Ep. 723: Dangerous Game

Summary

Episode 723: Dangerous Game – The MeatEater Podcast

Release Date: June 30, 2025

Hosts: Steven Rinella, Seth, Randall, and Morgan Potter

In Episode 723, titled "Dangerous Game," of The MeatEater Podcast, host Steven Rinella teams up with Seth, Randall, and Morgan Potter to explore the thrilling and perilous world of hunting Africa's most formidable wildlife. This episode delves into the challenges, ethical considerations, and exhilarating experiences associated with hunting dangerous game such as Cape buffalo and crocodiles in Tanzania's rugged terrains.

---

1. Introduction and Setting the Scene

The episode kicks off with light-hearted banter among the hosts about personal health and the logistics of their show, setting a relaxed and conversational tone. [03:35 – 04:07] They briefly discuss the fluctuating schedule of the podcast, with Seth expressing a desire for a more consistent release pattern, humorously suggesting renaming the show to "FWOP" to reflect unpredictable episodes.

Notable Quote:

• Seth (04:25): "In my opinion, it should just be that this is effectively live."

---

2. Critique of "Thunder Without Rain"

Seth introduces a critical discussion about the book "Thunder Without Rain" by Thomas McIntyre. He expresses disappointment in the author's digressions, where McIntyre deviates from the subject of Cape buffalo to discuss unrelated topics like Hemingway's influence and cinematography. [12:02 – 15:34]

Notable Quote:

• Seth (13:00): "He doesn’t talk about trout fishing in America. Gotcha."

Seth laments that while the book contains valuable information about the evolutionary history of Cape buffalo, it fails to meet his expectations as a reader seeking in-depth knowledge about the species. [15:08 – 15:36]

---

3. Hunting Cape Buffalo in Tanzania

The conversation shifts to the core topic: hunting Cape buffalo in Tanzania's montane forests. Steve Rinella shares his extensive experience, highlighting the dense vegetation and high elevation terrain that bring hunters perilously close to herds. [21:07 – 22:39]

Notable Quote:

• Steve Rinella (21:07): "I've been rolling for two minutes."

Randall adds that while intimidating, encounters with Cape buffalo can be exhilarating and leave a lasting impact on hunters. Seth discusses the adrenaline rush and the primal fight-or-flight response triggered during such encounters. [24:28 – 24:39]

---

4. Techniques and Ethical Considerations

The hosts delve into the specifics of hunting techniques to safely take down Cape buffalo. Steve emphasizes the importance of precise shot placement, advocating for shoulder shots to maximize effectiveness and minimize suffering. [73:34 – 74:04]

Notable Quote:

• Steve Rinella (73:34): "I am a firm proponent of the shoulder shot... it'll more than adequately penetrate that shoulder bone."

Seth and Randall discuss the ethical implications of wounding animals and the responsibilities hunters bear once an animal is injured. They touch upon the concept of "wounded loss," where a hunter may unintentionally harm the animal, affecting their hunting license and moral standing. [79:23 – 79:48]

---

5. Encounters with Crocodiles

Migrating from buffalo, the conversation turns to crocodiles, specifically the elusive black mamba in Tanzania. Steve recounts a tense encounter where a black mamba reared up beside him in tall grass, leading to a swift and necessary reaction to survive. [94:45 – 95:15]

Notable Quote:

• Steve Rinella (94:56): "If you can't break the on side shoulder, the other one shoot the offside shoulder."

He explains hunting strategies for crocodiles, such as baiting and precise aiming to the "smile" area above the crocodile's jawline to ensure a humane kill. The discussion underscores the lethal efficiency of these predators and the critical need for hunter preparedness. [71:02 – 72:17]

---

6. Impact of Diseases on Wildlife

Seth revisits the earlier critique of "Thunder Without Rain," highlighting how rinderpest devastated Cape buffalo populations in East Africa. Steve provides historical context on how diseases like rinderpest nearly eradicated buffalo herds, underscoring the importance of conservation efforts to maintain genetic reservoirs and habitat integrity. [91:05 – 93:03]

Notable Quote:

• Steve Rinella (91:13): "Rinderpest massivi hammered the population of buffalo."

---

7. Personal Anecdotes and Future Projects

Randall shares his recent hunting expedition in New Zealand, illustrating the differences between African and North American hunting experiences. He describes the unique challenges and beauty of hunting tar (similar to mountain goats) in New Zealand's public lands, emphasizing the authenticity and rawness of the experience. [83:07 – 85:05]

Notable Quote:

• Randall (85:11): "I felt like I was back here in Montana trying to find an elk or, you know, a bear or something like that."

The hosts also tease upcoming projects and bonus episodes, affectionately referring to these potential side shows as "FWOPs." They express excitement about future hunts and the stories they will bring to listeners. [100:17 – 101:03]

---

8. Conclusion and Final Thoughts

As the episode wraps up, the hosts reflect on the immersive nature of African hunting, stressing the blend of history, culture, and raw wilderness that makes it a unique pursuit. They encourage listeners to appreciate the complexities and ethical dimensions of hunting dangerous game, leaving them with a sense of respect for both the hunters and the animals they pursue.

Notable Quote:

• Steve Rinella (86:34): "The totality of it all. That kind of history and culture."

---

Key Takeaways:

• Precision and Ethics: Successful and ethical hunting of dangerous game like Cape buffalo and crocodiles hinges on precise shot placement and a deep understanding of animal behavior.

• Conservation and Resilience: The resilience of wildlife populations, despite devastating diseases like rinderpest, highlights the importance of conservation efforts and habitat preservation.

• Cultural Immersion: Hunting in Africa offers a profound cultural and historical immersion, differing significantly from North American hunting experiences.

• Personal Growth: The intense experiences shared by hunters contribute to personal growth, a deeper appreciation for wildlife, and a lasting impact on their perspectives.

---

Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• Seth (04:25): "In my opinion, it should just be that this is effectively live."

• Steve Rinella (21:07): "I've been rolling for two minutes."

• Seth (73:34): "I am a firm proponent of the shoulder shot... it'll more than adequately penetrate that shoulder bone."

• Steve Rinella (73:34): "Sort of, you know, how you try to achieve penetration. You're just trying to pop that brain open."

• Steve Rinella (91:13): "Rinderpest massivi hammered the population of buffalo."

• Randall (85:11): "I felt like I was back here in Montana trying to find an elk or, you know, a bear or something like that."

• Steve Rinella (86:34): "The totality of it all. That kind of history and culture."

---

Episode 723: Dangerous Game masterfully intertwines thrilling hunting narratives with thoughtful discussions on ethics and conservation. Listeners gain an in-depth understanding of the complexities involved in hunting Africa's apex predators, enriched by the hosts' personal experiences and diverse perspectives.

Transcript

[Steve Rinella]

This is an Iheart podcast.

[Seth]

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[Steve Rinella]

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[Seth]

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[Randall]

We hunt the Meat Eater Podcast.

[Steve Rinella]

You can't predict anything.

[Seth]

The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by First Light. Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer sticks, stands 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.

[Steve Rinella]

He.

[Seth]

Was accusing me of being always sick. He's confusing. He's giving. Like, he's confusing who got sick. I'm sick, like, once every two years. Is always sick.

[Steve Rinella]

I'm not.

[Randall]

Yeah.

[Morgan Potter]

Like, I know you to not be ill. An ill person.

[Steve Rinella]

I'm not an old person.

[Morgan Potter]

Pretty robust immune system.

[Seth]

I have allergies.

[Steve Rinella]

It's a bad year.

[Seth]

Can the show already be started?

[Steve Rinella]

It's. I've been rolling for two minutes.

[Seth]

Okay. Can you make sure it starts with. With clarifying the sickly Seth.

[Steve Rinella]

It's not true.

[Seth]

That sickly Seth is always sick. I'm not always sick.

[Randall]

I feel like you're gonna get sick in Alaska.

[Steve Rinella]

I was just.

[Seth]

Because he's over here sniffling right now. What are you sniffling about?

[Morgan Potter]

He's probably got allergies because.

[Steve Rinella]

No, it is. The pollen's bad this year.

[Seth]

Yeah, I think that would be rolled under sickly. Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

No.

[Randall]

Yeah.

[Seth]

Infirm. This is general infirmity. Our friend Morgan Potter's here.

[Steve Rinella]

Thanks for having me on.

[Seth]

Yeah, it's good to be back. But by the time you're listening to this, so. Because of. Because of things in this world that I hate.

[Randall]

Like what?

[Seth]

You really want to know?

[Steve Rinella]

That's a long list.

[Seth]

No, I'm only going to focus on one thing I hate.

[Steve Rinella]

Okay.

[Seth]

In my opinion, it should just be that, like, in my opinion, it should just be that this is effectively live.

[Randall]

The podcast.

[Seth]

Yeah. Like.

[Randall]

Like, as soon as it's done.

[Steve Rinella]

It's just vlog.

[Seth]

Yeah. And sometimes there'd be three shows in a week. Sometimes there'd be no shows in a week. It'd just be, like, flop.

[Steve Rinella]

What do we think, Phil? Well, I've talked with Corinne about this, and I actually agree with Steve. I would love it if we could.

[Seth]

Do something like that. We're just beholden to many agreements and deals with.

[Steve Rinella]

With people and companies, and there's.

[Seth]

There's a lot of moving parts. Great companies, of course. Incredible companies. That's the noise. I would change the show's name to fwop because that's what it would be like.

[Morgan Potter]

That sounds like something else. We won't go there.

[Seth]

By the time you're listening to this for, like, stupid. For, like, stupid reasons that I can't even begin to, like, understand, let alone explain. I've had it explained to me 20 times. I still don't understand it. You know, when do we talk about this? Recently in Life Aquatic.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, great.

[Seth]

Perhaps. Yeah. One of the top movies ever made.

[Steve Rinella]

Fantastic.

[Seth]

You know, it's like up there with Big Lebowski.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, definitely.

[Seth]

Someone's explaining something to his character. Bill Murray's character. And he says, I don't understand that, but it sounds like.

[Morgan Potter]

I ran into Bill Murray in an elevator once. I was working at a post production or office. Was in a post production studio. Steve, your phone's ringing.

[Randall]

Your phone's ringing.

[Seth]

No, it's not. How can you guys hear that?

[Steve Rinella]

Because we're all in the room.

[Morgan Potter]

Ran into Bill Murray in an elevator on the same day. I forget how many years ago this was, that he was on the COVID Was it Vogue or another publication? He was on the COVID of it, and I was holding that magazine while I stepped into an elevator together with him. We were both there, and I just kind of.

[Steve Rinella]

Was he cool? Did you say anything?

[Morgan Potter]

He was cool? No, I just looked at him, and I, like, slowly raised the magazine cover in front of my face so that he was staring at himself, and then we had a little chuckle and then went our separate ways. That was fun.

[Seth]

Oh, that was pretty fun.

[Morgan Potter]

That was my Bill Murray encounter.

[Steve Rinella]

He's one of the ones that I like. You want to hope he's cool in, like, in the wild, you know, he probably in the wild.

[Seth]

Morgan Potter. He's an Australian, as you can tell. Hey, do. Do for us. Your American accent.

[Steve Rinella]

No, I can't do it.

[Seth]

Why not?

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, it's bad.

[Seth]

I want to hear.

[Steve Rinella]

No, no, I can't do it. What is. What is your refused. What part of the country is your.

[Seth]

We could all do our Australian for the South.

[Steve Rinella]

I've heard a couple of the Australians earlier, before you walked in this door. Well, it was Kiwi, actually. Not. Not so great. You guys should probably refrain from that.

[Seth]

Do. Goof on him.

[Steve Rinella]

That's not a knife. See, you've got a lot of material. I mean, I have a deal. I have a deal with my children that when they can do. Because, you know, they've grown up here. When they can do a passable Australian accent. I'll like, give them a day off school, get them ice cream, whatever they want. They've failed to.

[Seth]

They can't do it. Maybe Randall could give him some pointers. Yeah, goof on him a minute, Randall.

[Randall]

Oh, now you're putting me on the spot.

[Seth]

Well, just do that.

[Randall]

This used to be a penal colony.

[Steve Rinella]

That's no good.

[Seth]

Shaming them. Yeah, no rules. We did. We did this with Southerners one time, and the Southerners would do their northern accent for us. Yeah, and. And then. But we were too. We wouldn't do our southern accent for them.

[Steve Rinella]

Ah, okay.

[Seth]

Yeah, I'm like. I'm not doing that.

[Steve Rinella]

No, I'm.

[Seth]

When they do their northern accent, they do everybody as Wisconsin.

