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- [00:01]
Granger Smith
Well, Steve, thanks for being on, man.
- [00:03]
Steve Rinella
I appreciate the chance. Sorry it took so long and I was late and everything, man.
- [00:07]
Granger Smith
I've been. Last night I was actually trying to put together, like, how would I. If I were going to write a doctrinal statement on Steve Rinella, like what. What kind of thesis would I come up with? Because you're. You're all over the place with so many projects, especially the last, say, three or four years. So many projects. So let me tell you what I was thinking.
- [00:32]
Steve Rinella
It. You can. I need. I'm going to write this down because I need something like this.
- [00:36]
Granger Smith
Well, you can't. You can't say. You can't say that at Steve's core is a hunter. You can't really say that because if you. If you run that out to its most logical conclusion, then some things don't make sense. You can't say at Steve's core, he's like a wild game enthusiast. You are, but it's not your core. There's something else. And so you can't say that you're an outdoorsman at your core because there's other things that if it runs out to its most logical conclusion, don't make sense either. So I was thinking about it and I think you could. I mean, it's use. You can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think at your core is a storyteller.
- [01:23]
Steve Rinella
Yeah, I usually will say writer and outdoorsman, but sure, I like storyteller. I don't know if that's the kind of thing you can say about yourself, though. You know, it's more like maybe something someone else has to say.
- [01:34]
Granger Smith
Well, look, I think when I think about you, there was. There was a moment for me. And this might sound weird, but there was a moment on an airplane somewhere. This is probably three years ago. And I'm watching Meat Eater on my phone on the plane. And to bring in the scene, it's like, you know, a mountainscape and time lapse. Clouds, fog, a rolling river turning over on itself. This, like real melodic, droning piano song, real pensive starts playing. And then. And then the camera's on the ground. And here comes, you know, these boots walking by. And that's. That's our hero walking by. And who's he with? He's not. He's not with a celebrity to hunt with. He's with his brother. You know, me coming, coming from a family, I got two brothers here. Here he is with his brother. So I'm locked in on the scene, right? And I watched this. The whole episode. It's called Walking the Clouds. And you guys are. Oh, yeah, you guys are doll sheep hunting, which is the. The hardest of the. Of the hunts in North America, right? Arguably. And you guys, you. You chase these sheep. Sometimes you see them, sometimes you don't. Sometimes you see a legal ram, but you can't get to them. You run out of time. The. The show ends and you never got one.
- [03:09]
Steve Rinella
Yeah.
- [03:10]
Granger Smith
And I thought. I watched the whole show and I was actually entertained.
- [03:14]
Steve Rinella
Did you feel. You didn't feel like you got ripped off? No.
- [03:16]
Granger Smith
That's the crazy thing I want to say. I didn't feel ripped off. I felt drawn into a story of a storyteller. This is how you ended it. This is what you said. In the end, you get to a point where you just have to give up and go home. The land beat you or the sheep beat you just by running out the clock. Now all you have is a long walk out and plenty of time to spend in your own head to think about how you'll get too old to do this. Eventually, getting back into places like this could break your body. Knees give out, backs go bad, lungs get tired, and half useless. That's a painful thing to look ahead to. But it's not nearly as bad as to think about leaving this place. One just breaks your body, the other breaks your heart. Scene ends. Show over. That's a story.
- [04:09]
Steve Rinella
That's doll sheep hunting right there.
- [04:12]
Granger Smith
That's incredible, man.
- [04:14]
Steve Rinella
Oh, thanks, man. I appreciate that. I appreciate that. We used to. We used to worry when we started doing Meat Eater. We used to really worry about what would happen to you if you had unsuccessful episodes. But we didn't. You know, you'd put all that time into going and filming one, and you'd kind of map out your year, you know, and you're gonna go make. Let's say you're gonna go make eight episodes and you go spend six, seven days on something, and you don't get anything. When we started doing it, we didn't have any option. You know, we had to figure out a way to. To. To run with them. The impulse would have been that you'd bury it somehow. You know, we just didn't have. It was funny because the decision was made for us. We just didn't have a way to get the time back.
- [05:06]
Granger Smith
Yeah.
- [05:07]
Steve Rinella
So we learned how to do them, and it was. It was. You know, when you're out, you're really pushing as hard as you can to be successful. Like, I like. You know, I like to Be successful, and you're pushing really hard to be successful. And when you're not, I never think to myself, oh, great, we weren't successful. Now we can make a skunker episode. And that's what you would call them, is making skunkers. Yeah, but we just learned to. You know, we learned to deal with them. And it was fun because it was. One of the ways in which I kind of fell in love with the audience is because people, for the most part, were supportive of it. I remember getting one email or. In the early days of making the Meat Eater, I remember getting an email from a guy, and he had said, I have enough failure and disappointment in my life. I don't need to get it from my tv.
- [06:06]
Granger Smith
That's a man trained, depressed.
- [06:08]
Steve Rinella
So depressed, man.
- [06:09]
Granger Smith
He's just been trained by the mindless hunting shows that have come for decades, that the whole trailer is the. Is the kill shot, and the animal falls and, like, and the music plays and. And it's all leading to that. And then your show comes around, and sometimes you don't get anything.
- [06:25]
Steve Rinella
Yeah. And for me, I'm like, yeah, sometimes we don't. Sometimes we. Sometimes we didn't. Don't. And. But, man, it wasn't. I'm. I'm promising you, dude, it wasn't because we weren't trying.
- [06:39]
Granger Smith
That's evident in the show, man. That's evident.
- [06:43]
Steve Rinella
And. And then your.
- [06:44]
Granger Smith
Your storytelling, though, it's. I mean, was it somebody. Was it a producer or a manager? Or was somebody like, hey, Steve, now we got to start writing books. We got to start getting your voice recorded for campfire stories. I mean, you took this. This whole. This whole universe of your. Your world, your. Your brand has gotten. It's. It's so wrapped around the storytelling, and hunting has always been about the storytelling from the beginning of time. It's always. It's never just about the kill. It's about the setup. It's about the campfire before the hunt and the campfire after in eating of the animal. It's always been that. And this is you. Is this somebody else's idea? Or were you the guy that was like, yeah, let me tell the story?
