39Speaker 3: on walkabouts with a little limp.
- 45:40Speaker 1: We caught our own cat, and we caught our own
- 45:43Speaker 1: cat trapping. Was that in a possum set on a
- 45:46Speaker 1: foot trap? Possum set? Caught our own cat in a
- 45:49Speaker 1: possum set. Let him out and he just followed us around.
- 45:53Speaker 1: He's like, what you guys are gonna show up? Let
- 45:56Speaker 1: him out there? He just tag along with the oction.
- 46:02Speaker 1: Uh oh, anyways, listen to this thing. Cat ownership and
- 46:08Speaker 1: schizophrennier related disorders in psychotic like experiences correlate, correlate to
- 46:17Speaker 1: cat ownership. Why it doesn't surprise me? Why you ask?
- 46:22Speaker 1: Because of something that you may have learned about listening
- 46:25Speaker 1: to this very podcast, the Meat Eater podcast. We did
- 46:29Speaker 1: an episode on cat scratch fever. Yeah, because we had
- 46:34Speaker 1: a guy on. Danny Bolton came on. Was that shit
- 46:37Speaker 1: called again?
- 46:40Speaker 2: That's why pregnant ladies shouldn't clean litter boxes? Right when
- 46:43Speaker 2: they say that if you're pregnant, don't you.
- 46:45Speaker 1: Have a cat cox ol Danny Bolton got toxoplasmosis from
- 46:48Speaker 1: eating raw I can't remember if it was goat or lamb.
- 46:51Speaker 1: It was goat. Goat, raw goat. And so there's a
- 46:55Speaker 1: ton of feral cats in Hawaii, so that cat shit
- 46:58Speaker 1: had somehow gotten on whatever and he ate it. And
- 47:03Speaker 1: toxoplasmosis has been linked to jackals. No, what is it jackals? Oh?
- 47:13Speaker 1: Or is it what's that other wild ass looking dog?
- 47:15Speaker 1: In Africa hyena hyenas Hyenas that have toxoplasmosis are more
- 47:22Speaker 1: likely to be killed by lions. There's risky yet, people
- 47:27Speaker 1: that you're more likely to die in an automobile accident.
- 47:32Speaker 1: If you've had toxoplasmosis. It removes your fear, but it
- 47:38Speaker 1: also apparently removes your ability to not can impact your
- 47:45Speaker 1: psychological state, and toxoplasmosis can link to schizophrenia related outcomes.
- 47:53Speaker 1: So when you hear it, when New Jersey cat ladies
- 47:56Speaker 1: come to mess with you, oh.
- 47:57Speaker 2: There's a reason why they're by.
- 48:01Speaker 1: So this is after you're ready through the conclusions. This
- 48:04Speaker 1: is after they recover from it. Our findings support and
- 48:08Speaker 1: association between cat exposure and an increased risk of broadly
- 48:14Speaker 1: defined schizophrenia related disorders. However, the findings related to pl
- 48:18Speaker 1: e as an outcome or mixed. There is need for
- 48:23Speaker 1: more high qualities. Just never mind all that. I like
- 48:25Speaker 1: to stick with the narrative. I don't want to read
- 48:28Speaker 1: all the disclaimers because I want to paint a damning
- 48:32Speaker 1: portrait of cat ownership. It's like mainstream media. But in
- 48:35Speaker 1: all fairness, they say there is a need for more
- 48:38Speaker 1: high quality studies in this field because there's some uncertainty.
- 48:41Speaker 1: But still, do you.
- 48:43Speaker 2: Do you know how cats get like because not every
- 48:46Speaker 2: cat has toxic plasmosis or you don't get so like,
- 48:51Speaker 2: what is it?
- 48:52Speaker 1: Outdoor cats are more I would imagine that cats that
- 48:56Speaker 1: have more of a chance to interact with cats.
- 48:59Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 49:00Speaker 1: Yeah, if you nabbed a cat out of a you know,
- 49:04Speaker 1: right out of the womb and never let it see
- 49:07Speaker 1: another cat, it's probably had a little likelihood of get
- 49:09Speaker 1: in toxle plasmos. Yeah. I'm a big fan of the
- 49:13Speaker 1: book You want to see another herd change? Yeah, I'm
- 49:17Speaker 1: a big fan of the book Life and Death at
- 49:19Speaker 1: the Mouth of the Muscle Shell. Oh love that book.
- 49:22Speaker 1: And in an area that now sits underneath the water
- 49:25Speaker 1: because of an impoundment, but it was a journal of
- 49:28Speaker 1: a guy who spent time at the mouth of the
- 49:32Speaker 1: where the muscleshell flows into the Missouri but like I said,
- 49:34Speaker 1: now it's flooded lays at the bottom of Fort Peck Reservoir.
- 49:39Speaker 1: And I had talked on the podcast before about the
- 49:41Speaker 1: amount of just bloodshed in that book. Well, a guy
- 49:44Speaker 1: read it, and he made a guy an audience member,
- 49:47Speaker 1: read it and built a spreadsheet where he could track
- 49:52Speaker 1: all the killings. Mm hm you want to hear some totals. Yeah,
- 49:57Speaker 1: when you read Life and Death at the Mouse of
- 49:59Speaker 1: the Muscle Shell, you will read about one thousand, four
- 50:03Speaker 1: hundred and seventy four dead wolves s wolf because in
- 50:09Speaker 1: that book, they're always going out and lace and buffalo
- 50:11Speaker 1: carcasses with strychnine yep, wolfing, and they'll be like, we
- 50:15Speaker 1: went to Bob's bait and had twenty four one day.
- 50:18Speaker 1: I can't remember what tribe it was. One day, one
- 50:20Speaker 1: of the planes tribes comes into the fort and they
- 50:22Speaker 1: are mighty pissed because their dogs all got killed. M
- 50:26Speaker 1: oh yeah yeah, and they're like, stop putting that poison out,
- 50:31Speaker 1: killed all their dogs. Four hundred and seventy four wolves,
- 50:37Speaker 1: four hundred and sixty eight analope one hundred and twenty
- 50:40Speaker 1: eight buffalo one hundred and twenty one Indians thirty four whites,
- 50:50Speaker 1: among many other things. That are the deaths of which
- 50:53Speaker 1: are described in Life and Death of the Mouth of
- 50:55Speaker 1: the Muscleshell. So that's the number of deaths that occur
- 50:58Speaker 1: in his time in his journal. Wow, they did. Yeah,
- 51:04Speaker 1: and they'd be like we got onto three and everybody
- 51:07Speaker 1: shot a bunch and couldn't find anything. Yeah, they killed
- 51:12Speaker 1: a lot of ground. Six got to.
- 51:14Speaker 2: What uh what years does that take place during that journal?
- 51:19Speaker 1: Uh, he's there in the late in the early eighteen seventies.
- 51:23Speaker 4: It's something on the Muscleshell is hunting this fall up there,
- 51:27Speaker 4: and it's that kind of like more north of Great Falls.
- 51:31Speaker 4: It's like kind of you know, sage brushy gumbo type landscape,
- 51:36Speaker 4: big old griz print in the bottom of.
- 51:39Speaker 1: This grizz track. Yeah, hunter, Yeah, show you the picture.
- 51:44Speaker 1: It's kind of freaky, really, Yeah, to be there. He
- 51:48Speaker 1: notices too that some you can tell some stuff about
- 51:51Speaker 1: migrations back then in uh so a real spike and antelope.
- 51:59Speaker 1: There's an in November eighteen seventy one, so one hundred
- 52:03Speaker 1: and three years before I was born. They killed two
- 52:07Speaker 1: hundred and twenty three antelope out of that Fort November. Wow,
- 52:11Speaker 1: I remember that part of the book, and it was
- 52:13Speaker 1: a big deal. Everybody's going up and killing all the antelope.
- 52:15Speaker 1: Thousands of antelope hanging out by the fort. Thank you
- 52:19Speaker 1: Craig for sending that in. Yeah, that's cool. Now here's
- 52:31Speaker 1: another little stats thing, a lot of stats today. We
- 52:34Speaker 1: had our buck Ratland stats. Those stats. This kind of
- 52:37Speaker 1: blew my mind. So there's a deal. In Wisconsin they
- 52:40Speaker 1: have a DNR website the tracks dogs killed by wolves. Okay,
- 52:47Speaker 1: this is this is pretty crazy. So it starts. It
- 52:51Speaker 1: must be when they start being able to have the
- 52:53Speaker 1: running season starting in July eight. So, for instance, July eight,
- 52:59Speaker 1: twenty three, Burnett County, one hunting dog killed seven year
- 53:05Speaker 1: old female blue tick trailing hound. Okay, that's July eight.
- 53:11Speaker 1: July twenty Clark County, one hunting dog killed and one
- 53:16Speaker 1: hunting dog injured. Walker trailing hounds. That was July twenty.
- 53:23Speaker 1: July twenty one, Lincoln County, one hunting dog killed six
- 53:28Speaker 1: year old female redbone trailing hound. The next day, July
- 53:33Speaker 1: twenty two, Bayfield County, two hunting dogs killed a four
- 53:38Speaker 1: year old male walker trailing hound and an eight year
- 53:41Speaker 1: old female red bone trailing hound. Seven days later, Burnett County.
- 53:49Speaker 1: One hunting dog killed five year old male blue tick
- 53:53Speaker 1: trailing hound. Four days later, August third, one hunting dog
- 53:57Speaker 1: killed three year old plot trailing hound. Why are they
- 54:04Speaker 1: getting killed in the summer because it's wolves killing dogs
- 54:07Speaker 1: running bears.
