Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 351: It's Only Slow Food Until You Try to Eat It with Bill Heavey

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Ep. 351: It's Only Slow Food Until You Try to Eat It with Bill Heavey · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast. I'm
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: your host, Mark Kenyan, and this is episode number three
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: fifty one, and today in the show, I'm joined by
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: outdoor writer and author Bill Heavy for a rambling exploration
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: of the relevance of hunting, fishing, and forging in the
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: year and beyond. All Right, Hello, and welcome to the
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Wired to Hunt Podcast, brought to you by Onyx. I
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: hope you guys are doing well and staying safe and
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: sane and busy. Today we have got an interesting conversation
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: for you, something a little bit different than usual, and
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: that I hope you're going to enjoy as I'm speaking
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: with Bill Heavy. Now, most of your probably familiar with
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Bill from his long running backpag column. Back page Column,
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: That's what I'm trying to say. Over at field and stream,
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: It's called a Sportsman's Life. These are these funny end
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: of the issue stories and anecdotes that Bill has just mastered.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: It always brings a smile to your face. He's also
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: the author of several great books, including one titled it's
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: only slow food until you try to eat it, which
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: is one that I just recently read and which inspired
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: me to give Bill a call. Bill is a is
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: a funny, insightful, and brutally honest writer. And if you've
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: heard episode number two thirteen of this podcast, which Bill
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: was a guest on, you know he's also a really
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: interesting guy to chat with. So for that reason, it
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: seemed that, you know, given everything that's going on right now,
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: Bill would be a good person to speak with. Given
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: the current events, it seems like hunting and fishing and forging,
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: to these different ways of living and eating close to
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: the land, it might have a new sense of relevance
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: for people. And it's this set of topics that I
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: wanted to pick Bill's brain about. So we discuss how
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: the outdoors helped him cope with the stress of our
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: current times. We chat about the future of hunting, parenting
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: children to appreciate the outdoors, foraging for wild edibles, uh,
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: the risks of eating goose eggs, and just a whole
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: lot more. It's a wide ranging and at times random conversation,
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: and in short, it was it was just what I needed. So,
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: without further ado, here's my chat with the one and
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: only Bill. Hev all right with me now on the
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: line for the second time is Bill Heavy. Bill, thanks
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: for coming back on the show, you bet. I. I
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: really enjoyed our last chat. And it seems, for whatever reason,
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: the last month and a half or so, I've found
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: myself drawn to certain types of people or writers. Um
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: maybe I'm I'm seeking comfort in some kind of something.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: I don't exactly know how to put words to it,
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: but but you are someone who I've been drawn to,
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: at least your words. Um. I you know, we cha
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: had a couple of years ago in the podcast and
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: I told you that I've read a lot of your books,
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: but there's one of your books that I hadn't read,
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: and that was It's only slow food until you try
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: to eat it. And so I decided to actually read
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: that one now. So I've been reading that one during
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: this current event crisis of sorts that we're in with
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: the coronavirus uh obviously sucking all the oxygen out of
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: the room here in spring, and it got me thinking
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: that that you would be a great person to talk to.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: So so that's that's why I'm really excited about this Bill.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: How how have you been holding up out there on
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: the East coast. Um. You know, I think about like
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: everybody else. Um, you know, the drama's kind of there
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: was some drama to all this, you know in the
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: first few weeks. Uh, you know, it was new and
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: it was you know, this complete break with the past
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: and and the kind of life that I've been living,
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: and I assume most people have been living all of
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: a sudden got changed completely. And now, you know, if
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: this were a story that I was handing into an editor,
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: it would come back with the remark. You know, there's
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: no dramatic art here. It's there's a there's a very unsatisfying,
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: you know, kind of status right now where we're all
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: just hanging out in it waiting for you know, things
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: to get better or things to get worse or whatever,
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  Speaker 1: you know, whatever is going to happen next, so we
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: can kind of keep moving. And you know, there's a
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: sense of being kind of you know, stuck frozen in place, waiting,
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: you know, waiting for the other sheet to drop. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: I feel like I feel very similar to like we're
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: in this this new slow tailing out of trying to
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: figure out what the new normal is or what's the
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: next what? I guess we don't know what normal is
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: going to look like, but everyone's trying to sort of
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: figure that out right now, to to the frustration of many,
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: I guess there's a whole lot of angst. Just just
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: yesterday in my home state here in Michigan, a bunch
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: of protesters stormed our capital, and we're seeing that all
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: over the country. So there's there's the health crisis, there's
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: the concerns, there's the concerns around the economy, and it's
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: it's uncertain times as for sure, what what have you?
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: What have you? What have you been doing during this
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: time of lockdown and quarantine? I gotta believe it's it's
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: got to be particularly particularly particularly something where you're at
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: right there near Washington, d C. I wish it was
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: particularly something I'm not sure it is. Um, what's lockdown
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: like in DC area? Uh? You know, I'm not sure
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: I can even speak to d C area. I can
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: speak for for me, because you know, DC area is
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: like any other areas, you know, composed of a million
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: people who are all in lockdown. In these worlds shrink too,
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: you know, the one, two three. You know, however, many
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: people we're we're seeing um. So, you know, I've been
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: taking a lot of walks. I can't go to the
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: gym anymore, which is which is a great loss for me,
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: because that's one of the ways I kind of get
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: outside my head, was to just go to the gym.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: And you know, even if it's getting on a treadmill, um,
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: you know, it helped me a lot. So I've been
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: taking a lot of walks. I go to the ton
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: of River and walk, and I've been walking on the
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: tow path. But they're you know, they're more and more
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: people going to those places to walk. And you know,
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: sometimes some people get it, some people don't. You know.
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  Speaker 1: The other the other day, I was out on the
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: tow pass and this family is walking towards me and
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: they're walking four abreasts and you know there's for me
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: to get six ft I would have to, you know,
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: jump in the canal. And I said, folks, you know
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: this is this is really not cool, the social distancing,
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: and they looked at me like I lost my mind. Um.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: So some people are some people's heads are in one
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: place and other people's heads are in another. It's it
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: strikes me during this period, um, whether when it comes
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: to the outdoor activities, when it comes to hunting or
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: fishing or just taking walks. I've been wondering to myself,
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: do those types of things that we take for granted,
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: that we love, that are part of our life, going fishing,
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: going turkey, hunting, whatever, do those things matter less right
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: now given this scope of what's happening around us? Should
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: they matter less or or the opposite? Do they do
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: they matter more than ever? Do they matter more? That's
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: that's what I'm wandering in your perspective, much more than ever,
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: because you know, they're outlets too, you know, to help
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: you cope with things, And so for me, they certainly
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: matter more more than ever. And you know, it's it's
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: actually a great comfort, uh to see that the natural world,
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: you know, I couldn't care less about this. You know,
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  Speaker 1: everything's blooming, uh. You know, flowers are coming up, trees
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  Speaker 1: are butting, the fish and running, um, you know that.