[Steve Rinella]

Okay. Yeah.

[Seth]

Oh, yeah. Two plays, two fillets per salmon.

[Steve Rinella]

Huh?

[Seth]

That's how they do. Like a Yankee, they're like, well, do your southern for me. And I'm like, I'm not doing my southern for you.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wouldn't know where to begin. I do. I love a good regional accent, though. You know, Australia doesn't really have that. So I like that America has, like, regional variation. I appreciate that a lot, but.

[Seth]

Well, do one. Do it. Just do a quick one.

[Steve Rinella]

No, I can't.

[Seth]

When you're telling your stories, when you're telling stories to friends back home and you have an American talking, you do it in Australian.

[Steve Rinella]

Sometimes. If I've been drinking, it's a little early for that. If I've been drinking sometimes in American, I just can't. I just. No, I flat refuse.

[Seth]

Fair enough. That's not. That's not nice. What?

[Randall]

Good on, mate.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. What you say was that good?

[Seth]

Get him, Seth, get him.

[Steve Rinella]

That was. Yeah.

[Seth]

I get fired. I get my something. I get my haircut at VIP here and right. Right here. Close.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, yeah.

[Seth]

And I'm in there getting my hair cut and kind of like, if he's listening, with all due respect, kind of like a crazy looking guy walks in. Just looks like he's been camping a long time.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth]

And not crazy. Just looks like it's been a long, hot. A long, hot camping trip.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth]

And he comes in and he asks if he can get a quick trim.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth]

And he's clearly Australian. So he sits down and there's two guys, Kevin and Jake. And Kevin's cutting my hair and Jake is waiting for his next guy and he's like, well, if it's quick, I'll do it. So you ask him, where's the accent from? He says, Australia. And Jake asked him what? Like, same thing I would have done. Any crocodiles nearby? To which. To which he points out that those are well north of him.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth]

And then. And then he asked him what he does for fun.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth]

And the guy says, well, we hunt a lot of pigs. And then I kind of perk up at this.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth]

And all of a sudden he goes, are you the guy from Meat Eater? Oh, that's funny.

[Steve Rinella]

I thought I was the only one.

[Seth]

No, he was in town for work.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, really?

[Seth]

He's in town for work? Two or three, he said he's here. I didn't catch what he was working on, but he's sent Here and he's got. He's got a.2, 3 months of stuff he's got to do.

[Steve Rinella]

I'll bet it's mining or something.

[Seth]

I'm sure. Yeah, I shouldn't say I'm sure, but whatever it was, looks hot.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth]

I'll bet he came in looking hot.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, mining checks out.

[Seth]

By the time you're listening to this, reasons I cannot explain, I will be with Morgan Potter who's sitting here right now. We will be like a. Like an alternate universe. We will be in Tanzania hunting for Kate buffalo. If you want to hear how. If you want to reflect back on how all this came to be, go Back to episode 446, which was called when an African cape buffalo beats your butt. Did we call it that? Yeah, we didn't call it beats your ass beat your butt.

[Morgan Potter]

Yeah, because censorship, you know.

[Seth]

Huh.

[Morgan Potter]

Yeah.

[Seth]

When an African cape buffalo beats your butt. So it was just for alliteration purposes. Yeah. Nothing to do with.

[Morgan Potter]

I think we went back and forth between ass, but nothing to do with cleaning her up.

[Seth]

So we're going to come around and. And talk about that in. In a little bit. I'm. Dude, I'm getting excited.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, me too.

[Seth]

I just read a whole book about Kate Buffalo that wound up oddly not being about Kate Buffalo.

[Randall]

Which one's happening right now?

[Seth]

I am. Yeah. No, it's true. Yeah. What if by the time this comes out, I'm not excited?

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, you. Like this sucks.

[Seth]

And then I'm listening to this and I'm like, but that's not true.

[Steve Rinella]

No, there's a low chance, low risk of that, I would say. Very low risk. What's the book that is not about Cape buffalo that purports to be.

[Seth]

Well, it's by the late writer. So we had a long time ago had on a writer, Thomas McIntyre.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, yeah, I know him. Yeah, he passed away. I did know that.

[Seth]

I didn't know that. I was talking about get. I was telling Craig to get him back on the show.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, dear.

[Seth]

And then turns out he had passed away.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, yeah.

[Seth]

Not terribly old.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. No, not terribly old. Yeah. Poor guy.

[Seth]

It's thunder without rain.

[Steve Rinella]

Ah, I have. I've read it a long time ago.

[Seth]

But you know how. Well, no, no, because it only came out a year ago.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, really?

[Seth]

Yeah. Thunder without rain. It came out posthumously.

[Steve Rinella]

Okay, okay. Is it like an anthology? Like a collection of stories, all original.

[Seth]

Material, but it's just like how broad against trout fishing in America.

[Steve Rinella]

Huh?

[Seth]

Isn't about trout fishing in America.

[Steve Rinella]

Gotcha.

[Randall]

Which is really disappointing.

[Seth]

There's a great line about trout fishing love.

[Morgan Potter]

Is it like a romance?

[Seth]

No, no, no, no, no. It's a nonfiction book. He just now and then I can say this because he's, you know, no longer worthless. Sometimes for like 75 pages he'll forget that it's about Cape Buffalo.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he'll be just talking about whatever. Or is it more like about like.

[Seth]

He does a big. So he at one point feels the need to sort of talk about movies that might tangentially involve Kate Buffalo. So he spends a lot of time on like, like a lot of, of his generation that were interested in Africa. They're very interested in Hemingway.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, yeah, no, no doubt.

[Seth]

So rather than talk about Hemingway's run ins with Kate Buffalo.

[Steve Rinella]

Right.

[Seth]

He decides just to do a mega bio on Hemingway.

[Steve Rinella]

Gotcha.

[Seth]

Or out of Africa. He has to talk about that. So then he does a mega bio on like everyone down to the financiers.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh. As opposed to the characters that it was based on. He is like talking about film.

[Seth]

He alludes to them, but he forgets that he's, he forgets the hook.

[Steve Rinella]

Right. And so then he's talking about the cinematographers and whatnot and kind of just.

[Seth]

Doesn'T and just for long stretches of time forgets about the subject at hand. But then now and then comes back to it in remarkable fashion.

[Steve Rinella]

Yep. Yeah, sounds familiar. I think I've flicked through this book. Yes.

[Seth]

But I don't write that way. I don't write that way.

[Steve Rinella]

His writing style is kind of unique. I, I, I think I flicked through this book and I, as I recall there was a good chunk of it dedicated to like the, like the evolutionary history of Kate Buffalo and their relationship with other bovids. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Seth]

That was the part I liked. And here's the deal. If I was just sitting down looking to read a book, yeah, I would like it. But I was sitting down looking to like get a big load of Buffalo info rather than reading the Wikipedia page.

[Steve Rinella]

Which I've read twice for the cinematographers of Africa.

[Seth]

So. So like, my needs as a reader are not being adequately met by the book.

[Steve Rinella]

Right.

[Seth]

My needs as a cinephile.

[Steve Rinella]

Yep, totally checking that box.

[Seth]

Have been satisfied. Yeah, I was reading it to Cram for our trip.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, yeah, no, I think I can recommend some other reading. But yeah, you know, the thing about Cape Buffalo is I was kind of, you know, I read Hemingway and all that stuff. I mean, I've read, you know, a huge amount of literature and Non fiction related to African hunting. But I think nothing can kind of adequately prepare you for like seeing your first one. Oh yeah, it's so cool. I still remember the first one I ever saw. And I just being like, that's the coolest thing.

[Seth]

I want to get charged bad.

[Steve Rinella]

Man, you say that now.

[Randall]

Jesus.

[Seth]

I've been looking at a lot of videos. My buddy just sent me a video. Some guys getting beat up by one the other day.

[Steve Rinella]

I'll tell you, the crew that's going to be with you does not want to get.

[Seth]

That's who I want to actually get.

[Morgan Potter]

Hit, though Seth and I will be on the side.

[Steve Rinella]

So what is your. If you had to, like, if you had to. I mean, other than just the. The ferocity of the animal from those charge videos, what would be your kind of like main takeaway as far as just like how it all goes down?

[Seth]

Just that it's.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth]

Because picture that is here. I don't necessarily want to get charged, but like.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth]

I was talking to my buddy yesterday. We'll sit in my office. My buddy's haunted him a couple times.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth]

And they had a instance, no charge, but they got. They were.

[Randall]

They were.

[Seth]

He said the trackers are tracking.

[Steve Rinella]

Yep.

[Seth]

And all sudden he. A guy holds his hand up.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth]

And touches his ear. And they've been. He said they've been following him for a good part of a day.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth]

And they can hear somehow their trajectory on the track. Like for whatever reason, something out ahead of them had bumped him or something.

[Steve Rinella]

Gotcha.

[Seth]

So he said they're going and they're. They're following the trail. But all of a sudden you can hear them and they're coming at a good clip like something just happened. And they're coming.

[Steve Rinella]

Yep.

[Seth]

And so he says they're way off. And then they're like in their lap, right?

[Steve Rinella]

Yep.

[Seth]

And. And shoots one at 30 yards.

[Steve Rinella]

Nice. Good range to shoot one at in their lap. Yeah.

[Seth]

So then you're like. He's like that, like that scratched the itch.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, I'll bet.

[Seth]

Because he's like. I was worried that it would be that like. Oh, I could, you know, through the brush, I could kind of make out like a shoulder blade and someone saying, go, go, go.

[Steve Rinella]

Give it to it. Yeah.

[Seth]

And then you shoot and it's in its dead. Never. Like you never were in its presence.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Seth]

And he felt like he. He was so happy to have it. They were. They were like there.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. It was exciting. Yeah. They were like close up. They were there without the without the sort of. Yeah, absolutely. Trying to kill you aspect of it. Yeah, yeah, I think he said.

[Seth]

Yeah, they were, he said they were oblivious to their presence.

[Steve Rinella]

Right.

[Seth]

But still he's like, you could still just like, like feel it.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. Feel the intensity of being that close to them. Yeah. I mean that's what, that's kind of what I endeavor to do on, on safari is, is get people a number of those kind of like interactions.

[Seth]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Whether you end up shooting one, you know, whether it's a, you know, you just kind of get up on a herd to just get a, get a look at what's in there. We typically don't shoot from herds if we can avoid it. But yeah, just having that, that experience of being close to them is definitely, it's a big part of it. The charge piece is far less desirable. No, I know, I know. I picked that up. No, for sure, for sure. No. But I'm not gonna pretend I've had.

[Seth]

Like little mix up with, with like minor mix ups with grizzly bears up close. And I wouldn't give away. As much as you try to avoid it. As much as you try to avoid it in hindsight.

[Steve Rinella]

Right.

[Seth]

I wouldn't sacrifice any of those experiences in hindsight.

[Steve Rinella]

No, for sure. And I'm not gonna pretend like the prospect of a charge isn't part of the appeal of hunting Cape buffalo. You know, it's. Of course it is.

[Seth]

It's how many, how many grizzly, how many grizzly bear attack people have we interviewed? And when I say to them, there's my two favorite questions in the world. As a person has wild pig problems, I say if you could wave a magic wand and all the wild pigs would be gone, would you waive it? They always say no, not all of them.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth]

And then people like, do you wish it wouldn't have happened? And people have a hard time saying they wish it wouldn't have happened. The survivors have a hard time saying they're like, eh, it's who I am now.

[Steve Rinella]

Because they are survivors. Yeah, for sure. But it is, it's a good point, Phil, because they're here with us. Yeah. I mean it's a way, it's, it's a, like a time and a place where you feel something that I think outside of certain other like walks of life, like being maybe a firefighter or a cop or something like that, you get a kind of range carp. What's that? A cop. Okay, here we go. Here we go. Yeah. No, I mean other than those sort.

[Seth]

Of carp, that's More English, isn't it?

[Steve Rinella]

File cop. That was way English. I mean we can go back.

[Randall]

3 year old file fighter.

[Seth]

I'm sorry.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. No, no. So outside of sort of those that narrow range of professions you get a, you know, a sort of a series of emotions and feelings that you're just not really going to get elsewhere and in day to day life. And that's a good way to think about it. Yeah, it's. I mean that's part of the appeal and then that does, it leaves like an indelible mark on you, you know, it kind of changes your, your perspective on stuff.

[Seth]

How many times in your career have you felt like to whatever degree something actually happened. How many times in your career have you felt like a threat from Cape buffalo?

