Ep. 673: Cooking Bear Ribs and Getting Boned by Politics

Summary

Episode Summary: Ep. 673: Cooking Bear Ribs and Getting Boned by Politics The MeatEater Podcast Release Date: March 10, 2025

In Episode 673 of The MeatEater Podcast, host Steven Rinella engages in an enlightening and often humorous conversation with returning guest Michael Hunter, a renowned chef from Toronto and author of the acclaimed cookbook, The Hunter Chef in the Wild. This episode delves into the intricate intersections of hunting, cooking, and the current political landscape affecting conservation efforts in North America.

---

1. Humorous Banter: Invading Canada

The episode kicks off with Steven Rinella and Michael Hunter exchanging light-hearted jokes about the hypothetical invasion of Canada. This segment showcases the camaraderie between the host and guest, setting a relaxed tone for the episode.

Notable Quote:

• Steven Rinella [02:30]: "He's gonna do your birthday months like you'll have February."

2. Conservation Politics: Lamprey Control and Federal Cuts

A significant portion of the discussion centers around recent federal budget cuts affecting conservation agencies, specifically targeting lamprey control efforts in the Great Lakes. Rinella criticizes these cuts, emphasizing the detrimental impact on both commercial and recreational fisheries.

Key Points:

• Lampreys are an invasive species decimating native fish populations in the Great Lakes.
• Federal agencies face budget constraints, freezing credit allocations essential for lamprey management.
• These cuts threaten the economy tied to fishing industries and tribal fisheries.

Notable Quote:

• Steven Rinella [14:00]: "Meaning they wouldn't know lamprey if it was latched to their scrotum."

3. Public Land Management and Political Divides

The conversation explores how different political parties handle conservation and public land management. Rinella outlines a perceived trend where Democrats are more likely to impose restrictions on hunting and predator management, while Republicans tend to undermine conservation funding.

Key Points:

• Colorado's legislative changes aim to alter the Fish and Game Agency's mandate, diminishing the role of hunters and anglers in wildlife management.
• State vs. Federal Control: Efforts by certain states to override federal wildlife management protocols.
• Economic Implications: Cuts in conservation spending lead to increased costs in fisheries management and public land upkeep.

Notable Quote:

• Steven Rinella [18:31]: "They'll always bone you. They'll always bone you on gun issues. Republicans are going to bone you on conservation issues generally."

4. Up Old Trucks Calendar Project

Rinella and his team discuss their ongoing project to create a calendar featuring "up old trucks" — vintage hunting rigs. The segment includes playful debates on the types of trucks desired and the criteria for selection, highlighting the show's community involvement.

Key Points:

• Community Submissions: Listeners are encouraged to submit photos of their vintage hunting trucks.
• Selection Process: Potential implementation of a voting system to choose featured trucks.
• Partnership with Backcountry Hunters and Anglers (BHA): A portion of calendar sales will support BHA initiatives.

Notable Quote:

• Steven Rinella [37:12]: "If one of your photos gets selected for the calendar, we're going to send you a $500 gift card and a free BHA membership."

5. Michael Hunter’s Cookbook and Cooking Wild Game

A highlight of the episode is the in-depth discussion about Michael Hunter's new cookbook, The Hunter Chef in the Wild. Hunter shares insights into his passion for cooking over open flames, his experiences with various game meats, and the challenges of promoting lesser-known recipes.

Key Points:

• Bear Ribs Recipe: Hunter elaborates on his method of smoking and glazing bear ribs, emphasizing the rich flavor and tender texture achieved through his techniques.
• Utilizing All Parts of the Animal: Encouraging hunters to make use of every part of the game to minimize waste.
• Innovative Recipes: Inclusion of unique dishes like smoked cougar ham and sustainable cooking practices.

Notable Quote:

• Michael Hunter [103:27]: "I took the sawzall and cut, you know, 2-inch ossobuco cuts out of the mule deer I shot. And she was dumbfounded that they weren't, you know, stinky."

6. Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) Concerns

The episode addresses growing concerns about Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) in deer populations and its implications for human health and hunting practices. Rinella and Hunter debate the severity and public perception of CWD, advocating for increased research and responsible meat processing.

Key Points:

• CWD Overview: A prion disease affecting deer, with potential but unproven risks to humans.
• Impact on Hunting and Meat Consumption: CWD-positive animals may lead to decreased acceptance of wild game meat in markets and food banks.
• Regulatory Challenges: Stricter regulations on meat processing due to CWD have forced many processors to cease operations.

Notable Quote:

• Steven Rinella [83:21]: "Once you have, once you have in these areas where they're wanting or pushing to sell deer, particularly like in the eastern U.S., if there's CWD infection there, 5%, 10%, it gets as high as 50% in some places. I don't know how much of that you're gonna be pushing down at the farmer's market."

7. Cooking Techniques and Tips

Hunter shares practical cooking tips for preparing wild game, emphasizing the importance of utilizing fat for flavor and texture. They discuss various methods like smoking, braising, and frying, highlighting the distinct qualities of game meats compared to domestic counterparts.

Key Points:

• Bear Ribs: Smoking with birch syrup glaze for enhanced flavor.
• Fried Perch and Deer: Techniques for achieving crispy textures using seasoned flour and cornmeal mixtures.
• Handling Fatty Meats: Strategies for managing and rendering fat to improve the eating experience.

Notable Quote:

• Michael Hunter [127:28]: "I use both seasoned flour and cornmeal to achieve that crispy texture."

8. Closing Remarks and Future Projects

The episode concludes with acknowledgments of sponsors, updates on upcoming projects like the new cookbook release, and invitations for listeners to visit Michael Hunter's restaurant. Rinella and Hunter express enthusiasm for future collaborations and community-driven initiatives.

Key Points:

• Book Promotions: Information on where to purchase Michael Hunter's cookbook.
• Upcoming Episodes: Teasers for future discussions on conservation and hunting techniques.
• Community Engagement: Encouragement for listeners to participate in projects like the calendar and share their hunting and cooking experiences.

Notable Quote:

• Michael Hunter [140:40]: "The books are available in the restaurant. We ship signed copies from the restaurant."

---

Conclusion

Episode 673 of The MeatEater Podcast intricately weaves together discussions on conservation politics, innovative hunting projects, and the culinary arts of preparing wild game. Through candid conversations and expert insights, Steven Rinella and Michael Hunter provide listeners with a comprehensive look at the challenges and joys of hunting and cooking in today's complex political and environmental climate.

---

Notable Quotes Overview:

• Steven Rinella [02:30]: "He's gonna do your birthday months like you'll have February."
• Steven Rinella [14:00]: "Meaning they wouldn't know lamprey if it was latched to their scrotum."
• Steven Rinella [18:31]: "They'll always bone you. They'll always bone you on gun issues. Republicans are going to bone you on conservation issues generally."
• Steven Rinella [37:12]: "If one of your photos gets selected for the calendar, we're going to send you a $500 gift card and a free BHA membership."
• Michael Hunter [103:27]: "I took the sawzall and cut, you know, 2-inch ossobuco cuts out of the mule deer I shot. And she was dumbfounded that they weren't, you know, stinky."
• Steven Rinella [83:21]: "Once you have, once you have in these areas where they're wanting or pushing to sell deer, particularly like in the eastern U.S., if there's CWD infection there, 5%, 10%, it gets as high as 50% in some places. I don't know how much of that you're gonna be pushing down at the farmer's market."
• Michael Hunter [127:28]: "I use both seasoned flour and cornmeal to achieve that crispy texture."
• Michael Hunter [140:40]: "The books are available in the restaurant. We ship signed copies from the restaurant."

This structured summary encapsulates the multifaceted discussions of the episode, providing valuable insights for both regular listeners and newcomers interested in hunting, cooking, and conservation politics.

Transcript

[Stephen Rinella]

Hey, American history buffs. Hunting history buffs, listen up. We're back at it with another volume of our Meat Eaters American History series. In this edition, titled the Mountain Men 1806-1840, we tackle the Rocky Mountain beaver trade and dive into the lives and legends of fellows like Jim Bridger, Jed Smith and John Colter. This small but legendary fraternity of backwoodsmen helped define an era when the west represented not just unmapped territory, but untapped opportunity for those willing to endure some heinous and at times violent conditions. We explain what started the Mountain man era and what ended it. We tell you everything you'd ever want to know about what the mountain men ate, how they hunted and trapped, what gear they carried, what clothes they wore, how they interacted with Native Americans, how 10% of them died violent deaths, and even detailed descriptions of of how they performed amputations on the fly. It's as dark and bloody and good as our previous volume about the white tailed deer skin trade, which is titled the Long Hunters 1761-1775. So again, you can buy this wherever audiobooks are sold. Meat Eaters American History The Mountain Men 1806-1840 by Stephen Rinella. This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten, and in my case, underwearless.

[Michael Hunter]

We hunt the Meat Eater Podcast.

[Stephen Rinella]

You can't predict anything. The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by First Light. Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting for elk, First Light has performance apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check it out first light.com f I r s t l I t.com we have a Canadian here from the Great White North. Repeat guest Hunter, Chef Michael Hunter in from Toronto. How's it going, man?

[Michael Hunter]

It's going well, thank you.

[Stephen Rinella]

One word answer. Are you excited that we're going to maybe invade your country?

[Michael Hunter]

Oh, that's such a hard one. I can't, I can't. I'm going to piss off a whole lot of people.

[Stephen Rinella]

Can't do in one word.

[Michael Hunter]

Not one word. No, no.

[Stephen Rinella]

Any tips for a country wanting to invade Canada? Should we hit from the east end?

[Michael Hunter]

I mean, our military, how should we come in is non existent compared to the American military. So it's not, you think a Marine.

[Stephen Rinella]

Landing up in the Maritime Provinces just coming right up through the plane?

[Michael Hunter]

I think a multifaceted approach would probably.

[Stephen Rinella]

Hit them or hit them all over, overwhelm them. And I think in, in Red dawn, didn't the Ruskies hit us down through the plains Coming down through. Why did you guys stop him in Red Dawn? I never thought of that.

[Michael Hunter]

I gotta. You guys just let me.

[Stephen Rinella]

I don't know if Red dawn is the place to go to brush up on your history. You ever seen the movie Red Dawn?

[Michael Hunter]

You know, it's been so long, and I don't. I have this wonderful ability to forget movies.

[Stephen Rinella]

Well, they just kind of say that they came down through, but there was no mention to like a heroic resistance. So Good, Steve, to keep mine. As we prepared. As we prepare to hit you guys hard. You don't have like a little imaginal line or anything built along there?

[Michael Hunter]

No.

[Stephen Rinella]

Okay.

[Michael Hunter]

No.

[Stephen Rinella]

He's got a new book out. We're going to talk about his new book. We're going to talk about his background that I didn't know that he. He. This is the only person I've ever. This is the closest I've ever been to someone that was on a. The closest I've ever been to someone that was on a fox hunt.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah. Yeah. I grew up as a kid, you know, riding. Riding a pony. My mom was on a horse and we would fox hunt on horseback. Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

With little bugles and so, yeah, the.

[Michael Hunter]

The. The man that trained the hounds, the huntsman, you know, he was from England and, you know. Yeah. He had a horn and would blow the horn and the hounds would, you know, go left or go right or come back and.

[Brody]

You're kidding.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah, it was, you know, he probably had like 30 hounds out. How do those hunts end most of the time? By, you know, they would get on a chase and run, run, ascent for a while and then, you know, I would say 30 of the time, they'd actually kill a kill.

[E]

Oh, the hounds. So you don't walk in there and.

[Michael Hunter]

No. Like, there's no. No one's got a firearm, you know, I don't think. Anyway, not that I ever saw. It's also been quite a few years since I've done it. But most of the hunts would, you know, wind up. We'd get on a chase, ride around for a few hours. They'd pack them back up into the. Into the trailer, and then we'd go. Have they called the hunt breakfast? And then it'd be at, you know, someone's farmhouse or back at the club. There was a farm kind of clubhouse. And it'd be like an early, early, late afternoon kind of dinner sort of thing. They'd call it a breakfast.

[Stephen Rinella]

Oh, sorry. Go ahead.

[Michael Hunter]

No, I was just. I was saying it was just they call it the hunt breakfast.

[Stephen Rinella]

But isn't it funny that. That that type of hunting has generated as much angst.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

As it has because, like, buddy, I can tell you. I can tell you about some stuff if you think that's bad, I can tell you about some stuff to blow your mind.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah. So, you know, I know in England, they banned it, and it's. It's more like, you know, a cultural, sort of historical, you know, bit about hunting. But in England, it's actually banned, which is kind of sad. And it. You know, it still does happen in. In Canada, and there's clubs in the US as well. Like, I have a friend in Georgia, so the huntsman, actually, that. That I grew up with. He. He now lives in. I think it's Georgia. Bear Creek Hunt Club or something. Something like that.

[Stephen Rinella]

When was the last time you went?

[Michael Hunter]

I would have been, like, 14 years old. I was a kid. Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. It's old news, but.

[Michael Hunter]

And then he was actually the. The guy that took me hunting for turkey for, like, the very first. I'd never been hunting for food before, so I was in high school, and I was. I was working in restaurants as a teenager, and I had just seen the documentary Food, Inc. And was interested in organic, you know, vegetable gardening at home and more organic food. And he took me hunting for turkey, and I was just absolutely blown away by the flavor of wild turkey compared to, you know, the farm stuff I had been, you know, everyone grows up eating, and I just wanted to eat a more natural diet, so that's kind of how I started hunting.

[Stephen Rinella]

Great.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[F]

You can check out the tattoo on his arm.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah. The turkey. Well, let me see the turkey wing.

[Stephen Rinella]

There you go.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Look at that. The table. My. Well, if I got a tattoo, you know what I want to get a tattoo of is the other day, I was making a comment that I was talking about, I don't want this tattoo, but someone should get it. I was making the comment about them cutting this. This applies to both of us because we share the Great Lakes, our two great nations, them cutting all kinds of positions that work on lamprey control.

[Michael Hunter]

Yep. On our end, I saw that. Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. And I was saying that the guys making those cuts wouldn't know a lamprey if it was latched to their scrotum. That'd be a sweet tattoo. I don't want. I don't want that tattoo, but it'd be a sweet tattoo.

[Michael Hunter]

That'd be gnarly.

[Stephen Rinella]

Where. Where Shoulder Chester already has that little.

[Brody]

But would the. Would the.

[Stephen Rinella]

Chester he already has a scroto.

[F]

The different versions of scro tattoo on Jester.

[Stephen Rinella]

So Chester already has a scroog. He thinks it's a. What does he think it is? A salmon fly.

[F]

It's a, like, fishing hook, right? Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

He's got a scrotum. He's got a scrotum.

[F]

Right.

[Stephen Rinella]

I'm going to put some little. The little hair marks on it, and then I'm gonna. We're gonna have to, like, put them under. I guess we're gonna give him a roofie or have to rufium. And then I'm gonna tattoo a lamprey. Latched onto it, going all.

[Brody]

Okay, I thought you might tattoo the. The lamprey onto someone's.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah.

[Randall]

And then you could have the tail kind of hanging down below the shorts when they're out running.

[Stephen Rinella]

So much better.

[F]

Someone.

[Stephen Rinella]

But no one's ever going to see that tattoo.

[F]

Someone.

[Stephen Rinella]

Well, but if you're at the beach in your shorts and there's a lamprey coming out the hem, I feel like.

[Randall]

That'S sort of a trendy thing right now is having a tattoo that goes down your thigh and people think, what's that?

[Stephen Rinella]

You know, what's that hook to.

[Randall]

Yeah.

[F]

Somebody who's listening may go get it and then email the Meat eater or radio at the Meat Eater Podcast, and we can cover that off in tattoos. I regret.

[Stephen Rinella]

I don't know, because that dude that got Hugh Glass tattooed on him. Holy. Got tore up. But he had his little nipple. He had his little nipple become like a part of the bear. His little nipple was the bear's ear.

[F]

I think the shading.

[Stephen Rinella]

Anyway, listen, people tore that guy a new one. I felt bad for the son of a gun. A little terrible for him. We got so many letters. So the last couple. Here's the. Here's the deal, man. Phil, I wish we had, like, a theme, like a Rant theme song. But you used heavy metal on Cal's rant.

[Michael Hunter]

I did, yeah. I.

[Stephen Rinella]

Maybe something more confessional.

[F]

There are plenty of metal options.

[Stephen Rinella]

Can you do something, like, to seeger. Like, something maybe to like to Night Moves?

[Brody]

Oh, of course.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

I would love to just. I mean, the end of Night Moves when he gets like. Have I explained Night Moves to you? I remember a Night Moves rant from years ago, but you can do it again. It's been a while. People think that night. Here's what Night Moves is about. Do I really?

[Randall]

You've explained this.

[Brody]

Yeah. We all know. We all know what it's about.

[Stephen Rinella]

I'm not explaining it Again. Yeah, something like that. But the end, the end like woke last night to the sound of thunder. That part of night moves. Yeah.