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  Speaker 1: And I find it really comforting that the natural world,
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: you know, just boogies gone and it doesn't doesn't doesn't
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  Speaker 1: really give a damn what we do. Yeah, that is
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  Speaker 1: that is reassuring in in some small way. I've always
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  Speaker 1: found that to be. Something that I have always appreciated
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  Speaker 1: about my outdoor experiences is that they can humble you
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  Speaker 1: so much when you realize how small you are in
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  Speaker 1: the bigger scheme of things, when you go out into
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: a wilderness and you can so tangibly feel how small
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  Speaker 1: you are. That some people. For some people, that's disconcerting
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  Speaker 1: or that is upsetting to them, But to me, it's
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  Speaker 1: it's kind of the opposite. Yeah, I find it. I
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: find it really nourishing somehow, Uh, to be reminded that that,
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  Speaker 1: you know, uh, I could drop that tonight and you know,
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  Speaker 1: the sun is gonna come up tomorrow and the births
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: are gonna sing, and you know, the world goes on
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  Speaker 1: and I don't know, it's hard to it's hard to
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: explain the comfort in that, but I certainly experience it. Yeah,
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: that's funny. You mentioned that though, when you say that
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: you could drop dead tomorrow and everything would go on. Um.
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  Speaker 1: I was reading in a recent story of yours from
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: Field and Stream where you well, I'll just I'll just
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: quote what you said here because it's it's related to
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  Speaker 1: something I think a lot of people are probably thinking
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: about right now, which is taking inventory of your life.
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  Speaker 1: This whole set of circumstances I think has made a
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  Speaker 1: lot of us press pause and think about things. And
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: so you wrote in this story, I'll quote to you said,
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: I read a news story the other day that asked, if, say,
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: my lungs were to fill with fluid a week from now,
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  Speaker 1: what I'd be content with the life I've led. My
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: response was an emphatic not really. Then, as the writer intended,
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: I began to worry. End quote and tell me this, Bill,
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: what what? What are you worried about? What? What would
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: you want to have done or still do when it
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: comes to obviously I don't want to pry into personal things,
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: but when it comes to hunting or fishing, or the
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: outdoors or anything like that. What what else do you
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: still want to get done? Oh? You know, it's strange.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: I think of it in terms of accomplishing the list.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: Uh you know, I know there are guys who have
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: these dreams, uh trips. You know, they want to go
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: to Alaska for caribou, They want to they want to
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: go elk hunting someplace. You know, there's nothing wrong with that.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: My individual head doesn't it doesn't really work it that way. Um,
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: you know, tomorrow I'm going out rock fishing on the
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: Chesapeake Bay and I'm really looking forward to it. Um.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: And I just got the invitation today, so it was
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: it was wonderful. So side Storady tomorrow morning, I'm gonna be, um,
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: you know, seventy miles from here, getting on a on
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: a boat and and that's going to be awesome. Uh.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: You know, the invitation came and I didn't think twice.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: I was just like, you know, yeah, I'm there. UM,
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: so it Uh. I'm not quite sure how to answer
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: your question because my yeah, I think I think I
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: probably misworded my question. I don't think that I necessarily
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: there's nothing wrong with having a bucket list. I don't
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: think that's something that um, we have to get to
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: it all. But is there? I guess what what? What
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: do you what? What are you looking forward to? What
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: are the things you still hope to experience? UM, I'll
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: just lay an example out for you. One of the
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: things I thought about, um as I was just kind
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: of writing some notes and I was thinking to myself,
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: what what are the things I would miss out on
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: if say, something like that were to happen. And right
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: now it's gosh, I want to see. I want to
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: see my son get his first turkey. When It's funny,
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: when we talked last time, Bill, when we talked, it
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: was it was almost exactly two years ago, because I
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: went and re listened to that conversation. And during that conversation,
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: I told you that I had a three month old son.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: And now we're speaking again and I have another three
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: month old son, which is interesting, but I also have
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: a two year old. So my son that was three
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: months is now two years old. And uh, and so
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: the joy of my lockdown period, the thing that's been
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: keeping me excited during this time stuck at home is
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: that I've been able to go in our backyard with
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: my two year old and go chase turkeys. He absolutely
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: loves turkeys. He plays with a slate call. He's so
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: excited about it. Um. And that's just been such a
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: sense of such a such a just a way to
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: kind of get away from everything and see that joy.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: So when I think about these next outdoor experiences there
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: anything to do the natural world, a lot of it
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: has to do with my kids. Now. Um, I'm just
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: gonna yeah, my head is listening to you, thinking I
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: want to borrow that Ki I want to have I
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: want to have somebody to chase chase turkeys with. Who
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: gets excited? Yeah, it's funny. My daughter has just taken
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: hunter safety and wants to go honey with me this fall.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: And that is about the most exciting thing going on
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: on the Huntymon fishing horizon for me, because this is
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: a kid who was brought up here and you know,
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: inside the Beltway, and um, you know, her school and
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: her mom. Um we're varying, you know, anti gun because
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: they had no experience with guns and they can't. You know,
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: there are there are a lot of people out there
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: who think, well, why would you own a gun if
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: you didn't want to shoot people? Um. And now she's
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: gone to uh she's working on a ranch in Texas
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: and she's meeting all these these boys and and shooting
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: guns and you know, seen in different way of of
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: life and and then you know, taking to it. So
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: she brought herself a pickup truck and took took counter safety.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: So that's you know, that's great. I think anybody with kids,
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: you know, there's no greater joy than putting your child
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: onto his first or her first you know, fish or
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: whatever it is. I was in your book. I was
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: reading a bit where you had been foraging and I
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: can't remember what exactly it was he had found, but
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: you had tried to feed whatever this was to your
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: daughter and she said something along the lines of, no,
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna eat that. I don't like nature food.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: Is that hissy growth from that too? Uh? I don't
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: you know? I hope so, uh maybe a little bit. Um.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: It's it's really a funny line when you think about it.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: I don't like nature food, you know. I like food
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: that comes I like who it comes from someplace else,
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: like the you know, the grocery store, which has nothing
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: to do with nature. Um. You know, you go, you're
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: brought up in certain places. You just think food comes
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: from the store, and you know, the idea that somebody
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: grows it, ships it. Uh, you know never crosses your mind. Right.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: It's funny though. Right now, I think, probably in a
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: more stark way than ever before, people are starting to
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: realize that all the grocery store isn't always going to
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: have what I need. For the first time, they're going
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: there and there's not the meat I want, or there's
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: not the produce I want. Um. It's It's strange how
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: the ripple effects of this set of circumstances are are
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: drifting out away from the core issue. I've just been
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: getting this sense from social media and conversations and and
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: I'm making some assumptions too, But I think there's this
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: this new interest in self reliance or uh, living closer
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: to the land. Are you sensing that? Do you think
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: that this is going to have that kind of fact? Yeah,
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: I mean I'm I'm sensing the same thing you are that.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: Um you know, I just I kind of there's a
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: part of me that just loves the idea that you
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: can't get everything you want at the grocery store anymore,
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: and that it's really shaking people up and making them examine,
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: you know, how they eat and what they eat and
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: where it comes from and why and the whole thing.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: You know, it's this this crisis, you know, one of
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: the things that's done as Jaga sell all out of
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: our complacency about a lot of different things, and one
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: of them is, you know, the natural world. Um. So
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: I think it's you know, there are more people growing
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: guardens um and and I just think, oh, that's great.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: Do you see that change at all in you are
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: you re examining what you're doing or trying wanting to
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: dive in even further. I mean, maybe I should. This
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: is a two part question. That's part B. Part A
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: is uh, have you continued on with the journey that
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: you started in that book where you spoke to this,
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: this desire to try to forge for more food, fish,
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: remove more food, hunt for more food, UM, supply more
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: and more of your diet with your own, um, you know,
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: with your own hands. Has that changed over the subsequent
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: you know, seven eight years since you wrote that book?