[Steve Rinella]

A threat in. Well, there's certainly been times. You know, I used to hunt and I still do hunt in the Cape buffalo in the montane forests of northern Tanzania. It's very high elevation, kind of these, these mountains that come out of the Rift Valley and it's very dense vegetation. It's, you know, almost like you could, you know, the layman's name, you call it like, almost like jungle.

[Seth]

Okay.

[Steve Rinella]

And you do inevitably get quite close to them in there. Either deliber deliberately or by accident. You'll bump into herds in this kind of very, very dense type stuff and you'll have situations where cows with calves and that will kind of come out and like bluff charge you or sort of like run in your direction. And then a, you know, a buffalo herd, sometimes they'll sort of circle up and like move a little closer to you, particularly in the evenings, you know, as part of sort of like a defensive posture that they kind of create. So I've certainly been intimidated by Cape buffalo a lot. But times where I could say that I was genuinely at risk of like serious injury or death. Probably less than 10, more than 5.

[Seth]

How many years?

[Steve Rinella]

15.

[Seth]

So we got a 33% chance? Well, no. Cause you're doing it a bunch of times every year.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, I'm doing a lot of trips a year. It's not one trip a year. It's not that lucrative. But yeah, it's, you know. So coming back to your charge videos, my, my kind of takeaway from them is a lot of them have a little more chaos than, than I would typically want to see.

[Seth]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Particularly if I was running the deal. But you know, everyone can sort of armchair quarterback these things. But the other one is just how difficult it is to adequately prepare yourself for that moment. Like even as a Professional hunter. How difficult. Difficult it is to override, like, the natural brain chemistry impulses that you get under that kind of stress. Like, it's just.

[Seth]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

I look at the guy's body language. I look at, like, how they, like what they're doing, and I could just see, because I've been in that situation, I could just feel like what they're feeling, you know.

[Seth]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And to me, it's like a mixture of, like, you get this huge rush of adrenaline. Right. But you also get like this fight or flight thing. And I think what happens is there's a part of your brain that like, looks at the size and power of the thing and is like fights off the table. It's a flight. This is a flight deal.

[Seth]

After careful analysis.

[Steve Rinella]

Analysis, I've decided that this is a flight deal. But the. The reality of it is you have to override that because you're really. You're big best and pretty much only chance of survival with, you know, some exceptions is to just stand as still as you can and make a serviceable shot that's gonna. That's gonna knock that thing down or turn it.

[Seth]

Because running, you're just gonna get.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, you're gonna flattened. Yeah, you're gonna get flattened. Trying to dodge too. They've got incredible ability to sort of re. Like readjust their course.

[Seth]

And they got hooks.

[Steve Rinella]

They got hooks. Yeah.

[Seth]

So he's got a. He's got, you know, whatever, 36, 40 inches.

[Steve Rinella]

40 inches of reach, which, you know, if he moves his neck, he can sort of rapidly readjust that to where they'll grab you and they get you with those hooks. That's what kills you.

[Seth]

Get surf, man.

[Steve Rinella]

Just like anybody. Just a little bit like, just cartwheeling through the air.

[Seth]

Dirt rides off on its back.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, yeah. There was one recently where a guy was like, kind of flicked up and on its back. I saw. Saw a video of that. It's. Yeah, it's rough, but I mean. Yeah, again, I can sit here and say all these things, but in the moment, it's tough. Really tough.

[Seth]

Did you know using your browser in incognito mode doesn't actually protect your privacy? Take back your Privacy with IPVanish VPN, just one tap and all your data, passwords, communications, browsing history, and more will be instantly protected. Ipvanish makes you virtually Invisible Online. Use IPVanish on all your devices anytime you go online, at home, and especially on public wi fi. Get ipvanish now for 70% off a yearly plan with this exclusive [e-mail] audio 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. 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. Randall and I are working on a project right now. We do this. Have you heard of our stuff? Meat Years, American History. We did long hunters in the Mountain Men. We're doing the buffalo hunters right now.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, yeah, the. The long hunters one. That was fascinating to me. I really enjoyed that.

[Seth]

Oh, good. We're doing buffalo hunters.

[Steve Rinella]

Nice.

[Seth]

The commercial buffalo hide hunters particularly. There's a couple instances there where guys are getting. In that case, where guys get trampled or tore up by American buffalo.

[Steve Rinella]

Right.

[Seth]

American bison. What's happening to them is they're. They got a dozen of them on the ground.

[Steve Rinella]

Right.

[Seth]

But unbeknownst to them, one is it's.

[Steve Rinella]

The dead ones that kill you.

[Seth]

Yeah, it's stunned, you know, I mean, it's like whatever. And they're in there doing their work and all of a sudden it's.

[Steve Rinella]

It's up.

[Seth]

It's up. And you know, like.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth]

In their midst.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth]

And there's a handful of accounts like this, but there's one we saw where the guy. And all of it winds up on it because it's the only way to get clear of its horns.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, okay.

[Seth]

Yeah, he gets, like, on it.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, really? Sort of like grabs onto the fur.

[Seth]

So that it can't.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, it can't get him. Yeah. It's like grabbing the tail, I guess, of like. You know what I mean?

[Seth]

Yeah, I think there's a mention of that, too. A guy got one's tail, but yeah, the guy wound up being like this. He wound up trying to get out of its way, got on it, and then I Can't remember he was. Rode it till it collapsed or whatever the hell he did. Yeah.

[Randall]

My favorite one is the guy jumps on his horse and then accidentally shoots his horse. And the chaos.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, dear. Yeah, I'm. I was. I. I always imagined that buffalo hunting, you know, in the American west is like a longer range kind of pursuit, you know, with those Sharps rifles and all that stuff.

[Seth]

Yeah. These guys are. These guys, they're like, in their preferred setup, they were two, 300 yards away.

[Steve Rinella]

Right. And is that. I mean, obviously they're capable marksman, but is that because the herd would just behave differently?

[Seth]

Yeah, yeah. They're relying on a level of confusion. They're relying on the herd not really understand where the shooting's coming from.

[Steve Rinella]

Gotcha. Yeah.

[Seth]

And then a thing that really surprised me about in all this research is two shots per animal was good.

[Steve Rinella]

Okay.

[Seth]

You'd brag about it.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, interesting.

[Seth]

Yeah. You'd brag about two shots per animal.

[Steve Rinella]

Okay. Yeah, I would have assumed. Yeah. That's interesting. Okay.

[Randall]

There's accounts of guys making a stalk and then realizing they're too close, backing out another 150 yards or something. Like Seth did with his coos deer.

[Seth]

Yep.

[Steve Rinella]

Not intentionally. Not intentionally.

[Seth]

The. The philosophy of these guys.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth]

And it like evolves, but the. The hunting philosophy of them is that you. Whatever one seems to be, there's like, there's a drift to the group or whatever. So whatever one seems to be the point.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth]

They like to wound it.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, the lead animal. Okay. Yeah. And then the sort of rudderless. The herds rudderless.

[Seth]

And then you watch. And whoever seems most inclined to take charge to leave.

[Steve Rinella]

Wound that one.

[Seth]

Yep. And then whoever seems most inclined to leave and then hitting them in a way that they don't run. And what's kind of gruesome about is it sometimes intentionally hit him in front of the hips. Yeah.

[Randall]

There's one guy likes to shoot him in front of the hips so they just arch their backs and kind of just stagger around.

[Seth]

Because then the other ones are like, well, he's not leaving.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. Gotcha. Okay. So they're like this one. Yeah.

[Seth]

But it's still standing here. I mean, there's like a.

[Steve Rinella]

There's a real different ethic. Huh.

[Seth]

There's no, you know, thing we've observed. I'm not going to talk about this too much right now because we'll talk about a lot more later. But the thing we've observed is out of the long hunters, you have like, American Heroes.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth]

Daniel Boone.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth]

Primarily out of the mountain men. You have Jim Bridger.

[Steve Rinella]

Yep.

[Seth]

The hide hunters produce no heroes.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sort of a. They produce rough cut.

[Seth]

They produce no heroes.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, Yeah.

[Seth]

I can see there's no American hero spun out of that gang.

[Steve Rinella]

Interesting. It took a different sort. Took more of a rogue. Well, yeah, just like. Oh, just.

[Seth]

There's a wicked.

[Steve Rinella]

I mean, like, on and dirty.

[Seth]

Yeah. It's. It's just like what they. Their skill set and all that and their toughness is like, undeniable. It's like unparalleled. What they could endure. But there's just a brutality.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth]

That emerges that you don't.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth]

A sort of like in an awareness.

[Steve Rinella]

Ethical gap.

[Seth]

In an awareness. Like an intense, deliberate spoken awareness that you're getting them all. Like, you knew. They knew by and large they knew exactly what they were doing.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, yeah, that's.

[Seth]

And by and large did not care. It's just a different gang, man. A different gang.

[Steve Rinella]

You know, a lot of the great African professional hunters of last century were at different times kind of doubled as like game control officers or were given the task of eradicating a large amount of game either to make way for agriculture or human settlement, you know, relocating different tribal groups or white settlement in. In East Africa. And yeah, it was. It's interesting how they. They could kind of go. I definitely wouldn't suggest at all that they were able to kind of go as down and dirty as those buffalo guys, like, intentionally wounding stuff. I wouldn't. I wouldn't suggest that that was kind of part of the program. But they were able to make this transition from being a very ethical. Very kind of very much focused on adhering to, you know, ethical constraints and game laws and things like that to going and kind of culling large numbers of elephant and buffalo and other species to kind of make way from ag for agriculture and then kind of seamlessly transition back into very selective, you know, a lot of kind of European sensibilities to it. Kind of professional hunting.

[Seth]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Which is interesting to me.

[Seth]

And what year was that crop of guys coming up? Is that like in the. Is that like the guys that were emerging around the. The. That sort of heyday? That kind of like Hemingway heyday of the.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth]

30S and 40s and for sure.

[Steve Rinella]

Right up until. So I would say from the, you know, the early sort of pre first War World War, right up until the kind of. Yeah, the heyday of the 50s and then. And then.

[Seth]

So the heyday was post. I. I was stupid to say the 30s and 40s, because the heyday was post World War II.

[Steve Rinella]

Well, there was sort of two. I mean it depend. You look at it, you know, there was to me kind of defining the heyday is, is difficult because there was different things that were good about different eras. You know, the, the, the 1890s were incredible. As far as.

[Seth]

Sounds like Theodore Roosevelt.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, well, his was 1909, I think, was his safari. And so, you know, just before that, you know, things were. Africa was so unexplored and so wild. But on the, you know, the downside of that era was your firearm technology wasn't, you know, where it was post the first. After the, the First World War. And then also, you know, your risk of dying of some tropical disease or whatever was massive. You know, end of the First World War was a real golden age because the, the British then acquired what was then Tanganyika, which is now Tanzania, and sort of added that to their, you know, territory that they could hunt. And there was a lot of kind of exploration and opening up of that country, which is fascinating. And obviously the firearm technology had come away a long way as had medical stuff. And then you have the arrival of the motor car in the 30s, which really changed the game as far as where you could get. And that was kind of what precipitated a lot of the change where the, even the East African Professional Hunters association saw the writing on the wall that safari was going to go in a totally different direction because it would open up this possibility for a new clientele that had less time to dedicate it to. To it. Like the Roosevelt safari was a full year because there was, you know, they had some trucks and that forgetting, but there was no roads. You know, the motor cars weren't widely available. So a lot of it was just on foot. You know, they would go out and hundreds of porters carrying their gear and just kind of march out into the wilderness. Whereas the motorcar changed it. Where you could have shorter duration safaris, you could get places quicker. You could, you know, the logistical aspect of it was more kind of under control. And then, you know, the arrival of the, the airplane. So, you know, that really allowed people from the US and you know, Europe as well to kind of. It just became more accessible.

[Seth]

Speaking of the airplane, you know what I can't get into?

[Steve Rinella]

What's that?

[Seth]

The book you got me on to.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh yeah, west with the Night. You can't get into it.

[Seth]

Struggling really.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, strong one. You know what you don't like barrels? Her right style. No style.

[Seth]

I don't like her as a Stylist.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth]

I didn't know. There's a little bit of controversy that there's like some people say that she didn't.

[Steve Rinella]

She didn't write it.

[Seth]

Yeah, I don't know if I believe that or not. I mean, it's not. It doesn't look to me like.

[Steve Rinella]

It's neither here nor there. I think her achievements don't. It doesn't take. If she didn't write. It doesn't take anything away from her achievements.

[Seth]

It happens to women because you know that they. There's a. There's an argument that Harper Lee didn't write To Kill a Mockingbird, that it was written by Truman Capote.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, I've heard that. I've heard that.