- 54:09Speaker 2: Oh, that's the bare season.
- 54:11Speaker 1: Now. I don't know if this is true, but someone's
- 54:13Speaker 1: pointing out cutting the hazard of cutting your hounds loose
- 54:20Speaker 1: near bait piles that wolves hitting are hinting and frequenting
- 54:27Speaker 1: those bait piles. And you're cutting your hounds loose near
- 54:29Speaker 1: bait piles, and it meant that thing starts cutting out,
- 54:32Speaker 1: baying or trailing. Yeah, those wolves are pounding it so up.
- 54:39Speaker 1: So this thing, I'm looking at tracks up till this thing.
- 54:44Speaker 1: I'm looking at tracks up till December. Okay. Now the
- 54:52Speaker 1: running tally so in Wisconsin in these counties. In Wisconsin,
- 54:58Speaker 1: twenty five bear killed and seven bare hounds injured between
- 55:04Speaker 1: July and October twenty twenty three in northern Wisconsin. Wow, jeez,
- 55:09Speaker 1: and that's something. Yeah, that's that's yeah. That's a number, man,
- 55:11Speaker 1: that's a big number. That's just surprising every couple of
- 55:15Speaker 1: days all and it peaks like in that September October
- 55:19Speaker 1: and then trails off obviously in December, pounding on them
- 55:23Speaker 1: trailing dogs. Dang, I don't even know what I think
- 55:29Speaker 1: about that. Yeah, I don't know. Trying to think of
- 55:36Speaker 1: what I think about that. I can see people saying,
- 55:41Speaker 1: if you like your dog's lot, I wouldn't turn them
- 55:43Speaker 1: out on numbars. And I could see someone saying a
- 55:47Speaker 1: lot of wolves. Yeah, I don't even know if I
- 55:53Speaker 1: want to get back into this thing about the bird
- 55:55Speaker 1: name it now?
- 55:57Speaker 2: Oh god, I can see a quick tidbit the well,
- 55:59Speaker 2: I'm curious about it now that you mentioned it. What
- 56:01Speaker 2: do you mean now that you mentioned you did this
- 56:03Speaker 2: bird naming thing?
- 56:04Speaker 1: And did you listen to the show?
- 56:05Speaker 2: Not this one?
- 56:07Speaker 1: This one?
- 56:08Speaker 2: Which episode is it?
- 56:10Speaker 1: Recently?
- 56:11Speaker 3: You and cal and and I was on your side.
- 56:18Speaker 1: The Ornithological Society in the US has moved to rename
- 56:25Speaker 1: seventy bird species. Now they will periodically rename a bird.
- 56:29Speaker 1: For instance, as I pointed out, everyone knows there's a
- 56:32Speaker 1: blue grouse, but the Ornithological Society determined that blue grouse
- 56:37Speaker 1: was capturing actually two distinct species of grouse. So there
- 56:40Speaker 1: became out of blue became dusky and sooty. Yeah, makes sense.
- 56:46Speaker 1: Everyone knows that the old squaw duck, that's a derogatory term,
- 56:55Speaker 1: and many people find that term offensive. So the Ornithological
- 57:00Speaker 1: Society came in and surgically took that duck and renamed
- 57:05Speaker 1: the long tail duck. Now they can't tell you what
- 57:07Speaker 1: the hell to call the dog, but it's just their
- 57:09Speaker 1: take on it. It's not you know, they're not like
- 57:12Speaker 1: the God of birds. But the Ornithological Society moved to
- 57:16Speaker 1: form try to formally rename the old squaw to the
- 57:19Speaker 1: long tail, therefore moving it away. Just like I don't know,
- 57:23Speaker 1: seven or eight squaw peaks, seven or eight, I don't know.
- 57:28Speaker 1: Is that probably more squaw creeks right got new names?
- 57:33Speaker 1: And I used to live in Missoula, Montana. One of
- 57:36Speaker 1: the primary peaks you'd see looking mostly west would be
- 57:40Speaker 1: Squaw Peak, and I remember, maybe as in the late
- 57:43Speaker 1: nineties early two thousands, it became Sacagawea Peak. There's a
- 57:47Speaker 1: Squaw Creek near where I live now that became storm Castle,
- 57:52Speaker 1: which seems like something from the Simpsons.
- 57:55Speaker 2: Storm Castle.
- 57:55Speaker 1: I remember he had storm King was his snowplow.
- 57:58Speaker 2: Oh those plow king, Like he was mister plow, and
- 58:04Speaker 2: then Barney got into it and he was the plow.
- 58:08Speaker 2: He was the competitor at home.
- 58:09Speaker 1: Yeah, like storm Castle. It seems like if you if
- 58:11Speaker 1: you've got one of those really bad realtors, you know
- 58:13Speaker 1: those realtors it does when they do a subdivision and
- 58:16Speaker 1: then name it for what it replaced. So if there
- 58:19Speaker 1: used to be like a bunch of elk meadows, you'd
- 58:21Speaker 1: mow that ship down, pave it over, build a bunch
- 58:24Speaker 1: of houses, and be like, I'm gonna call this subdivision
- 58:27Speaker 1: olk Meadows. I'm gonna call this subdivision cattle Country. So yeah,
- 58:37Speaker 1: storm Castle, which seems like a like a make believe
- 58:42Speaker 1: white castle, like little cheeseburger, like a place that has
- 58:45Speaker 1: a name like we used to hunt an area called
- 58:48Speaker 1: Froze to Death. I'm like, that's a legit name. You
- 58:51Speaker 1: can tell that some that area is Frozen Death, Hanging
- 58:57Speaker 1: Woman Creek. Guess, let me guess storm Castle.
- 59:04Speaker 2: I mean there's no castles your storming.
- 59:06Speaker 1: I got friends that just can't I got friends that
- 59:07Speaker 1: can't stomach it, and they just and they can't call
- 59:09Speaker 1: it that.
- 59:10Speaker 2: Yeah, uh, where was I.
- 59:15Speaker 1: I felt that this?
- 59:17Speaker 3: Oh?
- 59:17Speaker 1: So they now have done the big play and they're like,
- 59:21Speaker 1: no more surgical renaming of things. We're gonna just rename
- 59:27Speaker 1: seventy birds. Any bird named after like any bird named
- 59:33Speaker 1: after a white European, regardless of what that person stood
- 59:38Speaker 1: for or did, gets a new name. And I felt,
- 59:43Speaker 1: and still feel that one it's a publicity grab. Two
- 59:48Speaker 1: it's a lot. It's not surgical. It's just it's blunt.
- 59:54Speaker 1: It's like it just it just reeks to me of
- 59:58Speaker 1: it reeks to me of a pr someone pointed out,
- 1:00:02Speaker 1: and ornithologists pointed out that where this movement is getting
- 1:00:07Speaker 1: some resistance is the international ornithology community, who feels that
- 1:00:15Speaker 1: this is a distinctly American idea.
- 1:00:21Speaker 2: Yeah, do you have an example of a bird?
- 1:00:26Speaker 1: No, just go listen to the episode, Chris.
- 1:00:36Speaker 2: I will, and the listeners should too if they haven't
- 1:00:39Speaker 2: heard it already. So I like that pitch.
- 1:00:41Speaker 1: I'm sure there's birds out there named after. To give
- 1:00:44Speaker 1: you an example, the Stellar's J will no longer be according
- 1:00:49Speaker 1: to these guys, the Stellar's J will cease to be
- 1:00:51Speaker 1: the Stellar's J. They'll probably like the iridescent purple J.
- 1:00:54Speaker 1: But when which is great, they should have named it that.
- 1:00:56Speaker 1: I wish they were named that from the start. Yeah,
- 1:00:58Speaker 1: but at this point it's there.
- 1:00:59Speaker 3: They probably named it Stellar's Jake because some dude named
- 1:01:02Speaker 3: Stellar still last name.
- 1:01:04Speaker 1: Because these dudes used to run around name and everything
- 1:01:06Speaker 1: after themselves. Stellar did a j he did a sea lion,
- 1:01:11Speaker 1: he did an eagle. He doesn't named anything after himself.
- 1:01:14Speaker 1: Was Was he a bad dude? I don't know. It's
- 1:01:17Speaker 1: just fallen out of favor now, like no one names
- 1:01:19Speaker 1: a new bird their own name, But it was the
- 1:01:22Speaker 1: practice in the eighteen hundreds that was a common practice
- 1:01:27Speaker 1: that you would name that. If you scientifically described a species,
- 1:01:30Speaker 1: you would name it. Now the rationale I said, I
- 1:01:33Speaker 1: wasn't going to revisit this whole thing, and here I am.
- 1:01:35Speaker 1: The rationale is they feel that new birders, new birders
- 1:01:42Speaker 1: who aren't of who are not of European descent, who
- 1:01:47Speaker 1: aren't a male of western European descent, that new aspiring
- 1:01:53Speaker 1: birders would be turned off to birding when they saw
- 1:01:59Speaker 1: this crazy, beautiful purple bird feeding on white mark pine cones,
- 1:02:06Speaker 1: white marked pine nuts in the rocky mountains, and they
- 1:02:08Speaker 1: might be like, good gracious, what a gorgeous bird. I'm
- 1:02:11Speaker 1: so happy to learn about that bird. And they look
- 1:02:13Speaker 1: and be like Stellar's jail jay, I'm getting out of
- 1:02:17Speaker 1: this birding. I think the I'm done burden. I think
- 1:02:22Speaker 1: the people that and I don't buy that are.
