Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 175: If Cabbages Had Legs I’d Hunt Them Too
Transcript
- 0:08Speaker 1: This is me eat your podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
- 0:13Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You
- 0:18Speaker 1: can't predict anything presented by on X Hunt creators are
- 0:22Speaker 1: the most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters. Download the
- 0:26Speaker 1: Hunt app from the iTunes or Google play store, nor
- 0:29Speaker 1: where you stand with on X Doug, you'll be able
- 0:35Speaker 1: to relate to this story. Guy wrote in and he
- 0:38Speaker 1: got his uh, got his nipple pierced, And sure how
- 0:44Speaker 1: I'm gonna be able to relate to this story. This
- 0:46Speaker 1: is a joke I stole from Brian Cowen where if
- 0:49Speaker 1: you're telling someone a story that has you tell us
- 0:54Speaker 1: some story that has really in a crowd. You'll tell
- 0:57Speaker 1: like some like perverse story and you'll say like, oh
- 1:00Speaker 1: you know, Billy, this will you'll appreciate this, Bill, And
- 1:04Speaker 1: you tell like some stories and people are like later
- 1:06Speaker 1: they're like, why would you know? So that's why I
- 1:08Speaker 1: wanted to correct it right away. So a guy guess
- 1:12Speaker 1: his nipple piers and he writes in about it and
- 1:15Speaker 1: he's out shooting his bow. You can imagine when this
- 1:17Speaker 1: is going right, Oh god, yeah, very painful. I'm not
- 1:23Speaker 1: sure that's something i'd be writing you about well, we've
- 1:27Speaker 1: been talking about stuff people getting It started off with
- 1:33Speaker 1: hunting scars, and Gala rode in to say she had
- 1:36Speaker 1: jumped jumped to barb wire fence ripped her nipple, and
- 1:43Speaker 1: then the ripple nipping nipple ripping stories have come in
- 1:48Speaker 1: and rolled in. She was jumping a fence to go
- 1:51Speaker 1: dove hunting, and yeah, we told the whole story anyways,
- 1:56Speaker 1: and then she had made a joke about how her
- 1:59Speaker 1: husband and later she said, my husband called that one scarface.
- 2:03Speaker 1: And then other people wrote in, Um, just nipple ripping
- 2:08Speaker 1: stories catches free people that are slower the take. He
- 2:11Speaker 1: gets his nipple pierced. That's one. Like, that's one. I
- 2:17Speaker 1: just I mean, God bless right, but I just don't
- 2:22Speaker 1: just that not on my list before I went tongue piercing,
- 2:27Speaker 1: Oh yeah for sure. But if you wrote down all
- 2:30Speaker 1: the things you could get pierced in a list, and
- 2:32Speaker 1: I had to start like from the top, and I
- 2:33Speaker 1: know when it would end, I would that won't be
- 2:35Speaker 1: real low, real low on my list. Um, but he
- 2:40Speaker 1: catches it on his bow string, right, I would. I
- 2:47Speaker 1: would if that happened to me, I would say that
- 2:49Speaker 1: it happened, you keep it secret, No, I would say
- 2:53Speaker 1: it publicly. Yeah, Like, I don't know how to say this,
- 2:56Speaker 1: but in the last few years, but I I've increased.
- 3:02Speaker 1: I've never been I've never I've never I've never been
- 3:05Speaker 1: like reluctant to publicized when I do something stupid. But
- 3:12Speaker 1: it's gotten the point where I really wanted out there.
- 3:17Speaker 1: It's like a kind of a form of masochism. Well,
- 3:23Speaker 1: you dumb motherfucker. People are gonna know about this too,
- 3:29Speaker 1: you know, it's maybe it's like some kind of form
- 3:31Speaker 1: of like self betterment, Like, well, I think it's I
- 3:35Speaker 1: think it's helpful too, because the worst thing you can
- 3:37Speaker 1: be as a blowhard. Yeah, so if you are generally
- 3:43Speaker 1: competent person and you it's like under promising over delivering.
- 3:50Speaker 1: And if you're very vocal about what you've screwed up,
- 3:54Speaker 1: but you are generally competent, it's only gonna do good
- 3:57Speaker 1: for you. And I have found that when I have
- 3:59Speaker 1: like contractor a contractor over that staid as the plumbing
- 4:02Speaker 1: problem is beyond me to figure out if I have
- 4:05Speaker 1: a contractor over and I say, you know, I'm such
- 4:08Speaker 1: a dumbass when it comes to this right, It just
- 4:14Speaker 1: makes the whole thing go better. Then if you're in
- 4:17Speaker 1: there acting like you but got it solved, do you
- 4:22Speaker 1: know what I mean? You're also putting yourself in a
- 4:25Speaker 1: position to learn a little bit more, probably too speak
- 4:28Speaker 1: of things. Then it's good stories you could tell to
- 4:30Speaker 1: the world and kind of get it, you know. Up
- 4:34Speaker 1: a I saw a picture, but I didn't really get
- 4:37Speaker 1: a story. Yeah, No, that's kind of where I was
- 4:41Speaker 1: going with this. Yeah, so this is yeah, this is
- 4:48Speaker 1: me putting on sackcloth and ashes right here. Is that
- 4:51Speaker 1: a biblical reference? Mm hmm. What part of the Bible?
- 4:57Speaker 1: I don't know, isn't the sa and ashes? And then
- 5:01Speaker 1: also I think it's all I think it's in several
- 5:04Speaker 1: places in the Old Testament. And I think that when
- 5:08Speaker 1: one is wearing sat cloth and ashes there there it
- 5:12Speaker 1: was a stupid way. It wasn't the right usage because
- 5:15Speaker 1: it's usually you're repenting for something, but not repenting hat.
- 5:20Speaker 1: I'm wearing a hair shirt in the Bible, I don't
- 5:23Speaker 1: know when Usually when somebody's wearing set cloth and putting
- 5:27Speaker 1: ashes on their face, they're they're also gnashing their teeth.
- 5:31Speaker 1: That seems to be my boy, does that my four
- 5:33Speaker 1: year old. I have a lament that does it. I
- 5:36Speaker 1: think that nipple piercing just got replaced by you know
- 5:43Speaker 1: where this is going is you're gonna tell them? Yeah,
- 5:45Speaker 1: But first I got asked, you have a Llama shirt
- 5:47Speaker 1: on right now. Somebody gave me this. It's a little
- 5:49Speaker 1: tight on me. So it says Wikipedia fact number thousand,
- 5:55Speaker 1: eight hundred one. Llamas like to wrestle. Yeah, yeah, you
- 6:00Speaker 1: like that shirt. I don't know. Okay, go on, So
- 6:03Speaker 1: what happens? Um? They do like to wrestle though, they do?
- 6:09Speaker 1: Oh my god, I thought I was just being stupid
- 6:11Speaker 1: and cut. They like to wrestle. Yeah, sometimes I go
- 6:14Speaker 1: out in my pasture and break it up because I'm
- 6:16Speaker 1: afraid one of them is gonna get hurt. Really, what
- 6:19Speaker 1: is that, Doug? What was your thing about farm wrestling? Well,
- 6:32Speaker 1: Duc threatened the farm wrestle. It was a typo. It
- 6:41Speaker 1: was no, no, it was him. He was He was interested,
- 6:45Speaker 1: like I don't know what that is, but I want
- 6:47Speaker 1: to happen. He wanted something from me, and I said, well,
- 6:52Speaker 1: I'll arm wrestle you for it. But I think I
- 6:56Speaker 1: spoke into my phone and I said farm wrestling because
- 7:04Speaker 1: farm wrestle anyway. So there are playing with your bow
- 7:09Speaker 1: and arrows. Yeah, I Um, I was shooting out of
- 7:15Speaker 1: my house this winter because it was bit or cold,
- 7:19Speaker 1: you know, and I but I wanted to kind of
- 7:22Speaker 1: keep up on the shooting a little bit. So I
- 7:25Speaker 1: open was opening up the window and shooting out the window.
- 7:28Speaker 1: And I went out to fetch my arrows. And I
- 7:34Speaker 1: had an idea why I was out there. It's like, man,
- 7:36Speaker 1: I cannot see my pins very good inside the house.
- 7:40Speaker 1: So I went out into the garage and I got
- 7:44Speaker 1: a got my head lamp and it was zip tieing
- 7:48Speaker 1: to my site pin and then I got back in it.
- 7:53Speaker 1: You know, things a little bright, you know, So I
- 7:56Speaker 1: was you know, I was like there was a lot
- 7:59Speaker 1: going on, and I freaking forgot that I had closed
- 8:02Speaker 1: the window. Did you hit the target? I never found
- 8:09Speaker 1: that arrow. It took me a few seconds to even
- 8:11Speaker 1: realize what happened. I was like, what that window? Um? Here,
- 8:21Speaker 1: uh another quick thing. I was just reading. I'm reading
- 8:23Speaker 1: a book. Oh you know, Randall, you'll appreciate this watch out.
- 8:31Speaker 1: You'll appreciate it for real. Remember I was recently asking
- 8:33Speaker 1: you about the historian Elliott West because I'm enjoying his
- 8:39Speaker 1: books so much, his collection of his essays, one of
- 8:43Speaker 1: which is an essay that really counters the idea that
- 8:48Speaker 1: Lewis and Clark had discovered, you know, from a European perspective,
- 8:55Speaker 1: had discovered the like the great planes, right, And he
- 8:59Speaker 1: goes on to explain, at the time Lewis and Clark's
- 9:01Speaker 1: um journey, there were Indians on the Great Plains who
- 9:06Speaker 1: had been to Europe, met the King of France, and
- 9:09Speaker 1: returned home at the time of the Lewis and Clark expedition.
- 9:14Speaker 1: So you forward me that story a long time ago.
- 9:17Speaker 1: I know, Well, I wasn't got the book that that
- 9:19Speaker 1: piece of podcast listener that sent that that essay in,
- 9:24Speaker 1: and I went and got the whole book, and then
- 9:26Speaker 1: I was trying to and I wanted to get the
- 9:27Speaker 1: dope on Elliott West. So I asked Randall what Elliott
- 9:30Speaker 1: West's reputation was, and he told me about Elliott west reputation.
- 9:34Speaker 1: Then I get the book and I'm reading and there's
- 9:38Speaker 1: a piece about the difficult job of a historian to
- 9:43Speaker 1: uncover the unheard voices in history, meaning that we follow
- 9:48Speaker 1: like oh, Lewis and Clark, right, And we know all
- 9:50Speaker 1: these monumentas things, but like the the details of people's
- 9:55Speaker 1: lives and people that weren't spoken for, right, people whose
- 9:58Speaker 1: recollections aren't like like he talks about the paucity of
- 10:03Speaker 1: of accounts from Chinese immigrants who worked in the mines.
- 10:09Speaker 1: Right there, they didn't leave a written history, so now
- 10:14Speaker 1: you're trying to like find these forgotten voices. And in
- 10:17Speaker 1: there he's some about this guy and his brother that
- 10:19Speaker 1: are going out to the California gold Rush. And they're
- 10:21Speaker 1: leaving the East coast, going to California gold Rush by boat,
- 10:26Speaker 1: so presumably going all the way around Patagonia at the time, right,
- 10:29Speaker 1: no Panama Canal. His brother dies on the way, so
- 10:34Speaker 1: there's two brothers. They leave and his brother dies on
- 10:36Speaker 1: the way, and he gets a barrel of brandy and
- 10:41Speaker 1: packs his brother into a barrel of brandy. The dead
- 10:45Speaker 1: Brady packs into a barrel of brandy, gets to California
- 10:51Speaker 1: and to bury his brother at home, promptly sets out
- 10:55Speaker 1: on an overland journey with the bear, the brother packing
- 10:58Speaker 1: the barrel of brandy to bring him back home. Him again,
- 11:01Speaker 1: he's so intent on bringing his brother home. Why why
- 11:04Speaker 1: was it easier to do that, and then if he
- 11:07Speaker 1: opted to do the ocean one, do you have a
- 11:10Speaker 1: bunch of stuff with him? He doesn't explain that, and
- 11:12Speaker 1: I haven't dug into the footnotes to find where he
- 11:15Speaker 1: pulled that story from. But I don't understand why. I
- 11:17Speaker 1: was like, let's go one way. Maybe they were moving
- 11:21Speaker 1: a bunch of Maybe they're moving stuff, and he left
- 11:25Speaker 1: the stuff and it was quicker to packed him and
- 11:28Speaker 1: Brandy just wanted to change the scenery. Yep. Um. A
- 11:33Speaker 1: couple of other things I wanted to touch on real quick.
- 11:35Speaker 1: A guy wrote in he's fishing and his brother hooks
- 11:41Speaker 1: into their fishing on the East coast. Where were they fishing?
- 11:44Speaker 1: Could fishing off Maine? And his brother hooks into a
- 11:48Speaker 1: big fish. Uh no, I'll appreciate this. Yeah, hooks into
- 11:58Speaker 1: a fourteen foot blue shot and they're just fighting it
- 12:01Speaker 1: for the fun of it. And it's a strenuous fish fight.
- 12:07Speaker 1: That's a sharp go. A couple of days later, he
- 12:08Speaker 1: develops this horrible pain in his chest. I can't figure
- 12:15Speaker 1: out what it is. Thinks he pulled the muscle. Can't
- 12:16Speaker 1: figure out, but it gets worse and worse. Pain goes
- 12:18Speaker 1: to a doctor and he's got this tumor that he
- 12:23Speaker 1: didn't know about and would have killed him. And somehow,
- 12:27Speaker 1: fighting that fish tweaks something in that tumor pressed up
- 12:31Speaker 1: against the nerve and alerted him to the presence of
- 12:34Speaker 1: that tumor, and they removed the tumor. Now he's fine.
- 12:40Speaker 1: Well all the story. Go fishing fish more with your brother. Finally,
- 12:45Speaker 1: here's here's one last one before we start, before we
- 12:47Speaker 1: get some other stuff. Um guy uh takes his dad
- 12:52Speaker 1: turkey hunting. His dad's sentimental type takes his dad turkey hunting.
- 12:56Speaker 1: They his dad gets a turkey and he gives the
- 12:58Speaker 1: kid the fan because he wants the fan mounted. The
- 13:06Speaker 1: guy's dog destroys it. I think it was his dog
- 13:11Speaker 1: destroys it. Wife's dog. Oh, you saw this story, wife's
- 13:16Speaker 1: dog destroyed. Like, what's the difference between your dog and
- 13:18Speaker 1: your wife's dog. Oh, I think it's just and it's
- 13:23Speaker 1: the same as I think it's the same thing as
- 13:28Speaker 1: if you tie the tune into your girlfriend's car. No,
- 13:32Speaker 1: my girlfriend's dog, No, one says my wife. I guess
- 13:35Speaker 1: they do, you know what I'm saying. Like, at a point,
- 13:37Speaker 1: we have two dogs. My dog is the good one.
- 13:40Speaker 1: My wife's dog is a bad one, and it's like
- 13:43Speaker 1: the white's dog. My wife she decided to get it
- 13:45Speaker 1: when we started dating. And and you don't, you've never
- 13:47Speaker 1: acted like it was your our dogs. No, I mean,
- 13:50Speaker 1: it's it's our dog, but it's her dog, she said,
- 13:54Speaker 1: she's we're we're living together, and she said, um, I
- 13:58Speaker 1: want you to know, I put a deposit on a
- 14:00Speaker 1: chocolate lab puppy. So if we're gonna keep going with
- 14:03Speaker 1: this thing, we need to move into a pet friendly apartment.
- 14:07Speaker 1: And you, you know, do you want to go looking
- 14:09Speaker 1: for apartments with me or not? And so she made
- 14:12Speaker 1: that decision on her own, and he was going to
- 14:15Speaker 1: move whether you did or not. Yeah, she was like,
- 14:19Speaker 1: she was like, you want to you want to keep
- 14:21Speaker 1: this thing rolling for another year's lease, We need to
- 14:23Speaker 1: go find a pet friendly apartment. But she she put
- 14:26Speaker 1: a deposit on a puppy and did that all on
- 14:29Speaker 1: her own. And her dog. He's seven years old and
- 14:32Speaker 1: he's terrible and then uh what does he do? Uh,
- 14:36Speaker 1: he's just he's like now he's now on dog, big
- 14:51Speaker 1: difference between your dog dog go on randall. Now he's
- 14:55Speaker 1: just he's too much. He's just hyper. He's a yeah,
- 14:59Speaker 1: he's a hunter pound lab and lab people are overwhelmed
- 15:03Speaker 1: by them. We actually had someone come over for dinner
- 15:08Speaker 1: and they hadn't seen him in about a year, and
- 15:10Speaker 1: they said, oh, wow, you know, you guys are great.
- 15:14Speaker 1: Most people I know wouldn't have kept that dog, no joke,
- 15:20Speaker 1: and and I mean we looked at each other like,
- 15:22Speaker 1: I don't really know very many people that would get
- 15:24Speaker 1: rid of a dog, you know, just send him on
- 15:27Speaker 1: his way. But yeah, we got that from someone else.
- 15:30Speaker 1: You kept that thing around, didn't you. So But then
- 15:34Speaker 1: right before we got married, we got a second dog
- 15:36Speaker 1: and I got to pick that one, and she's perfect.
- 15:39Speaker 1: She's an angel. That's your dog, Rosie. Yeah, that's my
- 15:42Speaker 1: daughter's name. Kind of it's a good name. You know.
- 15:45Speaker 1: The only thing I have to sorry, go ahead, go ahead.