[Seth]

Anyhow, can't get into it.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, I'm sorry to hear that. It's a great book, but.

[Seth]

No, it's not.

[Steve Rinella]

Well, it's a matter of opinion, Steve. No, she. She was appreciate. She was an impressive woman. There's no question about it, for sure. And. And in an era where. Yeah, to your point. I mean, even the great Karen Blixon wrote under. Under the. The sort of pseudonym of Isaac Dinesen when she first published out of Africa.

[Seth]

What?

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth]

God, I think I should have learned that from the book. I'm. The other disappointing.

[Steve Rinella]

Well, yeah, I'm surprised he didn't go into that. Into those nuances.

[Seth]

Oh, you know, we gotta do Chili.

[Randall]

Yes, sir.

[Seth]

Chili has a hunting story to share with us.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, good.

[Seth]

A New Zealand hunts. Do a New Zealand accent.

[Randall]

It's so hard. I mean, like.

[Seth]

Well, you can't. Because then you gotta. Word. You gotta use the C word. Every other word.

[Randall]

Yeah, that's. That's the hard part.

[Steve Rinella]

One.

[Randall]

That was what. That was probably the funnest part about being down there.

[Steve Rinella]

Because you know what the difference.

[Seth]

When I came home from there.

[Morgan Potter]

They use that word a lot.

[Seth]

Oh, yeah. When I came home from there, I had like. I made the mistake. I made the mistake one time of arguing my wife.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh.

[Randall]

Oh.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, yeah.

[Seth]

No, well, not. I didn't know.

[Morgan Potter]

Oh, and you didn't call it.

[Steve Rinella]

We deployed. You just deployed. We've talked about this on the podcast before. It doesn't go over well.

[Morgan Potter]

The energy of a Kiwi is that.

[Steve Rinella]

Well, yeah.

[Randall]

It's like you can't.

[Seth]

You can't do their thing because their thing every. It's like their thing relies on like how we use the word and a lot. They use the C word.

[Randall]

Yeah, they.

[Steve Rinella]

It's.

[Randall]

But it's a term of endearment.

[Steve Rinella]

Really?

[Seth]

Oh, it's everything.

[Randall]

It's not. It's not.

[Steve Rinella]

Like, it's much more. More universal. Yeah. Yeah.

[Randall]

I mean, like, there's ways that they say it. Like if. If you were to get called, like a right C word, like, if they called you that, like, oh, he's being a right whatever, then like, you're not. You're in the crosshairs.

[Morgan Potter]

I mean, I've recently been to Mobland and they're Irish and they use it every other word. But I've. I guess I've not.

[Randall]

I said it the other day here in Bozeman. My house is like, oh, yeah, I know.

[Seth]

It's terrible thing. That's why I can't go back.

[Steve Rinella]

That's no good. I'd go back just to be able to say it.

[Seth]

That's great.

[Randall]

But yeah, I don't know if I could do the accent, like, hey, bro, how you going?

[Steve Rinella]

You know what the difference is between that and Australian? It's that they sort of flatten their vowels. So, like, I would say chips and they'd say chups.

[Randall]

Oh, yeah. I feel like they also are just. They're more like, kind of calm about it. Like, they're like.

[Steve Rinella]

They're being soft. Much more low key.

[Seth]

Do yours again with more confidence.

[Randall]

Hey, bro, how you going?

[Seth]

I don't think that's. That's something different. That's like.

[Randall]

That's like a. I can do the Australian. Like, if. I mean, you think.

[Seth]

You think, hey, bro. Hey, bro. Is New Zealand.

[Randall]

Is it more of it.

[Steve Rinella]

Hey, bro.

[Randall]

Hey, bro. Say, hey, bro.

[Seth]

Yeah, listen, I want you to call up your buddy. When he answers the phone, I want you to go, hey, bro, I don't know. And then ask him, what do you think I'm doing right now?

[Randall]

I spent 13 days there. I'm not going to be like a subject matter expert. Hey, bro.

[Seth]

He's not gonna say, I think you'd be in New Zealand.

[Randall]

No, hey, bro. No, he the Zane, my good buddy.

[Steve Rinella]

I declined to do that.

[Seth]

Again. Hit it again real quick.

[Randall]

I can't.

[Seth]

Jesus.

[Randall]

I gotta think of, like, a word or, like a phrase.

[Seth]

Don't do hey, bro.

[Randall]

All I can think of is just lines from Flight of the Congress.

[Steve Rinella]

That's all I'm thinking of right now.

[Seth]

Just like, band meeting.

[Randall]

So it's like, if you're talking about. Honey, you'd be like, so we're gonna go over there. Yeah, I can't do it.

[Seth]

It's a very effeminate I. I know.

[Randall]

But they talk like they caught they talk over there. The guys you're with.

[Seth]

We're gonna go over there.

[Randall]

Yeah, I'm gonna get. I'm gonna get hemmed up. I know I am. Zan's gonna watch this, and he's gonna call me a Right.

[Seth]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Well, you want me.

[Seth]

You don't need to talk like New Zealand. That's fine. But yeah, we.

[Randall]

We go. We went to New Zealand for 13 days to do a public land tar hunt. That was. That was the main goal.

[Seth]

Yep.

[Randall]

For. For me.

[Morgan Potter]

Enlighten me about tar.

[Randall]

Yeah. So I guess, like, the. The best way I could describe tar to somebody like, that hunts a lot in North America would be to describe them as, like, kind of like they're very similar to, like a North American mountain goat.

[Seth]

Yeah.

[Randall]

Like, you know, that's how I describe them. Like, same kind of environment, same horns, kind of.

[Seth]

But weird.

[Randall]

Kind of weird bald faces. Yeah, weird bald faces. Huge mane. Like, kind of like a lion's mane on their torso. And, you know, based off of, like, how old they are or. Or whatever like that, the horns and. And the mane will change. Like, the.

[Seth]

The.

[Randall]

The older they get, I think the more blonde. From what I was described or what I was told, it's like the older they get, the more blonde. Like. I don't know if there'll be some. Yeah, there'll be some pictures. I think Phil will throw up there. But the funny thing about.

[Seth]

If you want to see those pictures, tune into Radio Live that aired several weeks ago, because that's what we'll be talking about.

[Randall]

Oh, okay. You put it online.

[Steve Rinella]

Sweet.

[Seth]

Sorry.

[Steve Rinella]

Chilling.

[Randall]

But, yeah, like, the. The.

[Seth]

Like.

[Randall]

Well, I'll get into it, but from the tar that I shot, it was about a five and a half year old. The horns have rings, kind of like your bighorn sheep. So that's how you kind of age them. And the tar that I shot was about five and a half, but it was super blonde. And Zane told me, he's like, I've never seen a five and a half year old with that color of a mane. So I thought that was kind of cool. When I shot mine, there was a darker and older tar bowl. They call them bowls and nannies. He was right next to the one I shot. And. But for some reason, I just found this one to be a lot more pretty, and I was more interested in the one that I shot.

[Seth]

So did you say they call them. So it's.

[Steve Rinella]

It's.

[Seth]

I don't. I didn't remember this. It's bulls and nannies. Not Billies and nannies, not bulls and cows.

[Randall]

It's bulls and nannies. Yeah, bulls and annies. Yeah. And then. Yeah, that's. But yeah, so we.

[Seth]

Oh, there we go.

[Steve Rinella]

Look at that.

[Seth]

Look good?

[Steve Rinella]

Nice one.

[Randall]

Yeah.

[Seth]

So that's great.

[Morgan Potter]

Yeah, that's. That's beautiful. You sent me some photos, but looking at it here.

[Seth]

Yeah, it looks like the American alpine, too, man.

[Morgan Potter]

Got a darker face and then really blonde.

[Randall]

You're talking about Chili or the animal. Yeah, it's my spirit animal.

[Steve Rinella]

Your hair and the hair on that thing's similar.

[Morgan Potter]

The same.

[Randall]

I know. Probably why I liked it. The southern hemisphere looks good on you, Chili. It does. I also want to point out that that's not where. I mean, that's not where I shot that thing. That's. We're kind of like in the river bottom. We had to get that thing flown out because I couldn't. We couldn't physically get there.

[Morgan Potter]

Flown out. Oh, that's very helpful.

[Randall]

Well, so, like, I shot.

[Seth]

Fell where you couldn't retrieve it?

[Randall]

Well, yeah, like, we thought we could get up there from where we were standing, and then so we. I shot it. So we get. We get up to where we go. Wanted to find these tar, and we found them pretty early in the morning, hoping they would come back down, but they never did. And when I shot, I hit it. I showed Zayn our. The. The photos and the video of me shooting it, and he goes, I don't think that we're going to be able to get up there. And Is that what this picture is.

[Seth]

Chili, are you pointing up there?

[Randall]

Yeah. So, like, my body's kind of in front of. Of the mountaintop, but we thought we would be able to zigzag our way up there and at least try to try to locate it the next day because we had. I think I shot it with about an hour left of daylight left, but I showed Zany's is like, yeah, it's not worth it. So the next morning, Scott from heli rural flights, he came out and. And he. He picked it up and so he had to get it. And, like, when Zane got back after they dropped it off back at camp, Zane was like, there's absolutely no way you were to get up there because it from. I shot it and it fell pretty much on this ice shelf. And Zane said if, like, if it would have, like, slid two more yards, it would have kind of went all the way to the bottom and you wouldn't be able to get it. But he's like, if on foot, there's just absolutely no way.

[Seth]

So.

[Randall]

But.

[Seth]

Oh, that's sweet. That's your camp. That's.

[Steve Rinella]

Were you on the eastern or the western side of the Alps?

[Randall]

We were on the eastern side.

[Steve Rinella]

Eastern side, yeah. Nice. Yeah, I've done that hunt. Grueling. Yeah.

[Randall]

And just it's that such a pretty place. I mean, we didn't have a lot of options like where we could go. I mean, that, that super green side kind of off to my left there, that was like the main mountain we were hunting. But sorry, my watch is going crazy. But we could kind of go around to the right in between the. The snow capped mountain and the greenside mountain there we go up there. But there's a glacier in between those two mountains and there's a great glacier off to my. Off my right shoulder too. So we couldn't really go anywhere other than straight up the mountain or off to the left. So we were kind of limited. But it was just unreal country. Like. Yeah, we drank water from the glacier on the glacial rivers. Like, that was super fun. That was from where I shot. And down at the bottom you can see the kind of scree field. That's where we were camping. Yeah. Super abrasive and super, like intimidating country. Like, I wasn't. I knew it was going to be tough, but I don't. I don't think I was like mentally prepared as much as I should have been.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Randall]

But yeah, no, it was a great trip. A lot of fun stories. That, that was definitely like a hunt of a lifetime for me. It was interesting learning about like tar and like how they, how they hunt down there and like, like private land, public land and all that, all that stuff. Like there is public. There's kind of like three main ways to hunt. You got like your, your kind of your game ranches, which would be like your CA ranch or your Gault ranch. Staying at a lodge, hunting private land. Then you got your public and then you got like free range private. So the guys will like, if you want to shoot, a stag, guide will buy the stag and then put it on. On private and then you just go hunt it. So.

[Seth]

Say that again. Oh, yeah, I got you.

[Randall]

You know what I mean?

[Steve Rinella]

Put in the take type deal. Yeah, yeah.

[Randall]

Which is what two of the guys did for the stag and fallow, so. But that was fun to kind of do that. Like, I didn't, I didn't hunt stagger fallow, but.

[Seth]

And you didn't run in any chamois?

[Randall]

Not, not on. No. When there was A guy that was with us and he opted in to shoot a private land tar via helicopter. And so he's got, he's got flown in and hunted a tar that way.

[Seth]

He.

[Randall]

They said that they, when they were doing that they saw some shammy on this private land. But I, I wasn't with him at the time and. But yeah, apparently they're kind of the numbers of, of tar and shammy, from what I was told in the area that we were in, are kind of.

[Seth]

Getting decimated because that's intentional because the, I mean they, they helicopter gun them to reduce the numbers.

[Randall]

Well, yeah, so Zane called it Tarmageddon back in the day. There was just so many tar and they made like this Hilo. The Hilo hunting legal. And like you could do that. And so they just like absolutely decimated the population. And you could argue, I mean that's good and bad because they were overrunning and they were very much overpopulated. But when I talked like Zane, he goes, yeah, it kind of makes it like hard when you have clients and you're going into a public spot. Like we probably saw, I don't know, 20 tar up on top of this mountain. And he goes, he told us he's like 10 years ago there'd be hundreds.

[Seth]

Yeah.

[Randall]

On this mountain.