- 1:02:25Speaker 3: Behind this and using all this energy to go through
- 1:02:30Speaker 3: and change the names of seventy some birds just because
- 1:02:34Speaker 3: they're named after dudes or people. If they took that
- 1:02:39Speaker 3: energy and put that into preserving habitat for these birds
- 1:02:44Speaker 3: to live in, we would all be living in a
- 1:02:47Speaker 3: better world.
- 1:02:50Speaker 1: That's my two cents on it. I yeah, I just
- 1:02:54Speaker 1: I was with them, and now I just think it's yeah,
- 1:02:57Speaker 1: I'm not with them. I do no, no, no, I
- 1:03:00Speaker 1: understood the surgical, occasional renaming. I just think that, like
- 1:03:03Speaker 1: the seventy thing, I just felt like felt like a publicity.
- 1:03:05Speaker 3: So yeah, if it's named after something that's like offensive
- 1:03:08Speaker 3: to someone, obviously.
- 1:03:10Speaker 5: I think that. I think that's that that was the
- 1:03:12Speaker 5: premise that there are certain people who might or do find.
- 1:03:17Speaker 1: Offended just by the fact of offended by the ethnicity
- 1:03:23Speaker 1: of someone that named a bird.
- 1:03:24Speaker 5: That's that's very possible because I don't know for myself
- 1:03:27Speaker 5: the full you know, seventy that have been that had
- 1:03:30Speaker 5: been listed.
- 1:03:31Speaker 1: That's what they're saying. They're saying that not that you're
- 1:03:34Speaker 1: offended by a specific thing that you'd look and be like,
- 1:03:38Speaker 1: it's offensive to me that that individual's distant relatives hailed
- 1:03:46Speaker 1: from Western Europe.
- 1:03:47Speaker 5: If that's that, that's kind of the definition of reverse
- 1:03:52Speaker 5: racism in my opinion.
- 1:03:54Speaker 1: Yeah, you wanna know more something about birds? Sure? Now,
- 1:04:00Speaker 1: every boy dreams of being uh making his uh not
- 1:04:04Speaker 1: every boy, mini boys dream of one day growing up
- 1:04:09Speaker 1: and being like a trapper commercial you know, hunter commercial
- 1:04:15Speaker 1: fishermen like you make your living out hunt. Yep. Well,
- 1:04:18Speaker 1: these fellas in Montana got in that business all the
- 1:04:21Speaker 1: wrong way. Uh. They got into the golden and bald eagle.
- 1:04:29Speaker 1: Oh I right about this business?
- 1:04:32Speaker 2: Oh yeah, right, bro, these dudes did some It was
- 1:04:36Speaker 2: an orchestrated thing.
- 1:04:38Speaker 1: Yeah, they were big time.
- 1:04:40Speaker 2: Over a number of years.
- 1:04:41Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, So they were selling on the black market
- 1:04:49Speaker 1: at pretty good prices, like surprisingly good prices. Speaking of birds,
- 1:04:54Speaker 1: Uh to you guys, I don't need I don't want
- 1:04:55Speaker 1: to give their name. I mean you can find their
- 1:04:57Speaker 1: name they're in Montana, but you know, I don't want
- 1:04:59Speaker 1: to get their name. Uh. Three thousand, six hundred is
- 1:05:05Speaker 1: the number that they're indicted on killing for the mark
- 1:05:10Speaker 1: commercial market three thousand, six hundred golden and bald eagles.
- 1:05:19Speaker 1: Now social media. I remember one time we were in Missouri, No,
- 1:05:23Speaker 1: we were in Kentucky and I met a game warden
- 1:05:24Speaker 1: in the game. We were talking about being out in
- 1:05:26Speaker 1: the field, and I remember he was one of the
- 1:05:27Speaker 1: first people that ever expressed to me any unease about suppressors.
- 1:05:35Speaker 1: And he was talking about man that, uh you know,
- 1:05:39Speaker 1: I was actually talking to new handful of game wardens.
- 1:05:40Speaker 1: I can't remember which one said what, but one of
- 1:05:42Speaker 1: these game wardens was saying, I really rely on that
- 1:05:45Speaker 1: crack of a rifle. He said, I'll be out in
- 1:05:49Speaker 1: my tree stand and off in the distance, and he'd
- 1:05:54Speaker 1: be like something about that ain't right, and he said
- 1:05:57Speaker 1: I'll be down out of my tree heading over there
- 1:06:01Speaker 1: and catching poachers. And so he's like with suppressors, I
- 1:06:04Speaker 1: worry about losing that tool. And a game ward and said,
- 1:06:07Speaker 1: I don't need to go into the field anymore. I
- 1:06:10Speaker 1: have Facebook.
- 1:06:13Speaker 3: So he gains more time in his tree stand though, yeah,
- 1:06:16Speaker 3: he can Facebook in his trees.
- 1:06:17Speaker 1: So this guy had made This guy had tex so
- 1:06:20Speaker 1: this is not social media, but he had text messages people. Uh,
- 1:06:27Speaker 1: he had text message to a guy, you know, like basically,
- 1:06:30Speaker 1: what are you doing? I'm out here committing felonies?
- 1:06:33Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, they're texted them but they knew it man.
- 1:06:36Speaker 1: And another message she said he was out on a
- 1:06:38Speaker 1: killing spree. They illegally sold the on the black market
- 1:06:46Speaker 1: the United States and elsewhere. They ran their scheme from
- 1:06:51Speaker 1: January twenty fifteenth through March twenty twenty one. They sold
- 1:06:55Speaker 1: wings and tails.
- 1:06:58Speaker 2: Does it say how they got busted? Was it like
- 1:07:00Speaker 2: a sting? M?
- 1:07:02Speaker 1: I can't remember now?
- 1:07:04Speaker 3: What are people doing with the wings and tails?
- 1:07:05Speaker 1: Just three hundred and fifty bucks a pop? They were
- 1:07:10Speaker 1: making up to three hundred and fifty dollars. Oh my god,
- 1:07:15Speaker 1: that's per bird.
- 1:07:16Speaker 2: That sounds low, a little low, no knowing a like
- 1:07:21Speaker 2: committing a felony and you're selling it for three point
- 1:07:24Speaker 2: fifty with inflate.
- 1:07:26Speaker 1: Yeah, but you could probably, Yeah, they're probably. I mean
- 1:07:30Speaker 1: I don't I'd have to spend more time on it.
- 1:07:31Speaker 1: But I mean if you got on the if you
- 1:07:33Speaker 1: got on the right deer carcass or two, if if
- 1:07:39Speaker 1: you sit down and shoot a thousand bucks or the eagles, Yeah,
- 1:07:43Speaker 1: and all you're doing is like for processing. You're taking
- 1:07:47Speaker 1: the tail, the wings off. It's dude, Uh, that strikes
- 1:07:53Speaker 1: me as real easy money.
- 1:07:54Speaker 3: Well, yeah, he could probably go set a bunch of
- 1:07:56Speaker 3: legholds around the carcass and have a thousand bucks where
- 1:07:59Speaker 3: the eagles sitting there egles to check it, you know.
- 1:08:02Speaker 1: I mean, and I don't want to say I don't
- 1:08:04Speaker 1: when people taking the wrong way. But if that guy
- 1:08:06Speaker 1: set up shop Southeast Alaska, Oh, he'd buy a private
- 1:08:10Speaker 1: plane yep, on.
- 1:08:14Speaker 2: A dumpster in southeast Alaska. He didn't even have to.
- 1:08:22Speaker 1: So from April thirty, twenty twenty through March thirteenth, twenty one,
- 1:08:29Speaker 1: that's a long time, okay, they sold or offered to
- 1:08:36Speaker 1: sell the parts of whole birds, the parts or whole
- 1:08:42Speaker 1: birds from two bald eagles and eleven golden eagles. One
- 1:08:48Speaker 1: of these guys would travel from the state of Washington
- 1:08:54Speaker 1: out to an Indian reservation in Montana to shoot in
- 1:09:00Speaker 1: and around a reservation area.
- 1:09:02Speaker 2: For whatever reason, I think one of the guys lived
- 1:09:05Speaker 2: on the reservation.
- 1:09:06Speaker 1: He did. In one instance, on March thirteenth, twenty twenty one,
- 1:09:14Speaker 1: the two men quote returned to a previously killed deer
- 1:09:18Speaker 1: lure in eagles. All right, So they'd killed deer lure
- 1:09:21Speaker 1: in eagles facing up to eighteen years behind bars, one
- 1:09:25Speaker 1: of them eighteen years and one of them facing up
- 1:09:27Speaker 1: to fifteen years behind bars. Good surprise, that's it. Yeah,
- 1:09:32Speaker 1: but you know what I meant. It would be a
- 1:09:34Speaker 1: lot worse if they hadn't been delisted.
- 1:09:35Speaker 2: Because oh yeah, yeah, yeah, oh.
- 1:09:38Speaker 1: Do you know what I'm saying? If they had done
- 1:09:41Speaker 1: it in the seventies, if they had done in the seventies,
- 1:09:44Speaker 1: it'd be So it's not a federal offense.
- 1:09:48Speaker 2: It's probably multiple felonies. Right, It's probably felony to kill it,
- 1:09:50Speaker 2: and then felony to sell it, and then there's probably
- 1:09:53Speaker 2: you know, if you're going international, there's probably thousands.
- 1:09:56Speaker 1: That's a good question. Are they in federal or not federal?
- 1:10:00Speaker 3: How many felonies? Seems like there's a lot of felonies,
- 1:10:03Speaker 3: A lot of felonies. When I think of a felony,
- 1:10:09Speaker 3: I think of a lot more time than that.