[Michael Hunter]

A little more contemplative.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. So, but so we got boatload. Like I can't even keep track of all the letters we've gotten on the subject of. Because the last few, the, the last bunch, two of the last three episodes we've gotten into like all the hot headed like all the stuff going on at the, at the federal level. We had the president and CEO of Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership on talking about the, we do an annual conservation State of the Union thing and he was talking about what the next four years is going to look like in dealing with the new administration after that, after we recorded that before it aired we had all these layoffs of the federal land management agencies talked about that. It's been a quick moving thing. In fact so quick moving that we keep changing the release cadence of our episodes because things are happening so fast. We got a. I think partly maybe because of my comment about laying off about people making cuts to lamprey, Lamprey control efforts. If you're not aware like lampreys are noxious species. They're, they're an invasive exotic. They're in the Great Lakes and when they came into the Great Lakes they just decimated, I mean decimated Great Lakes fisheries including really wiping out native fish. I mean they, they just brutalized lake trout and the Great Lakes fishery. There's a commercial component to the Great Lakes fishery. There's a huge, so, so food for people right through tribal fisheries. A huge recreational driver. I mean it is, it is, it is of paramount. Recreational fisheries are of paramount importance to economies in the Great Lakes. So by some, some city kid, tech kid going in DC and sniffing around and feeling like he's being a hero by making all these cuts that he has no idea what he's talking about. Meaning he wouldn't know lamprey if it was latched to his scrotum. Isn't productive. Like it's, it's, it's, it's not saving money. Right. It's costing money because in the case of something like this controlling lamp raises cost tons of money. Destroying the fisheries in the Great Lakes costs a ton of money. So I was pointing out, I can't view this as, I can't view that as following into, into some like American America first doctrine. Maybe they're doing it to bone Canada stretch. Maybe they're like, I know it's going to sink American fisheries but this is really going to put the herd on them in Canada, too. I don't know. I don't know. We got so many letters in some guy. There's been a lot of this going on and people like, with how much stuff is happening right now on conservation. How much stuff is happening right now on cutting conservation spending in the US there's this whole thing of like, well, that's what you ex. That's what you people should have expected. What'd you think was going to happen? And I had a guy being like, you voted for him, and here's the thing, and I pointed this out to him. I have never, ever said. I've never said who I voted for. In fact, I've not said who I voted for because when I vote, I'm voting for. I, I like on this show. My, my promise to audience has always been on this show that I try to. It's hard as, as Brody brought up. Brody's sitting right here. Brody recently brought up the point that we always talk about conservation stuff in a bubble, right? Like you take conservation issues and, and you try to. You try to pull them out of their broader political context. And that's what we have historically always done on the show because we try to talk about issues that impact hunter, like, primarily issues of importance to impact hunters and anglers. And so we leave off, like, stuff about, you know, how one might feel about supporting Israel or any number of other things. Like, you always try to leave it off. If I'm voting, I'm voting with other factors in mind besides just what benefits hunters and anglers. So in my discussions about conservation issues, I never talk about, like, I never on this show go and say who I voted for. And I never endorse. I never explicitly endorse candidates because the same way. Because people in their personal lives and in their daily lives and professional lives cannot trim their world down to just what impacts hunting and angling. Even though the show might have the aspiration of just talking about what impacts hunters and anglers, all of our lives are more complicated. So for me to go into talking about who I voted for and endorsing certain candidates, which I always avoid doing, I avoid endorsing candidates. I do that because when you vote for a specific person, you're voting for a whole pile of policies. And I might have a personal feeling about Israel, for instance, and, and that might influence how I vote. But that is going above and beyond the brand promise here of just talking about hunting and angling issues. So it's funny to have some be like, well.

[Michael Hunter]

You.

[Stephen Rinella]

He Said you voted for Trump for. Because it's free speech issues. I said, hey, point out where I've ever said that. I said, I support straying away from the brand promise. This is gonna be the last time I stray away from the brand promise. I like, I like what Trump has to say about freedom of speech. I don't like social media platforms being. Becoming a political arm and needing to bow to political pressures about what they cover. Okay, don't like it. I also don't like them, the current White House kicking the AP out of White House press briefings because they refuse to say Gulf of America. That is also like a, like a weird contradiction because that is an attack on freedom of speech in a weird way. So all this stuff cuts both ways. I've never said who I voted for, but I'll tell you this. I'm gonna. Like, I'm gonna. This is as much as I'm gonna say about it. I have not voted for a major party presidential candidate in 16 years. Okay. I've. In 16 years, I have not voted for a Democrat or Republican presidential candidate. Why? The biggest reason why is no matter what you do, you get boned. This is the point I was recently making on. I tried to make this point on an Instagram post where I was saying hunters and angers. You always got to be paranoid because someone's going to come get you. You go look like, why do you always get boned by a major party? Okay, Go to Colorado, where Colorado has like, Democrats are like, firmly in control of Colorado. Colorado's become kind of like the, the, the hot spot of attacks on, on hunters. Washington, Washington state. These are like western states. There's other examples elsewhere. Washington state, big time Democrat, big time assault on hunters and anglers all the time. This is the state that like, banned fishing during COVID You could go into your yard during COVID and hit a golf ball into a pond and be legal. But you. This is. I'm not. I'm not. This is the truth. You couldn't go in your yard and cast a Rapala into a pond during the pandemic. Like, that is the sort of. That is the sort of attitude that's just like a small issue, but it's like an attitude they have about it. They are reflexively low on tag allocations. They are reflexively.

[E]

You're talking about Washington.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah, like all, like tons of opposition around any kind of predator management. Right. Limiting people's access to natural resources. Colorado coming out like, you have a governor whose husband is like an active animal Rights activist. And they're pushing a ban on bobcat and lion hunting in Colorado. Now, Colorado has this bill coming forward to change the language of what the Fish and Game Agency's mandate is to say. Like, instead of saying shall use hunting and fishing, they want to change it to may use hunting and fishing. Okay. A little minor switch to sort of tone, like to sort of de. Emphasize the role of hunters and anglers and wildlife management.

[E]

And it takes power away from Colorado Parks and Wildlife.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. And color. And they had a. They had a. They put it to a. A vote to do a wolf re entered or to do a wolf reintroduction on a timeline that was not in fitting with the state Department of Wildlife's timeline. So usurping the state's management agency. Right. Their management protocols. That's how you get boned, like, by Democrats. And they'll always bone you. They'll bony. On gun issues. Republicans are going to. Usually, as we're seeing right now, Republicans are going to bone you on conservation issues generally. Not always, but generally. We had an economist write in. He's like, first he lays out all of his bona fides. Randall, your man of letters. Do you say bonafides or bonafides?

[Randall]

I find that to be very pretentious.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah, bonafides. I've tried bonafitis a couple times. No, it just feels.

[E]

Doesn't roll off the tongue.

[Michael Hunter]

Right.

[Stephen Rinella]

Bonafiti.

[Randall]

I think you have to tilt your head back.

[F]

Bonafiti is just not correct.

[Stephen Rinella]

Seems like a French film director. Now I'm thinking of bonapart. Bonafit. No, I think it is. Right. Bonafitis.

[Randall]

Oh, I've heard it both ways, but it's not very common.

[Stephen Rinella]

Here's what threw me off. Roark Denver, He's a Navy seal.

[F]

He used it.

[Stephen Rinella]

Officer. Lacrosse player. Man of letters.

[Randall]

Lacrosse players.

[Stephen Rinella]

Well, he said bona fetis. So then I thought maybe I've been doing it wrong my whole life.

[F]

Isn't there, like, where the. How pronunciation works?

[Stephen Rinella]

I'm going back to bonafires.

[F]

I don't know how that. I can't read that. What's.

[Michael Hunter]

What's.

[F]

You know what I mean? When you have, like, the. The little hats on top of the vowels to indicate how. Diacritical marks. Thank you.

[Randall]

I don't even know if that's the right term.

[F]

So I. Okay, there's probably a. A right way.

[Brody]

Brody's got it pulled up. He's gonna play with the Internet pronouncement.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. Good luck, dude.

[E]

Oh, it's not.

[F]

I think they only put this stupid bona fides.

[Stephen Rinella]

It is, it is. Yeah. But I'm gonna say bona fides. What do you do, Michael?

[Michael Hunter]

I have never heard bonafides, so I would think it was bonafides.

[Stephen Rinella]

I'm sticking with it. He lays out all of his economic. He's a, he's a, he lays out all of his economic bonafides Credentials. Credentials. Yeah, just skip the whole thing all together.

[Randall]

Or maybe do you roll the R Credentials.

[Stephen Rinella]

That's the back of the throat. Lays out his credentials. Yeah, just. Yeah, we're good. Credentials.

[Michael Hunter]

Message from our sponsors. No free ads.

[Stephen Rinella]

Planet Fitness Phelps has a new thing this spring. They're coming out with what they call the prime cuts, turkey diaphragm calls. And one of them is called the Clay Newcomb prime cut. And I'm not just going to talk about it, I'm going to, going to blow on it here. I'm a simple turkey hunter who likes a simple system. I usually carry one, maybe two diaphragm calls in a single pot call every year. Don't even carry a box call. I wanted a versatile diaphragm call that was the best of two worlds. I wanted loud and raspy, a call that I could cut on but also one that was soft and subtle that I could purr Kiki run on. I love to make those raspy cuts and the soft subtle purrs on the same call. And I find many of them. I can't do both. And this call that I worked with Jason Phelps to build simplifies my turkey kit. These prime cuts come in a three pack. There's the Clay Newcomb call but also Steve Rinella and Jason Phelps favorite turkey diaphragm cuts. You can check all these out along with all the other meat eater and Phelps turkey [e-mail] eater.com. here's the problem in talking about, here's the problem in talking about the, the, the, the, the cuts. There's a ton of problems in talking about the cuts. The way they're kind of framing it, they're kind of. If you talk about the sort of ham handed conservation cuts that are going to wind up costing us money in a long time. The, the pro cut crowd of which I'm kind of a part of in some of these areas. The pro cut crowd will then act like what you're saying is you want to spend money on, you want to spend money on, you know, funding certain plays for children in Panama. It's like, oh, if you want to point out some really stupid things Doge is doing. That must mean that you support spending taxpayer dollars on putting on plays in Panama. I'm like, no, no, I don't equate putting on plays in Panama or whatever the hell it was. I don't equate that with letting the Lamprey get reestablished and destroying Great Lakes fisheries. It's not the same thing. It's not the same thing. So you're like, they try to bucket you like yet another person unhappy with what's going on in general. It's like, no, I'm not unhappy in general, unhappy with some of these things that are happening, that are really stupid. And I think that if you let, like, if you, if you need, if you need to make cuts to conservation spending, that's painful, but at least that you'd bring in new agency heads, let them fill out their agencies, and then give them 90 days, 120 days, whatever the hell it is. And trust me, 90 days is not going to make a big difference here, 120 days, whatever, and say, come to me with the 10% reduction and at least let someone who would know a lamprey was latched onto their scrotum decide what things ought to go. It's just the way they're doing it. Like the way they're doing it is reckless. And I'm talking about issues that are in America that impact Americans, like public lands and public land, like public lands are definitionally American because any American can go on them, right? It's like, you can't take these kind of cuts and act like this is part of this America first doctrine. It's just not. And I refuse to act like that by saying that you don't want to, that you don't want to gut conservation funding and public lands management is somehow like an implicit approval of us wasting our money on foreign escapades. It's totally different. This economy this economist writes in. The entire federal workforce only makes up 4.4% of the federal budget. Their incomes are also spent in the economy, which has a positive ripple effect known as the money multiplier. Trying to achieve a federal budget surplus by cutting workforce jobs is like trying to dig a 10 acre farm pond with a hand trowel. So what is the real objective with Doge if it's not to achieve a federal budget surplus? I don't know. Did I say I was reading a letter? Yes, I'm reading a letter a while ago. Back to reading letter. The letter goes on. So what's the real objective with Doge if it's not to achieve a federal budget surplus. I don't know. This is the letter. What I do know for certain is that a lot of necessary federal employees in many of our public lands are going to get punished for something they shouldn't involve, that shouldn't involve them. I also know that even if Doge gets everything they want, they still won't even come close to making up for the additional expenses that Trump's economic policies promise to add to the national debt. And we've gotten a million of these letters. I was the other day talking to. I was the other day talking to a federal researcher who works on salmon projects in Alaska. So here you have in Alaska, like, salmon is a huge part of the economy. Remember earlier I was talking about, with wildlife, like, like fisheries in the Great Lakes. Fisheries in the Great Lakes have a small commercial commercial component and a huge, small. Compare commercial. Keep saying commercial. Small commercial component. Huge recreational component in Alaska. Like, if you take the commercial impact of salmon, it's enormous. And then there's recreational. And then they have a third category of management strategy. Like Alaska Fish and Game looks at sort of three things when they look at allocation of a resource. Top of the pile. First, consideration for Alaska's subsistence, meaning if you look, they break out. They break out people that are, that are going to extract wildlife resources and put them into three buckets. Subsistence sits on top subsistence priorities. Subsistence takes priority, meaning people in remote Alaska who rely on fish and game resources as their protein source. Subsistence is top. Then comes commercial recreational. They're tiered out, right? And there's always like a little bit of fighting between them. But here, salmon drive all three layers of the stack. Salmon drive subsistence life ways for many, many people along river systems and along the coast. It's like the primary protein source. Huge in terms of commercial fishery, huge in terms of recreational fishery, of paramount importance. So these geniuses that are gutting conservation spending have gone in and you keep staff in place, but you freeze their credit cards. That's like the move right now. You put a dollar limit on credit cards. So you have people that are gearing up right now during the salmon runs to begin all their work monitoring salmon runs, describing salmon runs, habitat improvements, right? And you say, oh, no, we're still going to pay you. Your credit cards are frozen, so you can't do any of your work. That seems like a great way to save money. They'd be like if at this company, I came in and said, no, no, no, everybody, you. I'm freezing your credit cards. But you're like. But today, because I'm already getting paid a salary, I was going to spend a few bucks to drive down the road to do my work. No, no, don't do that. Just sit tight. We're saving money. Really? You're not. It's. It's like, you're not. Oh, I was getting back into, like, not voting for major. Oh, yeah, I said not voting for major party candidates because they always bone you. They always bone you. And I've never voted for, like, talking about voting. I've never voted for a third party that I actually liked. I just vote for third parties in order to embolden third party prospects. See how far that's, how good that's gone in the last 16 years. I think Ross Perot. No one's topped Ross Perot. Right.

[Randall]

He's the prime example, I think.

[Stephen Rinella]

So you can see how effective my campaign is. Yeah, clearly we got third party candidates coming through the roof. It's not working. My plan to embolden my, My one man's plan to. My one man's plan to embolden and prop up third party options in America is failing.

[Brody]

Is this leading the news cycle in Canada, too? Or is it. Is it. Where does it land?

[Michael Hunter]

I definitely. We definitely hear a lot about American politics and especially now with the, you know, the tariff, you know, stuff that's going on. It's definitely more. More prevalent. You know, politically, Canada has been more of a boring place. And, you know, since COVID I think they're taking a page from, from. I don't know if it's American politics or who's really fueling the. The divide, but there's definitely more of a divide now between left and right in Canada that. Than I remember, you know, in the last 10 years. Yeah. And we do, yeah, we do get a lot of American news. So, yeah, they can do whatever they.

[Stephen Rinella]

Want with the tariffs. I'm staying out of it.

[Michael Hunter]

It's stupid. It's stupid.

[Stephen Rinella]

I'm staying out of it.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah, it's not worth even talking about.

[Stephen Rinella]

Me and Yanni ran for president one time, and we ran under Better hunting. Efficient, Better hunting and fishing for America.

[E]

You ran in a bubble.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah, we tried to bubbleize. We ran in a bubble. But my God, the only thing I can hope. I put a thing on Instagram where it was like, I don't even. I never met the kid. Some kid that works in North Carolina for the Forest Service who's like, the only biologist in some, you know, hundreds or thousands of square miles of national forest got Brought back on. I don't know if. If there's gonna be. If this is all, like, gonna start making more sense and we're gonna start, like, reprioritizing public lands and wildlife resources. But this, again, I think, is coming from people that just don't care. They don't know. I don't think these kind of kids, these kind of kids that are doing this, like, they just don't seem to me like real hunting and fishing kids. And they're dabbling in a world that. They just don't understand the implications of it. They don't understand what's going on in the last hundred years in this country around wildlife conservation and what it means economically. And to come in and be like that. There's. That they're owning the libs by gutting wildlife habitat and wildlife habitat protections in this country. It's like. It just doesn't make any sense, man. What else? We're doing a next year's calendar on old trucks, a certain kind of old truck. Good pivot. Yeah. So we've done. This is a sl. I'm soliciting. Well, couldn't even had a little note in our. We had like, we have new stuff in a document and Karen has a little joke. Make some. Make a joke about tariffs. What did you have in. What you have in mind, Corinne?

[F]

No, that's how. That's how you kind of open things.

[Stephen Rinella]

No, no. I talked about us invading Canada. Yeah, that was my joke.

[Randall]

Too much to cover.

[Stephen Rinella]

Joke. I want to hear.

[F]

I don't have tariff jokes. I thought you'd be. If I put it up top, you'd have a thing off the top of your head. We talked about this at dinner last night.

[Michael Hunter]

We like.

[Stephen Rinella]

Are we going to tariff joke?

[E]

Well, his book's going to be more expensive.

[F]

Oh, there we go.

[Stephen Rinella]

I don't know, because 3 tariffs, I don't think.

[Randall]

Where is it getting printed?

[Michael Hunter]

We have the same publisher. There's Canadian and American Penguin Random House, so.

[Stephen Rinella]

So hopefully they'll figure out, I think.

[Michael Hunter]

That it's going to be equal across the board.

[Stephen Rinella]

But I hate to say this, but your book is beautiful and full of photographs, and I got a feeling it ain't printed in either of our countries.

[Michael Hunter]

No, it's not.

[Stephen Rinella]

Because that's hard to get down.

[Michael Hunter]

Is not.

[Stephen Rinella]

It's one of those things. It's one of those things.

[Randall]

It's like we don't do anymore.

[Stephen Rinella]

It's one of those things that. Yeah, it's funny when you get exposed to different industries. It's One of those things that just that. That America, Canada, too. Not tooled up for. In a weird way, like, if a book. A book that goes into a book that winds up being like a bunch of photographs colored in it. It's just like. We got out of the biz. Yeah, we got out of the biz.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

It's so weird. It's like certain things like. Like sewing certain kinds of clothes and stuff and waterproof laminates and stuff. Like us, like, got out of the business.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah. It's kind of a shame.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah.

[Brody]

What kind of trucks you gonna feature in this game?

[Stephen Rinella]

Well, I'll tell you, Yanni, funny you ask.

[Brody]

I hope they're going to be trucks that can still start and be driven.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah.

[Randall]

What are the parameters?

[Stephen Rinella]

Let me lay it out.

[Randall]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

In the past, we've done. We did a calendar. The. The first one was up old deer stands, and we had some of our own up old deer stand photos. And then we got. We crowdsourced up old deer stand photos. Then we did up old taxidermy again, some of our own. We got some from people. And then we did.

[E]

Took a break from that series for one year.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. And then did up old shitters. Had some of our own. And had other people's old shitters. This year we're doing up old trucks.