- [07:35]
Steve Rinella
No, I. I started out like I was a writer before anything. You know, when I was. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a. Even. I mean, beyond being a kid. And from the time I was 10 to 22, I was really pushing to be a fur trapper, and that was my main interest. And I. I became interested in writing. I went to graduate school. For writing. So I'm like a trained writer, formerly trained writer, and started doing magazine work. I did books before I ever did any kind of television. You know, in fact, doing TV stuff came out of doing books and then doing. Doing a podcast and other stuff came out of being a writer. So, you know, I was born a writer. I. I'll die a writer. And a lot. In a lot of ways, I. You know, earlier we were. Jo. Not joking, but you were bringing up how to describe it, and I said that. I. I always tell, you know, I was described like an. I'm an author and outdoorsman or a writer and outdoorsman. I feel like the various stuff I've been involved in is. I. I look at it all from the perspective of being a writer, you know, first and foremost. And then, you know, doing the writing on the show is. Is. I kind of think of, like, you know, I'm hosting it, you know, but I kind of more think of. I'm, like. I'm, like, writing it. You know, that's. That's how I picture it in my head.
- [09:03]
Granger Smith
Even if the camera wasn't there, you're writing. You're writing the story, and whether you're just telling to your kids or telling to your friends, this is just who you are.
- [09:15]
Steve Rinella
Yeah, I think that that's a little bit. Yeah, I think that that's that way. But I. I should also admit that when I'm just out hunting around, you know, by my. Hunting with my buddies or hunting with my. With my kids, I'm. I'm pretty far away from. I'm pretty far away from thinking about narrative. You know, I mean, I guess I like, you know, we'll tell a lot of stories, and we relive a lot of stories around home, but I don't. For me to sit down and make sense of it for somebody else. For me to sit down and, like, tell a story that would engage someone who wasn't there or doesn't share in the memory, I need to, like, sit down and be very deliberate about that process. Right. You know, I think I. Even though I spent so much time reliving, recapturing experiences, when I'm having the experiences, I'm not. I'm not really in that space. Right. That's why if you think, like, if you look at the Mediator show, there's a lot of what we call vo, Right. It's VO heavy. And. And we write like, I write the vo.
- [10:25]
Granger Smith
Yeah.
- [10:26]
Steve Rinella
So an editor will write, like, a scratch. Like, our editor will make placeholders for vo. And then I come in and write the vo. So one could look like. If you look generally in production, the way you would generally view it is you would view that VO is not good. So if you're watching nonfiction television and there's a lot of vo, you might look and be like it's emblematic of or a symptom of poor hosting because the host in the field didn't do the job. So then you're stuck filling in all these blanks and doing all this interstitial stuff and making all these connections because you screwed up in the field and didn't give it to camera. So it's normally like a lot of producers would regard.
- [11:14]
Granger Smith
Doing.
- [11:14]
Steve Rinella
Doing VO is. It's a big, giant band aid for what didn't get done, for what didn't get executed properly in the field. But we came to. Because I'm. I'm, you know, like, writing and am a writer and was first known writer. We came to it viewing it like. Like, VO was an asset for us. It wasn't just a crutch, it was a strength. And so we would just. We would kind of. You could almost be a little bit lazier filming, knowing that you were gonna build this. This VO narrative that was going to help you patch all this stuff together. And so, you know, as we kind of, like, put the show together, that's just sort of what we fell into, where we fell into it being, like, very reliant. Very reliant on narration. No VO narration. Right. And I've always enjoyed that, man.
- [12:10]
Granger Smith
That. Me too. And I understand that critique, but I don't agree with that critique, because I. I do. The VO from Meat Eater is what drew me in. And no one ever told that to Anthony Bourdain. His whole show was. Was successful because of that, in its unique way, because of his writing in his VO work. And it would. It would be a really shallow critique to say, yeah, that's just because he wasn't very good in the field. He wasn't good on the fly.
- [12:37]
Steve Rinella
Well, you know, the guys. The whole. The people I started making meteater with were all Bourdain crew. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that was. And it's funny. I'm just. Did a show, you know, the History Channel show we're launching right now. The showrunner that I worked with on that show was the first camera guy that ever filmed all the first Meteor episodes. And then he became a. He was a camera guy for Bourdain and then became a producer for Bourdain and He actually produced the Bourdain's last full show. They never cut it into an episode, but his last full show in Italy was this same guy produced it. So, you know, I wasn't buddies with him. I knew him, but we weren't like buddies at all. Bourdain, you know, I mean, like, Like I knew him, but we weren't pals. But anyway, there was a lot of. There was a lot of overlap in us both winding up with the same production place, winding up with a lot of the same crew, both coming from writing. You know, in some ways, I think that maybe when, when I started into that, there was a template that I walked into that had been established by him. You know, I didn't think about it at the time, but looking back from a more of a long term perspective, I kind of walked into his template because I walked into working with guys who were used to that. Yeah, they were used to that. Having a writer building story, you know, from a. From a writerly perspective, right?
- [14:08]
Granger Smith
Yeah, man. It's Shawshank Redemption. You know, it's Morgan Freeman, Andy. Andy Dufresne, you know, walked in the Shawshank. And I love that. Your show, your new show. When I first read it, I read it as hunting history, and then I realized that I was reading it wrong. And as I researched, I was, no, it's hunting history.
- [14:31]
Steve Rinella
Yeah, no, I think a lot of people. Yeah, I think that was. That. That's a forgivable. That's a forgivable mistake. Considering the, Considering the host, I could, One could be forgiven for making that mistake. Yeah, yeah. Hunting down history, like taking a hunter's perspective down history.
- [14:48]
Granger Smith
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whose idea was that? How did you get brought into that? Because that's. I think it's a perfect match. I love history myself, but somebody made a really interesting connection to put you in on this.
- [15:04]
Steve Rinella
Yeah. You know what, though? It's like my first book. I published my first book in 2004, somewhere around 2003. 2004, so quite a long time ago. My first book was called the Scavenger's Guide to Haute Cuisine. And it was a book about a book. It was a book about this crazy French cookbook that came out in 1903. So like, that's like the year the Wright brothers did their first, you know, flight with a heavier than air vehicle.
- [15:43]
Granger Smith
Right.
- [15:44]
Steve Rinella
And this guy, Scoffier wrote this 5,000 recipe compendium about French cuisine. And so my first book was about going hunting and fishing to catch all the stuff from that Cookbook. My second book was about the history of the American buffalo. The animal. Right. It was like, it was like the history of a species.
- [16:07]
Granger Smith
Yeah.