[Seth]

Yeah.

[Randall]

And so like yeah, you could argue both sides of the story. But yeah, for, from, from what Zane was saying is like he, he's not seeing the numbers that he would like to, to see.

[Seth]

There's often that tension with these, with places. Australia, speaking for your homeland, New Zealand. Hawaii. Okay. Where you have non native populations of game and you have like the environmental movement or more like, like kind of like the radical end of the environmental movement wants to see them all eliminated. Which puts them in an odd position because they're arguing for, you know, it's like, it's like they're arguing for like sort of the death of the animals, pointing out that they're non native. And you have the hunters who are like being like, yeah, I control is fine, but I don't want them eliminated because by this point you have a century or more of people who've grown up with the resource. Yep. You know, you hear like it's pretty commoner, you know, and, and you get it in Hawaii where there's, there's groups will buy like preservation groups will buy stuff and they want the goats gone, the sheep gone, the hogs gone. And then you got like Hawaiian dudes who hunt and they're on the end of being like, man, you're kind of like destroying our, Our resource.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth]

And we don't really care if they're technically native or non native or whatever. They're here, they've been here. We've always hunted them. My grandpa hunted them. Don't tell me they don't belong.

[Randall]

Yeah, yeah. Like Zane, I think, like, the big issue down there. Zane called them greenies, you know, but. Yeah, but their argument is that there's a. Where they, like, what the tar eat. And then in tar's case, they're eating, like, vegetation. They're. They're destroying, like, a plant and taking it out. So, yeah, when Tarmageddon happened, that was like the main. The main argument was like, well, they're destroying and this plant and this, this grassland.

[Steve Rinella]

Plant.

[Seth]

Plant biodiversity. That's the argument in Hawaii, too, is like, plant biodiversity.

[Randall]

Yeah. And, yeah, I think you just got to have a certain level of conservation when it comes to that. You can't, like, decimate the population, but you can't, like, let them run free too, so you got to be.

[Steve Rinella]

Well. And I don't know how well Himalayan tar are doing in their native range either. It would be a shame to lose that. That population. And I mean, it's certainly. I don't know if there is a huntable population of them in their native range. There might be, Yeah.

[Morgan Potter]

A couple of places, but southern Tibet, northern India, western Bhutan and Nepal.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Morgan Potter]

The native range.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. And I wonder if there is a. Is a huntable population there. I. I'm not sure, but I somehow doubt that if there is, it's very large. So it's important, I think, to have, you know, have that kind of repository of. Of genetics there in New Zealand. But yeah, that preservationist kind of impulse to just, like, get rid of it, take it back. Especially in a place like New Zealand has no native mammal. Seems a little strong.

[Seth]

Yeah.

[Randall]

It's either super far left or super far right. I mean, but I don't know, we. As far as, like, the hunting goes, like, it was. It was tough and it wasn't, like, ideal from Zane's perspective, but it was still like a really great hunt. Like watching tar, like, just up on top of these mountains and doing their thing, like, that was. It was unreal and like I said, trip of a lifetime.

[Seth]

Well, you. Your observation about mountain goats, it's like, more likely that. That's even more like mountain goats. The numbers you saw.

[Randall]

Yeah.

[Seth]

Climb up and be like, oh, there's 200 billies up there.

[Randall]

Right.

[Seth]

Like, you're like, you're like chasing like a billy or two.

[Randall]

Right. You know, and obviously depends on, like, what sort of, like, where you're at. You know, like, one area is going to have a bunch of them, the next might not. Right. It's like. Like it's typical for any sort of hunting that you do.

[Steve Rinella]

But.

[Randall]

Yeah, I guess I kind of had this false narrative, like, going in to New Zealand. You know, I've never. I've never paid for a hunt like this. I've never done anything like this. And so I kind of had this. This ideology that, like, I'm gonna go there and I'm gonna be looking at 200 tar every single day.

[Seth]

Oh.

[Randall]

And, like, I quickly learned that that was not the case. But I mean, it was still. It was like, it was more authentic. I. I would say, like, I got like.

[Steve Rinella]

It's.

[Randall]

Obviously I was in New Zealand, but I felt like I was back here in Montana trying to find an elk or, you know, a bear or something like that, which was. Which I enjoyed it made it. Made it feel a lot more genuine.

[Steve Rinella]

Absolutely.

[Randall]

So it was. It was a good job.

[Steve Rinella]

Well done.

[Randall]

Good work. Jilly.

[Seth]

Yeah.

[Morgan Potter]

Did you get to. Do you get to bring. What do you get to bring back and not bring back and eat or try or not?

[Randall]

So to. You can bring. To my knowledge, yeah, you can bring the meat back. We. We did not. We ate a lot of it down there for four days, but then we just donated the meat. The reason being, like, is just, you know, like, bags were super expensive. Like, Like, I would probably had to bring. Bring three additional bags and like, just for two bags down there, it was already 400.

[Morgan Potter]

How'd it taste?

[Randall]

Oh, it was good. I mean, I didn't. There's nothing about it that was just like, if I were to eat this again, like, this is going to be. This is tar. I mean, it was like red meat. It was, you know, wild game meat and. But I thought it was good. I definitely eat it again adjacent to.

[Morgan Potter]

Anything else you've tried.

[Randall]

Like, you know, nothing really stood out to me about it. Like, I mean. Yeah, I mean, like, to. It wasn't that much. Like, I would probably say. Yeah. I mean, I don't know, maybe like an elk. Ish. But like, not like, if you have like a really good elk. Like, you know, it's elk oak. I'd say it's like your average oak.

[Steve Rinella]

Okay.

[Randall]

I mean, to me. But yeah, as far as, like, what we can bring back, like, you can bring. I'm gonna bring back, like, the hide I'm gonna get a shoulder mount and then I'm gonna keep the euro amount as well. So I'll replicate the horns, put those on the shoulder mount and then keep the euro amount. But.

[Seth]

Yeah, who's gonna stuff it for you?

[Randall]

Well, I see. I'm gonna talk to John Hayes.

[Seth]

He's stuffing a couple things for us right now.

[Randall]

Yeah, Hayes, taxidermy. I'm going to talk to him. I don't really have a taxidermy guy because I've. I don't even have a shoulder mount. All my euro mounts, I do myself. So, like, this is a whole new experience for me as well.

[Seth]

So he's gonna do that big beaver.

[Randall]

Yeah.

[Seth]

And then. Yeah, the Boston with the boys guys, they want that beaver done. Like, what do they call that three point stance in football. Yeah, they want a beaver done in a three point football stance.

[Randall]

Oh, wow.

[Seth]

And then he's gonna stuff my. He's gonna do the rug of my kids first bear.

[Randall]

Oh, nice.

[Seth]

Wall hanger rug. Gotcha stuffed in head.

[Randall]

I wanted to do a wall hanger rug like that mountain goat there, but.

[Seth]

Well, that's what I have. You ever hear the writer Ben Wallace?

[Randall]

I have not.

[Seth]

You ever hear the book the Billionaires Vinegar?

[Randall]

I have not.

[Seth]

Are you aware of the forthcoming book about the. The guy that invented bitcoin?

[Randall]

The mysterious Mr. Nakamoto? Oh, yeah. Definitely unfamiliar with that.

[Seth]

That forthcoming book.

[Randall]

Yeah. Yeah. Forthcoming book.

[Seth]

He wrote that.

[Randall]

Oh, okay.

[Seth]

Well, I gave him my tar rug. Yeah. You've told me this story, and I don't. I reached out recently, just wonder, just to make sure it wasn't in some storage unit. And I'm like, hey, while I got you, how's that tire rug sitting right here in my office? Love it.

[Randall]

I kind of told you that he, that he likes it, but you're not getting it back anytime soon.

[Seth]

Yeah. Because if he said, oh, you know, it's in the storage unit out here. Gotten it back, but he still likes it.

[Randall]

Yeah, I. I wanted to do that, but I talked to. When I was talking with Zayn, I'm like, hey, you know, like, would that be okay? Like, I don't know if. Because they're pretty connected with those guys, are pretty connected with those animals. You know, they. They have like honorable ways of doing things. And. And so I was like, hey, what would be like the best way to kind of like just honor this animal? Like, what would you do with this thing? And he's like, well, honestly, I'd shoulder mount it. Like, I think a shoulder Mount or a good shoulder mount is a good representation of like this animal. And he goes, not a lot of people do the rug thing. He's like, it's not. It's not a bad way to do it. He goes, but like with yours, since my mane was so blonde. And he goes like you're gonna. If you rug it out, you're gonna cut through the middle of that and then you're gonna flay it out and it's not gonna look the same. So to kind of get. Yeah. To kind of, I guess, capture the essence of that. That creature. He said shoulder mount, so that's what I did.

[Seth]

Where are you gonna hang it?

[Randall]

Right above my bed.

[Seth]

That's a good idea.

[Randall]

Yeah, right above the bed.

[Seth]

Watch this transition. Well, I can't transition out of your story. Oh, is your story done? Oh, one last question. Is that that cold Wetzel guitar? Is it tuned up good? Playing good for you?

[Randall]

You know, I don't know where that thing's at, to be honest.

[Seth]

It's not. It's not playing good right now.

[Randall]

No. What do you. What is that? The transition?

[Seth]

No, there's a follow up question. So I don't have a transition out of that.

[Randall]

Okay.

[Seth]

But I'm gonna do a thing and then you'll see that it transitions into something else.

[Randall]

Okay.

[Seth]

I sent Karen an article the other day. It's actually a tragedy.

[Morgan Potter]

Right.

[Seth]

But there's a man, a guy in Florida, and a law enforcement officer described his criminal history as meth. This is a quote, quote, meth arrest, meth arrest, meth arrest, meth arrest, meth arrest.

[Steve Rinella]

So he does some meth.

[Randall]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Doesn't leave a lot to the imagination.

[Randall]

I think I know where the story's going.

[Seth]

He had some kind of psychotic break, swam a lake. Like, like law enforcement was after him. He, like, swam a lake and gets attacked by an alligator in the lake, undeterred, comes out. They tried, I think they tried to tase him.

[Morgan Potter]

Didn't work. He was unbothered by that.

[Seth]

So here he's been attacked by an alligator in his arm, shrugged it off. Well, they ended up. They ended up having to kill the guy.

[Morgan Potter]

Yeah. Because he tried to take the firearms off.

[Randall]

What did they do, the alligators?

[Morgan Potter]

And they shot him.

[Seth]

There's no follow up about the alligator. It's a great question.

[Randall]

Thank you.

[Steve Rinella]

Impressive that he managed to get free.

[Seth]

Well, that baby, you know, I know what the headline is. Bitten by alligator. Man is killed. After charging at deputies, sheriff says, huh. Then the authorities say that Timothy Scholes, 42, of Mulberry, Florida, Swam across an alligator filled lake before a violent encounter with deputies in the neighborhood. Most guys, that's going to take the fight out of them.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, I would think so. I would think so.

[Morgan Potter]

I messaged back that I thought he was on bath salts or something. I think. Or just there's something real strong to.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Randall]

My guess is yes.

[Steve Rinella]

I don't know.

[Seth]

Based on previous history, he was trying to get a shotgun out of a cop car.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. That'll get you shot.

[Seth]

Yep.

[Morgan Potter]

Yeah.

[Seth]

But the whole, the main gist of the article is that you get into a lake and get attacked by a gator and come out fighting.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, yeah.

[Morgan Potter]

But juiced him up.

[Steve Rinella]

Altered state for sure.

[Randall]

That's not impressive if you're on method.

[Seth]

No, not. That's not the word I'm looking for. I mean, just like it's. It's extraordinary as evidenced by the fact that it was reported.

[Steve Rinella]

It'd be tough to close call that newsworthy.

[Seth]

See that like the article like that catches a fella's eye.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Morgan Potter]

Report in the New York Times.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. But the like in my mind, once.

[Randall]

You read about, you're like, oh, he's on meth.

[Steve Rinella]

He's not. Just like.

[Randall]

It just kind of doesn't make it seem as cool.

[Steve Rinella]

I don't know that cool is something I would apply to this situation at all.

[Randall]

I had my cool chart out. I was trying to figure out where to plot this.

[Seth]

I need to press less cool. So, Seth, just to. Just to get into your head here.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, let's do it.

[Seth]

It winds up that this guy is stone cold sober. Stone cold. 10:00am Monday morning.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth]

Gets attacked by gator and then tries to kill some cops. You'd put that like if you.

[Steve Rinella]

No, no, no, no.

[Randall]

This is just the gator thing.

[Seth]

Oh, okay.