[E]

Hunting trucks. But we really want to.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah, I don't want to call that. Yeah, it's just too many words for the calendar. But you know what I'm saying? Rigs.

[E]

But I think.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah, what about.

[E]

I think Giannis has a point.

[Brody]

I agree with you.

[Stephen Rinella]

I'm not done laying it all out. All right, just give me a second.

[E]

Go ahead.

[Stephen Rinella]

Hold your point. Yeah, I'm just trying to lay the base. The base here, because there's certain things that are different.

[Brody]

I'm right here.

[Stephen Rinella]

What's the email address?

[E]

Up old trucks atthemeat eater.com.

[Michael Hunter]

Okay.

[Stephen Rinella]

The calendar is up old trucks. It's the 2026 calendar, if you send it. So here's the deal. We're partnering on this year's calendar with backcountry hunters and anglers. The reason we're partnering with BHA on this year's calendar is because I think they're not. I think it's kind of like there are a lot of public lands fights just a brewing right now. And as we talked about on our conservation State of the Union conservation piece, one of the things I liked about. Again, one of the things. One of the things I liked about Trump 1.0, Trump's first administration Is they didn't. He campaigned on not wanting to sell off public lands and stay true to it. There's a tenor shift right now. There are a bunch of public lands fights brewing. State level, federal level. It's going to get hot. So we're going to partner with BHA on the calendar. If one of your photos gets selected for. If one of your photos gets selected for the calendar, we're going to send you. What do you get? A 500 gift card.

[E]

I think we're doing 250 gift card. You'll get a free BHA membership.

[Stephen Rinella]

In a swag bag.

[E]

In a swag bag.

[Stephen Rinella]

Okay, so we'll send you a gift card that's good for first light. FHF gear, Phelps, game calls, DSD decoys.

[E]

Anything at the store.

[Stephen Rinella]

You'll get a year long BHA membership. And BHA is putting together swag bags of other kind of goods. Yeah.

[E]

And I think it's also important to note that a portion of the sale of every calendar will be donated to bha.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. So we got to do it all. But for every calendar we sell, two or three bucks will go directly to bha. Yep. I think we're gonna peel like our end. We're gonna kick in a couple and then we're gonna maybe raise the calendar another buck. That is that kind of.

[E]

I don't know. The price is going to stay the same.

[Stephen Rinella]

You think the prices stay the same? I think it'll stay the same. Okay, so for every calendar sold, we'll, we'll, we'll fig. I just got. We got to talk to the eggheads, the pen, the guys with the sharp pencils. But for every calendar sold, it'll be like a literal like calendar sold. It'll be whatever, like two or three dollars goes directly over.

[Michael Hunter]

Okay.

[Stephen Rinella]

Just like direct transfer over to bha. When you get the calendar, it's up. Old trucks. But what we mean is hunting rigs. Now, Yanni, go ahead.

[Brody]

I sure hope these up old hunting rigs will still start and be able to be driven.

[E]

Yeah, I don't think.

[Randall]

We don't want 12 photos of just burning like burned up hulk rusting.

[Stephen Rinella]

You don't have to go far. Why do you have to pick all those burning. What are you talking about? I just think like I'm reading about the Battle of Manila. Right.

[Randall]

We're looking for something with character. Not just that it's been really up.

[F]

What if it's like up in terms of like mold and rod and old blood and like fish scale?

[Randall]

Yeah, that's what we're looking for.

[Stephen Rinella]

But here's the deal. Have you ever thumbed through one of the calendars?

[Randall]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Okay. It's great breadth.

[Randall]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

And shitters. And shitters. We had a poorly built shitter that the wind had blown down into a gully. Okay. And then we had a. That someone had carved out of a giant.

[F]

That was.

[E]

The hell was that some kind of cedar.

[Stephen Rinella]

So carved a gnome out of a giant cedar with a chainsaw where you actually walked into a hollow tree. So you can have a. A. It's not like it's gonna be. It's not like people are gonna buy the calendar. It's gonna be 12 burned up trucks.

[Randall]

I'm just saying like in the event. In the, in the event that a guy has like a. An old hunting rig that the doors have fallen off and the, the floor is rusted out, but he also has a photo of a truck that he wrapped around a telephone pole. We're looking for the former rather than ladder. Right. Like we want character in the, in the up.

[Stephen Rinella]

But you're, you're, you're thinking that, you're thinking that your average dude out there can go out and go left and find a burned out. Up. Old hunting trick and then go right. It's like how many do they have access to?

[E]

I. I would think.

[Randall]

I'm just saying we don't want just.

[Stephen Rinella]

Just to watch your use of we.

[Randall]

I, I am only suggesting that we're not looking for fucked up as a measure of. And how bad of shape it's in. It's. It's got to have some.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

You can walk down to the junkyard by the airport, find 20 fucked up old trucks.

[Brody]

Like more than that.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

But everybody knows what we mean. Trucks that are you double deer to go hunt down.

[Brody]

No, no, I don't. I think you should just. Just in your mind just paint me a pict. This is all a up old hunting rig that you would be like. That's a good one. I'm gonna put that one in February.

[E]

He's gonna post one.

[Stephen Rinella]

The Aturia. Yeah, the Suburban. The cut off safari truck.

[Brody]

I think ain't up.

[Stephen Rinella]

You know what I told Brad last time I was down there it is. You know I told Brad last time I'm down there, I said like Brad, one of two things needs to happen. You need to fix the power steering box on this or widen the road. He's like, funny you mentioned that. Think about widening the road. Yes, it is. That's what I'm talking about. But here's the thing if you go look at up old deer stands, it's it like thumb through double deer stands. Is it a 12 photos of crumpled up ladder stands? No, I'm just that have been through house fires.

[Randall]

I'm just. I don't think it's a deviation from what we've done in the past. I'm just trying to give people a sense of. If they're not familiar with the series.

[Stephen Rinella]

What kind of idiots do you think are listening?

[Randall]

I take back everything that I've said.

[E]

Could be your truck.

[Stephen Rinella]

Could be Phillip said back there.

[Brody]

Yeah, I did.

[E]

It could be your truck. Could be your granddaddy's truck.

[Michael Hunter]

Well, I'm just. Steve, you've done an impression of many.

[Stephen Rinella]

Of your loyal listeners.

[Brody]

I think it sounds something like dun, dun, dun.

[Stephen Rinella]

So they're out there just saying no, that's the noise for people I don't agree with. Okay.

[Randall]

We're looking for oddities.

[Brody]

Yes. And I feel okay.

[Stephen Rinella]

But that's not the calendar series. It's not odd old trucks.

[Brody]

Yeah, I know. And so I think we have a.

[Stephen Rinella]

Little bit of old trucks. No one wants that calendar.

[Brody]

You like to have, you know, friction at times. And I think we have a little bit of friction between the title and what we're actually looking for.

[E]

I don't think so. We're gonna look at a thousand different photos, and we're gonna pick the cool one.

[Randall]

Like, I'd like a. I'd like a. Honey.

[Stephen Rinella]

Why are you guys even talking about me and Brody's project? Yeah, bro, take over this year's calendar. Where's your. Give me your calendar bona fides.

[Randall]

I think I had a couple rather clever captions in the up Shitters calendar.

[Brody]

I think.

[Stephen Rinella]

You know what we do captions Cool. When we do captions for up old trucks. Guess who ain't coming. And pointing at them. Not invited.

[Michael Hunter]

Ouch.

[Randall]

But I love it so much if.

[Brody]

You just ask for.

[Stephen Rinella]

Unless you apologize.

[Randall]

I wasn't trying to correct anything you've said. I was just trying to add some. Add some. Some guidelines. You know, if you have a truck that the driver's seat's ripped out, you have to sit on the. A milk crate or something because he.

[Stephen Rinella]

Right now I'm Trump. You're just. You're Zelensky. Oh, yes. If you want to come to this calendar's up old trucks meeting, you apologize and thank me. Thank me.

[Randall]

I will not.

[Stephen Rinella]

Oh, now I do want Randall to come to the meeting. You can still come to the meeting.

[Randall]

Okay, I appreciate that.

[F]

Parameters on people from just like, vomiting into our email. I know, but it takes a bajillion hours.

[Michael Hunter]

Let me.

[Stephen Rinella]

Let me take this.

[Brody]

Let me take a small.

[Stephen Rinella]

Let me put.

[Randall]

Can I put a finer point?

[Stephen Rinella]

We're gonna switch the. Michael, can I put a finer point?

[Randall]

We want it to.

[Stephen Rinella]

To be.

[Randall]

You want it to be up in an interesting way, just not. All right, take it back.

[Stephen Rinella]

No, I understand. Go on. Then. I. I'll retort that.

[Randall]

No, that's. That's all. I was just. I was just trying to suggest that, like, the more interesting it is as a up thing, the more likely it is to end up in the calendar. Not just your average. Like I. I rest my case.

[F]

Add that to the list of things that Steve feels very passionate about his calendar project.

[Stephen Rinella]

Okay. Please. You're making. You're a solution. Looking for a problem. We have never had a problem with our audience understanding what we mean when we say up old taxidermy. Like when we did up old taxidermy. Go look through the calendar. Yeah. Is it burned up taxidermy?

[Brody]

There was some charred taxidermy. I believe in that.

[Stephen Rinella]

You're right. A little bit. And there was a. They had burned up. Yeah.

[Brody]

So get the gasoline and the matches.

[Michael Hunter]

And have at it.

[Stephen Rinella]

But you're. You're acting like. You're acting like people don't understand what we mean when we say a up old truck. And you're like, you're. You're. You're infantilizing them and you're. What's that? What is another word like that?

[Randall]

Patronizing.

[Stephen Rinella]

You're patronizing them and infantilizing them as though they don't know a up old truck when they see one.

[Michael Hunter]

Well, trucks are a dime a dozen.

[Stephen Rinella]

There's so many trucks out there. I think we've been on, so we.

[Michael Hunter]

Have to be more specific.

[Stephen Rinella]

I'm with Randall here. I gotta. I got a way to put numbers around it. Yeah, we'll put numbers around it. I'll bet you right now $100. Oh, $100. As we sit right now. Where we're sitting right now.

[F]

Last time you bet with me, you didn't pay up.

[Stephen Rinella]

Do I owe you money? Yeah. For what?

[F]

For when we were talking about the Arizona thing, in what episode? We mentioned the whole Arizona state big game. Raffles.

[Stephen Rinella]

And who was right?

[F]

I was. Of course I was.

[Stephen Rinella]

How much did I bet you?

[F]

It was like $5.

[Stephen Rinella]

I'll pay you.

[F]

I don't need it. Don't worry.

[Stephen Rinella]

I'm just saying I won a thousand dollar bet against Giannis. And forgave him. I won a thousand dollar bet against my sister in law Karina and forgave her. I better at one point in time I better that in 10 years, Pebble Mine. It was like my bet was that pebble mine. And it was a 10 year window. I was like, in a decade pebble mine will not be developed. And I won and forgave her the thousand dollars.

[F]

I'm forgiving you.

[E]

Let's wrap this camera.

[F]

I'm forgiving you the $5.

[Stephen Rinella]

No, no, no. Here's the bet. Here's the bet. Me and Randall are betting 100 bucks. We got a witness. And here's the bet. And I don't know, we'll have to put it to Seth to figure out. I bet you that of all the submissions, 50% will demonstrate what I understand to be people's understanding of what is a fucked up old truck. A minimum of 50% will be like, well look, it'll just be like. It'll be. You'll put a picture up, it'll be like gets it, doesn't get it.

[Randall]

But what you're saying there is that my guidance and further clarification would in fact have been needed for one out of every two listeners because 50% would not be in line with what you think of as a truck.

[Stephen Rinella]

Brody, what percent make the calendar? What percent of submissions make the calendar?

[E]

Less than 1.

[Stephen Rinella]

Probably way less than 1.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[E]

So I'm just trying to be helpful going back to my point. We'll get a lot of really cool photos. We'll pick the coolest ones. They'll end up in the calendar period.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah, but we were talking about doing this too is we're talking about building a voting function.

[E]

Yeah, we're going to do that.

[Stephen Rinella]

We're going to build a voting function where. I don't know how it's going to work.

[E]

Well, say we get a thousand. It'll be more probably. But let's say we get a thousand submissions, we'll have a website, we'll. We'll select a hundred of those, put them on the website and people will vote. And the top say 10 will end up in the calendar.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah, but we need to. Here's the thing is like, you know, here's the, like a complication with, with, with democracy is we're like, what if we do the whole vote thing, but there's some that we just like too much and they don't make it. That's why we're going to peel off.

[E]

Yeah.

[Randall]

Checks and balances.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. We're going to peel off and we're going to buy executive order. Yeah, by executive order, we're gonna.

[Brody]

He's gonna do your birthday months like you'll have February.

[Stephen Rinella]

Our faves and Brody, in the time.

[Randall]

That we've now discussed this, someone could have gone to a dealership, driven off the lot with a nice new truck and turned it into a up old hunting truck.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. Number four.

[E]

I'm gonna add one more thing. This doesn't guarantee you're gonna get in the calendar, but if you got a sweet photo of your up old hunting rig on public land, that's even better.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. Or you just say it was public land.

[E]

Yeah, well.

[Stephen Rinella]

So yeah, game on. Game on. Up old trucks. Not very far into our document.

[F]

You know, I just suggested to Phil that when we edit this, we play the fast forward sound effect. So it's like, you know, fucked up old truck, fucked up old trucks arguments. So we can get through this. But I guess no, we're getting there.

[Stephen Rinella]

This is my favorite episode in a while.

[Michael Hunter]

Keep it going.

[Stephen Rinella]

This show is sponsored in part by BetterHelp. Now I know that there's a people put a place a lot of value on independence and individualism. I do too. But I also know this at times in my life I've had buddies, family members and friends come to me and say hey man, I need help thinking through something or I need help with something. And you know what I feel when that happens? I feel glad that they came to me and I feel glad that they have the self awareness to go ahead and reach out to others when they do need help. And it can happen to anyone. And if you have nowhere to turn, you're looking for an impartial person to turn to to talk about something that maybe you don't want to talk to about with with the people immediately around you. You can find a way to talk about it with therapy. And therapy is helpful for people who want to learn positive coping skills, who want to kick around ideas that they can't bring up to their immediate family perhaps. So this is where BetterHelp comes in. It's fully online. All right. Making therapy affordable and convenient and available to anyone. Build your support system with better help. Visit betterhelp.com meater to get 10 off your first month. That's betterhelp. H-E-L-P.com me eater so here's the next thing we're going to talk about. As Yachty researched what his part of Wisconsin that he's deforesting looked like pre contact.

[Brody]

I'm. I am researching it. It is harder to find that information that you would think, but some. I'm partnering with a private lands biologist with the U.S. fish and Wildlife Service, and they're helping me put about five acres. Actually, we've turned it into seven now. Seven acres of the property. We're going to turn it into an oak savannah. You familiar with that?

[Stephen Rinella]

That's what you're aiming for?

[Brody]

Well, in. We have. We have 40 acres that we're dealing with. 50 really, but this is just 7 acres of it. Is doing that. But because I feel like they have access to this sort of information, I was asking them. And because we're going to have a seed mixture, right, that goes in once we. After we deforest the place and then chemically burn the shit out of it, we're going to come in with native grass seed and Forbes seed to bring in what's there. And I was saying, I was asking him, I said, well, are we going to go and look at historical data to, you know, to then inform what sort of stuff we try to plant back in there? And he said, yes, we can do that, but because things are constantly changing in the environment, it's not all like it can inform you, but what has happened in the past might not necessarily be what you want to do in the future, because 100 years ago or 200 years ago, the climate was a lot different than it is now. And so depending on what you want to see and the successes you want to have, it could be different. So. Yes.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah.

[Brody]

I have been researching.

[Stephen Rinella]

I think it's good whether or not you can achieve it or even want to achieve it. I think that understanding what it is would. Would enhance your.

[Brody]

Oh, great.

[Stephen Rinella]

Enhance your journey. Great. Your slash and burn deforestation journey.

[Brody]

You want to continue? I can talk about this.

[Stephen Rinella]

It's gonna be the Labview to cut a tree. The Labian lover. My time as a deforestation agent.

[Brody]

No, our buddy Kyle Eybarger. You know, I was listening to him recently talking about the state of Alabama. He says, in. In probably since European contact, the state of Alabama has never had more trees than it has today.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah.

[Brody]

And he would like to see a lot of trees cut down and restored into native grasslands and prairie habitats.

[Stephen Rinella]

Understood. I'm mostly joking. I'm mostly teasing.

[Brody]

Oh, yeah, I know. He just gets. I love talking about.

[Stephen Rinella]

No, well, okay. We'll get some time just to dive in more deeply. There's another one that we're going to talk about today that we're at the Punt on. But that's a great question. Like, I try to skirt free of, like, just major controversy on the show, but this guy's wondering, like, Is that right? How much he's wondering about. I don't know if I can get. I don't know if I want to get into this. It's, like, really divisive is how much fur is too much. Like, you know, like, he's saying, like, when you do a little, like, you put some bear claws around your hat band, or you got, like, a bear claw necklace.

[Brody]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

You got, like, a fur hat.

[Brody]

Our buddy Dan Gates pushes the envelope. You know who I'm. Yeah. From Colorado.

[Stephen Rinella]

He'd be a great person to have on the debate.

[Brody]

Yeah, yeah. Because I don't.

[Stephen Rinella]

He.

[Brody]

He has a giant wardrobe, according to what I see on Instagram. Are you guys familiar?

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, every time.

[Brody]

Every time he's addressing a topic, I mean, there's a new vest or, you know, some sort of new accoutrement to his wardrobe that is, you know, fur. Or. Like you said, there's a lot of claws, horns.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah.

[Brody]

Antlers.

[Stephen Rinella]

It's a real. I think it's.

[E]

It depends on the person, too, man.

[Stephen Rinella]

I mean, listen, we're not. Yeah, you're right.

[E]

You go to the Bozeman airport, you're like, that person shouldn't be.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah, yeah.