- 15:48Speaker 1: The only thing I have to compare that too, is
- 15:50Speaker 1: when I was younger that when um, we would get
- 15:54Speaker 1: one of my siblings that I would get in trouble.
- 15:57Speaker 1: It seemed like, uh, the one the parent who was
- 16:02Speaker 1: pointing that out to the other parents, they would say,
- 16:05Speaker 1: your son did this. Yeah, well that's because they're seeing
- 16:11Speaker 1: that behavior. I would guess being married and having kids,
- 16:14Speaker 1: they're seeing that that behavior the result of your influences.
- 16:22Speaker 1: Well they said that. They're saying, like, because of you.
- 16:24Speaker 1: What they's what they're saying is because of you, your son,
- 16:28Speaker 1: the parts of our child that are that oh to
- 16:31Speaker 1: you are responsible for X. Can I get it back
- 16:36Speaker 1: to this thing? His mas dog eats it. He then
- 16:41Speaker 1: his mom and dad must be divorced. So is my
- 16:46Speaker 1: dog eats the His mas dog eats the You follow me, yeah, mom, mom, Mom?
- 16:52Speaker 1: And yeah, okay, well by the people might duck ducks,
- 16:58Speaker 1: probably losses. So I was just thinking childhood. I'll make
- 17:05Speaker 1: a flow diagrams. A guy. There's a guy, we'll call
- 17:09Speaker 1: him the kid. He takes his old man turkey hunt.
- 17:12Speaker 1: His old man shoes turkey. The kid then takes the
- 17:14Speaker 1: old man's turkey fan. His job is to mount the
- 17:17Speaker 1: turkey fan as a gift to the old man. He
- 17:19Speaker 1: then takes it to his mom's house to store it.
- 17:23Speaker 1: The mom's dog, if they are divorced, it's because the
- 17:26Speaker 1: mom's dog is still right out for vengeance, eats the
- 17:31Speaker 1: turkey fan. He then goes and gets a different turkeys fan,
- 17:35Speaker 1: mounts that gives it to the old man. And never
- 17:38Speaker 1: tells the old man the truth. So the old man
- 17:42Speaker 1: when people come over his house, he's stuck in the
- 17:44Speaker 1: awkward position of pointing it to the on the wall
- 17:48Speaker 1: and being like, see that, and then telling all about
- 17:51Speaker 1: what happened, when in fact it's a lie. But the
- 17:54Speaker 1: old man is not stuck in that position because he
- 17:56Speaker 1: doesn't know. He doesn't know. The guy is like, am
- 17:59Speaker 1: I that immoral? What do you think? I think it's
- 18:07Speaker 1: keeping the peace, you know, between the parents, the divorced parents.
- 18:12Speaker 1: I'm reading that into it. I don't know. Oh, I'm
- 18:14Speaker 1: just guessing if that's the case. Though I agree with you,
- 18:19Speaker 1: if there really is at keeping the peace, that was
- 18:22Speaker 1: a part of it. I feel like he would have
- 18:24Speaker 1: said that it was a part of like that his
- 18:26Speaker 1: folks were divorced and now the ma know. I just
- 18:31Speaker 1: think he felt bad. Yeah, it's not like he's trying
- 18:35Speaker 1: to like preserve some little semblance of you know, some
- 18:40Speaker 1: little semblance of family, you know, dignity this left after
- 18:43Speaker 1: this tumultuous divorce. He's not laying out that level of trouble.
- 18:47Speaker 1: It all comes down to whether he can live with
- 18:49Speaker 1: his little white lie or not. I think that it's immoral,
- 18:55Speaker 1: and I would tell the old man. You might not
- 18:59Speaker 1: remember this. Are you innocuous? Do you remember? Well, let
- 19:03Speaker 1: me tell you a lie. Let me tell you something
- 19:05Speaker 1: that happened to me, and you'll know all the players
- 19:07Speaker 1: probably has something to do with something. So when we
- 19:11Speaker 1: were little, real little, you know, how daddies to take us,
- 19:14Speaker 1: like you could go fishing on your birthday. Yeah, it
- 19:17Speaker 1: was my flied. I don't remember that, like you would
- 19:23Speaker 1: often get the you would get the play hooky if
- 19:24Speaker 1: you wanted an ice fish on your birthday, because I
- 19:26Speaker 1: had a February birthday or whatever, different activities. He took
- 19:30Speaker 1: me out and a guy caught a big northern not not.
- 19:37Speaker 1: Our party was me and Dad and I think alcoholic
- 19:40Speaker 1: was with us and a guy do people know who
- 19:45Speaker 1: that is? No, you've introduced him before, but it's a
- 19:49Speaker 1: great name. But he would develop such a thirst. He
- 19:55Speaker 1: would develop such a thirst, uh during his outings that
- 19:59Speaker 1: he offered, couldn't had to get home. Um. Another guy
- 20:04Speaker 1: catches a pike and he doesn't want and Dad wants it,
- 20:08Speaker 1: wants it, so Dad takes it and it freezes up
- 20:11Speaker 1: like how they do. And my dad says to me
- 20:15Speaker 1: hey and throws it to me and I catch it. Uh,
- 20:22Speaker 1: and he says, you just caught a pike. And I
- 20:24Speaker 1: later told Ron Spring, who was a commercial bait fisherman.
- 20:28Speaker 1: Ron Spring made a living catching wigglers and digging worms
- 20:31Speaker 1: and catching mentals. I told Ron Spring, I caught a pike.
- 20:36Speaker 1: I don't I don't know if I if it's a
- 20:39Speaker 1: good use of our time to do a post mortem
- 20:41Speaker 1: on those two lies. But that one, that one seems
- 20:45Speaker 1: far worse. It's just I'm putting myself, Yeah, that's real bad.
- 20:50Speaker 1: But I'm putting myself in the role not of the dad.
- 20:53Speaker 1: I'm putting myself in the role of the sun where
- 20:56Speaker 1: he's living with a lie. But there's the whole bit
- 20:59Speaker 1: that that that the dad actually did get a turkey,
- 21:03Speaker 1: and it's just, yeah, you know you didn't get ship
- 21:08Speaker 1: and then you made it. I'm not putting myself in
- 21:10Speaker 1: the role to dad. I'm putting myself in the role.
- 21:12Speaker 1: And I it would have cost him anything to come
- 21:14Speaker 1: clean and be like, look, here's a deal. This is
- 21:17Speaker 1: what I did, is what happened. Let's go get another
- 21:19Speaker 1: turkey next spring. What I would do is record this
- 21:22Speaker 1: and send it to him. And let him put it
- 21:26Speaker 1: together or tell him after he gets into their turkey,
- 21:29Speaker 1: because maybe it won't be like you know, Pops, you'll
- 21:33Speaker 1: you'll appreciate this. Okay, let's get on what we're fixing
- 21:40Speaker 1: the talk about. Oh, not one last thing. Rand Williams
- 21:43Speaker 1: is here, yes, uh minus his pituitary gland. Yes. How
- 21:49Speaker 1: does it feel? Um? Are you as smart as he
- 21:53Speaker 1: used to be? No, I'm not really categorically not really. Yeah,
- 21:59Speaker 1: tell me more. Um, A lot of issues with memory
- 22:03Speaker 1: and um, short term and long term memory. Yeah. Oh,
- 22:08Speaker 1: I didn't know. I was joking when I said that
- 22:10Speaker 1: we can cut this out. So you've been feeling you've
- 22:14Speaker 1: been since since it's been it's been a pretty uh,
- 22:18Speaker 1: it's been a pretty rough road, just ups and downs.
- 22:20Speaker 1: But yeah, for I mean, I had a lot of
- 22:22Speaker 1: symptoms that were pretty similar to like a traumatic brain injury. Really. Yeah,
- 22:26Speaker 1: I wasn't worth of that the bad that I asked.
- 22:28Speaker 1: You know, I'm pretty upfront about it all. Are you replacement? Yeah,
- 22:35Speaker 1: I'm on. Um. I'm on a couple of different hormone
- 22:38Speaker 1: replacements like testosterone and thyroid hormone, and I take hydrocortison,
- 22:46Speaker 1: which replaces cortisol um. And then I've got stimulants, I've
- 22:52Speaker 1: got antidepressants, I've got sleeping pills, I've got the whole mix.
- 22:56Speaker 1: Are you serious? And and and growth hormone. So every
- 23:02Speaker 1: morning I'm like Barry Bonds really, yeah, yeah, it's the
- 23:08Speaker 1: real deal. Oh, I mean I knew that this is
- 23:11Speaker 1: a big deal, but I didn't know that you were.
- 23:13Speaker 1: Really I didn't know there's that much to it. Yeah, No,
- 23:16Speaker 1: it's been a pretty serious Uh, it's been been a
- 23:19Speaker 1: pretty serious um struggle. But better than the alternative. I'm
- 23:26Speaker 1: all good. Yeah, you're on the right side of the gray.
- 23:28Speaker 1: He did get big, he did get a big bear.
- 23:29Speaker 1: I did, Yeah, I got a big bear. Um still
- 23:32Speaker 1: hunting still, that's true. Yeah, I just meant in the
- 23:38Speaker 1: general sense, I have tags for this, not yourder get
- 23:44Speaker 1: in trouble. No, Yeah, it's been pretty crazy. I m
- 23:49Speaker 1: start a new job around that time, and I had
- 23:51Speaker 1: to postpone the start of that job for about a
- 23:55Speaker 1: month while I went to California and got surgery. And yeah,
- 23:59Speaker 1: so it's gonna learned a lot about the human body
- 24:03Speaker 1: and a lot about myself. And uh, yeah, I didn't
- 24:08Speaker 1: mean to make this so serious. No, you didn't. But
- 24:11Speaker 1: I guess what's happened is you being so casual about it.
- 24:16Speaker 1: It was like effective, Yeah, at least in the way
- 24:19Speaker 1: you're putting it forth. You were putting it forth to
- 24:21Speaker 1: your friends. That just seemed the casual about it. So
- 24:23Speaker 1: I thought it was more casual than it is. No,
- 24:25Speaker 1: I mean I've been uh, I mean I haven't. I
- 24:28Speaker 1: haven't held any secrets, um, but I haven't really broadcast
- 24:32Speaker 1: a whole lot of this stuff. I don't put any
- 24:34Speaker 1: of that on social media or anything like that. But
- 24:36Speaker 1: it's kind of hard to This is a little bit
- 24:38Speaker 1: worse than the UM. Well, yeah, no, I mean it's
- 24:44Speaker 1: some of the symptoms like I can't hide, you know,
- 24:47Speaker 1: like sometimes for a while there, I was like crying
- 24:49Speaker 1: all the time and just have very little control over
- 24:52Speaker 1: my emotions and all that stuff. So do you enjoy
- 24:55Speaker 1: movies more now? You know. I've always been a crier
- 24:59Speaker 1: at the cinema, so that that hasn't changed much. But yeah,
- 25:05Speaker 1: and it's pretty crazy all these chemicals and processes in
- 25:09Speaker 1: your body, and UM kind of take for granted that
- 25:14Speaker 1: at all works. But we're figuring it out, and luckily
- 25:21Speaker 1: I've had a lot of help with that. So yeah,
- 25:27Speaker 1: anything else, No, I'm typing something. I just feel like
- 25:33Speaker 1: I'm at the doctor's office my symptoms, and you're taking notes. Um,
- 25:40Speaker 1: if you read the doctor's office, another dude will come
- 25:41Speaker 1: in here a minute and ask you the saint set
- 25:43Speaker 1: of questions. And I didn't have a cope when I
- 25:47Speaker 1: like I was saying, like I was saying to the
- 25:49Speaker 1: other person that was just in here a minute ago. Yeah, No,
- 25:54Speaker 1: I mean it's yeah, I mean just to some up.
- 25:57Speaker 1: It's been tough, but it's all good. We're figuring it out. Damn. Yeah, Yeah,
- 26:02Speaker 1: it's weird. Later I'll ask you if there's anything else
- 26:04Speaker 1: we can do to help. I don't think so. Um, well,
- 26:12Speaker 1: back when you had your pituitary glad you uh all
- 26:16Speaker 1: the people here, So the reason what what? What? One
- 26:21Speaker 1: of the commonalities I'm trying to say, one of the
- 26:23Speaker 1: commonalities that binds our friend Randall Williams and Doug during
- 26:29Speaker 1: my brother matt Ronello is that they were all uh
- 26:31Speaker 1: participants for good and bad um in the documentary film
- 26:37Speaker 1: that we recently released called Stars in the Sky and
- 26:41Speaker 1: we're gonna we want to talk about this a little
- 26:44Speaker 1: bit and kind of do you know talk about the
- 26:47Speaker 1: making of an aftermath of and the themes that we
- 26:49Speaker 1: explore in the movie the movie if you uh, if
- 26:53Speaker 1: you want to go watch this and that that's what
- 26:55Speaker 1: this is really about. I learned that there's a writer,
- 26:57Speaker 1: Ian Fraser, and he always says that he's written a
- 26:59Speaker 1: lot of book books, and he says he likes the
- 27:01Speaker 1: very cleanly um in the beginning of his books, tell
- 27:05Speaker 1: people what a book was about. So he begins a
- 27:08Speaker 1: book with the line, this is a book about Indians.
- 27:13Speaker 1: You want if people know what they're getting into. Um.
- 27:18Speaker 1: So yeah, the goal this here is that you will
- 27:20Speaker 1: go watch this movie somewhere to watch the movie, honest,
- 27:24Speaker 1: you have to go to you know you have. It's
- 27:29Speaker 1: called Stars in the Sky a Hunting Story. But what's
- 27:33Speaker 1: the website? Stars in this guy film? And it brings
- 27:37Speaker 1: you to Vimeo and you gotta pay some money. But
- 27:38Speaker 1: it's like really helpful to us if you do. You
- 27:40Speaker 1: gotta pay some money and you can stream it and
- 27:42Speaker 1: download it. Super helpful if you do. We started the
- 27:45Speaker 1: film like it was kind of such it's such a
- 27:47Speaker 1: weird story how it went because we started the film.
- 27:49Speaker 1: Do you even remember that's how I met Brody who
- 27:52Speaker 1: now works with us. When we film the first bit
- 27:56Speaker 1: of the film was several summers ago. Shifties in the
- 28:02Speaker 1: film and she's five, Well does that help? Well, it
- 28:06Speaker 1: was no more than five years ago. Oh, I see,
- 28:09Speaker 1: But but that was not even when we started making it. Oh,
- 28:13Speaker 1: I started making it several summers ago. You didn't film
- 28:15Speaker 1: me first, No, the first thing, like after me, you
- 28:21Speaker 1: filmed me in fifteen or sixteen? Was it really that
- 28:23Speaker 1: long ago? Oh? My god? It was right after we
- 28:25Speaker 1: did the first podcast, which was like June of and
- 28:30Speaker 1: we had we had already filmed parts of it then
- 28:34Speaker 1: because the first like, going into it, we knew we
- 28:36Speaker 1: were gonna do, we kind of knew we were gonna
- 28:38Speaker 1: do two things going into it. It was gonna be
- 28:42Speaker 1: this exploration of um sort of the mindset and conflicts
- 28:50Speaker 1: and contradictions and loves and hates and worries and joys
- 28:57Speaker 1: of contemporary America and hunters. Ah and I felt that,
- 29:04Speaker 1: you know, when we started working on it, we felt
- 29:06Speaker 1: that to do this you needed to kind of show
- 29:09Speaker 1: like what a hunting trip looked like, to demonstrate to
- 29:11Speaker 1: people what it could be and how it could feel
- 29:15Speaker 1: and smell and look. And so the first thing we
- 29:17Speaker 1: did in the movie was we just went and recorded.
- 29:19Speaker 1: We went and filmed a hunt, and we filmed the
- 29:23Speaker 1: hunt in Alaska for Sia blacktail deer. And it was
- 29:27Speaker 1: meant to in some ways. If people watch Me Eat
- 29:31Speaker 1: Meat Eater or the TV show You kind of Get You,
- 29:34Speaker 1: you can almost kind of imagine what this hunt might be.
- 29:37Speaker 1: Though it's it's structured very differently, but just like this
- 29:39Speaker 1: kind of like through line. It starts with someone leaving,
- 29:42Speaker 1: leaving a building and striking off into the woods, and
- 29:46Speaker 1: the ends with someone coming back to a building. Um,
- 29:51Speaker 1: and what I thought when I when I mapped out
- 29:55Speaker 1: in the movie like the things I wanted to talk about,
- 29:57Speaker 1: the thing, the themes I wanted to explore and ask
- 30:01Speaker 1: various hunters from around the country their impressions of and uh,
- 30:05Speaker 1: I realized that all of these topics were things that
- 30:10Speaker 1: could pretty easily spring off of conversations that one might
- 30:17Speaker 1: have or thoughts that one might have, or spring off
- 30:20Speaker 1: actions and things that could happen on a hunt. So
- 30:23Speaker 1: this through line of this hunt winds up being winds
- 30:27Speaker 1: up presenting these conversation starters and later over the one
- 30:34Speaker 1: of being Over the years as we were able to
- 30:37Speaker 1: do it, we interviewed a great many people from all
- 30:41Speaker 1: around the country and asked them uh their particular thoughts
- 30:48Speaker 1: and this is kind of where some of the contradictions
- 30:50Speaker 1: came into place, their particular thoughts about these themes and
- 30:54Speaker 1: issues that come up, and then assemble this thing like
- 30:58Speaker 1: like a documentary film. And in an added voice I
- 31:03Speaker 1: wanted to bring in, it's it's I'd like to actually
- 31:05Speaker 1: want to get him on an added voice that I
- 31:07Speaker 1: brought in as a philosopher and an animal rights ethicist
- 31:12Speaker 1: named Robert Jones. And he's a steady line as being
- 31:17Speaker 1: someone who's not connected to hunting and is actually adversarial
- 31:20Speaker 1: to hunting, like opposes hunting outright. And he also speaks
- 31:26Speaker 1: about these different themes we did we we want to
- 31:29Speaker 1: interview in add that. He's definitely he's definitely a star
- 31:34Speaker 1: of the dock. I think that very credible. He really
- 31:39Speaker 1: adds a lot. You know, it's a very smart move
- 31:41Speaker 1: I think on your part on directing that. But I
- 31:45Speaker 1: mean just to have both view points. You know, everybody
- 31:48Speaker 1: that I talked to is like, I mean, good thing
- 31:50Speaker 1: you had him in there, you know, one thing you
- 31:53Speaker 1: always get from people is you always get get people.
