Ep. 714: Enrolling At Backwoods Uni. with Lake Pickle and 'Old Trapper' Kate

Summary

The MeatEater Podcast: Ep. 714 - Enrolling At Backwoods Uni. with Lake Pickle and 'Old Trapper' Kate

Release Date: June 9, 2025

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Guests Introduced

In Episode 714, host Seth Morris welcomes two distinguished guests: Lake Pickle, the mind behind the upcoming podcast Backwoods University, and 'Old Trapper' Kate, a renowned figure in the trapping and outdoor community.

Notable Quote:

Seth Morris [02:37]: "Joined today by three very special guests. Lake Pickle, the most memorable name in America...and 'Old Trapper' Kate."

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Personal Journeys and Backgrounds

The conversation delves into the personal backgrounds of the guests. Lake Pickle shares his journey from a casual hunter to a passionate wildlife biologist, emphasizing his long-term collaboration with experts like Will Primos. 'Old Trapper' Kate discusses her extensive experience in trapping and outdoor adventures, highlighting her dedication to conservation and ethical hunting practices.

Notable Quote:

Doug Duran [10:14]: "I've been around Will. Like, if he heard me talking about him like this, he would dismiss it because he's a pretty down-to-earth dude."

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Launching Backwoods University

A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to introducing Backwoods University, a new podcast initiative by Lake Pickle and Doug Duran. This platform aims to bridge the gap between wildlife biology, conservation policy, and the human dimensions of outdoor activities. The hosts discuss the podcast's focus on species-specific studies, wildlife processes, and the profound impact of human activities on natural ecosystems.

Notable Quote:

Doug Duran [57:37]: "We're doing one on bison, but bison in the eastern United States...the influence of humans on these animals. Positive or negative."

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Hunting Ethics and Controversies

The discussion shifts to complex topics surrounding hunting ethics, including the controversial practice of hunting in cemeteries. The guests debate the moral implications, regulatory challenges, and community reactions to such actions. They also touch upon Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD), exploring its impact on wildlife management and the controversies within the hunting community.

Notable Quotes:

Maggie Hudlow [03:45]: "We're stuck in the past. Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide, and every time you make a purchase with your card, you automatically earn cash back."

Seth Morris [14:17]: "Because if I was visiting a cemetery and I see a guy hunting turkeys, I'm going to be jealous. And what do jealous people do? They lash out."

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Wildlife Biology and Conservation Efforts

Steve Rinella, as a research technician at Kansas State, shares insights from his ongoing wildlife biology projects, particularly focusing on turkey populations. He discusses the challenges of studying predator-prey relationships, the complexities of tagging and tracking wildlife, and the intricate balance required for effective conservation.

Notable Quote:

Steve Rinella [73:43]: "We're tagging them, understanding their roosting behaviors...it's all about maintaining that balance for sustainable populations."

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Trapping, Taxidermy, and Ethical Considerations

The episode delves into the art and ethics of trapping and taxidermy. Steve Rinella explains his involvement in trapping various species, handling pelts, and selling them through platforms like Etsy. The conversation highlights the meticulous processes involved in taxidermy, the market dynamics of wildlife furs, and the personal satisfaction derived from ethical trapping practices.

Notable Quotes:

Steve Rinella [119:03]: "Everything you catch is a big deal. I don't usually get into excess; I can handle everything myself."

Seth Morris [92:38]: "They want nice spots...they want something that's going to be really striking, like super eye-catching."

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Future of Wildlife Management and Policy

Maggie Hudlow emphasizes the importance of staying informed about rapidly evolving wildlife policies and environmental regulations. The guests express concerns over legislative actions that threaten public lands and wildlife protections, advocating for active participation and advocacy to preserve natural habitats and sustainable hunting practices.

Notable Quote:

Maggie Hudlow [119:30]: "We're doing our best to stay on top of it and to get it out to the audience so everybody can stay informed and take action."

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Closing Remarks and Upcoming Projects

As the episode wraps up, Seth Morris encourages listeners to engage with the new Backwoods University podcast, promising insightful discussions that blend biology, policy, and human experiences in the wild. The guests share their excitement for future episodes, which will explore diverse wildlife topics and the intricate interplay between humans and nature.

Notable Quote:

Seth Morris [132:15]: "Listen to Dan and it will stretch your brain all out. And I mean that in a very good way."

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Conclusion

Episode 714 of The MeatEater Podcast offers a deep dive into the intersection of wildlife biology, hunting ethics, and conservation policy. Through engaging conversations with Lake Pickle and 'Old Trapper' Kate, the episode underscores the importance of informed and ethical practices in preserving the natural world. Whether you're an avid hunter, wildlife enthusiast, or simply curious about the outdoors, this episode provides valuable insights and thought-provoking discussions.

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For more information and to subscribe to Backwoods University, visit Backwoods University Podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform.

Transcript

[Steve Rinella]

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[Seth Morris]

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[Ryan Seacrest]

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[Seth Morris]

Are you still quoting 30 year old movies?

[Ryan Seacrest]

Have you said cool beans in the past 90 days? Do you think Discover isn't widely accepted? If this sounds like you, you're stuck in the past. Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide, and every time you make a purchase with your card, you automatically earn cash back. Welcome to the now it pays to Discover. Learn [e-mail] credit card Based on the February 2024 Nielsen report.

[Seth Morris]

This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug bit, and in my case, underwear. Listen, the Meat Eater Podcast. 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 welcome everybody. Joined today by two super special guests. We got Lake well three I'm feeling Maggie.

[Maggie Hudlow]

Am I a super special guest?

[Seth Morris]

It's not like we're just like Seth.

[Lake Pickle]

We're just regular. They're here again.

[Seth Morris]

Seth's just hanging out. No one knows what he's doing.

[Lake Pickle]

I don't even know what I'm doing.

[Seth Morris]

Joined today by three very special guests. Lake Pickle, the most memorable name in America. I was at the I'm gonna get to the R2 guests. But when I was at this big Commencement or like a graduation ceremony last weekend.

[Doug Duran]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

You know, I could tell you why.

[Maggie Hudlow]

Congrats.

[Lake Pickle]

Go ahead and tell us why.

[Seth Morris]

And they're like, giving everybody's name.

[Steve Rinella]

Is there a doctor in the house?

[Seth Morris]

They're getting everybody's name. And a guy comes up who had, I believe, changed his last name to Extravaganza. I was expecting, like, a professional wrestler to come across the stage. You know, it was just a regular dude, really. Yeah. I was like, oh, wow, wrestlers here.

[Lake Pickle]

Is that. Is that speech. Was that filmed?

[Seth Morris]

Yeah.

[Lake Pickle]

Is it somewhere?

[Steve Rinella]

I look.

[Lake Pickle]

Tried looking for it.

[Seth Morris]

Kylie has it. I was.

[Lake Pickle]

I was turkey hunting, so I couldn't.

[Seth Morris]

Make it, but Kylie has it somewhere.

[Corinne]

I think it's going to be put up as a social post or a YouTube clip.

[Lake Pickle]

Yeah, I want to see it.

[Seth Morris]

It's called There is no Plan B. I like that.

[Lake Pickle]

I think I've heard that before from you, Late Pickle.

[Seth Morris]

The most memorable name in America. The hardest name in America, which is Caitlin La Spinoso. Which One can see why she just calls herself Old Trapper Kate.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

Am I saying it right? La Spinoso.

[Steve Rinella]

Los Spinoso.

[Seth Morris]

Los Bonoso.

[Steve Rinella]

Close enough.

[Seth Morris]

Her handle on one of my, like, a thing I love looking in on is her handle on Instagram is Old Trapper Kate. It's all about trapping and other kind of outdoors adventures, which I appreciate. So she's here today. Maggie Hudlow's here today. Journalist extraordinaire. What are you working on right now? That's the most exciting thing.

[Maggie Hudlow]

Most exciting thing. We've been having Dog week, so I've been writing dog stuff, which is fun because I love my dogs. And I just got into training a bird dog, so I got a year and a half old pup, Bill.

[Seth Morris]

What kind is it?

[Maggie Hudlow]

He's a lab German wire hair pointer mix.

[Seth Morris]

Is that intentional or did you get like a. Like at a pound? Yeah.

[Maggie Hudlow]

So I really like mutts. We'll talk about this later. I just wrote an article about why maybe you should consider a mutt to be your next hunting dog. And we got sick of wading through the muck and the falling through the ice to go after our ducks. And we're like, all right, we can get one more dog. We started looking and somebody had wire hair lab pups. And we were like, well, shit, I guess we're getting a dog.

[Seth Morris]

That's interesting, man.

[Maggie Hudlow]

Yeah, the guy, he had a bunch of bird dogs. He had labs and wire hairs. And he was like, yeah. I was always interested to see what they would end up like. Mixed. And he's a good dog. He's huge. He's a big boy. He's kind of goofy, like.

[Doug Duran]

Saw him tell him what he did.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

The first day I was here.

[Doug Duran]

It was the funniest thing I've seen all week.

[Maggie Hudlow]

Saw him run full speed into a glass door the other day.

[Seth Morris]

I've done that.

[Steve Rinella]

Me too.

[Corinne]

He's still a good hunting dog.

[Maggie Hudlow]

He's still a good dog.

[Seth Morris]

He was.

[Maggie Hudlow]

He's a little disgruntled.

[Steve Rinella]

He.

[Maggie Hudlow]

The. The glass in our house isn't that clean, I guess.

[Doug Duran]

That dog was so embarrassed.

[Steve Rinella]

Shame.

[Seth Morris]

Man. I've been meaning to spend a long time kind of explaining my buddy Doug Duran's new lab, but it's just too.

[Maggie Hudlow]

Mark, you know about this dog? Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah.

[Maggie Hudlow]

What? What do you like, Mark? Do you not, like.

[Seth Morris]

Listen, man, I think that that dog can't see it. Doug can't see it, but I think that dog got hit on the head. I have never seen a dog that's so not aware of how dogs are supposed to be. Like, any normal. Like, I've been around 50, man. I'm looking at dogs my whole life. Yeah. We used to have all kinds of dogs when I was a kid. This dog, there's like certain just things in the dog playbook. Right. Like if you're driving all around out in the woods and a dog is in like a can am, you're driving all around, you get to an interesting spot, everybody jumps out. Kids are like catching crappies, whatever. He's like, he doesn't get out. Do you know? I mean, like, any dog in the world would be like, well, dude, I'm gonna get out.

[Maggie Hudlow]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

And see what everybody's doing.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

He goes into a house, he doesn't go check what's going on around.

[Maggie Hudlow]

Interesting.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah.

[Lake Pickle]

That might be a good thing.

[Maggie Hudlow]

He just kind of chills out.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah. And Doug can't. Doug's like. Doug's like, if you said to someone. If someone had a baby and you said, man, I don't think the baby's not right. They're not gonna take that well. You know what I'm saying? Do you know what I'm saying?

[Corinne]

Feelings are getting hurt listening to this show.

[Lake Pickle]

If he's like, if the thing's sitting in the side by side, and he's.

[Seth Morris]

Like, come on, you gotta. He. And Doug won't. Doug won't pull it out. I'll pull it out. I'll grab. I can't handle it. I'll go out, grab it by the collar and Pull it out. Doug will come in the house. So there'll be a house full of people. Doug will pull up. Doug will come in the house. He leaves the door open, and you 20 minutes later, a dog's sitting in there. It's like. It's like amazing. It's one of the few dogs you could put it and just. It'll be there when you come back. That'd be.

[Steve Rinella]

Well, it's kind of handy in some situations.

[Lake Pickle]

That'd be like one of those dogs you see in Montana. It's just on the flatbed.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Lake Pickle]

Then you, like, go into a bar or whatever, and like, the dog's just out on the flatbed.

[Doug Duran]

No, this is different thing.

[Seth Morris]

This is different. That's like.

[Lake Pickle]

That's like obedience.

[Seth Morris]

I know. This is not.

[Lake Pickle]

Not obedience.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah, Because I forgot to mention, Doug is imploring the dog to come out.

[Lake Pickle]

Oh.

[Doug Duran]

Yeah.

[Corinne]

Maybe it just likes comfort.

[Steve Rinella]

Maybe he ran into a glass.

[Seth Morris]

He's gonna be pissed that I'm saying this, man, because, like, if I just. If you, you know, if you disagree with Doug on something like CWD or something, he's gonna write you a mean ass email. So I can only imagine what he's thinking right now. Me hacking on his dog.

[Steve Rinella]

You insult a man's dog. I'm fighting words, you know?

[Maggie Hudlow]

You know, my old dog Shooter made me believe in reincarnation because for one, I'm pretty sure this dog smoked way too many Marlboro reds in his past life. He, like, he's got a real smoker's hack, and the vets are like, nothing's wrong with him. He also has favorite songs. He loves the band Cripple creek.

[Seth Morris]

Oh, really?

[Maggie Hudlow]

He just perks right up to that and just yowls.

[Steve Rinella]

Amazing.

[Seth Morris]

You should introduce him to this dog, Mark.

[Steve Rinella]

So.

[Maggie Hudlow]

So my theory, from what I've heard on Mark, is maybe Mark was like a big fat dude that just liked to ride around in can ams and be. Drink a beer and just sit in the truck.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah.

[Maggie Hudlow]

You know, you never know what a dog's past life.

[Seth Morris]

No, you might get a nice email from Doug. He's gonna. He's gonna. I know, talking about reincarnation, but this is gonna. He's. This is gonna speak to Doug. This is gonna speak to dog Lake. I forgot to mention, besides having a very memorable name, Lake is an avid outdoorsman. Used to. Used to be tangled up in. In the old days with Will Primos, which is super cool.

[Doug Duran]

Yeah, I was for about a decade.

[Seth Morris]

Oh, man. And I love that guy.

[Doug Duran]

Oh, man, he's great. He was like, the way I explain it to folks. Like, when I grew up, in my house, you watched the Andy Griffith show and Primo's VHS tapes. That's just what you watched. Like, he was especially, like, living in Mississippi.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah.

[Doug Duran]

And you've been around Will. Like, if he heard me talking about him like this, he would dismiss it because he's a pretty down to earth dude. But, yeah. And it's. It's funny talking about my name. Like, part of the reason I ended up getting tangled up with Will, just a little stuff that happened before, but I saw Brad Farris at a local sporting show at home, and I'd never met him in person, but I'd been emailing him, trying to get a job.

[Seth Morris]

And he remembered your name.

[Doug Duran]

One thing I've always had going for me, someone might forget everything else about me, but they remember the name. So I go up to him, I said, hey, I'm late. Pickle. You're like, you're that kid that's been emailing me about video. And I was like, yeah. And I didn't know it at the time, but, like, the week before, they had some guys leave the video department. So two days later, my phone rings, and it's Brad. And he's like, hey, man, would you consider taking a semester off school? Because I got to film at Elk Hunt in, like, two weeks. I was like, yep, I'm gonna do that.

[Seth Morris]

And dropped out of school.