[E]

You know.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah, we're. We'll dive into it bad. We'll dive into it bad. What's too much?

[Brody]

Any. Just quick thoughts, Michael.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. You want to just touch it? Because you won't be here when we actually dive into it.

[Michael Hunter]

You know, I just. From listening to. To your friend there, I think I'd need more, you know, you need more.

[E]

In your own personal collections.

[Michael Hunter]

I will put a feather in my hat when I'm turkey hunting or something. Or, you know, I like to collect the odd pheasant feather. I, too, have a muskox hide that I'm wondering what to do with.

[Stephen Rinella]

You don't wear it, though.

[Michael Hunter]

No, I don't wear it, but it would. That would make a cool.

[Brody]

I would suggest harvesting the. What was it? Kivi. Kivi. Qiviut.

[Michael Hunter]

The wool.

[Stephen Rinella]

The wool.

[Michael Hunter]

Okay.

[Stephen Rinella]

I still might.

[Brody]

Yeah. Please. I hope I'm still on the list of people that might receive a beanie out of it.

[Stephen Rinella]

Phil, can you aim a camera at that muskox hide? No.

[Randall]

No.

[Stephen Rinella]

Can I?

[Michael Hunter]

Sure you want it? Sure.

[Stephen Rinella]

This should be fun. You'll do it. You gotta loosen something up. No, don't even worry about.

[Brody]

I just want to see you figure it out. That's the up and down one.

[Michael Hunter]

Here we go.

[E]

Is that it, Bill?

[Stephen Rinella]

No.

[Brody]

There you go.

[Stephen Rinella]

You got it. Now, Yanni, grab a little Kivi off that sucker. Well, now that broly's got a camera.

[Michael Hunter]

On it while we're doing this. You had mentioned earlier in the show about animals people don't want to eat, but they shoot. When I was in the Florida show. Oh, it was before the show. Okay. Sorry to the listeners for confusing people. But what I found interesting was when I shot mine in the Arctic, the locals. It was. There's four guys. We shot four muskox. We couldn't possibly bring all of it home. We brought home about 800 pounds of meat, but the locals didn't. A lot of the locals didn't want it. What their primary. And a lot of them really need food. They want caribou. Like, that is their main source of protein.

[Stephen Rinella]

That's weird, because on. On Nunavat Island. Yeah, it's very popular.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah. So I was in Baker Lake.

[Stephen Rinella]

They actually brought it out there as a food source.

[Michael Hunter]

So where I was hunting in Baker Lake is the only inland community in. In Nunavut. All the other communities are coastal. And caribou is like their bread and butter.

[Stephen Rinella]

Oh, did I say. I said Newton. I'm sorry. New Nevac.

[Michael Hunter]

Oh, no. Bearing. Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Nunavac island in the Bering Sea.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

With the. With the Chupik Eskimo. Muskox is very popular.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah. Anyway, I just thought that was interesting because a lot of people are not necessarily starving, but they're in need of food, a lot of them. But.

[E]

Yeah, my kid wore that muskox head for Halloween one time.

[Stephen Rinella]

He gave it to me. I remember that.

[Michael Hunter]

That's cool.

[Stephen Rinella]

So we'll do a whole big. We'll do a whole big thing on what's enough, what's too much, what's enough. Okay. Clear cut, Yanni.

[Michael Hunter]

So that wool. You just pulled the wool off the muskox hide.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah.

[Michael Hunter]

You can actually harvest wool and make stuff with it.

[Brody]

Well, and supposedly it's supposed. It's the warmest. Like, it beats out cashmere merino. There's nothing else. Like, I mean, think about where that animal lives and. Yeah, it's. But it's hard to harvest, if I remember correctly. Like, it. It takes a. I forget there was something that made it a little bit prohibitive to do stuff with it.

[E]

They don't have domestic.

[Stephen Rinella]

Do they have there? There wasn't. No.

[Brody]

I want to say, a lot of times they harvested it just in the springtime by plucking it off of bushes where.

[Randall]

Mountain goat.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. People. Yeah, no, people would go out and just collect it off.

[Michael Hunter]

That's cool.

[Stephen Rinella]

When they're shedding the spring. Okay. One of the things, Michael, that we're going to get into is I was trying to challenge you on something that Brody found out. You were right.

[Michael Hunter]

Okay. All right. I like this.

[Stephen Rinella]

Like, did Canada have wild turkeys historically?

[Michael Hunter]

Historically, we were told in our honeycourse that yes, at least where I grew up and the hunting license are done by the province. So we had to take a hunting course, and we had to specifically take a turkey hunting course where they gave us history about the wild turkey. That Ontario, in fact, had a native population of turkeys. They were extinct due to market hunting in the 1800s.

[Stephen Rinella]

Got it.

[Michael Hunter]

And they were brought back, I believe, in the 1980s. 70s. 80s.

[E]

1984.

[Michael Hunter]

There you go.

[E]

274 wild turkeys from various U.S. and did we.

[Michael Hunter]

We trade it. Do we trade moose to a state.

[E]

Otters, partridge, geese and moose.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

That's a good trade.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah, I love it. Cool trade. And now the wild turkey population in Canada is like, in Ontario anyway, is absolutely flourishing.

[Stephen Rinella]

Like, is it hard to get permissions?

[Michael Hunter]

I would say yes and no. It kind of depends. Like, I grew up in a rural community, so I've got a lot of contacts and family friends and stuff that let me run around on their farms. I think for like an average, you know, city person that's interested in hunting and wants to get their license, I think it's harder for them. You know, I take, you know, when my son was smaller, I would just take my kids to farmers doors and knock on the door and say, I want to take my kid hunting. And oh yeah, melts are hard. Now my son six for that.

[Stephen Rinella]

When it comes to permissions, man, you got to get yourself. Yeah, I wouldn't be bringing him anymore. Get yourself some kids, even if you got to borrow them.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah. Little nephews or something.

[Stephen Rinella]

Borrow the door, be real friendly, act cute.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah. But yeah, no, it. And I don't know the. The laws, but there's some provinces where it's actually illegal to lease your land for hunting. Whereas I know in the States it's really, you know, everybody's got a hunting lease somewhere like Saskatchewan. I know. I think it's illegal to lease your land specifically for hunting.

[Stephen Rinella]

You know, however one feels about that personally. How does. How do you, like, what is the. I know you're not like a policy expert on the issue but how do you argue that? Like, what is the argument? Like, how do you even tell the landowner that? Like, what the hell?

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah. I have no idea. I mean, like, how would you enforce that?

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah, like. Well, I'm just saying, like, regardless of how you might personally feel about, you know, however you might personally feel about leasing. Not leasing. Paying your own money. Lease, whatever. Wishing it was the good old days where you just hunted on everybody's place and never even asked. How do you feel about all that? I just can't picture crafting legislation.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

That would tell a landowner you cannot lease hunting rights on your land. It's like kind of like.

[E]

Well, that's like saying you can't.

[Stephen Rinella]

What's it to you?

[E]

Yeah, that's like saying you can't raise cattle or grow hay.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah.

[E]

You can't make money off your land.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. You can't lease farming rights on your land. Be like, why?

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah, there's more government overreach.

[Stephen Rinella]

I know. It just seems like it'd be a hard one to, like. A hard one to sell people on.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Because it's. It's not. There's no sort of like, there's no impact on neighboring properties.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

You know, it's not like you dumping hog into the river and acting like it's not your problem anymore.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Right. It's just. It's not. It doesn't, like, bleed over onto your neighbors. It doesn't have. It doesn't impact anybody.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

It just seems like it'd be your call.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah. I'm not sure. I'm not sure how it works, because in Ontario, I don't think it's the case, but other provinces, I've heard that it is.

[E]

What's the public land situation up there?

[Michael Hunter]

Public land, we call it crown land. There's tons of it. And hunting's generally pretty, you know, pretty good, depending where you're going. And I think some of the bylaws, like, there's, I guess, depends if you're close to, you know, provincial or federal parks. Like, there's certain parks that. There's no hunting in the parks. But the. The crown lands, I think it's open. You're allowed to camp on them for, you know, you have to move your structure every three weeks, like if you're going for a big trip or something. But it's. It's pretty, well just free reign.

[Stephen Rinella]

Can you guys find Turks on public land where you're at?

[Michael Hunter]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's. There's. There's public land, but it's like, municipal public land. So not far from where I live, you know, an hour and a half from Toronto, you can hunt. I think they call them, like, their county forests, and they're. They're municipal lands. And I don't know if they've been donated or what they are, but there's hiking trails, there's quad trails, snowmobile trails, whatever. And then they'll say, like, yes to hunting or no to hunting.

[Stephen Rinella]

And there's some Turks out on there stuff.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah. I've shot turkeys on public land. Yeah.

[Brody]

How many turkeys can you kill in a season?

[Michael Hunter]

We have two per spring. Two male bearded birds per spring. And they opened up a fall season, which I don't have time for.

[Stephen Rinella]

Can you guys shoot? Yeah. You know what?

[Michael Hunter]

I don't.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah.

[Michael Hunter]

And then fall, you can shoot hens. And again, it's like, I. You know, they're way. They're half the size of a tom. And it's deer season. Like, why. You know, if one happened to walk by my deer stand. But the season's super short. It's like two weeks or something. And the likelihood, anyway, I've never been able to get.

[Stephen Rinella]

I've never. Well, I'll tell you this. Like, I do a lot of turkey hunting. I love turkey hunting.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

I have never. Because I missed. I have never killed a turkey in the fall. I shot one bullet. I shot one.36 round at a turkey's head about 90 yards away and missed. And that was as close. So now I can sit back and say, I've never killed a fall turkey.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah, I tried to draw accident. I tried to draw my bow on a pair that were walking by my tree stand. And the moment I even moved, like, they took off, and it was like, how do you even do this in the fall?

[Brody]

Yeah, it's pretty. I had a similar experience. I wasn't gonna draw on them, but I had a little flock coming to me, and I was up in the tree. I thought I was pretty high up. I thought I was pretty well concealed. I had the tree between me and the turkeys, and before I moved, I let him get to probably 20. And the moment I was just going for my phone and whatever that was, just that little bit of elbow movement. I saw him go, give me one of those. And then the whole flock just turned. And they didn't run, but just. They're like. Don't know what that was, that tree, but we're not messing around with it.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah.

[Brody]

Keep walking.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. Yeah. I'm just not into it.

[Michael Hunter]

No.

[Stephen Rinella]

Mike kills My kid, he thinks we should be like big time fall turkey hunters.

[Michael Hunter]

And I've, I. And again, I've never done it, but I've heard that, you know, you need to find a flock, spook them so they disperse, and then you try and call the flock back.

[Stephen Rinella]

They make a dog for that.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah, that's how we did it when.

[E]

I was a kid in the fall.

[Michael Hunter]

And it's different calls, right? Like it's not, you're not necessarily yelping.

[E]

And a lot of times you don't even have to call. They're just gonna come back.

[Stephen Rinella]

Like there's like, there's like a grouping. Call Kiki. But the reason those boys use dogs for it is you can't run fast enough to scatter because what you're trying to do is you're trying to throw the flock into such disarray that they lose track of one another.

[Michael Hunter]

Gotcha.

[Stephen Rinella]

So if you go running after them, they just run off like a group.

[Michael Hunter]

And they're like in a trail.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. They're like, what's this annoying ass, dude. But if you send a dog to go slipping in there, raising hell, he might succeed in getting them to lose track of each other. I've never done this. I would like to see it, but I've never done it. Yeah, but just my understanding of it. And then you be we, we, we, we. And they hopefully, you know, draw back in. I know a guy used to kill Huns like that. That was his Hun strategy. He would, when he kicked a flock of Huns, he. Because they'll always scatter.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

He would kind of like watch them land and figure out what he thought was the center. And I don't even know what call he did. He would do a mouth call. He would go to what he thought was the kind of center and sit there and call.

[Michael Hunter]

That's cool.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. And shoot him coming back in. How far did you do you live? Hour and a half out of Toronto or.

[Michael Hunter]

You know, I'm right in the city, so. Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah.

[Michael Hunter]

My restaurant is about 25 minutes from my house, but I live on like kind of the northern side of the city and I'm close to all the highways, so I'm pretty mobile for getting out of the city quick.

[Stephen Rinella]

How's your restaurant doing?

[Michael Hunter]

It's doing great. We've been around for nine years now, Antler Restaurant. And yeah, we're just trying to figure out how to grow, you know, we've been there. We're coming up on a decade and you know, we were thinking about either a big renovation, you know, possibly expanding the space. We're just trying to figure all that out.

[E]

Yeah. The last time you were here, your restaurant, you were, you were real worried about the COVID thing.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah, Covid really hurt us for, for a while and a lot of businesses. And a lot of businesses closed. So, you know, we're very fortunate and lucky that we had a really good community around us that supported us and you know, people like what we're doing and we've got really great team behind us as well, staff wise. So. Yeah, it's, it's good.

[Stephen Rinella]

How often are you there?

[Michael Hunter]

I'm there during the week. I try not to work weekends anymore. I want to see my family, so I'm there during the week. And then we've got a really great general manager and a head chef now that kind of run it.

[Stephen Rinella]

Tell me, tell me what's on the menu.

[Michael Hunter]

Right now we have deer, duck, bison, wild boar. Our fish is kind of generally rotating for like what's in season. So we'll do like halibut, you know, salmon when it's running. We get walleye from Lake Erie. We get swordfish from the east Coast. Sometimes is really cool scallops. We get little Canadian kind of northern shrimp. We do spot prawns and stuff in the, in the spring. So I'll be coming up.

[Stephen Rinella]

But where's the wild hog from? Can you bring it in from Texas or.

[Michael Hunter]

No, I don't know. We. So there's a farm that's been doing. I think they actually just. There's some legislation that's closing down the wild hog farms. It was like a European hog they brought over.

[Stephen Rinella]

Oh. So it's like a, it's like a domestic hog.

[E]

But those Canadian super hogs, they're worried about coming into Montana.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah, yeah. So they actually, I think they've actually started closing these wild boar farms in Ontario because there's been, there's been sightings now.

[Stephen Rinella]

So it's wild boar, but it's, it's domestic domesticated like this sort of ancestral sue scraffa. Yeah.

[Michael Hunter]

And I think they're, you know, they're black long hair type pigs with tusks. Whereas, you know, just the farm raised pigs are pink hairless things.

[Stephen Rinella]

You know, man, we, we long time ago had a dude on a Fisky. That's our. We have a federal agency that does. They do a lot of stuff with non native species and whatnot. Wildlife Control Services, APHIS animal Plant. It's a, it's a division of like the Animal Plant and Health. Animal. Plant and Health Inspection Service.

[Michael Hunter]

Cool.

[Stephen Rinella]

But they run extirpation campaigns on invasive species as well. We were talking to him about hogs and it was like, where could hogs be? If you, if you just take the US And I'm sure guarantee it's true with Canada, where could they be? They would be fine everywhere.

[Michael Hunter]

Right.

[Stephen Rinella]

Because you got to go look like, look at the habitat they're in in Siberia.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

They're. They're wading around in snow up to their brisket.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

No problem. And it was like where they are and are not is more a factor of where can you find them and kill them.

[Michael Hunter]

Right.

[Stephen Rinella]

And it's in like open country, like around here. It's just easier. It'd be easier to go find them and kill them.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

And it's like where they survive is places where it's hard to find them and kill them.

[Michael Hunter]

Or they've become accepted.

[Randall]

Yeah, yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Become accepted as well. Yeah.

[Brody]

Because it's, you know, California is such a weird deal. Right.

[Stephen Rinella]

Like they treat him like a game animal. Yeah, yeah. But they just don't have this, the, they don't have quite the hordes like they get down in Texas. You know, just different. Like hunting pigs in California, you almost get a little excited when you see one. That can be hard, you know.

[Randall]

And you were saying last night you do quite a bit of pig hunting.

[Michael Hunter]

I, I've absolutely gone crazy. I'm addicted to that. That night hunting with the thermal, you're really sneaking around the woods with an AR15 and thermal, it is like amazing.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. But don't you just want to wind up with like, you just wind up with like a lot hawk dogs?

[Michael Hunter]

You can. Yeah, you definitely can.

[Stephen Rinella]

You just sort through them and pick the ones you like or what do you do?

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah. So sort of like the, the gigantic ones that really stink, you know, those will kind of go off to the side and you know, nice kind of medium sized, sour. The smaller piglets, they're incredible eating.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. So how, when you're getting a bunch, how do you deal with them? You can't not. And also you're going down to Texas, right?

[Michael Hunter]

I'm in Mississippi. Yeah. And they've got a huge problem with them. And it's. The guy that I go with, he donates a lot to some of the community. I know they can drop them off at the penitentiary, the federal prison or whatever, or the state prison. They drop them off there.

[Stephen Rinella]

That'd be good place to go to prison.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah. So yeah. You know, the Ones that we don't want, they do get put to use. But. Yeah, I love the meat. You know, it's just a totally different style of hunting for me. You know, this, the thermal thing is sort of like a video game almost.

[E]

Are you able to fly home with that meat?

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah, yeah, I just have to declare it at customs. You know, you look on the. I think it's the CBSA website, Canadian Board of Services or something. And it's got everything listed. You can carry more driving. There's really no weight restriction. Flying. They put a weight restriction, which is odd, but I've never had to weigh anything. I just declare it and you say, where were you? What were you hunting? Okay, see you later. So, yeah, and I freeze it and just put it in a suitcase wrapped in a hunting jacket and it stays frozen, which is cool.

[Stephen Rinella]

How often do you go do that?

[Michael Hunter]

I'm there pretty much quarterly doing it quarterly. They try to get there every couple months. You know, I love it, I love it down there. Yeah, I like the. So.

[Stephen Rinella]

When you guys sell deer in your restaurant, you're buying it from New Zealand or something?

[Michael Hunter]

No, we have, there's, there's a lot of local farms you can. It's actually cheaper from New Zealand, which bugs me. But yeah, we use a. There's a couple local guys that farm and they're red stag species.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah.

[Michael Hunter]

And he's, he's, he's. And the cool thing about the game farms is there, there's like smaller family run type deals so you can kind of get to know the farmer and tour the farm and meet the, meet the family. It's neat. Talk about what they feed them and their habitat and.