- 31:59Speaker 1: We can kind this a lot because when you're like
- 32:01Speaker 1: dealing with the ideas, people get angry when you give
- 32:04Speaker 1: someone a voice. They think that giving someone a voice
- 32:09Speaker 1: in media, the giving someone a voice is tacit approval
- 32:16Speaker 1: of what that person has to say, or that you
- 32:18Speaker 1: by giving someone a voice, you endorse what they have
- 32:23Speaker 1: to say. And I hear about it a little bit
- 32:27Speaker 1: for his inclusion in the movie, like why would you
- 32:30Speaker 1: give voice to him? And then when we had Rob
- 32:33Speaker 1: Bishop on the podcast and like like we have a
- 32:37Speaker 1: pretty consistent pro public lands, like like you know, as
- 32:41Speaker 1: a company whatever, we have a pretty consistent pro public
- 32:44Speaker 1: lands philosophy. And Rob Bishop is um I don't want
- 32:48Speaker 1: to call him anti public lands at all, but he's
- 32:52Speaker 1: you know, uh opposes a lot of the things I
- 32:56Speaker 1: believe in around public lands management. And people are like,
- 32:59Speaker 1: I can't believe you get Rob Bishop a voice. Like
- 33:01Speaker 1: Rob Bishop is the Chairman of the House Natural was
- 33:05Speaker 1: the chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee. I don't
- 33:08Speaker 1: know that he's lacking a voice, Like I wasn't like
- 33:12Speaker 1: I went and found someone who had no way to
- 33:14Speaker 1: I mean, the guy could talk to anyone wants anytime
- 33:16Speaker 1: he wants, and this animal rights guy as a professor
- 33:20Speaker 1: at a school in California, doesn't lack a voice, but
- 33:23Speaker 1: it want to be in one of That was probably
- 33:24Speaker 1: one of my favorite interviews that we did for that
- 33:28Speaker 1: because it was so it was really challenging to It
- 33:35Speaker 1: was challenging the kind like if we were sparring um.
- 33:39Speaker 1: It was challenging. He brought up some really challenging ideas.
- 33:43Speaker 1: So if uh, like Richard Spencer R Kelly haunted, would
- 33:48Speaker 1: you have them on UM's It's a really good question, Like,
- 34:01Speaker 1: knowing what we now know about R Kelly, if we
- 34:04Speaker 1: were doing a film, you know why I probably wouldn't.
- 34:08Speaker 1: I probably wouldn't because what he's most known for, which
- 34:16Speaker 1: is sex abuse of minors in the case R Kelly,
- 34:21Speaker 1: what he's most known for, isn't what I would be
- 34:25Speaker 1: asking about. It was so peripheral to the conversation that
- 34:30Speaker 1: that aspect of their personality or that aspect of their
- 34:33Speaker 1: biogopy would be this this like really weighty thing in
- 34:39Speaker 1: the room. Yeah, we just sat down and did an
- 34:42Speaker 1: interview with We did an interview with Bo Jackson about
- 34:46Speaker 1: his relationship with hunting. Um. And as part of that,
- 34:52Speaker 1: you can imagine that we talked a lot about his
- 34:56Speaker 1: career as an athlete, because it would sort of be
- 34:59Speaker 1: the it's like weird thing to have not come up,
- 35:03Speaker 1: the elephant in the room. Yeah, and so in that case,
- 35:06Speaker 1: I see, like that's good Devil's advocating. But in that way, yeah,
- 35:10Speaker 1: I was trying to put you in a spot. I
- 35:11Speaker 1: was just legitimately it was legitimately curious. Oh yeah, but
- 35:16Speaker 1: but this dude was fascinating. Um, Like his main thing
- 35:21Speaker 1: is that that the main point he tries to get across.
- 35:25Speaker 1: You have to watch because I could, like I kind
- 35:26Speaker 1: of cheery rather than like picking moments where he didn't
- 35:30Speaker 1: do great. I picked I felt like I that I
- 35:34Speaker 1: should say, ah, that we working on it. Kind of
- 35:37Speaker 1: picked his best points, you know. And and he countered
- 35:41Speaker 1: like he has really good counters for things where hunters
- 35:45Speaker 1: love to Hunters love to talk about it's natural, right, Oh,
- 35:51Speaker 1: Man's always hunted. If we didn't hunt, we wouldn't be
- 35:54Speaker 1: here today. It's natural. And he brings up there are
- 35:57Speaker 1: a lot of things that are natural fratricide, matricide, right,
- 36:08Speaker 1: that have always occurred. Does that it's yeah, does that
- 36:13Speaker 1: mean it's like, does that in and of itself in
- 36:16Speaker 1: an endorsement of the activity? Right? That's not it's not
- 36:18Speaker 1: a vindication of hunting that's always been done. I mean
- 36:22Speaker 1: we've always, like in the Grand in the like from
- 36:27Speaker 1: a historical historical perspective, we've always not driven cars, you know. Yeah,
- 36:36Speaker 1: So let me finish my I want to finish my
- 36:38Speaker 1: little preamble here. Then were gettato a couple of other things,
- 36:40Speaker 1: cause Janni has Yanni has some uh he's thought about
- 36:42Speaker 1: how how to discuss this, and he's got a good
- 36:45Speaker 1: idea for it. But the preamble being but I had
- 36:49Speaker 1: this idea that it felt very cohesive. Um, and then
- 36:53Speaker 1: we talked to so many people, and then you run
- 36:55Speaker 1: into this problem where how long is something? So then
- 37:00Speaker 1: you in the end you have ninety minutes or so
- 37:03Speaker 1: hundred minutes, and you go through the very very painful
- 37:12Speaker 1: process of narrowing this down to where you have a
- 37:24Speaker 1: hundred plus hours of interviews with people that you need
- 37:28Speaker 1: to fit into one minutes, and then you wind up
- 37:32Speaker 1: with something where someone would watch it and not. This
- 37:36Speaker 1: isn't saying something is good or bad. It's just a
- 37:38Speaker 1: fact of life. Someone would watch it and never have
- 37:42Speaker 1: and never have any idea what it was, how you
- 37:46Speaker 1: framed it in your head, because it only makes sense, right,
- 37:50Speaker 1: the framing of it only makes sense to someone who
- 37:53Speaker 1: felt that they were seeing like a process that they
- 37:58Speaker 1: were trying to put in place. When it's all done,
- 38:01Speaker 1: you can't expect that people would watch you go like, oh,
- 38:04Speaker 1: I see what you're doing, you know, because so much
- 38:09Speaker 1: falls away, Like when we started this show that you're
- 38:12Speaker 1: listening to right now, I had like a precise idea
- 38:15Speaker 1: of what I was trying to do. No one has
- 38:17Speaker 1: ever written and said, you know what, I see what
- 38:20Speaker 1: you did there. It's just it lives in your head
- 38:25Speaker 1: only you know. But the the guiding through line is
- 38:29Speaker 1: just these these these themes, And we're gonna ask you
- 38:34Speaker 1: guys a little bit about your feelings about these themes
- 38:38Speaker 1: and thoughts that you might have had um and and
- 38:43Speaker 1: you could speak to like kind of like what you
- 38:44Speaker 1: meant and what was represented in the movie, or if
- 38:48Speaker 1: things that you wish you said and hadn't said. And
- 38:52Speaker 1: one thing I want to start with with Matt and
- 38:55Speaker 1: and this was like in there almost up to the end,
- 38:57Speaker 1: I don't think it's in there. It's not in there.
- 38:59Speaker 1: It was the ending for a long time. For a
- 39:01Speaker 1: long time, the ending of the movie, almost the ending
- 39:04Speaker 1: of the movie was you saying, if you woke me
- 39:09Speaker 1: up a hundred years from now is how many years
- 39:14Speaker 1: he had said, if you woke me up hundred years
- 39:18Speaker 1: from now and told me there was no hunting, I
- 39:21Speaker 1: wouldn't be surprised and I wouldn't care. M hm. I
- 39:26Speaker 1: don't remember saying that, but but yeah, I guess I
- 39:31Speaker 1: still I still that still were saying, I don't believe
- 39:36Speaker 1: in hunting for hunting's sake. I'm just stuck being this. Yeah, yeah,
- 39:40Speaker 1: I don't. I don't think that. I don't think that
- 39:44Speaker 1: hunting makes someone a better person. Mm hmm um. If
- 39:49Speaker 1: you want somebody to be a better person, there's better, other,
- 39:53Speaker 1: more constructive uses of their time. It's like I was
- 39:56Speaker 1: going to advocate for something after that that's gonna carry
- 40:00Speaker 1: on after I'm gone. It wouldn't be hunting. I mean,
- 40:05Speaker 1: reading books maybe, or volunteering, you know, being a good
- 40:09Speaker 1: civil servant. It's far more important to me than the
- 40:14Speaker 1: future of hunting whence I'm gone. If I if I
- 40:17Speaker 1: care about hunting at all after I'm gone. It's because
- 40:22Speaker 1: you know, I it's I guess it would be. I'd
- 40:27Speaker 1: have to be convinced, and I partially am that it's
- 40:30Speaker 1: it's good for wildlife conservation. I guess there's part of
- 40:33Speaker 1: me that wants to look down from the heavens and
- 40:36Speaker 1: see wild animals running around still, But yeah, I don't.
- 40:41Speaker 1: I don't see hunting is making people better. When we
- 40:45Speaker 1: were assembling the movie, we took all of the people
- 40:48Speaker 1: that we interviewed and asked them about their hopes and
- 40:53Speaker 1: fears for the future. Everyone was really when when talking
- 41:01Speaker 1: about like a future everyone um, except for two individuals,
- 41:07Speaker 1: my two brothers. We're the only people out of everyone
- 41:10Speaker 1: we talked to who didn't in some way worry about
- 41:14Speaker 1: what would be lost. Hm. And these are two the
- 41:19Speaker 1: people that I know that like it the most. Yeah,
- 41:23Speaker 1: I uh, I just watched Dr Mary for the first
- 41:27Speaker 1: time a couple of nights ago, and I do remember, like,
- 41:30Speaker 1: I'm proud of the way I described it, that I'm
- 41:33Speaker 1: I'm stuck being a hunter. I would, I mean I
- 41:37Speaker 1: would just I would have an identity crisis that forty
- 41:43Speaker 1: eight years of age would be just kind of jarring.
- 41:47Speaker 1: If all of a sudden I stopped hunting, you know,
- 41:50Speaker 1: I don't know what I do or how I would
- 41:53Speaker 1: relate to what might what would preoccupy my thoughts, you know. So, um,
- 42:01Speaker 1: that's why I guess I hunt my kids recently. I
- 42:06Speaker 1: brought us up a couple of times, I think, but
- 42:09Speaker 1: my kids were recently asking about like why we had
- 42:12Speaker 1: to go? Um, I think it was ice fishing on
- 42:16Speaker 1: a cold day, and like why do we have to
- 42:18Speaker 1: go ice fishing? It's so cold? So well, you know,
- 42:23Speaker 1: I can think of a bunch of reasons, but one
- 42:25Speaker 1: would be you'll get to hang out with way cooler
- 42:27Speaker 1: people if you learn how to do this. And so
- 42:33Speaker 1: when I think, when I think about, like if someone says, oh,
- 42:35Speaker 1: it's gonna be in fifth years, it will be gone,
- 42:38Speaker 1: I wouldn't I wouldn't be able to have a huh.
- 42:41Speaker 1: It would like really make me sad. But a lot
- 42:44Speaker 1: of it would be nostalgia. Nostalgia for like a verse,
- 42:50Speaker 1: like the version of it that I experienced and imagine
- 42:54Speaker 1: that other people would experience. Yeah, yeah, there's I mean,
- 42:58Speaker 1: so many of my positive memories about hunting our about
- 43:05Speaker 1: the people I hunt with. I mean that is, it's
- 43:09Speaker 1: the it's um doing these adventurous things with UM people
- 43:17Speaker 1: I care about. I don't like. I don't like it
- 43:20Speaker 1: as a means for meeting new people very much. I
- 43:24Speaker 1: just have this small group of people that I hunt with.
- 43:27Speaker 1: If I'm gonna make friends with somebody, I don't want
- 43:29Speaker 1: it to be like through hunting. Probably that's it's in
- 43:33Speaker 1: a vehicle for forming friendships for me really, although like
- 43:38Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of my closest friends I've
- 43:40Speaker 1: met through hunting, but I don't want to. I don't
- 43:42Speaker 1: use it in that way. You know, like if if
- 43:45Speaker 1: you're at a wedding reception and someone looks across the
- 43:49Speaker 1: room and says, oh, you know that guy likes the
- 43:50Speaker 1: hunt a lot, you don't feel like a gravitational point.
- 43:53Speaker 1: I want to talk to him about it, and then
- 43:57Speaker 1: but if if he's if he's, I mean, there's just
- 43:59Speaker 1: some first first out and show me all the big
- 44:03Speaker 1: ship they got, and then I'm gonna be jealous, and
- 44:05Speaker 1: then I'm gonna wish that you would go they'd go away.
- 44:07Speaker 1: You know, you could always I met Doug and Janice
- 44:13Speaker 1: through hunting, and I could see very good friends of mine,
- 44:16Speaker 1: so I don't know. I just really think this out. Well,
- 44:19Speaker 1: you know what you always on the conversation is gonna
- 44:21Speaker 1: go wrong when you had like and when you had
- 44:23Speaker 1: a wedding reception and you go and talk to the
- 44:25Speaker 1: guy that someone says like the hunt, you'd be like, oh, yeah,
- 44:29Speaker 1: what you has been what have you been hunting? You're like, oh, yeah,
- 44:31Speaker 1: we've been getting a lot of turkeys used twelve gauge. Always,
- 44:35Speaker 1: you always know that should be the twentiest thing, you know,
- 44:40Speaker 1: Oh yeah, oh yeah, I had a guy. If it's
- 44:43Speaker 1: not like, oh yeah, where do you guys go, I
- 44:44Speaker 1: had a guy on the ranch where my the my
- 44:48Speaker 1: wife co owns and works Dude ranch. Another co owner.
- 44:52Speaker 1: He likes to careful now he likes to talk hunt
- 44:55Speaker 1: once in a while. Careful. You should have set it
- 45:01Speaker 1: up different. Yeah, yo, thank you, thank you. Man. I
- 45:06Speaker 1: would not. I wasn't even thinking about that. I guess
- 45:10Speaker 1: I've grown comfortable with this podcasting thing. I just think
- 45:13Speaker 1: it's conversation. Yeah, you know, No, you're right, You're absolutely right.
- 45:17Speaker 1: It would. It could be devastating. I don't know, we'll
- 45:19Speaker 1: cut it out. I don't know if she listens to
- 45:21Speaker 1: this or not. We'll cut it out. Um no, no, no, no,
- 45:25Speaker 1: you don't need to cut it out. I can keep
- 45:27Speaker 1: this part in. Yeah, really, yeah, I'm willing. I mean,
- 45:32Speaker 1: we didn't don't even say where I was really going
- 45:34Speaker 1: with it. There's an everything you say in the movie,
- 45:36Speaker 1: and you do say this in the movie, and I
- 45:38Speaker 1: love the line what I just I was now I
- 45:42Speaker 1: want to know you can ask him later. There was
- 45:45Speaker 1: another there was another person, different in a different locale,
- 45:54Speaker 1: and they said, they said to me exactly, you say,
- 45:58Speaker 1: when when when? Then your armor? The weapon is the
- 46:02Speaker 1: first thing that comes up. It's just a bad sign
- 46:05Speaker 1: of renversation is gonna go. And uh, because I just
- 46:09Speaker 1: think of weapons is something that you used to slow
- 46:12Speaker 1: down animals so that you can cook and eat them.
- 46:14Speaker 1: I don't give a funk about that ship, you know, halftime,
- 46:17Speaker 1: I can't even remember what calumber my goddamn rightful. Um
- 46:23Speaker 1: so uh he said, so what do you used to
- 46:27Speaker 1: kill them? And he wanted me to go over fifty five?
- 46:33Speaker 1: You know, I said, a shotgun. Your ship's a shotgun
- 46:42Speaker 1: with bullets, and um, the thing you say in the movie,
- 46:48Speaker 1: and I love it, and people it's like the one
- 46:50Speaker 1: line that people bring up the people like the most
- 46:53Speaker 1: in the movie. And I don't even know what you
- 46:54Speaker 1: really mean by I mean, I know what you mean,
- 46:56Speaker 1: but but you're saying, Uh, you said if if used
- 47:00Speaker 1: to have cabbages head legst them too. Yeah, I think that.