[Steve Rinella]

Like you said about how he just shrugged off a gator attack.

[Seth]

Oh, just the ability to shrug off a gator attack. Stone cold.

[Steve Rinella]

That's what you made it sound like.

[Randall]

That's what, what, what was like, interesting to you about this?

[Steve Rinella]

Kind of is very big of a gator.

[Seth]

I don't.

[Steve Rinella]

But a guy shrugging off a gator.

[Randall]

Attack on meth is not that impressive to me.

[Steve Rinella]

Doesn't seem that cool.

[Seth]

No, I understand.

[Steve Rinella]

The whole cop thing's not cool.

[Seth]

I understand. Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

It's like I don't really know how the cops won.

[Morgan Potter]

So if the guy is supercharged by meth and doesn't feel that his arm has been bitten by a gator, that is less surprising that he would shrug it off or not even be all there to experience it versus if a guy were sober and would, you know.

[Seth]

See, when I first read this, I thought it was about a man. Then I started thinking it was about a gator. Now I'm starting to think it's about a drug.

[Morgan Potter]

Yeah.

[Seth]

And you know where my head's going, you know where my head's going next. And this is the sad part, and this is like why stories like this are always hard. Is like somewhere is a heartbroken mother.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll tell you one other thing with that. No, if it'd been a Nile crocodile, he wouldn't have, he wouldn't have got out of the, out of the swamp.

[Seth]

Tells you what they made tell us about that.

[Steve Rinella]

They're, they're, they're an entirely more ruthless species than a gator, as far as I can tell.

[Seth]

Give me some specs on a now crocodile.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh man. I mean they're, they're massive creatures and I think that from what I can tell they're one of those things similar to like, I think I've heard this about like bass where over a certain size, for every inch they grow in length, they grow in girth.

[Seth]

Okay.

[Steve Rinella]

So the big ones are incredibly girthy. I mean I, I shot a 14 footer one time and kind of like you could barely sit on its back. It was so, so broad. We have one, we have one where you're going. In Luganzo Game Reserve reminds me of me. Luganzo Game Reserve, there is a, a man eating crocodile currently on the, on the loose. His name's Bada Weiwe, which in Kiswahili kind of trans. It would kind of translate to like not yet you insofar as like he hasn't gotten you yet. Last year, last year he ate five fishermen.

[Seth]

No. Yeah, but how is he catching the people?

[Steve Rinella]

He follows their canoes and he waits till they get out to unload their fish in nets and then he nails them thing.

[Morgan Potter]

Steve wants to go after him now.

[Steve Rinella]

He's got five people, five last year. I don't know what the tally is now. I'll have to check in with the guys and see where we're at. But yeah, he's been absolutely terrorizing this village. I tried to get him. I think I saw him. I'm certain it was him because a big crocodile like that, they're quite territorial. I doubt there'd be another one of that size in the same area. But he wouldn't come to my bait. He's 2 kg too clever, huh?

[Randall]

So what's the, what's like. Like the process is hunters are just like keeping an eye out for him and like they see him shoot them or. Well, what's like the, the plan to.

[Steve Rinella]

So. Well, first, first off, we weren't really aware of his existence until we did a kind of river based anti poaching patrol, which we do frequently, but we kind of pushed it into some areas where we hadn't done one in a while. And as a process we caught some kind of guys violating the fishing laws. And you know, while they were kind of detained, our guys got to chatting with them and they sort of were telling this story about this particular man eating croc. And so that kind of piqued my interest and I wanted to, wanted to hunt him.

[Seth]

Can you just, just to help me.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth]

Understand this whole thing. Can you describe like what is the village and how is it positioned and what is the sort of like vibe in the village?

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, so it's on the edge of the game reserve. So it's in our hunting area, but it's outside of the boundaries of the game reserve itself. So there's an old German railway that kind of goes between the game reserve and Ugala national park, and then that kind of crosses a bridge. And where that crosses a bridge, there's, there's a village there. It's a fishing village. You know, the people are, there's some, a little bit agriculture and some other stuff going on.

[Seth]

What are they netting there?

[Steve Rinella]

They're netting anything and everything, but primarily the species are lungfish, catfish and tilapia.

[Seth]

Okay, so they're netting them for a.

[Steve Rinella]

Commercial market, not just personal use, combination of both. Okay, so they subsist off them and then they dry and kind of smoke the, the, the surplus and then then that gets transported to other kind of population centers where it's sold.

[Seth]

Got it. How many people are in a village like that?

[Steve Rinella]

I would guess there's in that one, 1500, 2000.

[Seth]

Oh, okay.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. So it's a good, it's a good number.

[Seth]

I got you.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. And so they kind of, they, they go up and down the river. There's portions of the game reserve waters that they're not supposed to be in that they occasionally kind of violate. And there's, there's laws about the size of nets they can use, the types of nets they can use, the kind of, of the, you know, the amount of nets and hooks they can deploy and stuff like that.

[Seth]

So it's pretty like what would be recognizable to an American.

[Steve Rinella]

It's a controlled fish regular.

[Seth]

Yep. Fishing regulation.

[Steve Rinella]

Absolutely. Yep. They require a permit to fish, so they have to, you know, they have to actually go and purchase a fishing permit that gives them a window of time in which they're allowed to fish.

[Seth]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

So it's, it's a controlled fishery. And we work together with Tawa Tanzania Wildlife Management Authority to kind of of, you know, keep tabs on that. That fishery and how it's going, how it's impacting species, and it's an important ecosystem. There's obviously the crocodiles there, which are an important species, the fish, the birds. There's African clawless otter in that waterway as well.

[Seth]

Never even heard of that.

[Steve Rinella]

Beautiful creatures.

[Seth]

Can I tell you a thing that I'm worried about that someone told me, Someone told me I want to get back this crocodile. But just what you just mentioned, that, like, clawless otter. Someone told me that when you go to Africa for the first time, you're so like, overwhelmed and exhausted from the.

[Steve Rinella]

Mental processing overwhelm.

[Seth]

That you lose it, that you lose that, like you, you lose everything that's in the moment because you're so, like, tripped out.

[Steve Rinella]

I could see that.

[Seth]

And they're like, only later when I.

[Steve Rinella]

Got home was I, like, able to kind of.

[Seth]

Yeah. Because, like, I was just overwhelmed.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. It will be nice because you'll be documenting it, so you'll be able to revisit a lot of that, which is cool. But I, I think I can see that. I mean, I could see there's certainly times or even me, just the, the wonder of it all, you know, just gets you.

[Seth]

I mean, how big is a clawless otter?

[Steve Rinella]

I would say roughly the size of our kind of, you know, the North American river. River otter. Yeah. Yeah, about that size.

[Seth]

So back to this crocodile.

[Steve Rinella]

So, yeah, so we found out about him. The way we typically hunt crocodile, you can, you can certainly have like, sort of incidentally, like you'll be driving along the river or walking along the river and you'll see a sandbar or like a termite mound or something close to the river where they'll have slid up on and be kind of sunning themselves. And then you can kind of make a stalk and try and position yourself for a shot like that. A lot of times we'll. We'll put bait, so we'll drive some kind of heavy stakes into the riverbank. If there's not a tree or a rock or something to anchor to and put some, some stinking meat there to draw them in. The big advantage of that Is you can really control where you put it. Because the problem with a crocodile, unless you make the. The perfect shot that destroys its central nervous system, like, instantly. One flick of that tail, if that gets them back into the main stem of the river, where there's flow. And these rivers, you know, the ugala river, has significant flow. It's gone.

[Seth]

He's gone.

[Steve Rinella]

Never. You'll never find it.

[Seth]

So you hit him where? Right in the brain or at the base?

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, you try to sort of. That we call it like their smile, where they're kind of. Their, you know, their jawline kind of goes like this, just above that and kind of between this little. Little horn on their. Their head, you sort of try to shoot them there, and it kind of, if you do it correctly, it really pops their skull open. I mean, you're. It's quite. It's a bit, you know, it's quite visceral. But then, you know, they'll flick around a little bit, but they won't.

[Seth]

But they're cached.

[Steve Rinella]

They're done. Yeah, they're done. And then, whereas, you know, there are times when you can. If you miss that shot, you know, like a neck shot, something like that, where you fail to sever the spine or you, you know, you hit them somewhere else, they're gonna just flick right back into that deep water. And you'll never find them, even if they die, just get swept away.

[Seth]

So when you bait them, are you trying to get them the moment he finds it, or is he gonna start hitting the bait?

[Steve Rinella]

He'll start hitting the bait. Okay, so I need. You need to have a good look at him. I mean, you know, there's. There's two ways, you know, when you've got a big croc coming. I mean, one, you. You know, just the sort of size and scale of it. You can. I find it very hard to judge them through binoculars. I've got with my eyes. So you don't want to be too far away for that reason. Also, you know, you're shot. You know, you've got to. You got to put it in a little slot like that, sort of 3 inch by 3 inch.

[Seth]

So top of a single serving yogurt container.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, exactly. That's kind of what we're talking about. So you got to be. You want to be closer for that. But aside from that, you know, when oftentimes you'll put these baits and you'll get a lot of small crocs on them. You know, there'll be 5, 6, 7, sometimes 10 like anywhere from 6 footers, 8 footers down to 3, 4 footers, kind of splashing around, making a lot of noise, tearing this bait apart. But when the big boy's coming, like, they can. They can sense it, whether they make vibrations or vocalizations in the water, something like that. These crocs split, the little ones.

[Seth]

Will one big man evaporate?

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. And then you'll see this sort of head come up. They have like this big. That's like a tennis ball on the end of their nose. And then, you know, you'll usually let them sort of get comfortable, drag themselves out of. Ideally, you have the bait where they have to sort of drag themselves out of the water a little bit to kind of expose that shot. Yeah, but that's impressive.

[Seth]

And those waterways. Is it inadvisable just to be down, wading around on the edge?

[Steve Rinella]

You can, you can do it. I mean, there's areas like. It just depends on how the water looks. Right. If you've got sort of a bit of a shallow flat, you could. You can splash around there.

[Seth]

You know he's not there.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. You know, you'd see him coming. You know, you'd have to make a wake. But like, if there was a big pool, I wouldn't. I wouldn't go near it. I mean, he could be just waiting, waiting there in ambush. You'd have a hard time seeing him. You won't know till he's got a hold of you. And they move like lightning, too. What, what are you shooting those things with? Like, what rifle you. Well, whichever one you shoot the best. Are you using a scope? Scope rifle, yeah. Scoped rifle is ideal. Yeah. Whatever you shoot, I mean, typically will sometimes when you're sneaking up on them, you know, you'll. You'll be following buffalo, buffalo tracks by the river. And it's like, hey, there's a massive croc on that sandbar, and the guy's got his.416. That's what you're shooting it with. Gotcha. In an ideal world, like where I had all the time in the world to set it up, kind of build my blind, get everything staged, you know, 30 odd 6, 300 mag, 7 millimeter. That type of stuff does the job. Again, with that brain shot, you're not. You're not trying to kind of achieve penetration. You're just trying to pop that brain open.

[Seth]

Talk about shot placement on a cape buffalo.

[Steve Rinella]

I'm. I am a firm proponent of the shoulder shot. So kind of come up that leg about a third of the sort of you know, third of the way up the body from the belly line.

[Seth]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And put it right on the shoulder.

[Seth]

There in the like on the shoulder.

[Steve Rinella]

On the shot. On the bone. Not behind the shoulder. On the bone. Break that shoulder because. And this is something that, that's changed. There'll be some, some of the old school guys will very much disagree with me and I will would argue that their thinking is rooted in a different era where high quality bullets weren't available. Yeah, there was just a lot of junk. And so one would always try to shoot behind the shoulder to make sure that you got adequate penetration. Now if you're shooting something along the lines of a Barnes tsx, Swift, a frame, that type of stuff, it'll more than adequately penetrate that shoulder bone. And then you break them down. They don't go as far. You know, it's, it's a lot of trauma. A busted shoulder is really going to slow them down.

[Seth]

Hitting them right in the shoulder.

[Steve Rinella]

Right in the shoulder. Everything below the scapula or below the scapula. Yeah. Sort of somewhere near that joint, you know, somewhere where that scapula kind of joins on to the, to the other bone there.

[Seth]

Let's say he's quartering away from you.

[Steve Rinella]

Quartering away from you. You're gonna. So what I like to talk about, I like say imagine you have X ray vision.

[Seth]

Yep.

[Steve Rinella]

And so if you can't break the on side shoulder, the other one shoot the offside shoulder.

[Seth]

Or if he's coming dead on, nuts, dead on.