[Stephen Rinella]

Huh.

[Michael Hunter]

It's cool. Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

I don't, I'm more. If you see that. The, the. Do you ever. Do those guys sell product in America that.

[Michael Hunter]

I don't know. I think it's a lot harder for them. You know, I know that the cattle goes across the border, but I don't know about the game species.

[Stephen Rinella]

So when you go buy it from, how do you buy it? Like, what's it show up to you?

[Michael Hunter]

Like we buy it quartered. Like we buy whole. Quartered.

[Stephen Rinella]

You pick what quarter you want?

[Michael Hunter]

No, we take the whole thing. We have to buy a whole animal at a time.

[Stephen Rinella]

Oh, you do.

[Michael Hunter]

And then. Yeah, we get it. We, you know, he just does a solid and quarter. We used to get it whole. And then he asked me, what are you guys doing with this? And I said, I told him we just break it down with a Hacksaw. And then he said, well, just get a sawzall. And I'm like, I'm an idiot.

[Stephen Rinella]

Why?

[Michael Hunter]

I've been doing this for, like, three years with a hacksaw. And then the sawzall just cut our time and, you know, by a fraction. And then he was like, well, I can just quarter it for you. Like, after five years.

[Stephen Rinella]

Quicker now.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah. Like. Okay. Like, I didn't know that was an option. But.

[Stephen Rinella]

So he goes out. Like. Is he able to go out? He just goes out and shoots the thing?

[Michael Hunter]

No, he has to actually get it onto a trailer and take it to a slaughterhouse alive.

[Stephen Rinella]

So he saws the antlers off it.

[Michael Hunter]

I haven't actually asked about that. He. I know he sells antler. If you want antler specific stuff, he'll sell you antler. But, yeah, I think he asked.

[Stephen Rinella]

I can't picture that. You could transport them with the antlers on them.

[Michael Hunter]

I have no idea how that works. I'll ask him.

[Stephen Rinella]

Hmm.

[Michael Hunter]

I've never asked that question.

[Stephen Rinella]

It's red deer.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[E]

But there's like, a legal governmental process for getting them.

[Michael Hunter]

He has to get it onto a trailer alive. To a slaughterhouse. Yeah. And there's been times where he's called me and said, hey, I gotta come. You know, I can't come this week. I gotta come next week, because I couldn't catch him. So he has to wait till they get into, like, he's got like, a thousand acres or something. And, you know, when they're in the barnyard, he can kind of shut a gate and corral them onto a trailer. There's been times where he's like. I think during mating season in the early summer, spring, he can't actually catch them or something. So there's been times, like, in July, he's like, yeah, they're mating or something. I can't. I can't get one for you this week.

[Stephen Rinella]

So you order, like, one.

[Michael Hunter]

We usually get two. Yeah, one or two. And then the last couple years, we've actually been buying, like, 30 at a time. There's a friend of mine that does a call with, like, a. Another game farm, and he's been calling animals and they actually shoot them. They had a veterinarian on site that inspected the heart and liver, and then the brains were sent for cwd. And then once everything was cleared, it went to a butcher shop and got stamped, got the.

[Stephen Rinella]

So they check them for a cwd.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

You know, what a weird deal. I know this isn't with you guys, but someone Sent me these. I was looking at these exchanges the other day, and the deer farmers here, the deer breeders here, not meat guys, but, like, antler guys.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

They're trying to. They're trying to use this political climate here to try to get, like, the Doge boys to kill CWD research. Because they're sick of hearing about it.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

They don't want them researching it.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah, that's a bummer. That sucks.

[Stephen Rinella]

So they're trying to say that, hey, while you're throwing out all kinds of conservation work, throw that out too.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah. That's unfortunate because they don't even want.

[Stephen Rinella]

To talk about it.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

They know what it's going to mean for them.

[Michael Hunter]

There was a game farm in Quebec, one of the largest in the countries, that got completely shut down. Had to kill all their. Their entire herd because of cwd. And there is the risk of it getting out into the wild.

[E]

Do people in the restaurant never.

[Michael Hunter]

No, not one customer.

[Randall]

It's probably not on their radar.

[Stephen Rinella]

That's the thing I wonder about, man, is like, with. There are. I'm pretty sure I heard this. There are some food banks that aren't accepting.

[Michael Hunter]

Oh, gave me.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. And then also there's this. There was a processor that used to process four food banks, I believe in Wisconsin. There was a guy in Wisconsin that would process four food banks.

[Randall]

Or Michigan, maybe.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

You know what, from the email. Yeah, it was Michigan. There's a processor that you could like dudes that like to shoot deer, but they don't know. They don't know how to cook, or they're squeamish and they won't eat it. They would go and shoot deer, but then they don't know what to do with it, so they always want to donate it.

[Michael Hunter]

Right.

[Stephen Rinella]

You know, so, you know, because their kids are like, I want butter doodles. So. But this processor is like, he can't have it in there anymore.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

He can't have it in his plant because of cwd. So I wonder if, if as we get more CWD spreading around more, I always wonder, is that gonna put an end to being able to supply food banks and charitable organizations with deer meat?

[Michael Hunter]

I know they changed a bunch of laws where I am as well, where, you know, any butcher could take game from a hunter and butcher it for them, you know, in charge for it. And that now a lot of them have shut down because of new rules and regulations. They've got to clear out all of their, you know, farmed meat, wash everything down, like walls, ceilings, floors. Give everything a Wash. Yep. Then butcher the game, then wash everything again. And then they're allowed to bring in, you know, farm raised products again. So a lot of the processors just say no, they don't do it anymore.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah, I just get a little bit worried about. I get a little bit worried about what, that if, if people, if places stop accepting it.

[Michael Hunter]

Right.

[Stephen Rinella]

If people stop accepting it. I don't think like, you know, we're not in a position where we're gonna, we're not gonna be able to. We're not in a position to kill less deer. They're trying to get people to kill more deer in a lot of suburban areas. Right. So it's like if they stop accepting it, I just think it's just be more winds up in the ditch.

[E]

Yeah. Because people aren't. There's just a lot of people will never process their own animal. They just won't do.

[Stephen Rinella]

No, they're not going to do it. And like everything they shoot goes in that. And then donation. If people don't want to accept it, what's going to happen? And then here's another thing that's like, there's this new, this idea that never goes away is like that we should, we should begin. We should go back to the days of selling wild deer.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

And with CWD every year being in more and more and more counties, I don't even know if that's like a great business plan. Because once you have, once you have in these areas where they're wanting or pushing to sell deer, particularly like in the eastern U.S. if there's CWD infection there, 5%, 10%, it gets as high as 50% in some places. I don't know how much of that you're gonna be pushing down at the farmer's market.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Have they, people are being like, what now?

[Michael Hunter]

Have they linked CWD to human nose yet?

[Stephen Rinella]

Never. Never. I hope they never will.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Like, no. No one's ever gotten it. I mean, hunters in America, dude. Not just hunters in America. I said this one time to a CWD researcher and they're like, no, that's not true. And I'm like, it is true, dude. I was like, hundreds of thousands of Americans have eaten CWD infected meat.

[Michael Hunter]

Probably.

[Stephen Rinella]

Definitely.

[Michael Hunter]

I would think so, dude.

[Stephen Rinella]

Once she said no, and I, I was like, maybe she's right. And I thought about it for a minute and I thought about it for a while longer. I'm like, dude, hundreds of thousands of people have eaten CWD infected meat. No one. No one.

[Michael Hunter]

Wow.

[Stephen Rinella]

But there's this like there's, there's, there's risk. Meaning mad. Like, you know, mad cow has jumped. Am I wrong about that? No. Like, it's.

[E]

No for sure.

[Stephen Rinella]

So mad cow, like, it becomes like Jakob, you know, Creutzfeldt, Jakob disease. Prion diseases have moved across the barrier. This one has not. Okay, but there's also. But what I'm talking about is just a perception issue. Like, picture that they in the east or wherever where you're at, whatever. They start saying, hey, we're going to go back to the days of shooting whitetail deer and selling the meat in the markets. And then you are a anti hunting organization and you start saying, well, you know, there's like a prion disease that is in that herd at prevalency rates of 5, 10, 15%. How much of that you gonna be selling?

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

So no. No one's gotten it. This is the thing we discuss all the time.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Is there's two ways I look at it. Be like, I believe a person that says CWD is not a problem. There's like a litmus test that I've devised that I haven't done yet, but I need to. I'm going to get a bunch of CWD meat from my friends in Wisconsin. I'm gonna be like, I want meat from all your positives. Okay, you give me. I want 10. I want meat from 10 positives. My buddy Pat Durkin got a positive dough this year. I should have said, send me a pound. I'm gonna make. I'm gonna get all this CWD positive meat and I'm gonna make burgers with it. So it's all known positives and I'm gonna make burgers. And then when I get someone who tells me CWD is nothing to worry about and they should cut research funding for cwd, I'm gonna make them up that patty. Yep. Lettuce, pickles, tomatoes, however you want it. And I'm gonna be like, eat that burger.

[Randall]

Serve it to your kids.

[Michael Hunter]

Yep.

[Stephen Rinella]

Eat that burger and then come tell me. Eat that burger and come tell me about it. If you eat that burger, I'll believe everything you say.

[E]

There will be some people that will.

[Stephen Rinella]

Gladly eat it and I'll gladly talk to them. I'll gladly talk to them. To them.

[F]

Meanwhile, we're all going to be like, carrying bleach and freaking no torches.

[Stephen Rinella]

No, I don't think that. I think that that's too. I think.

[F]

I don't want it in the podcast room.

[Stephen Rinella]

No, but you're fall. You're doing the other thing you're doing the other, like, everything has its extreme.

[F]

Yes.

[Stephen Rinella]

So on. On one extreme you got like, it doesn't matter. No one should pay attention to cwd. The other extreme is like, if a deer was CWD so much as looks at your stainless steel counter, your stainless steel counter will forever be infected with cwd. And it's like, can we remind everyone that no one's gotten it from eating the. Yet now we're talking about your stainless steel counter giving you cwd. You can't even get it from eating the meat.

[Michael Hunter]

Like, in Ontario, where I live, I don't even think there's a resource where I could send my animal to you.

[E]

Oh, there's not, like, test.

[Michael Hunter]

I don't think so. Whereas, like, in, you know, I don't know if it's every state or, you know, half the states where you can send in your, like, you said, your friend contest. Yeah.

[Randall]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Well, that's what they're trying to do. They're trying to, like, shut the whole conversation down.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

And. And I'm like, hey, man, I don't know. No one's gotten it. I hope no one ever gets it. I don't want anyone to get it. I think we should. I think we should be investing heavily in research.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

To understand. Is it like, to understand everything there is about it? Because you're going to kill. I think that if. If, heaven forbid, dude, heaven forbid, if you somehow, like, had some hunters, whatever. Heaven forbid, it would. It would destroy deer hunting.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

It would put up, not destroy. It would really hurt.

[Michael Hunter]

It would shake it up.

[E]

Or if they crossed over to cattle, who knows what would happen?

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah, that's. See, that's the other part that, like, the other point I always make is like, I always look like, man, those boys aren't sweating it. Maybe I shouldn't sweat it.

[E]

Yeah. I don't know.

[Stephen Rinella]

Because they're not worried about their cattle. And their cattle look a hell of a lot more like a deer than I do. But then other guys are like, cattle guys are sweating it. It's scary, man. Like, just the unknown is scary. But the, the whole burger point is the, the. The CWD burger I want to make is like. And I do. I am going to do this.

[Michael Hunter]

Some pre. Pre frozen patties in the freezer ready to go.

[Stephen Rinella]

It's like, dude, I want. I want to hear from. I want to talk with and hang out with and converse with more people who don't care, because then maybe it'll make me not care because it makes Me nervous and why? Who wants to be nervous? Yeah, like, no one, like, chooses to be nervous.

[Michael Hunter]

Ignorance is bliss.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. When you see those drugs that are supposed to, like, make you more sexually desirous, right? I'm like, if you're not. If you have no appetite, do you wish you did? It's a weird thing, you know what I mean? Do you follow what I'm saying? Like, I wish I wanted something that I can't get, but, like, I don't want to be nervous about. I don't want to be nervous about cwd. But if I give my burger to some dude and he eats the burger, then I'm like, man, this is a true believer.

[E]

Yeah, he doesn't care anyway, you know?

[F]

Makes you nervous around, like, spinal cords. Like my.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah, dude.

[F]

Like my. Before my deer tested negative. But it's like always.

[E]

There's no such thing as a negative.

[Michael Hunter]

Negative.

[F]

It's non detected. Right. And so that's the other thing that makes me nervous. And I'm like, if I wait three more days or wait four more days, like, what's the, like, prion load that would push the little meter to detected? And then I'm like, getting all weird about the spinal cord. And then one day I forgot and I kind of, like, sectioned part of the back and cooked it in a soup and like, slurped up the spinal cord. And I was like, joe, see, what am I doing?

[Randall]

I have no, like, personal anxiety about getting cwd.

[Stephen Rinella]

Really? Would you eat my burger?

[Randall]

I mean, I just.

[Stephen Rinella]

Randall's the first guy that's gonna have the burger.

[E]

Oh, do you get the burger tested?

[Randall]

I. Yeah, I've got. I've gotten deer tested.

[Michael Hunter]

Company man.

[Randall]

No, no. I mean, I just.

[F]

Too much. As a friend, buddy, I know you.

[E]

Don'T lose sleep over it.

[Stephen Rinella]

How about a meatball?

[Randall]

I think of. No, I guess Swedish meatballs. It's one of those things where I see. I see CWD is like this existential problem for deer in North America and deer hunting as we know it. Right? But I think, like, the odds of the. The piano falling out of the sky and hitting me, and I'm the first human to get it. I see those odds as very low. Like me personally getting it, and I'm. I'm the. The case number one. Does that make sense?

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah, I don't think I'm going to be the case number one.

[F]

I mean, it'd be like everybody. It'd be like thousands of people at the same time. Get it?

[Stephen Rinella]

No, because they would have already been Getting it.

[F]

Yeah.

[E]

And that kind of disease, you could carry it around forever.

[Stephen Rinella]

And that's how they scare you.

[E]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

They tell you. Well, you maybe you don't know yet.

[F]

Right.

[Michael Hunter]

It's like the cordyceps, like, Last of Us show, the mushroom fungus takes over your brain.

[Randall]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Oh, I haven't seen that.

[Michael Hunter]

That's a good one.

[F]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Like it's in you, but you don't know it.

[Michael Hunter]

Oh, they know it. They. They turn into like zombies or something. It's like a horror kind of TV show. But there's that mushroom, the parasitic mushroom that'll take over, like an ant, its brain, and it kills the ant, and then the mushroom grows out of the ant.

[Stephen Rinella]

It's like that happening to dudes.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Would you eat the burger?

[Michael Hunter]

I mean, I don't think so. I would think about it.

[Randall]

Would you eat the burger?

[Michael Hunter]

I would think about it.

[Randall]

I don't know that. I mean, it's not that I. I guess, like, if I had. If I tested a deer and it was positive, I wouldn't eat it.

[Stephen Rinella]

So you definitely wouldn't. Right. I mean, my burger is made of. All right. It's made of a potpourri.

[E]

It's seasoned with.

[Randall]

But like, the idea that. The idea that a deer that's. That's either an unknown or has tested not detected. The idea that I would be like, personally anxious about somehow do that.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah.

[Randall]

Like. Like my own personal anxiety is. I mean, plus, if I did get CWD and I was case one when they did all the blood tests on me, they'd find something else that's wrong with me, and then that would actually be the primary concern. I feel like, you know, I just think of all the things in the world, for me personally, that's gonna. That's gonna change my arc in the universe.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah.

[E]

It's kind of like eating fish from a lake that has, like high mercury. Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Like, I don't care about that.

[F]

I mean, I guess for me, it's.

[Stephen Rinella]

Not just I do that. I'd eat that fish burger.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Poke bowl full of high mercury fish. Hell yeah.

[Michael Hunter]

I've eaten Lake Ontario salmon and that I later kind of researched and was like, yeah, I probably shouldn't eaten that.

[Stephen Rinella]

That's not gonna do anything to you, dude.

[F]

I mean, but you guys were eating like, you know, your mercury poisoning.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah, but it's totally different. Getting a prion disease, getting like.

[F]

Yeah, I know. It's just like health in general, maintaining your.

[Randall]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Getting CJD is not having a little mercury spike.

[F]

No, I'm not saying that they're the same thing, but it's like if you can. For me personally, I try to avoid. To the extent possible. Like I don't put plastic in the microwave. Like it extends to. I'm consistent across the board, you know.

[Stephen Rinella]

You don't flirt with danger.

[F]

I try not to.

[Brody]

When you first brought up the CWD burger idea, I believe you're going to grind the spine into the.

[Stephen Rinella]

I know. Well, I did find. No, then someone pointed this out. Someone pointed out. But I don't grind my spines into my burger. So it's like out of fairness.

[Brody]

Okay, yeah, out of fairness.

[Stephen Rinella]

I don't eat the deer. I don't eat the deer brains anyways. So don't put it in. I don't want a deer brain burger out of any kind. Would you.

[E]

Would you lose sleep if you found out after the fact that you ate?

[Stephen Rinella]

No.

[Randall]

Yeah. This is like. That's what I'm saying.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. No, because I guarantee I have. I guarantee.

[E]

I think I have because I got buddies.

[Stephen Rinella]

I got buddies of mine in Wisconsin months and like, they'll be like, send you some summer sausage or something, you know, and it sure. Like, I, I probably have. But here's the deal. One time. See, my wife doesn't listen to anything I say or Right. So I can say this here so it won't get back to her. My daughter killed a deer in a high CWD area or not a high area. She killed a deer in a cw. Where they recommend testing and this is a county where there's CWD cases. So I submit my sample on the way home. You can just pull in and submit. I submit my sample on the way home and we eat the heart right away. Because I kind of forgot for a minute. Then I'm thinking to myself that some comes back positive. I either gotta live with the secret or I gotta tell my wife, like, hey, you know, like, you know. And she's gonna be pissed. But it came back negative.