- 47:09Speaker 1: So is it that you like to hunt things that
- 47:11Speaker 1: have legs? Well, I like to hunt things that are motile.
- 47:15Speaker 1: I mean I also does that word mean that they move? Yeah?
- 47:22Speaker 1: Not mobile? Well? Yeah, I think it's just another way
- 47:26Speaker 1: of saying the same thing. I'm checking. There's also well,
- 47:29Speaker 1: you know what a one animal? It doesn't move? Is
- 47:32Speaker 1: there an organism that doesn't move? Is cecil? It's a
- 47:36Speaker 1: cecil organism. No, you're right, capable of motion. Yeah, and
- 47:40Speaker 1: I like I like to gather cecil organisms. I just
- 47:44Speaker 1: gathered some horse mushrooms the other day. How you've been
- 47:46Speaker 1: doing a while asparagus kicking ass? It's been really, really good.
- 47:51Speaker 1: My PA's been stinking every day. That's good. Can you
- 47:54Speaker 1: tell people a hot tip and find a while to asparagus?
- 47:57Speaker 1: You taught me? Oh uh, you spot it driving down
- 48:02Speaker 1: the river in your boat at full tilt. You gotta
- 48:04Speaker 1: look for last year's stems. Do you have it in Wisconsin. Yeah, ditch,
- 48:11Speaker 1: we we have that too, but no, that, yeah, is
- 48:16Speaker 1: a pretty pretty abundant there um if you know where
- 48:19Speaker 1: to go. You know, yeah, your riverboat isn't fast, but
- 48:22Speaker 1: you've I've seen you spot it at full tilt. Oh yeah.
- 48:25Speaker 1: And and and you know I can also spot green
- 48:30Speaker 1: new stems full tilt. Really yeah, I just kind of
- 48:36Speaker 1: get a search image in your brain. Tell them about
- 48:39Speaker 1: to tell them about last year's growth, because this is
- 48:41Speaker 1: a hot til. Yeah, so you look for the last
- 48:43Speaker 1: year's stalks, as you know, and it puts off a
- 48:47Speaker 1: branch at a perfect, perfect ninety perfect perpendicular to where
- 48:54Speaker 1: the branch with the stem creates two perfect forty five
- 48:57Speaker 1: degree angles. And that's key because there's a lot of
- 49:00Speaker 1: other plants that superficially look like you know, the death
- 49:05Speaker 1: stems look superficially like. But the way that branch comes
- 49:08Speaker 1: off that stem like you could square a house with that. Something.
- 49:12Speaker 1: Bit man, I've been finding something like I don't know why,
- 49:16Speaker 1: but it seems like at the tail end of the
- 49:18Speaker 1: season they get fatter, and I've been finding some freaking
- 49:21Speaker 1: quarter pounders lately. Figure around as a silver dollar. It's
- 49:25Speaker 1: like a steak knife. Yeah, it's just as good, right,
- 49:30Speaker 1: And that's interesting. And I realized that because I got
- 49:32Speaker 1: some that was growing in a garden from Doug's wife.
- 49:36Speaker 1: That's the easiest way to find it is just to
- 49:38Speaker 1: actually propagate it. And when she first over in that
- 49:44Speaker 1: part of my garden over there, when she first busted
- 49:50Speaker 1: him out, I'm kind of like, oh, those big old things,
- 49:55Speaker 1: because when you like, I never buy asparagous it looks
- 49:57Speaker 1: like that in the store because it's gross. Oh, but
- 50:00Speaker 1: out of the ground, man, you can get like a
- 50:01Speaker 1: carrot stick. Yeah, I mean just unbelievable the difference, Like
- 50:05Speaker 1: you said, just as tender and as tasty as the
- 50:07Speaker 1: little guy. It's all non native, right, yeah, it's all
- 50:12Speaker 1: like fair It's like Farrell house cats, but fairrell asparagus.
- 50:16Speaker 1: So uh if cabbages had legs that hunt them too, well.
- 50:20Speaker 1: I think that Dan Doty was there that day and
- 50:25Speaker 1: he asked me, what is it about meat? And that's
- 50:29Speaker 1: what precipitated all right, So I guess there. I don't
- 50:35Speaker 1: want to, I just just seemed to be there, like
- 50:37Speaker 1: that's all about meat. It's like, I love to eat
- 50:39Speaker 1: all kinds of food. I love vegetables, I love. It's
- 50:46Speaker 1: just so yeah, that's that's the product of hunting. The
- 50:53Speaker 1: food product of hunting just so happens to be meat.
- 50:57Speaker 1: But if if cabbages ran around the woods, I would
- 51:01Speaker 1: freaking love to go hunt me a cabbage. You don't like,
- 51:06Speaker 1: not that you won't do it like you're eating restaurants
- 51:08Speaker 1: Like the rest of us, you don't relish buying meat. Well,
- 51:13Speaker 1: with one exception, my it just so happens that my
- 51:17Speaker 1: three favorite foods are um conventionally raised meat products. Tell
- 51:24Speaker 1: me more do um bologny No, chicken wings with ranch,
- 51:29Speaker 1: chicken wings with blue cheese, and chicken wings are my
- 51:33Speaker 1: three favorite foods. Well, that changed because your old favorite
- 51:41Speaker 1: food was pizza and your second, No, your favorite food
- 51:47Speaker 1: was hot wings. Your second favorite food was pizza. And
- 51:51Speaker 1: then one day, this is a big deal, this is
- 51:53Speaker 1: a big moment. I like the story. One day you
- 51:56Speaker 1: go into a restaurant and they had hot wing pizza,
- 51:59Speaker 1: which was not and you ordered it and were surprised
- 52:01Speaker 1: that it wasn't good and it really likes shook it
- 52:03Speaker 1: up too much, And remember how delighted you were. It
- 52:08Speaker 1: was like the first time we when I'd done I
- 52:10Speaker 1: think Nita was there and we were in Ennis maybe
- 52:13Speaker 1: and we went to some random, you know restaurant that's
- 52:16Speaker 1: that was the first year was opened, probably last year
- 52:18Speaker 1: was open. And you looked at the menu and you're like,
- 52:20Speaker 1: this is my kind of place. All was was like pizza,
- 52:25Speaker 1: hot dogs, wings, and you were one of everything and
- 52:29Speaker 1: ate one of everything and just happy it's convenient. Do
- 52:32Speaker 1: like I do like the bar food we and another
- 52:38Speaker 1: thing I really like. And I just gotta say this
- 52:40Speaker 1: and I'll stop talking so much, But I really like
- 52:43Speaker 1: I'm asking you questions right now. I really like I'm
- 52:46Speaker 1: working around the way you don't deal poker. I'm going
- 52:49Speaker 1: to Okay. I like, um uh, some thin sliced turkey
- 52:56Speaker 1: on wonder bread with a bunch of mayo and cranberry sauce,
- 53:00Speaker 1: like Thanksgiving leftovers. That's a favorite food. So you've expressed
- 53:12Speaker 1: like you don't relish buying meat. I don't buy him.
- 53:15Speaker 1: I don't buy me because it's it's a it's a
- 53:21Speaker 1: major treat and my wife, but you don't you go
- 53:24Speaker 1: buy wife ways probably a hundred and what do you
- 53:27Speaker 1: think thirty pounds? Yeah, she's one thirty. He eats as
- 53:35Speaker 1: much food or more food than I do. And I'm
- 53:37Speaker 1: not exaggerating that woman can freaking monster truck some chicken wings,
- 53:44Speaker 1: and so it's kind of like something we do together.
- 53:48Speaker 1: So so, uh, what I'm getting at here? Let me
- 53:55Speaker 1: tell you where I'm going with this. You don't relish
- 53:57Speaker 1: buying meat, No, I don't. I don't buy me except
- 54:01Speaker 1: when I go to a restaurant. Yeah, and a lot
- 54:03Speaker 1: of that, like it comes from a couple of places,
- 54:05Speaker 1: I think. And you've expressed this, and I'm sure you're like,
- 54:08Speaker 1: I'm sure you're feelings about it evolved and changed over
- 54:11Speaker 1: the years, because all of our feelings evolved and changed
- 54:13Speaker 1: over the years. But I think that you are a
- 54:17Speaker 1: naturally very frugal person um, and you would never be like, well,
- 54:21Speaker 1: why would I buy something when I have like an
- 54:26Speaker 1: approximation of it in my freezer? And you're not any like, sure,
- 54:30Speaker 1: it's more convenient that it's all like ready to roll
- 54:32Speaker 1: and thought out, but you'll go home and thought helped
- 54:35Speaker 1: meet out and your microwaiting and eat it because you're frugal.
- 54:39Speaker 1: But there's also a little bit of ethics mixed in there.
- 54:42Speaker 1: There's some ethics and there's also another dimension that I
- 54:44Speaker 1: tried to explain um when I was interviewed for the
- 54:48Speaker 1: documentary didn't make the cut. And I can see why
- 54:50Speaker 1: because I wasn't very clear and I probably won't be
- 54:52Speaker 1: now either. But there's this child like it's from child hood.
- 55:01Speaker 1: This is where this feeling emerged. Was in childhood for me,
- 55:05Speaker 1: this giddy sense of getting something from free, to eat
- 55:12Speaker 1: from nature, and that is an abiding component of what
- 55:20Speaker 1: drives me to haunt and gather is in fish? Is
- 55:25Speaker 1: that what that giddy feeling of, like you doing it
- 55:29Speaker 1: yourself and getting uh your food from nature for free.
- 55:34Speaker 1: Like it's like it's like a thing that I've been
- 55:38Speaker 1: thinking about. We've been eating a lot of Morrel's from
- 55:40Speaker 1: dogs Farm that he picked. Morels are good. A right,
- 55:44Speaker 1: they're good, but they're not that good. They're not that good.
- 55:48Speaker 1: I mean they're great, but people's enthusiasm for listen, listen,
- 55:52Speaker 1: they ain't chicken wings no here. I like, Okay, I
- 56:02Speaker 1: like Morrel's, love Morrells, but peoples and people who look
- 56:09Speaker 1: for and find Morrell's have an enthusiasm that exceeds the
- 56:14Speaker 1: flavor of the morrell Yeah, it's I it's like, it's
- 56:20Speaker 1: not like they're like, dude, come may, I'm eating a
- 56:23Speaker 1: shipload of Morrell's, whether I got to buy them or not.
- 56:26Speaker 1: That's not true people that hunt Morrel's. If all of
- 56:30Speaker 1: a sudden there was a drought and no Morrel's came up,
- 56:33Speaker 1: It's not that they're gonna be driving around calling to
- 56:35Speaker 1: stores to find Morrel's because they have to have morels.
- 56:39Speaker 1: They morels are great because you find the sun's bitches
- 56:42Speaker 1: growing out of the dirt. Yeah, and then they're great,
- 56:45Speaker 1: and they're what I'm saying. It's like, you can't un
- 56:49Speaker 1: you can't untank, like you can't disconnect the two. I
- 56:52Speaker 1: remember when I did. I did a deep dive on
- 56:55Speaker 1: mushrooms for a number of years, three or four years,
- 56:58Speaker 1: when you were infatuating, learning a lot of different SPECIs.
- 57:01Speaker 1: You got to where you knew more about mushrooms than
- 57:03Speaker 1: anyone I knew. And I remember learning that they have
- 57:09Speaker 1: no calories, and that was very disappointing to me because
- 57:13Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, being it really so this isn't like
- 57:16Speaker 1: getting a food item anymore. UM have protein in them?
- 57:23Speaker 1: Oh dude, it really it's interesting. They shure taste like
- 57:26Speaker 1: they what they taste like freaking meat man when you
- 57:28Speaker 1: put a little oh good yeah flower on them and
- 57:31Speaker 1: brown them in a bunch of butter. And I'm like, good,
- 57:34Speaker 1: do you guys see what I'm saying. I'm not this
- 57:36Speaker 1: in your morals? Man, Okay, well let me see this,
- 57:40Speaker 1: Doug was less than you bought aom Morrell. I have
- 57:42Speaker 1: never bought m call and I've never sold a morale either.
- 57:45Speaker 1: I've given a lot of them away. And I agree
- 57:48Speaker 1: completely what with what you're saying about the fascination with
- 57:53Speaker 1: going out there. And I mean, I was so frustrated
- 57:57Speaker 1: this spring because I'm looking and I'm looking, and you know,
- 57:59Speaker 1: I'm going one out almost daily because the conditions are
- 58:02Speaker 1: right and I've got great spots. And my wife and
- 58:05Speaker 1: I were out looking for him, and and uh we
- 58:09Speaker 1: we came around and we had taken a pretty good
- 58:11Speaker 1: hike and ironically found this big batch that that you saw,
- 58:16Speaker 1: and then you got some right behind the barn, I mean,
- 58:18Speaker 1: you know, a hundred and fifty yards from the house,
- 58:21Speaker 1: and uh, I had left that tree alone, but we
- 58:23Speaker 1: came around there and it's just this fascinating sort of
- 58:29Speaker 1: magical thing to come there and see this little village
- 58:32Speaker 1: of of these little little village, you know, a little
- 58:40Speaker 1: scaring and and you sem and then you look away
- 58:45Speaker 1: for a second and you look back and okay, I
- 58:47Speaker 1: know there was one there? Where did it go? And
- 58:50Speaker 1: we we spent Trish and I spent an hour and
- 58:53Speaker 1: a half. They're picking Morrel's and just keep looking and
- 58:56Speaker 1: you know, and and Trish said, we picked a hundred
- 58:59Speaker 1: and moreles there and she said thank you for everyone
- 59:03Speaker 1: that she got the earth well in the I mean,
- 59:07Speaker 1: there's it's the magic of it. It's it is. You
- 59:10Speaker 1: can take somebody that's never seen him morell, never eating
- 59:13Speaker 1: him morell morell hunting, and they'll get that like that
- 59:16Speaker 1: about it. And with those things too, Like that that
- 59:20Speaker 1: makes an extra special is that you can't farm them, right,
- 59:24Speaker 1: something wild about them? Yeah, they're wild. It's like people
- 59:28Speaker 1: get excited about the asparagus. But you can go to
- 59:31Speaker 1: the store and buy them, but it's still toials of
- 59:33Speaker 1: times cooler to find it. You can grow. They completely
- 59:37Speaker 1: defy cultivation. I think that I think that when you
- 59:40Speaker 1: see Morrell, it's wild grown. I don't think you can
- 59:42Speaker 1: I don't think yeah, I don't think you can cost effectively,
- 59:45Speaker 1: But I think I know that you can buy these
- 59:48Speaker 1: little pots where you water them. And that's my understand
- 59:51Speaker 1: is no one's figured out a way to like make
- 59:53Speaker 1: money could state somewhout You just your relationship, which is
- 59:56Speaker 1: like the meat, right, and you talk about like isn't
- 1:00:00Speaker 1: like the meat because I hunt cabbages? Um. But then
- 1:00:05Speaker 1: you have some pasture land at your house and you
- 1:00:10Speaker 1: guys raise up you and your bodies raise up some lambs.
- 1:00:13Speaker 1: We did for a while, Yeah, and then you know
- 1:00:16Speaker 1: you'd go out and have to dispatch, say the lamb,
- 1:00:22Speaker 1: and you didn't like that, hated it. No, I know
- 1:00:25Speaker 1: I'd not relish that. There was like and then I was,
- 1:00:29Speaker 1: let me do, let me lay one more part on.
- 1:00:31Speaker 1: Then you can talk about the whole experience because you
- 1:00:32Speaker 1: don't like that, kind of dread it. And then but
- 1:00:38Speaker 1: then you really enjoy the lamb meat. M hmm. So
- 1:00:42Speaker 1: is that connected to hunting or is that as different
- 1:00:46Speaker 1: from hunting is picking asparagus? You know what I mean? Like, like,
- 1:00:49Speaker 1: what is that in the movie we see your place
- 1:00:53Speaker 1: and you're kind of a little livestock area there. Um.
- 1:01:00Speaker 1: So the raising the sheep. I was doing that with
- 1:01:02Speaker 1: some friends that they hunt a little bit but not
- 1:01:04Speaker 1: a lot. And they got young families and they were
- 1:01:06Speaker 1: using the meat and I would take a little bit
- 1:01:08Speaker 1: of it, but it was more to encourage them to
- 1:01:11Speaker 1: spend time at my house and just like something to
- 1:01:13Speaker 1: do with my community of people, you know, my friends. Um.
- 1:01:19Speaker 1: I think that when I kill an animal hunting, it's
- 1:01:23Speaker 1: like it's it's usually after a tremendous amount of work.