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: And then how has this changed things in further? If so? UM,
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: I think it's kind of deepened. You know. I it's
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: not that I do more of it, but I uh,
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: I really value that the times when I'm when I
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: can do that. I've been going crazy the past few
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: weeks looking from where else and occasionally, you know, I
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: had one day when I got about forty or fifty
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: Morrel's and it was it was just an amazing day.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: I was fishing with I mean, I was hunting for
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: Morrel's with the young guy met at Fletchers Fisheries biologists
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: and we're out and you know, very skilled fishermen and
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: we're out and finding Morrel's and he was finding twice
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: as many as I was. For whatever reason, he said,
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: this is amazing. You know, this is don't tell anyone this.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: I like finding a morrel more than I do catching
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: a fish. Um. So I assured him that I would
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: keep that private. And now I'm I'm telling you, uh
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: but um, you know, those kinds of things are just
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: They're just so cool. That's so satisfying. So I brought
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: you Morrel's home post the sauce with them, you know,
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: put them in dishes and stuff, and it's it's wonderful.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: I want to go out again. I'm actually planning doing
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: that tomorrow and Sunday with my with my family, we're
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: gonna do some morrel hum this weekend. Pretty excited about that.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: You got morels up there? We do, we do. I've
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: I'm ashamed to admit that I've never taken them very
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: seriously and not spent the time looking for them. But
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: over the last year I've decided I need to change that.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: So yes, I think we finally have the weather and
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: from what I hear, they should be starting to show
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: up right now, so we're gonna be hitting it hard. Yeah,
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: they can. You can get really hooked. Can you Can
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: you give us a pro tip? As you mentioned, I've
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: you've been finding a bunch lately, any anythings that it's
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: it's weird. I've been I've been going to places that
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: people have told me about or have found them, and
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: it is just so spooky, Uh, where they are and
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: where they aren't. You know, I've gone to place and
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: walked the whole day and not found a single morale.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: And I've gone to places where you know, I probably
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: didn't walk you know, four yards all day and found
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: tons of morrels. So, um, I'm light on pro tips.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: That's okay. It's fun to look. Yeah, you know, it's
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: funny sometimes whether it's looking for mushrooms or shed hunting
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: or probably any other kind of forging, you need to
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: just enjoy the act of searching. If you don't enjoy
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: the act of searching, if you're just focused on the
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: end result, you're probably gonna be disappointed most of the time.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: It's it's totally like shed hunting, and you know, if
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: you need to find a shed to have a good
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: day shed hunting, you know you probably shouldn't go. Yeah,
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: and actually one of the things I like about Morales
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: is like, um, they're easier to find the sheds. Do
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: you think so for me? That then, what I've found
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: as many sheds as I found Morrel's, I would be
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: I would be very happy. I guess you don't ever
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: find uh, fifteen sheds, I'll cluster together under one tree. Huh, No,
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: they don't. I wish you're you know, you're decided to
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: cooperate and like, I'm gonna go shed over here these
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: guys are looking for. That would be. That would be
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: pretty great. Um, so you're looking for mushrooms? Is there
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: anything else that you still forge? Because I was just
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: reading the other night about how you had tried to
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: forage from your lawn and put together a salad from
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: all the various weeds and greens in your yard, and
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: I had read about cattails you're eating. Has any of
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: that carried over? Do you forage for anything else? Um?
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: Every once in a while, you know, And when the
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: Danny lions first started coming up, I would get Danny
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: lion and so I say them and I like them
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: for breakfast with eggs. Um, So that that was really good?
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: How do you how do you do that? Is which
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: parts are using. Well, you're using the leaves and what
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: you want or what's known as the basil rosette. So
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: you go to the center of the of the plant,
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: and what you really want are the young, small tender
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: leaves that grow in the center, and as you go
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: out from that they get tougher and more bitter. And
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: by this, you know, by the time the plants have
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: been up for a while, they get real bitter, which is,
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: you know, this is a nature's way of protecting the
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: plant um. You know, to put stuff in it that
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: makes it so that certain animals don't you know, don't
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: eat as much of them. Right. I've been been looking
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: into more and more of this whole foraging idea, and
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: it does seem a little intimidating. Even mushrooms. It seems
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: like if you eat the wrong one a aquileia um.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: But I as I've been looking to it seems to
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: be there's some staples. For example, a friend of mine
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: on a recent podcast talked about the foolproof four mushrooms
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: that you know, there's these four that are safe, they're
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: easy to find, they're great. Um. If I was going
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: to pick up forging other things, greens or something like that.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: Is there a foolproof four of of anything else out
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: in nature that I could be adding to my diet?
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: Or if I'm locked down because of coronavirus, I need
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: to spice up the refrigerator. Is there is there a
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: handful of things you've learned about? Yeah, well, let's see,
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: you're putting me on the spot here. Um my job.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: You know. I love to go out and get you know,
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: wine berries, which are kind of um. They're like wow,
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: uh raspberries, um. And let's go pretty well around here.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: You know, most places there are berries that get ripe.