[F]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah.

[Michael Hunter]

I think I had text you last summer when I thought I infected myself an entire party with trichinosis. Yeah, I think. And you were like, I think I just got the flu or something. After I like a week later and I text you because I was freaked out and you said, no, I think it's like a month for symptoms.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah.

[Michael Hunter]

And I turned out being. Being negative and it was nothing. But I was, I was pretty freaked out. Sure. I didn't care that I had it. I was freaked out that I had like potentially giving it to like 30 people. At a barbecue.

[Stephen Rinella]

It doesn't, no, it doesn't matter.

[Brody]

Would you serve them bear cougar?

[Michael Hunter]

I did a cougar ham and we, we. I spit this funny. I spit, roasted a beaver and I did a cougar ham. And, and I remember like temping the beaver repeatedly. And I, I know I attempt the cougar, but I couldn't remember what the final temp was.

[Stephen Rinella]

And then. Was it 130?

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Or 160? Yeah.

[Michael Hunter]

And it's like I had, it was my birthday, so I had had a few drinks, we were having fun, and the next day I just was like, I. I don't really remember what that, that cougar was. And then I got sick like, you know, four or five days after.

[Stephen Rinella]

And then was like, yeah, but it doesn't matter.

[Randall]

The Fahrenheit is the biggest thing too. Is probably tricky for you, you know.

[Stephen Rinella]

What do you cook meat to in metric? How's that work?

[Michael Hunter]

You know, I use Fahrenheit, I use imperial.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah.

[Michael Hunter]

It's like in, in culinary school, they still teach you the, the imperial temperatures.

[Stephen Rinella]

They do.

[Michael Hunter]

I think now maybe like, because I'm, you know, old enough that maybe they weren't, but they kind of teach you both. And just all the old school chefs I grew, Everything was always Fahrenheit. And a lot of our ovens and equipment seriously come from the States too. So I think so they're. All the dials and stuff are in. I think it's like a car. Like you can see the Celsius or Fahrenheit, but I think Fahrenheit's more predominant.

[Stephen Rinella]

That's so weird because in the u. S. Everything that matters they do in metric. Yeah, Like, I think like the military runs. The military runs metric.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

NASA, they're not like, ah, you know.

[Michael Hunter]

38 of inch, like my other couple yards from the moon here, My oven at home is in Fahrenheit. So it's just.

[Stephen Rinella]

Is it really?

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah, I. So cooking stuff. I use Fahrenheit.

[Stephen Rinella]

And you were taught that in culinary school.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah, I think they always showed you both. Okay, but like, like, like I said, our equipment, it's in Fahrenheit.

[Stephen Rinella]

When you wake up in the morning, what's the temperature?

[Michael Hunter]

That's in Celsius, which is bizarre. Like, I have to, I have to cross reference stuff when I'm traveling to like, I know 80s, like warm, you know, 90s, hot, you know, 60s, 70s is like comfortable.

[Stephen Rinella]

You got it.

[Michael Hunter]

All you need to know 32 is freezing. Like, I Know the basics, but I don't know the conversions, like, exact. Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Tell me about spit roast and a beaver.

[Michael Hunter]

So I text a friend of mine that's indigenous, and I. Someone had gifted me this beaver they were trapping. They said they had too many. Did I want a beaver? And I said, you know, yes. And this thing was gigantic. It was the biggest beaver I've ever seen.

[Stephen Rinella]

Don't give me vagaries, man.

[Michael Hunter]

I didn't, you know, I didn't weigh it, but I've seen, like, this thing was massive. Like, it was like a. Like a large dog.

[Stephen Rinella]

Give it to me.

[Michael Hunter]

I'd show you a picture. So I called my. My buddy who's indigenous, talking blank. I said. I said, you know, what do you guys. What do you do with this? I don't know. Like, what would someone in your community do with beaver meat? And they said, they smoke it. So they always smoke. So I thought, okay, I'm gonna. I bought this rotisserie thing, and I did a huge open fire and just spit roasted it. And then. So he said, they smoke it. So I wanted to smoke it over wood and charcoal. And then I. I was glazing it with birch syrup, which I just kind of came up with that on my own because it's like kind of molasses, savory, sweet, kind of has a tanginess to it. And it came out awesome.

[Stephen Rinella]

Now I got a problem where I, like, I missed some of the detail. You. You were putting the syrup on it while you.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah, so I had it on a rotisserie.

[Stephen Rinella]

And you're just, like, dripping it on there. Dripping.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah. And I had, like, a brush, and I'd kind of brush it every, every, every so often.

[Stephen Rinella]

Do you make birch syrup?

[Michael Hunter]

I. You know what? I tried to make birch syrup one year, and I got so many flies and moths in it, it was pretty gross. Birch. The birch trees run after the maple trees run.

[Stephen Rinella]

Okay.

[Michael Hunter]

And by that time, all the snow is gone, and it's actually quite warm. And you have to do it with the tube and line system, where there's no oxygen and the flies can't get in, which I just did it with a bucket.

[Stephen Rinella]

Oh, no, kid.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah. So if you just hang a buck, like, for maple season, you can hang. I now get in there. They. So, like, I opened the lid of this bucket, and there was, like, 300 moths in this one little bucket. And I was like, that's gross. I'm.

[Stephen Rinella]

This whole thing is such a knowledge gap with me is.

[Michael Hunter]

It's neat, it's fun.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. When we were kids, we'd run around trying to tap stuff. We had no idea what we're doing, and we just, like, tap in the summer.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. No. No experience with it. My brother Danny in Alaska, he makes the birch syrup.

[Michael Hunter]

Cool.

[Stephen Rinella]

It takes twice. Like, the ratio is already terrible. Yeah, but it's twice as terrible.

[Michael Hunter]

Yes.

[Stephen Rinella]

And then everything you put it on tastes like a buckwheat pancake.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah. It has, like, a molasses. Yeah. Tanginess. Yeah. No, it's. So, yeah. Maple syrup is fun. So, like, back home, it's. The season is now in the spring when the temperatures are above freezing during the day and then they freeze at night is sort of the optimal season.

[Stephen Rinella]

So how'd you serve? What'd you wind up doing with that beaver? Then?

[Michael Hunter]

We. So we're shooting it for the cookbook. So it's in the second cookbook, which is out in September, and we just did, like, a barbecue plate with it. We. I sliced it. Sliced some of the tail and just had it with the birch syrup glaze.

[Stephen Rinella]

But when you did that, were you able to get it? You didn't get. Where you could pull.

[Michael Hunter]

Was some parts you could pull. Like, I think I did it for about 10 hours. Yeah. I started in the morning. Yeah. So, like, some parts you could pull. Some of the thicker, like, the hind quarter stuff I could slice. Like, I could physically rip it. Like, it wasn't, like, falling apart, pulling. But I could kind of pull it off the bone, and then I sliced it.

[Stephen Rinella]

You didn't hide off, right?

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Well, you know. And there's a mountain man, Osborne Russell.

[Michael Hunter]

Okay.

[Stephen Rinella]

Left a very, very good journal.

[Michael Hunter]

Okay.

[Stephen Rinella]

And he describes that. He describes the sheep eaters, the Shoshone group that was in, like, the absarokas. Was that where it was when he ran into him? Was he in the absarokas?

[Randall]

I think it was down by the Tetons.

[Stephen Rinella]

Oh, was that where he ran into them?

[Randall]

Yeah, they.

[Stephen Rinella]

When they're cooking them, they were doing it like how you would do a hog, a roast hog, but they're burning the hair off instead of scalding it.

[Michael Hunter]

Oh, interesting.

[Stephen Rinella]

So they're rolling it to burn all the hair off and then roasting it skin on like you would pig, which I'm kind of dying to try.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

I want a D hair one.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Gut it, dehair it. So it's cavity back up with good stuff to eat inside there.

[Michael Hunter]

That'd be cool.

[Stephen Rinella]

And then roasted skin on.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah. I wonder if you get that crackling like you would with pig Skin. They're kind of greasy.

[Stephen Rinella]

They're greasy and tough hide. Yeah, I'm definitely wanting to do that.

[Michael Hunter]

Be neat. That'd be really cool.

[Stephen Rinella]

That'll be cool. And then what'd you do with your mountain lion? You got everybody not sick.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah, I did like a char Sioux kind of Chinese barbecue sauce that I marinated in and, and, and smoked it and. Same thing. I, I smoked it not to the point of pulling, but where it was like really tender and I could slice it.

[Stephen Rinella]

You guys don't. Where'd you. Where's that mountain line from?

[Michael Hunter]

My friend shot that in British Columbia.

[Stephen Rinella]

Oh, okay.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah, so he gifted that kind quarter.

[E]

What do they call them up there? They got. We call them all.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah, yeah. Cats, mountain lions.

[Stephen Rinella]

Oh, they do use.

[Michael Hunter]

Are they like cat hunting or mountain lion?

[Stephen Rinella]

Not cougar. Not catamount.

[Michael Hunter]

I've never heard catamount.

[Stephen Rinella]

Not painter.

[Michael Hunter]

No, no, I have yet to shoot one. I've, I've. I'm trying to, trying to get my hands on a tag. But they're. Unless you live in a, you know, province or state, I think they're, they're getting kind of expensive. Expensive. You got to know somebody or get a deal.

[Stephen Rinella]

But does Canada the same way that for. For an American dude to go hunt or so like to go hunt big game. For an American to go hunt big game in Canada, there's all the guide. There's guide requirements.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

But if you hunt out of province.

[Michael Hunter]

In Canada, depends on the province.

[Stephen Rinella]

Okay.

[Michael Hunter]

For me to go to B.C. or Alberta, Saskatchewan, Newfoundland, most of the provinces actually, except for Ontario, where I live, you have to go with a guide. I'm technically a non resident even in my own country.

[Stephen Rinella]

See that?

[Michael Hunter]

That's all most birds. I don't. I think it's big game, small games, off that list. Big game. And I don't know if it's like a safety thing. You know, they don't want people climbing mountains that don't know what they're doing. Maybe I don't know, you know what.

[Stephen Rinella]

Kind of thing it is?

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah. Money.

[Stephen Rinella]

For you people not watching.

[Michael Hunter]

I'm doing the money sign, shuffling some bills around. But yeah, maybe that's a good thing. Like it's like local economy. It's. But you know, the price tag of things now is just getting out of control. Like I'm like, will I ever shoot a sheep? You know, the one cool thing though, about Alberta and B.C. and these big game, there is a slight kind of workaround if you know someone that has someone that lives There and is a resident, they can apply. It's called a permission to a company. So I can go with a local that lives there and we have to apply for this permission to a company three months before the season or something. And then I can put in for the draw and then potentially draw a tag.

[Brody]

Spencer was just researching the old permission to accompany.

[Stephen Rinella]

I've had people invite me on those permission to accompanies. Yeah, but you know, it's so. I'd love to understand it better. I mean you got to have. It's hard to understand your own state.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

You know, I'm always explaining what goes on here and it changes all the time. It's hard to get like a good grip. And then you're talking about like a huge place with all these, you know. How many, what seven? How many provinces are there? Thirteen.

[Michael Hunter]

There is ten provinces, three territories.

[Stephen Rinella]

See that, Randall?

[Michael Hunter]

Something like that.

[Randall]

Pretty good.

[Stephen Rinella]

I corrected myself.

[Michael Hunter]

I'm gonna count. I'm gonna get myself in trouble here.

[Stephen Rinella]

Tell us about the book though, man. Tell us about your new cookbook. Tell us about your last cookbook.

[Michael Hunter]

Well, the first cookbook did really well and I think it surprised my publisher As a first time Canadian author, you know, thanks to guys like you, it did really well in the States. So I think they were really surprised. You know, it was in every bass pro across the country. Which I thought was pretty amazing. Yeah. Thank you. And that was a passion project for me for like 10 years I worked on that thing. I originally thought, oh, I'm going to self publish. And I did a lot of the photography just because I was like a 20 year old kid, you know, taking interest in something and run around with a camera. I couldn't really afford a photographer so I thought I'll just take, you know, pictures myself. And you know, and then so the first book did really, really well. And then, you know, a lot of years went by and my publisher said, hey, you know, would you think about a second book? And I really love, you know, I love barbecue, you know, but you know, I'm not really known as a barbecue guy. But you did that, beaver. Yeah, but you know, because at first I was like, oh, I'd like to do a barbecue book. And it's like, well, I'm not really a pitmaster. But then I started thinking about.

[Stephen Rinella]

You felt like you were like a. You felt like you were like an interloper.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah. You know, like that. What's that syndrome? The imposter syndrome maybe.

[E]

Is barbecue like popular?

[Michael Hunter]

It is, but you know, Canada doesn't have its own barbecue culture, you know, like, there's like, you know, the Carolina barbecue versus Texas, you know, so. But then I was. I wanted to, you know, really make it authentic. And then I thought, you know, what do I love most? And it's like, I love cooking over a fire. So the second book is all over the fire.

[Stephen Rinella]

Do you guys do that in your restaurant?

[Michael Hunter]

We have some. We have a little live fire grill that we finish everything on. So we'll like pansier ribeye, and we have a bison ribeye. We cast iron pan sear it, and then we finish it on this little charcoal barbecue that's. And it just imparts that, like, you know, that little charcoal kiss of smoke into it.

[F]

Charcoal.

[Michael Hunter]

A lot of people comment, they're like, what's different about your meat? It's like, oh, it's finished on charcoal. And then. But yeah, there's just something about cooking over live fire. Like, you can't. You can't. It's hard to explain, but it's just. It tastes better. And I don't, you know, I don't know why that is. It's whether you're. Just because you're standing around watching the flames, being outside, you know, all those things that go along with it. You know, you and everyone in this room knows about, you know, what cooking. Like, cooking at camp is like, like, why does it taste so good? And then when you go home, it's. It's good, but it's not the same, you know? And is it. Is it the experience outdoors? Is it that you're so hungry because you've been hiking a mountain, you know, on your. On your sheep hunt or whatever it is, you know, why does that meal taste so good? It's over the fire, you know, and it's. It's. As a professional chef, like, I. I can't figure it out, you know, and it's. So anyway, that's what I was passionate about. I thought, you know, this was. This was going to be a fun project to do all over the fire. And. And, yeah, it proved to be a lot harder than the first one because everything had to be done outside over a fire. Yeah. But there's a lot, A lot more seafood in this book, and there's still some desserts and cocktails and stuff. I work into it that can be made over the fire or on a smoker. And. And yeah, I'm really excited about it.

[Stephen Rinella]

You got photos from all over the place.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah, I did a lot of travel. I've been really, really fortunate to, to work with some, some cool hunting companies that kind of help me on the travel stuff and yeah, Muskox is in there, Antelope is in there, Elk is in there and grease balls. Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Lakers.

[Michael Hunter]

There's some lake trout in there.

[Stephen Rinella]

I love those things. But I was more joking about when I was a kid. That's what people called them. They were. They went through a period of being. That's weird man. Like in Michigan they went through a period of being.

[E]

It was probably because of like the introduced salmon and people looked at them.

[Stephen Rinella]

They got all excited about it.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

I think that's like those that fisheries built on Lakers. Not built on but like. I mean Lakers were a huge.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Part of the fishery, you know. And then they kind of got decimated by lampreys. Salmon came in and then when I was a little kid people would talk about lake trout like almost being like adjacent to a rough fish. Now they're celebrated again, you know. Damn. They're good man. They're so good.

[Michael Hunter]

I was actually fishing for lake trout last week with some buddies and I was actually getting frustrated. I didn't catch any good eating size when we were catching these monsters which is like unreal. Through the ice. Through the ice.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah.

[Michael Hunter]

I'd never caught anything that big, any kind of fish through the ice before. So I was like freaking out. And then I was like we can't eat these in this big. And they're like no, like you can't eat. They're way like mushy and like they're not good to eat when they're big because I've caught lots of small ones, you know through the ice in different, different lakes. And up north a couple summers ago I caught like a 45 pound lake trout.

[Stephen Rinella]

Wow.

[Michael Hunter]

Whoa. Yeah. There's a lodge. They're called Plumbers, Arctic lodges. And they're on Great Bear Lake in the Northwest Territories and they're one of the deepest lakes in the world.

[Stephen Rinella]

45 pound lake trout.

[Michael Hunter]

And that's not even like their record is 70.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. I think the record record out of I think wasn't Michigan. Wasn't there a 90 pounder came out of Michigan?

[E]

No, the world record's out of Great Slave Lake, mate.

[Stephen Rinella]

What?

[E]

It's out of Canada. It's over a hundred.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. I feel like the Michigan. There's one. There's like an account of a 90 something from Michigan but it was so long ago. You wonder what the hell they measured it on. Yeah, like bags of sand on one of the little deals, you know the scales of justice.

[Michael Hunter]

But.

[Stephen Rinella]

And that.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah. So that place was. But I never caught one that big through the ice. So this one is probably like 15, 20 pounds pound range. But yeah, it was wild. And I. I had gone. I. I wasn't expecting to catch anything that big. So I used my little 6 inch auger and my buddies had an 8 inch auger. And I'm like yelling at them to come over and give me a hand because I widen the hole. Well, I was like, what are we gonna do here? You know, we got it through. It was pretty. Pretty challenging, but we got it through. But yeah, it's. So anyway, I've been. I've been on a big ice fishing kick lately.

[Stephen Rinella]

Did you guys put a gaff into it to drag it up through that small hole?

[Michael Hunter]

No, no, we just stuck her hand in and.

[Stephen Rinella]

Because that's the thing you want like when the whole. When you get real deep ice.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

That you can't get, you know, and when they come up. And that hooks. I'm talking about northeast. But you know, northerns. But it'd be the same with lake trout.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Is the hooks coming outside of their mouth?

[Michael Hunter]

Okay.

[Stephen Rinella]

And when he comes up to the ice, he's like sideways in there.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Where the front of his face is on one side of the hole and his gill covers on the other side of the hole. And no amount of. Of it's so hard to ever get him finagled.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah. To get his head.

[Stephen Rinella]

Because you can't. Because the whole. The ice is too thick to manipulate it by.