- 1:01:28Speaker 1: So the feeling of accomplishment kind of kind of offsets
- 1:01:34Speaker 1: the sadness a little bit, you know, kind of overrides
- 1:01:37Speaker 1: it a little bit, because there's so much work involved
- 1:01:40Speaker 1: in finally getting something. But when you kill domestic animals,
- 1:01:44Speaker 1: just the sadness without that other component to it. Does
- 1:01:48Speaker 1: that make any sense? I puzzle over with the because
- 1:01:51Speaker 1: people like, oh, you'd like to kill, but then when
- 1:01:54Speaker 1: you go out to like then maybe some people don't,
- 1:01:58Speaker 1: but anyone that I have that we're some livestock, but
- 1:02:01Speaker 1: I know they might really love to hunt, but never man,
- 1:02:04Speaker 1: anyone who's really excited to go out and shoot the pig. Right. Yeah,
- 1:02:08Speaker 1: I like hunting right up to the point where I
- 1:02:12Speaker 1: pull the trigger, and then I stopped liking it, to
- 1:02:16Speaker 1: the point where the animal is starting to become me
- 1:02:21Speaker 1: really yeah. Huh. The other that that, you know, if
- 1:02:28Speaker 1: you're tracking something or have to finish something off as
- 1:02:33Speaker 1: too nerve racking and and sad you're watching the life
- 1:02:37Speaker 1: go out of something. I know the sadness is really
- 1:02:40Speaker 1: because I've seen so many people cry but then be
- 1:02:45Speaker 1: really glad that they did it. But I don't. I don't,
- 1:02:48Speaker 1: And I know people talk about it, and I feel
- 1:02:50Speaker 1: like I've even paid some lip service to it. But
- 1:02:52Speaker 1: when I really think about I'm really honest about there's not.
- 1:02:54Speaker 1: The sadness is only when it goes bad, when you
- 1:02:58Speaker 1: make a mistake, then awful. But no to see something
- 1:03:02Speaker 1: go bam down on the ground, never sadness. Never, it's
- 1:03:06Speaker 1: the only one is ugly. Um, Doug, one of the
- 1:03:13Speaker 1: themes Matt was themeless, mass conversation was steamless, meaning I
- 1:03:22Speaker 1: asked you about all the themes, but your perspectives are
- 1:03:25Speaker 1: just interesting perspectives. But Doug is like part, like Doug's
- 1:03:28Speaker 1: role in the film as part of a theme. Okay, Um,
- 1:03:35Speaker 1: did you feel manipulated by the movie? Not at all?
- 1:03:38Speaker 1: Did you feel manipulated? No? I felt like I hope
- 1:03:40Speaker 1: you weren't because I was. I was kind of hoping
- 1:03:42Speaker 1: that that's who you were. I mean, you look, no,
- 1:03:44Speaker 1: let me tell you what. Let me tell the way
- 1:03:47Speaker 1: in which Doug seemed like Doug to me. No, it's Doug,
- 1:03:49Speaker 1: it's Doug. It's Doug. Absolutely. But if you were manipulated,
- 1:03:53Speaker 1: the manipulation occurred with what's said before you're segment, what's
- 1:04:01Speaker 1: said before your profile piece, and and the first sentence
- 1:04:08Speaker 1: that comes out of your mouth in the movie, which
- 1:04:12Speaker 1: was not the first sentence that came out of your
- 1:04:14Speaker 1: mouth when we sat down to interview. So there was
- 1:04:16Speaker 1: a manipulation of what you said, and there was a
- 1:04:19Speaker 1: manipulation of when you said it, the amount of emphasis
- 1:04:23Speaker 1: you might put on it, and then to have it
- 1:04:25Speaker 1: be the first thing out of your mouth really sets
- 1:04:30Speaker 1: that teas up a point. And it starts out with
- 1:04:34Speaker 1: the animal ethicist Doug. Segment is kicked off by the
- 1:04:39Speaker 1: animal ethicist and animal rights activists who says the most
- 1:04:44Speaker 1: egregious form of hunting, mm hmmm, I know where you yeah,
- 1:04:51Speaker 1: And then the next sentence you hear is Doug saying yeah,
- 1:04:57Speaker 1: I think you said. Yeah, I guess I'm a trophy
- 1:04:59Speaker 1: hunter or yeah, I do some trophy hunting. Which I'm
- 1:05:05Speaker 1: gonna let you go. I want to, I just want to.
- 1:05:07Speaker 1: I just wanted that scene a little bit. And then
- 1:05:11Speaker 1: the movie tells the story of a particular deer and
- 1:05:15Speaker 1: the way it would the way I feel that it
- 1:05:16Speaker 1: might have been taken by you to be slightly manipulative.
- 1:05:20Speaker 1: Is it takes your life story and family story and
- 1:05:24Speaker 1: the death of your brother, um to sort of serve
- 1:05:29Speaker 1: this thing of to sort of make this point that
- 1:05:31Speaker 1: when you go into a person's house and you see
- 1:05:34Speaker 1: a dead deer hanging on their wall without asking them,
- 1:05:40Speaker 1: you will never know. You might have assumptions about what
- 1:05:44Speaker 1: that thing represents, and assumptions about what it stands for
- 1:05:47Speaker 1: and what it's supposed to mean and what it's supposed
- 1:05:49Speaker 1: to make you, as the looker feel, but you will
- 1:05:52Speaker 1: never really know when you look at something dead hanging
- 1:05:55Speaker 1: on someone's wall. Is kind of what even like your
- 1:06:02Speaker 1: story is so beautiful as a free stay thing, but
- 1:06:03Speaker 1: it's kind of like it it's taken to service that point, like, hey,
- 1:06:08Speaker 1: let's yeah, let's talk about a dead deer on the wall.
- 1:06:10Speaker 1: I know, just the fucking deer that dog's house. Um. No,
- 1:06:18Speaker 1: I didn't feel manipulated, but by it at all. And
- 1:06:22Speaker 1: in fact, I think before we even started to roll camera,
- 1:06:25Speaker 1: you said that you had been speaking with this fellow
- 1:06:30Speaker 1: Robert Jones said his name and who I was my favorite.
- 1:06:34Speaker 1: He was my favorite person in the in the film,
- 1:06:37Speaker 1: I mean, other than everybody in this room. But um,
- 1:06:39Speaker 1: it was a good save. But I mean because I
- 1:06:45Speaker 1: like the way he asked the questions or made the points,
- 1:06:48Speaker 1: and I couldn't disagree with his ideas. Um, it was
- 1:06:55Speaker 1: more the exploring of him that I was more interested in. Um.
- 1:06:59Speaker 1: And in the case of the of of that deer
- 1:07:02Speaker 1: you had before the cameras rolled, you said, uh, so
- 1:07:06Speaker 1: we were just talking to this animal ethicist and and
- 1:07:11Speaker 1: uh and you said so he said the most egregious
- 1:07:14Speaker 1: thing is trophy hunting and and and you said, well yeah,
- 1:07:19Speaker 1: before the cameras rolled in the bar, sitting in the bar, yeah,
- 1:07:22Speaker 1: And and you remember the deer hanging on the wall
- 1:07:24Speaker 1: full of deer, I said, well, there's a bunch of
- 1:07:27Speaker 1: trophies right there, like you know, what's the um And
- 1:07:32Speaker 1: we didn't talk about those deer at all. We talked
- 1:07:35Speaker 1: about a particular deer in the story behind it. And
- 1:07:39Speaker 1: my it's interesting because one of the things my wife
- 1:07:43Speaker 1: said about about the movie is that you were a
- 1:07:46Speaker 1: younger man when this was made, because of the time
- 1:07:48Speaker 1: had passed and and not only was he a younger man,
- 1:07:51Speaker 1: I was you know, my my thinking. She was saying,
- 1:07:53Speaker 1: you were a younger man. Your wife said you you
- 1:07:55Speaker 1: were a younger man. Yeah, she's noticed that. That That wasn't
- 1:07:57Speaker 1: as great feeling frisky after watching um anyway, I don't
- 1:08:06Speaker 1: remember exactly I watched it the second time, remember you
- 1:08:10Speaker 1: looking like that? I watched it the second time the
- 1:08:15Speaker 1: other night with my daughter in Chicago, and um, that
- 1:08:18Speaker 1: was a really interesting thing too. So how things have
- 1:08:22Speaker 1: evolved for me since? Um as we tell as as
- 1:08:27Speaker 1: the as you tell in the In the movie, UM
- 1:08:31Speaker 1: my brother, my younger, my late brother, Matthew, UM and
- 1:08:34Speaker 1: I had talked about deer management, and um it was
- 1:08:39Speaker 1: conservation based deer management, but really a part of it was,
- 1:08:42Speaker 1: you know, we're sort of we've been killing with these
- 1:08:44Speaker 1: little forkis, you know, the thing that we get a
- 1:08:46Speaker 1: basket full of and um uh and we had started
- 1:08:51Speaker 1: talking about deer management, things that we could do better,
- 1:08:54Speaker 1: and you know, habitat work and all that sort of thing.
- 1:08:56Speaker 1: And then and then he died tragically, and um, I
- 1:09:00Speaker 1: kept that that ideal alive and uh we I think
- 1:09:06Speaker 1: we did a good job of of of conservation, you know,
- 1:09:09Speaker 1: dear management, and it sort of culminated in the fact
- 1:09:13Speaker 1: that I got to kill it here. And uh, it
- 1:09:17Speaker 1: was you know, as I said in the movie, it
- 1:09:22Speaker 1: was sort of a remembrance of that of that whole process.
- 1:09:25Speaker 1: It wasn't like, oh, yeah, we manipulated our landscape and
- 1:09:30Speaker 1: we let all these bucks go and then all these
- 1:09:33Speaker 1: things happened and then and and it wasn't that. It
- 1:09:35Speaker 1: was much more. I mean, the first thing I thought
- 1:09:37Speaker 1: about when I killed that here it was him and
- 1:09:40Speaker 1: uh and and what we had done and how close
- 1:09:43Speaker 1: it was to where that at all happened and uh
- 1:09:46Speaker 1: and so it was really the remembrance of a whole
- 1:09:50Speaker 1: the whole um group of things that happened in over
- 1:09:54Speaker 1: a period of time. And and then it wasn't that important.
- 1:10:01Speaker 1: I mean that deers is real important symbolically. But what
- 1:10:05Speaker 1: I've learned since is that uh, or acted on since,
- 1:10:10Speaker 1: is that the conservation and was way more important. Um
- 1:10:15Speaker 1: any of those restrictions or attitudes that we had about
- 1:10:19Speaker 1: not you know, shooting younger deer. That's all gone now
- 1:10:21Speaker 1: because the thing that's more important now is conserving to me,
- 1:10:25Speaker 1: conserving the resource and doing the right thing for the species.
- 1:10:28Speaker 1: And um, far down that road we want to go.
- 1:10:31Speaker 1: But because of where our farm is located, that's you know,
- 1:10:34Speaker 1: it's a part of it. And so to me it
- 1:10:35Speaker 1: was just sort of people you're talking about because they're
- 1:10:37Speaker 1: gonna confused if now, Oh yeah, I'm sorry, but but
- 1:10:39Speaker 1: it brings up, it brings up the NFC, the point
- 1:10:41Speaker 1: where you and I find it's all the time, like
- 1:10:44Speaker 1: you know, you always leaving these these sort of time
- 1:10:46Speaker 1: stamps by things you say. But then earlier I mentioned
- 1:10:49Speaker 1: to Matt how people evolve over time, and and your
- 1:10:51Speaker 1: understanding of yourself and understanding of things around you change,
- 1:10:54Speaker 1: and you try to Um, you know, I have these
- 1:10:57Speaker 1: certain like things I feel consistently throughout life, and I
- 1:11:02Speaker 1: explained them in a way, and then I started to
- 1:11:05Speaker 1: realize that that I know that the thing is there,
- 1:11:08Speaker 1: like let's say there's some like undeniable that there's some
- 1:11:13Speaker 1: undeniable truth, Okay, they can't be debated, that it's there,
- 1:11:18Speaker 1: Like there's an objective reality that's there. And and I
- 1:11:23Speaker 1: feel that that that objective reality stays constant through life.
- 1:11:26Speaker 1: And I'll look at that objective reality and I'll say
- 1:11:29Speaker 1: to people, um, you know why that's that way, right,
- 1:11:34Speaker 1: it's that way because and I'll explain why it's that way.
- 1:11:37Speaker 1: And then ten years ago by the objective reality is
- 1:11:40Speaker 1: still there and I'll say, you know why I think
- 1:11:46Speaker 1: it's that way, and it will be different, and some
- 1:11:51Speaker 1: people will be like, well, you used to think, and
- 1:11:56Speaker 1: I'm just like yeah, and I came up with a
- 1:11:58Speaker 1: long to ago me like I used to ship my diapers.
- 1:12:01Speaker 1: I used to ship my diapers. You usually say it
- 1:12:04Speaker 1: like this, I used to shoot ship my diapers, but
- 1:12:08Speaker 1: things change. It became when comfortable. No, that's not it.
- 1:12:14Speaker 1: That's not it. The devil's in the details with this.
- 1:12:17Speaker 1: It's yeah, I used to shoot ship my diapers too,
- 1:12:19Speaker 1: but things change, that's how you say. And you may
- 1:12:22Speaker 1: well still again reality. So point being, there's a saying,
- 1:12:31Speaker 1: what's that saying? It's uh, once a man, twice a boy, Yeah,
- 1:12:35Speaker 1: that's good. Or what walks on um for legs in
- 1:12:40Speaker 1: the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs.
- 1:12:45Speaker 1: That's what you had to say. That's what uh was
- 1:12:49Speaker 1: the Oedipus. I think you're right when he like Oedipus,
- 1:12:56Speaker 1: his deal was we talked about the support Oedipus, didn't
- 1:12:59Speaker 1: we up. This deal was he was raised not by
- 1:13:01Speaker 1: his actual parents, but he didn't know that they were
- 1:13:03Speaker 1: in his parents. And he goes to a soothsayer. The
- 1:13:06Speaker 1: soothsayer says the Oedipus, oh, you know what's gonna happen
- 1:13:08Speaker 1: to you. You'll kill your dad and marry your ma.
- 1:13:12Speaker 1: But he doesn't know that. He thinks he lives with
- 1:13:14Speaker 1: his parents, so he splits. He splits to to to
- 1:13:18Speaker 1: to get away from his thing, and then winds up
- 1:13:23Speaker 1: in some crazy town. And to get into the town,
- 1:13:26Speaker 1: you gotta answer a riddle. And he answers that riddle,
- 1:13:28Speaker 1: and the guy that gave him the riddle dies and
- 1:13:30Speaker 1: he kills him, and he goes into town, gets in
- 1:13:32Speaker 1: a fight with the guy, kills him, marries the gal
- 1:13:36Speaker 1: is dad. Ma Um, that's where the riddle came from. Well,
- 1:13:41Speaker 1: but what I was trying to get at was this,
- 1:13:44Speaker 1: that's the riddle that he had to solve, not what
- 1:13:45Speaker 1: I'm trying to get your time stamp and in this movie,
- 1:13:51Speaker 1: moviesn't not in the digital as I'll live forever in
- 1:13:53Speaker 1: some form or another. Um, your time stamp is a
- 1:13:56Speaker 1: guy that's like interested in growing big, huge giant bucks
- 1:14:00Speaker 1: because in your mind, like big huge giant box are
- 1:14:02Speaker 1: emblematic of like a healthy deer population. And then chronic wasting.
- 1:14:06Speaker 1: And then the movie ends and you get really concerned
- 1:14:09Speaker 1: about chronic wasting disease. And it emerges that that like
- 1:14:12Speaker 1: a leading theory on the spread of chronic wasting diseases,
- 1:14:15Speaker 1: the deer most likely to go all over to damn
- 1:14:18Speaker 1: place um and that's young Bocks. And then you start
- 1:14:24Speaker 1: the you kind of have an attitude was trying to
- 1:14:27Speaker 1: lower deer numbers in your area because that's the game
- 1:14:30Speaker 1: agency objective too, is just the drive deer numbers down, down,
- 1:14:33Speaker 1: down to slow the spread of chronic wasting disease. So
- 1:14:37Speaker 1: had we made a movie about you, uh five years
- 1:14:42Speaker 1: two years after we did right completely except the thing
- 1:14:50Speaker 1: so there you are saying stuff that you don't even
- 1:14:52Speaker 1: believe anymore. Not true. He believe those things that the
- 1:14:58Speaker 1: circumstances were still the same. But the what was the
- 1:15:04Speaker 1: no appreciate this now the thing that's consistent throughout it,
- 1:15:17Speaker 1: and you and I've had this conversation before, and we've
- 1:15:19Speaker 1: talked about it on the show, and we're talked about
- 1:15:21Speaker 1: on podcasts we've had you know, is that it's a
- 1:15:23Speaker 1: part it's the conservation of of the area and a
- 1:15:29Speaker 1: part of what we were doing in growing you know,
- 1:15:32Speaker 1: bigger and older buckses that we were not going to
- 1:15:34Speaker 1: population called big huge giant bucks doug. Uh, I really
- 1:15:39Speaker 1: don't like that expression, but um, so, you know, more
- 1:15:45Speaker 1: mature whatever were It was a part of, oh, we've
- 1:15:49Speaker 1: got a population problem, and that was expressing itself in
- 1:15:52Speaker 1: our in our woods. Um and and you know, we're
- 1:15:58Speaker 1: there was overbrows and we're trying to regenerate oaks and
- 1:16:01Speaker 1: so um and we're killing a bunch of deer, but
- 1:16:03Speaker 1: we happen to be targeting Uh does more. And then
- 1:16:06Speaker 1: I'm learning why you can't really stockpile box. It's not
- 1:16:09Speaker 1: like you can just turn the whole farm into a
- 1:16:11Speaker 1: whole bunch of bucks. And because you know, and then
- 1:16:18Speaker 1: it's you know, and then the other thing is interesting
- 1:16:20Speaker 1: about big giant bucks is once there starts to be
- 1:16:23Speaker 1: a lot of them around, it's not that unusual. It's
- 1:16:24Speaker 1: not that special anymore. Deer are special to me, um,
- 1:16:29Speaker 1: and the fascination of seeing them in the woods. But anyway,
- 1:16:31Speaker 1: so it was conservation based and that has been the
- 1:16:34Speaker 1: overriding theme through through my lifetime. That's what I meant
- 1:16:37Speaker 1: by the objective reality. That's what's the phrase that I
- 1:16:40Speaker 1: was looking for, um that I couldn't remember. Um, the
- 1:16:43Speaker 1: objective reality fixed the fixed thing, the fixed things conservation.
