Ep. 720: Beaver Castor Moonshine and Will Primos' Shotguns

Summary

The MeatEater Podcast Episode 720: Beaver Castor Moonshine and Will Primos' Shotguns

Release Date: June 23, 2025

In Episode 720 of The MeatEater Podcast, host Steven Rinella engages in a lively and insightful conversation with returning guest Will Primos and co-host Dr. Randall. The episode seamlessly blends discussions on unique hunting practices, conservation efforts, and the fascinating world of Purdy Hammer guns, all while maintaining the podcast's signature humor and camaraderie.

---

1. Will Primos’ Purdy Hammer Gun Collection and Conservation Auction

[02:56]
Will Primos returns to the show to discuss his remarkable collection of five Purdy Hammer gun shotguns. These rare firearms, valued for their craftsmanship and historical significance, are poised to be donated to a gun auction supporting conservation initiatives. Dr. Randall emphasizes the importance of such contributions:
"Purdy Hammer gun shotguns. How many in the collection? 5. And they're nice guns. This is a valuable collection and Will was telling us how he is donating these guns for an auction for a conservation fundraiser."

Will explains that donating his entire collection is a gesture towards supporting organizations that have profoundly impacted his and others' lives in the hunting and conservation community. He shares his personal journey with these guns, highlighting their role in his family's hunting traditions and their ultimate purpose in fundraising for conservation.

---

2. Beaver Castor Moonshine: A Unique Hunting Lure

[07:32]
A significant portion of the episode delves into a novel hunting technique involving beaver castors soaked in moonshine, a method devised by Will Primos to create effective natural lures. Presenting a mason jar filled with the mixture, Will introduces the concept:
"That right there is beaver castors soaking in moonshine."

Despite initial skepticism about the potent aroma, the discussion reveals the efficacy of this concoction in attracting game animals, particularly turkeys. Will credits lure maker Mike Marziata for the inspiration, emphasizing the blend as a universal attractant that mimics natural pheromones, thus enhancing hunting success.

---

3. Advanced Hunting Strategies and Call Usage

[21:22]
The conversation shifts to sophisticated hunting strategies, focusing on turkey hunting techniques. Will presents a mathematical scenario to illustrate the probability of a turkey coming within shotgun range without aggressive calling:
"What are the odds of if you get within 70 yards of a turkey and his roost tree and don't do anything, what are the odds he's going to walk within shotgun range?"

Dr. Randall and Will discuss the importance of subtlety in calls to prevent turkeys from becoming distrustful. They advocate for minimizing vocal cues, suggesting that overuse of calls can lead to turkeys avoiding hunters altogether. Techniques like using dried hen wings tied to a string to simulate natural movements are explored, highlighting the balance between attracting game and maintaining their natural wariness.

---

4. Proper Tipping Etiquette for Hunting Guides

[44:40]
Listener engagement is a highlight as Will poses a question regarding the appropriate method for tipping hunting guides. The scenario involves a hunter debating whether to tip 20% to each of two guides for a six-day hunt, resulting in a significant total tip. Will outlines the issue:
"But he thinks we need to tip 20% to each guide for a total of $1,840 worth of tips."

Dr. Randall and Corey respond by suggesting that the total tip should equate to 20% of the hunt's cost, to be fairly divided between the guides based on the service quality. Corey likens it to restaurant tipping practices, emphasizing that multiplicative tipping can be excessive. This segment underscores the importance of recognizing guides' efforts without overcompensating, maintaining fairness and appreciation.

---

5. StewardLink: Facilitating Conservation Efforts

[80:13]
A pivotal part of the episode features StewardLink, a platform designed to assist land stewards in accessing conservation programs and funding. Dr. Randall explains:
"StewardLink represents the Steward of the land and helps them access government conservation programs like the Conservation Stewardship Program."

StewardLink acts as a liaison, simplifying the application process for landowners seeking to implement sustainable farming and conservation practices. By providing tailored conservation activity plans and connecting stewards with necessary resources, StewardLink plays a crucial role in promoting environmental stewardship and land preservation.

---

6. Listener Questions: From Porcupines to Fish Storage

Throughout the episode, the hosts address various listener questions, offering practical advice grounded in experience. Topics include:

• Porcupine Canoe Attacks:
  Will clarifies misconceptions about wildlife behaviors, distinguishing between porcupine and beaver damage on equipment.

• Freshwater Fish Storage:
  Advice is given on keeping fish alive in small boats using baskets, ensuring freshness without compromising the catch.

• Turkeys vs. Grouse Myth:
  The hosts debunk the rural myth that turkeys actively hunt grouse, advocating for science-based understanding of animal behaviors.

These segments reflect the podcast's commitment to educating listeners with accurate information and debunking unfounded myths in the hunting community.

---

7. The Will Primos Purdy Collection Auction Details

[74:53]
Wrapping up the episode, Dr. Randall shares the logistics of the upcoming auction for the Purdy Hammer guns:
"The guns cost about a million one. And they appraise for 800 because they are. They are used."

The auction, managed by Rock Island, is a unique opportunity for collectors and conservationists to bid on these one-of-a-kind firearms. Proceeds will be distributed to five key conservation organizations, reinforcing Will Primos' dedication to giving back to the community that supports and sustains the hunting and conservation ethos.

---

Conclusion

Episode 720 of The MeatEater Podcast masterfully intertwines personal anecdotes, innovative hunting practices, and impactful conservation efforts. Will Primos' generosity in donating his Purdy Hammer gun collection exemplifies the spirit of giving back, while his creative beaver castor moonshine recipe showcases the blend of tradition and innovation in modern hunting. The episode not only entertains but also educates listeners on effective hunting strategies, proper etiquette, and the importance of supporting conservation initiatives through platforms like StewardLink.

As Steven Rinella aptly invites, "Listen to Dan and it will stretch your brain all out and I mean that in a very good way," emphasizing the podcast's role in deepening the understanding and appreciation of the natural world.

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Notable Quotes:

• Will Primos [02:58]:
  "Purdy Purdy Hammer gun shotguns. How many in the collection? 5. And they're nice guns. This is a valuable collection and Will was telling us how he is donating these guns for an auction for a conservation fundraiser."

• Will Primos [07:32]:
  "That right there is beaver castors soaking in moonshine."

• Will Primos [21:22]:
  "What are the odds of if you get within 70 yards of a turkey and his roost tree and don't do anything, what are the odds he's going to walk within shotgun range?"

• Dr. Randall [80:13]:
  "StewardLink represents the Steward of the land and helps them access government conservation programs like the Conservation Stewardship Program."

• Dr. Randall [73:56]:
  "They are used. So if you got a bunch of stuff, like this castor and moonshine, you know, nobody wants your cast. Nobody wants your caster moonshine. I may want some. For some bait."

---

Final Remarks:

This episode serves as a testament to the profound connections between hunting, conservation, and community. Through engaging dialogue and shared experiences, Steven Rinella and his guests reinforce the values that underpin The MeatEater Podcast Network, encouraging listeners to deepen their relationship with the natural world while actively participating in its preservation.

Transcript

[Steve Rinella]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Will Primos]

You ever drive past a piece of land and wonder who owns that? Or maybe you need to know where exactly a property line runs? Well, that is where ONX Hunt comes in. And it's not just for hunters. There are folks using Onx for their jobs every day throughout the country. If you need the best land ownership maps, aerial imagery and property boundaries in your pocket, ONX Hunt is the tool for the job. Try it free for 7 days. Download onx hunt in the app or Google Play Store or visit on xmaps.com hunt to get started. 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. This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten, and in my case, underwearless.

[Corey]

We hunt the Meat Eater Podcast.

[Dr. Randall]

You can't predict anything.

[Will Primos]

The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by First Light. Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stakes, hands or scouting for elk, First Light has performance apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check it out at first light.com f I R-S-T l I t e.com joined today by my favorite senior citizen by far, Will Primos is here. Will Primos joined us back on episode 593 and we talked about a gun auction that was coming up later this year where Will had over the years collected collected a collection of Purdy Hammer guns.

[Dr. Randall]

Purdy P U R D E Y.

[Will Primos]

Purdy Purdy Hammer gun shotguns. How many in the collection? 5. And they're nice guns. This is a valuable collection and Will was telling us how he is donating these guns for a auction for a conservation fundraiser. He's just giving them up. The Whole collection. And I said, man, when that happens, you should come back on the show. You can come on the show anytime you want. But I said, you should come back on the show and we'll talk about the auction and plug the auction. So we're going to get around to that and do that and talk about some other stuff you got going on. And this the organization at Steward. Steward.linkStewardLink.com. yeah, Steward. Steward. Not Stewart. I keep seeing it like a name. Yeah, like. Like a dude named Stewart.

[Dr. Randall]

Stewart.

[Will Primos]

Picture a guy named that.

[Dr. Randall]

The steward of the. Is the person who owns it and farms it or leases it and farm it. Whoever has control of the land is the steward.

[Will Primos]

Got it?

[Dr. Randall]

And so we are the link for the steward to the NRCS offices, FSA offices, carbon sequestration companies, anything that benefits the land. Anything that can help you provide income to afford land or to make it better to conserve water. Variable rate pesticide programs, variable rate fertilizer programs. Equip leveling land so it could be easier to irrigate it, whatever it might be. And all this got started because Nick Thomas, the founder, helped me with my farm and I couldn't get anybody to help me with anything on my farm. And then over a number of years, he got probably, I mean, you know, telling hundreds of thousands of dollars. I stopped. Stopped the water from going into the creek and eroding the land and filling the creek in. I planted trees along the bank, stopped all that, put land back into trees, did warm season grasses, restored the quail. There's just tons of things you can do and you can get there. Excuse me. Public and private people that will help help you provide that got money to do it.

[Will Primos]

Yeah. My buddy Doug Durham is getting excited right now.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah.

[Will Primos]

Listening, Doug.

[Dr. Randall]

Darren needs to know about Stuart Link.

[Will Primos]

Might you know about Doug During? Doug During. About Stuart.

[Dr. Randall]

There you go.

[Will Primos]

Well, it's a huge sh. I gotta write it on my hand.

[Dr. Randall]

You're talking about the senior citizen stuff. Yeah, I got it bad. Yeah. Yesterday I was so impressed, I had to get a haircut. And I went to this place called Great Clips. And that's where I go. Yeah. And.

[Will Primos]

And the lady, would they stick you for that haircut?

[Dr. Randall]

$19. I said, how come it's so cheap Just because you're a senior citizen.

[Will Primos]

I think she's hitting on it. You look great, Phil. I thought, something's wrong. We're super loud, man. Oh, yeah.

[Corey]

Spencer asked me to turn up the.

[Will Primos]

Volume on those headphones.

[Corey]

I can turn yours down. Yeah.

[Will Primos]

Hey, hey, you know what? Close your eyes a minute. Corey, block his eyes. Now. Phil turned me all the way off. Now, come on, man.

[Corey]

It's a sensitive knob.

[Will Primos]

I want. I want to test. I want Phil to. Or. What am I saying? I want Will to take a to. I want you to smell something.

[Dr. Randall]

Okay.

[F]

Oh, there you go. You're on your own, closing your eyes.

[Will Primos]

Oh, no. Yeah, it's pretty good. Okay, don't. Don't open. I gotta trust you got them open. This is the most intriguing odor.

[Dr. Randall]

Spill it.