- [16:08]
Steve Rinella
Had a lot of hunting in it. My first book again was a history of. It's like about like French food, but had a lot of hunting and fishing in it. My buffalo book was a history of the animal. Had a lot of hunting and fishing in it. As a magazine writer, I did like, I, I wrote stuff about like the colonial French, you know, all kinds of things. So I'd always like dealt heavily in history. We did, we have a thing, meat eaters, American history, these audio originals we do about history. So I've always been a player in history and always been very interested in history and I've always been very interested in hunting. So for me to do a history show, people that are familiar with my TV show, Me Eater might look at it like it, like it being different than what I would normally be engaged in. But if anyone who was accustomed to what I wrote, the stuff I've written, you know, it's, my stuff's always been very heavily informed by history. And so in that way it just felt more that way. It felt more like a, like a continuation of what I've already been up to. The difference here being is that in some of the cases, rather than really long deep dives into subjects, doing an hour long show where you tackle a whole subject in an hour, it's kind of like more fun and cursory than it is to do like book length explorations of subjects. Right. It's breathe, it's breezy and entertaining.
- [17:40]
Granger Smith
You know, that's a good way to look at it. Yeah. And I saw, I saw in the episodes last night and it's, it's, it's breezy, it's, it moves quicker even than even the Mediator. In a lot of ways it moves quicker. We don't have the Pensive Piano, you know, on the History Channel with this, but it's, it's still super cool and it's, it's such an extension of your brand that works so well. I also listened to that, that audio. What did you call it?
- [18:09]
Steve Rinella
Aud Media's American History.
- [18:11]
Granger Smith
Yeah, that, that, that was so, that was so engaging. It's good stuff.
- [18:16]
Steve Rinella
Did you listen to the one about the long hunters? Daniel Boone and the long Hunters?
- [18:19]
Granger Smith
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cuz you know, I'm sitting here looking at this and like, yeah, he's, you know, got the new show on the History Channel, Hunting History. But then I started realizing, but That's. I mean, that's what's new right now. But I mean, some of that stuff was the mountain men. I mean, that was like last year. You put that out. So there's a lot of recent things.
- [18:42]
Steve Rinella
Yeah, yeah. The long. Yeah. So we're gonna do. We're actually working on this series of things. Like, you know, as an outdoorsman, you'll kind of appreciate these names that pop up, like, you know, you know, Daniel Boone. Yeah, he's some of a household name. Jim Bridger, John Coulter. So we're doing is. We're breaking up American history into these chunks and looking at market hunters from these different eras. So people know Daniel Boone. Not many people know that, like, what he actually did, like what his actual job was. Daniel Boone was a deer skin hunter. Like, he hunted deer for the skins. And these skins were exported to Europe and turned into leather. If you see those old paintings, like Kings from the 1700s, and they got those white pants on, those white breeches, those are probably American buckskin.
- [19:34]
Granger Smith
Wow.
- [19:36]
Steve Rinella
So that's what Boone did for living. He did other stuff too. He hunted for bear grease, you know, oil made from bears. But he mostly hunted deer skins. And. And we kind of break up American history where we look at the deer skin trade from 1763 to 1775 and we sort of argue why 1763. There was the end of a frontier war. And so these hunters could kind of push into Kentucky and it wasn't as risky for them to go there. They hunted from 63, 75. Everybody knows 1775. What comes next? 1776, the American Revolution. And the frontier got untenable again. The frontier got very bloody after the Revolution began. So we look at like these, these guys and we know them now as well. They were actually known in their time. They were known as long hunters. And it had to do with the length of their trips. You know, they would go on very long hunts hunting deer skins. The next one we're jumping into is 1806-1840, and it's the beaver skin trade. And that's called Meat Eaters American History, the mountain men. And it covers figures like Jed Smith, John Colter, Jim Bridger, who are all just Rocky Mountain beaver trappers. And then when the beaver market collapsed, all the attention moved to the buffalo hide hunters. And so the next one we'll do is the buffalo hide hunters. We'll probably run that. 1865 to 1882. The last big herd was shot out the winter of 82, and 1865 was the end of the Civil War. And a lot of guys were coming out of that war going west to hunt buffalo. So it's all these really detailed examinations of sort of the economy and life ways and skill sets of these, like, American archetypes, you know, but also what drove the economy to be that way, you know? And again, they're really. They're like deep dives into these things. But it's fun to do because I feel like that is. You know, I've read about that for my whole life. And so it's fun to get it down, you know, to get the work down.
- [21:43]
Granger Smith
And I love this about you, but what is the affinity for North America for you? This is where you concentrate. Everything. I mean, I love it, but what is it about you?
- [21:55]
Steve Rinella
I don't know. I always tell people. When people are talking about other stuff, I always tell them I'm just, like, way too American to understand. I just feel like I'm so, like, completely American, dude. I can't even. Like, I have a hard time. I like to read about geopolitics, but I just have a hard time understanding. You know, One thing I'll joke about with people is like, you know, if you're in America before, you be. If I'm in America and I see a dude walking down the road, you know, I mean, I'll be like, that guy looks like. He said of the work. That guy looks like his truck broke down and he's in trouble. That guy looks like, whatever. You know what I mean? Like, I just can tell what's going on. Yeah. And when you're in another country and you see someone walking down the road, you're like, I have no idea what that dude's doing walking down the road.
- [22:42]
Granger Smith
I agree. That's a way to look at it.
- [22:47]
Steve Rinella
I gotta stick to the place where I just feel like I know what's going on.
- [22:51]
Granger Smith
Okay. I mean, there's more to it. That also. Yes, I. I agree. I hear you. But you. You have a love. You have love.
- [23:02]
Steve Rinella
Yeah, yeah. American love. Like the country, for sure. But also, I guess you. You know, every man I got. It's funny, I got a buddy who. He had this guy that worked for him. He had a ranch manager that worked for him, and he once went to give the ranch manager a talk, you know, like, about kind of expanding his role. And the ranch manager and said to him, you know, every man's got his limits. And I just. I kind of have my limits. Like. Like, I'm very into. I don't care how far Back you go in North America. Like, I don't care if you go back 20,000 years. I remain comfortable in North America talking about North America 20,000 years ago, but I wouldn't be comfortable talking about Europe today. I don't have any subject matter expertise, you know?
- [23:49]
Granger Smith
Yeah.
- [23:49]
Steve Rinella
So it's just like, I like the American story, the American characters. It's huge. It's a big subject. I just. I. I will. You know, earlier I talked about writing a book about French food, but when I wrote a book about French food, I talked about French food as understood in America.
- [24:05]
Granger Smith
Sure. Has there been a place that you've traveled in. In. In North America that has surprised you or that you continually think of as, like, the pinnacle of this is where Steve has to go. This. This one area.
- [24:22]
Steve Rinella
Yeah. The thing that most has blown me away is now, like, I don't go a day in my household without saying to my kids or my wife, I'm like, you know, the Cajuns, when I started hanging out, like, I don't know what took me so long. Louisiana was the last. Louisiana was the. It was the last state. It was the state I'd never been to. So I'd been to 49 out of 50 states. Like, and I'm counting, like, spending the night, not just on the airport, but spending the night.