- 1:16:47Speaker 1: And so I don't think that I've been accused um.
- 1:16:52Speaker 1: You know, well, I guess in some ways negatively about yeah,
- 1:16:55Speaker 1: well you used to be the guy who's all about right.
- 1:16:58Speaker 1: I didn't think you killed that was I thought you
- 1:17:00Speaker 1: were a big buck hunter. And you know, I've been
- 1:17:03Speaker 1: accute said and of that in in in bars and
- 1:17:06Speaker 1: things like that, and UM my responses, well't no, it's
- 1:17:09Speaker 1: just always been the same ideas that we're trying to
- 1:17:12Speaker 1: do what's best. Um. And one of the by products
- 1:17:17Speaker 1: of that was bigger bucks and older box and U uh.
- 1:17:22Speaker 1: And so that was one of the things that happened
- 1:17:24Speaker 1: of it. And I felt like, not only was the
- 1:17:27Speaker 1: was the standard as we came to we never named
- 1:17:30Speaker 1: you know how white tail Guy's named dear when they
- 1:17:33Speaker 1: see him on the camera and stuff. When you don't
- 1:17:35Speaker 1: name them till they're dead. Well and A and a
- 1:17:41Speaker 1: friend of ours had said when he saw it, he goes, well,
- 1:17:44Speaker 1: that is the standard by which all dear in the
- 1:17:46Speaker 1: future will be judged. And so you know that was
- 1:17:49Speaker 1: how that happened. And UM and and so that that's
- 1:17:55Speaker 1: the part that made sense to me. And and now
- 1:17:58Speaker 1: that UM, the resource because of chronic wasting disease has
- 1:18:03Speaker 1: been uh, it's threatened. I mean, we have high prevalence
- 1:18:07Speaker 1: in our area. UM, I can't I have trouble with
- 1:18:11Speaker 1: the visualization now of seeing a hundred deer in the
- 1:18:15Speaker 1: field and and uh, you know, realizing that up to
- 1:18:21Speaker 1: that hundred deer are carrying a fatal disease that there
- 1:18:25Speaker 1: is are also spreading around. UM, not in our area yet,
- 1:18:29Speaker 1: but south of us. So I'm trying to do what
- 1:18:30Speaker 1: I can for it. So the conservation ethic of it
- 1:18:35Speaker 1: is that overriding theme, or that that continuum of it.
- 1:18:40Speaker 1: And and the fascination of of deer in the woods
- 1:18:46Speaker 1: and the time in the woods is also the the
- 1:18:49Speaker 1: part of it that's been real consistent for me. But
- 1:18:52Speaker 1: UM Jones brought up a lot of the questions that
- 1:18:56Speaker 1: UM and I never was offended by anything that the
- 1:18:59Speaker 1: guys that um or and I thought it was a
- 1:19:03Speaker 1: fascinating guy because he talked about moral responsibility and UH
- 1:19:09Speaker 1: and I and I feel that responsibility. UM. And I
- 1:19:13Speaker 1: think that UM all the folks that I like to
- 1:19:15Speaker 1: hang out with anyway and hunt with and stuff, that
- 1:19:17Speaker 1: they feel that responsibility for it too. UM, just like
- 1:19:21Speaker 1: I feel a responsibility. You know, you're talking about, UM,
- 1:19:24Speaker 1: the livestock that you raise, you know, as you know,
- 1:19:26Speaker 1: I raised cattle, and UM, there's I have a have
- 1:19:30Speaker 1: mixed feelings about that, but at the end of the day, UM,
- 1:19:34Speaker 1: there's a I feel a responsibility. I would never grow
- 1:19:38Speaker 1: cattle in a way that you know that they are
- 1:19:42Speaker 1: done on a large scale. I just it's just not
- 1:19:45Speaker 1: something that I would do. And I'm in a position
- 1:19:47Speaker 1: where I don't have to because you just like large
- 1:19:49Speaker 1: scale because it's large scale. You're just like what you
- 1:19:51Speaker 1: assume comes with large scale or what you know that
- 1:19:53Speaker 1: what you know to come with large scale, what I
- 1:19:56Speaker 1: know to come if you have if you have an experience,
- 1:19:58Speaker 1: if you create an experience, it's that's the right word.
- 1:20:01Speaker 1: You create a reality or an experience for your cows.
- 1:20:05Speaker 1: If you can what's the difference if you're doing it
- 1:20:08Speaker 1: for that experience for twenty year, that experience for a thousand,
- 1:20:12Speaker 1: if it's how they're raised. You know, one of the
- 1:20:15Speaker 1: things that you brought up was that like the desire
- 1:20:19Speaker 1: of people now to know that their meat is humanely raised,
- 1:20:22Speaker 1: that their animals like you see what I'm saying, right,
- 1:20:25Speaker 1: it's not that it's large It's not that the fact
- 1:20:28Speaker 1: that it's large scale. It's like what efficiencies come with
- 1:20:32Speaker 1: large scale that you don't like or or there's I
- 1:20:36Speaker 1: don't want to but there's probably an environmental component exactly.
- 1:20:40Speaker 1: That's exactly right, Like if you have a lot, if
- 1:20:41Speaker 1: you're doing a thousand and then you got a lot
- 1:20:44Speaker 1: of manure you're dealing with and for a finite fine
- 1:20:49Speaker 1: feeding operations or environmentally problematic to say the least. And
- 1:20:55Speaker 1: when I was a kid, when you drive around our
- 1:20:57Speaker 1: area was and you guys have been there a farm here,
- 1:21:00Speaker 1: farm there, farm there, and and and sort of everything
- 1:21:02Speaker 1: that was happening. Yeah, green hills, red barn silos, black
- 1:21:08Speaker 1: and white cows and uh you know, the manure that
- 1:21:12Speaker 1: was being uh produced on that farmer those cattle was
- 1:21:15Speaker 1: pretty much going back in the field, and and there
- 1:21:16Speaker 1: were times that you you know, you kind of wish
- 1:21:18Speaker 1: you had more because it was you know, it was
- 1:21:20Speaker 1: it was it was. It wasn't a byproduct or a
- 1:21:23Speaker 1: waste product that you're getting rid of. Um. So there's that. Uh,
- 1:21:28Speaker 1: there's the living on concrete, you know, a cow, a steer, whatever,
- 1:21:34Speaker 1: living its life out in an environment like that. For me,
- 1:21:39Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not going to judge other people that
- 1:21:41Speaker 1: are doing it, but for me, I don't think that's
- 1:21:43Speaker 1: um morallily responsible. I raised grass fed beef. I'm able
- 1:21:48Speaker 1: to do it in a way that uh um. I
- 1:21:51Speaker 1: think about all the time, like, am I doing this right?
- 1:21:53Speaker 1: Am I treating them? Well? Is it? Uh? Um? Uh,
- 1:21:58Speaker 1: it's just you know, environmentally sense at um. And then
- 1:22:02Speaker 1: Robert Jones would say, you know that's all great, but
- 1:22:04Speaker 1: in the end, you kill it. Yeah, he'd say it,
- 1:22:06Speaker 1: let's take it one step further and now do it
- 1:22:08Speaker 1: at all. Let's finish let's finish it up. Well. Um,
- 1:22:14Speaker 1: but you're sort of saying like no, you're sort of saying,
- 1:22:16Speaker 1: I have to do it. This is the best I
- 1:22:19Speaker 1: can do. He would challenge the idea that you have
- 1:22:22Speaker 1: to do it um, yes, yes, he sure would. Um,
- 1:22:27Speaker 1: but I think that that idea when he talked about
- 1:22:31Speaker 1: instinct for instance, well, you know, we don't act on
- 1:22:33Speaker 1: all of our instincts, but we can act on our
- 1:22:35Speaker 1: instincts and a morally morally responsive. Interesting point, he said,
- 1:22:39Speaker 1: when I smell bacon, I think, man, that bacon. It
- 1:22:43Speaker 1: was really interesting to hear him say that. Yeah. Yeah, Um,
- 1:22:48Speaker 1: I mean I don't take any of it lately. You know,
- 1:22:51Speaker 1: you were asking me about this last night or the
- 1:22:53Speaker 1: day before or something, and um, it gets harder for me. Uh.
- 1:22:57Speaker 1: You know, I loaded up a bunch of six months
- 1:22:59Speaker 1: old calves, uh six months old steers and heifers last
- 1:23:03Speaker 1: year and sent them down the road and listen to
- 1:23:05Speaker 1: their mother's beller and they you know. I mean it
- 1:23:08Speaker 1: was a it was a decision that I had to
- 1:23:10Speaker 1: make because of the cattle and all of that. Um,
- 1:23:14Speaker 1: and it was I'm literally changing how I'm raising cattle
- 1:23:18Speaker 1: because I don't want to do that again. I mean,
- 1:23:21Speaker 1: I'm just going to raise them differently, um, and not
- 1:23:24Speaker 1: have big groups of cattle like that. I'm gonna take
- 1:23:27Speaker 1: them through their lives so that in when they do um,
- 1:23:30Speaker 1: go to slaughter and I really want to move towards
- 1:23:33Speaker 1: um being able to be a USD. And they have
- 1:23:35Speaker 1: a U s D inspected mobile, butcher come to back
- 1:23:40Speaker 1: into the barn, walk them on there there and and
- 1:23:43Speaker 1: they do all the work right there. Um because the
- 1:23:46Speaker 1: inspection is important to me because I sell the beef.
- 1:23:49Speaker 1: But rather than even putting them on that truck to
- 1:23:53Speaker 1: go to the locker where they then settled down, spend
- 1:23:56Speaker 1: the night, and the next morning they die. That's how
- 1:23:58Speaker 1: we do it now, um. But I can tell you this,
- 1:24:02Speaker 1: they have a great life up to that point, just
- 1:24:04Speaker 1: like the deerer on our farm do. UM. And I
- 1:24:09Speaker 1: and I and I try to balance that with you know,
- 1:24:13Speaker 1: with that that's that responsibility that I feel. And I
- 1:24:17Speaker 1: think that um that as you said, I think that's
- 1:24:20Speaker 1: the best I can do. Quick story for you, little digression.
- 1:24:26Speaker 1: I was at my friend on his house one time.
- 1:24:28Speaker 1: Her dad was a vet but also a rancher, and
- 1:24:32Speaker 1: she had a bunch of friends over, including some vegetarians
- 1:24:34Speaker 1: are over. And they get there and they got this
- 1:24:36Speaker 1: little they got this little crawl right off their house
- 1:24:40Speaker 1: and it's all the lambs are in the craw And
- 1:24:44Speaker 1: I said, what's going on with the lambs, you know,
- 1:24:48Speaker 1: and she makes like a throat cutting gesture to me,
- 1:24:53Speaker 1: like this is a sensitive subject considering the people she
- 1:24:56Speaker 1: has over And while we're there hanging out and living him,
- 1:25:01Speaker 1: a truck backs in and the guy's custom plate is
- 1:25:04Speaker 1: one shot j J. She looks out the wind and
- 1:25:10Speaker 1: she's like, oh, and JJ got out of his Tony
- 1:25:16Speaker 1: two and set to work. What did they think of that?
- 1:25:21Speaker 1: No one really liked it, but they he set to
- 1:25:24Speaker 1: work right then and there. Well, I no one went
- 1:25:28Speaker 1: out to view, but it was just like, you know, yeah,
- 1:25:30Speaker 1: I was like, the guy one shot JJ's here. Yeah,
- 1:25:35Speaker 1: and he had the whole he had his truck, but
- 1:25:37Speaker 1: then he also had his whole mobile. Anyhow. Yeah, I've
- 1:25:40Speaker 1: been real matter of fact about it in the past
- 1:25:42Speaker 1: because I grew up with it, you know, with the
- 1:25:45Speaker 1: slaughtering of animals and and and hunting and all of that.
- 1:25:48Speaker 1: I think that's key, and I think that that that's
- 1:25:51Speaker 1: like what makes you realize that it's just it's kind
- 1:25:55Speaker 1: of like there's a lot of things, a lot of sense,
- 1:25:57Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of tough issues that if
- 1:25:59Speaker 1: you were raising a range of environments, you'd come out
- 1:26:04Speaker 1: thinking the same thing, like, we'd all agree that no
- 1:26:09Speaker 1: matter what kind of householder were raised in, that violent
- 1:26:11Speaker 1: crime is bad. That you know, beating somebody up as bad.
- 1:26:15Speaker 1: There are people who question, well, yeah, but I mean
- 1:26:18Speaker 1: depending on how they are raised often or their level
- 1:26:21Speaker 1: of sociopath but people would agree that perpetrating violence against
- 1:26:29Speaker 1: somebody's wrong. But with hunting um or killing animals, whether
- 1:26:36Speaker 1: you were great raised in like a vegetarian household or
- 1:26:40Speaker 1: hunting how farming household has a huge bearing. Yeah, what
- 1:26:47Speaker 1: you end up thinking as an adult. Yeah, I know
- 1:26:50Speaker 1: that because I've had, I continue to have so much
- 1:26:53Speaker 1: exposure to people who had such a very different upbringing
- 1:26:56Speaker 1: in the things that I think of as just a
- 1:26:58Speaker 1: very matter of fact or sometimes shock to people. M Yeah,
- 1:27:04Speaker 1: like look at uh, look at even people that have
- 1:27:08Speaker 1: been exposed a lot to hunting and fishing, like my
- 1:27:12Speaker 1: my wife. You know, she's been exposed to hunting and
- 1:27:16Speaker 1: fishing on an offer whole life, and ranching and ranching.
- 1:27:19Speaker 1: She doesn't hunting fish, but she's been exposed to it.
- 1:27:22Speaker 1: She thinks it's deplorable that we don't kill pan fish.
- 1:27:27Speaker 1: I've talked about this on this here programming a lot. Yeah,
- 1:27:30Speaker 1: and Uh, to me, that is just I was told
- 1:27:33Speaker 1: when I was a little kid that they don't feel stuff.
- 1:27:37Speaker 1: Hold on expand on that, because not just that we
- 1:27:39Speaker 1: don't kill pans. Okay, so we catch the fish and
- 1:27:40Speaker 1: we don't dispose. You got a catfish and throwing the
- 1:27:43Speaker 1: bottom of the boat. She acts like you're driving around
- 1:27:46Speaker 1: with a deer flopping around in the back of your truck,
- 1:27:49Speaker 1: or you'd have a rabbit in your game pouch kicking
- 1:27:51Speaker 1: around back there. And and when that's exactly how and
- 1:27:54Speaker 1: when I try to counter her, my arguments are extremely thin,
- 1:27:58Speaker 1: like I don't know what that thing is feeling. You
- 1:28:03Speaker 1: know that narrative which I love, it's like this sort
- 1:28:08Speaker 1: of thing and I'm not for Pat Durkins explored that
- 1:28:11Speaker 1: narrative of of your family farm and this like and
- 1:28:19Speaker 1: b n y that we get into in the movie
- 1:28:22Speaker 1: Not Nice Buck Next Year. This sort of ethos or
- 1:28:24Speaker 1: this conservation ethic that perhaps is the elastic in some way.
- 1:28:28Speaker 1: Uh that it's like a really um it's it's really
- 1:28:33Speaker 1: like compelling, beautiful and very tidy story. It's like this
- 1:28:38Speaker 1: nice tidy package when you want to pluck it out
- 1:28:42Speaker 1: and so and to have it be in a movie
- 1:28:44Speaker 1: that you like, pluck this little package out and book
- 1:28:47Speaker 1: ended with other people's sentiments, it has it wants up
- 1:28:52Speaker 1: feeling like conclusive, you know, but then it ends and
- 1:28:56Speaker 1: ship goes on and let the story continues, just like
- 1:29:01Speaker 1: the story has continue to that farm for a hundred
- 1:29:03Speaker 1: and fifteen years. And one of the interesting things to
- 1:29:05Speaker 1: me is how in the ark of my lifetime we
- 1:29:08Speaker 1: went from a few deer too more dear too now
- 1:29:14Speaker 1: to too many deer and disease. And at the same time,
- 1:29:20Speaker 1: that's how if you're just isolating the deer and at
- 1:29:23Speaker 1: the same time we have these other conservation issues on
- 1:29:25Speaker 1: our on our property, in in our in the whole
- 1:29:28Speaker 1: driftless area, um, that are all sort of interwined together.
- 1:29:33Speaker 1: And so I see them as as a group of
- 1:29:36Speaker 1: of issues that are interwined together as opposed to you know,
- 1:29:42Speaker 1: people who are most interested in or in some cases
- 1:29:47Speaker 1: solely interested in deer and dear only. UM. And I
- 1:29:54Speaker 1: don't I don't know exactly how to um wrap that
- 1:29:57Speaker 1: all up real tidy, but uh, I think that with
- 1:30:02Speaker 1: the kinds of themes that we're talking about, the bigger
- 1:30:05Speaker 1: ball of all of these things together is is you
- 1:30:08Speaker 1: know where I rest, my rest, my case and all
- 1:30:12Speaker 1: of this that I'm not just caring for one thing
- 1:30:14Speaker 1: or trying to do one thing. I'm trying to do
- 1:30:17Speaker 1: and a lot of folks that I know um doing it.