[Will Primos]

No, I'm not gonna do anything bad. Yeah, it's not a bad. It's not a bad smell. Guide him into that, Corey. Well, no, I'll just put it. Put your hand out.

[Steve Rinella]

Tell the audience what it looks like.

[F]

Yeah, you're gonna want to reach out with your left hand.

[Steve Rinella]

Looks like me.

[F]

Yeah, reach out with your left hand and grab this mason jar. Oh, it's to the left of your microphone here.

[Will Primos]

Yeah, just put it up there. Just feel it. Yeah.

[Corey]

This seems like a bad way of doing things.

[Will Primos]

What are you getting? What are you getting?

[F]

Can we pass it around?

[Will Primos]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

What in the heck is.

[Will Primos]

This is my favorite thing I've ever made, man.

[Steve Rinella]

Should we.

[Dr. Randall]

Should we got a pleasant odor to it.

[Will Primos]

Isn't that something just by looking at it? Isn't that.

[Corey]

Well, you're familiar with medicinal marijuana.

[Will Primos]

You don't like the smell.

[F]

Oh, Corinne went deep.

[Will Primos]

That's an overreaction.

[Corey]

Chemistry t the water or you just.

[Steve Rinella]

Smell the lid Related. But that's like chemical science class in my knob.

[Will Primos]

Chemical.

[F]

Jeez. I sniffed with my eyes.

[Will Primos]

The whole room smells like.

[Steve Rinella]

So everybody who's listening. That's like a jar of, like, brain soy sauce. That's what it looks like over in Will zone.

[Dr. Randall]

What is it? Is it really.

[Will Primos]

That right there is beaver casters soaking in moonshine.

[Steve Rinella]

I thought there was an extra kick.

[Will Primos]

To it was taking a shot.

[Dr. Randall]

I mean, I used to trap a lot, and I always said if anybody wants to torture me, tie me up and feed me caster. Oh, no, I'll die. That's the nastiest smelling stuff.

[Will Primos]

A little bit now and then is good. Yeah, a lot often is not.

[Dr. Randall]

So I want to see you drink that.

[Will Primos]

Well, I don't think I'm gonna, though. So here's what happened. There's a. There's a. Here's why I have this. Oh, it's an intriguing odor.

[E]

It is really striking.

[Will Primos]

There's a famous lure maker still alive. Won't come on the podcast Trappy lure lid is not.

[Corey]

There you go.

[Will Primos]

Won't come on the podcast doesn't understand what the. What you're even talking about when you bring it up to him. Mike Marziata is his name.

[Steve Rinella]

If you're listening, you're not listening.

[Will Primos]

I'm about ready to pay him to come up. I'll be like, okay, listen. Okay, don't come just up. I have a job for you.

[Steve Rinella]

He doesn't know what it.

[Will Primos]

Yeah, I have a job. And it would be that you come be on the pocket and just don't worry about it. There's a day rate.

[Steve Rinella]

We should just call it like radio.

[Will Primos]

Yeah, like whatever. We give a camera guy for a day rate. Whatever we give a camera guy for a day.

[Dr. Randall]

Right.

[Will Primos]

We'd give Mike Marziata as a day rate to come on the show and talk about trap and lure.

[Steve Rinella]

You don't pay.

[F]

Guess he.

[Will Primos]

He has a column in Trapper's Post. He has like a lure making column in Trapper's Post. And in it, he's talking about how over the years, the different ways he's experimented with preserving beaver casters for lure making. And he says, like, you can soak them in Everclear. He says you can soak them in cheap wine, and then when you later grind them up to put it. Because it's a kind of a universal animal attractant.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah.

[Will Primos]

I happen to have. We quit. Me and my wife quit drinking booze, so now we just have booze that just lives in the house and it never goes down. Right. So I have a bottle of moonshine that I've owned since beginning of time, and I topped them off with moonshine. And I cannot get over the. Just how intriguing.

[Dr. Randall]

This lure maker will pay you for that formula.

[Corey]

Oh, maybe that's your trade goods.

[Will Primos]

You know what, Mike? If you come on, you can have that job.

[E]

Do you think that's safe to drink?

[Will Primos]

Oh, yeah.

[E]

I mean, that. Yeah, you'd think that it would be.

[Will Primos]

It's just pickled glands. Yeah. Pickled gland.

[Dr. Randall]

But it's got this. It doesn't. It doesn't smell like castor.

[Steve Rinella]

Right, that's what. Yeah, it doesn't.

[Will Primos]

No, it's there. No, no, no, no, no.

[Dr. Randall]

It may be there, but it's something that makes it tolerable.

[Corey]

I think it's definitely there.

[Will Primos]

Just take a big old swig of that.

[Dr. Randall]

No, no, no, no.

[Will Primos]

You don't want to get all drunk, do you?

[Corey]

Trying to quit.

[F]

You know, it looks and smells like pickled elk nuts.

[Will Primos]

Doesn't smell like a pickle, dude. Take another whiff. You Guys are not. You guys are, like.

[E]

Not like another.

[Will Primos]

You're not thinking, man.

[F]

Well, I was thinking about elk nuts when I was smelling it.

[Corey]

It smells like Castor.

[Will Primos]

Give him another whiff. Cory, take another whip.

[Corey]

I think it smells like Castor.

[F]

I don't.

[Will Primos]

And picture, picture, picture. It's May, and you're walking along a stream. Okay.

[F]

I do that a lot.

[Will Primos]

Okay, now take a whiff.

[E]

And you've got a glass of Everclear in your hand, and you're drunk on moonshine.

[F]

I just like smelling the lid. Safer.

[Will Primos]

Let's get in there.

[F]

No, I did that the first time.

[Corey]

Don't spill it.

[Dr. Randall]

Will's lap.

[Will Primos]

Yeah, I kind of, like, take a swig. I'd drink it all, but I don't drink.

[F]

I just smells dangerous.

[E]

I'll pour it through a coffee filter and drink it.

[F]

Yeah.

[E]

If we can strain it a little bit.

[Steve Rinella]

What if you. If you consume Castor? Like, what.

[F]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

What.

[Corey]

What could happen?

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. Like, what's. Is it, like, packed with vitamins and minerals?

[Will Primos]

Yeah, it's great for you. It's no different than eating. I mean, you can eat a whole animal. Yeah.

[E]

Flavor cigarettes with it.

[Steve Rinella]

Have you ever made that into jerk? Like, what's the consistency when it's, like, fresh in the body? Is it more like brain? Is it more like.

[Dr. Randall]

More like. More like brain, but harder.

[Will Primos]

Looks like brain, but when you open it up, it's a paste. There's a paste inside of it.

[Corey]

There's, like, an oily paste.

[Steve Rinella]

And then there's, like, a die caster one day, like. Like, panko fried.

[Will Primos]

There's no breaded caster. No, I'm not eating that. Because the smell gets. The smell. Like, Will's saying, the smell gets to you.

[E]

After a while, your brain starts to think that it's like a. You know, people make, like, apple. They'll make moonshine with, like, apples and cinnamon sticks. Your brain starts to think that it's cinnamon and you sort of want it.

[Will Primos]

Take a big old swig.

[Steve Rinella]

Should add some star.

[Will Primos]

Just take a little.

[Dr. Randall]

Have you. Have you had your brain?

[E]

I'm not opposed to it.

[Will Primos]

Give me the danger.

[Dr. Randall]

If you had your brain.

[Steve Rinella]

Exactly, Randall. If you take a little shot. I'll take a little shot.

[Will Primos]

Give me the jar. I don't even drink no jar.

[Dr. Randall]

No.

[Will Primos]

You guys are pansies now. I'm gonna be back. I'm gonna be back to drinking.

[E]

I'll drink it. I just. There's a lot of floaties in there that I'm. I don't want to Pick out of my teeth.

[Will Primos]

We're one day sitting there at the dinner table, and my kid knows that I used to. We used to drink like, you know, we used to drink like people drink. Social, social drinking. And I don't know where he picked up this expression, but he was 14. And he says to me, dad, how long you been sober? I'm like, what? I'm like that. Like implies like a whole other level.

[E]

Your sobriety journey, I think is what.

[Corey]

They call it now, even within the confines of my home. That makes me uncomfortable.

[Will Primos]

So I was like, that's like a different thing.

[Dr. Randall]

You're nuts. You're nuts.

[Will Primos]

Tastes like. It smells like.

[Steve Rinella]

It smells.

[Dr. Randall]

Oh, you're nuts.

[Will Primos]

God. Regret that there.

[Corey]

You want to rinse your mouth out.

[Will Primos]

With some bear grease, Corey? Talk about your jar. Now I regret that.

[F]

My jar.

[Dr. Randall]

Oh, once.

[Will Primos]

All your guys. Jar. I'm not gonna vomit. I'm gonna go grab a. I'm gonna.

[F]

Go grab a sortie pop wash down that caster. I believe what Steve's referring to are the. All the jars of bear grease that I just passed out. Freshly rendered yesterday. Looks like it still needs to find a cool, dark area to.

[Corey]

Yeah, I'm impressed that it's still liquid form here.

[F]

Well, it sat in the meat eater kitch. Yeah, I'm surprised it is too. But find a cool, dark pantry and it'll solidify on you.

[Will Primos]

Sorry. Did you explain to us? Yeah.

[F]

Got a jar of bear grease. I passed out to everybody that wanted one.

[Will Primos]

And you got it off a spring bear, which is unusual. Yeah. To get that much. Yeah.

[F]

I got 4 gallon Ziploc baggies full of fat off of them, which I always figure is each gallon Ziplocs about seven pounds.

[Steve Rinella]

But that's because it was the biggest bear that ever was.

[Will Primos]

That's not true. Second biggest. We just. I just. I just held the biggest bear that ever was. Okay. Was it a Boone and crocodile in Alaska?

[F]

Well, gotta give it some time to shrink.

[Will Primos]

Where's it sitting at right now?

[F]

My garage.

[Will Primos]

No, no. What? What?

[F]

The skull. Oh, 20. Just over 20 inches.

[Will Primos]

They ain't gonna make it.

[F]

It might shrink enough.

[Will Primos]

Are you. Are you drying it in a bucket of water? No.

[Corey]

Are you gonna have it beetled?

[F]

No, I've already boiled it.

[Will Primos]

Oh, you did?

[Corey]

That's a bummer. Beetles just make things prettier.

[F]

Oh, yeah. No, this is free, though.

[Corey]

I think there's less shrinkage with beetles too, probably.

[F]

Yeah. I was always wondering if Boylan would shrink it. I'm not gonna actually have it officially. Measured, but it's roughly 20 inches.

[Will Primos]

Big old bear. No, I'm not, I don't, I'm not, I'm not. I'm just jealous, you know.

[Corey]

No, I mean anything over 19 inch skulls. I mean that's a big old BlackBerry.

[E]

It's a good looking bear.

[Will Primos]

I'm just hacking on it because I'm jealous. But when you showed me, I remember saying how big it was. Yeah.

[F]

I was asking if you needed the, the shin bones for more halibut hooks.

[Will Primos]

Well, I got two shin bones and I'm sending. I got two shin bones I'm sending to Heather's dad who's interested in. In. In. Because do you remember the one I made?

[F]

Was it last year?

[Will Primos]

Yeah.

[F]

So that was for my bear last year.

[Dr. Randall]

No.