[Doug Duran]

So, funny thing is, yeah, I went to the Primo's office. I'd never met Will in person, and they were interviewing me, and Will comes in and he says, I'm not gonna hire you if you don't promise me that you'll finish.

[Seth Morris]

Oh.

[Doug Duran]

So, yeah, I was in school for wildlife science and that kind of stuff, but, yeah, that's how it all started. But it all hinged on Brad being like, oh, yeah, you're the kid. Because he. My name's so odd he remembered it.

[Seth Morris]

That's great.

[Doug Duran]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

So you did wildlife still in the wildlife business?

[Doug Duran]

Yep.

[Seth Morris]

June 9th, you will find Lake Pickle on the Bear Grease podcast feed with a new show we're doing called Backwoods University. And we'll talk a little bit about that. We talked about old Trapper Kate. We're gonna jump ahead to the news, then we're gonna come back around. Crin's got us all assed up. Oh, are we returning?

[Corinne]

Sorry, no, no, I. I didn't get to talk to you about this. I wondered if we would change the order Of. Of things this time, but maybe that's all. Oh, okay. So that part wasn't athletes.

[Seth Morris]

No, because I have to remember. No, I see just getting rid of. I could see just not having any news ever.

[Corinne]

That. Yep, that. That's possible.

[Seth Morris]

But then how would I find out about the news?

[Corinne]

Brody. Brody in the website.

[Seth Morris]

We should have a. I wish we could do one of those polls. Like, should we not have any news and then do a vote.

[Maggie Hudlow]

Oh, we could make something like that happen.

[Seth Morris]

Oh, can you do that?

[Maggie Hudlow]

We could do it on a newsletter. We could do it on Instagram.

[Seth Morris]

It'd be like, should the meat eater podcast have or not have listener feedback and news?

[Corinne]

Yeah. I think they'd be sad about not having listener feedback.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Corinne]

Because then we wouldn't have, like, stories and jokes that carry on for a few episodes. But what do I know? I just think we should separate it. Like, news is separate from.

[Seth Morris]

Well, the problem with the news program here is that we have the same news article we had before in the news. We already covered the guy that killed the. That's in trouble for hunting the cemetery. I have additional thoughts Doug might like.

[Lake Pickle]

If you got rid of the news, then he went after to get mad.

[Steve Rinella]

Unless you start dissing his dog.

[Seth Morris]

Had the main interview be about his dog.

[Doug Duran]

But then instead of the news, it's updates.

[Corinne]

We wouldn't touch on CWD as much as we do.

[Seth Morris]

I know it saved me a lot of Doug's ire, but then how would we goof on his dog? Unless we, like, focus. We had a dog psychologist in to goof on dog's dog.

[Corinne]

We should get dog psychologist.

[Seth Morris]

So the guy. Some emerging details. Are you. Are you going to follow this? Because I'm just interested in this turkey deal.

[Maggie Hudlow]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

What I had explained before is like, I feel it's between the guy and the people that are dead in the cemetery.

[Maggie Hudlow]

Largely, they don't have much to say.

[Seth Morris]

I was buried in a cemetery and I knew someone was turkey hunting the cemetery. I would be glad.

[Maggie Hudlow]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

But then I learned while he was hunting there, there were visitors in the cemetery.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, that's rough.

[Seth Morris]

Which tips, right? Like, at a point, you have to, like, you got that when you're sitting there at night being like, man, I really want to hunt the cemetery. And you think to yourself, with the people in there, you know, with the souls in there, how would they feel about it? And that's kind of regional. And then there's. How would the people.

[Steve Rinella]

How the mourners.

[Seth Morris]

Those people.

[Steve Rinella]

What would the mourners think?

[Seth Morris]

Because if I was visiting a cemetery and I see a guy hunting turkeys, I'm going to be jealous. And what do jealous people do? They lash out.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, that's true.

[Seth Morris]

And they don't lash out about being jealous. They think of another thing and then they're going to lash out about public safety. But the biggest question I have is, was he bushwhacking them because he got dropped off by a late model black full sized pickup? So did he get dropped off to call or did he get dropped off to bushwhack? And did he use tombstones like how you might use round bales?

[Steve Rinella]

You almost can't be mad about it. At some point.

[Doug Duran]

I want to know the nature of the visitors. Like, was someone getting actively getting buried?

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. Was this like a fresh burial or was this like a year anniversary thing?

[Seth Morris]

Were they turkey scouting? Maybe they're a turkey scout.

[Doug Duran]

It may be.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, God.

[Seth Morris]

They happened on Mother's Day.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, oh.

[Lake Pickle]

Was this like a.

[Steve Rinella]

No.

[Lake Pickle]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

New Hampshire.

[Lake Pickle]

Is this like a private cemetery?

[Seth Morris]

Doesn't say. But it says you're not allowed to hunt cemeteries.

[Lake Pickle]

So I guess it won't matter.

[Steve Rinella]

Except for the ones in public, I'm assuming.

[Seth Morris]

I recently cut through a cemetery and jumped a fence to get down to a creek.

[Steve Rinella]

Cool.

[Lake Pickle]

I used to stand next to a turkey and. Or stand next to a cemetery and listen for turkeys all the time.

[Steve Rinella]

There you go.

[Seth Morris]

Well, like we're saying, if you see an old church or a cemetery, there's a turkey around.

[Doug Duran]

That's a rule of thumb.

[Steve Rinella]

Doesn't have to be like abandoned.

[Doug Duran]

No, like, I mean, it is a rule of thumb that I'm telling you. We live and die by, like, if it's an old church or a cemetery, there is a turkey around there. I've never seen it. Not be true.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah, No, I could see that, man. The cemetery I want to get buried in. I think that that'd probably be true of that. We used to hunt squirrels back there. But I was pre turkey. Like there weren't turkeys when I was growing up. But there's turkeys now, you know?

[Doug Duran]

Yeah, there was a. There's a place where my grandma and grand grandma and grandpa got buried and I got permission to hunt the land right behind it from them. Yeah, they. I know they would be okay with it. Yeah. But that was the first time it happened to me. Like I pulled up to the cemetery, like I was going to visit their grave, and like, I pull up, there's a turkey goblin right behind it. I was like, I got to see if I can get access to that.

[Steve Rinella]

There's a hot tip off. You start asking for permission post mortem.

[Seth Morris]

Yep. Yeah. Talk to him. I know. And be like, hey, you know, I know, like you're not feeling well.

[Steve Rinella]

Listen, it's a crying shame what happened, but.

[Seth Morris]

Oh, I can picture dudes now just sitting there like trying to like make fake tears and stuff. Just listening for gobbles, trying to be like they're mourning. This happened on what? How the guy got in trouble is somehow he hits the bird. You know, like the saying, you can't stop the flop, but he desirous to stop the flop, tackles it and. And thereby gets himself on camera. People claim he's wrestling it, but it would have been more accurate if journalists had explained that he was trying to stop the flop, which you can't do. You can't.

[Lake Pickle]

Was it like a bad shot and it was kind of getting away a bit or.

[Seth Morris]

I think he was trying to.

[Steve Rinella]

It was just like the classic sprint out to it.

[Seth Morris]

And my, my. I don't know. My guess is he was. It was raising a ruckus as they do. He was trying to stop the flop. And people think he was trying to wrestle it because there's like visitors. He already shot.

[Steve Rinella]

He's trying to be incognito. Launching on the turkey.

[Doug Duran]

And when they go to flopping, it is. I mean, it's a racket.

[Steve Rinella]

Quite loud. Not as loud as the shotgun blast.

[Doug Duran]

Was he on with a shotgun? Do we know.

[Seth Morris]

You know what?

[Steve Rinella]

This doesn't seem like an archery kind of deal, but I could be wrong.

[Seth Morris]

Anyone with information on this incident. This is serious. Please contact New Hampshire's Fish and Game department.

[Maggie Hudlow]

This is also.

[Seth Morris]

You can make an anonymous tip and.

[Maggie Hudlow]

Just another one of those things where like this guy chose to post this video.

[Steve Rinella]

What? Oh, that's always interesting.

[Seth Morris]

He didn't post his own video.

[Steve Rinella]

He put on his own account.

[Corinne]

What I understand is that there was like there was a hunter at the cemetery, someone who self identifies as a hunter.

[Maggie Hudlow]

Okay.

[Corinne]

Because this. According to New Hampshire Game and fish, around 10am on that Sunday, a hunter observed a male in camouflage apparel shoot a turkey in the cemetery on Clo Road. The poacher was dropped off by a late model black full size.

[Maggie Hudlow]

So that guy was looking for turkeys in the cemetery.

[Steve Rinella]

He was jealous.

[Seth Morris]

Jealous?

[Steve Rinella]

Jealousy.

[Doug Duran]

Allegedly.

[Seth Morris]

I think we need to get all. If Corinne was like a good producer right now, we'd have the hunter, we'd have the witness.

[Lake Pickle]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

And we'd have the family of who was in the closest grave.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. We'd have descendants.

[Corinne]

I can't believe I didn't think of that.

[Seth Morris]

They'd all be here arguing about it.

[Steve Rinella]

We'd have the casket that he was standing over.

[Seth Morris]

Here's the Internet. This guy's got an interesting problem. There's a guy that. Saying that for whatever reason, he's a. He's a magnet for poachers to come confess to him.

[Steve Rinella]

Interesting.

[Seth Morris]

I just think that's being alive. Like, that's not unusual. Like, I confess old poaching stuff every time I'm talking to anybody, really. Kids when we were little kids, like, we didn't. It wasn't. It's just hard to explain.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

You didn't know.

[Lake Pickle]

You just did stuff you didn't. You didn't know.

[Corinne]

These days, do people go and. Do you get a lot of confessions?

[Seth Morris]

Yes. Because. Okay, when I started deer hunting, I wasn't old enough to hunt deer. When I killed my first year, I wasn't old enough. My mom came and put her tag on it. But it was like. You would have told anybody here, but it was like there was no. There was Z. It was just like. I can't explain how it was.

[Corinne]

Some of the examples he uses, though. I'm not. I'm not sure that these are people just talking about stuff that they did a really long time ago. I'm just looking at one of the examples he cites, and it's almost like someone.

[Seth Morris]

Let me make. Hit the examples. But I want to make one more point. You know how I've been hip to that Veterans Institute. They play the interviews with the World War II veterans. Guys are in their 80s and 90s. It's the best thing on YouTube. Well, I like world's greatest hockey goals in slow motion, but.

[Lake Pickle]

I'll look into.

[Seth Morris]

That next to the world's greatest hockey goals in slow motion.

[Maggie Hudlow]

Hockey does go fast.

[Seth Morris]

The American Veterans Institute did this, has this huge series of interviews with World War II guys in their 80s and 90s. They're down watching. I think I talked about this. I'm watching two of these guys together, and they're talking about they would just kill ss. They would line them up and shoot them. And he said, we weren't supposed to talk about. It was a long time ago. And he's like, we were told to do that. Right? So you get a lot of like, I will. Because we grew up violating. But it wasn't like. It just. It's so hard to explain, man.

[Steve Rinella]

You're past the statute of limitation. Yeah, it's Like a common ground kind of thing in the hunting community.

[Lake Pickle]

Well, when I was growing up, price same for you. You just. You didn't even know it was illegal.

[Steve Rinella]

The sort of awareness, you didn't even know of the. Like, you didn't know the rationale, the severity or the implication or anything.

[Lake Pickle]

Like when.

[Steve Rinella]

Nothing serious.

[Lake Pickle]

When I first got Onx, I. I went and looked at all the old places where I used to hunt. It's all private. It's like I. I thought this was legit, thought it was public land.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah. I remember like. Like just being young, you know, like teens and hunting wood ducks on the roost and it looking like a fourth of July display by the time the wood ducks would come into that roost and you were sort of like you. It's just like. But that's what all the guy. Like the old. Like your mentors.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

Do you know what I mean? It was just. You were so.

[Steve Rinella]

Well, yeah, because the. The farther you go back in the timeline of hunting, the, like, the grayer all that gets. Yep.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

Another. Another thing that was just like. Just another confession. Here I am doing all these confessionals. There's another thing. Leading up to the largemouth bass opener, you would put your live well out on the end of your dock and you would detain them.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, no.

[Seth Morris]

Then fillet them on the opener. But it was like, this isn't like you were like totality, buddy.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. It was just like, this is what we did.

[Seth Morris]

Walk down the damn beach holding the largemouth by the bottom lip and throw it in the live well. And like your parent, like our parents, you know, I mean, people weren't like, don't.

[Maggie Hudlow]

It's.

[Seth Morris]

It's so hard to explain, man. It's so hard to explain the way. And only later did I start to put it all together. Yeah. And then you get like, in your 20s and you start whatever, meeting people, reading. Reading Sand County Almanac, which, like, you start putting it all together and you're like, oh, man, that's like. Not like if everybody ran around doing that with that level of like.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

Passion.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. You end up with the early 1900s.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah. It'd been disastrous, but it was just like, you weren't. None of this. Like. I never. No one ever, ever said the word conservation when I was a kid.

[Steve Rinella]

Yep.

[Seth Morris]

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[Seth Morris]

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[Corinne]

Well, look at, look at the examples.

[Seth Morris]

Okay?

[Corinne]

He says poachers apparently see my BHA and meteor merch and think quote. And this is. These quotes are so specific. So, you know, someone told him this, quote, I'm gonna tell this guy about unlicensed night hunting in a day hunting only state for game that's out of season and I don't have a tag anyway. Or quote, let me tell you, tell you how I pulled a fast one by hunting against regulations on a military base and got away with the trespassing citation instead of any real consequences. Haha.

[Seth Morris]

You know what they're trying to do? They're trying to get on Clay's bear grease podcast.

[Doug Duran]

That might actually be true, but they.

[Seth Morris]

Don'T realize that they have to have redemption. Like when I was 15, Clay wouldn't have had me on. He would have had to wait till I was later, had an epiphany and we would have stopped like our casual violating.

[Corinne]

Well, I mean, this guy is just wondering, like, what would you all do? Would you tries to educate and you know, these are instances that had happened in the past. And he said that in case he sniffed that there was any sense of a crime being about to be committed, he would say something.

[Seth Morris]

But I got no confession.

[Corinne]

Asking for advice.

[Lake Pickle]

Is this what this podcast is turning into confession?

[Seth Morris]

A little bored. It's like I'm just. The more I think about, the more I'm interested in what our are. Like, I want to go back and interview our young, younger selves. So high school, okay, like just, just give you, for instance, high school with my late friend Eric Kern. Smelt dipping. For whatever reason, like, Sam would come in with the smelt during the spring smelt run one day. We're standing out there. We weren't at a river mouth like you generally hit and smelt at the river mouths, but we were. We knew about these gravel beds that were way down on Lake Michigan. And the smelt would come up and spawn in these little gravel beds that weren't even in the stream mouth. They're like an anadromous fish, but they would sometimes spawn in the waves. And we're sitting there, and here comes the salmon chasing smelt. And Eric gets in his dip in that. We're old enough to know that he ought to put that salmon in his waders and he puts the salmon down the leg of his waders to hide it. And we like finished our smelt dipping, had a big laugh about how slimy and his Pants were.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, I'm sure that felt great.