- 1:30:20Speaker 1: And really the people that I personally respect the most
- 1:30:23Speaker 1: are trying to do a u something that's much more
- 1:30:27Speaker 1: a wider conservation based idea. Yeah, that's that's Leopold, the
- 1:30:31Speaker 1: whole community. Yeah. Yeah, well he's from the soil all
- 1:30:36Speaker 1: the way up to this guy. What was his Uh
- 1:30:38Speaker 1: he didn't coin biome what did he coin? He he
- 1:30:46Speaker 1: would have known him for. Yeah, but the but the
- 1:30:53Speaker 1: land ethic and that that I mean. And Leopold is
- 1:30:56Speaker 1: my he's my hero. Um. He used to take out
- 1:31:02Speaker 1: his recurve and take seventy yard shots a deer. Just
- 1:31:05Speaker 1: see if you get hit him. Yeah, there's a book
- 1:31:08Speaker 1: I can't there's a later book of his words, just
- 1:31:12Speaker 1: see if you hit him. Yeah, there's a later book
- 1:31:14Speaker 1: of his where he's hunting in New Mexico with some
- 1:31:17Speaker 1: friend of his and there's a lot of questionable shots.
- 1:31:22Speaker 1: If now, if you just hunting now, you think he
- 1:31:26Speaker 1: was a perfect perfect segue. If we wouldn't want to
- 1:31:30Speaker 1: jump into the ethics thing. Oh I thought we were
- 1:31:33Speaker 1: talking about ethics. Oh well, we talked about this idea
- 1:31:38Speaker 1: of one of the things we talked about one of
- 1:31:40Speaker 1: the themes. Rattle off a handful of themes and I'll
- 1:31:43Speaker 1: touch on this quick, but I want to get I
- 1:31:44Speaker 1: want to get to Randall too. Um, the patrilineal passage
- 1:31:50Speaker 1: of hunting. So we had, Yeah, Yanni had this idea
- 1:31:53Speaker 1: and we just, you know, conversations like movies going their
- 1:31:56Speaker 1: own direction. Um untied that of bringing up a bunch
- 1:32:02Speaker 1: of the themes that we explore in the movie, and
- 1:32:04Speaker 1: we're just you's gonna throw them out and I'm gonna
- 1:32:06Speaker 1: give a handful of snap shots and then we're gonna
- 1:32:08Speaker 1: move into talking to talking to Randall. But yeah, so
- 1:32:13Speaker 1: we explore like patrilinnial descent being that's how most like
- 1:32:19Speaker 1: just I'm not talking about I'm not talking about the
- 1:32:21Speaker 1: way things should be. I'm just something about the way
- 1:32:22Speaker 1: they are. The people to buy a hunting license in
- 1:32:25Speaker 1: this country are men, and most of those pick it
- 1:32:29Speaker 1: up from their dad. We talked about that, and then
- 1:32:32Speaker 1: we talk about cases that aren't that, and and and
- 1:32:36Speaker 1: and it's sort of this chorus of characters talking about
- 1:32:39Speaker 1: what it like, what it was that pushed him in
- 1:32:41Speaker 1: this direction. And I oftentimes find that the ones that
- 1:32:44Speaker 1: are most interesting are the ones that aren't just the
- 1:32:46Speaker 1: same old, same old, which is like, un is your
- 1:32:49Speaker 1: dad hunted, you hung as your dad hunted, young as
- 1:32:52Speaker 1: your dad hunted, You hung as your dad hunted Randall, No,
- 1:32:55Speaker 1: my dad didn't hunt. There you go. We're um, we're
- 1:32:59Speaker 1: still justically skewed right now. There should be nine of
- 1:33:02Speaker 1: us in one of you. No, No, that's not true.
- 1:33:07Speaker 1: That's not no, that's not that. I'm mixing that up
- 1:33:10Speaker 1: with the I'm mixing that up with the with the
- 1:33:11Speaker 1: with the gender thing, red alof not one real quick
- 1:33:13Speaker 1: Johnny H Hunters pr problem. Yeah. The way in the
- 1:33:21Speaker 1: movie we get into try to explore this idea of
- 1:33:25Speaker 1: the way a hunter experiences their actions and activities and
- 1:33:32Speaker 1: the way those actions and activities look to people who
- 1:33:35Speaker 1: are not that they are seeing. There's a there's a
- 1:33:40Speaker 1: really good book if you guys, let read Milan Kundera.
- 1:33:44Speaker 1: Kundera's book, The Unbearable Likeness of Being. It's a good book.
- 1:33:49Speaker 1: There's a guy and his girlfriend and his novel and
- 1:33:51Speaker 1: and she was from the Soviet block and he's not.
- 1:33:54Speaker 1: And they talk about when they see a parade, when
- 1:33:57Speaker 1: they watch a parade, what she thinks when she sees
- 1:34:00Speaker 1: a parade and what he thinks when he sees a parade,
- 1:34:05Speaker 1: same thing. Well, they conjures very different, very different emotions
- 1:34:10Speaker 1: in them. Um. So we get into that a little bit.
- 1:34:15Speaker 1: Um the question like why have ethics become so intertwined
- 1:34:20Speaker 1: with today's hunting? Yeah, meaning, um, you know, if you
- 1:34:25Speaker 1: go back to the first people, the first Siberians that
- 1:34:31Speaker 1: came into the New World, the western hemisphere what's now
- 1:34:34Speaker 1: the US, Um, what was there? More? Did they feel? Uh?
- 1:34:41Speaker 1: Was there an ethical conundrum? Was the sadness there? Or
- 1:34:46Speaker 1: other animals that are alive now on our planet? Is
- 1:34:50Speaker 1: there sadness when the wolf when that elk finally bleeds
- 1:34:53Speaker 1: out and dies? Is the wolf? Like, dude, I'm always
- 1:34:56Speaker 1: kind of balmed. I imagine the fact that like ancient
- 1:35:01Speaker 1: man didn't have it choice, some major mitigating factor. And
- 1:35:07Speaker 1: if you look at you know, we don't explore this
- 1:35:09Speaker 1: fully at all, but if you look at there was
- 1:35:11Speaker 1: also like kind of a hallmark of indigenous hunter gatherer cultures.
- 1:35:16Speaker 1: And this is something Robert Jones brings up and he
- 1:35:17Speaker 1: winds up contradicting himself. It's not in the movie, but
- 1:35:21Speaker 1: some dad like to release the whole interview. He winds
- 1:35:23Speaker 1: up contradicting himself because he's okay with indigenous hunting. Yet
- 1:35:27Speaker 1: his point is, then animal doesn't care about your things
- 1:35:30Speaker 1: that he kept telling me, Like you talk about ethics,
- 1:35:32Speaker 1: but animals don't care about your ethics. They're getting killed,
- 1:35:35Speaker 1: they feel pain, and they die. They don't care what
- 1:35:36Speaker 1: kind of trip you're on. Yet he expresses to me
- 1:35:39Speaker 1: being okay with indigenous hunters because it has religious connotations
- 1:35:42Speaker 1: for them, and I'm like, the animal doesn't know it
- 1:35:44Speaker 1: has religious connotations. You're contradicting what you just told me.
- 1:35:47Speaker 1: And maybe I feel something that's borders on the religious.
- 1:35:50Speaker 1: But it's a thing where like people that are anti
- 1:35:52Speaker 1: hunters oftentimes had to find these ways to make other
- 1:35:56Speaker 1: things that they feel should be okay okay. And the
- 1:35:58Speaker 1: thing that's hard for them to explain is it's harder
- 1:36:01Speaker 1: than to be like, well, why can indigenous people hunt?
- 1:36:03Speaker 1: Because they don't want to say they can't. It's like colonialism,
- 1:36:06Speaker 1: But you wonder why then, like how like this brings
- 1:36:09Speaker 1: it all the way back around to what we're just
- 1:36:10Speaker 1: talking about with Leopold and like Pope and Young. Right,
- 1:36:12Speaker 1: there's plenty of stories those boys going out on hunting
- 1:36:15Speaker 1: trips with hundreds of arrows because they were known to
- 1:36:18Speaker 1: fling it a distances now even the best archers think
- 1:36:21Speaker 1: are long and far with today's equipment, right, And so
- 1:36:25Speaker 1: even in that short period of time, what is that?
- 1:36:27Speaker 1: When when did Pope and Young come around? Like, I
- 1:36:30Speaker 1: think what was it? Was it? That it could have
- 1:36:33Speaker 1: been like really weirdly early too, but I want to
- 1:36:36Speaker 1: either way within the last within the last hundred years, right,
- 1:36:41Speaker 1: So look where the hunting ethics is coming that short
- 1:36:44Speaker 1: period of time. Yeah, or just some of the classic
- 1:36:47Speaker 1: gun writers are lobbing bullets out there taking shots with
- 1:36:52Speaker 1: That's why we call Yanni, not because I love shots.
- 1:36:59Speaker 1: We call me Anie Van's Wall too, but um yeah,
- 1:37:03Speaker 1: Yanni O'Connor, Jack O'Connor. He they'd like roll up on
- 1:37:08Speaker 1: a group with big horns and just everyone and start
- 1:37:10Speaker 1: shooting and they're going they're like, oh my gosh, we
- 1:37:12Speaker 1: want to before Well there's also I mean this is
- 1:37:16Speaker 1: going that late no really, yeah, but that's that's the
- 1:37:24Speaker 1: that's when it became an official club, Pope and Young themselves.
- 1:37:28Speaker 1: I think we're doing things prior to that. But the
- 1:37:31Speaker 1: Pope and Young Club and art right, I think so. Yeah,
- 1:37:35Speaker 1: because Boone and Crockett Club was early eighties all right, Randall? Yes,
- 1:37:41Speaker 1: so that might do any justice Yanni on on the
- 1:37:44Speaker 1: themes you're in the point. I want to move on
- 1:37:46Speaker 1: to Randall though, since we got him here. Yeah, those
- 1:37:49Speaker 1: boys are hunting together, just to wrap it all up,
- 1:37:51Speaker 1: nineteen eleven twelve. In those years, I hope they like
- 1:37:56Speaker 1: each other. They liked each other because they're like nuts
- 1:37:58Speaker 1: on a dog now. Yeah, yeah, they're just together. You know. Um, Randall,
- 1:38:05Speaker 1: if you had like a one to ten, if you
- 1:38:07Speaker 1: had a sliding scale of one to ten and you
- 1:38:11Speaker 1: had to rate our job of capturing what you had
- 1:38:18Speaker 1: to say on a one to ten, where are we
- 1:38:23Speaker 1: four or five? Where are we? Like when you watched it, Like,
- 1:38:27Speaker 1: what was your level of disappointment? Oh? I was thrilled?
- 1:38:31Speaker 1: You were thrilled? Yeah you were disappointed? No, I mean
- 1:38:34Speaker 1: we had we talked to you a lot. Yeah, we
- 1:38:36Speaker 1: did one interview. There's probably like three and a half
- 1:38:38Speaker 1: hours and one that was probably to something and uh,
- 1:38:41Speaker 1: somedoy who release all these as just a giant transcription?
- 1:38:44Speaker 1: Oh god? You know, like I I walked away from
- 1:38:51Speaker 1: each one of those interviews feeling kind of punch drunk,
- 1:38:54Speaker 1: like did I really say that that way? Or did
- 1:38:56Speaker 1: I get it backwards or did I flip that? You know,
- 1:39:00Speaker 1: did I actually get across what I was trying to say?
- 1:39:03Speaker 1: And and when I pressed play on the documentary for
- 1:39:06Speaker 1: the first time, my hope was that I would just
- 1:39:11Speaker 1: make sense and then I wouldn't say something that was
- 1:39:14Speaker 1: categorically false or outrageous. Um. And I thought, I I
- 1:39:20Speaker 1: thought I came out pretty good. Can you tell people
- 1:39:23Speaker 1: what it is you did that first put you on
- 1:39:26Speaker 1: our radar? Yeah? So I did, uhum a PhD in
- 1:39:30Speaker 1: history at the University of Montana, and my dissertation was
- 1:39:36Speaker 1: a study of hunting in American politics and culture in
- 1:39:41Speaker 1: basically the second half of the twentie century, called Green Voters,
- 1:39:47Speaker 1: Gun Voters, um, Hunting in American Politics and Culture in
- 1:39:52Speaker 1: the twentieth Century. I think, did we know that that
- 1:39:56Speaker 1: was the title? Back in the day? You do that?
- 1:39:59Speaker 1: I knew that, Um, Yeah, it's not published. He was
- 1:40:03Speaker 1: ahead of his time it's not published. I started working
- 1:40:08Speaker 1: as an editor after that, and at the end of
- 1:40:10Speaker 1: the day I just wanted to put away the computer
- 1:40:13Speaker 1: and not look at another word document, so I never
- 1:40:15Speaker 1: kind of picked it back up. Um, did you uh? Did?
- 1:40:18Speaker 1: Did you get your a little piece of paper that
- 1:40:20Speaker 1: says PhD? I did? I did, And I just realized
- 1:40:24Speaker 1: the other day I have no idea where that is.
- 1:40:27Speaker 1: No one's I was looking at my wife's degree on
- 1:40:29Speaker 1: the wall and I was like, man, I don't don't
- 1:40:31Speaker 1: really know where that that went. No one said, no
- 1:40:34Speaker 1: one said to you prove it and you had to go,
- 1:40:36Speaker 1: and you've had to go get it. No, I have
- 1:40:39Speaker 1: a PhD. How would I have this? I have two
- 1:40:41Speaker 1: PhDs and I don't know where one is. This is
- 1:40:44Speaker 1: a joke. Don't tell this joke, pretty huge, don't tell
- 1:40:52Speaker 1: this joke. Go on, Randall, Um, is that gonna get
- 1:40:57Speaker 1: cut because you didn't You didn't all the joke. I
- 1:41:01Speaker 1: was actually gonna alert Randall to check in with you
- 1:41:05Speaker 1: about your joke. Later used that you used that line
- 1:41:09Speaker 1: on me in the first podcast. I think that's I
- 1:41:13Speaker 1: learned that from a girl I was dating, and she
- 1:41:16Speaker 1: learned on the TV show Friends. Is that right? Wow? Yeah,
- 1:41:20Speaker 1: I don't know that that Friends was like risk a man,
- 1:41:24Speaker 1: I had a girlfriend love that show? Go on? Um yeah,
- 1:41:31Speaker 1: So basically, I, um, it's part of my research. I
- 1:41:35Speaker 1: had just looked at hunting and fishing magazines over the
- 1:41:38Speaker 1: course of like sixty some odd years, and looked at
- 1:41:42Speaker 1: other public representations of hunting and hunting where it popped
- 1:41:45Speaker 1: up in the news or another, um, you know, forms
- 1:41:50Speaker 1: of popular culture, like when Sesame Street in the seventies
- 1:41:55Speaker 1: or eighties does something on hunting, what does that look like?
- 1:41:58Speaker 1: Or how our hunters represented in Looney Tunes things like that.
- 1:42:02Speaker 1: So just basically tried to um digest this huge volume
- 1:42:07Speaker 1: of material and think about, um, how hunters have represented
- 1:42:13Speaker 1: themselves over time, and what others have thought of hunters
- 1:42:16Speaker 1: and they um the dialectic between those two things, and
- 1:42:21Speaker 1: how that's evolved in this period in which hunting's place
- 1:42:25Speaker 1: in popular culture has really changed a lot. Have you
- 1:42:28Speaker 1: ever seen that cartoon where it's like it's not part
- 1:42:30Speaker 1: of Looney Tunes or anything, but used to be on
- 1:42:33Speaker 1: like Saturday Morning once in a a while, where it's like
- 1:42:35Speaker 1: deer hunting and it's just like people shooting each other
- 1:42:40Speaker 1: and stuff. It was all from the fifties, from the fifties,
- 1:42:42Speaker 1: and like one of those in the embedded in his
- 1:42:45Speaker 1: like an ad for the mother in law deer hunting suit,
- 1:42:50Speaker 1: and it's like she puts it on, it's a deer suit,
- 1:42:54Speaker 1: so she gets it's so she gets shot. And then
- 1:42:56Speaker 1: a guy in that same cartoon, a guy shoot the
- 1:43:00Speaker 1: buck and then says to his body, I got one
- 1:43:03Speaker 1: that's got antlers like this, and he gets his head,
- 1:43:06Speaker 1: holds his hands up to show the antlers and his
- 1:43:09Speaker 1: friend shoots him. Yeah, and there's one Joe. I don't
- 1:43:12Speaker 1: know the lead. I remember the lead up, but it
- 1:43:14Speaker 1: ends up with like the deer's driving the car and
- 1:43:17Speaker 1: he strapped to the bumpers. I haven't seen that, no,
- 1:43:22Speaker 1: And I said before Sesame Street. What I'm thinking about,
- 1:43:24Speaker 1: think is the Muppets, And there's like a scene in
- 1:43:26Speaker 1: the Muppets um that I came across where that Buffalo
- 1:43:32Speaker 1: Springfield song, like you know, that's one of vivid memories
- 1:43:38Speaker 1: of these animals are walking through the forest and their
- 1:43:42Speaker 1: hunters there and whenever it stopped, they start shooting. I
- 1:43:46Speaker 1: don't remember that. Yeah, and they're they're like these these
- 1:43:48Speaker 1: hunters are creeping through the woods looking for the animals.
- 1:43:51Speaker 1: And yeah, and it's like a protest anthem. So it
- 1:43:54Speaker 1: has by a band that's named after a rifle. Yeah. Yeah.