[Will Primos]

Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm saying. But did you ever see with the finished product? So Heather, Heather Duville, who's tlingit and lives in southeast Alaska, they make a halibut hook called a knock knock. White folks can't say the word. I've tried a bunch of times.

[F]

Unless you drink that moonshine.

[Corey]

And that's the first Steve's trying.

[E]

I think Corinne said the word earlier.

[Will Primos]

Yeah. If you drank that bottle, you'd be like, it's a knock.

[F]

Come out crystal clear.

[Will Primos]

They make a knock and it's they. And her father carves them. Just type up like traditional Tlingit Halidah hook. You'll see a picture. Not you, Corey, but I mean G I T. They use yellow cedar and. And like, like a juniper or you.

[Corey]

You. Yeah, it's you.

[Will Primos]

And they. And. But anyways, they make it with a lot of traditional materials. They weighed it with a. Just a regular rock. But her father uses stainless steel. The barb, he uses stainless rod. He was explaining to me that traditionally it was a bear's shin bone. So I got from Corey's bear last year I got a shin bone and I made a few prongs and I took one of their knocks and took the stainless off and put the what? I. I basically took the shin bone, took a porta band, kind of got it roughed in and then I ran it on a. You know, I did. I took a benchmade belt and just slowly like for like five.

[Corey]

Oh, you're like your work sharp sharpener belt.

[Will Primos]

Yep. And shape that thing. I was quite proud of it.

[F]

Yeah.

[Will Primos]

Sent it up to him. I don't know if they've used it yet. But anyways, her dad's kind of a perfectionist, so I'm guessing that he's not happy with. He probably likes the idea, but is not impressed by.

[E]

That's a nice gesture.

[Will Primos]

He's like, I can see what he was shooting. He's probably. I'm putting thoughts in his mouth, but he's probably like, I see what this kid was shooting for, and if I had a shin bone, I would perfect. So I'm sending him shin bones to perfect.

[F]

Do you need more?

[Dr. Randall]

No.

[Will Primos]

But I do think the one I made would work. I do think the shin bone I put on there would work. That'd be awesome.

[F]

Yeah.

[Will Primos]

But I don't think. I don't know if they've tried it out yet. When I went out with them to set these hooks, I was skeptical. Were you there? Yeah. You were there? Yeah. Yeah, we went out and set six. We made six sets. And you always fish two at a. You fish two next to each other. And she's been on the podcast and explained that you. When you set them out, you the. There's two hook. You set two hooks next to each other, and you implore them to compete with one another. So you're setting them together to. To outshine each other. And when you set them, you encourage them. You're like, go get them. And then you like your friends coming to fight you, you know, so you lower it down. And we set out six sets. So we set 12 hooks and pulled like 370 pounds plus Hal.

[F]

Wow.

[Will Primos]

Big ones, like an hour soak.

[Dr. Randall]

That's cool.

[Will Primos]

An hour soak.

[F]

That's fast.

[Will Primos]

One of them had a. One of them was a double. Yeah. Couldn't believe it. I couldn't have done that with regular hooks. And that was like, not like ideal season. It was late season. Yeah.

[Corey]

It was what, September was it.

[Will Primos]

Was it that early? Yeah, it was a little later. It's kind of after this. No, the salmon were done. Yeah.

[Corey]

I think it was late September.

[Will Primos]

The soft cover of Catch a Crayfish Count the Stars is out. If you haven't already picked up a soft cover copy, it's out. So that's our kids activity book. I did two books, like Back to Back. I did Outdoor Kids and Inside World, which is kind of a book for parents or caregivers or aunts and uncles about getting kind of the philosophy and practice of getting kids engaged with nature. And then the follow up was Catch a Crayfish Count the Stars, which is like an activity book for outdoor kids to educate, inspire, make them tougher, make them more knowledgeable about nature. It's just little things they can do projects they can do with help. You know, some things you got to have a machete or whatever. So you got to help them out with some stuff. Some stuff they can do safely on their own. It came out in hardcover. It was the number one New York Times bestseller. The soft cover is out. So what I keep saying as a joke is if you got a kid that's not good enough, not well behaved enough for a hardcover. Like what kid in America is so bad he can't have a soft cover?

[E]

I really liked that joke a lot.

[Will Primos]

I've used it four times. It was the fourth time.

[Corey]

How's it performing on the.

[Will Primos]

No feedback on it. No feedback. It might be like Corey's bear where people are jealous and so they don't say much.

[Corey]

Right. Yeah, I'm sure that's it.

[E]

No, no, I just told you I liked the joke.

[Will Primos]

Oh, I thought you're being facetious.

[E]

No, no, I. I thought it was very clever. I like the idea of bad kids.

[Corey]

I think we may have lost Will here.

[Will Primos]

I'm bringing them right back in because I got a question for Will.

[Dr. Randall]

No.

[Will Primos]

Okay. Picture with me here. Oh. Do you know what this shirt is? You don't? I'll tell you. This is the odds of if you get within 70 yards of a turkey and his roost tree and don't do anything, what are the odds he's going to walk within shotgun range? That's the math problem.

[Dr. Randall]

That's pretty cool.

[Will Primos]

Do nothing. Do nothing. There's a 13 chance he'll be within shotgun range when he leaves that. That leads into my question. If you like. If you just take an average turkey hunter's lifetime and he hears a gobble and calls to a bird, the bird doesn't come. What percent of the time in your view? After a lifetime of turkey hunting and being a master turkey hunter, in your view, what percent of the time is the turkey not interested versus the turkeys thinking? I don't buy it. Something's up.

[Dr. Randall]

It's pretty much he don't trust it.

[Will Primos]

Oh, you think so?

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah, because he's. He's. There's been some association with hearing a yelp, hearing it come from. He knows it's on the ground, he's in the tree. That's always a bad deal. We never, we never say nothing till his feet on the ground. But I have a friend who had one of those turkeys and.

[Will Primos]

One of what turkeys?

[Dr. Randall]

One of them turkeys you couldn't kill, that he'd gobble. You'd yelp him and he wouldn't come. He'd always go the other way. And he didn't eventually gobble going the other way. So he took his son in there and he said, let's flip a coin and decide who's going to yelp. And they did, and the dad lost. So they got on both sides of the tree, about 100 yards apart from the tree.

[Will Primos]

So now they got a 26 chance that they do nothing.

[Dr. Randall]

Well, they know this turkey. They know he's going to go. He's going to go straight. No matter if they knew straight away, Daddy yelped. Little David sat there with his gun up. Five minutes later, he come.

[Will Primos]

So you think that they're like, you remember, you know the great famous turkey book, Tenth Legion?

[Dr. Randall]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Will Primos]

It's like a masterpiece, Right? Like, no one will ever write a better turkey.

[Dr. Randall]

No. Nobody's got. Nobody's got Tom Kelly's brain. He's unbelievable.

[Will Primos]

Yeah. I don't care who, what, when. No one's gonna ever write a better turkey book. If you're writing a turkey book, Stop.

[Dr. Randall]

That's right.

[Will Primos]

Write a different book. Write a beaver book. I don't know.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah.

[Will Primos]

Tom Kelly has a thing where he has, like a. He doesn't describe it as an epiphany, but one day he's talking about. He's watching some time, like it's spring turkey season. He's watching some gobblers.

[Dr. Randall]

Yep.

[Will Primos]

Going about their business.

[Dr. Randall]

Yep.

[Will Primos]

And he's. Here comes a real live hen.

[Dr. Randall]

Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. They never looked at her.

[Will Primos]

He says they never lift their head up. And he's like, in that moment was. You know, maybe it's not that they're right, but that's a real hen, dude, and they don't care.

[Dr. Randall]

You're talking about these turkey hunters who think they know it all, and they. They're. They think there's God's gift to call. And. And they're going to yelp. And they're going to. And so the turkey ends up associating so much with what you're doing. And. And the stimuli that he's getting, he learns to stay away from it.

[Will Primos]

Hmm. So you've gotten to where you don't make peep till they hit the ground.

[Dr. Randall]

Never.

[Will Primos]

Huh. I'm going to start.

[Dr. Randall]

That is. That's a cardinal rule, really. You don't do it to get him.

[Will Primos]

Don't bleep all that out.

[Corey]

Even if you hear other hands yelp before. Before they're. They hit the ground, he just knows.

[Dr. Randall]

Where they're usually in the tree. So if you're on the ground, he's in the tree. I mean, more times than not, depending on the terrain, he knows you're down there, right? Yep. And so what, what's supposed to happen? You're supposed to walk to his tree. That's why he stays in the tree goblin. You're supposed to walk to his tree and then he flies down. So you got to break that. So you got to make him think he's losing something, you know, you hadn't said a word. So what we do, we take a wing. We take a dried wing. Usually it's a hen wing because they bend easier than as stiff as a jake's wing or a gobbler's wing.

[Will Primos]

And you got to go out and poach a hen, huh?

[Corey]

Well, bearded hen buddy.

[Will Primos]

Okay. Trying to figure out how to get that hen thing. Like you're telling everybody to go poaching now.

[Dr. Randall]

No, you just hunt in the fall. You have fall seasons. You break them up and whistle them back in. Okay. But anyway, disregard the poaching. You fly down and you do that.

[Will Primos]

You do the fly down noise with that wing.

[Dr. Randall]

It's tied to a string to my back because I kept leaving. Losing them in the woods, it stays at the back of my vest.

[Corey]

So is that like you're cutting the air or you're hitting the ground with it?

[Dr. Randall]

You're touching the tree because when those, when the turkeys leave the limb, leave the roost, they're hitting limbs and coming down. And then you go and you hit the ground.

[Corey]

Okay.

[Dr. Randall]

And then don't yell. Wait maybe two and a half minutes. Scratching the leaves.

[Corey]

Yep.

[Dr. Randall]

Don't, don't, don't, don't open your mouth. Take the guy's call away. He's going to screw it up the instant he tries to yell better.

[Will Primos]

Man. I've never used AI in my life, but I'm going to use it right now. Well, no, I have because I use the Merlin app, but I can use AI to make him say all the opposite and then I'm going to be the only one that knows the truth.

[Corey]

So we had a similar question yesterday on, on when we did the media live, we had somebody ask about using predator call or fawn and distress call. I think I brought up the fawn and distress call for black bears. And I'm very much of the opinion that if it's kind of a two sided thing, if you just want to kill a bear, then you risk use, you risk not getting a bear by using a Fawn and distress call, in my opinion.

[Will Primos]

How so?

[Corey]

Because small bears will go the opposite direction.

[Will Primos]

They're like, oh.

[Corey]

Yep. They're like, don't. Just not worth the risk.

[Dr. Randall]

Got it.

[Corey]

But big bears either care or they don't care. Yeah, but they don't leave the country because you're using a fawn and distress.

[Will Primos]

They just might not. I've watched many of them not pick their head up.

[Corey]

Right.

[Will Primos]

And then 1 in 10 goes ballistic.

[Corey]

Yep. Goes 90 degree turn and he's coming.

[F]

Yeah, we should probably make a T shirt out of that. Like, what are the mathematical odds of a bear coming to your predator call?

[Will Primos]

10%. If you're close, maybe you gotta be in his lap.

[Dr. Randall]

That's the finest T shirt I've ever seen.

[Will Primos]

Well, you want to see something that's gonna really impress you?

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah.

[Will Primos]

It's outside. Go out that door. Because we had different engineers. Hang tight a minute, boy.