- [24:52]
Granger Smith
Okay.
- [24:52]
Steve Rinella
And hadn't been there 2. The first time I was going there, we had made it as far as. Like, we're going from Memphis to Louisiana. Made it as far as the Delta in Mississippi. Close. And they're like, yeah, there's a big hurricane coming. And we sort of thought about it, decided not to go to New Orleans. And it was Hurricane Katrina. Okay. Then we made another trip to go down there and had another hurricane happen and didn't go. And eventually made it. And. And kind of fell in with. Hanging out with Cajun dudes. And. I mean, guys that, like, they don't even know the. They don't know the names for ducks that we use. Not like, they still use the French names for their ducks. Right. They use the French names for their inshore fish, you know, and they. When they're cooking stuff, they got a word. You're like, what? You know, I can't. Like, all the French words for the food, French words for the ingredients. Like that. How. Just impressive that culture is in the level of, like, cultural continuity and cultural identity that the Cajuns held on to. And I say the Cajuns, you know. You know, I probably sound like some kind of, like a. Like a Idiot saying, like the occasions is there's like this monolithic thing called the Cajuns. But it just, it blew my mind, you know, that like the, the. The food, the language, the customs. And man, I, I, yeah, if I had found out about that world when I was 18, I probably would have tried to, like, perfect a French accent, and I'd have gone and tried to, like, slip in, you know, join in, right.
- [26:46]
Granger Smith
I mean, I love all of our Louisiana listeners right now, but that. I did not think that's where you're going with that question anywhere in North America.
- [26:55]
Steve Rinella
You're like, yeah, that, yeah, that, like, blew my mind, man. Like, I always heard about it, but, like, that's thing that's really shocked me is just my love of that, of that little corner, you know, that corner of the world, man. And I've always been a northern guy. I've always lived in the northern tier states, Montana, Michigan. Like, I've always lived up north, Washington, always touching Canada, you know.
- [27:18]
Granger Smith
I just want to tell everybody that's listening right now, all the Louisiana people, this is a man who's been doll sheep hunting, you know, the top of Alaska where he could see the whole world, and he's saying, I like Louisiana. I like the Cajuns.
- [27:30]
Steve Rinella
Oh, that's impressive. Yeah, that should, like eating all that. Yeah, all that food they got and all the words they got for their ducks. I love it, man.
- [27:37]
Granger Smith
Yeah, that, that should be, you know.
- [27:38]
Steve Rinella
One of the coolest things about talking to the Cajuns. I'll leave. I won't talk about this all the time, I promise you. But what's funny is like, like having all the words for knowing all the French words for docs and the French words for all the inshore fish, you know? And what's funny is, like, if you get to the offshore fish, like in the Gulf, okay, you get out, you got wahoo, yellow tail, all these offshore fish. And I'd be like, well, what's the French word for. Right? Like yellowfin tuna. Like, what's the French word? Yellowfin tuna. And they don't have any of those words. And one of my buddies pointed out to me is like, at that time, no one knew that stuff was out there. Like, 20 miles into the Gulf. You might have been on another. You might as well have been on another planet.
- [28:19]
Granger Smith
Oh, yeah, that's true.
- [28:20]
Steve Rinella
Like, people weren't, like, people weren't aware that 20 miles out there in the blue water were like wahoo and stuff.
- [28:26]
Granger Smith
Oh, yeah.
- [28:28]
Steve Rinella
I mean, they were like redfish, trout, Right, Whatever. And it was so. So they never incorporated. As close as it seems now. As close as it seems now. It was never like no one had a way to get out there. You know, you weren't rowing, you weren't paddling out.
- [28:44]
Granger Smith
Yeah. So they don't have names.
- [28:46]
Steve Rinella
Yeah, it was there, but it wasn't there. It was there, but like I said, it might as well have been on another planet.
- [28:51]
Granger Smith
That's. That's wild. Well, I hope that you've heard already about Yi Yee festival. That is May 9th and 10th. You can come see me and all the gang at the Yi Yi farm. We've got all kinds of crazy things that are gonna be happening. It's good for the whole family. I really, really think you'll love it. So go to yee.com for more info. If you like the content in this podcast, hey, consider sharing it with a friend, subscribing to this podcast, giving it a good review if you want, and commenting on the YouTube page. These are all things that help this podcast reach more people. If you want to get a hold of me personally, you can go to cameo.com grangersmith I can make you a video message for anything that you want. It could be happy birthday, happy anniversary, maybe just a word of encouragement. Go to cameo.com grangersmith your dad, he got you into hunting? Could you say that?
- [29:39]
Steve Rinella
Yep. My dad.
- [29:40]
Granger Smith
Is your dad still around?
- [29:41]
Steve Rinella
My dad. Oh, no, see. No, see, my dad, he had me. And my dad would be 101 years old. He had me in 1924. Or not had me. What am I saying? He was born in 1924, fought World War II, enlisted at 17, fought in World War II and came home and was just a big hunter and fishermen. So I was always brought up around hunting and fishing and. And, you know, he didn't trap. He didn't. He didn't trap. But I got into trapping, and he was very supportive of trapping. And. And he. I got lucky with those. I got lucky, like, with my mom and dad in a lot of ways. But one of the ways I got lucky with them is they didn't. You know, my dad didn't finish high school right. Formally, so for them, you know, you meet people like. I've met a lot of people like this in my life. Who's. Who, they. They get a lot of family pressure to go into things that maybe they don't want to go into.
- [30:43]
Granger Smith
Yeah.
- [30:44]
Steve Rinella
You know, occupationally, and. And I have kids, and we pressure our kids. We don't pressure about what they do, but we pressure them about their performance in school, right? We pressure them about how they treat their elders, whatever. Like, we pressure them. But, but for like when I said, oh, yeah, I'm going to be a trapper, it was kind of like, oh, that's great, it's a good idea. And I'm like, oh, I'm gonna be a writer. That's a great idea. Like, never had any sort of pushing in a, in a, in a different direction. And for me, like, because my dad was a big outdoorsman, when I started getting a little success writing about hunting and writing about fishing and writing about the outdoors, he just thought that was great, you know, he thought that was a great move. And the fact that you had to live for many years below the poverty level. I always point out to people that, like, if you don't have. If you're not married and you don't have kids, there's no such thing as being poor. You're broke, but you're not poor. Like, poor is later, you know. So I just lived for a long time without any real serious income. But in my parents minds I was very successful because I had chased something kind of weird and did it. And so it was cool like that with my dad. As much as he enjoyed that hunting and fishing to see. For him to see his kid kind of make a way in, that he liked that a lot.