- 1:43:58Speaker 1: I talked about that in my buffal little book Buffalo
- 1:44:01Speaker 1: Springfield and what that name? What that name is all about? Um.
- 1:44:08Speaker 1: I teach my kids to recognize anti hunting bias and
- 1:44:12Speaker 1: the things that they look at. And they're good, my boys.
- 1:44:14Speaker 1: My boy is good at picking it up. And we
- 1:44:16Speaker 1: talked about in children's literature. It is almost I don't
- 1:44:19Speaker 1: want to say daily, but weekly. I bet you I
- 1:44:21Speaker 1: got I got to just like stop and be like, okay, girls,
- 1:44:24Speaker 1: let's just think about what this book just said and
- 1:44:27Speaker 1: like really go through it and and dissect it. Because no,
- 1:44:30Speaker 1: wild animals don't need our help. And when you don't
- 1:44:33Speaker 1: have to put food on the window sill so that
- 1:44:35Speaker 1: the birds will continue to live, like what in the world.
- 1:44:39Speaker 1: That's why you gotta read your kids. Light in the Forest,
- 1:44:41Speaker 1: Hatchet my side of the mountain. There's plenty of books
- 1:44:46Speaker 1: out there. Man. The worst anti hunting show is um.
- 1:44:49Speaker 1: One of the worst anti hunting shows is Wildcrats. I
- 1:44:53Speaker 1: haven't seen it. That show so what's this on this
- 1:45:01Speaker 1: on the sliding scale, all of your complex ideas, we
- 1:45:04Speaker 1: kind of mostly just had you be like a little
- 1:45:07Speaker 1: bit of a demographics guy and a little bit of
- 1:45:09Speaker 1: a Roosevelt guy. Yeah. I was fine with that. Yeah. Um,
- 1:45:16Speaker 1: I felt there's so many people. It's it's funny because
- 1:45:18Speaker 1: there's so many people that I feel, UM like getting into.
- 1:45:23Speaker 1: I didn't know what I was getting into, you know,
- 1:45:25Speaker 1: I didn't know how hard it was gonna like. I didn't.
- 1:45:28Speaker 1: I just knew I wanted to capture, like we're gonna
- 1:45:30Speaker 1: go capture tons of stuff. And then I knew that.
- 1:45:33Speaker 1: You know, I've watched hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of movies.
- 1:45:37Speaker 1: I know how long they are. Um, And I didn't
- 1:45:41Speaker 1: put those two things together like I didn't. I didn't
- 1:45:44Speaker 1: think about I wasn't thinking about um. I was thinking
- 1:45:50Speaker 1: about it. I wasn't thinking it was gonna be like
- 1:45:52Speaker 1: Ken Burns a civil war or something. But never I
- 1:45:55Speaker 1: wasn't think I knew what was gonna wind up being.
- 1:45:56Speaker 1: It was gonna be like a ninety minute whatever. And
- 1:45:59Speaker 1: I wasn't picturing that's what I want to do another
- 1:46:03Speaker 1: one someday. I wasn't imagining what would happen to all
- 1:46:10Speaker 1: of these ideas. Not only that, like that you need
- 1:46:18Speaker 1: to like simplify things and pare it down for a
- 1:46:22Speaker 1: couple of reasons so that the viewer could understand, and
- 1:46:25Speaker 1: you also have the sense of allegiance to the subject.
- 1:46:28Speaker 1: And you're like, I can't have the subjects say ten
- 1:46:31Speaker 1: things incompletely. Yeah, I'm gonna have to find they're just
- 1:46:36Speaker 1: gonna have to say two things in a way that
- 1:46:38Speaker 1: makes sense, yea, rather than letting them right there giving
- 1:46:43Speaker 1: them sound bites about tons of stuff. It's like, I
- 1:46:44Speaker 1: gotta this is gonna be like like if you're gonna
- 1:46:47Speaker 1: boil it down, what are some things? And then the
- 1:46:49Speaker 1: problem with like with friends, and there's so many friends
- 1:46:52Speaker 1: of mine in it, you know, Rogan's in it, Robert
- 1:46:56Speaker 1: Abernathew's in it. I don't want to point like, I
- 1:46:58Speaker 1: don't want to posset these problems their problems only in
- 1:47:00Speaker 1: my head, because they're not problems for someone to watch
- 1:47:03Speaker 1: the film. I really want people to watch films I do.
- 1:47:05Speaker 1: I like, I like, I want people to see an
- 1:47:06Speaker 1: experience it. So there's the thing we keep talking about,
- 1:47:09Speaker 1: like these things and it's like way as you perceive them,
- 1:47:11Speaker 1: there's the thing, and the thing as a freestanding entity
- 1:47:14Speaker 1: is something I want people to see, but I can't
- 1:47:17Speaker 1: watch it without all of the the noise in my head.
- 1:47:22Speaker 1: And part of the noise in my head is like
- 1:47:24Speaker 1: I had these friends who have really interesting experiences, like
- 1:47:27Speaker 1: like Matt, who's sitting here, has this very refreshing like
- 1:47:31Speaker 1: everything out of MAT's mouth is delights me, Like everything
- 1:47:35Speaker 1: he says delights me. So um, Doug, you know, like dogs,
- 1:47:43Speaker 1: like this generous, beautiful person with kind of this like
- 1:47:46Speaker 1: a way to express, to explain his life in the
- 1:47:49Speaker 1: way that's very moving and instructive. Right, And you have
- 1:47:53Speaker 1: this like really cohesive view of something that's really complicated
- 1:47:57Speaker 1: and like a real knack for sort of blaming this
- 1:48:02Speaker 1: activity that is so influenced by history and influenced by
- 1:48:05Speaker 1: demographics and sort of like making it seem like a picture,
- 1:48:08Speaker 1: you know, like like presenting it and and I'm friends
- 1:48:12Speaker 1: with you guys, and so then to put you there,
- 1:48:15Speaker 1: I'm also like what I want them to look like?
- 1:48:18Speaker 1: What I see when I see them, It's just it's
- 1:48:21Speaker 1: just complicated. Man. Oh yeah, I'm kind of haunted by
- 1:48:25Speaker 1: the I'm haunted by the process. Well, I think that's
- 1:48:27Speaker 1: I'm good. I'm I'm so. I'm glad as to be
- 1:48:29Speaker 1: sitting here talking because I want to make sure we're cool. Yeah,
- 1:48:32Speaker 1: we're all good. And this also goes out as an
- 1:48:34Speaker 1: apology to all those other people that the interview that
- 1:48:37Speaker 1: didn't make the cut. Well, I know, I mean, I
- 1:48:41Speaker 1: a lot of what you're saying resonates with me because
- 1:48:43Speaker 1: when I, UM worked on my dissertation, you're telling a
- 1:48:48Speaker 1: story and you're trying to explain something through the storytelling process,
- 1:48:52Speaker 1: and you have to choose a beginning and an end
- 1:48:54Speaker 1: and an arc to it, and you can't compress everything
- 1:48:58Speaker 1: in there. And UM. So that's like, when I go
- 1:49:02Speaker 1: back and look at my dissertation, I remember all the
- 1:49:05Speaker 1: things that started to become threads that I wanted to
- 1:49:08Speaker 1: weave into this and I had to I had to
- 1:49:11Speaker 1: cut them. UM. And I have, you know, boxes and
- 1:49:15Speaker 1: boxes of photo copies and notes and things like that
- 1:49:19Speaker 1: that have been traveling around with me for a couple
- 1:49:21Speaker 1: of years and UM, and they're all little things that
- 1:49:25Speaker 1: I wanted to cram into that. UM because when I
- 1:49:28Speaker 1: read what I wrote, I think, like man, it's it's
- 1:49:32Speaker 1: more complex than that. There are several other layers that
- 1:49:35Speaker 1: I need to to weave into this thing. Um and
- 1:49:40Speaker 1: and so yeah, I mean I think especially with you know,
- 1:49:44Speaker 1: I'm lucky because I I didn't have a page limit. Um.
- 1:49:48Speaker 1: But when you're making a documentary film, obviously there's that
- 1:49:51Speaker 1: window of time that you have to fit it into.
- 1:49:53Speaker 1: It doesn't matter how good the stuff you get is. Um,
- 1:49:56Speaker 1: you have to make those really really tough choices. You
- 1:49:59Speaker 1: ought to cred sism we got early on about the movie,
- 1:50:03Speaker 1: which I would have thought would have been a compliment,
- 1:50:05Speaker 1: but it was always issued as a criticism is it
- 1:50:08Speaker 1: doesn't come down hard enough on anything. It feels too
- 1:50:11Speaker 1: open ended. And I always want to be like, that's great, yeah,
- 1:50:20Speaker 1: you know, I mean if people wanted to be like
- 1:50:23Speaker 1: a like a like a Michael Moore kind of thing.
- 1:50:25Speaker 1: I try not to surround myself with people who come
- 1:50:28Speaker 1: down hard on stuff like there's what's the point, you know?
- 1:50:33Speaker 1: And to the point earlier about having this animal ethicist
- 1:50:39Speaker 1: as a leading figure in the documentary, like having an
- 1:50:43Speaker 1: open exchange of ideas and questioning your own ideas and
- 1:50:48Speaker 1: reflecting on what you really think or what you really
- 1:50:51Speaker 1: believe or what values you have. Like if you just
- 1:50:54Speaker 1: are in an echo chamber and you're you know, talking
- 1:50:58Speaker 1: about the people on the outside, or you're talking about
- 1:51:00Speaker 1: how great the people in this room are, what are
- 1:51:04Speaker 1: you really doing? You know, it's not it's not a
- 1:51:08Speaker 1: real serious intellectual exercise. And so yeah, I'm you could
- 1:51:11Speaker 1: have made a movie of people saying, dude, if we
- 1:51:13Speaker 1: don't kill all the deer, we'll get overrun. Yeah. Yeah,
- 1:51:19Speaker 1: And I think, like, you know, one other thing too,
- 1:51:22Speaker 1: is like it's really easy to like write a book
- 1:51:26Speaker 1: review or a movie review and and slam it. Like
- 1:51:29Speaker 1: and this is something that at least in graduate school
- 1:51:32Speaker 1: you could recognize people are starting to write book reviews.
- 1:51:36Speaker 1: They just trash everything or it's the greatest thing they've
- 1:51:39Speaker 1: ever read. But it takes, you know, it takes it
- 1:51:43Speaker 1: takes a lot more effort to to you know, pick
- 1:51:46Speaker 1: something apart and ask questions of it and go back
- 1:51:50Speaker 1: and revisit and chew on it, and and that ultimately generates,
- 1:51:54Speaker 1: you know, more questions. Like a film reviewed on NPR,
- 1:51:59Speaker 1: You're like, I can't tell that dude really like, yeah,
- 1:52:03Speaker 1: you know, I think that's so he might not want
- 1:52:05Speaker 1: to bore his listeners with whether he liked it or not. Yeah, right, Yeah,
- 1:52:11Speaker 1: I always want to know because I'm like, well, I mean,
- 1:52:14Speaker 1: this is his job. He liked it, I'll I might
- 1:52:16Speaker 1: be more inclined to see it. Yeah, if you're always
- 1:52:19Speaker 1: to be thought provoking, I think he succeeded there. I
- 1:52:22Speaker 1: think everybody can't agree on that, right, Yeah, it's I
- 1:52:27Speaker 1: don't know. It's it's nice to see something that, like hunting,
- 1:52:30Speaker 1: as you're saying, is often portrayed as this cartoonish activity
- 1:52:35Speaker 1: and you're either the hero or you're the villain, and
- 1:52:39Speaker 1: that's not the reality of it. And so to see
- 1:52:42Speaker 1: this like nuanced, um exploration of what we're all doing
- 1:52:47Speaker 1: and why we do it, and why we think we
- 1:52:49Speaker 1: do it, why we may actually do it. Um. I
- 1:52:52Speaker 1: don't know. I found that refreshing. It would be interesting
- 1:52:55Speaker 1: to like hear what I don't ten people from various
- 1:53:01Speaker 1: uh walks of life that don't hunt. What did what
- 1:53:06Speaker 1: did anything change in their perception upon it? If you
- 1:53:09Speaker 1: could make them, If you could take people who were
- 1:53:12Speaker 1: ambivalent or hostile to hunting and somehow forced them to
- 1:53:16Speaker 1: watch and then do a post interview, Yeah, I could
- 1:53:19Speaker 1: set that up. I just haven't done it yet, but
- 1:53:21Speaker 1: it'll be interesting to it. Definitely do it. And you know, well,
- 1:53:25Speaker 1: I don't know if I need to hear it now.
- 1:53:27Speaker 1: Maybe when the making of it I would have been
- 1:53:28Speaker 1: interested here, but now it's like something that would be
- 1:53:31Speaker 1: the reason that I would do it. Uh. You know
- 1:53:33Speaker 1: remember how I began. You want to you want to
- 1:53:35Speaker 1: see some full circle? Right? You want to see it
- 1:53:38Speaker 1: like Uh, as long as you're gonna allow me to
- 1:53:40Speaker 1: to do a concluding question, you can including questions you
- 1:53:43Speaker 1: want to see me bring something full circle. Remember how
- 1:53:48Speaker 1: earlier I mentioned uh Ian Frasier, what did I say
- 1:53:53Speaker 1: about the in Fraser earlier? He starts his books with
- 1:53:57Speaker 1: he likes to tell people right away in his books
- 1:53:58Speaker 1: about there about he thinks to will start reading the book.
- 1:54:00Speaker 1: They want to know what. They don't want to wait
- 1:54:02Speaker 1: to find out what it's about. He also told me
- 1:54:04Speaker 1: this when he's right. He's a nonfiction writer. When he's
- 1:54:08Speaker 1: writing and he's profiling people, he'll get this feeling that
- 1:54:12Speaker 1: they're not gonna like what he's writing, and he always
- 1:54:16Speaker 1: um mitigates that by getting a very flattering physical description
- 1:54:20Speaker 1: of them. Where she says usually can undoes any harm.
- 1:54:28Speaker 1: They're like, you know, I really like that. You know,
- 1:54:31Speaker 1: I likes what you had to say about our conversation. Uh,
- 1:54:35Speaker 1: I didn't need to do that with you guys, because
- 1:54:37Speaker 1: it's a movie, and so people can see just how
- 1:54:41Speaker 1: wonderful you all are by going to Vimeo and watching
- 1:54:45Speaker 1: Stars in the Sky. That was that is, that's from
- 1:54:53Speaker 1: years of That's why you do it. And just picture
- 1:54:58Speaker 1: him with a little more grain and Doug just imagine
- 1:55:01Speaker 1: you see Doug now, just imagined him when he looked younger.
- 1:55:04Speaker 1: It'd be it would be even better if you just
- 1:55:06Speaker 1: went to Stars in the Sky film dot com and
- 1:55:09Speaker 1: bought it there, wash it there. That was a little
- 1:55:11Speaker 1: more blunt. We could, but then we can we could
- 1:55:15Speaker 1: track here, We could track your watching better, and we
- 1:55:17Speaker 1: could report numbers to people that give a ship and
- 1:55:20Speaker 1: it would help us out. So Stars in the Sky
- 1:55:23Speaker 1: film dot Com you told me when you first started
- 1:55:27Speaker 1: doing this that, like, really the end goal was to
- 1:55:29Speaker 1: do it well enough so that you would be allowed
- 1:55:33Speaker 1: to make another one. That's the wardy Allen Maxim. Yes,
- 1:55:36Speaker 1: but you have his movies were good enough that they
- 1:55:38Speaker 1: let him make another one. But you thought that that
- 1:55:41Speaker 1: would be like a measure of success. Yeah, so do
- 1:55:46Speaker 1: we know that now or if not, how long will
- 1:55:48Speaker 1: it be until we know? I'll make another movie. I'll
- 1:55:50Speaker 1: make another movie. Um, but just my circumstances are such that,
- 1:55:56Speaker 1: like it doesn't matter. I'll just find a way I
- 1:56:00Speaker 1: would like to make it on a movie. And uh, yeah,
- 1:56:03Speaker 1: all right, I'll write more books and I'm gonna make
- 1:56:05Speaker 1: another movie. I don't know if it's gonna because someone
- 1:56:08Speaker 1: let me, or if it's gonna want someone let me.
- 1:56:12Speaker 1: What's gonna want to be because I went and did it?
- 1:56:14Speaker 1: But yeah, I love it. That's my favorite. Um. If
- 1:56:18Speaker 1: I if I had to be honest with you, if
- 1:56:21Speaker 1: I had to pick up medium a medium, if God
- 1:56:25Speaker 1: came down and put a gun to my head and
- 1:56:26Speaker 1: made me pick a one medium, one thing that I
- 1:56:31Speaker 1: could take in for the rest of my life, it
- 1:56:33Speaker 1: would be films. And if he really subdivided it out,
- 1:56:36Speaker 1: I would say documentaries. H yeah, because even if I
- 1:56:41Speaker 1: went blind, I could still listen to him, and if
- 1:56:42Speaker 1: I went deaf, I could watch him. Good point. Tell
- 1:56:45Speaker 1: him that website again, Yanni Stars Film dot Com. Al Right, everyone,
- 1:56:52Speaker 1: thank you so much guys for coming down I really
- 1:56:54Speaker 1: do love you guys, and you people listening. I meant
- 1:56:57Speaker 1: I was talking about these guys, but you guys do
- 1:56:59Speaker 1: not don't know them, But you'd love him if you
- 1:57:02Speaker 1: got to know him.