[Corey]

It's show and tell day here on. Yeah, on the old meat eater podcast. Uncle Will's in town. Steve's getting all the stuff out, pulling out his toys.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah, that's it.

[Will Primos]

Yeah, that's another version. It's another version.

[Dr. Randall]

Therefore, Q, E, D, B equals 0 over 360 times 100 and sin 1/4. I don't know who Paul Knack is, but he's good. That is crazy.

[Will Primos]

No, it's a good little formula. You ever drive past a piece of land and wonder who owns that? Or maybe you need to know where exactly a property line runs. Well, that is where ONX Hunt comes in. And it's not just for hunters. There are folks using ONX for their jobs every day throughout the country. If you need the best land ownership maps, aerial imagery, and property boundaries in your pocket, ONX Hunt is the tool for the job. Try it free for 7 days. Download onx Hunt in the app or Google Play store or visit onxmaps.comhunt to get started. When you're in the back country, don't forget your own back country. Keep it pristine and confidently clean by bringing along wet, extra large dude wipes. I'm. I'm glad to be doing dude wipe ads because I buy dude wipes. Anyways. I've been a long time dude wipe. I'm a dude wipe dude all the time. Just like your truck gets muddy out in the wild, soaking your butt. You'd never clean your vehicle with dry paper towels, so why would you clean your butt with dry toilet paper? Wetter cleans better. So ditch the itch and switch from tp to wet Extra large Dude wipes. Love them. Like going on a ten day moose hunt. I just bring a pack along. Not only that, so they're extra large. Okay. If you're a little baby, you get little baby wipes. If you're a man, you get extra large dude wipes. And when you're out in nature, it's going to inevitably call. So make sure you bring along wet dude wipes and three adventure sizes, like Day Hike single wipes, 18 pack weekend wipers or you know, for long trips you got a 48 count pack. And it's not just that, like when you're out camping just sleeping in a sleeping bag, let's say you're gone for 10 days, whatever. I use them just to clean up at night, like, you know, scrub the old pit, scrub your arms if it's all dusty. Just kind of get your neck and everything cleaned up. I love having them with me. Dude wipes. It is the best clean. Pants down. They're available at Amazon. That's where I usually order mine from. It's on Amazon, but you can get them at Walmart nationwide. Fantastic product. Proud to be doing ads for these boys at Dude Wipes. Hey everybody, I'm talking here about Montana Knife Company. From our very own state of Montana, this company was founded by one of the most experienced master blade Smiths in the world, Josh Smith, who over recent months I've become friends with and my God, have I learned a lot about knives from this guy. Just a phenomenal hometown company that makes world renowned knives. Josh has been making knives for 30 years. You get one of these knives up and open, it is sharp like something that came from outer space. And here's the deal. They make knives that can be sharpened. You can work on these knives. If you don't want to work on them, you send it to them and they'll work on it. They'll get it sharp. Phenomenal hunting knives. If you want to see them in action, we just did. Me and John Hayes, the taxidermist just did a video about how to properly skin a black bear. Watch that video and in that video you'll see Montana Knife Co. Knives in action. MKC products usually sell out in minutes of being released, which is true. But now for the first time, they're dabbling with having knives in stock on their site. So right now you can grab yourself a Blackfoot 2.0 or the ultralight speedgoat use code meat eater and you get 10 off your first order. Montana Knife Company working knives for working people. 10% off with the code, meat eater. That's a good deal. A guy wrote in. We got a listener question. The guy wrote in. He's been struggling with some beavers.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah.

[Will Primos]

And then he's saying he thinks that beavers attacked his canoe. I disagree. That's a bite from porcupine. His canoe got attacked by a porcupine.

[Corey]

Yeah, that's what I thought, too.

[Will Primos]

His canoe got attacked by a porcupine. That ain't a beaver.

[Corey]

I don't think beavers just chew on random stuff.

[Dr. Randall]

You need to qualify. Where the. Where the canoe got attacked.

[Will Primos]

Southwest Wisconsin. You want to see the picture?

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah, yeah, I got you. But, but, but if. If you were from Mississippi, it was not a porcupine.

[Corey]

Oh, no, that's a good point.

[Will Primos]

He's in porcupine. He's in porcupine country.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah.

[Will Primos]

Porcupines will eat tree stands. They like treated plywood. They like.

[Corey]

You know, they like ax handles because just sweat from your hands getting on the ax handle. Wooden ax handles. No. No porkies in Mississippi. Huh? They just don't exist down there.

[Will Primos]

Really? Yankees.

[Dr. Randall]

When you say accent, one of my favorite saying is, I'm as scared of her as a possum is Ax handle. That's what I think.

[Corey]

I'm gonna start using that.

[F]

Yeah, I've had him chew on my fly rod. Cork handles.

[Will Primos]

Yep.

[F]

Sweat in the wilderness.

[Will Primos]

My dad had a cabin. He's telling me that they had a cabin. He said you kind of like people would walk out the door to take a leak, and there was a stump, and you would naturally. It was just like a human fire hydrant. Like, anyone that, like, went out the door, they'd go slightly left and pee on a stump. And he said the porcupines were always out there gnawing on that stump. Just from the minerals and stuff in the.

[E]

Yeah, like mountain goats.

[Will Primos]

The guy wrote in. But that's really complicated. Battle with beaver covered that. Oh, here's a good one for you, Will. Opinions on keeping freshwater fish in a small boat. Let's say you're out fishing. What do you guys calm down where you're from? Brim. You say bluegills or do you say brim?

[Dr. Randall]

Brim. Bluegills.

[Will Primos]

Okay. You're out in a small boat. He's like, how do you keep fish nice? You know.

[Corey]

Like ice or something.

[Will Primos]

You don't have a big old ice chest. He's wanting. No, he's just asking, how do you keep.

[Dr. Randall]

You put them in a basket in the water. You keep them breathing and alive.

[Will Primos]

You like the basket.

[Dr. Randall]

Same way you do an alligator. You catch an alligator, you don't kill him.

[Will Primos]

No.

[E]

Clear.

[Dr. Randall]

Tape his mouth up and you tie his arms up behind his back and keep him alive till you get him to the butcher room. I didn't know that.

[E]

Everybody knows that.

[Dr. Randall]

Everybody knows that.

[Will Primos]

This guy's going to be delighted that he's getting, he just thought he's going to get advice from us guys, but he's getting advice from will.pr if you.

[Dr. Randall]

Want it, if you want it fresh, keep it alive.

[Corey]

Makes sense to me totally.

[Will Primos]

If you guys have any thoughts on if my stringer and home, what's he got going on now?

[Corey]

Sorry, our, our brim game up here is pretty weak. I, I would love some easy access to like throwing some slip bobbers for, for like bluegills, big bluegills.

[Dr. Randall]

I just, I just got back from the Wind River Canyon and this guy was using a balloon as an indicator and it looked just like a cork. And I kept saying, did you see my cork move? And he goes, do what? So I, I, I went on the Internet and I searched definition of a fishing cork. And after he left that day, I sent him, sent it to him. He wouldn't reply. You're like, let's get on the same page.

[Will Primos]

Yeah, I got a couple additional thoughts now that I've read it more carefully. He's using a stringer combo. Stringer fish basket combo. He's putting them on a stringer out in the water, then he's throwing them in a fish basket when he's back. And he's also fishing for northeast northern, so he's dealing with some larger fish. He needs to go with.

[Dr. Randall]

A nice chest for the northern, for the bigger ones to keep them, you know, nice and fresh. But the small ones keep in a basket. If you use the stringer, you're going to bust their lips and they're going to break off or you put it through the gills, you're going to kill them.

[Will Primos]

That's what I was going to include for him is I remember when we were little we used to use stringers and we didn't know so we'd always run it under the gill cover.

[Dr. Randall]

That's, that's, and then it hurts.

[Will Primos]

You got a bunch of dead fish and then later learned to prick them with it. But you know, that's that like for bluegills, that doesn't really work.

[Dr. Randall]

We would put them on stringers, but the, the last time a water mocca had wrapped around that stringer, not done.

[Will Primos]

My kid recently, he Was down fishing in the creek down the road from our house, and they caught some trout and he had them on a string. And then he looks down there and there's a big old crayfish messing with his trout. So him and his buddies came home and they fried their trout up and boiled that little crayfish. It was a nice crayfish. That nice little surf and turf. Yeah, whatever.

[Corey]

Yeah, fish boil. There you go.

[Will Primos]

Yeah, boil. They had a nice little boil. Okay, here's one. I curious to get your. Your thoughts on this. A guy was at a. A guy was at a turkey hunting, like a Turkey Derby, NC Strut Masters or something like that. He was dismayed by the. He was dismayed by the. The field care he witnessed where you're weighing birds. And so people got their birds hung up with the guts in them, out in the sun, not chilled. And then he was saying that he saw a tremendous amount like, no, like some people not even taking the breasts, but a lot of people not taking the. Most people not taking the thighs and legs. What do you think about that?

[Dr. Randall]

Wild Turkey is just so great. The breasts, the legs, the thighs make the greatest soup. It's just. It's just great. If you just learned it, you just got to deal with it. Yeah, but leaving the guts in, I usually. I draw them. You know, that's what you call it. Yeah, yeah. I draw them instant. I kill them before they're hardly finished flopping.

[Will Primos]

Yeah. Because that stuff smells, man.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah, you cut. You cut a slice there at the bottom of the breast and you stick your hand there and grab the biggest thing you can find, which is going to be the gizzard. That's going to be the gizzard. If you can grab hold of it and get it, it's all coming out.

[Will Primos]

Got it.

[Dr. Randall]

Now if you got away them. Because I'm not interested in winning some turkey weight contest. So I like the meat better than that. So I'm drawing them.

[Will Primos]

You know, I lost the turkey contest in. In Elroy. I think it's called Elroy, Wisconsin. Is there a place called Elroy, Wisconsin? I don't know. Yeah, sure, I lost. I joined a turkey derby, but I got in my bird and brought it down and I was leader on the board. And then a guy beat me by a few ounces. And all the old guys in the bar were just thought I was the dumbest guy on the planet. My buddy says he go, his dad goes back in there a couple days later and he's sitting there and they're still in there.

[Dr. Randall]

He got in the bird. Good for you.

[Steve Rinella]

But I know this. This audience member was kind of appalled that there would be so many dead turkeys just pinned to a board. And it was in that no one was really taking the meat out of them. So it was about salvage laws.

[Will Primos]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

I'm wondering how many states have.

[Will Primos]

I don't know. His final question is. My question to the crew is, what is the best way to get North Carolina to create legislation on a salvage law?

[Corey]

Yeah. Start showing up at your fish and Game committee meetings and. And introduce it. And then eventually, if. If you feel like you're not getting any traction, you can write into your state reps and get somebody interested in that. The people that you need to target in that case are the people who sit on the Fish and Game Committee at the state level.

[Will Primos]

I'm a big believer in. I love salvage laws. I understand, like, arguments that, like, oh, it's big brother telling you what to do. But I like. I like them. I like how detailed they are. I like salvage laws.

[Steve Rinella]

Are they per species?

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

I see.

[Will Primos]

Or they'll spell it out like ducks up to the size of a mallard. Right. An interesting little thing here. And it's still. Even though they rolled, Montana rolled back some salvage laws. But in Montana. Is it Montana you still like? I think the wing. Yeah.

[Corey]

You got to keep away the wing meat.

[Will Primos]

In Montana, you got to retain the wing meat, which I guess we love our wings. That is strict.