- 1:10:12Speaker 1: Yeah, where are they indicted? O? Man depends on a felony.
- 1:10:20Speaker 4: A couple of them deer coming in felt like they're
- 1:10:23Speaker 4: coming into sting.
- 1:10:24Speaker 1: Seemed like yeah, like coming on and be like no
- 1:10:30Speaker 1: it's federal. So they're in a federal It's it's a
- 1:10:32Speaker 1: federal deal. You know why it's federal because it'd be
- 1:10:35Speaker 1: Lazy Act, right, because it'd be federal anyways, because they're
- 1:10:40Speaker 1: crossing the state lines to commit a crime automatical nation. Well,
- 1:10:45Speaker 1: because of it, seems like you should be federal. Yeah,
- 1:10:48Speaker 1: well it would be picked up as federal because when
- 1:10:50Speaker 1: you commit a state wildlife crime, when you cross state
- 1:10:52Speaker 1: lines to break a state's wildlife law, it becomes federal.
- 1:10:57Speaker 1: Like if you kidnap someone and drive them across if
- 1:11:00Speaker 1: you were to kidnap someone in Texas and drive into Oklahoma,
- 1:11:05Speaker 1: you're now that's a federal charge. It ceases to be
- 1:11:09Speaker 1: state and goes federal. So because of the Lacey Act,
- 1:11:13Speaker 1: they're moving wildlife parts across state lines and it became
- 1:11:18Speaker 1: a federal US District court. One of them was a
- 1:11:25Speaker 1: shooter and one of them was a shipper. One of
- 1:11:28Speaker 1: them was from the Yeah, one of them lived on
- 1:11:30Speaker 1: the Flathead Indian Reservation. Hmm.
- 1:11:36Speaker 3: I wonder if they thought they'd get around it somehow
- 1:11:39Speaker 3: by being on the reservation.
- 1:11:43Speaker 1: I had to read more. If he's a tribal member,
- 1:11:45Speaker 1: they might have thought they were covered by something and don't.
- 1:11:48Speaker 1: I don't really know why they're not. Yeah, we'll do
- 1:11:52Speaker 1: a better job reporting on this next time we're out,
- 1:11:54Speaker 1: next time we're out hog hunting.
- 1:11:56Speaker 2: Yeah, I haven't seen any other things come in your ears?
- 1:12:00Speaker 5: Everyone there like the way. Yeah, and then they're all
- 1:12:06Speaker 5: they're all out left over there a couple hundred yards.
- 1:12:11Speaker 1: Recent news story about the schizophrenia, cat ownership and skirts
- 1:12:16Speaker 1: of schizophrenia we recently covered a we found out. I've
- 1:12:22Speaker 1: been real interested in people dropping stuff into toilet vaults
- 1:12:26Speaker 1: and then getting going in there and getting stuck in there,
- 1:12:28Speaker 1: like National Forest Spots, fishing access site, magnet.
- 1:12:33Speaker 2: Oh, that's where the most have happened.
- 1:12:35Speaker 1: So I'm gonna say this. I'm gonna say to you, Chris.
- 1:12:37Speaker 1: I'm gonna say, did you listen to the episode where
- 1:12:39Speaker 1: we had the guys on who rescued someone from a
- 1:12:41Speaker 1: vault toilet? And you're gonna say, well, no, not that one.
- 1:12:44Speaker 2: I had not listened to. I don't do a lot
- 1:12:49Speaker 2: of podcasting, So I got a fresh baby that might
- 1:12:54Speaker 2: have preceded her though no.
- 1:12:56Speaker 1: It did so again, uh uh, there's a there's a
- 1:13:03Speaker 1: high pro a case of international significance where someone got
- 1:13:07Speaker 1: stuck in a vault toilet and got rescued. Then later
- 1:13:11Speaker 1: a woman got stuck in a vault toilet trying to
- 1:13:13Speaker 1: fetch her watch out of there, and they couldn't figure
- 1:13:17Speaker 1: out how to get her out because they were trying
- 1:13:19Speaker 1: to take her up through the toilet seat. Oh but
- 1:13:21Speaker 1: one of the responding officers had listened to the podcast,
- 1:13:25Speaker 1: so he knew. He's like, hey, I listened to a
- 1:13:29Speaker 1: podcast about this. You can actually remove the pedestal and
- 1:13:32Speaker 1: fish the person right out of the hole beneath the pedestal. Oh, yeah,
- 1:13:35Speaker 1: saved the day. We've saved. I don't know how many liyes?
- 1:13:39Speaker 1: Can I keep expecting presidential commendation? Dude, Metal of Freedom.
- 1:13:48Speaker 1: Someday I'm gonna be down there at the State of
- 1:13:51Speaker 1: the Union to dress and like Trump's gonna be like
- 1:13:54Speaker 1: tonight we're honoring, going to be It's gonna be us
- 1:14:02Speaker 1: about TURNI quits and how to get people out of
- 1:14:04Speaker 1: vault toilets. So there's then there's like a rash of
- 1:14:09Speaker 1: these vault toilet tragedies near tragedies. Uh, so we're going
- 1:14:17Speaker 1: to close because oh, back to this, so we realize
- 1:14:22Speaker 1: some I don't know who found this guy. There's a
- 1:14:24Speaker 1: guy that sings the news. He takes news stories and
- 1:14:28Speaker 1: to write songs so you don't have to read the news.
- 1:14:32Speaker 1: You can just listen to his songs where he covers
- 1:14:35Speaker 1: the news with piano accompaniments.
- 1:14:39Speaker 5: Yeah, piano news.
- 1:14:41Speaker 1: Reads piano news. So he writes the song about the
- 1:14:44Speaker 1: news story, puts the news story up on social media
- 1:14:47Speaker 1: on one screen, and the the other half is him
- 1:14:49Speaker 1: performing his song about the news. So he did the
- 1:14:54Speaker 1: news on this vault toilet issue. And he says it
- 1:15:01Speaker 1: starts with him saying if I dropped my watch into
- 1:15:06Speaker 1: some public excretion, I say that's it for me. Dog Uh.
- 1:15:19Speaker 1: And he has done one and we're gonna close with it.
- 1:15:24Speaker 4: Uh.
- 1:15:25Speaker 1: Our license on the very controversial ride On by Christopher
- 1:15:29Speaker 1: Denny has expired, and KRINN rather than renewing our rather
- 1:15:33Speaker 1: than forking over our few thousand bucks that it caused
- 1:15:36Speaker 1: us to have Chris Denny's right on for a year,
- 1:15:40Speaker 1: we're gonna switch to only using music that our listeners
- 1:15:44Speaker 1: write and perform.
- 1:15:47Speaker 5: We've gotten a ton of submissions already.
- 1:15:50Speaker 1: Chester the Midwester we use some dog dirt and dirt
- 1:15:53Speaker 1: send one over.
- 1:15:55Speaker 5: Dirt, and if you're not all musical, you could do
- 1:16:00Speaker 5: like spoken word poetry too.
- 1:16:04Speaker 2: The music is I do like I started listening to
- 1:16:08Speaker 2: that day, Henry rollins, I take that back, everybody.
- 1:16:11Speaker 1: We need the music, so for twenty so for twenty
- 1:16:16Speaker 1: twenty four, we're only using listener sourced music to close
- 1:16:20Speaker 1: the show. And we're not going to tell you who's
- 1:16:22Speaker 1: doing it every time, but every time you'll find it
- 1:16:24Speaker 1: the show liner notes and we're only telling you who's
- 1:16:26Speaker 1: doing Knox, We're kicking the whole thing off. This is
- 1:16:29Speaker 1: the first one right mention this. We commissioned it. We
- 1:16:31Speaker 1: sent him, Hey, you like singing about the news, why
- 1:16:34Speaker 1: don't you sing about cats and schizophrenia? So he composed
- 1:16:38Speaker 1: original music. If you don't like to read, you know though,
- 1:16:41Speaker 1: you already heard the story, so we just talked about it.
- 1:16:43Speaker 1: Let's just say you hadn't, or you skip that part here.
- 1:16:46Speaker 1: Now you can hear the news saying to you, oh.
- 1:16:50Speaker 5: But he riffs off it, and you know Signamese cats
- 1:16:54Speaker 5: are involved in this.
- 1:16:56Speaker 1: Yeah, oh wow, yeah, schizophrenia, Siamese cats. You see what
- 1:16:59Speaker 1: this is going on? So, uh dig in, We're gonna
- 1:17:04Speaker 1: go gut Krin's Hog.
- 1:17:06Speaker 5: And stick around for the chapter Oh.
- 1:17:09Speaker 1: And after the song? Yeah, Oh, shoot man, how many
- 1:17:13Speaker 1: people are we gonna lose because they're gonna hear the
- 1:17:16Speaker 1: end of music and turn it off and not already
- 1:17:18Speaker 1: told them about it.
- 1:17:20Speaker 2: Yeah, just stick around, you gotta stick around. The Hunter
- 1:17:23Speaker 2: thing is gonna be good.
- 1:17:25Speaker 1: Man. Do Read's Piano music, and then stay tuned for
- 1:17:28Speaker 1: chapter seven of me Eater's American History, The Long Hunters
- 1:17:33Speaker 1: seventeen sixty one to seventeen seventy five, and remind you
- 1:17:39Speaker 1: what comes after seventeen seventy five, The Revolution seventeen seventy six. Yeah,
- 1:17:47Speaker 1: So if you're wondering, like why those age brackets, you
- 1:17:49Speaker 1: will find out when you listen that. Why what did
- 1:17:53Speaker 1: Daniel Boone and the boys who kind of deer? Why
- 1:17:57Speaker 1: did their era end with the Revolution? You don't know.