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: Um and you know a few weeks or a month
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: or more from now u UM. I love going up
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: for papaus in the fall. It's usually in mid September,
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: and they tend to grow along rivers. They're all over
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: the East, but not not exclusively. And then you know,
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: from Canada to Louisiana, and you know, those are wonderful.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: It's the biggest um. It's the biggest New World fruit,
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: and it has this amazingly tropical taste. You know, the
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: first time you eat one, you can't really believe that
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: it grows, you know, around the first one time I
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: had one. I couldn't believe it was a local fruit
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: because it just tasted so so much like you know,
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: mango and banana and I love those, but you know
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: with a lot of florage things. You know that if
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: people who have all these recipes for poppa and I
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: have always thought the best way to eat them this
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: just you know, we're right under the tree where you
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: find take a pocket knife, feel the skin off and
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: just enjoy it. It's almost um tomorrow. It's almost like
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: a sacrament of fall. You know. It's just a reminder
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: that this is a once a year thing and that
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: the seasons are rolling and at this moment and the
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: paw paws are ripe has come around again. Yeah, you've
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: always thought the best spice is the scene. Like if
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: you there's so many meals that you can look back
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: on and say, that was the best meal I could
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: ever imagine, and you think about the food itself, and
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: it probably wasn't, you know, tangibly that much better than
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: something you ate at home or at a restaurant. But
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: it was because you were on that mountain. It was
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: because you were you know, by that tree or by
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: that river. Um, those meals just seem to be saturated
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: with something different. It's yeah, it's totally about those associations.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: I was once writing a piece about uh family of
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: African Americans who gathered from all over the country in Texas,
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: um for a barbecue every summer, and they, um, you know,
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: they were all dispersed wively, but they've grown up here.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: And the the guys were taking me to this barbecue
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: place that had these sausages which they loved, and they
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: just typed these sausages up, you know, for hours before
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: I had one, and they were they were awful that
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: these guys loved them. And I realized what they're tasting.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: They're not really tasting the sausages, They're tasting their their
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: use again and that, you know, that named them wonderful.
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: Do you have anything like that in your life? A
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: meal or a food or something that you have associated
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: with some past memory or a place or something that
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: if you took me to eat it, I probably wouldn't
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: be too impressed. Um, well, you know, I was a
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: Suburbs kid, so it would be you know, McDonald's or something. Well, okay,
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: you're right, I wouldn't be impressed. Yeah you would. I'm
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: not impressed. So I wish I had some magical, you know,
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: touchstone food I could tell you about gush about. But
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: but I don't. I think. I think as I try
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: to answer my own question, as I just popped in
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: my mind, and I I thought back to, well, I
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: grew up in a in a family that that hunted fish.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: But it was a very there's a lot of enthusiasm,
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: there's very little expertise, I guess, might be a way
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: to put it. We kind of just follow the very traditional,
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: very traditional Michigan your head out, you sit next to
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: a tree and shoot the first thing you see. We
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: had a little cabin up north. Um, so great tradition.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: Um yeah. But but when it came to, for example, cooking,
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: same thing, no expertise. The only way I ate venison
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: growing up was we would my dad or grandpa would
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: cut up pieces of venice and into medallions, put in
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: a pan, put in sliced onions, pour a whole thing
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: of barbecue sauce into the pan, and then you fried
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: it up, and you fried it to those things where
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: like hockey pucks, and and that is what we ate.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: And I thought it was the best meal in the world.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: It was so good. But now looking back on it,
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: it must have been terrible picking all those chunks of
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: meat out of my teeth for weeks on end afterwards,
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: because I'm sure it was horribly overcooked. Um, But aside
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: from that, it sounds pretty damn good. Yeah, yeah, it was.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: It was the best if you just don't overcook it,
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: that's a pretty good that's a pretty good meal. I
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: was making barbecue last night from from a you know,
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: a doe doe shoulder that I had in the fridge. Um,
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: and it was good. What's uh? What what are your
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: go to what do your go to comfort meals or
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: comfort food recipes for your venice in these days? I
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: don't if if if you're feeling this, but I feel
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: like right now, comfort food things that just make me
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: feel good are high on my list of the types
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: of food I want to eat right now. Um, what
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: would you go to be right now? You know? I
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: like making barbecue and and uh, as as it happens,
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: it turns out to be a plug for you because
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: the recipe I was on deed either perfect for and
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: I can't remember what it was called, so I don't
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: know how to direct people to it. But it was
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: cooking venison was you know, you made sauce with onions,
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: you know, onions and dinner, so you know the primary
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: ingredients in it, and you cook it down and you
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: put it in a crop pot on low, and you know,
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: come back the next day almost but it's great. Yeah,
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: hard to go wrong with that. Yeah. Um. We I
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: did something kind of similar, except for I did low
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: and slow in a smoker and may like almost like
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: a barbecue brisket type of chop brisket sandwich, um with
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: a venison roast and wow that was that was tremendous too. Yeah. Um.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: When it comes to food, I had another story I
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: wanted to pry out of you, Bill that kind of
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: looks at the opposite side of the food spectrum, which
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: would be the appalling And I absolutely loved the story
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: you shared in your book about foraging for goose eggs.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: Can you can you regale us with the story of
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: your blue goose story? Uh? I just would love to
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: hear that again. Uh. The best I can remember, I
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: was out. I had a couple of foraging teachers, and
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: one was my friend Paula Smith, who had written The
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: Bath extensively, and we were out looking for goose eggs
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: along the Potomac, and she was explaining that, you know,
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: in high water, you know, the goose are not the
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: goose are not the brightest creatures. You know, they nest
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: right at the at the edge of the water, and
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: sometimes the water comes out and wash it their eggs away,
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: so they, you know, they there's a second way. And
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: so she we're you know, we're we're kind of bush
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: whacking through this tall grass and seeing geese, and um,
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: we saw one that put its head down, you know,
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: it wasn't running away. And she goes, oh, that's one
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: on the nest. Okay, we can get these. She goes,
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: you know I wouldn't well, you know, I wouldn't take these,
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: but we're overrunning geese. You know, I wouldn't take a
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: duck's eggs. Um. So we went and we got these
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: two eggs and they were big, you know, um, more
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: than twice the size of a regular eggs. And she said,
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: now these will be good. So I took my home
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: and uh, what did I do? I think I boiled
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: it or soft boiled it. And I opened it up
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: and it was, uh, the fetus of the of the
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: goose blue and a little too fully formed for my
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: taste to eat it, and and I kind of slipped
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: out and I just I washed it down the I
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: washed it down the disposal and turned on the disposal
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: and just tried to make it, you know, like this
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: didn't really have to make it disappear, but because I
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: felt so bad about it, so it was like this
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: thing was never really here. Um. And later I called
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: Paula and I said, did you have the same experience
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: I did? He goes, yeah, boy, I wasn't crazy about
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: eating that, but I ate it. He goes, yeah, I
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: took it. I had to eat it, and you know,
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: I felt kind of ashamed that I was not the nobles. Yeah.