[Corey]

I think for this turkey contest, there is a lot of meat on the wings. For this turkey contest, if you want to just make everybody happy and not feel like they're wasting good stuff. Is you got a contract out with, like, some sort of a mobile food truck cooking service.

[E]

You said they do that.

[Steve Rinella]

That's what they.

[E]

And then it's just an extra fee, and people aren't paying the fee.

[Corey]

Oh, people can't just jerk the hide off their turkey and. And throw the carcasses and what he says, at least make stock. I put up a ton of stock every year. And. And. And that definitely is part of why, like, killing a bunch of turkeys. But, yeah, turkey stock is amazing. And if you want. As long as it's fresh, you. You don't have to clean those birds. Well, you just dump it all.

[Will Primos]

Calvin spoils the whole bird.

[Corey]

I do. I mean, I pull the meat. Pull all the meat off, take the thighs.

[Will Primos]

Everything but the gobble he throws into a pot.

[Dr. Randall]

I like to see a turkey baked, roasted whole. Like, you like doing that? Yeah. And the Wild turkey. Of course, the breast just sticks straight up. It's just, you know, it's not big round like the swift's butterball.

[Will Primos]

Yep.

[Dr. Randall]

But you boil some water and you dip him. Of course, you've already drawed him. So the hot water, you don't want to leave it too much. You don't want to cook the meat, but you get it just right and that those feathers will just come off and that you're leaving the hide on Gotcha skin.

[Corey]

So then are you brining your bird and then roasting it?

[Dr. Randall]

You can. I've done it that way. It's not necessary.

[Corey]

Oh, really?

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah. You just flat clean it good. Pick all the feathers off all the wing, every. Everything.

[Corey]

Yeah. Make it look like.

[Dr. Randall]

Then you, you can stuff it if you want. I like oyster dressing the best.

[Corey]

Cool.

[Dr. Randall]

Oyster.

[E]

Oyster.

[Will Primos]

I want people to know that we know that it's not turkey season anymore.

[Dr. Randall]

Oh, it depends on who's watching.

[Corey]

This is the last weekend in Montana.

[Will Primos]

It's wrapping up. Yeah.

[Corey]

But I don't know. I could talk turkeys anytime.

[Will Primos]

Oh, no, I love talking turkeys. And you got the, you got like a turkey man here. You know, I had a guy one time who was in the poultry business, described to me he lumped turkeys into two categories, sharp breasted and round breasted.

[Dr. Randall]

Oh.

[Will Primos]

And he would say a turkey. A wild turkey. He said that's a sharp breasted bird.

[Dr. Randall]

It's sharp.

[Will Primos]

Yeah. It's a good way of describing it.

[Dr. Randall]

And they can be pretty dry. So you can inject them with butter when you bake them.

[Will Primos]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

Wild meat can be very, very dry.

[Corey]

I would use oven bags and oven. I thought the oven bag with brining a bird.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah.

[Corey]

You never got a dry bird.

[Dr. Randall]

Great.

[Corey]

They were, they were fantastic plan.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah.

[Corey]

But I'd take, I'd take the legs off because they just wouldn't, they wouldn't, they wouldn't cook to the same degree. The, the.

[Dr. Randall]

You got it. You got to cook them slower and more. Put the legs in a crock pot.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

And it falls off the boat or.

[Corey]

Buddy Jesse Griffiths just taught me. You basically turn your turkey leg into a smoked ham hock. And so I just did four turkey legs like that.

[Will Primos]

So throw them into something.

[Corey]

I brined them in like a cure style, brine, smoked them and then I just vac sealed them for doing like big things of collard greens or something like that. Throw them in there for.

[Dr. Randall]

Sounds good.

[Corey]

Yeah, yeah.

[Will Primos]

I'm getting that caster's taste out. How long has it been I got. Here's another advice thing from. Okay. Another guy wrote in looking for advice, but we're gonna put it to you.

[Dr. Randall]

Okay.

[Will Primos]

This, this is like a complicated. Put your thinking cap on.

[Dr. Randall]

Okay.

[Will Primos]

It's like a math problem.

[Dr. Randall]

Oh.

[Will Primos]

Okay. Okay. He's wondering about how to tip a guide. So. Tipping a guide. Okay, ready? We got former guides in the room. You guys will have an opinion about this.

[Dr. Randall]

Oh, always.

[Will Primos]

Okay, put, put yourself in the hunters don't put you guys. So Cal, Corey, you're in the hunter's perspective.

[Corey]

And Randall, Randall's fishing guy.

[Will Primos]

Oh, you've done. Yeah, you've done some guiding. Okay. You're in the angler's perspective, not the guy's perspective. Yanni said when he used to guide and the clients had come in, he goes, you're always looking for subtle cues about who's got the most money so you can get paired with them.

[F]

It doesn't always work out that way.

[Corey]

No.

[E]

I had a guy one time, spent the whole week, I fished him for like six days and he'd won the trip. So it was a free trip. And he kept asking me all week. He's like, so you know Walter takes care of you, right? Walter takes care of you, right? And I was like, man, it's really thoughtful of him that he's so concerned that I'm being fed and housed and that my summer's going well. And at the end of the week, he got on the plane and he stuck his head out the plane and he said, walter's taking care of you. Right. And it finally clicked that he was checking to see whether or not he needed to tip me.

[Will Primos]

Yeah. Because it was a free trip.

[E]

It's too late.

[Corey]

Quick. Through a rock, through the windshield of the plane. Hold on a second.

[F]

Okay, ready for this pocket knife.

[Will Primos]

So you gotta now think we're giving you hitting numbers here. You're. You're a businessman. Six day bear turkey combo hunt. All right, the price is. The price is 4, 600 per hunter. The outfitter website recommends 15 to 20 tip for the guide plus 100 to $200 for the camp cook. The outfitter notified us we will have a guide for turkey and a separate guide for bear. My friend wants to tip 20%. So $920 plus 200 to the cook. But he thinks we need to tip 20% to each guide for a total of $1,840 worth of tips. Comes out to a 44 increase per hunter.

[Corey]

I'd say you do whatever you want and give me your Friend's number. And I'll guide them anytime.

[E]

Yeah.

[Will Primos]

While I agree that we should tip for our trip, I think 44 of the total trip price is excessive. For each individual hunter, I have two tip recommendations. Then he goes on with his recommendations. He wants to split it up. We're going to tip 20%. So if it's six days of. Okay, if it's three days of turkey, three days of bear, however you slice it, you take the 20% amount and go like, okay, you get half of 20% and then the turkey guide gets half of 20%.

[Dr. Randall]

What would you do to me? It's really simple.

[Will Primos]

Okay.

[Dr. Randall]

It's the cost of a hunt. If the hunt cost you $5,000, whether it's three days or six days, I tip a minimum of 20%.

[Will Primos]

And they can do how. They can divide it up how they.

[Dr. Randall]

Want, how they want. Now I also tip the cook like I just left on from a trip on the Wind River Canyon. And I checked in because I wanted to know kind of what the average. The typical tip is. $100 per person per day. There's two people in the boat. $200 a day for three days. That's $600.

[Will Primos]

Okay.

[Dr. Randall]

I gave him 800. I just think God's. Now, if the gods. If he's a. If he's an sob, he's got a bad attitude, and every other word out of his mouth is profanity, which I don't like.

[E]

Oh, that explains a lot.

[Will Primos]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

In other words, if you were my guide, you'd get zero.

[Corey]

Dang it, Steven.

[F]

You don't want Steve guiding you.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah. So anyway, I just. I just think 20 for a tip. He guided me once.

[F]

Yep, that's true.

[Will Primos]

Were you cursing all the time?

[F]

Nope.

[Will Primos]

That's good.

[F]

Maybe. Maybe under my. Under my mustache.

[Will Primos]

Yeah.

[F]

And it was a heck of a tip.

[Will Primos]

I quit any kind of booze. I'm going to quit any kind of swear next.

[Dr. Randall]

There you go. Good luck.

[F]

Tip your guys 20%.

[Will Primos]

So these you guys, the guy that wrote in 20% of the bill and then divide it to the guides, how you think? I think that your friend thinking each guide gets 20% is not. Is not the way to think about it. Yeah.

[E]

If I'm eating at a restaurant and my server, I get a new server halfway through the meal or whatever. Someone clocked out. I'm not all of a sudden tipping 40% meal.

[Will Primos]

That's a great way of looking at another way to look. Let's say you're going out like we. We did a Guided hunt one time for mule deer with. With Crooked Sky Outfitters. Wonderful guys. But you might be with Stuart one day. You might be with land one day. You know what I mean?

[F]

Yeah.

[Will Primos]

They might be like, well, today go with so and so because he, he wants to go up and check you're not in the end going like twenty percent of the trip to him. Twenty percent of the trip to him. 20% of the trip to him. Yeah. It wouldn't be how you would look at it.

[Dr. Randall]

So we had a, A lady that cleaned the lodge in the room every day. I gave her $100 for the three days and. Which wasn't asked for. And then the, the chef was great. He had a great personality, and he was five star. I gave him 600 bucks.

[Will Primos]

Starting to think, if I host this show just right.

[E]

You pour him a.

[Will Primos]

Glass of that moonshine, Will's gonna leave a couple hundos.

[Dr. Randall]

When you, when you go on these trips and these people, I mean, guiding is a great life. If you don't weaken. It can be, it can be hard if you don't do what we can.

[Will Primos]

I don't understand what you mean.

[Dr. Randall]

We can. If the guide doesn't, if the guy doesn't weaken.

[Will Primos]

Oh, I see. Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

I mean, it's hard.

[Will Primos]

I got you.

[Dr. Randall]

And, you know, and, and they're dealing with some of these guides get some pretty bad clients. Oh, my gosh. They know it all. They want to tell you how to hunt. You got to remember, don't guide the guide. You, you, you bought a hunt. You, you hired a guide, and you gotta go with the flow.

[Will Primos]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

Compliment him and give him the opportunity to do good for you.

[Will Primos]

You know, I've been developing a piece of life advice that I've been using, and I use it with contractors when I, if, if I'm having a problem with like in my mechanical room. I explained this on the show recently. Like, let's say I'm having. We have in floor heating. You open my mechanical room up, you can't tell what's going on in there. Yeah, Too complicated. It's not like the old days, like a pipe coming in, a pipe going out. You look at you like, who knows? It's like open up a NAS control room. So what I do when I have a guy over, I don't do that well. You know, I'm thinking it might be whatever. And, you know, and I tried a couple things, but, you know, I'm too busy fixing other stuff. So I need you to take a quick look and I'd probably be able to figure it out. Like, I don't do any of that garbage. I come in and go, man, I'm an idiot. I don't know anything about. I look in here, and it's just. I don't get it. That opens up, like. That opens up a level of rapport. And you. You just. You dispense with all the trying to save face, and you just come in and be like, dude, I don't know. I don't know. I don't. I don't get it. I'd love to understand it. I can't understand it. And it just creates a different dynamic because a guy's impulse is to try to establish his bona fides. Right?

[Dr. Randall]

Good. Yeah.

[Will Primos]

So Nate Mason, who we work with, recently went to a dog training thing, and he said the first words out of my mouth. And he knows a thing or two. The first words out of his mouth, man, I'm an idiot. I don't know anything about any of this. Says just completely change the whole dynamic. People all day trying to help him out. He said, like, everybody's real nice to him.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah.