[Seth Morris]

And we're, like, old enough to drive, and there's no way I would let my kid do that. I would wring his neck. Just. I don't know. I can't explain it.

[Steve Rinella]

Different times.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah. Guy wants to know if it's stolen valor to put to buy taxidermy and decorate your cabin. Yes.

[Doug Duran]

It's an easy one.

[Maggie Hudlow]

Hard stop.

[Seth Morris]

Unless it's like a crazy, Like, Unless it's like a specimen.

[Corinne]

Huh?

[Steve Rinella]

You're killing my market.

[Corinne]

It's like a jackalope.

[Seth Morris]

What's that?

[Corinne]

What if it's like a jackalope?

[Seth Morris]

That's not stolen valor.

[Corinne]

Okay.

[Seth Morris]

Taxidermy.

[Corinne]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

Like, I think if you bought, you know, if you're like a big deer hunter and you bought a. Like a big, you know, and then he kind of got it there, and you know what it is? Do people coming in think that you got it true?

[Steve Rinella]

If someone asks, like, did you shoot that? What's your answer?

[Doug Duran]

So a real good friend of mine, he used to tell me how comically bad his father was at hunting. And the first time I went to his father's house, I walk into his living room. This is a true story. And there was, like, several shoulder mounted deer. And then there's a shoulder mounted elk in there. And I was like, jordan, you said your dad was bad at hunting. He said, oh, he didn't kill any of these. Bought all of them off ebay.

[Seth Morris]

It's deeply nuanced because someday my father's taxidermy is still in my mother's home. Someday, heaven forbid, I will take possession of my father's taxidermy and I will put it somewhere that's different.

[Steve Rinella]

Does that count? Yeah, I don't think so.

[Seth Morris]

It's something that's deeply nuanced. Or if you had something where you're like, oh, yeah, Wyatt Earp shot that buck. You know, whatever. It'd be like a specimen. But if people come in and they go like, my God, this guy's gotten some tanks.

[Corinne]

And then you don't say anything. You just let that thought linger.

[Doug Duran]

So I have a European skull mounted elk that I did not kill in my house. It's the first bull that I filmed Wilbur shooting. And he asked me, he said, do you want this elk?

[Seth Morris]

That's okay.

[Doug Duran]

That's awesome. And I was like, absolutely. But everybody that comes in the house, they're like, I'm like, will shot that elk, not me.

[Steve Rinella]

You need to make it black.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah, right.

[Corinne]

But then you tell the True story of that.

[Steve Rinella]

Right?

[Seth Morris]

But Yanni has his dad's bull moose hanging in his living room. Yeah, Totally fine.

[Doug Duran]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

That's not stolen valor.

[Lake Pickle]

Yeah. Dirt has one of your coos. Deer.

[Seth Morris]

You gave it to him. Yeah, but dirt's like, a special guy.

[Lake Pickle]

It's not stolen valor. He was there. He filmed it.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, I think we're talking, like, if you go to, like, some kind of thrift shop and they have, like, someone's random estate sale taxidermy, you can.

[Doug Duran]

I don't know if you can anymore.

[Corinne]

You could.

[Doug Duran]

You used to could legitimately go on ebay and buy a tax.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, no, you still can.

[Seth Morris]

It's. Yeah, it's like. It's like estates. Earlier I said yes, but I'm realizing how complicated. It just depends on the motive and what you're trying to get away with. If you're trying to be like, give visitors the impression it's one thing. What?

[Lake Pickle]

All right, here's an example. If you just bought a big mansion in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, you went down to the shop that has all the taxidermy for sale for thousands of dollars, and you buy a big old elkhead and put it in your big, big house that looks right at the Tetons.

[Seth Morris]

Stolen valor.

[Lake Pickle]

Okay.

[Steve Rinella]

And you bought a cowboy hat.

[Seth Morris]

That's stolen valor.

[Steve Rinella]

What about furs?

[Seth Morris]

No.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

No, I don't think so.

[Steve Rinella]

I don't think.

[Seth Morris]

Showing my biases. It's just different. It's different. Guy has a moral bind. Well, let me give you an. A good example. I got a friend, very accomplished hunter. Okay. He's got a display of every male and female of all North American waterfowl that he got.

[Corinne]

Huh.

[Steve Rinella]

That's awesome.

[Seth Morris]

But he also has a big collection of many furbearers from around the continent.

[Steve Rinella]

Yep.

[Seth Morris]

He would. He will be like, that's from so and so. That's from so and so. He's got one. He goes, someone left this because they knew I have a collection, and they remain anonymous. I don't even know who gave it to me.

[Steve Rinella]

Wow.

[Seth Morris]

So it's just different. It's like a educational display. Do you follow me?

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

Where he's like, check all this out. But he doesn't claim none of it's his stuff, but he likes to. He grew up trapping. He likes to have the stuff there. But it's not his first.

[Steve Rinella]

Because my main buyers are like the oddities market, and they just like having them as a novelty. Like a novelty wall hanger.

[Seth Morris]

They're like, no, I'm not trying to Screw your business.

[Steve Rinella]

Like take it easy, Steve.

[Seth Morris]

Here's a guy. I haven't read this yet, but he's in a moral mind. He lives in eastern Wisconsin, far from dog. Sounds like avid bow hunter. One of my close buddies owns a local tree farm and is currently planting new trees. This is a quote. He recently got a crop damage tag to take five deer in 45 days as the deer are eating his newly planted trees. At first I was excited to get the bow out. However, he has sent me videos of the deer pretty much walking up to him. The chase in which bow hunting. It's not a great sentence. I think he'd me. He means bow hunting is about the chase.

[Corinne]

I'm just saying it.

[Seth Morris]

Oh, no, no, it is. It's like a very. It's like bad syntax, but it makes sense. The chase in which bow hunting is about is gone. Like a few commas could have salvaged that sentence. I don't feel like taking five deer will help the problem. And it's all very likely to take a deer holding fawns. However, he puts a lot of pride into his farm and I have even helped with planning and witness firsthand the hard work that goes into it. Does going forward with this pretty much give up all the ethics we believe as hunters? No, of course not. Or am I looking to. That was me editorializing and yes, another rhetorical question. No, it's a serious question. Or am I looking too much into. And ultimately it's just simply what is protecting his crop?

[Corinne]

I think ethics is not really the right word there at all.

[Seth Morris]

No, there's an outlet for. If there's an outlet for the deer, you want it, your body wants it, your church wants it. And the guy's got a crop damage permit. And it's white tailed deer, which last I checked in Wisconsin are above objective.

[Steve Rinella]

It's not that serious.

[Seth Morris]

Don't see it being an issue. One more. Is this the last one? Another news bit. So in Alabama, this is from Alabama. The bill ALHB 509 passed the House and is moving to the Senate. This bill led by the captive deer industry, which he. This person writing in claims that folks high up in the state legislature have family ties to the captive deer industry. I can't say that's true or not. He's just saying that's true. They want to declare high French. They wanted to declare high fence deer. So they want to make captive deer private property instead of public. Okay. Some people might be surprised that it's already this way. It depends on what State you're in some states, if you have captive deer, you can just do whatever you want. You hunt them year round, you do whatever you want with them. Some states, if you have high fence deer, you still got to go by deer law.

[Steve Rinella]

Interesting.

[Seth Morris]

They want to switch it and they want their pet deer to be livestock so they can do whatever they want. They don't want them to be wildlife. Why would they care? You could think of all kinds of reasons they'd care because now they can hunt them whenever they want and do whatever they want, kill as many as they want, whatever. But the main thing is they're trying to get out from under regulation and inspections that would keep their captive deer, which I'm not saying I'm sure, like CWD is in Alabama, they want. They don't want the state messing with them about the risk that their captive deer are going to spread diseases to wild herds. So they're trying to get free of that and get out of inspection services. That's what's in the back of their head. That's all.

[Steve Rinella]

That's tricky. It's dirty.

[Seth Morris]

It is a tricky one, man, because I'm just suspicious of captive deer, like, in general. But I also get the argument that if it's in the fence and it's captive, it's like, whatever, but they get.

[Maggie Hudlow]

Out of the fences.

[Steve Rinella]

They do. Frequently.

[Seth Morris]

Like that's. That's.

[Steve Rinella]

So do cattle. It.

[Doug Duran]

That was. It strikes a little close to home because Alabama's right next to Mississippi.

[Seth Morris]

Okay, what's your take on it?

[Doug Duran]

I don't like neighbors.

[Seth Morris]

I don't like it.

[Doug Duran]

I don't like it at all.

[Seth Morris]

Tell me more.

[Doug Duran]

I. I mean, cwd, obviously a problem there. I have a problem. I mean, like, I get the. They're. They're in the fence. Like, they're not. I mean, they do get out. But I hinge on the thing. Like, even without the CWD argument, it's like the wildlife are. Belong to the. Belong to the people. They're public resource. Like saying that you can put a fence around that and all of a sudden that deer and everything in there becomes your private property. I don't like that at all. And then there's just been. Been a lot of stuff going on around home with CWD lately that's not. I mean, it's never good. Right. But we had a. There was a case that popped up along the Mississippi river in Louisiana. But going off CWD management guidelines, it would have put part of Claiborne County, Mississippi, in CWD management. Well, there's a dude on our wildlife commission that was like, why would Louisiana deer make this go into CWD management? The river's right there. Disregarding the fact that those deer swim the river all the time. And so they had this boat and they were, you know, and next thing you know, within like, couple months, they have a CWD case show up in Claiborne County.

[Seth Morris]

You kidding me?

[Doug Duran]

No, dead serious. And so. And obviously, you know, CW is a very controversial topic, but.

[Seth Morris]

Oh, it is.

[Steve Rinella]

So.

[Doug Duran]

And seeing that and using as. Like, if they pass that, then they could get around some of the CWD stuff. And I could just so very easily seeing that hopping over into Mississippi because there's some high fences there too, and I just don't like it too close to home.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Maggie Hudlow]

Well. And there's a lot to learn about cwd.

[Steve Rinella]

So much.

[Maggie Hudlow]

But we certainly know that concentrated areas of animals are one of the worst things that we can have. So promoting that and making that easier is not helping the CWD case at all.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah. And moving servants has proven to be problematic. But. But a lot of the cervid movements are down now. An interesting casualty of the CWD is that you. That it really put the knicks on elk recovery.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

Because as they're like, regulating, relocating servants, it's ground down that you're going to take out from source populations and bring them into new places because people aren't wanting to transport servants around.

[Maggie Hudlow]

And now we have CWD on all of our feed grounds. Because the elk are in feed grounds.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah.

[Maggie Hudlow]

It's getting messier by the minute.

[Seth Morris]

There was a. The late Jim Posewitz, who was. He was from Montana, and he wrote these little pamphlets that you give kids when they're like, if your kid goes through hunter safety with the state, you might. He might wind up with these gym. These Jim Posewitz pamphlets. Like, I can't remember what they're called. Just little like. Like sort of things about ethics of hunting and stuff. He was. He was kind of. He was a hunter. He was like a philosopher about hunting ethics. And he was. He was always very suspicious of captive. The captive servant industry and was involved when Montana. When it went to a vote in Montana and Montana rejected canned hunting on captive servitor facilities overwhelmingly. Jim Posewitz was very involved in that fight. And he had this interesting point about it, which is like, if you look at the. The captive deer and elk industry, there's. There's a friction because this is just. This is just like, this isn't proposing legislation. This is just like an observation of his what gives those captive animals their value is the social value that the wild version has. Do you know what I mean? It's like what excites someone about growing a big buck is the social value that a big buck in its wild form has.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

Meaning if you went and got a. You know, if you went and got a sheep and you figured out how to make a little ram, a little domestic ram, have, like, slightly bigger horns, people are not. That's not exciting to people because there's not a social value attached to wildlife that you're trying to mimic. Right. You're. You're in a way subverting the thing that has social value to build a sort of artificial version of the thing that people are excited about in the first place. So he just questioned it from. Like, from a. From a philosophical angle. You know, it'd be similar to. I think of a bunch of things that'd be similar to. But it's insulting to bring it up, so never mind.

[Maggie Hudlow]

Now I'm intrigued.

[Steve Rinella]

Worse than Doug's dog.

[Seth Morris]

I was gonna make a. I was gonna make an analogy to what some people refer to as the oldest profession.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh.

[Maggie Hudlow]

10 to 4.

[Steve Rinella]

Loud and clear.

[Doug Duran]

I got it. Yeah, we got it.

[Seth Morris]

What some people argue is hunting. I don't know.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, God.

[Seth Morris]

All right, so, like, you're central Mississippi.

[Doug Duran]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

Grew up in central Mississippi. What was your. How did you get into. How'd you get into hunting, man?

[Doug Duran]

I mean, you're kind of. You're put into it early just because central Mississippi is just kind of. Just kind of the common thing around there. Everybody hunts or fishes to some degree. But my dad is. Describe my dad. He hunts a little bit and fishes a lot. That's where. It's where the name Lake came from. My dad's an obsessed fisherman.

[Seth Morris]

Oh. And so I would have named you Crick Pickle.

[Doug Duran]

That's fair.

[Steve Rinella]

Dill.

[Corinne]

That's really good.

[Doug Duran]

So, like, we were, you know, we. We bass fished a lot. Like I was telling you earlier about, you know, my dad, it was, like, mandatory that me and my brother learn how to throw a bait caster. You know, we fished a whole lot. And then deer season would come around and, you know, the rifle opener and maybe other. One weekend a year and then opener, Duff season. Always a big thing down there, but that was about the extent of it.

[Seth Morris]

You guys would fish during hunting season?

[Doug Duran]

Oh, yeah, yeah. Like. Like that.

[Seth Morris]

You shouldn't be allowed to do that.

[Doug Duran]

Like. Like, fishing is the end all. Be all. Like the. When I was first getting into Turkey, I'M skipping a little head ahead here. But, like, I remember one of the first morning turkey hunting, like, trying to hear a turkey, and there's like a little pond down below. And dad's like, I wonder if I got a buzz bait in my truck. I mean, that's all he's thinking about. So. And turkey hunting is a huge down home. And so I'd heard some buddies, like, at church and stuff, talking about turkey hunting during the spring.

[Seth Morris]

It's like the cradle of turkey hunting.

[Doug Duran]

Oh, yeah, yeah. And I. But I just didn't get that early because my dad wasn't a turkey hunter. And then this is true story. People think I'm being hyperbolic, but it's true. We were on a. We were on a family, like, vacation thing. Over spring break, we stopped at a bass pro shop, and they were doing these, like, seminars, and there was a primo's pro staff. Guy wheeled out this tv. And I was a kid, so, like, oh, it's on the tv. And he plays a turkey hunt. And I was like, holy smokes, that looks wild. So I start when I'm at church on Sunday, I start, like, sourcing out people. I'm like, will you take me turkey hunting? Because, like, my dad was willing to do it, but my dad was like, I have no idea what I'm doing, you know? And thank the good Lord I found a guy still close friends with him to this day. A guy named Keith Polk. And Keith was.