[Michael Hunter]

Right.

[Stephen Rinella]

Pulling the line around. So we would.

[Randall]

Turns into a drywall anchor.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. We would just take a big fishing hook.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

I have one that's just. It's a big treble hook on the end of a long graphite fishing rod.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah. Neat.

[Stephen Rinella]

That you can just put down there and just try to get something into them.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah, yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

To pull him up, finagle his head around. Yeah.

[Michael Hunter]

We were on like 12 inches. So we just stuck our hand down and pulled him up.

[Stephen Rinella]

But now that 45 pounder. That's cool.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

And you got a cool way of cooking them in the book.

[Michael Hunter]

The lake trout we just did over a fire and then we.

[Stephen Rinella]

If you got that one, that picture where it's like prop.

[Michael Hunter]

Oh, that's. So that's a steelhead.

[Stephen Rinella]

Oh, that was a steelhead. Some reason I thought. I remember that being a lake.

[Michael Hunter]

I nailed it to a cedar.

[F]

Sexiest thing.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah. I nailed that to a cedar plank tank.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah.

[Michael Hunter]

I put some kelp behind it. And. And put that over the fire. That was cool.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. No, that's pretty. Really cool pictures.

[Michael Hunter]

Thanks.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah, thanks.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah, so some of those I. A lot of those I took the. The ones in nature I take myself, and then my business partner takes the. The indoor kind of place.

[Stephen Rinella]

That's a lot of your photography.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Wow, that's talented.

[Michael Hunter]

I. Yeah, you know, I can take. I'm not, you know, I. I use auto mode a lot. I can. I can manipulate some stuff in manual mode, you know, but I'll take a picture in auto and then try and correct some stuff. But, yeah, Yeah, I just point and shoot.

[Stephen Rinella]

How many recipes are in the book?

[Michael Hunter]

I think it's about 100. This one as well?

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah, yeah.

[Michael Hunter]

The seafood one. I got them down to 80 because I'm like, I don't know if that's a lot. So the number three is going to be 80, but, yeah, this one's 100.

[Stephen Rinella]

When you're doing that, how much. When you're putting a book together, how much do you think of it? Like, how do you imagine the balance between things that people wouldn't think to eat?

[Michael Hunter]

Eat?

[Stephen Rinella]

And so you're trying to convince people to try stuff, which I would put, like. I mean, people have always eaten beavers, but I'll put beavers in that pile.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Mountain lions have always been eaten, but I'll put mountain lions in the pile. So, like, just general Joe Blow.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Like, there's always subcultures that consume this stuff, but, like, yeah, the general Joe Blow is going to be reluctant to try, so you want to encourage them. On the other hand, you want to have the stuff that's just easy and good, that everybody knows is good. Are you aware of this?

[Michael Hunter]

The mix? The sales?

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. Like, yeah, yeah. Like, what is your mix? Like, what's your personal mix?

[Michael Hunter]

I think. I think my publisher called them, or editor called them, like, the aspirational recipes. I think there's about 5 to 10%.

[Stephen Rinella]

You mean the kind of weird stuff?

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah, the weird stuff. So I think it's probably 5 or 10%.

[Stephen Rinella]

You know, weird stuff, aspiration.

[Michael Hunter]

And then, yeah, I just. I cook what I like and I want, you know, and there's. There's like a, you know, porchetta, which is like an Italian staple with, you know, with pork and, you know, so it's not like, that's not, you know, really anything new, but it's just stuff that I like to cook and maybe, you know, somebody in, you know, rural Mississippi has never done a porchetta, you know, so they can see that book. But it's, it's. Again, it's not like I'm reinventing the wheel, but it's just, I just want to share with people what I like to cook. And you can use wild ingredients too.

[E]

It, yeah, I'm looking at like some of the, some of your barbecue recipes, for instance, and, and you have like smoked cougar ham bear ribs.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah. Oh, the bear ribs.

[Stephen Rinella]

So good.

[E]

So it's like pretty cool that, you know, you got some, some odd, odd speed. Well, not odd, but like species aspirational. Yeah, aspirational. But do you then like, if you can't get a cougar, do it with this?

[Michael Hunter]

I don't know if I gave, you know, alternative ingredients for cougar and you know, for a lot of the game, my publisher did ask like if you can't use bison, use, you know, use a grass fed beef or stuff like that. But yeah, the cougar. Well that's, it's pretty hard to, you know, switch that out. You know, squirrel, you could switch out rabbit or something. But yeah, like for, for bear ribs there's, you know, I guess the closest thing might be like bison ribs.

[E]

That makes me want to like just think about bear ribs.

[Michael Hunter]

The bear, they're so good.

[Stephen Rinella]

Walk people through bear ribs.

[Michael Hunter]

Use a Sawzall that I learned from my dear farmer. And yeah, you can just cut like whatever size, you know, length of rib you want. These ones I did probably like 4 or 5 inch cuts down the ribcage.

[Stephen Rinella]

And you're not, you're leaving all the fat, everything. So you're not, you're just taking the hide off.

[Michael Hunter]

Hide off.

[Stephen Rinella]

You're not trimming the outer layers.

[Michael Hunter]

Okay.

[Stephen Rinella]

Hide off.

[Michael Hunter]

And then there's probably like fall bear, spring bear. That was a spring bear.

[Stephen Rinella]

Okay.

[Michael Hunter]

And, and yeah, so then I, I put on the smoker. You know, I had a dry rub on it, smoked it. I kind of treated it like a brisket where I, you know, wanted it to hit, you know, 160, 165 for the stall. And then I wrapped it in tin foil just to keep that moisture in.

[Stephen Rinella]

And then what?

[Michael Hunter]

And then just cook it till like 200, 205Fahrenheit until you could actually like pull the bones apart.

[Stephen Rinella]

No brazing at all, just all done in the foil.

[Michael Hunter]

All done in the foil. The bare ribs were fatty enough that I didn't need to. Deer ribs, I'll put like a splash of beer in or something in the foil and, and, or I'll put it on A. Like, I'll smoke them first to get the smoke flavor in there, and then I'll put it on a baking sheet. I can add, you know, splash of beer or something, some stock, and then cover it. But it also. That's the thing about game meat. You know, if you shot a lean spring bear, maybe you do need to use some liquid in there. Yeah. But for that one, it was. You can see by the picture, like, it's pretty fatty. There's a good meat. It almost looks like a beef short rib. It's kind of so meaty.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. You know what I made Monday night that bummed me out? What was. I had this. I'd killed a pig in Texas. A wild pig.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

That was fatty.

[Michael Hunter]

Right.

[Stephen Rinella]

But there were so many pigs around. You could go sneak into the. You could sneak into the. What they call the sounder, whatever the hell. Sneak into the little party.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

And look for the fat ones. It was just a freak thing where there was just things that you never imagined. You could pick fat ones out. And I had one that was like, you so seldom get a wild hog where it's just, like, layered in fat. And I was so excited about these little ribs. I cut up the little wild hog riblets.

[F]

I think I have the other half of that, which I haven't cooked yet. Okay.

[Stephen Rinella]

Well, they're good. So I did a braise on them.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

And then threw them in the oven. It's like, too much of a good thing.

[Michael Hunter]

Oh, no.

[Stephen Rinella]

My kids were not into it.

[Michael Hunter]

Too fatty.

[Stephen Rinella]

Just.

[F]

Oh, really?

[Stephen Rinella]

Just the goopiest. Yeah. I never thought you could have it be. There's like, two.

[Michael Hunter]

The opposite.

[Stephen Rinella]

Much.

[E]

Like, it didn't render out or, like.

[F]

Oily or, like, I should have put it gelatinous.

[Stephen Rinella]

What I needed to do is put it in an oven at low heat and let that shit drip out for a long time. Dry out a little bit or set.

[E]

Your grill on fire.

[Stephen Rinella]

I was eating them.

[F]

I'm taking a note from you.

[Stephen Rinella]

I ate them and enjoyed my daughters. Like. Yeah. But they don't, like. They don't eat a lot of. They don't like real fatty meat. They're just not used to it.

[Michael Hunter]

My kids don't either. Like, kind of breaks my heart when I see people, like, cut the fat off a strip loin and they leave it on their plate. Oh, that's the best part.

[F]

That's what you fork out of their plate if you're with them.

[Brody]

I'm surprised to hear that because my kids, you know, that's the reason they love the mallard duck is because they're like, oh, wow, you're actually serving us something with some fat that. And, you know, the skin's the best part, right. They get.

[Stephen Rinella]

My wife don't like it.

[Brody]

All over their face.

[Stephen Rinella]

My wife likes. She don't like it. She don't like domestic meat. She don't like beef steaks. She likes. She don't like any of that kind of fat. She likes it.

[Brody]

I wonder if you had treated it more like you would treat a domestic rack of ribs if it would have come out better.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah. If you just smoked it.

[Stephen Rinella]

I treated it just like I did. Just what I would do for, like, deer ribs. And it was just the wrong. I got left. I'm gonna put them back and I'm gonna mess with them. I haven't given up.

[Michael Hunter]

That's the secret of cooking. When people are like, oh, how do. It's like practice. You just gotta practice and to try new things. And you tried braising it, you know, and didn't get the same results. So it's like, try straight smoking it.

[Stephen Rinella]

Well, I'm going back down and I'm going back down to that same place and I'm gonna hunt me down another little fatty and I'm gonna try to get. But you don't get a chance to practice with fat wild hogs because there aren't many of them out there.

[Michael Hunter]

Not. No. What.

[Stephen Rinella]

Jesse Griffith. What's Jesse. Jesse Griffiths put a number on it one time. No, it wasn't him. It was. Remember that. Remember that dude, Clayton Saunders, who was real good.

[Randall]

The obesity rate among wild hogs.

[F]

Oh, like, how many are fat?

[Stephen Rinella]

No, I said that was it. Clayton Saunders down in Texas.

[Brody]

I can't remember what we're talking about.

[Stephen Rinella]

I said, like, of all the.

[Michael Hunter]

He.

[Stephen Rinella]

Of all, like all wild pigs, how many are suitable? Oh, remember he put us. He put a hog shoulder. Yeah, he put a hog shoulder in a smoker, Texas style, had a mop. And I said, how many? Like one out of what is suitable to do that with the front shoulder? And I feel like he says something like, man, one in a hundred.

[Michael Hunter]

Oh, really?

[Stephen Rinella]

Well, I'll do that. It was. But it wasn't that. It wasn't that bad. It was bad, but it wasn't that bad that he would do a. Again, just to be clear, that he would take a whole front leg from a wild pig and do it the way he cooked it for us, which was phenomenal. He said, it's like a one and whatever. Like.

[E]

Like treat it like A exactly like.

[Stephen Rinella]

You treated domestic and not need to bring any extra stuff to the show.

[E]

Yep.

[Randall]

You know, we did ribs this weekend and I also learned a little trick for next time. Bison ribs.

[Stephen Rinella]

Oh.

[Randall]

And I brought. I had just the whole side of ribs and they're frozen, and I went to cut them up into those like five inch strips.

[Stephen Rinella]

Huh.

[Randall]

And I did it in the kitchen with the sawzall.

[Stephen Rinella]

Sure.

[F]

And you got the bone fragment and.

[Randall]

Frozen frozen little meat and bone dust.

[F]

Yep.

[Randall]

All over the backsplash.

[Stephen Rinella]

Your wife get mad about stuff like that? Yeah, that was.

[Randall]

That was a good lesson learned.

[Stephen Rinella]

You're so weird as mine like it. Like she just does it, man.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah, as long as I clean it up.

[Randall]

Oh, yeah. I cleaned it up too, but it was just like this was a thing that didn't need to happen. It would have been much easier to do that, do the sawzalling outside home.

[Stephen Rinella]

If I didn't clean it up, I'd hear about it. Yeah, but I could cut up a person on our counter and she's not care if I clean it up. You know what I'm saying?

[Randall]

Yeah, yeah. No, we have a. Our program's a little different.

[Stephen Rinella]

She doesn't like that kind of stuff. I'll call her.

[Randall]

She'll probably hear about it.

[Brody]

No, I. I think you're pushing it there with the person analogy. I think she would care.

[E]

Depends on the person.

[Stephen Rinella]

If I cleaned up, I wouldn't need to hear about it.

[Michael Hunter]

That's the secret.

[Stephen Rinella]

Okay. Not a person. But I'm saying, yeah, not a problem.

[Randall]

You can make it.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. There's like a person would. There's like legal implications. What I'm saying is like, if I clean up, I don't need to worry about what I do in the kitchen.

[E]

Yeah. And she's walking through your garage every day where there's like hides hanging and yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

She's like, clean, clean that up. I don't know. When you're done. It might be that.

[Randall]

It might be that. My. My cleanup is like a 97 out of 100. You know, there's always some residual.

[Stephen Rinella]

Do you think your wife would come on the show?

[Randall]

Yeah, happily.

[F]

She's been on trivia.

[Stephen Rinella]

Dude, that'd be a great episode, man. Just interview Randall's wife.

[F]

Actually. That would be. Sydney is fantastic.

[Randall]

She actually, she actually, she was listening to the trivia, like the past couple trivia episodes the other day, and she said what? What my. Her new favorite game to play is. Instead of trying to answer the questions, it's trying to guess which Ones Seth gets. Right.

[E]

That's cruel, man.

[Stephen Rinella]

Like, even Seth didn't know that well.

[Randall]

She just sort of like, she doesn't know Seth that well, but she, like, as she listens along, she's sort of playing this meta game on top of it. It was like, based on what Seth gets wrong and right.

[Stephen Rinella]

Does she root for you, do you feel?

[Randall]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

She likes to see you win.

[E]

My wife stopped caring about trivia a long time ago. Get all excited about winning. She doesn't care.

[Stephen Rinella]

Just. Just clean up your mess.

[E]

Randall's still. Randall's still on the trip.

[Randall]

Newlyweds still with the whole trivia thing.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. She's like, just clean your mess up, bro. I hope you had fun at trivia. What's your. So, so that's the mix, the blend.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

10 to 15%, something like that.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah. She just. Yeah. Made it a point to say, you know, not too, not too many of those aspirational recipes.

[Stephen Rinella]

And then what is. What do you feel is like, the best. The best. What's the star of the show like in the book? What is the one. If someone said, hey, I'm cook one thing out of this book.

[Michael Hunter]

What should I cook that's so hard? Because I, I love, you know, I love a lot of the, the content in there. The. The bear ribs, I think is way up there. Like, I was really surprised how good those were.

[Stephen Rinella]

We got off on this whole thing. Sorry, Keep going on the bear ribs. You just serve them like, bone on.

[Michael Hunter]

Bone on. Yeah. Smoked the whole time. Didn't really braise it. You know, dry rub and. Yeah. Just phenomenal. Really, really surprised how good they came out.

[Stephen Rinella]

Lay them on a plate.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Brody]

Serve them with some tangy Casey style sauce or.

[Michael Hunter]

I, I don't know if Brody still's got the. Still got the page up on the computer there, but I forget. I think I served it with that barbecue sauce. The bear ribs I know you had listed. Maybe you're reading the table of content is the barbecue. I forget what I served. I think I glazed it with something.

[Stephen Rinella]

You know, that's cool. It's like I never, when I'm cutting up a bear, I never think to do the ribs. Like, I never think to do the ribs on the bone.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah. Most of the time I will cut in between the meat. Out.

[Stephen Rinella]

Out. Yeah.

[Michael Hunter]

But, yeah, I just. I was on a barbecue kick and I had shot a bear. And I'm gonna do the ribs.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. I'm gonna try that this spring. Yeah. A lot of the bears we deal with are coastal Bears, though.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

And I wonder. I wonder if that. Because it's hard to trim the fat out.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

And that fat can be pretty fishy.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

I might try it. We. I was serving some of that fishy bear meat to my buddy Dirt.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

And I was like, problem with it is, like, it's like. It's kind of like. It's like meat, but it's kind of tastes like smoked fish. Like, I love smoked fish. He likes.

[Michael Hunter]

Funny. That's funny.

[E]

I want to ask you about your fried perch, because I know Steve's got opinions on fried perch.

[Stephen Rinella]

Lid on me.

[F]

No, I'm asking him how he does that fish. Directly. Right.

[Michael Hunter]

I. I think I use, like, a seasoned flour. If I flourish. Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Wheat flour.

[Michael Hunter]

Like fish crisp. You know, like, not cornmeal. I think I. I think I mix. I put some cornmeal in my seasoned flour.

[Stephen Rinella]

But would you say, like, in all honesty. In all honesty, just level with me.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Randall]

Brody, is this what you're going for?

[E]

Oh, yeah. I knew this would happen. I got a couple more questions.

[Stephen Rinella]

In all honesty, I'm no Canadian.

[Michael Hunter]

Yep.

[Stephen Rinella]

Do you feel that you're from a fish fry culture?

[Michael Hunter]

I would say no. No.

[E]

Do you leave the skin on the.

[Michael Hunter]

Fillets not to fry them? If we're. If I was gonna sear it without breading and stuff, I would. I do, like, fish skin. Like walleye. I love crispy walleye skin. Save a tread. Like most fish. I leave. I scale it, and I will leave the skin on. But fried. Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Because you clarify that you're not a pit master.

[Michael Hunter]

No, I wouldn't. I wouldn't.

[Stephen Rinella]

But now you're telling me you're a fry man.

[Michael Hunter]

I love to fry. I like the fry stuff. I fried a lot of food. I think I fried more food in my life than. Than legit barbecue, but.

[Stephen Rinella]

Okay, so tell me the perfect perch is. Is wheat flour, not cornmeal.

[Michael Hunter]

I use both. I mix. Yeah, I do. I don't know if it's 25. Corn. Corn. You know, Got it. Cornmeal. But I like the crispy texture.

[Stephen Rinella]

I like that approach, the cornmeal flour mix. Because what it gives. It gives like. Like, I like a real fine cornmeal.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

But if you can get a little. Like a little bit of a medium ground.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

You don't get that universal coke coat.

[Michael Hunter]

Right.