- [32:12]
Granger Smith
When did you lose him?
- [32:14]
Steve Rinella
He died right after the. It was right after the terror attacks. No, it was either right before or right after the terror attacks.
- [32:25]
Granger Smith
That was before almost every.
- [32:27]
Steve Rinella
He died that December. I think maybe it was that December.
- [32:30]
Granger Smith
He died, you know, so that was before most of the world knew of you and meat eater and.
- [32:36]
Steve Rinella
Oh yeah, I was like, oh yeah, there was nothing like that. I mean, he died before I published my first book, but I was, I was a magazine writer. I was a magazine writer and. And I remember, like, I wrote a couple things, you know, I did some stuff in Field and Stream and did some stuff and outside. And I remember the last time I hung out with him before he got real sick. We were down in Florida fishing and we were going to buy shrimp, you know, and he's like, you know, you can tell he's like waiting for someone to. He's like, you don't know who this is? You know, he's like waiting for someone to like, recognize me because I'd written a field.
- [33:14]
Granger Smith
That's a good dad. That's a good dad. Yeah.
- [33:21]
Steve Rinella
Not realizing that no one reads who wrote the articles. They're reading in magazines, no one looks at the author's name.
- [33:28]
Granger Smith
That's amazing, man. I love. I love that. I love that.
- [33:32]
Steve Rinella
Isn't that hilarious, though?
- [33:33]
Granger Smith
You. Your kids, you said you. You put pressure on them.
- [33:38]
Steve Rinella
Oh, yeah.
- [33:38]
Granger Smith
And yet you didn't necessarily get that pressure from your dad. But it's also just a different.
- [33:43]
Steve Rinella
Oh, no, we had a. No, no, we had a. We had a pressure for sure, but not like it wasn't directional. It was just like a pressure to perform, you know, like, it wasn't. It wasn't like a pressure to. To follow in dad's steps and become an orthodontist, you know?
- [34:00]
Granger Smith
Yeah, right.
- [34:01]
Steve Rinella
It was like you couldn't. You couldn't be a screw. Sure. You had to. You had to work hard. You're going to be in trouble. But there was no. It wasn't hyper directional, I should say.
- [34:10]
Granger Smith
And now it is. You're saying, is it directional pressure you put on your kids?
- [34:17]
Steve Rinella
No, no. I. I just had this conversation this morning. Me and my wife were talking to a friend of ours this morning, and I was. My wife's much more inclined to get after him about grades. You know, she's pretty demanding on grades. And I was trying to explain to a friend of mine that I didn't have that relationship with school. I did a lot of schooling, but I didn't have that relationship with school. And. And I don't look at it, like. I don't look at it as the sort of sole opportunity that. I don't look at, like, academic performance as being the kind of, like, where you're make or that. That that's your chance to make or break yourself or. I don't look at, like, the quality. The quality of a kid's formal education really, like, casts their die and sets their destiny. You know, I look at it like it's a part. It's a. It's a part. It's important. It's a part of a much broader collection of things that go on in one's life that'll sort of determine where they head right within that, you know, if our kids screw off in school and they get bad grades, they're gonna lose privileges.
- [35:33]
Granger Smith
Yeah. Yeah. So what does cast the die?
- [35:37]
Steve Rinella
Oh, man.
- [35:39]
Granger Smith
Or is that too broad to ask?
- [35:41]
Steve Rinella
No, no, it's. It's very funny that we're on this because. Because we were, like, having this. We were having this very question earlier, and a friend of mine was pointing out. My friend of mine was taking the other perspective here, and she was saying, you guys Meaning our family. She's like, you guys are really engaged. You, like, know a lot of people. You have, you know, a lot of connections, you have a lot of opportunity, you have a lot of passions. If you take some kids and strip away where they have, like, not a great home life, they don't have engaged parents, it might be that that is their chance, like, shining in school without people backing them up and. And without people backing them up at home and supporting them at home and like creating chances for them. Yeah, right. Sacrificing for them. She's like some people, if. And she was, She's a. She was. Her family, during the Iranian revolution, they fled Iran, right?
- [36:48]
Granger Smith
Yeah.
- [36:48]
Steve Rinella
And came to America with nothing. She's like, dude, for me, for us, if we didn't make it in school, you weren't gonna make it, right? Because that was your chance. Like, that was your chance to shine and that was like your spot. You were gonna do it academically because there wasn't another way you were gonna do it. And I was like, yeah, it's kind of true because. But I point out, like, I'd be thrilled if my kids joined the military. I'd be thrilled if my kid went up and became, you know, got a job guiding, you know, became a sheep guide in Alaska. Like, I'd be thrilled for him. You know, it doesn't. I don't have. There's just. I think there's a lot of paths, you know. When is your die. When is your die cast? That's a great question. We have a 10 year old, a 12 year old, 14 year old. I don't know at what point you feel like you're out of the woods. Last night, the cab driver I drove with from the airport, we were talking about this subject a little bit and he said he. When his kids were. He. When his youngest one was kind of finishing college, he all of a sudden said, I felt like I had done it. You know, he's like, I felt like I could look and be like, you did it. Yeah, you did it. You did a good job. Yeah, you got it.
- [38:04]
Granger Smith
You know, my kids are the same as your. My oldest is 13, though. Yeah, I'm right there.
- [38:11]
Steve Rinella
And yeah, we don't. We don't kick like at 14. I can tell you one thing we're not doing is we're not kicking back saying we did it, because there's still a lot of. There's still a lot of rows to hoe.
- [38:21]
Granger Smith
No, man. Do you guys. Is there a. You guys have a faith in your Family?
- [38:27]
Steve Rinella
No, you know, we were brought up. Well, yeah, it's, it's, it's present because we were both brought up very much in the, in the Christian tradition. And our kids have observant. Our kids have observant family members observing observant grandparents on each side. But in our household, no, it's like they. We've never been. We're like, we're observant in the tradition, like so many people are, where we acknowledge holidays, but we're just not. We're not church going, we're not church going people, even to the point where our kids have expressed and will go with their grandparents, you know, like they've taken in, they're interested, but it's just something that, for us, it's something that we were grounded in, based in, and then just got like, just drifted in some way, you know?
- [39:23]
Granger Smith
Does that, does that feeling change when you're on top of a mountain alone or, or.