[Seth Morris]

That sounds like a good turkey hunter.

[Doug Duran]

Oh, man.

[Seth Morris]

Keith Polk.

[Doug Duran]

Keith Polk, 100. Yeah. Yeah. Keith is man. Yeah. I probably owe that guy a lot, but he talked to my parents and were like, hey, you mind if I take lake turkey on over Mississippi youth weekend? And they were like, please take lake turkey hunting. It's all the kid talks about. And so he rolls up Saturday morning, the youth season takes me turkey hunting, and we end up shooting a bird. And I, like, literally, I've not stopped ever since. I still. I mean, I could swear.

[Seth Morris]

How old were you then?

[Doug Duran]

12. Yeah, I could. I can close my eyes and still picture that turkey strutting down that ridge. It was just burned into my brain. I get never. And I once. I remember thinking, like, because I was only. I was only 12. I remember shooting that turkey, and we're carrying them out of the woods, and I'm like, you're telling me I could have been doing this the whole other 11 years of my life? I just. And. And that led to everything else. Like, I got into bow hunting and really got into turkey hunting. And, yeah, it just. It all spurred turkey on, was the catalyst of all of it.

[Seth Morris]

Isn't that funny that you got turned on to turkey hunting, watching the primos video, then went on to make. How many primos videos did you work on? Probably dozens and dozens and dozens.

[Doug Duran]

I mean, I was there for, I mean, nine years and some change. Just. Just south of 10 years. I don't know, man. It was. Yeah, it's all my. What I tell people is, like, my whole life has been like, just these series of, like, how in the world did I even end up here? Kind of thing. But, yeah, I will Primos. And I remember the first time I turkey hunter with will was kind of funny. But I would. I would watch primo's videos. Like. Like I was watching game film, you know, trying to. Trying to drive. Like, what did he do? Because I told Will, like, oh, yeah, I told will one time. I mean, this was years ago. I said, will, I used to watch those videos, and I would listen to a, like, calling cadence, and then I would rewind it and listen to it over and over and over again and try to mimic it.

[Seth Morris]

Huh.

[Steve Rinella]

Get muscle memory? Yeah, yeah.

[Doug Duran]

Because, I mean, like, 10. I just. I didn't know what I was doing. And then even after I got that first bird with Keith, like, there was still a whole lot of, like, you got to put it together for yourself kind of thing.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah.

[Doug Duran]

But yeah, yeah, it was. I was like, Will, Primos was. And the whole Primo's crew, man, they were like, they might as well hung the moon for me.

[Seth Morris]

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[Seth Morris]

When you when you're working there and you get your check, what's it say? Primos on it?

[Doug Duran]

Yeah, it did. Yeah. Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

The thing I like about I've said it's for and I said to his face, one of the things I, I like Will, Will's a very good communicator.

[Doug Duran]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

But to, to, to my awareness, I've never heard him say a negative word. Man, he's just like about anybody.

[Doug Duran]

I'll tell you a story about Will. Like, he's so like you used to say. Like you hear people say there's people that want you to succeed, there's people that don't want you to succeed. Like or Will like goes over and above, over and beyond like wanting to people wanting people to succeed. And I had been at Primos for three or four years and been hunting with Will a lot. So we got to know him and, and he came by the office one day in the middle of the week and I saw him for like a minute, maybe two minutes just he was just in and out. And that weekend it was Saturday morning, my phone rings. It's Will. Not uncommon. And answer the phone. He's like, hey, I need some help over at the house. You mind coming over? Not uncommon. I'm like, yeah, sure. Right up there. He's not usually. If he called me, it was like something out in his yard. But he wasn't out in his yard. I was like, huh. So go knock on his door. And he's like, just standing in casual clothes. Come inside, get some coffee. And at this point, I'm like, oh, what did I do?

[Seth Morris]

I gotta fire you. He's gonna fire you like a man, he says.

[Doug Duran]

He says, man, get some coffee and go sit in the office. And so I sit in the office at coffee. I'm like, what in the world did I do? Like, my wheels are spinning. And he comes in there and he sits down and he says, lake, when I came in the office this week, I could tell something was bothering you. I don't know what it was. But you and me, we're going to sit here, we're going to talk about it till we figure it out. Because I don't like seeing you that way. That's just kind of duty is.

[Seth Morris]

What was it, though, dude?

[Doug Duran]

It was like a. It's like a. It was like a breakup or something like that. Something minuscule. But it just meant the world that he cared that much, you know?

[Seth Morris]

Yeah. You're married now. How long you been married?

[Doug Duran]

Three years in July.

[Seth Morris]

Kids?

[Doug Duran]

No kids. Two dogs.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah. That's the thing about Will. There's like. I've encountered a bunch of people like this. Well, I'm gonna return to my commencement address I gave the other day. The no Plan B address.

[Doug Duran]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

What I was talking about was, like, people trying to pick what the. Selecting your Plan A for now, pick a Plan A and kill the plan Bs, because you'll get seduced by your Plan B. It'll just be easier and you'll get. It'll seduce you. And I put it in terms of, like, cliff jumping and watching my daughter pick a real high cliff in Hawaii that she was going to jump off into the plunge pool at a waterfall. And then you could see in her mind just wishing she hadn't climbed out on that cliff. But there she is now.

[Doug Duran]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

And, like, most people get on the ledge and they quickly would go down and find another ledge and jump, but she just couldn't. She picked it, and there she was. And now she had to cope with the selection and how intimidating it was being up there. And I was talking about, there's people. When you're on your Plan A, Ledge. There's people that want you to come off that ledge bad, and there's people that want you to do it, and they want you to break your back when you hit the water.

[Doug Duran]

Yep.

[Seth Morris]

Do you follow me?

[Doug Duran]

Oh, 100.

[Seth Morris]

And that's the sense I get from him. Another dude that has that, like, he doesn't talk about it, but he has it, like, to unbelievable degree is Joe Rogan. You know, he gets into podcasting early and encourages all of his friends to start a podcast. He opens a comedy club in Austin. You'd think that if someone wanted to open a comedy club down the road on the street, you'd be like, damn it. He's like, awesome.

[Doug Duran]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

It's different, like, ways of viewing the world, man.

[Doug Duran]

And that's one of the biggest things I got from Will, man. Well, like, so this podcast, you know, like, it all kind of all started, like, I met, like, Clay, came down in Turkey on with me and Will for a few days, and then we just kind of kept going every spring and hunting other stuff. And Will and Clay became buddies. Clay and I became buddies. But when all this happened, we were working on, like, the first episode of Backwoods University, and it just so worked out. I was like, will would actually be a perfect guest on this. So I call Will and I tell him, you know, I don't just say, hey, I need to interview you. I tell him, hey, man, I got this opportunity, this new podcast gonna be on Clay's feed. And Will is, like, ecstatic not to be on the interview. He's just like, man, that's so great. And, like, just, like, cleared out. And he's pretty. Like, he stays busy, that guy, but, like, cleared out a time for me to come and make that happen. Just because he's. That's just how he is, man. He's like, how can I help push you up the hill?

[Seth Morris]

Yeah, that's the sense I got watching.

[Doug Duran]

That's how he is, man, with everybody, not just me. Like, he's just that kind of guy.

[Seth Morris]

Talk about the podcast, what it's going to be like.

[Doug Duran]

So backwards university, very wildlife biology based, but also, like, Clay, we were kind of putting together a list of, like, topics and episodes we would do. And I was like, clay, there's not a species of wildlife, because we're doing some episodes, just kind of like an overarching view of a certain species, and then we're doing some that's, like, getting more specific and, like, wildlife processes or whatever. And I was like, clay, there's not any of These that I can talk about where you can't mention the influence of humans on these animals. Positive or negative.

[Seth Morris]

Got it.

[Doug Duran]

But the influence is usually very strong one way or the other. Sometimes it's great, sometimes it's not so great, but. Yeah, that's what it's kind of focusing in on.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah. Nothing has escaped us.

[Doug Duran]

No, it's, it's man. I was talking to the quail biologist named James Martin and he was talking about some of the strongholds in the southeast and he was talking about like, he's talking about particular stronghold. I said, man, why, why was that was a habitat thing. Was it this, that and the other? He said that's where the railroad stopped.

[Seth Morris]

Oh, you're kidding me.

[Doug Duran]

Yeah, he's like, he's like if the, if the railroad would have kept going, the stronghold would have been somewhere else.

[Seth Morris]

We had an anthropologist on recently and we're talking about the Pleistocene extinctions. And he was saying there's a really good formula for places where megafauna like lar. There's a really good formula for places where large mammals continue to exist. There's never enough people there to get them all. And he starts like rattling off cases of like refugia.

[Doug Duran]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

Where things like managed to survive. It's like managed to survive because the human populace, it couldn't support a bit. No, it was more than that. It wasn't just happen chance. It was just places that weren't going to support a large human population at a certain time.

[Doug Duran]

It's, it's astounding, man. Like there's an episode that I'm working on right now that delves into the state of Mississippi because Mississippi is one of the last states to put in a formal game and fish agency. They've established laws. And that's when Leupold made his trip down there and he wrote, and he wrote a report in 1929 where he basically just goes over the status of all these game animals and it's astounding. Especially like now. The white tailed deer population in Mississippi now is like, like 1.5 million. Like our game agency is asking, they're imploring hunters like, please shoot more deer. We have too many. When Leupold was there in 1929, in his report it was, it was estimated we had 1200 deer in the entire state.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh my gosh.

[Seth Morris]

You've got to be kidding. It was that bad down there, huh?

[Steve Rinella]

Wow.

[Doug Duran]

It's, it's wild. And talking about like turkey hunting being the, like the epicenter of turkey hunting culture, which I would argue that it is, which I'm biased, but one of the first. Like, we established a game and fish Agency in 1932. One of the first things they started working on was wild turkeys. Because Leupold wrote in his report, he was like, y' all have wiped out almost all of your turkeys. He said, I can't. I'll butcher it. But it was like the upland stop. The turkeys left in the uplands are gone. The only thing you have left are in the swamps because. Because humans couldn't get to them.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah.

[Doug Duran]

But it's like going through it and, like, how bad. And it wasn't from. A lot of. It was during the Great, Great Depression, and people weren't. They're mainly just, this is how I feed my family. But again, it's just like, really trying to grasp how heavy of an influence we have. It's wild.

[Seth Morris]

What are the first episodes going to be?

[Doug Duran]

We've got one on bison, but bison in the eastern United States.

[Seth Morris]

Oh, yeah.

[Doug Duran]

Then we've got that one talk.

[Seth Morris]

Ted Franklin Blue.

[Doug Duran]

I didn't. We referenced his book a lot. I actually talked to guys named Jeremy French. He works for Dwayne Estes. The coolest part of that whole process is Jeremy took me to a property where they're doing a lot of prairie restoration, and I didn't know it. He said. He said, from the original Cumberland settlements, they digitized a bunch of the. Because they had mapped out the buffalo trails. And so there's a place on that property. I mean, it looks like someone drove a bulldozer through it. And he said, there's your bison trail. You can still see it.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah.

[Doug Duran]

And we walked down in there. I stood in, and it was crazy. But that was a fun episode. We're doing one on Bob, like quail. And then the one that I was just talking about, I referenced Leupold a lot. But the subject of the story is actually a woman named Fanny Cook, which, again, I'm biased, but I would argue she's one of the greatest conservationists to ever live because she was pretty much the first wildlife biologist in the state of Mississippi, and she fought to establish the Game and Fish Commission. There's. There's not, like, hard evidence of it, but there's reasonable evidence that she's the one that got Loophole to come down and make the report. She's pretty incredible woman.

[Seth Morris]

But have you. Has anybody in Mississippi ever gotten a full body mossy oak tattoo or real tree tattoo?

[Doug Duran]

Yes. Yes, there is.

[Seth Morris]

Because it's hot. Yeah. Y' all run around in that stuff all the time.

[Doug Duran]

Anyway, somebody, one time we were at a local sports show and like, primos used to have these logos. Like, they had like these little bitty individual animal logos. And this dude just runs up to the. The primo booth that he was like, check this out. And he pulls up his sleeve and he has the primo turkey logo on.

[Seth Morris]

His arm, but no full body sleeve camo. So you just hunt.

[Doug Duran]

That'd be a good idea.

[Seth Morris]

Just hunt the way God made you.

[Maggie Hudlow]

We should start selling temporary tattoos.

[Seth Morris]

So is your. Is backwards university gonna have, like, how. How far north will you allow yourself to go? Oh, I'm going like, you'll do Yankee stuff.

[Doug Duran]

Oh, 100. That's like. It's just been regional right now.

[Seth Morris]

Just because that's just where Clay's got, you know, he's got like, you know, Clay. I'll say stuff like, well, you know, people in the south are very interested in music. You know, I mean, people in the south, you know, they love their families. It's like every day he talks to me, he tells you something. I'm like, oh, we wouldn't know about that. You know, music is very important in southern culture. I'm like, you know. Ever heard of Motown? I don't know.

[Doug Duran]

Yeah, no, I've actually, while I've been up here, I've interviewed some grizzly folks, so. Yeah, yeah, we're not.

[Seth Morris]

So you're talking to Yankees? Yeah.

[Doug Duran]

Oh, yeah.

[Seth Morris]

Why?

[Doug Duran]

I'm. I'm trying to go continental wide.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah. Okay, good. Not good foreigners, but you will talk Yankees.

[Doug Duran]

Yeah, that's it.

[Steve Rinella]

No Canadians. Get out of here.

[Doug Duran]

Draw the line there and then how.

[Seth Morris]

What's the frequency?

[Doug Duran]

You're shooting for bi weekly right now? Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

Okay.

[Doug Duran]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

Good man. How long will an episode be, man?

[Doug Duran]

I think the first couple ones, anywhere between like 30 and 40 minutes.

[Seth Morris]

And you're going to hear interviews.

[Doug Duran]

It's basically like we end up landing on. It's kind of a bear grease format, just. Just condensed. Like the. The quail episode has Wilbur in it. And then a guy named Dr. Mark McConnell.

[Seth Morris]

Oh, yeah, because he's a big quail hunter, man.

[Doug Duran]

Again, such a. I've known will for over 10 years at this point, and when he was sharing, like. Because what I was going for is I wanted to get a scope from what happened to Bob White quail from a biologist perspective.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah.

[Doug Duran]

But then, like, Will, like, some of his first hunting experiences was hunting with his uncle when he was 8. And so, like, a real sense of what the culture was like. So you get kind of a balance. You get biology, but then you get hunting culture dimensions.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, for sure.

[Seth Morris]

Can I make a episode recommendation, please? I think you should go this. I'm dead serious.

[Doug Duran]

Okay.

[Seth Morris]

It'd be a lot of fun. I think you should go to Wisconsin, team up with Doug Dern, but he can't be all the way in it. But team up with Doug Dern and go around bars in southwest Wisconsin and interview people. Interview anyone at a bar that can tell you about what's wrong with deer management.