- 1:18:02Speaker 8: I have no Chris damn sure don't know what I
- 1:18:05Speaker 8: found out about him today, But I'm not gonna tell
- 1:18:10Speaker 8: because I don't know if his mom listens, Does she
- 1:18:14Speaker 8: listen more than you, because if not, she's not going
- 1:18:17Speaker 8: to hear it.
- 1:18:18Speaker 2: I don't know if she knows what a podcast is.
- 1:18:21Speaker 1: She's like, I didn't listen to that episode. Alright, stay
- 1:18:28Speaker 1: tuned for reads. What's it called? Reads?
- 1:18:30Speaker 5: Pianos Reads?
- 1:18:31Speaker 1: Piano news? Chapter seven, Long Hunters, Thank you guys, got some?
- 1:18:41Speaker 1: He ain't got a twin thinks now hearing voices, this
- 1:18:48Speaker 1: can't say to breathe? And who's that other guy in
- 1:18:51Speaker 1: my house watching me? Maybe I can't do ball?
- 1:18:59Speaker 6: The last time I think I fought in North am
- 1:19:03Speaker 6: I going in sade?
- 1:19:07Speaker 1: This really?
- 1:19:08Speaker 4: Is this a fantasy?
- 1:19:10Speaker 1: How come I bought that cat? Now there's me my
- 1:19:14Speaker 1: hear cat owners saying, I think I'm lost my bad
- 1:19:17Speaker 1: Based the pony studies, I think they're probably right Saturdays.
- 1:19:21Speaker 6: If I don't, If I don't, please, I'm gonna need
- 1:19:25Speaker 6: some pett and balls.
- 1:19:26Speaker 3: It's their paint.
- 1:19:27Speaker 7: Forty five cat came on, thinking, bye, are you okay?
- 1:19:31Speaker 1: The straight jacket's only come in light? Chapter seven? Gearing up.
- 1:19:52Speaker 1: Becoming a successful long hunter required more than steely nerves,
- 1:19:56Speaker 1: the hunger for adventure, and an intimate knowledge of the land, escape,
- 1:20:00Speaker 1: and wildlife of the first Far West. Without the right tools,
- 1:20:05Speaker 1: you were not gonna last long. In seventeen sixty nine,
- 1:20:15Speaker 1: a large party of long hunters, some twenty or more,
- 1:20:18Speaker 1: assembled in the frontier settlements along the New River in
- 1:20:22Speaker 1: western Virginia. The men had plans to hunt the Cumberland
- 1:20:26Speaker 1: River drainage on the far side of the Cumberland Gap.
- 1:20:29Speaker 1: You'll recognize some of their names, Casper Mansker, the Bledsoe brothers,
- 1:20:34Speaker 1: and John Baker. Two years earlier, Baker had been on
- 1:20:38Speaker 1: that ill fated trip to New Orleans where his party
- 1:20:41Speaker 1: boded their hides down the Mississippi, sold them off, and
- 1:20:45Speaker 1: got robbed of their cash on the way home. Despite
- 1:20:49Speaker 1: the obvious risks, the call of opportunity prevailed. Setting out
- 1:20:54Speaker 1: in June, this newly assembled party took the Warriors Path
- 1:20:58Speaker 1: across the headwaters of the Tennis River, moving through the
- 1:21:01Speaker 1: Cumberland Gap to the Cumberland River. They then traveled downstream
- 1:21:06Speaker 1: to where Meadow Creek flowed in. That's where they'd set
- 1:21:09Speaker 1: up their station camp in a spot known as Price's Meadow.
- 1:21:14Speaker 1: If you're looking for that place today, it's on the
- 1:21:17Speaker 1: south side of the Cumberland River. You can just look
- 1:21:20Speaker 1: for a historical marker near Rubbing Bucks Barbecue.
- 1:21:25Speaker 9: The party broke up into groups of three or four hunters,
- 1:21:28Speaker 9: and they got after it. Every five weeks, the groups
- 1:21:31Speaker 9: planned to return to their station camp with their harvests
- 1:21:34Speaker 9: of hides loaded on their horses. The hunt was successful.
- 1:21:39Speaker 9: Within a few months, the party hit amassed some five
- 1:21:42Speaker 9: hundred white tailed deerskins, but one day a group of
- 1:21:46Speaker 9: twenty five Cherokees discovered their camp while the men were
- 1:21:50Speaker 9: out hunting. The cherokees stole the long hunter's cash and
- 1:21:54Speaker 9: some of their gunpowder. They also took off with some clothing,
- 1:21:58Speaker 9: pots and kettles.
- 1:22:01Speaker 1: With what little gunpowder the long hunters had left, continuing
- 1:22:05Speaker 1: to hunt would have been feudle, so Isaac bledsoel rowed
- 1:22:09Speaker 1: back to the settlements with some of the men to resupply.
- 1:22:13Speaker 1: Upon their return, the hunt resumed. The men hunted until
- 1:22:17Speaker 1: April of seventeen seventy, when half the party hauled a
- 1:22:21Speaker 1: pack train of deerskins and furs back east.
- 1:22:26Speaker 9: Casper Mansker and the remainder of the long hunters stayed behind.
- 1:22:30Speaker 9: They decided to build two boats and two trapping canoes,
- 1:22:34Speaker 9: which would have been made from bark sown over a
- 1:22:37Speaker 9: frame of lashed saplings. They also made use of a
- 1:22:41Speaker 9: third boat that had been abandoned on site, perhaps by
- 1:22:44Speaker 9: French hunters or traders. The hunters loaded up their hides
- 1:22:49Speaker 9: and meet and gear, and started to head down river
- 1:22:52Speaker 9: to the colonial settlement of Natchez on the Mississippi. This
- 1:22:56Speaker 9: was an incredible journey of hundreds of river miles. The
- 1:22:59Speaker 9: men would have canoed down the Cumberland River to the Ohio,
- 1:23:03Speaker 9: down the Ohio to the Mississippi, and down the Mississippi
- 1:23:06Speaker 9: to Natchez. At French Lick, the present day site of Nashville, Tennessee,
- 1:23:12Speaker 9: they saw what was, by all accounts, the largest number
- 1:23:15Speaker 9: of buffalo and wild game they had ever encountered in
- 1:23:19Speaker 9: any one place. After killing a few of the animals
- 1:23:22Speaker 9: and using their hides to cover their open boats, they
- 1:23:26Speaker 9: continued downriver until they reached the mouth of the Cumberland.
- 1:23:31Speaker 1: At this point, the men were dealing with some spoilage
- 1:23:34Speaker 1: in the bear meat that they'd harvested back in the
- 1:23:36Speaker 1: Cumberland River country, not surprising given the length of their
- 1:23:40Speaker 1: journey and this being the warmer months of the year,
- 1:23:43Speaker 1: so they decided to convert some of the bear meat
- 1:23:46Speaker 1: into bear greece. To do this, they would have discarded
- 1:23:50Speaker 1: the lean red meat and retained just the fat. They
- 1:23:53Speaker 1: then simmer the fat in kettles to separate the oil
- 1:23:56Speaker 1: or grease from the solids. The valuable grease would have
- 1:24:01Speaker 1: likely been sewn into sacks made of deer, elk, or
- 1:24:04Speaker 1: buffalo hide. During this process of rendering bear grease, they
- 1:24:08Speaker 1: get robbed again. A war party at Chickasaws makes off
- 1:24:13Speaker 1: with their guns and ammunition. At this point, you'd be
- 1:24:18Speaker 1: justified in assuming that this long hunting party would come
- 1:24:21Speaker 1: to an end. I mean enough bad luck is enough, right,
- 1:24:25Speaker 1: But it does not come to an end. The Chickasaws
- 1:24:29Speaker 1: didn't take the white men's oils or furs, so the
- 1:24:33Speaker 1: hunters continue downstream, and they eventually are able to sell
- 1:24:37Speaker 1: their skins and bear grease in Natches. After the sale,
- 1:24:42Speaker 1: some of the men commence their journey homeward, but Casper
- 1:24:46Speaker 1: Mansker stays a while in Natches, likely because he seems
- 1:24:50Speaker 1: to have gotten sick. Upon recovering, he too sets out
- 1:24:54Speaker 1: for home, traveling upriver in a boat with John Baker.
- 1:24:59Speaker 1: The two men events actually join up with a party
- 1:25:01Speaker 1: of horse traders who are heading over land to Georgia.
- 1:25:05Speaker 1: Mansker and Baker then break off from the horse traders
- 1:25:09Speaker 1: and cut north through East Tennessee and then finally onto
- 1:25:13Speaker 1: the New River, likely arriving in late summer or early
- 1:25:18Speaker 1: autumn after more than a year away from home. Now
- 1:25:23Speaker 1: that is what you would call a long hunt.
- 1:25:27Speaker 9: There's a lot to take in about that story. One
- 1:25:30Speaker 9: of the main things that might have surprised you was
- 1:25:33Speaker 9: the way the Native American hunters took some supplies from
- 1:25:36Speaker 9: the hunting party that they saw as trespassers, but they
- 1:25:39Speaker 9: didn't take everything from them. In the following chapter, we'll
- 1:25:42Speaker 9: be talking about why something like that might happen. But
- 1:25:46Speaker 9: what we're gonna dive into here is the critical nature
- 1:25:49Speaker 9: of those supplies and equipment used by the long hunters,
- 1:25:53Speaker 9: from guns and ammunition to knives and hatchets. We're going
- 1:25:57Speaker 9: to cover the gear that allowed them to do what
- 1:25:59Speaker 9: they did.