- [39:29]
Steve Rinella
Yeah, because, you know, I feel like a, like a spiritual connection to nature and I feel a sort of like, I don't know, like a, A spiritual connection to my friends and my fellow man. Like, I never have this feeling of being that it's pointless or being that we're just like drifting in outer space. There's no broader meaning things, you know, I mean, I feel like very grounded in a order where there's a. Where there's a higher order and there's a. There's a thing that we need to pay homage to and there's something that we're indebted to. Right. So those feel there's something that you owe back to. Right. We try to raise our kids with that awareness. But what. I wouldn't say that we're observant, you know.
- [40:20]
Granger Smith
Okay, that's interesting. So what, what would you owe for the Sega conversation?
- [40:31]
Steve Rinella
I'd have to think about. I'd have to think about why I feel that way. I don't know, like, I'd have to think about why I feel that way.
- [40:39]
Granger Smith
And that's a thought you would, you would have. On the top of a mountain in Alaska, you would have that feeling. Like, I feel. I feel like I owe something, but.
- [40:47]
Steve Rinella
Yeah, like a sense of like, like a sense of it. Like a sense of. Sense of indebtedness. That's a great question. I can't really answer why I have that. You know, it's like I never dug back. I never dug back more layers on it to really think about why I had that feeling of, of, you know, being in a Like, like existing in a sort of sense existing in a world where there's. Where there's like a continuity and a. In a broader meaning to it all. I just. I've never fallen into. I've never had a sort of despairing feeling of. Of it all being empty or it all being pointless. I've never felt that way, you know, even in the absence of organized religion, I've never felt that perhaps it was from being raised in that tradition, you know.
- [41:38]
Granger Smith
Right. Which is that emptiness. You're kind of alluding that. That emptiness is typically what drives people into searching for a deeper understanding.
- [41:47]
Steve Rinella
Probably you'll hear people say, like, could this really be it? And I never. I never have that feeling of it could really be it. I think that that's one of the things of. One of the big strengths of. One of the reasons I like, like parenting and, and. And I'm serious about parenting and find a lot of value in parenting is I think it creates a. There's a term I used in a different context before, but I use this term like an arena. An arena of consequence, meaning. I've said that one of the reasons I like exposing my kids to the outdoors is you're in an arena of consequence. Like you can get into situations. You know, you're out in big water in a small boat.
- [42:31]
Granger Smith
Yeah, right.
- [42:32]
Steve Rinella
You're in an arena of consequence, man. Like screwing up has. There's a real thing that happens when you screw up, and if you're not paying attention, there's a real thing that happens. And I feel that I've found so much more clarity in life as a parent because it makes the whole thing an arena of consequence. I remember my buddy earlier, I was talking about the guy that used to work for Bourdain on the Bourdain stuff, and he's the showrunner on the History Channel show. He, he. We were talking about this and he described to me like once he had kids, when he woke up in the morning, he felt like he was in one of those old movies where you put your hat on and go out the door in the morning, you know, racing to work with the newspaper under your arm, you know, like racing to work. He just felt like it was. He loved it. All of a sudden there was like a mission, you know? Yeah, it's your family. It gives you a mission. And I think that's one of the things that. That the reason I have, like, own such a greater happiness as a parent than I did prior to being a parent is the huge sense of Purpose. So when I talk about the continuity thing is all of a sudden you're like. You kind of like, oh, I get it. If I can take things that I've learned and things where I find value in being a good person to the people around you, whatever, trying hard, and I put that into my kids and. And that grows in them, and then. And then they move on and. And do that as well. You know, it kind of makes like a. It makes things have a lot of sense. And it wound up being really, really psychologically, mentally, for mental health and stuff for. I would say for both. Speaking for my wife, who's not in the room right now, but if she was here, I would say the same thing. It helped us a lot. Like. Like, like, mentally. It did. Having kids and being parents did a lot for us. A lot for us in a way that's taken me years to realize.
- [44:33]
Granger Smith
Did you struggle at any point before that with mental health?
- [44:37]
Steve Rinella
Yeah, I did. I did. Yeah. I had, like. Yeah, drank too much. Like, we don't. I don't drink at all now. I'm not down on it, but you.
- [44:50]
Granger Smith
Don'T have time to.
- [44:52]
Steve Rinella
Yeah, no. Drank too much. Yeah. Just not, like. Not great, you know, moved a lot of things over. You know, I talked a lot about my parents. I talked a lot about my dad. That was not always a very, like, a completely harmonious relationship. He had had terrible experiences in the war, and. And, yeah, it was just, you know, my net. My net overall happiness. Just. I kind of found it with family. Right. I found it with family. And. And I wouldn't even even have. It wouldn't have occurred to me to even have said that until I was well into the job of being a parent, you know.
- [45:39]
Granger Smith
Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. I have to think more about that, that becoming the parent fulfills something in you. That. Yeah, that's. That's fascinating stuff. I. I feel like.
- [45:53]
Steve Rinella
Yeah, it gave you. It gave. It gave everything a shape. I feel like I think it gave everything in life a shape.
- [46:00]
Granger Smith
Yeah. As I sit here, I do realize, and it's not lost on me, that I'm in a position that millions of American men, probably worldwide, would want to be. And that is. I get. I get to talk to Steve one on one and ask him anything I want. So this is a huge privilege and I appreciate the time. I do want to ask a few questions, though, to, you know, for the rest of the men out there, one gun, one rifle, and that's all. That's the only one you get the Rest of your life for any hunt. What are you taking.
- [46:31]
Steve Rinella
This? This is my 14 year old's favorite game.
- [46:37]
Granger Smith
That says a lot about my brain, I think. Right?
- [46:39]
Steve Rinella
Yeah. No, no, I'm not dogging because I'm right there with him. It's funny. If we had to do. Okay, if it was the one gun. The one gun, me and my boy both decided it would be a 12 gauge and we would just become slug hunters for big game.
- [46:53]
Granger Smith
Interesting.
- [46:54]
Steve Rinella
I like it because we hunt everything, man. Like we hunt rabbits, squirrels, yeah. Deer, whatever. We're like, man, if we could have any shell we wanted, we would go with the 12 gauge. For, for rifles. I shoot like for rifles. My main, like all around gun is I shoot a.300 win mag. Okay, but see, but we, you know, I hope, you know, I like to hunt moose and stuff, man, you know, and. And I know there's a lot of advances and you know, bullets are getting so good and a lot of stuff's changed and you can get away with much lower calibers on stuff. But I've never been bothered by recoil and I enjoy shooting a.300 win mag. So if I was picking a rifle, you know, my younger bodies, everything now is like smaller, faster, you know. But yeah, I shoot 300 win man. The one gun. Deal. For sure, man. 12 gauge.