[Doug Duran]

That would be interesting.

[Steve Rinella]

It would be a really.

[Seth Morris]

I think it would be deeply entertaining and very informative.

[Doug Duran]

That would be interesting.

[Seth Morris]

You would get such a disparate view of the state of deer, man. Like, it doesn't need to be Wisconsin, but it needs to be, like, it needs to be someplace where there's a lot of factors at play, you know, like increased predation, where there's a lot of. A lot in the soup.

[Doug Duran]

Yeah, there's a lot.

[Seth Morris]

A lot of the stew, you know, like. Like, let's say you went to an area where you're kind of on the southern edge of. Of wolf expansion and you got CWD in the mix and whatever, and do, like, Dear biology according to dudes and bars.

[Maggie Hudlow]

That's a whole new podcast.

[Doug Duran]

You're kicking me down a whole line of thought because you could do the same thing. Like, again, like, southeast. If I went around to and was like, hey, man, what's going on with wild Turkeys? You would get such a wide spectrum. Oh, man, it's the fire ants.

[Seth Morris]

But I tell people that and I quit drinking.

[Doug Duran]

You would get such a widespread answers, man.

[Seth Morris]

The only bummer is I don't drink. I'd have to go in there. Like, I'm just gonna sit in there and drink water, hoping to come in. I'll be like, lakes in town. I'm gonna go down to the bar, just hang out. I need to get interviewed for this show, man.

[Maggie Hudlow]

Toasted in that one. He must have been just drinking straight.

[Seth Morris]

It's so funny because I was like, he's so high. I'm like, no, I'm not. Yeah, that'd be a good one. That is a good idea. It might work so good. You could do more. But yeah, just like, hey, man, what's. Like, if you went in and chill, don't go on a weekend. Don't go way late. Don't go mega late. You want the dudes that are in there.

[Doug Duran]

8:00Pm yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Seth Morris]

Post dinner, pre. Right?

[Steve Rinella]

The happy hour crowd. Yeah, yeah.

[Seth Morris]

Go and chill and be like, hey, man, I'm just trying to get. I'm just trying to get everybody's perspectives. I'd love to just. I'm trying to just get like, I don't want the agency guys. I don't want the government guys. I want to hear the guys on the ground.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, my God.

[Seth Morris]

The guys in the field.

[Steve Rinella]

That would be insane.

[Seth Morris]

The guys in the field leaning in the bar.

[Doug Duran]

The guys that were once in the field.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah. Like, what's going on, man? What's going on with Turkish cookies?

[Doug Duran]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

Non residents, wolves, blue collar biology residents. Poachers. Fishing game.

[Steve Rinella]

Man, that sounds like my average call with a landowner.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah, let's talk about that. Let's talk about what you do as a research tech. But hit me with the dates and everything. Lake Pickles, Backwoods University, June 6. Bear Grease. Podcast feedback.

[Corinne]

Tune in and video on YouTube.

[Seth Morris]

Learn all kinds of stuff about white wildlife.

[Doug Duran]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

Start with the quail.

[Doug Duran]

Starting with.

[Seth Morris]

Me and Krin are in hot water with the quail community. I don't know if you know this.

[Doug Duran]

I've.

[Seth Morris]

I've heard.

[Doug Duran]

I've heard.

[Corinne]

Why is that the quail community should listen to your two episodes?

[Seth Morris]

Because we did a thing and we had a guy on. It was a guy that knows what's wrong with quail. And. And there's a. It's a rich stew.

[Doug Duran]

I thought I talked to the biologist about it. Yeah, yeah, it's a. Yeah, I'm aware.

[Lake Pickle]

All the people wrote in from their bar stools to let us know.

[Seth Morris]

We had a guy. There's a. Just. There's a. An alarming decline in bobwhite quail numbers which has been going on for a long time across an enormous geographic area. We had a person on talking about his feelings about what's happening to quail in a relatively isolated geographic area and has a solution, Has a proposed solution that in some people's minds does not adequately address the root cause. And to hear him out is bad, right?

[Doug Duran]

Yeah, yeah. It pretty much sums it up.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Doug Duran]

I did learn. You want the first noted declines that they can find in the North America. You know when it was.

[Seth Morris]

You tell me where.

[Doug Duran]

No, when. Like when the first notable declines of.

[Seth Morris]

Bobwhite quail bar room declines or like.

[Doug Duran]

Decline declines from the biologists. Like.

[Seth Morris]

What'S the question again?

[Doug Duran]

When were the first noted declines?

[Steve Rinella]

First, like statistics. Yeah, yeah.

[Doug Duran]

1920, 1890.

[Steve Rinella]

Wow. Industrial Revolution.

[Doug Duran]

Yeah. Most people. Now, if you want to go back to the bar room side, it's like everyone normally says, 1966, but that's that. They started doing brood surveys in the 1960s, so that's why they say that.

[Maggie Hudlow]

So where does the data come from?

[Doug Duran]

I don't know. I'd have to go back and listen to that in schools or.

[Seth Morris]

You just learned this the other day.

[Doug Duran]

Yeah, yeah.

[Seth Morris]

Barstool biology. And they hope we don't get sued by barstool sports. No, it's Barbara.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah. He's a kind of an anti hunter.

[Doug Duran]

Is he?

[Seth Morris]

Yeah, I've always wanted to have him on Dave Portnoy.

[Doug Duran]

Oh, I mean, no, he is. I didn't know he's anti hunter. What about, like, barstool, outdoors and all that?

[Seth Morris]

Well, Portnoy is kind of like. I see. Like, I think he's kind of like waffles on the edge of humane society kind of stuff. I'd like to have mine if you're listening. Probably not.

[Maggie Hudlow]

Be weird if he was just.

[Steve Rinella]

They're ste. Like, Doug.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah, we'll get, like, if Dave comes on. If you come on, I'll buy you. I'll take you around.

[Corinne]

You can get all common ground in pizza.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah, I'll take you.

[Lake Pickle]

He probably hasn't done pizza reviews in Boseman.

[Seth Morris]

No, you can do like a whole. Dude, come on.

[Steve Rinella]

You know who loves pizza? People in the South.

[Doug Duran]

Do they? Southern folks. Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

They don't eat pizza down there.

[Doug Duran]

I don't know about Yankees, but Southern. Southern. The South. Yeah, they love it.

[Seth Morris]

You know you guys are on to. Is boiling them peanuts.

[Doug Duran]

Oh, man, I didn't even know that was unique to us until there was someone from out of town that was like boiled peanuts. I was like that. Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

I had no idea. I remember going to South Carolina and the guy I was with pulled over and get a hot, sopping wet, steamy bag.

[Maggie Hudlow]

They're so good.

[Seth Morris]

I was like, dude, that's good, man.

[Doug Duran]

So there's a fella, used to have. He had a setup, and you had to drive right past him if you're going to the local sporting goods store. He had his. His old pickup truck. He'd have him a little popup tent out there, and he'd be boiling peanuts with jalapenos in them.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh.

[Doug Duran]

And you pull up to him, you roll down the window, and he'd walk up to you and he'd say, you want a big fat bag or a little fat bag?

[Steve Rinella]

Did he wear a trench coat?

[Doug Duran]

Oh, no, he had. He had overalls on.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

All right. Old trapper Kate.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

Thanks for coming on. Man, I appreciate it.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. Thanks for the invite.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah. Well, I just. Like I said, I just want to talk to you because you like trapping.

[Steve Rinella]

Yep.

[Seth Morris]

But first, tell me, what do you do at Kansas State?

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, so I'm a. I'm a research technician. So doing out in the field, doing the. The down and dirty work for all the. All the research projects. And started on an elk survey when I first got into town. Moved over to flying squirrels.

[Seth Morris]

Really?

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

Is that a demotion?

[Steve Rinella]

You know, it depends who you ask. I think it was. It was cool. I mean, flying squirrels are cool.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah. Tell me something about flying squirrels. I don't really know much about them.

[Steve Rinella]

Few people do.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

But they love suet cakes. So that's how we would bait them in for the cameras.

[Seth Morris]

Got it.

[Steve Rinella]

Peanut butter suet cakes.

[Seth Morris]

So they'll eat meat.

[Steve Rinella]

Well, I guess that's an interesting.

[Seth Morris]

Well, no, in fact, I know they do because they'll turn up, they'll get onto Martin sets.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, yeah. So they like me. Yeah. I think all squirrels are kind of opportunistic omnivores in that way, but yeah, suetcakes. And we would do camera traps to try to survey them during the summer, and then sort of a nest box kind of set up to get colonies in the winter. And that's when you go in and tag them because they're all holed up together.

[Seth Morris]

Oh, really?

[Steve Rinella]

In these little nest boxes. And so, yeah, you just kind of sneak up to the box, cover the.

[Seth Morris]

Entrance and how many are in there?

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, gosh, there could be like five or six, I think.

[Seth Morris]

Oh, that's gotta be cute.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. Oh, my gosh, they are adorable, those big old eyes. But yeah. And then. And then I got moved over to the turkey project in September of 23, so I've been doing that. Doing that since then.

[Seth Morris]

And what's that looking at?

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, gosh, everything. So it's statewide, and we're looking at resource selection, just kind of general landscape scale. Where are they going? What are they like, what does it look like? They're preferentially kind of selecting for roost tree selection. Oh, yeah. Which is actually pretty interesting, seeing the. The difference between, like, the western side of the state just kind of across that longitudinal gradient.

[Seth Morris]

You mean in what and what types of trees?

[Steve Rinella]

They want to be in the height of the tree, the diameter of the tree, the species, like everything kind of there. So we're doing in that area.

[Seth Morris]

How apt is. How apt is a turkey to use the same tree two nights in a row?

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, gosh, it Depends on the region, because the farther west you go, the fewer their options are for, like, a suitable size and just anything that's like, that can reasonably hold.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

So they're. They're more. They have more roost fidelity in the west versus the East.

[Seth Morris]

That's, like, just observationally, that's been my finding.

[Steve Rinella]

Where.

[Seth Morris]

I mean, it's kind of obvious, but places where there's not any trees.

[Steve Rinella]

Yep.

[Seth Morris]

Or down in Sonora, Mexico, where there's just. The only possible roost tree is a sycamore grove and a canyon bottom. So, like, no kidding.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

Like, because within 10 miles, there's. It's just the sycamore group.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

And so they're like a magnet. But we hunted in Colorado this year and got kind of washed. Different groups. I mean, they would be. They would be 800 yards, 900 yards. These different groups every day. Like, no sense of going back to where they came from.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

But it's tons upon.

[Steve Rinella]

So many. Yeah. So many options. Yeah. So that's kind of. That is kind of what. What we're seeing there.

[Seth Morris]

The drift around.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. When they have, like, the. When you're. When you're in, like, the. The bigger kind of woodlots or bigger. Bigger creek bottoms, river bottoms in the east, they'll kind of move around a little bit on a rotation or just kind of have. They'll bust. Bust off into, like, different groups within one flock and kind of end up on different roosts each night.

[Seth Morris]

Do you guys go find out what killed them when they die?

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, that's impossible.

[Lake Pickle]

Oh, it is.

[Steve Rinella]

They get scavenged so hard so fast.

[Seth Morris]

Huh.

[Steve Rinella]

It's really hard to tell, like, what exactly got them.

[Seth Morris]

That's a tough one.

[Steve Rinella]

It's so hard. Same with the nests. Like, they get scavenged so fast that. Trying to pinpoint exactly why a nest failed or if it was actually predated or if it was just abandoned and then scavenged afterwards. Like, unless you're literally sitting there, like, 24, seven watching that nest, it's. It's almost impossible to tell. You can kind of tell, like, what ate the egg. Like, if the egg was eaten. Like, if you just find, like, eggshell, you can kind of tell what ate it.

[Seth Morris]

Okay.

[Steve Rinella]

But whether or not it was, like, the hen abandoned it first and then something else found it.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah, I got it.

[Steve Rinella]

After she got killed. And therefore she got killed, or she just. Some. We've noticed that they just. Sometimes they just walk away.

[Seth Morris]

Because what would cause them to do that?

[Steve Rinella]

We're not sure.

[Seth Morris]

They'll ditch it.

[Steve Rinella]

They'll just ditch it. Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

But you feel that they're like.

[Steve Rinella]

They'll lay like a couple eggs and then just ditch it. Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

Too stressful or. Who knows?

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, who knows? Yeah, it's. It's interesting, but. Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

I never knew. I didn't realize that the forensics is tough on turkeys.

[Steve Rinella]

It is so tough. I mean, they're like, they're such a nice little snack for just about anything that, you know, if they're out there longer than 24 hours before you get there, the odds of something finding. Finding the. The body.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah. Because you show up and some possum is sitting there that doesn't tell you what happened.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. You don't kill it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So that's why, like, a lot of studies, people are like, wanting to put cameras on the nest, but just like, having that camera there and the smell of the camera and stuff is that. That increases the. The risk of predation because a lot of predators will actually key in on that little bit of human scent. Like, they'll key in on the scent of, like, another predator in that, like, one specific spot. And they, they like, actually learn, like, okay, there's. There's something there. And so you're increasing the risk of predation on this nest by putting a camera there. But that's really the only way to know exactly what happened. So it's. We're kind of stuck in a. A dead zone there. Yeah. Not really being able to exactly say what happened.

[Seth Morris]

I've talked to guys that, that work on collaring studies where they're collaring, you know, big game animals with big visible collars.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

That are probably hard to get used to.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

And it's. I mean, they factor in. And it's an open question, but once you do that, how accurate is the mortality study?

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

Because when something's chasing or whatever or they recognize, like something's wrong with something different.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

You know, I mean, it's got, like, however they read that collar.

[Steve Rinella]

Yep. Yeah. So we have on the hens that we're. We're tagging, we have backpack transmitters and they're, you know, they're slick and they're. They're black. Like, they're not. They're not obvious, but you have to be careful about, like, how it affects the movement of that hen. Like, you have to make sure she has full extension of her wings. Like, it's not. You only. Only put them on hens that are hefty enough. Like, it can't be over a Certain percent of their body weight. Otherwise like it's going to impact their ability to get up in a roost and it's just going to wear on him like having that walking around with that weight. But we also, we also ditch all the data from anything that dies within two weeks of capture. So that like if it's a mortality that could be directly related to either capture stress or like something to do with the transmitter, like.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah, that kind of. Well, yeah, yeah, that starts to address what I'm getting at, then you could just never get used to it.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, yeah. So that's, that's typical with any kind of coloring, Any kind of tagging study is like if you have a mortality within a certain window of time after the capture, you just omit it from the data because it's you, you just write it off as a capture related mortality.

[Seth Morris]

Like you freaked it out too bad or.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, they can get like capture myopathy just like their, their muscles just melt basically from the stress. Yeah. And they just kind of, they just kind of can't move anymore.

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[Seth Morris]

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[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

And put a camera on it and man, do you remember? Did you. Has anybody else seen this video?

[Lake Pickle]

I don't think I have.