[E]

A lot more for his money.

[Will Primos]

Instead of coming and being like, wow, I've trained a few dogs in my day, you know, none of that.

[Dr. Randall]

It's like a fishing guy. You're hiring a guide. We were on the Wind River. That guide has been fishing that river every day. He's watching the river change. He's watching the levels. He's watching the temperature. He's watching different spots. He's figuring it out. And so I come in. I'm a big fly fisherman. I go all the time. I know what I'm doing, and I try to tell the guide what to do. It changes the dynamics of the whole trip. Instead, at first I said, look, anything I do, tell me not to. If you need to. And if you need to tell me twice, tell me twice. Tell me what to do. And I want to play his game. And it was so much more fun. And he taught me. I learned stuff that I didn't know. It was great.

[Will Primos]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

And then you tip good and you're welcome back.

[Will Primos]

So do the guides in this room like this.

[F]

I love everything Will's saying.

[Will Primos]

Yeah.

[F]

I need to know more specifics about this bear hunt. Is it a baited bear hunt? Is it spot and stock? Are there hounds involved?

[Will Primos]

You want to talk shop about bear hunting?

[F]

Yeah. This isn't enough information here.

[Will Primos]

Okay, Will, I got one more for you. Ready for this, guys? No, gents, Sorry for the title. The title is Turkeys vs. Grouse Mortal Enemies? He says. Sorry for the title. I wanted to grab your attention. In all seriousness, however, this has been on my mind quite a few years now. Maybe you folks have heard of this discussion before, and maybe you guys think it's nuts, but I'm telling you, there's a good amount of northern Minnesota outdoorsmen who keep repeating what I believe to be a rural myth. That myth is that turkeys target and kill grouse and grouse nests, eggs. He says he has had over 15 people tell him that turkeys are killing the grouse.

[Corey]

Are they all from the same family?

[Will Primos]

It's a large family.

[Corey]

I. I don't know about that.

[E]

Do they suspiciously have a freezer full of grouse?

[Corey]

No. I mean, if you watch domestic turkeys, not like in your high density facilities. Right. But like your normal barnyard, I don't know, vanity turkeys, we'll call them scratching around. I mean, they'll, they'll get into anything. Curiosity stuff. And it's not uncommon to, like, throw eggshells out there for a little added calcium.

[Will Primos]

It's a great point, because when I put my compost on my garden, the magpies, every bird in town is walking around and they're picking the eggshells out during nesting season.

[Corey]

Mm. So it wouldn't surprise me if. If a handful of turkeys take advantage of something like that, but I don't think it's going to be a primary food source or it would. I mean, it'd be really interesting. Right. If they're there, it'd be like a fisheries biology study. Right. It's like, how much mass can that landscape support? And by killing off the grouse, the turkey population will grow somehow. Right?

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah. I say look at the science. Somebody.

[Will Primos]

Well, who's studied science on this.

[Dr. Randall]

I don't know. Let's look at the size. I mean, what's the turkey biologist name from Georgia?

[Will Primos]

Chamberlain.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah. So if I'm mistaken, if I remember right, he's the one who figured out that the great horned owl.

[Will Primos]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

Was killing the gobblers, knocking them off the limb and flying down and eating their head. All the interest from the neck. And. And that's it. But he documented it. He figured it out and documented it scientifically. So that's what needs to be done. I don't think.

[Corey]

I know. You don't understand how the game of BS has played here.

[Dr. Randall]

I do, I do. And I'm telling you, that's bs so I'm using the science and saying I'm going to Science.

[Will Primos]

Well, there is a. There is a. There is a parallel because we had a woman on the show. I think she was sitting right where you're sitting right now. And they do cameras on turkey nests, right? So all you gotta do is you gotta. Somehow, it's probably not hard to do. You could design a study. You gotta catch grouse, find the females, put a marker on them at the right time of year, find where they're hanging out, go there. She was concerned that. She explained to us she was concerned that. That. What's that thing in astronomy like? Just you watching it changes it. Oh, he's a high. No, it's not. Heisenberg.

[E]

Yeah, Heisenberg's principle.

[Will Primos]

Heisenberg's principle. There's a bit of Heisenberg's principle at play because she feels that your. She feels that your presence at the nest changes a dynamic. And she has noticed that when she goes to a nest site and does the work and sets the camera up, she feels that very quickly thereafter there's a bobcat present and a much higher likelihood that a bobcat will be present right away than later. And somehow that activity and human odor and messing around is somehow attractive.

[Dr. Randall]

Wow.

[Will Primos]

She was speculating. She doesn't know, but she has. She's like, why is it that we place a camera? And so quickly there's a bobcat there and then no bobcats, you know, who knows? Is this a study on Miriam's Kansas? Okay, so whatever.

[Dr. Randall]

That would be in Rio's or Easterns.

[Will Primos]

Okay, yeah, studying that. But, yeah, it'd be an interesting thing. But, you know, I'll tell you one thing that changed my life and how I view wildlife is you remember long maybe it was a decade ago, someone had a trail cam image of a. Of a whitetail deer that walked up to a robin nest and ate some of the chicks. And I'm like, okay, all bets are off. Like, all bets are off. You know.

[Corey]

I can't remember where we were, but somebody was, oh, it was over in. In Wyoming the other day. But there's a bunch of town pheasants basically, in all the green areas. And this friend of mine, his folks had just moved to town and had asked him, is there anything they can do about these pheasants? Because they're. They're cackling so early in the morning.

[Will Primos]

Get up earlier and go to work.

[Dr. Randall]

And.

[Corey]

Yeah, maybe that's what that white tail deer was doing. He's attired to those bird noises early in the morning.

[Will Primos]

You know, I watched. We were Watching. Me and my boy were watching some turkeys, you know, as turkeys often are on the wrong side of a fence sort of watching them and like trying to call them into a place they'd never want to go in a million years, you know. And like this bird, we watched him for an hour, you know, and he never made a peep. And then a while later this, this pheasant gets up and he's doing those low flying like flying cackles and gets over that turkey's head and pow, hit it. Hit like a good shot. Gobble off that rooster. You ever drive past a piece of land and wonder who owns that? Or maybe you need to know where exactly a property line runs. Well, that is where ONX Hunt comes in. And it's not just for hunters. There are folks using Onx for their jobs every day throughout the country. If you need the best land ownership maps, aerial imagery and property boundaries in your pockets, ONX Hunt is the tool for the job. Try it free for 7 days. Download onx Hunt in the app or Google Play store or visit on xmaps.com hunt to get started. When you're in the back country, don't forget your own backcountry. Keep it pristine and confidently clean by bringing along wet extra large dude wipes. I'm. I'm glad to be doing dude wipe ads because I buy dude wipes anyways. I've been a long time dude wipe. I'm a dude wipe dude all the time. Just like your truck gets muddy out in the wild, soaking your butt, you'd never clean your vehicle with dry paper towels, so why would you clean your butt with dry toilet paper? Wetter cleans better. So ditch the itch and switch from TP to wet extra large dude wipes.

[Dr. Randall]

Love them.

[Will Primos]

Like going on a 10 day moose hunt, I just bring a pack along. Not only that, so they're extra large. Okay. If you're a little baby, you get little baby wipes. If you're a man, you get extra large dude wipes. And when you're out in nature, it's going to inevitably call. So make sure you bring along wet dude wipes and three adventure sizes. Like day hike single wipes, 18 pack weekend wipers, or you know, for long trips you got a 48 count pack. And it's not just that. Like when you're out camping, just sleep. Sleeping in a sleeping bag. Let's say you're gone for 10 days, whatever. I use them just to clean up at night. Like, you know, scrub the old pit Scrub your arms if it's all dusty. Just kind of get your neck and everything cleaned up. I love having them with me. Dude Wipes. It is the best clean. Pants down. They're available at Amazon. That's where I usually order mine from. It's not Amazon, but you get them at Walmart nationwide. Fantastic product. Proud to be doing ads for these boys at Dude Wipes. Hey everybody, I'm talking here about Montana knife company. From our very own state of Montana. This company was founded by one of the most experienced master blade Smiths in the world, Josh Smith, who over recent months I've become friends with and my God, have I learned a lot about knives from this guy. Just a phenomenal hometown company that makes world renowned knives. Josh has been making knives for 30 years. You get one of these knives up and open it, it is sharp like something that came from outer space. And here's the deal. They make knives that can be sharpened. You can work on these knives. If you don't want to work on you send it to them and they'll work on it. They'll get it sharp. Phenomenal hunting knives. If you want to see them in action, we just did. Me and John Hayes, the taxidermist just did a video about how to properly skin a black bear. Watch that video and in that video you'll see Montana knife company knives in action. MKC products usually sell out in minutes of being released, which is true. But now for the first time they're dabbling with having knives in stock on their site. So right now you can grab yourself a Blackfoot 2.0 or the ultralight speedgoat use Code me Eater and you get 10% off your first order. Montana Knife Company working knives for working people. 10% off with the code meat eater. That's a good deal. All right, well tell us about the gun auction.

[Dr. Randall]

Well these are what if people want.

[Will Primos]

To see what they look like? What can they type into their phone?

[Dr. Randall]

The truth about Conservation.com.

[Will Primos]

Oh, this to see the actual things.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah.

[Will Primos]

Okay.

[Dr. Randall]

See the guns.

[Will Primos]

All right.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah.

[Will Primos]

The truth about Conservation.com. so as he will's talking since you probably have your phone with you. Truth about conservation.com then the gun auction. You can, you can behold the purdy shotguns that will will now explain the history of and what's happening with them.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah, so I've always loved my first, my first gun ever shot was a Fox model B, side by side double trigger. My, my dad, when he got out of World War II, he was alive. He got home, went to Hardware store. He was going to go hunting. Bought him that gun for $10 used. And it's now one of my favorite guns. And so he then bought some bamboo fly rods. And that's kind of the story of my. My daddy after World War II and hunting and fishing. But as time went on, didn't have any money, and I just loved the marriage of metal to wood. And I went hunting with a guy, and he had Holland and Holland hammer guns. And he handed me one, and we'd been hunting, and. And it's just so much fun to cock those hammers. So before they figured out how to put the hammers internally and cock them when you open. When the gun opened, cock them. The hammers were on the outside. And so you cock the hammers, and you had a safety. And just like any normal gun, so the hammers are cocked. And it was just so much fun shooting it. You don't see the hammers when you shoulder the gun when you mount it. And so the first gun that I ordered was a 16 gauge. And Purdy was. Happened to be in town. I asked him to meet with me. They took me to dinner, told him I wanted to order the 16, and I wanted to reserve the 410, the 28, the 20 having the 16 made and the 12. The serial number consecutive, because I was going to order all of them over time.

[Will Primos]

But how would the serial number be consecutive?

[Dr. Randall]

They reserved them.

[Will Primos]

Oh, I got. Okay, yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

So they reserved the serial numbers.

[Will Primos]

I see.

[Dr. Randall]

So those were going to be my serial numbers when I ordered the guns.

[Will Primos]

Yep.