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: I think I think you wrote that she hard boiled
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: it and then slice it up thin or something. Yeah,
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: something like that. It's funny though, in in that I'm
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: recalling now what you said is that when she told
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: you that, you know, well I killed it. I had
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: to eat it. You were impressed by that, by that
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: set of principles she had around it, around the hunt
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: or the the kill. Um. Do you do you feel
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: like you have something similar now or have you have
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: you changed it all since those early days? Uh? Yeah.
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: I mean, I maybe this is what happens if you
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: get old, like I feel even more um, a duty
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: to make use of any animal I've killed, you know,
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: taking the life of this animal, which is you know,
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: it's a momentous thing. It's you know, you you're you know,
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: it's a godlike power life and death. And if you
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: kill something, um, you know, and you don't use it,
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: that seems to me just indefensible. Yeah, mm hmm. Yeah.
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: It's one of those things that for me and probably
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: for a lot of people, especially I guess those who
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: start as children as as as a young person. I
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: was just indoctrinated into it. This is what you do.
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: You hunt, you you kill animals, you eat them. That
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: was just part of life. It wasn't until I think
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: I got into my twenties that I started to self examine,
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: like why do I do this or or how do
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: I do this? And it doesn't matter how I do this, um.
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: And I didn't come to my own set of of
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: ethics or principles until that point. But before it was
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: it was the thing you did. UM. I wonder if
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: what did you discover in your own ethics? Well, I
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: think I discovered pretty quickly that I had to set
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: some kind end of I had to create that ethic
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: for myself. There was there was what was given to
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: me by my family. You do this, you do this,
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: you do this. But I never really got into the why,
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: um except for I was what. There was always a
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: sense of respect. You had to respect the animal. You
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: definitely had to use the animal. There was there was
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: always My Grandpa was always very serious that you would
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: you would never shoot anything unless you were going to
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: kill it right away, click, quick, clean kill, and you
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: were going to use it. There was no shooting at
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: something just because, um you know, he didn't like me
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: shooting at a raccoon in the woods just because. Um.
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: So that was given to me. But I had to
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: then later process it in my twenties and then figure
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: that out and and figure out what what does that
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: mean for me as an adult and how does that
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: influence the decisions I make, what I'm gonna hunt, why
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: I'm going to hunt? All that, And you know that's
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: that was thirteen years ago or whatever. I'm still of
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: figuring out today. It's evolving. You came into hunting as
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: an adult, as I understand it, Um, but you've been
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: doing it for for quite a long time. Now, how
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: is your set of principles or your set of in
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: an internal guidelines? How is that evolved? How? I know
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: you still have them? You obviously do the deeper you said.
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: But but what what's changed? Has anything changed? You know?
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: How to put this exactly? As you get older, your
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: your heart gets softer. You know, it's harder, it's harder
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: to kill things. Um. And I've sometimes, you know, I'm
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: gone out thinking I'm going me hunting and at a
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: shot at a at a deer and just not taking it.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: Just something something, and he wasn't ready to, you know,
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: let that arrow go. Um. And I don't think that's
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: an uncommon experience among my older hunters. You know, Uh,
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: you realize you're not going to be around forever. Yeah,
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: and you see something. I don't know. Maybe I've see
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: something to myself and need animals. I don't know. My
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: my grandpa in his later years, he started taking video
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: camera and and that was all he would shoot his
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: animals with. And I always thought I thought it was crazy.
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: I would get mad at him, Why don't you shoot
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: that buck? Um? But I think aren't I think I
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: get it a little bit more now though I can
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: see where he was coming from. I could see, you know, someday,
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: maybe I'll find myself in a similar place. I'm not
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: I'm not there yet. I'm not. I'm not at the
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: video camera stage yet. But you know, I get it
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: as I as I h as I understand it. You
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: still you still get pretty excited about the shot. I
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: saw a recent article about target panic. You still you
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: still get the fever. Huh? Yeah, well, tarr panics completely
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: different than than the hunting. The hunting shakes. But yeah,
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: it's it's funny, and it's I cannot even be thinking
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: about getting excited about the deer. You know, maybe I've
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: been out hunting a couple of days and I haven't
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: seen one, and a deer, you know, walks within range
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: and might lects you start shaking. It's not even h
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: it has nothing to do with my brain whatsoever. How
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: are you dealing with that? Well, you hope the deer
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: is long. I hope the deer is gonna be around
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: long enough for me to get from control of that.
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: But you know, I also love that I still have
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: that reaction. You know, it tells me I'm alive. It's
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: a great that that you can be that moved by
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: an animal. Uh. I think it's something to be thankful
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: for you. Very true. It's funny that kind of that
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: kind of experience is is so relatively unique to something
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: like hunting. I think that's one of the things that
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: draws so many of us to it and keeps us
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: so pooked on it. Um. But then you see, you know,
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: so many other folks across the country or the world
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: are pulled in these other directions with you know, the
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: video games, TV shows, whatever it is. There's so many
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: different distractions out there, these different things that can fill
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: your time. Um. But then you see something like hunting,
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: and you and I know, like, oh, there's you're missing out.
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: There's this there's something so special that you're missing out
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: on while you're filling your head full of Netflix. Do
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: you and I can't. I can't believe it's a video
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: game that makes anybody's legs shake. Right. So, so with
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: that being the case, do you do you ever worry
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: that hunting is becoming irrelevant to people? Is hunting relevant today?
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: How do you feel about that? I certainly have my thoughts,
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: but I mean, it's it's very relevant to me. And
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: I think there will always be people to whom it
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: speaks um. You know, I don't think hunting will ever
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: go away. You know, we're we're hard wired for it.
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: You know, our species hunted for of our time on
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: this planet. We've we've lived and died by our skills
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: as hunters. And I think that's just we're hardwired for that.
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: But it's true that if you don't get exposed to it,
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: you never know. You know, you never know that. The
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: first time I killed a deer um, it was with
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: a bow and arrow, and as soon as I've done it,
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: I was just flooded by all these minckles and emotions,
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: and I had this really distinct sense that I, you know,
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: what I was feeling was not unique to me. It
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: was U an ancestral memory, you know, a kind of
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: circuitry that's latent in all of us. But you don't
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: know that until you activated, and otherwise it's just you're
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: not even aware it's there. D I can relate to that.
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: And I wonder have you thought at all about or
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: worried or hoped at all about your daughter's experience of
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: that possibly coming up if she's able to fall through
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: and and go on a hunt. I would yeah, I
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: mean I firmly hope that she will have the same experience.