[Seth Morris]

I don't know what it was. It was like 12 hours later, there's a coyote standing there eating all those eggs right away.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, yeah. And so part of this, part of this study is a wide scale camera, wide scale camera survey for predators. And this is like not related to the turkey location. So we're just based on the capture locations, we're doing like a broad kind of placement, random placement of cameras around the capture sites just to kind of see what the predator communities are in those areas.

[Seth Morris]

Hanging out.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, yeah. And then we'll try to kind of see if there's a correlation between what the predator communities look like and what happened to those, like what kind of patterns we saw in the turkeys in those areas. But I noticed going through, I mean, we have 600 plus camera sites per survey season and we're on our third now. So there's, I mean over 500,000 photos at this point. And I noticed going through those photos that immediately after the cameras would be deployed, like if there was gonna be a bobcat on that camera, it was usually like that night.

[Seth Morris]

Like, what is that?

[Steve Rinella]

They just smell.

[Seth Morris]

Why is it not repelling them?

[Steve Rinella]

Their cats are, cats especially are so curious. Like coyotes are a little more wary. And this is actually a big thing with trapping, like cat trapping versus coyote trapping. You can be really flashy with cats. And they'll, they'll come in because they, they're more prone to just investigate what's going on here. They have a lot more confidence.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

So when they like smell that human scent in a random area that they don't normally smell it, like, they come. Right, right.

[Seth Morris]

Some association with humans and food.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. Or they're just like, what's going on? Like, just curious. Yeah. So I noticed that, like, really quickly, I'm like the first thing on most of these cameras, like, if there's going to be. If there's a cat on it, it's going to be like the first thing that's on there is really interesting.

[Seth Morris]

Have you ever had the ethical issue of you got all these turkeys running around? How. How do you view that it would influence your hunting activities?

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, my God. I, I don't pay attention to it at all. Like, I, I have. I did so much turkey hunting before I got on this project that I like, already had spots picked out and stuff on public to where, you know, it's far removed from anywhere we have turkeys tagged. And I have like, no desire to go anywhere near those tag turkeys.

[Seth Morris]

Yep.

[Steve Rinella]

So, yeah, I just, I, I hunt the spots that I found, you know, way before I got involved. No insider trading.

[Seth Morris]

Yep. I got, I got a friend that worked on. He's worked on some wolf collaring project. He's a pilot.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

He has no access to the data, but he's a pilot for the thing and. But he's also a wolf trapper.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

And he says, man, I go the other direction.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

Because I don't even have access. But just what people will say.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

Because I don't. Anything that happened when I worked on that, I go the other way because. Just perception.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. And just for me, like, I wouldn't, I would be kind of bummed, like, if I shot a tom and it had a tag on it that I'm like, I could have tagged that tom for sure. Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

You know what's puzzling is we. I've brought this up a bunch of times over the years that, like, like, would you shoot a. If you saw a collared whitetail, would you want to shoot a collared deer?

[Steve Rinella]

Being like where I am now, like actually involved in the kind of wildlife tagging business.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

I don't, I, I would say I don't really have a desire like that would probably make me less likely to want to shoot that one. Which I know is. You're not supposed to do that for the science of it. But, like, I definitely am not more inclined to shoot a tagged animal.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah. Which is which people bring up is like, why it's so coveted to get a tagged duck.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

Or a tagged goose. But people don't want some collar on a deer.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

It's, like, hard to explain, man, because I feel like the deer's been not corrupted, but he's like. He's lost his.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

He's lost his.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

His wild juju, you know?

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. Yeah. You have the image in your head of some. Someone, like, tackling this deer.

[Seth Morris]

It just feels like you're not. You're not like, the first person on the scene. You know, there's been some other person.

[Steve Rinella]

Monkeying, you know, like, there's not a lot of. There's at least one bit of mystery in that deer's life that is like, no, more like you're like, I know at least one thing that happened.

[Seth Morris]

He got. Man 1. Do you guys ever have. Are with all your collaring projects or tagging projects, do you ever have. Get immortality and then. Or get whatever and go there and be like, someone shot this thing. Like, someone poached the turkey, you know.

[Steve Rinella]

I don't think we've had that issue yet.

[Seth Morris]

Like, it turns up. I remember talking to a guy that was in a c. Or in a turkey. You don't call it coloring. What do you call it? Tagging.

[Steve Rinella]

I don't know. Well, we use an unscientific term of transmittering.

[Seth Morris]

Okay. His transmitter turkey wound up in the middle of a wood stack, missing. It's missing its breasts. Missing its breastplate.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. There's a clue.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah. Which felt very suspicious.

[Steve Rinella]

Probably figure out what happened to it.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah. They, like, buried it in their own wood pile.

[Doug Duran]

The fan's gone. The.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

What killed this guy? I wonder.

[Seth Morris]

I feel like they were telling me that it was at that time. I feel like they were telling me it was glued onto it. Glued into the feathers. Is that not right?

[Steve Rinella]

That's not right. If that happened, that was not a good idea.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah. I feel like they were super gluing, so they were super gluing it into its feathers.

[Steve Rinella]

When was this? How long ago?

[Seth Morris]

When did I have this conversation? Over 10 years ago.

[Steve Rinella]

I wonder he's still alive. I don't know if that was. For what it's worth, I want to say that that was never supposed to be the standard for. For putting transmitters on you. We do use super glue, but. We use super glue, so we use marine shock cord to make like the.

[Maggie Hudlow]

It's.

[Steve Rinella]

It's kind of like a. It's almost like a. If a bungee and paracord. Made a baby.

[Seth Morris]

I got you. I know what you're talking about.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

What do you call it? Marine.

[Steve Rinella]

Marine shot cord. Just marine grade. So it can stand up to the weather and everything. So we use that to make the, make like the little backpack straps. And then when we knot it, use like a surgical knot to tie it off. Then we'll put super glue on that knot. But we put like a piece of cardboard underneath so that none of the super glue gets on the feathers. Because you don't want that.

[Seth Morris]

Understood.

[Steve Rinella]

And you do not want to glue the transmitter to the bird.

[Seth Morris]

Well, this might have been the pioneering days of Turkey.

[Steve Rinella]

Maybe.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

That's why I'm like, you know, I don't know, maybe we got to this, this strategy because the old one, you know, of super gluing them directly to the bird turned out to not be a great idea.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

But might be a band.

[Seth Morris]

So what's your like? Well, I want to get into your trapping business too. But what, how does, how's your career? How'd your career path go and what happens to you next?

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, so I, I always knew I was going to go into some kind of science and some kind of like biological science. I was always super interested in the outdoors and like insects and birds and all kinds of things like that was just always my jam. And so I knew when it came time to think about, okay, what kind of degree do I want to get? I was like slam dunk, some kind of wildlife biology, environmental science, something like that. So I graduated in December of 21 with a Wildlife Biology degree. Immediately went into a TA job for that program, which was just like a temporary thing. There's a, I went to NC State. There's a mandatory summer program for all of the wildlife biology folks. And it's all, it's six weeks in the field. You go and do like hands on IDs and tagging and all kinds of stuff. It's super cool. So that was my first job out of undergrad. Was that TA job. Then I moved to Kansas and found my way into the, the wildlife, the wildlife departments there. And that's when I got into the elk. The elk.

[Seth Morris]

And that's just like a salary job. Full time salary job.

[Steve Rinella]

This is hourly. Yeah, most, most tech jobs are hourly. But you know, it's, it's like always just 40 hour. You just put in 40 hours a.

[Seth Morris]

Week and that's what you're still doing now.

[Steve Rinella]

Yes.

[Seth Morris]

And then what happens next?

[Steve Rinella]

Ideally, I would absolutely love to turn trapping somehow into A full time business of like trapping, fur handling, taxidermy at least. Like I've tried to dabble in like actual mounts and stuff. I still have a lot to learn there. But I had a dermisted colony. I just moved really recently, so I don't have it set up again yet. But I had a dermisted colony and that was like, like a really good kind of side gig to run was skull cleaning.

[Seth Morris]

Sure.

[Steve Rinella]

And for my own skulls that I got from, from trapping and everything, I, I sell, sell all those. So I would just, you know, run them through the Beatles and, and sell those.

[Seth Morris]

You don't have it now.

[Steve Rinella]

Now I got to get it started back up again. I don't have like a great place to set up, you know. You know how they smell. Oh my God, the dermisid colonies.

[Seth Morris]

So nothing. It's like nothing you've ever smelled.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, yeah.

[Seth Morris]

There's probably like things, little tricks you can do.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh yeah.

[Seth Morris]

But I've been to some. They're just horrific.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. If you have like the right ventilation system, that's the biggest thing. Like you have to have it really well ventilated.

[Seth Morris]

They create their own kind of funk.

[Steve Rinella]

Yes. And God forbid you get flies in it. Oh, somehow the like the Beatles don't smell that bad if you haven't ventilated. Right. But if maggots get in there, I don't know what it is about a maggot that they just smell so much worse.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah. And well, they probably come in on people's just bringing in maggots.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, that's the problem. And like you can't really kill a mat. Like you can freeze the skulls like indefinitely and it feels like the second you thought the maggots still just pop out, like it just doesn't kill them. So yeah, you got to be careful about like not leaving skulls out where they're gonna get flies on them. And, and you got to be careful about the. Because I, I did, I took in, I took in a skull at some point that had been left out where it got. Got maggots in it and it just destroyed the colony.

[Seth Morris]

Oh really? That was it.

[Steve Rinella]

I mean you just got. Yeah, you just gotta ditch it and start it, start fresh.

[Seth Morris]

You have to kill all those thousands of lives.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Seth Morris]

Let's say I got a hypothetical for you. Let's say you're at Meat Eater Trivia and the answer to the question is dermested. Okay. And, and someone, and you're the judge and someone writes dermifted.

[Steve Rinella]

Would you give it to him dermifted. I probably would.

[Lake Pickle]

It's a good thing you're not the judge then.

[Seth Morris]

Do not gotta revisit, like, what else.

[Steve Rinella]

What else could you be going for? Right.

[Seth Morris]

Exactly my point.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. I'm guessing that you said you're mifted.

[Seth Morris]

That was me. Yeah. And I did not get it.

[Steve Rinella]

You're asking for a friend did not get it. Yeah, that's. I. I call on that one that.

[Seth Morris]

You'Re changing your answer.

[Steve Rinella]

No, no, no, no, no. I call. I'm not giving it to you.

[Seth Morris]

Good.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

All right, so. So get me to. How'd you get into trapping?

[Steve Rinella]

So.

[Seth Morris]

Because there's not a lot of young trappers. No, there's not a lot of female trappers.

[Steve Rinella]

Yes. And not a lot of first generation trappers.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah. I remember a startling statistic from Michigan. I never looked to see if it's true, but the guy that told me would know. He's like, he was telling me that. And this, this is some years ago, he said the. Every year, the average age of a trapper in Michigan goes up by a year. A year?

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

Like, the more you think about that dude, it's like stunning.

[Steve Rinella]

Yes. Yeah. So I. I just like, never really hit a limit with what I want to do in the outdoors. Like, I've taught myself pretty much everything. I'm kind of in the same boat as lake where, you know, my dad was like a casual deer hunter and. But really into fishing and my mom as well. So I grew up fishing a ton and I was just obsessed with it. And my dad would go out, you know, a couple times, a couple times a season, go walk around. He literally would just go for a hike with a gun and just hope he bumped into something.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah. Like deer hunt.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. So he didn't even. He didn't get his first. His first deer until I was. I want to say I was like six or something. And my mom, like, wouldn't let me go anywhere. She's like, don't look, don't look. I don't want it. Like, keep the meat away. Like, don't. I don't want her seeing this.

[Seth Morris]

She thought it traumatized you.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. She herself was kind of like, I don't like this. But yeah, the more, the more and more I got into fishing, the more I was like, I just wanted something else. And the natural next step was like, oh, you know, what about hunting? And my dad's like, I don't know, kind of same with you in the turkey hunting. Like, my dad's like, I don't know what I'm doing. So he took me to an outfitter, got my first deer. He was like, super nervous that I was going to be turned off when I shot my first dealer. I was going to have like a emotional breakdown or something. But I was so stoked, I shot two on my first. My first hunt. The last, like, afternoon after sitting in like cold rain the whole time.

[Seth Morris]

Where did he take you to go on a guided deer hunt?

[Steve Rinella]

Northeastern North Carolina. Yeah. Yeah. So this was. So I was actually born in New Jersey, Lived there until I was six. So we hunted or we fished a lot up north. Did a lot of fishing up in, like, upstate New York and stuff. Just worm and bobber.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Move down to North Carolina and we could not get on fish to save our lives. Like, we could not catch a thing.

[Seth Morris]

Like your old tricks weren't working?

[Steve Rinella]

No, I mean, there was no trick, like, up north. I mean, we would just take any kind of live bait and chuck it in there and you'd catch like a nice molly or yellow perch or something. Like there was just nothing to it.

[Seth Morris]

Got it.

[Steve Rinella]

And yeah, get down to North Carolina. It's this, like muddy ass water, like sitting there with like minnows and stuff. We're like, why can't we catch anything? And everybody was kind of giving up. Like, my parents were like, not interested anymore. My dad's like, I think I'm gonna sell the boat. And I was like, this can't happen. Like, I just loved it so much. And so I was like, I gotta figure this out. And that's when I got into bass fishing because I was. I was like researching, you know, what kind of fishing is good around here and largemouth bass. So then I started learning how to fish artificial, learned how to use a bait caster, and ended up getting really into that. And then that was what led me into, like, when I got super into bass fishing, I was like, there's got to be something I can do, you know, in the. In the winter when, like, bass fishing's not like, super fun. And I know someone might be making a face at that because there are a lot of people that fish bass in the winter out there and think.

[Seth Morris]

There'S nothing to say that someone's not gonna. Just someone's not gonna disagree.

[Steve Rinella]

But for me, I was like, I love fishing, like, the weed bass beds in the summer. That was my thing. And I'm like, I want something to do in the winter, fall and winter. So it just seemed like if I like fishing so much, I probably will like, hunting. And so got into hunting. And then when I kind of got. Got my feet under myself with hunting, then I started to find myself being like, okay, but what about. What about, like, after deer season and before turkey season?

[Seth Morris]

February problem?

[Steve Rinella]

Yes, exactly. I was. I'm sitting there like, you know, I can go shed hunting. Go to just hike around. I'm like, it's just not really scratching that itch for me. And I actually watched the beaver trapping episode, the Wyoming beaver trapping episode, and I was like, that was a long time ago. Yeah. Yeah. I was like, I wonder. And this. This creek bottom that I had been hunting on public for. For deer for several years, this beautiful swamp bottom full of beavers. And I was like, that seems like a very easy, like, first step is like, just trying to snare from a beaver in that creek. I'm like, I know it like the back of my hand. Like, I can get in, get out pretty easily. Snares are, like, a super straightforward thing to use. They were legal there only for beaver, but. Yeah. So I went in beginning of January, and this was in 2021. I went in, made all my sets. Two nights later, got my first beaver with a snare. With a snare. And it was. It was just like. It just clicked. I was like, this is it. Like, this is the thing. It just felt so natural. And so like, there was like a. It was like a kind of a puzzle that hunting doesn't really give you.