[Steve Rinella]

It depends on how he's holding his head. But when they typically sort of, if they're a little bit curious, you know, they won't, you know, they sort of, they've seen something. They'll kind of hold their head in a fairly, I would say fairly neutral position. It's not too up, it's not too down. Unless sometimes if they're, they'll, you know, they'll be laying under some vegetation kind of in the shade and they'll stand up and to see you, they'll have to sort of dip their head to see under the vegetation. In that instance, it can be tough. But typically I sort of just go right below the chin kind of into. You're trying to get it into this kind of clavicle gap.

[Seth]

And that's not inadvisable.

[Steve Rinella]

It's not my favorite. But sometimes if it's that or nothing. Right. Like if it's, if you've got to make that shot. But I'll tell you one thing about that shot. When it's done properly. It like, it really rocks their world. So if they don't react to how I want, like how I would expect them to, that'll be a time where I'd consider backing up. Because what can happen with that shot if it's off, it'll kind of hit the sternum.

[Seth]

Sure.

[Steve Rinella]

Which on those things is sort of like a, you know, very V shaped and obviously extremely robust piece of bone with a lot of sort of sagging skin hanging on it. And what that can do. The sagging skin will kind of set up the bullet so it really mushrooms quicker than it would on a, on a sort of a taut like flank. And then it will hit that sternum and kind of go along, sort of track along the sternum and wind up kind of in the armpit, if you know what I mean.

[Seth]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Having done no damage to the vitals, you'll get some blood. You follow that thing forever and it's, it's, it's a bad deal. So I don't, I don't love the frontal shots, but I don't. It's not off the table. It's not like we never do that. It's something that sometimes you've got to make it happen.

[Seth]

And North Texas heart shots on a follow up shot.

[Steve Rinella]

Yes. Like as a first shot. Absolutely not. But as, as a follow up. The old Portuguese brain shot.

[Randall]

I've never heard of that one.

[Steve Rinella]

Imagine it's running away.

[Randall]

That's why it's important to travel and meet people from other cultures.

[Seth]

So because you learn about shot placement, you always want to be able to travel. You want to travel the world.

[Steve Rinella]

What's better on that follow up though, if they do spin and turn away than your classic Texas hot shows? Try to break that hip.

[Seth]

Is so on a follow up. Like once you make your first careful shot, is any shot good?

[Steve Rinella]

Give it to it.

[Seth]

It absolutely shot is good.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. You didn't come all the way. So like, to your previous point about those other guys with like two shots on a, on a bison was considered good. I don't, I don't have any. The more the merrier.

[Seth]

Got it.

[Steve Rinella]

If it's still on its feet, keep shooting. And then also for, you know, reasons like those guys experienced where it's as I said, the dead ones will kill you will oftentimes go up, even if it's looking thoroughly deceased. Put another one in there as insurance.

[Seth]

And then is there any situation where you ever tell a client, like on the, like, the animal's fine, so it's not Wounded where you're. Were you shooting in the head? Shooting in the head.

[Steve Rinella]

I have had situations like that before. It's extremely close. You know, you just. For whatever reason, again, mostly in that montane forest, one kind of stands up and all you can see is the head kind of above the vegetation and it's like, yeah, you, you know, you're gonna have to go for a headshot here. If you can do it. If you feel comfortable, go for it. And again, if you get it right, it's going to have an instant result. Otherwise I'm gonna have to back you up.

[Seth]

Yep. You know what I didn't realize is, is standard, and this doesn't bother me, but it's standard that when you wound an animal, that's. That's it. That's your, like effectively you tag the animal if you want to get away.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth]

And there are units. There's a bear unit in Alaska, for instance. Like if you touch it, right. If you touch the bear and don't find it, it's still regarded as. That was your bear.

[Steve Rinella]

Yep. You're going to attack.

[Seth]

And in Africa, like, that's absolutely.

[Steve Rinella]

You take it, right.

[Seth]

You take a bad shot or get a bad hit, that's your, you scratched your ticket.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's it. That one's off your license. And we write it down as wounded loss. Very sad, sad thing to have to do. So a lot of, a lot of things. So yeah, it's to mitigate that.

[Seth]

Just be cautious, man.

[Steve Rinella]

Be cautious. Yeah. If the shot doesn't, if it doesn't feel right. And again, the beautiful thing about Africa and especially where we're going, you know, these premium areas, like in Tanzania, you, it's not like you like, oh, that was your buffalo. You know, we saw one for the, for the two week trip and you, you fluffed it. It's like, no, we'll get another chance. This one runs off, we'll find another one. There's more. There's plenty.

[Seth]

Do you guys use the term dagger boys? Can you explain that to me? I mentioned that to me.

[Steve Rinella]

Yes, we do. We do use that term.

[Seth]

Say it again.

[Steve Rinella]

Dug a boy. Dugga. So it's a dagger boy. So the term duggar is. It's a southern African term. It's a southern African term. Well, it's a bastardization of a word in one of the southern African kind of Bantu languages, which it refers to mud.

[Seth]

And the reason it is dog boys.

[Steve Rinella]

And so the old bull buffalo that are in their kind of bachelor phase or they're in a permanent bachelor phase, as sometimes is the case will spend. They like to wallow. They spend a good, you know, Cape buffalo or a wallowing animal. They. They enjoy it. They like to. It helps them keep biting flies away. It keeps their skin healthy. So they. They're wallowers. They love it. And oftentimes you'll see those old balls will spend a good amount of time wallowing and they'll be really crusted with mud.

[Seth]

Got it.

[Steve Rinella]

So that's where. That's the origin of the term.

[Seth]

It's the mud boys.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. It's one of those terms like safari, which, like is very much a Swahili term, but it's become kind of ubiquitous throughout the continent. Duggaboy will be used to describe an old bull buffalo kind of wherever you.

[Seth]

Go and you're playing like we talked about this before, but your plan is you guys don't get on the big old herds generally looking for like, male little squads. 1, 2, 3, 4, whatever. Yeah, little bachelor gang.

[Steve Rinella]

Bachelor balls. Yeah, that's the ideal. I mean, we'll definitely. We'll follow some herds and we'll get up on them for. For the experience of that, particularly early on in the hunt. And there are times where. Particularly in Luganzo because it has. It has a big river and a big lake. So what I find happens there, more so than other areas I've seen, is that a lot of buffalo kind of congregate their bachelor balls and herds will kind of be gravitating towards the same areas to drink and kind of feed on that. On that floodplain.

[Seth]

They're not together, but they're not together.

[Steve Rinella]

But they're drawn to the same area and they'll kind of often like leave together, so they'll kind of mingle. So, you know, I have found more con, again, more consistently than other places I've hunted in Luganzo. You'll find like a really old buffalo or couple of really old buffaloes with. With a herd. But it's a sort of loose, casual association and they'll break off and sort of peel off eventually. So we'll spend some time mixing it up with herds for the experience. And again, I like. Part of what I like to do is, is give you that opportunity to really feel that species versus kind of just looking at the back of my shirt for however many days and then I put the sticks up and say, that's the one. Like we'll. We'll really try to get in amongst them and sort of see how that, you know, Just feel it, just enjoy their presence and kind of get a sense of the species. But yeah, the one I want to shoot, I'm almost guaranteeing will be in a, in a bachelor herd.

[Seth]

And how do you know a shooter when you see like, what do you see where you're like that is a shooter hard boss.

[Steve Rinella]

So, so the way that buffalo's horns grow, you've got obviously that kind of bone core with the horn, like the keratin sheath on the outside. And in a mature bull it kind of grows from the outside in. So on a young bull. And then you'll see this very clearly when you're looking at them through your binoculars, the kind of what we call the boss, which is where the horns kind of come together over the top of their head, over that kind of honeycombed bone that protects their brain. It'll be, it'll be still sort of vascular and soft and pulpy. Even like a little bit of hair growing out of it. On a young bull, a fully mature bull that will have completely hardened into horn and there may be a strip of hair or a strip of kind of flesh or you know, skin down through the middle of the horns. Not all of them fully meet in the middle. Some do, some don't. That's not a like a determining factor of age or anything like that. It's just like a genetic thing. Some do, some don't. But yeah, we want to fully mature a hard bossed bull that's, that's worn down ideally some of its horns. And yeah, it's just that right one to take.

[Seth]

And how wide is he, tip to tip?

[Steve Rinella]

Depends. My, the best one I shot last year was 42 inches, sort of from widest point to widest point. But I've seen, I've seen them there. I, I was, I had a client last year that was a bow hunter and we didn't manage to get on this buffalo, but we, we put a stalk on one that I would have of conservatively put it like 44.

[Seth]

Is he still around? Oh yeah, you know, got him a.

[Steve Rinella]

General idea vicinity here in this.

[Seth]

Randall.

[Steve Rinella]

We'll give it a crack.

[Seth]

Steve, is this, what's this doing for you, Randall?

[Randall]

Oh man.

[Seth]

What's all this doing for you?

[Randall]

I mean I've always had the, I've always been really curious about Africa.

[Seth]

I.

[Randall]

Think just for the sense of like wonder like you described, just like the smell and the, the soil and the plants and just seeing animals. But yeah, I'm getting, I guess what it's doing for. It's it's inspiring quite a bit of jealousy in me.

[Seth]

Envy. It is, yeah. Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Reasonable position to take.

[Seth]

So you're interested?

[Randall]

Oh, yeah.

[Seth]

Yeah.

[Randall]

We almost. We're at the Montana wild sheep banquet. We got a little. We're overserved and almost went in on a safari with our. With our friends.

[Steve Rinella]

Where. Where was it?

[Randall]

The one in Bozeman.

[Seth]

Oh, the safari. I have no idea. You were bit. You were almost bidding on it.

[Randall]

Oh, we did bid on it.

[Seth]

What country?

[Steve Rinella]

That's not a good start.

[Randall]

Well, we. We.

[Seth]

The.

[Randall]

The first text message I saw on my phone the next morning was, I'm glad we didn't wake up as the owners of a safari.

[Seth]

Got it.

[Randall]

Yeah. But it's.

[Seth]

It's always.

[Randall]

It's always something that's kind of like, you know, you got a couple little voices in the back of your head about things that you like to do someday and. Yeah, I definitely have the itch.

[Morgan Potter]

Oh, dude, I'm like, bid on it next time.

[Steve Rinella]

Well, let's talk about that. I'm not.

[Morgan Potter]

Wake up with that.

[Steve Rinella]

Send me the details. Shoot me a text. I'll give you the. Give you the inside scoop on whether it's going to be something new.

[Seth]

Morgan, I hope you can reply quickly because I'm in the middle of a drunk. I'm in the middle of a drunk Dr. Process.

[Morgan Potter]

Is it worth it?

[Seth]

I just wanted to fact check a couple things.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, I'll set a couple guardrails for you.

[Randall]

Yeah, no, I mean, I. I think, like, especially just the history and sort of the. The place of African hunting within our larger hunting traditions, like, globally. I think it's. It's something I definitely like to experience and understand better.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth]

I'm dying to go check it out. And like, with me, though, the thing is, of course you can just go check it out, but I need. I need more. I need, like, like the immersive, like. Yeah, like the. I need to get in there.

[Steve Rinella]

You know, the immersion is the thing. The totality of it, like the history, the. The flora, the fauna, the culture, the people, that's what makes African hunting, I think, unique, aside from the species and the conduct of the whole hunt. Right. All that's a separate thing. But if you just think about, like, the. The appeal of it, why it kind of gets people so much. It's just the. Yeah. The totality of it all. That kind of history and culture.

[Seth]

Yeah.

[Morgan Potter]

I think we also get to highlight the difference between the differences between hunting across certain countries in Africa and that, like, the experience in Tanzania. I Anticipate would be very. Will be very different than, for example.

[Seth]

Wherever I would be that we bid on.

[Morgan Potter]

Yeah. In South Africa.

[Steve Rinella]

I'd actually bet on it. That's a fair. Yeah, for sure. I, I think so. I think East Africa has that, that reputation and certainly I don't want to take anything away from, like, there's some amazing hunting that happens in Southern Africa, Central Africa, French, you know, Francophone West Africa. There's some incredible hunting experiences that can be had kind of across the continent. But I think East Africa kind of holds a certain place in people's imaginations because of. Yeah, because of that history and because of the kind of like the way that it was the birthplace of a lot of the kind of conservation ideals and, and hunting ethics ideals and, and sort of. Yeah, I think this, it's just what, it's where your brain goes when you think of safari.

[Seth]

I got last question for you. How are we doing, Phil? Phil's real worried by everybody getting out of here.