- 1:26:01Speaker 1: We'll begin with one of the most iconic pieces of
- 1:26:04Speaker 1: the long hunter's kit, the Kentucky Rifle, also known as
- 1:26:09Speaker 1: the Kentucky Long Rifle. Not only is it central to
- 1:26:12Speaker 1: their adventures, it remains one of the most legendary guns
- 1:26:16Speaker 1: in American history. The rifles weren't just renowned for their
- 1:26:20Speaker 1: function and aesthetic. These were the first uniquely American firearms.
- 1:26:25Speaker 1: We're gonna get into some finer details about these guns,
- 1:26:29Speaker 1: but let's first cover the very basics the long hunters
- 1:26:33Speaker 1: hunted with flintlock muzzleloading rifles. We'll get to the flintlock
- 1:26:39Speaker 1: part in a few minutes, but let's first look at
- 1:26:41Speaker 1: what specifically a muzzleloader is by talking about what it
- 1:26:46Speaker 1: is not. If you look at your standard rifle or
- 1:26:49Speaker 1: shotgun that you're gonna use for this year's deer or
- 1:26:52Speaker 1: duck season, you'll see that the shell is loaded into
- 1:26:56Speaker 1: the breach of the gun, meaning it's loaded into the
- 1:26:59Speaker 1: end of the barrel that you're standing at, not the
- 1:27:02Speaker 1: end where the bullet comes out. Well, that's the defining
- 1:27:06Speaker 1: feature of a muzzleloader. A muzzle loader is loaded from
- 1:27:11Speaker 1: the muzzle end or the front opening of the barrel,
- 1:27:15Speaker 1: and these guns weren't loaded with complete cartridges that combined
- 1:27:19Speaker 1: primer gunpowder and a lead projectile in a brass casing. Instead,
- 1:27:25Speaker 1: the load, or shell as we call it, was assembled
- 1:27:29Speaker 1: by the hunter inside the barrel. First, a hunter would
- 1:27:33Speaker 1: pour a charge of loose gunpowder down the barrel. They
- 1:27:38Speaker 1: could measure it out or just take a good guess
- 1:27:41Speaker 1: and free pour it. Then they'd take the bullet, which
- 1:27:45Speaker 1: was a simple lead ball, and wrap it in a patch,
- 1:27:49Speaker 1: a greased piece of fabric or thin leather that cradled
- 1:27:53Speaker 1: the ball like how a Hershey's kiss is cradled in
- 1:27:56Speaker 1: its wrapping of aluminum foil. That package of ball and
- 1:28:01Speaker 1: patch would be shoved down the barrel with a ramrod.
- 1:28:05Speaker 1: It was a pretty tight fit. Now, it's important to
- 1:28:08Speaker 1: keep in mind that all Kentucky long rifles were muzzleloaders,
- 1:28:13Speaker 1: but not all muzzleloaders were Kentucky long rifles. And it's
- 1:28:17Speaker 1: also important to note that the long hunters journeying into
- 1:28:21Speaker 1: Kentucky wouldn't have said they were carrying Kentucky long rifles.
- 1:28:26Speaker 1: That name didn't take hold until later in the seventeen eighties,
- 1:28:30Speaker 1: and in fact it was something of a misnomer then,
- 1:28:34Speaker 1: as the rifles would be more accurately associated with Pennsylvania,
- 1:28:39Speaker 1: where they took on their defining characteristics. You'll actually see
- 1:28:44Speaker 1: them referred to as Pennsylvania rifles here and there in
- 1:28:48Speaker 1: the historical record.
- 1:28:50Speaker 9: So this can all be a bit confusing whether you
- 1:28:54Speaker 9: call them Kentucky rifles or Pennsylvania rifles. These iconic weapons
- 1:28:59Speaker 9: derived from a pres that assessor weapon that arrived in
- 1:29:01Speaker 9: North America with distinctly European roots. That early gun, the Jaeger,
- 1:29:07Speaker 9: was shaped by a combination of two key design features.
- 1:29:12Speaker 9: One was German and it's called rifling. Now, we mentioned
- 1:29:16Speaker 9: this word a minute ago, and it's important, as rifling
- 1:29:19Speaker 9: is where the word rifle comes from. Rifling refers to
- 1:29:22Speaker 9: the spiral grooves that are cut into the inside or
- 1:29:25Speaker 9: bore of a rifle's barrel. Historians disagree on how this
- 1:29:29Speaker 9: innovation came to be, but regardless, rifling is what gives
- 1:29:33Speaker 9: a slug or projectile it's spin.
- 1:29:36Speaker 1: Just like a good spiral pass with a football.
- 1:29:39Speaker 9: A spinning projectile is stable in flight and thus much
- 1:29:42Speaker 9: more accurate. We just explained how a musloading rifle is
- 1:29:46Speaker 9: loaded with the fully assembled load of powder, patch and
- 1:29:50Speaker 9: ball crammed down the end of the barrel. Well, the
- 1:29:53Speaker 9: only thing left to do in order to make that
- 1:29:56Speaker 9: gun go boom is somehow ignite the gunpowder. That's where
- 1:30:00Speaker 9: the term flintlock comes into play. The flintlock ignition system
- 1:30:05Speaker 9: was a design tradition that came from the French, or
- 1:30:07Speaker 9: rather it exploded out of Paris.
- 1:30:10Speaker 2: With much enthusiasm.
- 1:30:12Speaker 9: This ignition system replaced earlier cruder mechanisms designed for the
- 1:30:16Speaker 9: same purpose. The flintlock system featured a spring loaded hammer
- 1:30:21Speaker 9: that was fitted with a small chunk of flint held
- 1:30:23Speaker 9: in place by a clamp. Pull the rifle's trigger, and
- 1:30:27Speaker 9: the hammer crashed down on a hinged piece of steel
- 1:30:30Speaker 9: that flung open to reveal a small pan of gunpowder.
- 1:30:35Speaker 9: In a synchronized bit of wonderment, the flint hitting the
- 1:30:39Speaker 9: steel created a flash of sparks that landed right into
- 1:30:42Speaker 9: the now exposed pan of powder, igniting it. The flames
- 1:30:46Speaker 9: from this ignition would jump through a touch hole in
- 1:30:49Speaker 9: the side of the barrel and ignite the much bigger
- 1:30:52Speaker 9: load of gunpowder. Within bang, a rather boom out comes
- 1:30:58Speaker 9: the lead ball spin smooth and fast thanks to the rifling.
- 1:31:03Speaker 9: As an aside, when you hear somebody say a flash
- 1:31:06Speaker 9: in the pan to describe something short lived or less
- 1:31:10Speaker 9: than promised, that's where the same comes from, a little
- 1:31:13Speaker 9: blast of powder that failed to ignite the main charge.
- 1:31:18Speaker 1: When German gunsmiths, the pioneers of rifling, adopted the French flintlock,
- 1:31:25Speaker 1: the result was this rifle known as a yagger. Now,
- 1:31:28Speaker 1: for you connoisseurs of yagermeister, that's German for hunter. So
- 1:31:34Speaker 1: how do we get a uniquely American gun. From this
- 1:31:37Speaker 1: European lineage, well Yaggers came to North America in the
- 1:31:41Speaker 1: seventeen hundreds with the German immigrants who would settle in
- 1:31:45Speaker 1: the Lancaster Valley of Pennsylvania. Lancaster became the largest western
- 1:31:50Speaker 1: town in Colonial America, and as it grew and as
- 1:31:53Speaker 1: folks migrated from there down through the Shanandoah Valley, those
- 1:31:58Speaker 1: gunsmithing traditions spread. Now, keep in mind these guns. Back then,
- 1:32:04Speaker 1: these muzzleloaders were entirely handmade. Every spring and screw and
- 1:32:10Speaker 1: piece of metal, no matter how small, was built by
- 1:32:14Speaker 1: the hands of an individual gunsmith. There are an infinite
- 1:32:18Speaker 1: number of little details we could get into about this process,
- 1:32:22Speaker 1: but here's just one. The barrel started out as flat
- 1:32:25Speaker 1: pieces of metal, basically long flat bars that were actually
- 1:32:30Speaker 1: hammered into cylinders. The hole in the middle of one
- 1:32:34Speaker 1: of these cylinders would be smoothed, polished, and rifled. Will
- 1:32:38Speaker 1: explain that in a minute too, with nothing but crude
- 1:32:42Speaker 1: hand tools. The making of these rifles was an intricate
- 1:32:46Speaker 1: expression of the finest craftsmanship, and these designs evolved not
- 1:32:52Speaker 1: in a board room or in the R and D
- 1:32:54Speaker 1: lab of some company, but in the hands of individual
- 1:32:57Speaker 1: gunsmiths working on individuals guns informed by the feedback of
- 1:33:03Speaker 1: individual customers.
- 1:33:06Speaker 9: Two further innovations took place that would turn the Jaeger
- 1:33:10Speaker 9: into the Kentucky rifle, and they both happened in the
- 1:33:13Speaker 9: New World. One was the lengthening of the barrel, which
- 1:33:16Speaker 9: would typically be forty to forty eight inches long. The
- 1:33:20Speaker 9: iconic long barrel gave the charge of powder more time
- 1:33:24Speaker 9: to full ignite, increasing the SHOT's velocity, and the longer
- 1:33:28Speaker 9: trajectory out of the barrel also increased accuracy by stabilizing
- 1:33:32Speaker 9: the projectile's path. The second innovation that defined the Kentucky
- 1:33:37Speaker 9: rifle was a shrinking of the bore size, which meant
- 1:33:41Speaker 9: the gun fired a smaller projectile. European guns at the
- 1:33:45Speaker 9: time traditionally shot larger projectiles up to seventy five caliber
- 1:33:50Speaker 9: or more, meaning a sphere of lead about three quarters
- 1:33:53Speaker 9: of an inch wide. For a long hunter in particular,
- 1:33:57Speaker 9: there was an obvious advantage to the smaller It helped
- 1:34:01Speaker 9: reduce the amount of powder and lead they needed to
- 1:34:03Speaker 9: carry with them into the back country.