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: And at the same time I realized that I have
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: um about no control over that. You know that she's
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: going to She's gonna experience what she experiences. And as
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: as a parent, you know you want, you would love
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: to be able to shape that, um but that's part
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: of you know, parents and even just coping with the
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: fact that you know that you can't and you know
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: letting go. Are you gonna Is she gonna go on
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: her first hunt with you? Or she going to get
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: to do that in Texas? I think I think she's gonna.
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: I think she's gonna wait and go with me. That's exciting?
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: Is that exciting or nerve wracking? Both as as your
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: minded man, so I know you said you can't control it,
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: but who's let's not kid ourselves. I'm sure you are
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: going to try to at least plan and or influence
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: as best as you possibly can. Uh, how do you
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Do you have something envisioned already? Do
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: you have some kind of idea? I think the most
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: powerful thing you can do is just talk. You know,
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: the most powerful thing I can do is just tell
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: her what what it's been like for me and what
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: it means to me. Um, and you know, turn her
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: loose and see with her experiences and you know, hope.
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: You know. I think kids are always listening more than
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: we give them credit for. Um, even when they're telling you,
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: you know, they don't need you and mind your own
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: business and let people in my life, um and pushing
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: you away just as hard as they can. U. They
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: still need you, and they're still listening. It. It's just
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: they're doing a really convincing job of making you think
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: they are. Yeah, you'll get to this, your kids are young. Yeah,
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: I can already feel like I can see the very
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: beginnings of it, thou. Yeah, it is. It is an
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: interesting journey, that's that's for certain. And it's it's funny.
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: I find myself looking forward to things like you're describing.
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: You know, I can't wait till I can take him
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: on a real hunt, until he can get hunter safety
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: and and all these things. But then I try to
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: remind myself not to wish away today. I do try
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: to just appreciate and enjoy the little things right now. Um.
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: But man, I remember taking I took em on what
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: fishing was. And uh, I had brought, you know, a
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: little rod for her, you know, set it up, and
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: you know, did all this stuff so she would enjoy fishing.
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: And she cast you three times and said, you know,
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: I'm bored. I'm gonna I'm gonna go over here. And
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: I said, We'll just okay, let me fish for a
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: little bit. And when I came over, she had made
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: about eight or ten little altars. She just had gathered
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: grasses and rocks and sticks and stuff, and she just
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: made these amazing little altars, some you know, little shrines
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: or something um in the rocks, and and you know,
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: they were It was kind of mind blowing because she
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: was having her own experience and response, I think, to
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: the river and to being out there. And it wasn't
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: about fishing, but it was, you know, it was primal.
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: One of the things that I've It's funny, as you
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: mentioned that I've as I've been starting to have these
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: experiences of my son, I find myself being conflicted with,
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: like these two sides of what I want to have happened.
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: I want my son to have. Yeah, Like for example,
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: I want to go out, We're going on a hike,
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: I want to go somewhere, I want to cover distance,
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: I want to get to whatever and destination is. So
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: there's that, But then there's the flip side, which is
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: I also want him to enjoy his own experience, like
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: you described this other thing, whatever it's going to be
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: for him. So I'm constantly struggling with like my frustration
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: that we're not covering any distance because he wants to
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: look at every dandelion, everyone wants to pay up every stick.
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: But at the same time, I have to remind myself,
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: this is so great that he's excited about these things
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: and that he's having fun. So it's it's I'm definitely
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: in this new phase where I have to rewire how
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: I get satisfaction out of things. Um I I went through.
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: I went through a lot of that where I would
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: get annoyed at my child because she was not moving
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: at what I was sure was the right pace, and
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: the stuff that she was interested in was not the
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: stuff that she should really be interested in. And what
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: you know that you know, you're dawdling blah blah, uh,
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: you know, while I have something to show you and
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: it's up here, and and I you know, now that
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: I'm older. I regret, you know, keenly, that I didn't
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: just let her go and try to help her discover
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: as she was discovering. And you know, maybe that's one
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: of those things you only really appreciate in hindsight. But uh,
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: you know, I'd love if I could go back and
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: change some of the ways I I acted. It's it's
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: interesting that on the flip side of that, I totally
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: I can see myself wanted to be doing what you
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: just described. I want to try to be as as
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: patient and understanding and focusing on the enjoyment for them.
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: That of course makes a lot of sense. But I've
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: got a friend who brought another point up which I
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: think about sometimes I'm not there yet with my kids.
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: They're too young, I think, but at some point I
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: wonder if I want to introduce this element And um,
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: I've mentioned this on the podcast before, so previous listeners
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: know what I'm getting at here. But this friend of
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: mine had said that, um, the outdoors is really good
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: at teaching your kids to become comfortable with the uncomfortable
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: and using it as this tool like we should, we
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: should I don't want to say force, but it's okay
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: to put them in uncomfortable, difficult situations and push them
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: past the easy enjoyment, because that's a growth opportunity. It's
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: important that they learned to deal with being cold, not
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: just to be dealing with being cold, but what that
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: kind of does for someone building that little you know, toughness. Um.
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: And so I think about that a lot and how
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: I might try to walk that fine line someday. UM,
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: if any experience with that or thoughts on on these
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: outdoor experiences as personal growth tool for our children as well. Um,
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: you know, I don't really Um, I think they're going
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: to get They're going to get what they get. And
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: I agree with you that those experiences are aren't great.
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: And if you know, if the kid is h enthused
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: and engaged in what they're doing, they won't mind being
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: a little cold or a little uncomfortable. I never had
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: any luck trying to, you know, trying to convince the
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: child that it was okay that she was cold. That's
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: a lizing battle, huh. And it's just a little discomfort.
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: And you know, if you stick it out to see
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: me when you're home, you know you'll be glad that
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: you did. I never got real far with that. Yes,
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: so far my method has been snacks. I've been able
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: to extend our outdoor activities of snacks. Ye, yes, I
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: have been lucky, though I don't know what I did
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: right or just lucked into it that so far, my
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: son is gung ho. He's he wants to go out
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: and chase turkeys. Even in the pouring rain. He wanted
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: to stay out in the woods and he just sat
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: on my lap and ate his neutral grame bar And
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: every time we heard a turkey gobble, his eyes got
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: big and he said turkey, and uh, that's wonderful. So
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: it's been a lot of fun. It's been a lot
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: of fun. The only problem is that he tries to
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: bring that in side with him. So when our three
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: month old is taking a nap, which are so so
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: so blessed and sacred right now that he needs those
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: and halfs we need that little baby sleeping, and then
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: my two year old grabs his box call and wants
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: to start cutting away on that. Um, then we have
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: an issue. So that's that's our current struggle right now.