- [47:50]
Granger Smith
All right. You could even get a bird with that. You can get a dove with that. I like it. That's a good answer.
- [47:53]
Steve Rinella
Oh, no, we hunt turkeys. We hunt dogs. Yeah, you just do everything.
- [47:57]
Granger Smith
Top five game meets in order. I know that would probably change. So today, in your current mood, right now, your hotel room, top five games, we.
- [48:05]
Steve Rinella
A lot of. We eat a lot of mule deer. My family, we've always eaten a lot of mule deer. People tend to like what they know. You know, when people talk about something tasting strong, it's because it's unusual to them. We eat a ton of mule deer. My kids, first deer. You know, all mule deer. That's what we hunt. So that's the favorite. We like to eat a lot of halibut and salmon, like cottontail rabbits.
- [48:36]
Granger Smith
Interesting.
- [48:38]
Steve Rinella
Yeah, we eat a lot of cottontail rabbits. We can get them.
- [48:40]
Granger Smith
Cottontail top three. Interesting.
- [48:43]
Steve Rinella
Well, no, I don't. You know, now that you put it.
- [48:45]
Granger Smith
That way, it's hard.
- [48:45]
Steve Rinella
Oh, black cod. I'd put black cod on that top list.
- [48:49]
Granger Smith
Okay.
- [48:49]
Steve Rinella
Stable fish. I like a lot of stuff.
- [48:55]
Granger Smith
That's a. That's why that could change tomorrow. That's a tough question.
- [48:58]
Steve Rinella
Well, that's the thing is I'm like, yeah. I always joke, like, I got way too many. I'm like, I always talk about that's my favorite food. And I'm like, well, I do like that other thing too.
- [49:06]
Granger Smith
Yeah, I get it. Give me a dear me.
- [49:09]
Steve Rinella
Like. Like it? No, but seriously, if I had to. I'll tell you this way. If I had to just eat one. If I had to eat one thing.
- [49:17]
Granger Smith
Okay.
- [49:17]
Steve Rinella
One. Just one thing. And I had to access the one thing, it would be like, I would want, like, dear bodies. Deer.
- [49:23]
Granger Smith
Okay.
- [49:23]
Steve Rinella
Whitetail deer, mule deer. The whole thing. I want the whole tongue.
- [49:26]
Granger Smith
Deer.
- [49:26]
Steve Rinella
Everything. I want just deer.
- [49:28]
Granger Smith
Okay. Even. Even an eyeball. You ate an eyeball one time, didn't you?
- [49:32]
Steve Rinella
Yep. I bought the whole deer. If I had to pick one thing, I'd be like, it has to be the whole deer.
- [49:36]
Granger Smith
Yeah. All right. What's. What's a hunt? One hunt that just.
- [49:40]
Steve Rinella
You.
- [49:41]
Granger Smith
You've had so many. You look back in your life, is there one that just pops out, knocked your socks off?
- [49:45]
Steve Rinella
Yeah, you kind of hit it on the head. Talking about. Talking about hunting doll sheep. I've been real fortunate. Like in Alaska, you can't hunt sheep without a guide. Unless you have a relative that lives there. It can be your cousin. They call it second degree kindred. My brother's been in Alaska for 25 years or something, so periodically, I'll be able to go sheep hunting and we just go. I can just go with him, you know, And. And man, that's like. It's the. Just the epitome of mountain hunting. The epitome of mountain hunting. Another favorite for me would be like hunting mule deer during the rut. You know, hunt mule deer in late November is just a blast. Just a blast. Love it.
- [50:29]
Granger Smith
Yeah, it's great. One more thing, and I'm not going to push you on this because it's contentious, but cwd.
- [50:37]
Steve Rinella
Oh, I don't think it's contentious. Well, it is contentious, but it doesn't bother me. Talking about.
- [50:41]
Granger Smith
Okay, well, I mean, here in Texas, a lot of these ranch owners are, especially the ones raising deer, are actually pretty scared. There's. There's guys that have based their whole life, their whole income, everything is based around deer. And now the government has authority to come and just wipe out the whole herd with a 24 hour notice.
- [51:03]
Steve Rinella
Yep.
- [51:03]
Granger Smith
Is there. Is there anything nefarious that you think could be happening here? Is this a ploy in any way? Especially after we saw what happened with COVID Is there. There's more to this as we see These CWD cases popping up randomly. Is it naturally occurring? Have you seen any way to eradicate it that's effective? These are all tons of questions.
- [51:25]
Steve Rinella
No, no. Well, you're opening up a bunch, but I'll give you, like, if I. If. If you don't mind, I'll give you sort of a general perspective.
- [51:33]
Granger Smith
Yeah, yeah.
- [51:40]
Steve Rinella
It was first identified in the 70s. Some people feel as though it was always there and we weren't finding it. We have a lot of testing in place now all around the country, and we have areas now where you can test, test, test, and you don't find it. And then you can test, test, test, and you begin to find it. I do believe. I do believe that it is a somewhat novel meaning new. I do believe it is a somewhat new disease, and I think that it's expanding its range. I think it's spreading from deer to deer to deer in areas. I do not believe there's any stopping it. I. The primary thing that I worry about with CWD is that it would. I am very concerned about the ramifications of it. If it would jump into humans. There's no evidence that. There's no evidence that it will. It has not. I would. I've been. I've had people challenging me on this. I think that there are hundreds of thousands of hunters, hundreds of thousands of Americans who've eaten CWD positive meat.
- [53:04]
Granger Smith
Yeah.