[Dr. Randall]

So order the 16. And that was the 16 gauge, like my daddy's fox. And so I just loved hunting with a gun. I killed whitetail with it, Turkey squirrels. Killing the limited gray squirrels. And holding up a $200,000 shotgun is kind of fun. And that's one of my favorite pictures. But anyway, so I started ordering the other guns. But they told me, they said, will, we don't have plans to ever make a 410 or a 28 in a hammer gun with ejectors. We just don't even have the plans for it. And I said, well, start working, because I'm going to order them. If you want the money, I'm going to order them. And so over time, they finally decided to build the 410. They built 10. They only built 10. Gordy's in Houston bought five of them. Four of them were bought at the SCI show, and one of them's mine. Mine's the only one that's different. I have modified Beavertail and mine have a special bird engraved on each gun. And so I ordered that gun and then I ordered the 28. The 28 is the only 28 in existence. It's a 28 gauge hammer gun with ejectors. It's my favorite upland gun. Wow. And the 410 cost $295,000. That's what it costs.

[Will Primos]

Got it.

[Dr. Randall]

It is. They're. And they're beautiful and they're exquisite. And when you close them, they go ding because they're so, so tight. So I was in Arizona hunting with my 28 and I. I don't know how, but all of a sudden shot. Reloading the gun and it wouldn't close. And I went, oh my gosh, what is going on? The gun would not close and I didn't want to force it. So I'm looking at it. A piece of sand had gotten in the breach.

[Will Primos]

That's how tight it is.

[Dr. Randall]

That's how tight it is. I blew out that sand.

[Will Primos]

Ding.

[Dr. Randall]

You know. And so I just. The guns were just a joy to shoot. They're a joy to handle. Of course, they all fit to me. You know, made measurements for me. But when we. When we did the initial gathering of information, all these conservation groups, the Congressional Sportsman's Foundation, Du rmef NWTF and quail and pheasants came to my home in Mississippi and we took them out to a real nice sporting range that have halise. H E L I C E. Some people call them ZZ bird targets. They're. They're.

[Will Primos]

I'm not tracking what you mean by that.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah. Police is a. Has a. Is a target with two fan blades on it. And so it's out in a box and. And you. It starts spinning when you, when you say I'm ready. The target. There are five of them. So there's five boxes with five spinning fans with a target in the center. And so when you say pull, one of those is going to go. And you don't know which one I got you.

[Will Primos]

And one of them pigeons. Clay pigeon. Is going to drop into one of those fans and spit it out.

[Dr. Randall]

It's already there. It's not a clay pigeon. It's a plastic pigeon. It's a plastic clay target.

[Will Primos]

Okay. Okay.

[Dr. Randall]

And it's made to mimic box pigeon shooting which started in Europe when they used to. That was their big shooting event.

[Will Primos]

I'm back to not understanding.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah.

[Will Primos]

What's it called?

[Dr. Randall]

Helice H E L I C E or ZZ Bird.

[Will Primos]

Is it dumb that I don't know this?

[Dr. Randall]

No.

[Will Primos]

Okay.

[Dr. Randall]

A lot of people don't know about it.

[Will Primos]

Okay.

[Dr. Randall]

I mean, police, it's a specialized discipline of shooting.

[Will Primos]

Okay.

[Dr. Randall]

And it's a big competition. The world championship this year is in Italy. Last year, I think it was in Cyprus, Greece. So anyway, you say pull and one of those five targets is going to go. It's going to that. You don't know whether it's going to go straight up the fan. The machine is oscillating, so it might go straight up straight away, straight left, straight right. It's crazy what it can do. Got it. And so you're sitting there ready, and your eyes have to be blended over the five targets. So when one of them goes, you got to go to it and kill it. So we lined up all five of the conservation groups. 4, 10, 28, 20, 16, and 12. And we made all the targets go one at one at a time. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Nobody missed. And it was just beautiful. Yeah. Seeing everybody shoot those guns and enjoy them. And so that was kind of one of the scenes. And you probably can see that on that the Truth About Conservation site. There's probably a video of that on there.

[Will Primos]

Got it.

[Dr. Randall]

But the whole effort here was to engage these conservation groups.

[Will Primos]

Well, you got to back up. I'm not. I'm not done hearing about the whole thing. When you were accumulating them, were you thinking to yourself, and someday I'll give them all away?

[Dr. Randall]

I didn't know what I was going to do. I felt like I could find some way to help raise money for the hunting and fishing community. I just didn't know what it was going to be. And so as I would attend the Decks Unlimited convention or the National Wild Turkey Federation convention, I would find the philanthropy organized people who accept money and all that kind of stuff. And I say, look, I got these set of guns. I would like to give them a way to conservation. I'm trying to figure out how to do that. And I want these groups to share in the money. These are people who've been a part of my life. The RMEF is such an incredible organization and it's done so much for my life. And the National Wild Turkey Federation and Ducks Unlimited and Quail and Pheasants. I mean, they're just incredible organizations. And Congressional Sportsman's foundation who protects our hunting and fishing and trapping rights at the local, state and federal level. I mean, how can I do something to give back and thank them for what they've done to help protect those rights and to help Grow other people being associated with hunting and fishing and trapping. And so one day, the Congressional Sportsman foundation called me and they said, look, we got this campaign. It's not hunt, fish, listen, it's I hunt, I fish, I vote.

[Will Primos]

Got it?

[Dr. Randall]

And they said, we want you to be a part of this campaign. I said, look, that's fine. I'll do that. Do whatever you want me to. I'm not really interested in being a poster boy, but I will. I said, but I've got these guns. How can we leverage these guns? How can I cause a ripple effect? How can I throw a little pebble into a perfectly still body of water and have it become a wave? Those are my words. And I was talking to a lady named Corinne Johan. She was the director of marketing. She's no longer there, but she says, let's think about it. Let me talk to Jeff Crane, the head of Congressional Sportsman, and to Kevin Perry. Let me see what we can come with. She called him back and she goes, so you want to give us these guns? And then we think we can auction them and all the money and the proceeds and you have to have them appraised. And anything over appraised value will, can be written off because they're going to go to all 501c3 public companies.

[Will Primos]

Okay.

[Dr. Randall]

And so that's how it all came about. And that's what we did. We created the campaign articles in all these magazines alerting everybody. So some, hopefully some guy that's got a real nice nest egg who wants to give back to conservation will pay more than their, than their appraised value.

[Will Primos]

Are you guys being public about the appraised value? Is there a minimum, I don't know how.

[Dr. Randall]

Rock island is the auction house. They, they auction off the finest guns in the world. And we chose them because there is.

[Will Primos]

A, that's who we bought that, that punt gun from. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Corey]

We met those guys at, at, at Pheasant Fest this year and her Quail Classic and yeah, we ran through the.

[Dr. Randall]

Whole In Kansas City.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

Did you see the Primos guns?

[Corey]

Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. I, I was telling you earlier, I personally just enjoy the fact that the 16 gauge is noticeably well worn.

[Dr. Randall]

I'm guilty. Yeah.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

The 16 has a little more wear own it than the other ones.

[Corey]

Well, I, I, to me, it makes it all more valuable because you're, you know, just like anything these days, if you can buy whatever, but if that thing has a story. Yeah, it can be a lot more valuable.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah.

[Corey]

And, and so the whole set kind of has that, like. It is, like, fine, fine stuff. Anybody can see that. You're like, this is something that is set apart by craftsmanship.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah.

[Corey]

And there's. There's a couple of those guns don't look like they've been touched at all, but I'm sure they've been cleaned and. Yeah, but the 16 has been, because I think you put extra swivel studs in there and stuff like that. Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

So I had swivel studs put on the 16 because it's my duck gun. When I'm putting out the decoys, I sling it on my shoulder. Well, little did I know. I'm scratching it back there with suspenders, suspender buckles, and all kind of stuff, you know. Anyway, I had to have it, you know, kind of touched up. But.

[Corey]

Yeah, the Rock island folks, they have a whole. It's online. I'm sure I haven't looked at it online, but I have a big catalog of the whole collection. And. And there is. We should look it up right now. But there is an appraisal price that has been posted.

[Dr. Randall]

So the gun. The guns cost about a million one. And they appraise for 800 because they are. They are used.

[Will Primos]

Oh, I see.

[Dr. Randall]

So anything. Anything that's paid over the appraised value can be written off.

[Corey]

Right. But those guns, no matter who they belong to, typically go for over appraised value. Yeah, yeah, those. Those purdies do. Because, I mean, they're a major.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah. But they'll never ever be another set. So. Yeah. Rock island went to London and interviewed Nick Harlow, who is the curator of the London Guns World. And he sits right there and says, this will never, ever be. Never been done. And it'll never be done. Not again.

[Corey]

Yeah. One of a kind, one of a guy.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah. So anyway, so, you know, you go and you think about what. What somebody can do. So what I want is for other people also to think other people have things that they've acquired in life.

[Will Primos]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

That are valuable.

[Will Primos]

I'm touching one right here, buddy.

[Dr. Randall]

Nobody wants your cast. Nobody wants your caster moonshine. I may want some. For some bait. I may want that. No telling what you'd catch. But anyway, so other people hopefully will start a ripple effect in that way.

[Corey]

Yep.

[Dr. Randall]

That other people can say, well, you know, I've got. I've got this beautiful painting, or I've got this gun, or I got this, and I'd like to give it to Congressional. I mean, they are working their butts off. Like the Colorado initiative to stop all the anti hunting stuff and you know, if they don't get on the front end of it and provide the money and the resources and tap into all the people that they have access to to tell the story, we're going to lose.

[Will Primos]

Hit me with a couple more details just for folks listening. The auction, what are the. What is it a specific. Sorry, I'm having a hard time communicating. Is it like a specific moment?

[Dr. Randall]

December 5th is December 7th.

[Will Primos]

Okay.

[Dr. Randall]

The parties, like you got to have like.

[Will Primos]

So it's not like open for a long bid process. It like it's a 48 hour bid.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah. It's going to start and it probably be the fifth. The fifth, sixth and so it'll probably be the fifth and sixth. They haven't narrowed that window down. I'll be there for the auction.

[Will Primos]

Oh, you will?

[Dr. Randall]

In Dallas? Yeah, my wife and I will.

[Will Primos]

I gotta check what I got going on. Seventh is Pearl Harbor. It's an auspicious day.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah. Really?

[Will Primos]

That's pretty exciting, man.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah, it is. And, and you know, I just can't say enough about these organizations and what they've gone to bat for us and all of us, hunters and fishermen, trappers and, and if we can do something, we should.

[Will Primos]

That's generous of you, man. That's. That's real admirable. Sounds like such a cool collection too.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, after I, I got the 28, you know, my wife was looking at the order, you know, it's real expensive and we, she says, I'm going to go to Juniper's, that's a real fancy jewelry store in town. I went, I said, okay. And she goes, I'm really looking at a really nice ring. I said, you can't catch me.

[Will Primos]

Okay, so December is coming up. We'll remind people as we go along. But in December, the collection, it's called the Primos Guns. Like, what's the sort of slang?

[Dr. Randall]

Will Primos Purdy Collection.

[Will Primos]

I guess I like that. The Will Primos Purdy Collection. The Will Primos Purdy collection will go. And then that money will be divided up by five conservation organizations that Will Primos has identified as having changed his.

[Dr. Randall]

Life and helped his life, Changed many.

[Will Primos]

Of our lives, changed many of our lives.

[Dr. Randall]

And Rock island, there is a buyer's commission and a seller's commission and they have forgiven the seller's commission, which is going to be hundreds of thousands of dollars. Wow. They've given that back already. So we're already on a roll here raising money with this deal.