- 1:34:17Speaker 1: Back in those days, they weren't talking in the same
- 1:34:19Speaker 1: caliber nomenclatures used today. Their common unit of measurement for
- 1:34:24Speaker 1: bore diameter was how many balls for a particular rifle
- 1:34:29Speaker 1: could be produced from a single pound of lead, which
- 1:34:32Speaker 1: would translate roughly to how many deer could be killed
- 1:34:36Speaker 1: with a single pound of lead. Think of a modern
- 1:34:39Speaker 1: day conversation about fuel economy and cars. Someone might say
- 1:34:43Speaker 1: my car gets twenty five miles to the gallon of gas. Well,
- 1:34:45Speaker 1: a long hunter might note that his gun got forty
- 1:34:49Speaker 1: eight shots to the pound of lead. One source described
- 1:34:54Speaker 1: Pennsylvania rifles in general as firing quote a ball no
- 1:34:59Speaker 1: larger than thirty six to the pound, which would be
- 1:35:03Speaker 1: a fifty three caliber meaning a bore diameter of zero
- 1:35:07Speaker 1: point five to three inches, so just barely over a
- 1:35:11Speaker 1: half inch wide. For comparison's sake, a roughly forty five
- 1:35:16Speaker 1: caliber rifle, which was preferred by most long hunters, would
- 1:35:20Speaker 1: get about forty to forty eight balls per pound of lead.
- 1:35:25Speaker 1: I'll point out that this ball's per pound of lead
- 1:35:28Speaker 1: measurement is actually where our contemporary shotgun gauge system that
- 1:35:33Speaker 1: we use today comes from. When you hear a shotgun
- 1:35:37Speaker 1: described as a twelve gage or twenty gauge that's a
- 1:35:40Speaker 1: reference to how many lead balls of a particular diameter
- 1:35:44Speaker 1: you can make out of a pound of lead. Meaning,
- 1:35:47Speaker 1: if you cast twelve spherical lead balls with the diameter
- 1:35:51Speaker 1: matching the diameter of the barrel of your twelve gage shotgun,
- 1:35:55Speaker 1: they would add up to one pound. Likewise, if you
- 1:35:59Speaker 1: divide a single pound of lead into twenty equal spheres,
- 1:36:04Speaker 1: those spheres would be the bore diameter of your twenty
- 1:36:08Speaker 1: gage shotgun.
- 1:36:10Speaker 9: The long hunters in their contemporaries thought of rifles and
- 1:36:14Speaker 9: ammunition in this way balls per pound, because they weren't
- 1:36:18Speaker 9: carrying the set quantity of round balls or bullets into
- 1:36:21Speaker 9: the back country. They were casting these projectiles themselves out
- 1:36:25Speaker 9: of bars of lead. This was the most efficient means
- 1:36:28Speaker 9: of transporting all of the ammunition they'd need in the
- 1:36:31Speaker 9: first far West. They hauled their lead in bars that
- 1:36:34Speaker 9: weighed several pounds each. Then to form bullets, they would
- 1:36:38Speaker 9: cast that lead into round projectiles over a campfire by
- 1:36:42Speaker 9: pouring molten lead into a cast. Achieving some level of
- 1:36:46Speaker 9: consistency was important. Bullets needed to be smooth and relatively
- 1:36:51Speaker 9: clean of creases, seams, and pitting. We can only imagine
- 1:36:55Speaker 9: that casting bullets must have been a frequent activity at
- 1:36:58Speaker 9: the station camps where the long hunters deposited their skins
- 1:37:02Speaker 9: and stored their supplies. Stores of lead and melting ladles
- 1:37:06Speaker 9: which they'd used to melt and pour their lead were
- 1:37:09Speaker 9: communal gear that was left at camp, but each individual
- 1:37:12Speaker 9: hunter would have had a bullet cast that matched his
- 1:37:15Speaker 9: own rifle. Keep in mind these weapons were all handmade
- 1:37:18Speaker 9: by individual gunsmiths, and each had their own unique irregularities
- 1:37:24Speaker 9: and specifications.
- 1:37:26Speaker 1: Another chore required to keep their guns running would have
- 1:37:29Speaker 1: been napping or shaping flint from fist sized pieces of
- 1:37:33Speaker 1: suitable rock chirt or obsidian, the same types of rock
- 1:37:37Speaker 1: that Native Americans used to make arrowheads. This flint, when
- 1:37:41Speaker 1: struck against steel, was what produced the spark. Although we
- 1:37:45Speaker 1: don't have any sort of detailed insight on this point
- 1:37:48Speaker 1: through lime and draper or our other sources, we can
- 1:37:52Speaker 1: only imagine that the long hunters would keep in camp
- 1:37:55Speaker 1: a store of chirt or other toolstone that they could
- 1:37:58Speaker 1: shape into flints if they did run out. This was
- 1:38:02Speaker 1: one supply that would have been relatively easy for them
- 1:38:06Speaker 1: to source out in the field.
- 1:38:09Speaker 9: Gunpowder with something else long hunters might have known how
- 1:38:12Speaker 9: to produce on their own. In a pinch, it could
- 1:38:15Speaker 9: be made from a concoction of batguano, sulfur, wood, ash,
- 1:38:20Speaker 9: and the dowsing of their own urine, But all available
- 1:38:23Speaker 9: evidence suggests they simply purchased powder back in the settlements.
- 1:38:27Speaker 9: Outside of the most dire circumstances, high quality gunpowder imported
- 1:38:32Speaker 9: from Great Britain and her other colonies was readily available,
- 1:38:36Speaker 9: and it was cheap, so cheap that domestic manufacture of
- 1:38:39Speaker 9: gunpowder in the colonies that became the United States was
- 1:38:43Speaker 9: not economically viable. There were exceptions in periods when trade
- 1:38:47Speaker 9: was interrupted or when Great Britain was in a state
- 1:38:51Speaker 9: of war and restricted the supply of gunpowder going outside
- 1:38:54Speaker 9: of its borders, but generally, gunpowder in the colonies came
- 1:38:59Speaker 9: from overseas and it was abundant. The counts frequently mentioned
- 1:39:03Speaker 9: that the long hunters set out with large supplies of
- 1:39:06Speaker 9: lead and powder. They'd transport this powder and store it
- 1:39:09Speaker 9: in their station camps and larger containers, probably small kegs,
- 1:39:14Speaker 9: but individual hunters would carry their powder in the field
- 1:39:17Speaker 9: in a powder horn, another essential piece of gear made
- 1:39:21Speaker 9: from the horn of a cow or buffalo. It would
- 1:39:24Speaker 9: be fitted with a stopper at the pointy end and
- 1:39:27Speaker 9: used to pour a charge of powder down the muzzle
- 1:39:30Speaker 9: of the gun.
- 1:39:32Speaker 1: As we saw at the top of this chapter, those supplies,
- 1:39:35Speaker 1: along with the rifles themselves, were sometimes seized by Native
- 1:39:39Speaker 1: Americans when they ran into parties of white men hunting
- 1:39:42Speaker 1: on their land. The long hunter's rifles made an attractive
- 1:39:46Speaker 1: prize because they were way better than the type of
- 1:39:49Speaker 1: guns the Soul called trade guns that were in wide
- 1:39:53Speaker 1: circulation among Native people. These trade guns were smooth bore
- 1:39:57Speaker 1: guns or muskets that were produced use relatively cheaply in
- 1:40:01Speaker 1: Europe and were frequently traded with the Native Americans by
- 1:40:05Speaker 1: the colonial deer skin traders in exchange for deer hides.
- 1:40:09Speaker 1: Smooth bore guns had smooth bores, so none of the
- 1:40:13Speaker 1: rifling or spiraling grooves that gave the Kentucky rifle its
- 1:40:18Speaker 1: accuracy by forcing bullets to spin as they exited the barrel.
- 1:40:23Speaker 1: But smooth bore guns could be loaded more quickly, and
- 1:40:27Speaker 1: again could be produced more cheaply. You could outfit an
- 1:40:31Speaker 1: army with smooth bore guns for less money, so they
- 1:40:35Speaker 1: were around. But when Native Americans ran into parties of
- 1:40:38Speaker 1: long hunters on their traditional hunting grounds, they would often
- 1:40:42Speaker 1: take the opportunity to, let's say, exchange those smooth boar
- 1:40:47Speaker 1: guns for the long hunter's Kentucky rifles. We'll be hearing
- 1:40:51Speaker 1: more about this interesting dynamic of theft and trade in
- 1:40:55Speaker 1: the following chapter. There's a lot more to say.
- 1:40:59Speaker 9: To get back to the elements that comprise the long
- 1:41:02Speaker 9: hunter's kit. Other than their rifles and necessary paraphernalia, the
- 1:41:07Speaker 9: cutting tools carried by long hunters with the most essential
- 1:41:10Speaker 9: pieces of gear they had. Many would have carried what
- 1:41:14Speaker 9: was then called a clasp or folder knife, what we
- 1:41:17Speaker 9: would today just call a pocket knife or a jackknife.