- [53:05]
Steve Rinella
No one's gotten sick. There's been groups of people that we can track over time that we knew ate infected meat, you know, whatever, 15, 16 years ago. They routinely, you know, check up with them. There's no evidence that it's happened. However, other prion diseases. There have been other prion diseases. Mad cow, for one. There's been other prion diseases in time that have jumped and infected humans. So it can happen. You go to England and it's happened where mad cow has infected people in a couple of handful of cases. So as a prion disease, and it's not, you know, you have, like, mad cow and cattle, there's a prion disease, scrapy in sheep, there's a prion disease, cwd, that hits members of the deer family. So you have these different kinds of creatures, and they have different prion diseases. You have a prion disease that hits humans. Jakob Creutzfeldt or, you know, yak. I think it's Jakob Creutzfeld disease or Creutzfeldt Jakob disease. That's a prion disease that occurs in humans. So, yeah, I believe that there's a prion disease that occurs in cervids, not ungulates, but servants and deer and the deer family. There's a rub here that, that even when people have tried to slow the spread or to eradicate the disease in certain areas by killing tons of deer, they haven't successfully done it. There's no, there's no place where you can go look and see that any human efforts have done anything to get rid of it. When people land at a spot that is just people that have landed at a spot that, let's say someone, someone out there accepts, like, I believe the CWD is a disease that, that can kill deer or that does kill deer. I believe that that's true and I believe it's just out there. I don't believe it's going to infect humans. And I don't believe that us trying to do a bunch of measures to control it are going to be successful. I could see a person landing at that, in that position, quite logically, I could see someone landing there. For me, like, what I support, what I would like to do is I would like to continue us hunters, anglers, not, not anglers, you know, well, outdoorsmen, livestock producers, whoever. I think that we should continue to explore research and continue to fund research and try to get, somehow, it's very hard, but try to get like really unbiased information from someone who's not pushing an agenda, not pushing a pre existing agenda or trying to use CWD to get something they were already after anyway. Yeah, right. But like, like straight shooters, honest straight shooters, continuing to explore, like what is this thing? What are the risks? Right. Like, I welcome all of that information.
- [56:12]
Granger Smith
And it sounds like there's almost a race to who gets there first because the hunters need to get to that, need to get to the solution before the nefarious side that says, hey, we're going to use this for something we already wanted to accomplish.
- [56:26]
Steve Rinella
Yeah, it's, it's. And like, and I've, I've seen that man. And I, and I understand people's frustrations where like, like, I'm coming from a perspective of a guy that's, that's, that's concerned, very concerned about cwd. I'm also concerned about some researchers, just some research that came out of Wisconsin suggesting that CWD in areas of Wisconsin has far surpassed humans as the leading cause of death for deer. So some people feel that at a certain rate, when you get up, when you get CWD infection rates 30%, 40%, that it's gonna, you're gonna lower Your deer numbers, your deer herd is gonna go down. And here's the other thing is, like, CWD is always fatal, right? Like, if. When a deer gets cwd, it's usually dead within two years. So if take six years, five years, six years to grow a mature trophy whitetail and you have infection rates at 40% or 50%, and it's always fatal within a couple years. You do wonder about our ability in. In areas that have a lot of infection, are we going to have the ability to. To, like, produce big bucks? Now, a lot of people outside of hunters are going to look and be like, well, who cares about producing bucks? But you care? I care. I care about that. I don't care. I don't. I care about that a lot. I care about deer meat more. And if it wound up being that, like, I had to be that. If it wound up being that, some. That it did jump. And we started seeing a higher rate of prion diseases in humans that were, like, consuming a bunch of deer meat. Right. We haven't seen this yet. There's no evidence of it at all. Hopefully there never will be. But if we did see that down the road, I would. I would. The first thing I would think is, like, man, I wish that we had paid more attention this early. Early on. But. But again, on the other hand of this, what burns a lot of guys is what burns a lot of guys is without all this information, trying to set regulations and trying to take preventative measures that aren't really shown to be effective, but that work against the interests of hunters. Meaning there's some county that gets cwd, and they come up with the idea, well, let's go kill every deer in that county.
- [58:48]
Granger Smith
Everything. Yeah, everything.
- [58:48]
Steve Rinella
Then it winds up being. It doesn't do anything. The deer come back and you still have cw. So it's like, why do we just kill all the deer in the whole damn county?
- [58:57]
Granger Smith
Yeah, I. I was in. I was in Montana just a few months ago. A game warden friend of mine comes in. Sorry, I'm late for dinner. Oh, we've just been killing deer all day, last two days. Just killing deer because of one CWD case.
- [59:11]
Steve Rinella
Yeah. There's an idea. There's an idea.
- [59:14]
Granger Smith
That.
- [59:15]
Steve Rinella
That picture that you had. Picture. There's a cold going around town, right? And you might be like, well, how's the cold spread? Well, it spreads from person to person. Okay, let's get rid of half the people and see if we have half as many people with the cold.
- [59:32]
Granger Smith
Yeah, that makes no sense. I see a New show coming one day. Steve Rinella and cwd, man, I don't want.
- [59:42]
Steve Rinella
Listen, I don't want you to think. Here's the one thing I don't want you to think. I don't want you to think that I, I am not claiming to know all the answers.
- [59:50]
Granger Smith
Yeah.
- [59:50]
Steve Rinella
I, I, I'm not. But I, I'm telling you flat out, I'm telling you flat out, I think it's something we should pay attention to. Hopefully in 10 years, it'll be like, we'll look at CWD the way we now look at Covid.
- [60:03]
Granger Smith
Yeah.
- [60:04]
Steve Rinella
Where we're like, hey, you know, something happened. We got some things right. We got a lot of things wrong. You know, there's a lot of things we did, we didn't need to do, and now we can kind of coexist. Right. It's around. It's around. Sure, it's around. Like, EHD is around. All these other deer diseases around. I hope we land there. I'm not rooting for, I'm not rooting for wildlife disease, but I don't think that we should. I don't think that we should view it differently than we would view any other wildlife disease. Like, we, we like, research. We want to research wildlife diseases and understand what their capabilities are.
- [60:39]
Granger Smith
Yeah, right.
- [60:41]
Steve Rinella
No, I want information, man. Yeah. I want information.
- [60:43]
Granger Smith
You know, that's good. Hey, bro, thank you so much for taking the time being on here. Hunting history from the heart of a, of a storyteller. I appreciate you so much, man. And it's, it's a great new show that you guys have.
- [61:00]
Steve Rinella
Well, I appreciate you saying all that nice stuff, man, and, and I appreciate you bringing up and having, and bringing up talking about. Talking about chronic wasting disease, because it, you know, it's a, it's a real frustrating mystery, and it's kind of dividing some hunters and, and I, Yeah. And I, I just hope that guys that have a vested interest in deer continue to read up on it and follow what's going on and have opinions, but, and, you know, have informed opinions. Right. Like, get, Try to, try to draw some information from a variety of sources and weigh it out in your head and see what you think.
- [61:38]
Granger Smith
It's good to talk about it. I agree. Yeah.
- [61:40]
Steve Rinella
Yep. 100, man. 100.
- [61:42]
Granger Smith
Yeah. Well, thank you, brother. Sure appreciate your time.
- [61:45]
Steve Rinella
Yeah, man. Take care.
- [61:46]
Granger Smith
Yeah, you too. Thanks for joining me on the Granger Smith podcast. I appreciate all of you guys. You could help me out by rating this podcast on itunes. If you're on YouTube subscribe to this channel, Hit that little, like, button and notifications bell so that you never miss any time I upload a video.