[Stephen Rinella]

So if you do flour. Flour sticks to, like, it's just on there, and then. And then you got that cornmeal, so you got, like, a good, even coat. Then you got, like, a little of that texture and stuff.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. That's a good way to go. What are you frying? What's your oil?

[Michael Hunter]

Lately I've been using peanut oil. I. I kind of save fat and render everything. I love frying stuff in bear fat. I think it's like, the best of the best.

[Stephen Rinella]

How hot do you get it?

[Michael Hunter]

Around 350 and up around there, like, you know, we'll do French fries at 300 and then to finish it, like 375.

[Stephen Rinella]

Do you ever make a french fry in bear fat?

[Michael Hunter]

Yes, I've done that.

[Stephen Rinella]

No kidding.

[Michael Hunter]

It's real good.

[Stephen Rinella]

I never did that barefat.

[Michael Hunter]

Like, I don't know what it is. It's like. It makes the flakiest pastry. I want to talk to a food scientist about why bare fat makes flakier pastry than, like, pig lard.

[Stephen Rinella]

Is that right?

[Michael Hunter]

I don't know why. It is, like, the most incredible lard to make pastry.

[Stephen Rinella]

Huh? Yeah. You couldn't legally. No, you probably couldn't. Like, in your restaurant. You couldn't be just frying stuff in bear fat.

[Brody]

To get a lot of.

[E]

Bears to make that work, hypothetically.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah, I know they'd frown upon that.

[Stephen Rinella]

So you, like. You like to fry in peanut oil at home?

[Michael Hunter]

I fry in peanut at the restaurant. We don't. Just because of the peanut allergy thing. Oh, the rest.

[Stephen Rinella]

So what do you have to use in a commercial kitchen?

[Michael Hunter]

It's not.

[E]

What.

[Michael Hunter]

Like, we could. We could use people then.

[Stephen Rinella]

Gotta tell everybody.

[Michael Hunter]

We gotta tell, you know, we gotta be really careful. We use, like, you know, most restaurants use canola.

[Stephen Rinella]

Okay.

[Michael Hunter]

It's like, just standard. It comes in a big box with a jug and it's, you know.

[Stephen Rinella]

Do you ever fry in beef tallow in your restaurant?

[Michael Hunter]

I've never fried with it. I've used it in potatoes, like, to roast potatoes and stuff and, like, you know, brush base stuff with. And whatever. But I've never actually filled the fryer with beef tallow.

[Stephen Rinella]

Real.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Have you ever hung out with Jesse Griffiths?

[Michael Hunter]

I. So I was gonna tell you because last time I was on the show, I. I'd never heard of him. And you told me to look him up. And I, you know, been following him for the last four years. And then I. I just met him at NWTF show.

[Stephen Rinella]

Oh, okay.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah, he was there with his new turkey book. Dude.

[Stephen Rinella]

You guys, I feel like you guys, like, you guys be like nuts on a dog.

[F]

Screwed the whole thing up because he was here the other.

[Michael Hunter]

I know. We were joking. We were like, we're ships passing. But we're. We're gonna make plans to hang out.

[Stephen Rinella]

If you guys went to. If you went to each other's restaurants and stuff, you guys would be like. You guys would be like best friends, man.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah, we. We. We kind of became best friends at the show. So we're gonna. No, we're gonna try and do some stuff together.

[Stephen Rinella]

I feel like you guys would have a great time hanging out.

[Michael Hunter]

His book's anyways. Beautiful. Really cool books.

[Stephen Rinella]

If you ask him about frying stuff and what grease he uses, he'll not say no opinion.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah. What did he say?

[Stephen Rinella]

He likes to be fat. Dude.

[Michael Hunter]

Really cool.

[Stephen Rinella]

When they do their Friday fish fries.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

At. At Dai Due.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah, they.

[Stephen Rinella]

When they do their fish fries, they do their fish fries and beef fat.

[Michael Hunter]

That's funny. That's cool. I thought it was like. It's not waxy, but it's so much thicker than, like, large. Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

And you know what's funny about is I keep it in my fryer, but I keep my fryer outside, but I keep it loaded. And beef fat. And in the winter, like, we just had like, negative 20.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah. Like a rock. Oh, yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

And like, you turn that thing on, you better turn it on in the morning, man.

[Brody]

Really?

[Stephen Rinella]

I think those. I think those heating elements get a little bit of that liquefied, but it takes a while to bring that back to life.

[Michael Hunter]

Really? Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

When it's just frozen like a brick.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah. You know, I've never done a whole pot of beef tallow. I definitely, definitely will give that a shot.

[Stephen Rinella]

What else is in the. What. What else in the book do you think of as a highlight? You like the bear ribs?

[Michael Hunter]

The bear ribs, definitely The. The fishing part was fine. There's a lot of fish stuff and there's. I started spearfishing recently, so there's some spear fishing stuff in there. Yeah, just. Just the. Just over the fire thing is prevalent through the whole book. So if you're interested in fire cooking, it's. There's some. There's some how to stuff, you know, different types of fire setups. Yeah. And, you know, it doesn't have to. You don't have to buy a $5,000 smoker. You can make one with cinder block.

[Stephen Rinella]

Rocks, you know, so if there's a. Let's say this. There's a dude that fishes. What's the one hot tip you could give a guy that fishes? You gotta leave, Brody. Yeah, we're gonna wrap up, but go ahead.

[Michael Hunter]

I would say just, you know, try doing something different. You Know, if you always take the skin off, you know, try leaving the skin on and frying it, you know, and then in a cast iron pan, you know, just. There's all kinds of stuff I like to just, you know, teach people about how to get more out of their, out of their game. Whether it's, you know, bare ribs, where a lot of, A lot of guys leave that stuff for, you know, shanks. So many times I've cooked shanks for outfitters and they're like, we've been feeding these to our dogs for 20 years.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah.

[Michael Hunter]

You know, and they just. And, and one of them, their wife said if you could make a ruddy mule deer, shanks taste good, like you're welcome anytime. And she couldn't believe it. I took the sawzall and cut, you know, 2 inch ossobuco cuts out of the mule deer I shot. And like she was dumbfounded that they weren't, you know, stinky.

[Brody]

So now you could cut up any part of that animal and cooked it up, made it good.

[Michael Hunter]

But yeah, the, the fishing. So to get back on the. What would I recommend? The, the fishing guide. It's, it's like what, what's out of the realm of, you know, what's out of their comfort zone and try and teach them something to do that's different.

[Stephen Rinella]

Try to do something new.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah, yeah. Like if they fry everything all the time, then try grilling it or try pan searing it or just try something different.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah.

[Brody]

Have you found that odd because you came to hunting a little bit later in life. Right. Like when you first sort of came, became aware of this idea that there's a lot of hunters out there that aren't using the whole animal or, or maybe even not using an entire animal because there's this idea that, oh, rutted up mule deer buck can't taste good because it's been eaten sage. Or the pronghorn's been eating sage and it's going to be sagey. Or the thing now that I keep coming back to that we experienced a bunch this winter is the ducks that 100 years ago we nearly extirpated the damn things across our country. And now we shoot them literally just for fun. And multiple outfitters have told me that 90 plus percent of their. Their clients would just leave the ducks with them if they were legally allowed.

[Stephen Rinella]

And they were wiped out to go into restaurants.

[Randall]

Y wiped out.

[Brody]

Not because we enjoyed shooting them, but because we enjoyed eating them so much. So like when you encountered this.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Brody]

As in an adult, like what was.

[Michael Hunter]

Your take on that, it just blew my mind. Like, you know the family friend that took me turkey hunting for the first time, you know, I saw the way he cleaned his bird, he skinned it, cut out the breast and chucked the rest into the woods.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah.

[Michael Hunter]

And I was like, no, no, no. Like, can you show me how to pluck this? And he like, was like annoyed and it was like, okay. And. And he goes, oh, no, don't eat the legs. You can't eat the legs. I was like, what do you mean you can't eat the legs? He's like, oh, they're tough as well.

[Stephen Rinella]

Like, I'll die.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah. Like, he's like, yeah, but you know, he was like a 45 year old Englishman that his whole life, you know, he's not a chef. So, you know, telling him to braise it, he would be like, what, like how long? Like five hours. No, like, so, you know, I, I get it. I just get a kick out of, you know, teaching people how to do it, you know, and it's really not that hard and it doesn't take that much extra time. And you just shot this turkey and now you keep in these legs that are like three to four pounds of extra meat. And it's usually well received. You know, people are generally surprised in a good way. And it's.

[Brody]

So if you had a point to a reason to why it's become this way, is it because like for him it's a lack of cooking skill?

[Michael Hunter]

I definitely lack. And there's culture, like, culture. You grew up hunting with your dad and your grandfather and you guys shoot bears as a nuisance and you can't eat bear. That's what you're told. Like I went the. The first time. Not the first time. It's probably one of like third or fourth bears that I ever killed. I went to a friend's hunting camp in Alberta and every single person at that camp had never eaten bear before, but they were at a bear hunting camp and they're just there to have fun and shoot a bear. And they keep. Legally you have to keep them the fur. Yeah. In Alberta you don't have to eat the meat. And they just. Yeah, they just grew up thinking that you can't eat bear. So I did bear shanks. I put it in a crock pot by the fire. I think this one's actually in the book too. It's served on a paper plate. Because it was at the camp. It was pretty cool. And I did like polenta, like kind of like grit style. And it Was like bear shank, ragu and polenta, like cheat cream or not cheddar cheese polenta. I think it's like they couldn't believe it. They were just like, we've been hunting bear our whole life and never eaten it.

[Stephen Rinella]

That's Lord's work right there, man. Yeah.

[Michael Hunter]

Actually, I had this conversation with California when we were turkey hunting, you know, with Danielle a few years back, and he said as an outfitter, other guides would get pissed off when clients wanted to eat because that's way more work now for the guides.

[Stephen Rinella]

Me and Cal cooked bear meat for a bear guide who was blown away that it was good.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Brody]

Was that in Jeff's camp? Yeah, yeah. We made Ossavuco, Right? Yeah.

[Michael Hunter]

The other thing that's funny, too, is in Texas, those old boys, like, you shoot a pig that's over, you know, 150 pounds, like, you can't eat that. Yeah, sure, you know. Oh, you can't eat that. Get that out of the skinning shed. It's going to stink us up. Like, they were adamant that I couldn't eat this hog I shot, and it wasn't that big, you know, and they said, oh, that shoulder plate, you know, it's. That's. That's a. What do they call it? Like, it's full of testosterone. Like, it's. It's a mature male. You can't.

[Stephen Rinella]

So am I, man.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah. Yeah. And. And then. So I put that thing in a smoke. I brined it overnight. I quartered it. I brined it overnight, low tea. Then I put a dry rub on it and I put it in a smoker all day. And they loved it. And they were like, what. What is this? I was like, oh, that's. That hockey told me I couldn't eat.

[Stephen Rinella]

I never thought that you could boost your tea with just eating hogs.

[Brody]

Yeah, well, we learned when we trapped all those hogs. I forget who told us we were. The one fella we were with was trapping them and selling them live, you know, just like your farmer guys do. And that the big hogs like that, because there's. Because of that plate and all, there's actually less yield.

[Michael Hunter]

Right.

[Brody]

And so it. The price is more expensive per pound, but over in Europe, they actually pay more for it because they prefer.

[Michael Hunter]

Interesting.

[Brody]

The high flavor, I think, is how he.

[Stephen Rinella]

There's a. There's a skin and trick on those son of a guns, too.

[Michael Hunter]

Oh, really?

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. Then we're going to wrap up, but okay, picture. You got them hanging by, let's say well, let's say he's hanging by his hind hawks.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Okay. And you're pulling the hide down.

[Michael Hunter]

Yep.

[Stephen Rinella]

When you get to the. When you get to the shield.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

The shield doesn't roll. It's like a dead end street. It's all a sudden like the hide's pulling over the ribs and it hits the shield and you can't budge it. Like it won't roll over.

[Michael Hunter]

Yep.

[Stephen Rinella]

So they take he picture again. He's hanging from his hawks. You run a couple ver. You run a couple vertical cuts through the shield.

[Michael Hunter]

Okay.

[Stephen Rinella]

So the shield is now basically running in parallel vertical strips 3 or 4 inches wide. Yep, those will roll.

[Michael Hunter]

Interesting.

[Stephen Rinella]

Then also right down. That noise I made was speed. Yeah, that noise I made was meant to denote speed skin.

[Michael Hunter]

That's good to know.

[Stephen Rinella]

Speed skinning. Yeah, it was genius.

[Michael Hunter]

That's cool.

[Stephen Rinella]

Genius. Don't you remember that, Yanni? I stand right there.

[Brody]

I don't remember that. Do we cover that in that episode?

[Stephen Rinella]

I don't know.

[Michael Hunter]

And he just did it from the top, like from through the fur kind of thing?

[Stephen Rinella]

Yep. He just got down to that shield and then just gashed. Like cut the shield into slits and you can skin each slit down. The whole thing won't roll.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Clayton, it was those boys that were showing us that.

[Brody]

I feel like we made a mistake if we didn't include that in that episode.

[Stephen Rinella]

Maybe it was hanging out with some different Texas dudes, but I don't think so. Maybe Jesse showed me that.

[Brody]

Maybe.

[Stephen Rinella]

I don't know. Either way, little tripped. Tip, tip.

[Brody]

Hot tips.

[Michael Hunter]

Good one.

[Stephen Rinella]

All right, man. So they can find you at your restaurant. Go to Antlers in Toronto.

[Michael Hunter]

Yep. Antler restaurant, Toronto. At thehunterchef.com we'll post the pre. Presale link for the book. There's like, you know, Indigo chapters, all those stores. But I'll put the main kind of pre sale link on my website.

[Stephen Rinella]

You can buy the book in the store, I hope.

[Michael Hunter]

Yep. The books are available in the restaurant. We ship signed copies from the restaurant.

[Stephen Rinella]

And buy them on Amazon.

[Michael Hunter]

Amazon's been great. Buy them at bookstores, all bookstores and. Yeah, thanks for having me.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah, man, good luck with it.

[Brody]

Next time we're in Michigan, maybe we ought to just be bop over the bridge.

[Michael Hunter]

I think it's like three hours.

[Stephen Rinella]

We're not Toronto though, man. Yeah, three hours.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah, it's not far. It's not that.

[Brody]

Do you guys ever do hours from Detroit?

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah, Detroit.

[Stephen Rinella]

That's quick.

[Brody]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Michael Hunter]

Would love to have you guys? It'd be great.

[Stephen Rinella]

That'd be fun.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah. If you come up anytime in a season, we could shoot some ducks or turkeys or whatever.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah.

[Brody]

I wonder how hard it be to get a turkey license over there. Notario.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah. We have some of the non resident Joe Blow Americans. It's like over. Everything's over the counter except for maybe moose. Is difficult. As a non resident, I have to look into that one. But turkeys, deer, ducks, everything just over the counter.

[Brody]

If we annex Canada, it's going to change the whole chasing 50, you know, because chasing 51.

[Stephen Rinella]

Here's the thing they hadn't thought about. When they go annex Canada. I was reading this. They're gonna. We're gonna take it over and make it a new state. But it's gonna be a blue state. They hadn't thought about that. No, it's a blue state. So here.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

So here.

[Brody]

They're gonna go take it over lands left of our son.

[Stephen Rinella]

I haven't thought of that.

[Michael Hunter]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Now they're all voting for Democrats. I wouldn't. If I'd have known that, I wouldn't have invaded them.

[Michael Hunter]

And you got to take. You got to take Quebec with it too. So a lot of electoral votes. I love Quebec, but I'm just saying.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah.

[Michael Hunter]

They have French people. They have a lot of French people there too. Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

It's like careful what you wish for when you invade Canada, man. Yeah. I hope don't get tense between us if that happens.

[Michael Hunter]

No.

[Stephen Rinella]

Okay. We'll stay friendly.

[Michael Hunter]

I love the States.

[Stephen Rinella]

Okay. So thanks for coming on. Tell everybody the name of your book.

[Michael Hunter]

The. It's Hunter chef in the wild. So [e-mail] I'm the hunter chef. Dot. Or at the Hunter Chef everywhere. And all the socials for the restaurant are Antler kitchen, bar.

[Stephen Rinella]

I want to go to that restaurant. We'll check it out. Field trip.

[Michael Hunter]

Good. We're an hour and a half from Buffalo. If you guys ever do a show.

[Stephen Rinella]

Oh, that's a good way of putting it.

[Brody]

Yeah.

[Michael Hunter]

Oh, I tell people that, they're like. Heads explode. Like what? I'm like, yeah, we're an hour and.

[Stephen Rinella]

A half drive up there for dinner. Oh, man, we do.

[Michael Hunter]

We get. We get folks from Buffalo.

[Brody]

Listen, I'm not like taking myself out of it, but I think we as Americans, like, our geography ends in two places, north and south.

[Stephen Rinella]

I can't remember whose quota was. Was. There was a quote. Is war is how Americans learn geography. So coming up, Americans will have a very good sense of Canadian geography. All right. Thanks for coming on. Sure. Appreciate.

[Brody]

Thanks, Michael.

[Michael Hunter]

Thanks, guys.

[Stephen Rinella]

Foreign hey, American history buffs. Hunting history buffs, listen up. We're back at it with another volume of our Meat Eaters American History series. In this edition, titled the Mountain Men 1806-1840, we tackle the Rocky Mountain beaver trade and dive into the lives and legends of fellows like Jim Bridger, Jed Smith and John Coulter. This small but legendary fraternity of backwoodsmen helped define an era when the west represented not just unmapped territory, but untapped opportunity for those willing to endure some heinous and at times, violent conditions. We explain what started the mountain man era and what ended it. We tell you everything you'd ever want to know about what the mountain men ate, how they hunted and trapped, what gear they carried, what clothes they wore, how they interacted with Native Americans, how 10% of them died violent deaths, and even detailed descriptions of how they performed amputations on the fly. It's as dark and bloody and good as our previous volume about the white tailed deer skin trade, which is titled the Long Hunters 1761-1775. So again, you can buy this wherever audiobooks are sold. Meat Eaters American History the Mountain Men, 1806-1840 by Stephen Rinella.