[Seth Morris]

Yep, yep.

[Steve Rinella]

And it was like, exactly what I'd been craving. So I. I went so hard that season, I think I ended up getting 11 beavers out of that little creek bottom. I got a couple otter, which is awesome.

[Seth Morris]

And snares.

[Steve Rinella]

No. So you're not allowed to use snares for otters there. I started using three 30s after I got kind of confident with. Because at first when I was looking at a 330, I was like, oh, that's terrifying. Like, my arms are.

[Seth Morris]

Break your wrist.

[Steve Rinella]

So once I got a little more comfortable, I got some 330s and I put those out, and so I got a couple otter. And then kind of towards the end of the season, I started trying raccoon, too, because there's so many raccoons. Any creek bottoms full of raccoon.

[Seth Morris]

What'd you do with your otters?

[Steve Rinella]

I put. I just. Just skinned them out. I actually have all of the. I've only gotten three otters because, you know it. That place was stacked with them. Kansas is not.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

So I wasn't in North Carolina very long Before I moved to Kansas and I only got three and I just love otters so much. I'm like, I couldn't let go of them. So I have all three of those pelts up on my wall. Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

And now you got. Then you got in like pretty sophisticated. Like bobcats and stuff.

[Steve Rinella]

Yes.

[Seth Morris]

Like top tier, top tier traffic happen.

[Steve Rinella]

Yes. Which is amazing. That was like super unexpected to me. I mean I knew everyone always says, like, if you can catch a coyote, you can catch a cat. Like, cats are just so much more confident and so much more predictable really.

[Seth Morris]

And so much more. Not as many of them running around.

[Steve Rinella]

Well, yes, that is. Yeah. So like I'm always getting more numbers of coyotes than cats. Like if I'm running a pretty even line. But like if I find a cat trap, it's like I'm going to get that cat. Like you can, you can just be so much more confident if you like if you have the right.

[Seth Morris]

Within how many nights you find a cat track in Kansas? Within how many nights he's going to. You're going to have them.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, that's tough. I would say within a week because they do kind of run. They usually run kind of a loop within their territory. Same with coyotes. So like if I see like super fresh sign, I'm like, okay, maybe I'm like a little bit behind here and it's going to take. Take you know, four or five nights before that cat comes back around.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah. But he's gonna come and walk in that spot.

[Steve Rinella]

Yep, he's gonna come right back through there and he is going to clue in on any kind of new smell, anything in there. And yeah. And like you can put out. Cats are one of the few things that you can like just drop a cage right there and they're just like, looks good to me and just walk right in. And a lot of times, like, even when the cage closes on them, they're like like, oh well. And they'll just eat the rest of the bait and they'll just lay down. Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

So were you selling your bobcats this year? So on the open market or do you everything you sell yourself, you sell yourself to your own customers?

[Steve Rinella]

No. So if I get like a really, really nice cat, I prefer to sell them frozen whole to taxidermy trade.

[Seth Morris]

And they care about whether it's nice?

[Steve Rinella]

Yes, well, they care about the spotting. That's really the big thing. So it's not, it's not really the length of the fur when you're selling to taxidermy market. It's the, the. The pattern and the coloration.

[Seth Morris]

They want nice spots.

[Steve Rinella]

They want nice.

[Seth Morris]

Not just the belly, but the body.

[Steve Rinella]

The body? Yeah. Like, you can have a super plain belly, but if it's got like awesome spots and like the rosettes and stuff down its sides and its back, like, that's because they want something that's going to be. They're usually buying these to make competition mounts. And so they want something that's like, really striking, like super eye catching and even like kittens. A lot of times, like kittens are, are really hot on the market.

[Seth Morris]

What?

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, if, like, they'll, they'll sell so fast and you can get a decent chunk of change for them because it's like a. If you can get a kitten mount, like, really, really nice. Super realistic. It's so good in a competition.

[Seth Morris]

You know, when I was growing up, the. The worst thing you could do to an otter is touch it with a knife.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

The taxidermy trade was.

[Steve Rinella]

Yep.

[Seth Morris]

Hot form.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. It still is.

[Seth Morris]

And it'd be like, it'd be way more money.

[Steve Rinella]

Yep. Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

It wasn't even like, it was just. It was a completely separate deal.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

Did you have that, like, did you sell stuff, Seth to tax?

[Lake Pickle]

I never did, no. But I knew people who did. Like, every once in a while someone would catch like a black coyote or a black red fox.

[Steve Rinella]

Yep.

[Lake Pickle]

Those typically went to taxidermy.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah. It's funny. You put all that work into like you can put all that work into an otter.

[Steve Rinella]

Yep.

[Seth Morris]

Flash it, stretch it.

[Steve Rinella]

Yep.

[Seth Morris]

25 bucks, freeze it and bring it to a tax service. 100 bucks.

[Steve Rinella]

Yep.

[Seth Morris]

And that's without calling around. That's just like, they don't even know. I never got. With the Internet, you could probably get pretty targeted.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. Facebook, there's.

[Seth Morris]

There's a guy that really wants it.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. There's all kinds of trapper to taxiderms. You can start like a bidding war for like if you get something really awesome and you put it in one of these like trapper to taxidermist Facebook groups.

[Seth Morris]

Oh, really?

[Steve Rinella]

Like, yeah. You could start a bidding war on some of that stuff if your day.

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[Seth Morris]

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[Steve Rinella]

No, I don't.

[Seth Morris]

I've never divorced from the market.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, I, I, I do my own thing. I, I get everything dried sent off to the tannery and I sell it in my Etsy store.

[Seth Morris]

What tannery do you use?

[Steve Rinella]

Sleepy Creek in Iowa. They're, they're kind of, kind of new, but they do a fantastic job and really good pricing.

[Seth Morris]

Do you ever use Moyle Minka Tanner?

[Steve Rinella]

I haven't. Yeah, I went right to Sleepy Creek because they're, they have very, very competitive pricing and I like that.

[Seth Morris]

All right, good.

[Steve Rinella]

I'm in it for the profit margins.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah. So everything you catch, you, you sell wall hangers, skulls.

[Steve Rinella]

Yep.

[Seth Morris]

And you, you have enough of an outlet where you never get excess that you Got to go dump into the market.

[Steve Rinella]

Nope. No. Yeah, because I'm, I'm trapping all on public. I'm doing it in my very limited free time outside of work. So I, I can only run like a dozen sets at a time.

[Seth Morris]

That's still fun as hell.

[Steve Rinella]

So much fun.

[Seth Morris]

I'm jealous.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. So much fun. And. Yeah. So every catch to me is like, it's a big deal. And I don't, I don't usually get into. If I get into double digits on any one species, that's like a really solid year. So it's nothing I can't handle myself.

[Seth Morris]

So even right now, like, the way cat prices got kind of crazy this year and some people think that they overbought. I don't know why. For some weird ass reason, I follow fur markets very closely. I'll never understand.

[Steve Rinella]

There's so much nuance. Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

It's a hobby of mine.

[Steve Rinella]

It's like the stock market.

[Seth Morris]

Yes. Well, no, I could see that because you could. But there's like a relevance argument to the stock market. But for me to follow fur prices, just like, it makes zero sense. I'm just into it. Anyways. There's suspicion.

[Steve Rinella]

Uhhuh.

[Seth Morris]

That people overbought.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

I guess, like overpaid on cats, but cats got crazy, so. But even then you can still do better. I don't want you to give all your trade secrets. You can. Even with crazy cat prices, you can still do better. Not selling in the cat market.

[Steve Rinella]

I would say if you're not in one of like the high desert kind of states.

[Seth Morris]

Oh.

[Steve Rinella]

Where they have like that crazy long fur, big white belly, nice spots. Like Kansas cats were like a little too far east.

[Seth Morris]

Like a middle tier cat.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. But amazing spots on a lot of them. Like whenever someone says, oh, the cats here aren't spotted like that. That's not that, that's bullshit. Because they're, they're out there. Like, it might be different percentages of ones that are super spotted, but like everywhere has spotted cats in there. And part of the reason why I know that for certain is running this statewide camera survey.

[Seth Morris]

Oh.

[Steve Rinella]

The number of just like unbelievably spotted cats that I'm seeing on these cameras, like, it's a pretty even mix of like the really like, sandy kind of plain ones and super spotted ones. And like almost everyone I talk to, like, when I catch a super spotted cat, they're like, oh, man, that's crazy for around here. Like, we don't get them like that. And I'm like, they're there. Yeah, they're there.

[Seth Morris]

That's making me just irritated, man.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

When I get buried in Twin Lakes Cemetery, my grave's gonna say, he should have been a cat trapper.

[Steve Rinella]

It's not too late. They're. They're straightforward, if you can find. I got.

[Seth Morris]

I've got a couple, but I mean, like, really just doing it all the time, all day.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, God. I am pretty jealous of, like the high desert trappers that are just like. It hits that certain date of the season and they get up in the mountains and they don't come down for like a month, month and a half.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

With like a whole truckloaded, just beautiful. Like 800 cats. But yeah, for me, like, you've got.

[Seth Morris]

Some nice looking cats. I know an old trapper, Kate.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, I know. I've been. I feel very fortunate to have gotten the ones that I have. They're beautiful. But those are. Those are taxidermy market cats. Those are not fur market cats. I. I don't think I've gotten. I haven't gotten one yet that I was like, oh, that would do really well on the fur market. They just don't have the belly for it.

[Seth Morris]

So tell people where. How do they go find your market?

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, yeah. So I'm on Etsy Little Shop of Furs is my shop name.

[Seth Morris]

So cute.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

Old trapper. Old Trapper Kate's Little Shop of Furs.

[Steve Rinella]

There you go.

[Seth Morris]

And you got. So you got nothing like, no sewn goods.

[Steve Rinella]

I do sometimes.

[Seth Morris]

Okay.

[Steve Rinella]

I. I've just kind of fallen behind in that since I started the turkey project. It's a lot to keep up with, so I haven't done quite as much like pillow making and stuff, but I do have many unfinished pillows that once this survey season, once the summer season kind of dies down a little bit, I'm gonna get. Yeah. And once my furs come back from this season, because I have a. A big. A big shipment that needs to go out. I have two more beaver pelts of flesh, and I want to send it out all in one shot. So I'm waiting, waiting.

[Seth Morris]

So you're gonna do some more beaver pillows and stuff?

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And I, I got. I'm. I'm torn because I do want to make myself a blanket, and so I don't. I'm not sure how many beavers I want to get.

[Seth Morris]

You see me and Seth. Beaver blankets.

[Steve Rinella]

I have. I haven't seen. I've seen pictures.

[Seth Morris]

Oh.

[Steve Rinella]

But, yeah. Yeah.

[Lake Pickle]

My most favorite thing I own, I think.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. Oh, My gosh.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah. My wife is, like, largely indifferent. I mean, when I'm gone hunting, she doesn't know where I'm at or what I'm hunting for kind of things, you know, largely indifferent. When I. But the beaver blanket that she's like, that's badass.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah. Like, all the things, anything I've ever brought home. And I just got her a full muscle musk muskrat bomber jacket, which she. I got her at the end of the season, but she likes it. But like, the beaver blanket, she's like, like work of art.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

You know, loves it.

[Steve Rinella]

Just amazing.

[Seth Morris]

The only thing I never have to, because otherwise she'll take. A lot of times she'll take my stuff, like put it somewhere.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. Squirrel it away.

[Seth Morris]

But she just squares the beaver blanket out and lays it out.

[Steve Rinella]

That's awesome.

[Seth Morris]

It was. It was a good. It was a good call, you know? It's beautiful. Is it like, how many people? Because we did. Me and Seth had 50 beavers.

[Lake Pickle]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, wow.

[Maggie Hudlow]

Is that one year?

[Seth Morris]

I don't know. It was during COVID man. We were just cranking on.

[Lake Pickle]

We got a lot of beavers during.

[Seth Morris]

COVID It might have been like a fall. It might have been like. No, I wish. The pandemic.

[Steve Rinella]

It was amazing, dude.

[Corinne]

I was two years of, like, hunkering down.

[Doug Duran]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

So I was still in. I was still in school at the time, and all the classes went online and I'm like, I cannot sit in front of my.

[Maggie Hudlow]

Dude.

[Steve Rinella]

I would. I would take my phone because I'm like, I have to just, like, be in the zoom call. Like, I can't just be. Not there all the time, but I would put it on. On zoom on my phone and tuck my phone into my waiters, and I'd just be out there beaver trapping the whole time while my lectures going. And they'd, like, kick us into, like, little groups to do some kind of. Some kind of like, little, like, side assignment. And I'm like, hey, guys, I'm a little indisposed right now. You're going to have to do this by yourselves.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah, it was all the. The. All the. All the bad parts not withstanding. There were aspects of it of, like, a lot of camping, a lot of beaver trapping.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

Anyways, we had 50 and we, like, kept some primo. We kept some premiere ones, had those two blankets made and still had a lot left over. And those are big.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Lake Pickle]

I don't know how many went into one.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, I want to see.

[Doug Duran]

That was going to Be my question. Beaver amount per blanket.

[Steve Rinella]

I can tell you on this one blanket, obviously. Do you guys have, like, throw blankets or is it like a comforter?

[Seth Morris]

Full blanket.

[Steve Rinella]

Okay.

[Seth Morris]

No, no, no. They're like. They're six feet by six by five maybe. I don't know. Big. Yeah, six by six.

[Lake Pickle]

And they're like strip. It's like strips.

[Seth Morris]

He let them all out. You know what that means when you let them out? No, you cut them. You cut them so that one beaver makes a big long piece.

[Steve Rinella]

Gotcha.

[Seth Morris]

And then there's like. There's literally miles. There's miles of thread head.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. Wow.

[Seth Morris]

Because you have less scenes. No, it's like he explained it on the phone. I didn't. I was doing one of those things that I try not to do.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. Like you go in like a spiral.

[Corinne]

Do you spiral it?

[Seth Morris]

Microphone.

[Corinne]

Do you spiral it?

[Seth Morris]

He told me. And I did the thing I don't like to do where I acted like I understood.

[Corinne]

Not do that you've been doing.

[Seth Morris]

So in my mind, I'm like. I can't picture it. It's a common thing in furs. What it does is you. Gives you. It's very labor intensive, but you take a wide. You take a wide fur and it makes it that you can. That you then sew it together and it gives you a big long strip.

[Corinne]

You are sewing.

[Seth Morris]

You're making these like. You're making like a type of panel missing. Yeah. And the panels are very long and homogeneous. So you wind up these long, homogeneous panels.

[Corinne]

Okay.

[Seth Morris]

So then you can line the furs out. And let's say they're not uniform like every animal's. You know, they're all different. But you kind of let you arrange them where maybe there's like a reddish.

[Steve Rinella]

You take your red color gradient and.