[Steve Rinella]

We got 10 minutes.

[Seth]

We're good. Okay, you got 10 minutes to answer this question.

[Steve Rinella]

Lay it on me.

[Seth]

Let's say I'm over in Europe and some guy's like, I'm going deer hunting in America. I'm going. No, not that hunt. I'm going deer hunting in North America. First thing on my mind is. Well, that could mean any number of things.

[Steve Rinella]

Sure. Yeah.

[Seth]

Are you hunting in South Florida?

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth]

Are you hunting in northern Alberta? Like, what do you mean? So how different are, like, you know, I mean, you're going hunting in Africa.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, yeah.

[Seth]

It's a big ass place.

[Steve Rinella]

Big ass place.

[Seth]

Like, how different is it all? Do you know what I mean?

[Steve Rinella]

Very, very.

[Seth]

Is it as. Would it seem as different to someone There is.

[Steve Rinella]

It would seem to be from Florida to Alberta 100. If I would have that exact same reaction if I, if I met someone yet in an airport bar and they're like, I'm on my way to Africa to go on safari, you know, hunting safari. I'd be like, where are you going and what. You know, I, and I. I'd have some.

[Randall]

You've told me nothing.

[Steve Rinella]

Ideas.

[Seth]

Yeah, yeah, right.

[Steve Rinella]

But, yeah, precisely. You told me nothing. I mean, it's just, I think if I, if I kind of boil it down to like why Tanzania is different and where we're going is different is what sort of sets us apart is that free range, those big vast areas, there's no fences.

[Seth]

That's what drew me in the big.

[Steve Rinella]

Huge country expanse of it, you know. And again, I think we talked about it. This is on the last podcast. Tanzania's got roughly 30% of its land mass set aside as wilderness of some sort. You know, some of it's got some. Some, you know, grazing and seasonal agricultural activities. Others, other parts of it, like where we're going in Luganza is just pure wilderness. But it's a. It's a massive amount by. By modern standards, it's a massive, massive amount of wilderness there. And to be able to hunt those species in an unfenced environment where they're not a reintroduced animal, you know, there or. Or intro or purely introduced animal there, that's ancestral stock. That's as wild as they get.

[Seth]

You know that book I was being slightly critical of.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth]

Thunder Without Rain. I was being a little too harsh on it.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Seth]

Because you know, what it did explain is when that cattle disease came.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, rinderpest.

[Seth]

Yeah, rinderpest came and then jumped into the Cape buffalo and just decimated the Cape buffalo.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, yeah. Crushed them. Yeah. Early.

[Seth]

He spends a lot of time on render pest.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, yeah.

[Seth]

And the famine that emerged from first, the famine of people that were herders.

[Steve Rinella]

The c. Cattle got flattened. Yeah.

[Seth]

But then also the famine that extended to other people that had been hunters and just wiped them out.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, yeah.

[Seth]

It's that more than hunting.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, yeah.

[Seth]

Render pest.

[Steve Rinella]

Render pest massive, for sure. Of all the things, you know, that set back game, it's. I mean, even. I don't think rinder pest. I think rinder pest is one of two diseases that humanity's successfully eliminated altogether. Like completely. We're free of it. And so it's that in smallpox, rinder pest, I think right up until the 50s was like an issue in East Africa.

[Seth]

But it's a great name for a disease.

[Steve Rinella]

It is, yeah. From German. Yeah. Cattle disease. And so it's. It when it first came in, I think it's almost 100% like fatal in, you know, species that are naive as far as being inoculated to it. But over time, obviously the, you know, you gain natural immunity. And then there was efforts made by the veterinary departments in what at those times were colonies to. To kind of mitigate it. But yeah, it hammered the population of buffalo. But what it. The also interesting thing that you can kind of glean from the rinder pest epidemic is that that those animals came back, you know, in. In vast numbers because the habitat was intact.

[Seth]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And that's the, that's the difference. You know, if you have these sort of massive wipeouts of species, it's Something that, that's happened throughout, you know, history as a result of climate or whatever. If the habitat's intact, there's a. There's an option, there's a possibility for them to come back. As long as you've got some kind of genetic reservoir.

[Seth]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

But if you destroy the habitat, you're done. So as remarkable how robust and resilient these species are in the face of things like rinderpest, if the habitats there.

[Seth]

Here's my actual last question. What's a big group? What's a big group to run into of Cape buffalo?

[Steve Rinella]

It depends very much on the area. In Luganzo, I would say a big herd would be 60 to 80.

[Seth]

Okay.

[Steve Rinella]

Just because of the terrain and kind of like. And yeah, the environment, the, the lion population. But there are certain areas, like, you know, in Mozambique, even southern Tanzania, I've seen some really massive herds. But you know, where you get like big sort of floodplain areas where there'll be hundreds and hundreds of them out there.

[Seth]

Now when we're out knocking around, are we going to run an alliance?

[Steve Rinella]

Almost certainly. Yeah, almost certainly. They're there all the time.

[Seth]

Sickly stuff. He'll be sick. I don't.

[Steve Rinella]

What's it like? Are they like grizzly bears here? We gotta watch out for them. If you run into them or just like, generally speaking, no, sometimes they'll put on a little bit of, a, bit of a performance. But generally these ones, they'll sort of slink off. You know, if they've got a kill nearby, they might be a little more reluctant to leave and they'll kind of like, like, you know, they'll posture a little bit. But you're, you're very unlikely to have an issue with them. And just in that context of like bumping into them somewhere. What about snakes? I would be surprised. We may see them. But more, more often than not, like I would say in all my time in Africa, 85% or more of the snakes I've seen have been like on the road sunning themselves. When and you sort of drive by and it's like, oh, there's a cobra, etc.

[Seth]

Do you guys got that one where you're supposed to just lean against a tree and die because there's nothing you.

[Steve Rinella]

Can do about it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Black mamba. Yeah, for sure.

[Seth]

Yeah, for sure. You run into those often?

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, not often. Not often. It's uncommon. But you'll see that it's so bad.

[Seth]

The best thing you can do is lean against a tree. You ain't gonna Live. Yeah, true with that.

[Steve Rinella]

So is that not true? It is. So, yes and no. So they have bit by one.

[Seth]

I'll tell you, just lean against a tree.

[Steve Rinella]

I'll tell you two stories about black mambas, which. And. And we can kind of. We can leave it at that. But it's uncommon to see them. And again, usually it's that same thing. You'll see them from the car. They'll kind of be beside the road.

[Seth]

And do you pass through them when you see them?

[Steve Rinella]

No, we typically leave them alone. One time I was in. I was in the saloon. I was in southern Tanzania and I was. We're following buffalo with a client and there's kind of little depression like this little valley that had tall grass in it. You know, seven, eight foot tall grass. And we, based on the freshness of the buffalo tracks that we were following, we kind of. The trackers and I had a little conference and sort of determined that they likely weren't in that tall grass. Like they'd passed. It wasn't that big of an area. They'd kind of passed through it and gone and bedded down somewhere in the miombo, like in the woodland. So we were pretty confident in being able to just sort of pass through it. So we're pretty casually like going through this tall grass, sort of following these trails that the buffalo and elephants and other stuff had made through there. And yeah, I'm just sort of fairly not totally asleep at the wheel, but sort of just, you know, going along. And next thing, like the two trackers kind of, they went around a little sort of corner in the grass in front of me to where I couldn't fully see them. Next thing, they both just sort of like evaporate. Just like gone. They just like flew past me, like, not a word said. Just like disappeared. And I'm like, oh no, the buffalo are in here. So I sort of pick up my rifle, safety off. But normally with buffalo in that kind of context, like it'd be a cow with a calf or something. And you'd hear them like they're gonna. They. A lot of times they'll vocalize. If you'd hear them crashing around, it was like silent. A couple seconds later, this black mamba sort of reared up to like just below my eye level. Kind of comes around the corner in the grass. Yeah, I mean, this thing was thick. It was sort of probably like diameter, I don't know, like 4 or 5 inches. It was like a thick snake, big snake. I couldn't see the full length of it, but it was really reared up and they do. They really rear up, which is why they. They so deadly, because they'll strike you in areas that you can't put, like a tourniquet, like you'll be. So I just pulled my front trigger, and I still can't tell you to this day whether I hit that thing or not. But I'm sure the muzzle blast from like, that, that distance rattled its cage. And I just turned around, grabbed the client, just ran. I just got out of there.

[Seth]

Because they'll come at you.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, they will. I mean, they do. What the guys said later was he was like, just curled up on the trail, and when they kind of like got up on him, like, he sort of got agitated, right. Like he felt like he was being accosted, and he sort of reared up and. And sort of like, sort of came towards them. And then he was probably just more or less curious as to what had happened and kind of came around that corner and got a face full of nitro express.

[Seth]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

But I also heard a story about it.

[Seth]

Number one right now.

[Steve Rinella]

I also heard a story about a. A young Maasai boy that was bitten by one in Masailand. And there's this wonderful place not far from Arusha called Messerani Snake Park. We'll actually drive by it where they have. They have a bunch of snakes. Yeah, it's. It sounds grim, but it's really cool. They have a bunch of snakes and they have a clinic where they extract venom and they do all the stuff there and they treat. Pretty much, they're the hub for all of northern Tanzania for, like, snake bite victims.

[Seth]

Got it.

[Steve Rinella]

And so the, the, the other kids that this, this Maasai boy was with recognized that he'd been bitten by a mamba. So they, they kind of managed to get him to a road where they flagged down a guy on a motorbike, and they got him on the motorbike and they all took off their belts and kind of belted him to the guy because they knew he was going to pass out. I mean, he was on the verge of passing out and he passed out. Somewhere along the journey. They got him to Mesarani. They gave him the, like, they gave him the treatment, the antivenom, and apparently, like, a couple days later, it was fine.

[Seth]

Really?

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. So you can't survive happy as a clam. The only injury he had like, like that was, you know, kind of sucked was when he passed out. Like, one of his feet had kind of dragged along the black Top, he's got a. Got serious road rash. But he was. He was fine. So I'm not going to say it's 100 fatal, but. Yeah, if we're out there in luganzo, we definitely want to avoid those things. But I'd be surprised.

[Seth]

That's going to have two huge belts on now.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. So we can just belt you to steel toed boots. Sounds like something to Steve. I just don't come home from this trip. Well, again, the snake boots aren't going to help you. No.

[Randall]

Just for the dragging your feet behind.

[Steve Rinella]

There you go. There you go. There you go. Yeah, well, and the other thing about them that's kind of spooky is they'll. They're like semi arboreal. They'll go up trees. So there are guys that have been bitten, like from above the top of.

[Seth]

His head, right through his little hat.

[Randall]

Seth's not gonna have a good time.

[Steve Rinella]

No, we won't. I'd be surprised if we see one. If we do, it'll be cool because we'll be from the car and we can all go and not have to.

[Seth]

Worry about getting like, go poke himself.

[Steve Rinella]

Don't touch it.

[Seth]

Go worry him.

[Steve Rinella]

Nope.

[Seth]

All right, wait, before we. Oh, it's gonna wrap up.

[Morgan Potter]

We just gotta say that your dream will come true because we will have a handful of bonus episodes dropping. Just a couple of.

[Randall]

We'll.

[Morgan Potter]

We'll have a lot of flops.

[Seth]

How do you spell fwop?

[Morgan Potter]

F, W, A P. Don't look at me.

[Seth]

We'll think of what makes good. We'll call them all.

[Morgan Potter]

FWOP.

[Steve Rinella]

FWOP.

[Morgan Potter]

1, 2, 3. Yep, we'll have a bunch of FWOPs while we're in country. Turned around, you know, within a matter of days. Podcast video.

[Seth]

Stevie. Stevie Hemingway goes there.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, exactly.

[Morgan Potter]

Tuesdays and Thursdays for a few weeks. So you can stay tuned for those.

[Seth]

No, I can't wait. Dude, I can't wait. You're there now. Yeah, now I'm getting excited, man. What's doing them snakes weeks. Thanks for coming on, man.

[Steve Rinella]

Absolutely. Thanks for having me. Looking forward to being in the bush with you. We're gonna have a hell of a time.

[Seth]

No, I think it's gonna be fun. I think it's gonna be fun. Congratulations on your hunt. Thank you, sir. Phil, we're getting out of your hair. Thank you, sir. We're only seven minutes overdue. My boy's calling me. Oh, no, I can't tell this. I got a funny story about my kid. But I'll tell later. Nothing to do with our subject matter. All right, guys, thank you for foreign 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 environment, 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 Me 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.

[Morgan Potter]

This is an iHeart podcast.