- 1:41:21Speaker 9: They also carried larger fixed blade knives, commonly described in
- 1:41:26Speaker 9: the historic record as butcher knives or sometimes scalping knives,
- 1:41:31Speaker 9: six to ten inches long. They were used for all
- 1:41:33Speaker 9: manner of purposes, eating, scanning, fighting, whittling, carving, and yes,
- 1:41:39Speaker 9: at times, removing human scalps. Most blades were imported from Europe,
- 1:41:45Speaker 9: typically without handles, the owner would fashion and attach their own.
- 1:41:50Speaker 9: Some surviving examples from this period have handles made from
- 1:41:53Speaker 9: deer antlers. These would have been in ready supply given
- 1:41:57Speaker 9: the occupation of the long hunters, and if you hear
- 1:42:00Speaker 9: of a stag handle knife, that's what they were talking about.
- 1:42:03Speaker 1: The antler handle.
- 1:42:05Speaker 9: Modern blade steels are much stronger than what they had
- 1:42:08Speaker 9: around then, and our knives hold a sharper edge than
- 1:42:12Speaker 9: could be expected of the blades carried by long hunters.
- 1:42:15Speaker 9: This meant they would frequently need to sharpen their knives,
- 1:42:18Speaker 9: quite likely with stones found nearby. A smooth and wet
- 1:42:22Speaker 9: river cobble would have been an adequate tool to sharpen
- 1:42:25Speaker 9: the soft steel that was in use back then.
- 1:42:29Speaker 1: As ubiquitous as these knives were, a small axe was
- 1:42:33Speaker 1: just as critical to the long hunter's kit. Some folks
- 1:42:36Speaker 1: might use the words hatchets, belt axes, and tomahawks interchangeably today,
- 1:42:42Speaker 1: but to the long hunters there were key distinctions. Long
- 1:42:47Speaker 1: hunters like Boone would have carried a belt axe. These
- 1:42:50Speaker 1: were hung from the belt or carried on a shoulder
- 1:42:52Speaker 1: strap and secured beneath the belt. They were smaller than
- 1:42:56Speaker 1: what you might be picturing, maybe twelve inches or so
- 1:42:59Speaker 1: overall and weighing less than a pound. The head of
- 1:43:02Speaker 1: the axe had a squarish appearance. The pole the end
- 1:43:07Speaker 1: opposite the bit or cutting surface was flat and rectangular,
- 1:43:11Speaker 1: and could be used as a hammer for any number
- 1:43:14Speaker 1: of tasks. The eye, or the opening in which the
- 1:43:17Speaker 1: handle was seated, was a tapered, oblong shape. As they
- 1:43:22Speaker 1: would with a knife. The owner of a belt axe
- 1:43:25Speaker 1: would commonly need to haft it or put a handle
- 1:43:28Speaker 1: on it themselves.
- 1:43:31Speaker 9: These belt axes were different from a round poled, round
- 1:43:34Speaker 9: eyed trade axe that sleek distinctive profile we would most
- 1:43:38Speaker 9: commonly call it tomahawk, and from the long axes these
- 1:43:42Speaker 9: men would have carried on their horses for use in
- 1:43:44Speaker 9: shelter building or other big projects. We can certainly imagine
- 1:43:49Speaker 9: that when Casper Mansker and its contingent decided to build
- 1:43:52Speaker 9: canoes for that long ride down river to Natchez, they
- 1:43:56Speaker 9: would have used belt axes to pill away the sheaves
- 1:43:59Speaker 9: of elmbark used for the hulls of the boats, for
- 1:44:02Speaker 9: butchering bison and elk, setting traps, shaping and pounding stakes
- 1:44:06Speaker 9: for shelter, and any number of other tasks in which
- 1:44:09Speaker 9: long hunters had to reshape some part of their environment
- 1:44:13Speaker 9: to better suit their needs. The belt axe was indispensable.
- 1:44:18Speaker 1: When it came to equipment. Long hunters needed practical, utilitarian
- 1:44:22Speaker 1: items that served multiple purposes and that they could repair themselves.
- 1:44:28Speaker 1: They had to shoe horses, do leather work, and build
- 1:44:30Speaker 1: all manner of items necessary to the hunt, such as canoes, shelters,
- 1:44:35Speaker 1: and fur and hide handling equipment like fleshing beams and
- 1:44:39Speaker 1: stretching boards. Steel traps cost six to eight dollars a
- 1:44:43Speaker 1: piece back then, making them one of the most significant
- 1:44:47Speaker 1: costs of a long hunt. Tuning and repairing traps required
- 1:44:51Speaker 1: the skill set of a blacksmith, as they often needed
- 1:44:54Speaker 1: to fabricate trap parts, including pans and triggers. Gunsmithing skills
- 1:44:59Speaker 1: were ass essential. Boon and likely other long hunters could
- 1:45:03Speaker 1: skillfully restock a rifle, repair and replace parts, nap flints
- 1:45:08Speaker 1: for the ignition system, and generally troubles you any issues
- 1:45:12Speaker 1: that arolls with a rifle while on the hunt. Among
- 1:45:15Speaker 1: the tools they would bring were files, bellows to heat
- 1:45:19Speaker 1: up the fire for metal working purposes, and what they
- 1:45:22Speaker 1: called a hand vice.
- 1:45:25Speaker 9: Also known as a gunsmith's vice or a clockmaker's device.
- 1:45:29Speaker 9: A hand vice was used to hold small objects being
- 1:45:32Speaker 9: worked on.
- 1:45:33Speaker 1: Picture a large.
- 1:45:34Speaker 9: Pair of tweezers with wider jaws, or the type of
- 1:45:38Speaker 9: pliers you'd use for putting seams in sheet metal. The
- 1:45:41Speaker 9: jaws were spring loaded and tightened with a wing nut
- 1:45:45Speaker 9: and screw. Long hunters also traveled with what's called a
- 1:45:49Speaker 9: screw plate, a plate of iron with different sized threadholes
- 1:45:53Speaker 9: cut into it, forcing a piece of metal through the
- 1:45:56Speaker 9: holes that would impart an external thread to a screw's surface.
- 1:46:00Speaker 9: If you've done some basic machining, you're probably familiar with
- 1:46:04Speaker 9: what it looks like to tap a hole using a
- 1:46:06Speaker 9: cutting implement to create or clean up internal threads. This
- 1:46:11Speaker 9: is a bit like the inverse of that process, and
- 1:46:13Speaker 9: they would have used it to fashion replacement hardware for
- 1:46:16Speaker 9: their rifles or traps. It's remarkable to consider that the
- 1:46:20Speaker 9: long hunters and other travelers in the back country were
- 1:46:24Speaker 9: actually fabricating metal parts. Today you might bring along a
- 1:46:28Speaker 9: multi tool on a long back country hunt. These guys
- 1:46:31Speaker 9: were bringing along complete miniature workshops alls.
- 1:46:36Speaker 1: Which were tools used to punch holes in leather, where
- 1:46:39Speaker 1: another vital piece of equipment often mentioned in the sources.
- 1:46:44Speaker 1: These would sometimes fold out from the backside of a
- 1:46:47Speaker 1: clasp knife. The reason that all was so indispensable is
- 1:46:52Speaker 1: quite simple. In addition to being metal workers, occasional gunsmiths
- 1:46:56Speaker 1: and woodworkers. The long hunters were also hobblers, and that's
- 1:47:01Speaker 1: because one item that would have been in constant need
- 1:47:04Speaker 1: of repair or replacement was their footwear, the moccasins they
- 1:47:08Speaker 1: fashioned from elk and buffalo hides. You'll recall that these
- 1:47:12Speaker 1: elk and buffalo hides were thicker and heavier than the
- 1:47:15Speaker 1: deer skins that were the long hunter's primary target. These
- 1:47:20Speaker 1: thicker skins made for more durable footwear, but they still
- 1:47:24Speaker 1: required constant maintenance. A pair of moccasins might only take
- 1:47:28Speaker 1: a long hunter a few hours to make, but repairing
- 1:47:32Speaker 1: them was probably a task that required near daily attention.
- 1:47:38Speaker 1: We do know that anyone spending time outdoors in this
- 1:47:41Speaker 1: time was very much aware of the risks of getting cold.
- 1:47:46Speaker 1: One source describes hunters in the late seventeen hundreds as
- 1:47:50Speaker 1: apprehensive of rheumatism, a term then used to describe rheumatoid arthritis.
- 1:47:57Speaker 1: They blamed rheumatism on cold feet and slept in their
- 1:48:01Speaker 1: half faced shelters with their feet to the fire in
- 1:48:04Speaker 1: hopes of warming them and drying out their moccasins. It's
- 1:48:08Speaker 1: probably safe to assume that many of them had circulation
- 1:48:12Speaker 1: issues and numbness from wearing wet moccasins year round, but
- 1:48:19Speaker 1: every mile in wet moccasins and every cold night was
- 1:48:23Speaker 1: endured with a single objective in mind.
- 1:48:28Speaker 9: Henry Skaggs, Daniel Boone, Casper Mansker and their companions weren't
- 1:48:32Speaker 9: simply equipping themselves to survive the First Far West, although
- 1:48:37Speaker 9: that in and of itself was not an easy task.
- 1:48:41Speaker 9: Their tools were all a means to an end. They
- 1:48:44Speaker 9: had a very specific, labor intensive purpose to their travels,
- 1:48:49Speaker 9: producing deer skins in large volume for the commercial market.
- 1:48:53Speaker 9: But of course they were not the only hunters on
- 1:48:56Speaker 9: the landscape of the First Far West.