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: Be careful what you create. I know, I know we
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: joke that, um, he's going to go into preschool or
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: kindergarten or whatever, and that poor teacher is going to
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: start walking through during class the various animal noises. Maybe
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: at some point they'll bramp. Well, you know, a turkey
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: says this. Uh bear says this, And I can see
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: my son being very bossy and correcting everyone. Well know
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: what turkey actually a female turkey will yelp like this,
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: and it helps bugles like this because he's already bugling
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: on the bugling tube and he's I don't know, he's
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: into it, So that'd be great, be great, It would
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: be a wonderful story to tell you. If he gets
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: narrited or something, it will be here, it will be
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: I'm at this point now with my hunting and fishing
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: where you know, as a kid, I was just into it,
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: and then as a teenager I was trying to get
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: good at it, trying to figure it out, just the basics,
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: like how do I get it? How do I kill
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: a deer? How do I catch fish? And then in
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: my twenties it was how do I catch a bunch
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: of fish? And how do I get good at deer hunting?
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: And you know, kill a big buck or an old
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: buck or something like that. And so I think that's
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: been my trajectory. Now I'm in my thirties and I've
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: got a young family, and um now I'm finding myself
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: more and more thinking about, Okay, how do I how
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: do I foster and create a lifestyle for my family
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: that is centered in these outdoor places and wildlife and
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: these things that matter to us, and how do I
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: introduce my children to that? So that's where I am
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: in my kind of outdoor journey. Where where where are you? Bill?
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: What are the things that are mattering to you now
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: and in the future. Um? Well, I you know I
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: referred to this before, but you know, there's nothing more
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: satisfying than than putting a kid, you know, on his
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: first fish, or helping a kid, uh enjoy the outdoors.
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: You know that that becomes much more socilling than um,
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: you know, anything I could catch or kill. Um. Other
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: than that, it's just you know, it's the experience that
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: I just I really value the experience of being out there,
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: just being part of the of the cycle of being,
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: you know, being a witness to it, getting to see
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: the year just ye going on the way seasons have
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: always been, always gone and always will if you know,
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: scrutiny was up too much. Yeah, do do you have
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: anything coming up that, uh, that you're particularly looking forward to,
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: if if assuming we can do the things we're hoping
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: we can do in the coming months, Um, anything that
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: you're particularly pointing your point in your mind towards. Um, well,
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: I'm very excited if you're going rock fishing tomorrow. Um,
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: I'm going to get out and start um shooting and
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: getting ready for tear season, which is kind of you know,
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: it's kind of like Christmas to me. Um. So yeah,
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: here's the big thing. Yeah, are you are you traveling
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: at all for deer this year or just gonna be
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: hunting local? I think I'm gonna be pretty local. Magazines
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: are really pulling in their horns budget wise, because you know,
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: this this downturn is affecting everybody. Yeah, yeah, probably using
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: an orange juice can microphone, right, Yeah, keeping it pretty
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: basically over here too. Um, what given given that we
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: are in strange times right now. Um, whether it be
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: magazine is pulling back budgets or people having to stay
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: close to home, people not being able to travel for
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: their big trips or able to go into work or whatever,
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: a lot of people are stuck at home. Um. So
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: I would certainly encourage people to to hunt if they can,
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: or fish if they can, or forge if they can.
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: But if they literally can't get out and do any
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: of those things and they need to consume media, do
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: you have any recommendations there? I know last time I
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: asked you about this, you'd recommended The Bear by Faulkner. Um.
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: And I just I just love picking the brains of
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: other writers about books they like, or documentaries that they
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: have been moved by, or anything like that. Is there
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: anything out there right now that you can point folks
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: towards it might be worth a little bit of their time. Yeah.
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: I pointed towards the the books of Bill Head, which
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: I think will really flift them up spiritually, engage them,
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: teach them new things. And you know, um I do agree.
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: Let's see, Uh, funny I've read. I'm doing a review
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: of a book by Jeremy Wade, who was the guy
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: on River Monsters and is you know, the extreme Anglers
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: Extreme angler but uh, and he wrote this book trying
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: to take you into his mindset as he goes after
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: these fish, and in that he succeeds. You know, he
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: shows you his mindset. And the only problem is his
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: mindset is is really uh to me, it's really dull
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: because he's not fishing. He thinks, you know, the the
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: idea of sport is unhelpful. You know, he's trying to
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: catch these fish for his TV show, you know, no no,
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: no fee and uh so it's you know, he fishes
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: as if his life depends on every situation. And he's
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: always using that the heaviest gear, um, you know, gear
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: appropriate to catching the biggest fish that he can possibly
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: catch and in a given situation and reducing all human
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: error and um, you know, just and it just reduces
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: fishing to this uh kind of brutal science. Um. And
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: you know the guy's has huge success. Um, but you know,
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure how much money. Yeah. So, so we
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: wouldn't wouldn't read that book, wouldn't read that one. You know,
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: I'd I'd love to get out of chessing bluegills. What
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: It's funny you bring that up, because it is a
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: weird line we walk though, and I'm pivoting off of
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: the media thing and back to what you just described
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: because it applies to a lot of things, applies to hunting,
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: applies to fishing. Um, So that the idea that he
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: just wants to catch the fish is somehow off putting. Um.
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: But at the same time, if you didn't want to
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: catch the fish, or if you look at the opposite
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: way and you said, well, I don't I just want
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: to play it. Um, But I would never eat it,
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: or would never or I just want to hunt the deer,
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: but I don't really care about the end result. Then
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: something's gone there too a little bit. Um. Oh, yeah,
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: you shouldn't be hunting deer if you don't care about
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: the right right, how do you reckon with that? Well,
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: you know, I want to I want to catch fish
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: and I want to shoot gear. But my day in
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: the woods. Uh, you know, I can have a pretty
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: good day and not not shoot a deer or catch
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: a fish. Although it's harder with fish, I have to say,
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: I don't catch anything that's a harder day. You can
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: always you can always release the fish, that's true. Do
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: you have any qualms with catching release fishing at all?
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: There's some folks that that I know that have taken
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: stances against it and that it's kind of playing with
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: your food. Um, I'm catching release. It does no, it
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: does bother me a little bit. It seems to me
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: that I'm not you know, I'm not saying I'm right.
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: I'm just saying it. It bothers me a little bit
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: that the idea of that I'm out there and you know,
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: kind of inflicting trauma on this fish to some degree.