[Seth Morris]

The reddish around the edge, and it has a gradual fade.

[Corinne]

Okay.

[Seth Morris]

To a dark. And then it'll gradually fade the other way. If they. I think if they were all exactly the same. Like, that's the thing with ranch mink. Why ranch mink became a thing is like every bank's huge and every mink's the same.

[Corinne]

Okay.

[Seth Morris]

And you don't have the variability to deal with, but it's a way to, like, make big, long panels that are.

[Corinne]

Homogeneously colored, but those individual panels are stitched quite a bit.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah. Yeah. He told me. And. Well, I'll say who did it. He did a beautiful job. He's not looking for work. Don't even bother calling him. Clifford's Critter Creations. Don Clifford not looking for work. You have to beg him, call him, beg him if you want. He's doing. Oh, man, I shouldn't have said it. My next thing is. I'm doing. I'm doing. I'm doing a raccoon. Full raccoon.

[Steve Rinella]

So underrated.

[Seth Morris]

He wants 18.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, okay.

[Seth Morris]

He wants 18 good ones.

[Steve Rinella]

Okay. Yeah. Oh, that would be so easy in Kansas. I'm sure it's. Well, how's the raccoon?

[Seth Morris]

It's easy anywhere.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, I was gonna say it's probably easy here too.

[Seth Morris]

The problem is the, the bottleneck is Don sewing three miles of thread together.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, I don't, I don't have a machine. I do it all by hand, so the, the concept of a blanket is intimidating, but I do really want to do it.

[Seth Morris]

You know who you should be buddies with? Are you buddies at all with Heather Duville?

[Steve Rinella]

No. So I've never actually interacted with her, but super interested.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Like, she's like, right in my wheelhouse.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah. She's working with like, coastal northern stuff.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, my God.

[Seth Morris]

Different critters. But you guys should talk. Shit.

[Steve Rinella]

I'm looking at her power washing setup. Like. Oh, please. I wish.

[Seth Morris]

No, you guys, you guys should talk a little shop.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, I don't think my neighbors would appreciate me blowing a bunch of beaver fat out all over the.

[Seth Morris]

Well, she's gotten very sophisticated about this.

[Steve Rinella]

I know.

[Seth Morris]

So she used to sew needle and thread.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

Got with the machines and like, like has gotten sophisticated about the sewing.

[Steve Rinella]

I swear. Yeah. Yeah. I need to get. I'm definitely, I definitely would not describe myself as a sophisticated fur handler.

[Seth Morris]

Sophisticated trapper.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. I mean, I. I got to think about it. I'm like, man, this was only. I only started it in 21, so I'm only four years in of like completely self taught. And there's, there's. There's so much to learn.

[Seth Morris]

Oh, it's bottom so much.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

It's the most. It's the. It's the most bottomless pit.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. Arguably. Yes.

[Lake Pickle]

There's constantly new, new techniques coming out.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, my. Yeah. And between like the actual, like new tools and. Yeah, between like the actual, like, trapping and then the fur handling and the tanning and I tried to do tanning myself, and that took a little bit too much apparatus to get everything actually broken the way that it needed to be.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah. You can't, you can't scratch the surface.

[Steve Rinella]

God, no. So, yeah, so I started sending to a tannery.

[Seth Morris]

Okay. So the little fur shop on Etsy.

[Steve Rinella]

Little Shop of furs on it.

[Seth Morris]

Little shop of fur.

[Steve Rinella]

And it is quite dry right now.

[Seth Morris]

But like, you're low on product.

[Steve Rinella]

Low on product because I, because I don't have my dermisids and I, I'm waiting. I sold out pretty much all the furs from last season and I'm waiting on the, the next round to be back from the tannery. So I'm gonna get, I'm gonna get to work when I settle down from this summer.

[Seth Morris]

Good luck.

[Steve Rinella]

Turkey season.

[Seth Morris]

Thanks for coming out.

[Steve Rinella]

Get into it. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah. I hope you, when you get your first shot refilled, it empties back out again.

[Steve Rinella]

Yes.

[Seth Morris]

All right.

[Steve Rinella]

Hope so.

[Seth Morris]

Maggie, what are you working on that people are going to be most excited about for, for journalism type stuff?

[Maggie Hudlow]

Most excited about? I think mostly we're just trying to stay on top of all the crazy policies stuff that's happening. It seems like, you know, there's a, there's a new executive order every other day.

[Seth Morris]

It's impossible to follow and, well, hard to follow.

[Maggie Hudlow]

It's difficult. And you know, things are getting snuck into the budget bills, like selling off public lands in Nevada and Utah in the dark of night. There's just shady shit going on right now. And we're doing our best to stay on top of it and to get it out to the audience so everybody else can stay on top of it, call their representatives, make a fuss, because that's pretty much the only way we're gonna keep our public land secure and our wildlife protected and all that. So, you know, it might not be the most exciting stuff to read, but I think it's the most important stuff.

[Seth Morris]

So you've been putting a lot of energy into that, just trying to track it. Yeah, if people followed like, how dizzying it was to follow the tariff situation, just like how rapidly evolving and continues to be. Like, if you imagine with, with, with the wildlife world in the public lands world, it's been as, as chaotic, as hard to follow. And Pat's a really rapidly changing environment.

[Maggie Hudlow]

Pat Durkin just wrote an article about how tariffs are impacting hunters and anglers because, you know, it's impacting everyone in every which way. But yeah, it's to the point you made. I mean, it's happening so fast and there's so much happening all at once. Like there's these water monitoring stations from the USGS that now have to be shut down this summer all across the country. The USGS doesn't. I totally understand, like, what's going on with that, how that's gonna, like, affect smaller, you know, water monitoring stations on individual rivers. It's just there are so many changes that are happening without too much public comment, too much, you know, is this a good idea? They're just being written in and we're going from there. So trying to stay informed is really important right now.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah, it is. One of the. One of the things that I've liked least is the sense that a lot of the management decisions aren't coming from the agency heads and the people that are familiar with the policy. And so it has a. Some of it winds up having a kind of ham handed, machete like quality to it. That. And that's why you see things get reversed.

[Maggie Hudlow]

Like the federal firings that happened too high up. There was no good reason. All those people should have been fired. So.

[Seth Morris]

And then there's people that are like, dude, if you made it easier for me to get rid of people, I got a big list of people I get rid of, but my hands are tied. And like, talk to me about cuts.

[Maggie Hudlow]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

It's just at the local level because I know, like, I know what. I know where the problems are and you're not hitting the problem. Right.

[Maggie Hudlow]

That's been frustrating and that's happening, you know, with. Jordan wrote an article about this. I think it was Jordan, but the zero based budgeting for environmental policy.

[Steve Rinella]

It's.

[Maggie Hudlow]

It's looking at all of these things like the Migratory Bird act, the Clean Water act, and it's going through that and saying that we need to look into everything that carries these acts out. And they have to be, you know, you can either keep them going for five years or we have to like totally overhaul things. And it's like, I think it's asking to do too much at one time. Like, look at where there's issues. Look at individual agencies, Ask them to pinpoint where there are things that need to be fixed. Not just say, here's this whole list of everything. Let's swipe this down and start from zero. Because a lot of those acts were made for a reason.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Yep.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah. It's like, what happened? Wow.

[Steve Rinella]

Wow. Oh, you're never gonna hear the end of that.

[Corinne]

Even if my phone's on silent, dirty dog, the alarm still goes off.

[Seth Morris]

Oh, that's.

[Corinne]

Sorry about that.

[Seth Morris]

It. It's like, I don't want to beat the. Beat a dead horse in this. It's not a dead horse. It's a living horse.

[Maggie Hudlow]

It might have a busted leg.

[Steve Rinella]

I was gonna say it's a Little gimpy.

[Seth Morris]

Like if you look at how sort of like expertly. Expertly executed things around the border were and how like quick and sort of like wow, how'd that not happen a long time ago? Right. It's certain other, certain other things that have happened with the administration has been like where it feels like expert. Right. And motivated and expert. I just think a lot of things around the Land Management Agency just hasn't felt like it's coming from the most educated perspective and like really like I, I wish things were. Were happening at a level where. Happening at a level where you had reform minded insiders that were doing things in a. In a slower more thought out.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

Way because I think there's good. We're going to do things and then we're going to realize that we've made big costly mistakes especially around a lot of fisheries management issues and other things where you're going to do a thing and then a couple years are going to go by and you've made like a very expensive mistake.

[Steve Rinella]

Yep. Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

And then. And then need to throw money at it because you're. Because you're killing. Because you're killing industries cost and jobs. You know.

[Maggie Hudlow]

100 now.

[Seth Morris]

Stay on it.

[Maggie Hudlow]

Working on it. I've been getting articles sent into me while I'm sitting here. I actually I got so you know we were talking about the turkey in the graveyard earlier. I just had a writer send me one in. This guy got pulled over, had a live turkey in the back of his car. Oh it was wounded. He shot it. But he was driving around with a live turkey in the trunk of his car.

[Steve Rinella]

Did he know that it.

[Seth Morris]

Corinne and I talked about this yesterday.

[Steve Rinella]

Resurrected person because I, I've seen before where like a deer got hit by a car and they loaded it up and it was just like knocked out and then it stands up in the bed.

[Seth Morris]

Oh no, we've had that. I had that when I was a kid. Happen to us.

[Maggie Hudlow]

No, because this guy got pulled over like the next day. I think I was just quickly reading this.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah, he kept it.

[Maggie Hudlow]

He had a turkey and a squirrel in the back.

[Seth Morris]

And then was the squirrel alive?

[Doug Duran]

What a spread.

[Maggie Hudlow]

From my understanding, the squirrel looks pretty dead in the picture. Turkey. You can tell the turkey's alive. It's looking at you. And then so he gets a ticket and then he gets pulled over like the next day or something driving a different truck. And he's got two dead turkeys, still no license or nothing that he shot with a.22 which it's illegal to hunt turkeys with the.22 in his state.

[Seth Morris]

So was he cemetery hunting? Was it old church or was it cemetery cemetery?

[Maggie Hudlow]

I did. I was reading about the cemetery, and it was right next to an old church every time. Double whammy there.

[Doug Duran]

Giving out one of my best tips on here for that. I'm telling you, it holds true.

[Seth Morris]

Spot burning, spot burning. The whole country.

[Lake Pickle]

I recently came across Instagram account, this dude, he, like. I think he's a fishing guide and up in, like, Washington or something, but he has a pet turkey he takes in the. In the boat with him. Oh, yeah, I saw a video. He was hal, but fishing. And, like, he pans over, and his turkey's, like, in the boat gobbling, and it's like reeling up a halibut. It was, like, the coolest thing.

[Seth Morris]

If you go way back in our archive, we have a episode called the Bronze Back and the wiffle ball bat. And it was an expert turkey caller named Guy Zuck. And he grew up with a turkey, and he would call that turkey in, and then he'd whap it with a wiffle ball bat to disincentivize it from coming in. Oh, and then he'd call it in again because he was like. He wanted it to be, like, getting tricked is bad.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

Not hard.

[Maggie Hudlow]

Okay.

[Seth Morris]

He just alarmed up.

[Steve Rinella]

Newspaper on the nose.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah. Like his pet turkey, he wanted it to be that. Like, he wanted it to be not not wanting to get duped.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

[Doug Duran]

And that's how he learned to call.

[Steve Rinella]

That was his version of.

[Seth Morris]

He explains the whole process. Yeah. Like, if. You know, I don't. You ever. I don't know. In the old days, when your dog did something bad, you'd give it a little.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, yeah. Little whap.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah. I'm not trying to hurt it, but the dog's like yeast. Not gonna do that again.

[Maggie Hudlow]

I spaced out.

[Steve Rinella]

I thought you meant he was, like.

[Maggie Hudlow]

Hunting turkey with a wiffle bat. I was like, that's gonna take a lot of.

[Steve Rinella]

I can't even be mad about that.

[Seth Morris]

Let me put this. But he'd hide, call it in, and then scare the hell out of it. So a while later, when he called in, the turkey's like. Like a hunted turkey. He's like, man, I don't want. I. I want to go over there. I mean, there's turkeys over there. What I don't want is for that to be. And that's how he became really good at calling turkeys, because he kept fooling that browns back. Who was paranoid.

[Doug Duran]

Oh, so he wasn't trying to keep the turkey safe from other hunters. He was trying to make a challenge for himself.

[Seth Morris]

He's trying to make a challenge. Oh, he's trying to make a challenge. Like, if I went out, I could go out. Like you could probably. If you had a handful of corn and every time you called, you gave that turkey a handful of corn. He's gonna become real easy to call in.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, yeah.

[Seth Morris]

But if you hit him with a bat, a love tap with a wiffle ball bat, he's gonna get tough.

[Doug Duran]

Yeah. Like the same scenario of a turkey gets missed a couple times. In actuality, that's that biology. He's like, not this time.

[Seth Morris]

He's like, I'm not going over there, man. Something like that. Thanks, everybody.

[Steve Rinella]

Yep.

[Seth Morris]

Appreciate everybody coming on.

[Doug Duran]

Yeah, yeah. Thanks for having me.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah.

[Corinne]

Listen to Lake's podcast.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah. Listen to Lake's podcast.

[Doug Duran]

Yeah.

[Corinne]

Please do today because this episode will drop on June 9.

[Steve Rinella]

He is going to be the missing link between biology and policy and human dimensions.

[Seth Morris]

Oh, wow.

[Steve Rinella]

I appreciate no treasure.

[Seth Morris]

You can go on and leave a little review.

[Steve Rinella]

That might be nice.

[Doug Duran]

Yeah, type that in on Apple. Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

That'S a T shirt right there.

[Steve Rinella]

There you go.

[Seth Morris]

All right, thanks, everybody.

[Ryan Seacrest]

Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and safeway. Now through June 24th. Score hot summer savings and earn four times the point. Look for in store tags on items like Sargento cheese slices, best foods, mayonnaise, lay's party sized chips and snacks and Triscuits. Then clip the offer in the app for automatic event long savings. Enjoy savings on top of savings when you shop in store or online. For easy drive up and go, pick up or delivery subject to availability restrictions apply. Visit Albertsons or Safeway.com for more details.

[Seth Morris]

Steve Rinella here. The American west with Dan Flores is a new podcast production on the Meat Eater Podcast Network. It's hosted by author and historian Dan Flores, who happens to be mine and our own Dr. Randall's former professor. By focusing on deep time wild animals, native peoples in the west, unique environments, Flores will challenge your understanding of the American west and he will help to explain why it is the way it is today. I count Dan Flores as a friend. We do not agree on everything, but he has had a massive impact on my understanding of American history and I invite you to get challenged by him in the same way that I have. Catch the premiere of the American west with Dan flores on Tuesday, May 6th on the meat Eater Podcast Network. Subscribe to the American west with Dan Flores on Apple, Spotify, iHeart, or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to Dan and it will stretch your brain all out. And I mean that in a very good way.

[Steve Rinella]

This is an iHeart podcast.