[Will Primos]

Has anyone reached out to you yet to tell you like I'm going to be there and I'm bidding.

[Dr. Randall]

I've had several people say I'm really interested.

[Will Primos]

Okay. You think they're serious? No one's tried to preempt?

[Dr. Randall]

Not that I know of. And I don't know how they do that.

[Will Primos]

Yeah, Got it, got it. Lastly, Steward Link. I hadn't heard about this.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah. So StewardLink is stewardlink.com it is a group of tremendous agronomists, foresters, people that have all the degrees and all the certifications for writing conservation programs. A lot of these people are former national resource conservation service, NRCS, part of the U.S. department of Agriculture office that have come together just like a CPA represents you to the IRS. The people at StewardLink represent the Steward of the land. The person who owns the land and farmers it or the person who leases it and farming. They're the steward. Whoever controls the land and they represent them and help them access the government.

[Will Primos]

Programs, which is probably like a byzantine structure that's hard to navigate and there's.

[Dr. Randall]

All kind of issues with. Everything's right. So when you. The Conservation Stewardship Program, CSP program. If you apply for the for Conservation Stewardship Program and you apply, everybody in here applies. We all have 500 acres, thousand acres, 250 acres. We get ranked who has the most opportunity to put the most conservation on the ground. But I hired Stuart Link and Stuart Link knew that if they would write certain plans, these are, these are activity plans, Conservation activity plans. Conservation activity cap plan. I think the name, the acronym may have changed recently with their changes stuff all the time. But anyway, these plans we, the plans were written for me. For mine, I was going to do a nutrient plan, I was going to do a, a water conservation plan, a variable rate pesticide plan, a variable rate fertilizer plan. And I had all these plans written and didn't cost me a penny. And that's part of my application. And I ranked the highs and I got the $400,000.

[Corey]

I mean a big, big problem, right, is you have producers, farmers, ranchers that are working 16 hour days and then in order to understand this stuff, apply for it. Have the back and forth. That takes a hell of a lot of time too.

[Will Primos]

Oh yeah.

[Corey]

At the, at the back end of that day.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah.

[Corey]

And there's huge, huge bottlenecks in these systems.

[Dr. Randall]

And the NRCS employees, there's, there's right here on Main street. In both of them there's an NRCS office. Those people are great. But there's only so many hours in the day. And, you know, and there's so many. There's these plans. Mississippi, because we're in Mississippi. That's where we started. It's number one in csp. It's the number one state in all the country. We went to California. The whole state of California had only four CSP prints that had ever been approved. So now we're going to new. We're in New York, Indiana, Ohio. We've got employees in those states. And we're constantly meeting with farmers and helping them understand what's available.

[Will Primos]

Let's say just help me out. So I'm a farmer in. Give me a state where you guys were.

[Dr. Randall]

Wisconsin.

[Will Primos]

Okay. I'm a farmer in Wisconsin, and I have a thousand acres. And I want to know even just what is available for conservation funding for my land.

[Dr. Randall]

That's correct.

[Will Primos]

That's the first step is call and be like, I'm managing a thousand acres for my family.

[Dr. Randall]

It's located in this county. Here's my farm number. We can access all that and look at everything and, and, and give you the information. And you don't have to hire us. If we can help you, we will help you. That's. That. That's. That's.

[Will Primos]

And that would be like, questions like, should I put stuff in crp? Is there a way that I should be categorizing portions of my land for different tax structures or whatever?

[Dr. Randall]

Exactly.

[Will Primos]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

I mean, it's just a tremendous amount of opportunities. For instance, let's say you've got a piece of land, and next to you is a piece of land that's got wre waterfowl reserve easement on it.

[Will Primos]

Okay.

[Dr. Randall]

Which was the former, you know, wetlands protection plan, and it was planted trees and you. It borders you. And you want to put it on yours. Well, guess what? You already rank higher than most because you border a part already had.

[Will Primos]

Oh, got it.

[Dr. Randall]

So we know that. So we. Oh, we need to focus on this. And then there's equip. It's equip. You've got a piece of land, you're in Montana, and it's a little bit rolling, and you don't have any money. You're barely making it, trying to grow weed or whatever you're doing.

[Corey]

I'm familiar. Go ahead.

[Dr. Randall]

But you need to level that land. If you could level it and you could irrigate it a different way and so that all the water would flow correctly, slowly and maximize the water that you have some water, but you need more. Da, da, da, da, da. We can write you an equip plan, and the government will come in and give you money to level that land, to move the dirt and to make it.

[Corey]

And then so on the implementation side of things, is that. That where folks start cutting, Cutting checks to Steward Link.

[Dr. Randall]

Steward Link does. You don't. You don't pay Steward Link a dime unless you get approved for a program.

[Corey]

Nice.

[Dr. Randall]

And then you don't apply. You don't pay Steward Link a dime until you get the money. Let's say you qualified, and you might. You've qualified for a $400,000 program. You get the. You get the program. You pay steward link typically 20%. You get the money, then you write them a check. Yep.

[Corey]

Cool.

[Dr. Randall]

So you don't. You don't spend anything.

[Will Primos]

I don't want to get too far into the details here, but does that 20%, that's got to come out of pocket, though, because you got to put the grant on the ground.

[Dr. Randall]

You're not paying the 20% until you get the money. That means you've got it and it's happening.

[Will Primos]

But let's say I. Let's say, okay, let's say I. I apply and I get a hundred dollars, and the assumption is I'm going to take the $100 and put the $100 onto the land to the program.

[Dr. Randall]

Well, they're going to pay the money. It's all. It's all under. You've got to do what's supposed to be done.

[Will Primos]

Yes. I'm saying. So I got to go find the $20 because I've taken a hundred. I got to go find 20 somewhere else to pay for Steward.

[Dr. Randall]

Either that or you take it out of that.

[Will Primos]

Oh, so that's what I'm saying. There is a way to get it out of that.

[Dr. Randall]

Oh, yeah? Yeah.

[Will Primos]

Okay.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah.

[Will Primos]

Because that was part of implementation.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah. It's part. It's part of the plan to implement all the things. And we will help monitor to make sure you're doing your part of the game. Because you're not just going to get this money and not do it.

[Will Primos]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

You've got to spend the money in the right place.

[Will Primos]

You talk about, like, implementation. There's a funny story where I got a buddy that had a. He's got his land in crp. The CRP program. You know, it's strict, right. What you do and don't do. Well, they had a deer blind set on a hay wagon, and one day he was told, hey, you got farm equipment out on the crp. He's like, no, we don't. And he realized it was a blind on a hay wagon. And they would just look when they. They like drive by and look. And he's like, oh, wow, you're right.

[Dr. Randall]

They move the hay way you've got to do.

[Will Primos]

So it's like dudes come by and they like see what's going on.

[Dr. Randall]

That's right.

[Will Primos]

Yeah. You can get. You can get dinged.

[Dr. Randall]

You got to do what you're supposed to do to implement the program properly, to put conservation on the ground. Everything flows downstream. If we use less fertilizer because we variable rate it rather than just broadcast it everywhere, then we're sending less nitrogen, less nutrients downstream, which over blooms, stuff and screws up the creeks. So there's a reason for it.

[Will Primos]

Yeah. Excellent, man. Anything else you want to. Anything else you need to tell us about. From. From Will Primo's land?

[Dr. Randall]

Something that's kind of funny. So that's this. This place in Virginia called the Homestead.

[Will Primos]

Okay.

[Dr. Randall]

It's an old. Oh. The first US Open Sporting Clay championship was hell there. It's in Hot Springs, Virginia, if I got the city correct. And they contacted me about the gun giveaway.

[Will Primos]

Okay.

[Dr. Randall]

And they said, we want to do something to help you with that deal. We want to attract more people. And I said, okay, what you want to do? Says, we want to have a shoot. And we want to call it the Will Primos Invitational. That kind of made me laugh. I said, okay, do you have to shoot? Very good. If you enter this thing. So that's happening. That's coming up in July.

[Will Primos]

Okay.

[Dr. Randall]

And it's going to be an exclusive set of people who are interested in bidding on the guns that are coming.

[Will Primos]

Can people go get on the list?

[Dr. Randall]

You get. Yeah. You pay.

[Will Primos]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

And so much of the proceeds to be a part of this exclusive Omni Resort dinner meals shooting goes to the Congressional Sportsman's Foundation.

[Will Primos]

Okay. So if someone is kicking the idea around, getting ready for a bid in December and they want to experience the guns, here's.

[Dr. Randall]

The guns are going to be there.

[Will Primos]

Yeah. So here's an opportunity to show up and.

[Dr. Randall]

Yep.

[Will Primos]

Here's an opportunity to show up and.

[E]

We'Ll give you the hard sell personally.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Will Primos]

All right.

[Dr. Randall]

I might even let somebody shoot one of the guns. If that. If that. If insurance will cover it.

[Will Primos]

They're not. Are they already out of your name? They're not in your name anymore.

[Dr. Randall]

They're in the Congressional Sports Foundation.

[Will Primos]

Gotcha, Gotcha.

[Dr. Randall]

And Rock island carries the insurance.

[Will Primos]

Where do they sit? Right now.

[Dr. Randall]

Right now they're in Baltimore, Maryland, at the DU President's convention.

[Will Primos]

Okay.

[Dr. Randall]

They're being shown. Right.

[Will Primos]

So they're on the road.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah. Yeah. Just like they were at.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

At Kansas City.

[Corey]

Yeah. Because I know the Rock Island Boys were telling me that the part of the reason for going too purdy and talking with was to figure out what the insurance price needs to be. What, what type of coverage they need to have. And, and it's a heck of a lot more than 800,000.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah.

[Will Primos]

So the Rock Island Boys sounds like something if you're reading about the Civil War. Yeah, it's like someone that took the backside of the hill at Antietam or something.

[Dr. Randall]

Kevin Hogan is one of the owners of Rock Out. They're incredible people. They're great conservationists.

[Will Primos]

Is that right? Okay, that's good to know.

[Dr. Randall]

They're for us. Yeah. Good.

[Will Primos]

All right, man, well, thanks for coming on. I appreciate you taking the time, man.

[Dr. Randall]

It's awesome to be with you. You are nuts. I'm going to tell you what that caster and moonshine, you know, I've, I've.

[Will Primos]

I've often said I got a problem where, like, I, I, I, like if I bring this up all the time, but, like, if someone's telling me about a health problem, I'll start feeling like I got the health problem. Do you know what I mean?

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah.

[Will Primos]

If someone's like, oh, you know, my uncle had testicular cancer, I'll get like a terrible ache, just. And now I've gotten my head like, I'm like, well, what would happen if you drank a little bit of that?

[Corey]

I thought you were gonna say, now, if you just take a finger moonshine caster, it cures what ails you.

[Dr. Randall]

I'm telling you, that stuff has such a unique. You need to, I mean, you need to patent it or something.

[Will Primos]

Yeah, there's some commercial application. I'm not sure what it is.

[Corey]

Well, I was wondering if the lights went out, if we could just light it on fire and then.

[Will Primos]

Great candle, man.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Will Primos]

Next time you come out, we'll have a plan for that job.

[E]

Cover your ears, Phil.

[Dr. Randall]

Y' all are awesome. Thank you for having me.

[Will Primos]

Thank you, everybody. Will Primo. Thank you very much. Yes, sir.

[Dr. Randall]

Foreign.

[Will Primos]

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's 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 I heart podcast.