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: You know, I have no idea to what degree um
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: for my you know, for my own amusement. It seems
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: sort of cleaner and more honest if you're catching fish
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: to two feed yours self. Although you know, if that's
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: all we did, you know a lot of rivers and
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: streams which soon be devoid of fish. Yeah, yeah, it's funny.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: I've thought the same thing, but it hasn't kept me
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: from catching release fishing. It's it's a but it's true.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: If if you want the opposite too far what you
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: just described would happen, then we wouldn't have we wouldn't
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: have the resource at all if it kept everything. So
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: there's it's interesting though. It's this weird thing that I
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: that I think that across all of these consumptive activities
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: you have to constantly wrestle with if you, I guess,
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: if you get to the point where you start thinking
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: about these things like the guy I did in my twenties.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: You start wrestling with the what am I doings and
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: the why am I doing it and the how I'm
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: doing it. And it is a funny thing when you
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: when we rationalize that, Okay, I'm hunting to eat. I
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: want to kill a deer to eat it. But then
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: you self impose different restrictions on yourself that make it
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: harder to get the thing that you eat. So you
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: go from I don't want to use a gun now
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: when he's a bow or then you start using traditional gear.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: And there's an argument that can be said that someone
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: might look at that and say, oh, it's more ethical
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: to bow hunt because it's harder. You're making it more
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: difficult for you, so it's easier for the deer to
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: get away. Or you can make the opposite argument, which is, no,
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: it's less ethical to bow hunt because there's a greater
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: chance of you wounding the deer and it's not as
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: quick of a death. There's all these weird ethical moral
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: dilemma's fine lines. Um and and I don't know, I
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: kind of think that the one of the greatest things,
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: maybe the greatest thing about hunting is that you know,
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: there's no audience, you're You're the one who decides those things,
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: and every hunter decides what's right for him, you know. UM.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: And I try to stay away from ethical arguments as
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: if there is um, you know, the right or wrong. Um.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: You know. The wonderful thing about hunting is the is
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: a moral complexity of what you're doing. You know the
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: fact that it's not um, black and white, and that
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: nobody there's nobody else telling you you know what to do,
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: and there's so few areas of our lives where we
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: have that freedom. And of course with that freedom is
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: you know, responsibility for what you choose to do and
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: you know how you're gonna live with, which I think, er,
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: you know, it's fantastic. Yeah, it's it's it seems to
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: me it's the process of having to go through that
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: kind of murky swamp of the interior of your mind
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: to figure that out for yourself. Ah, there's there's I
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: don't know if it's joy or accomplished or there's something
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: there's something there that is there's not being healthy about that,
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: something good about it and and I don't know what
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: it is either, And I'm hesitant to try to uh
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: put a label on it. But I know, I know
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: it's I know it's important. Yeah, you might be you
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: might be hesitant to do this. You just you just
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: said that you like to avoid any kind of ethical
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: or moral stance that you're pointing it to someone else.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: But um, but but to steal a question from another
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: podcast or that, like if if you were given a
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: billboard along the highway they're heading into d c um
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: and in this I think this is a great final
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: thought to to end on here. If you could have
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: a billboard for everyone to see, or if I could
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: give you the homepage of Google and YouTube and you
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: could plaster a great big banner at across it for
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: everyone to see every day. Um, what would that message
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: be right now for people from from Bill Heavey? What
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: would you like to see on that? Uh? Well, that's uh,
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: that's a totally unfair question. I kind of resent you
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: asking it, and my my quickness, you know, off the
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: top of my head, I guess I would I would say,
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: you know, h, enthusiasm is more important than skill. You know,
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: the idea that it's about enjoying what you're doing. It's
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: not about being the best at it, because I think
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: there's a sort of purity of we feel like we're
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: not supposed to enjoy stuff unless we're really accomplished at it,
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: unless we're serious about it, And I think that's just
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: completely bast awkward. I think that's a great that's a
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: great sentiment to be thinking about, especially during times like these,
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: when I think spend a little more time focusing on
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: the joy you can have is more important than ever.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: Absolutely so so. Bill, for people that do want to
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: take your original recommendation, which was to read up on
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: all those Bill heavy books, Um, do you wanna do
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: you wanna kind of read through? Which what those book
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: titles are? Or mention anyone in particular that folks might
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: want to take a look at right now where to
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: get them. The first one was if I if you
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: didn't bring turkey, what did I just eat? And it
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: was not lost? If you can still see the truck,
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: followed by um, it's only slow food until you try
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: to eat it? And uh, should the tempt be burning?
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: Like that? All great titles? Um? And I gotta say,
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: I don't I don't know which I have no idea which,
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: well are you willing to tell me which book did
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: the best or which to book did the worst? Uh,
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: the one that I honestly don't know, I don't I
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: don't care great. I know which one did the work,
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: which is probably not what I should tell you. But
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: it's only Slow Food did the worst, I think because
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: they had no idea how to categorize it, okay, because
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: it was a bunch of different things. Yeah, and and
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: so I asked, because I was if you didn't bring jerkey,
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: what did? I just did? I think was pretty successful.
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: So so yeah, I was. I was thinking that maybe
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: that the Slow Food one would be the answer because
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: it is a different format than your other books, and
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: and like you said, maybe harder to categorize. Um. But
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: I want to make it a personal mission of mine
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: to try to change that. So I want everyone out
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: there to go and check out that book because I
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: really have been enjoying it. I've always loved your short essays,
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: but to see a book, because for folks that aren't familiar,
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: all of your other books are a series of short
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: stories and essays um related to fishing, hunting, the outdoors,
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: different things like that. But it's never been a single
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: narrative like what you did with it's only slow food
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: that is a narrative, a single narrative arc that takes
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: you through your own personal journey to try to become
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: more connected to your food and hunting and fishing and
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: foraging and all that. Um. And it's really good, Bill,
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: It's it's a it's an enjoyable book. I think it
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: deserves readers more than it has. I'm sure there's been
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: plenty of readers, but deserves more. UM. So I would
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: encourage anyone out there listening. It's a great read for
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: right now. These these times were in Um I've I've taken,
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: I've I've laughed, I've smiled, I've learned a thing or
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: two along the way, and it's it's inspired me to
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: spend more time out there looking for tasty things to
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: pick up out of the wild and eat. So highly
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: recommend all those, but definitely check that one out right now.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: So Bill, thank you, thank you for writing, thanks for
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: talking with me, Thanks for your time, my pleasure. Thank
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: you all right, that is going to do it and
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed this one. Like I mentioned at the end,
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: highly recommend Bills books. Now. It's a great time to
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: do some reading, so pick those up. If you haven't
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: already picked up That Wild Country, my recently published book,
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: I recommend to check that one out too, And otherwise,
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: I just hope you have a great rest of your week,
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: Stay healthy, stay well. I hope you can get outside
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: and enjoy mother Nature and some sunshine. And until next time,
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: stay wired to Hunt.