Ep. 748: Campfire Nachos and Jonathan Taylor Thomas | MeatEater Radio Live!

Summary

Podcast Summary: The MeatEater Podcast
Episode: Ep. 748: Campfire Nachos and Jonathan Taylor Thomas | MeatEater Radio Live!
Release Date: August 15, 2025
Host: Randall Williams
Guests: Kevin Hogan (President of Rock Island Auction)
Duration: Approximately 91 minutes

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Introduction

The episode, titled "Campfire Nachos and Jonathan Taylor Thomas," kicks off with Randall Williams welcoming listeners to MeatEater Radio Live! aired on Thursday, August 14th, from Bozeman, Montana. Hosted by Randall, Spencer Newharth, and Corey Calkins, the show promises a blend of outdoor topics, humor, and engaging discussions.

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Interview with Kevin Hogan of Rock Island Auction

[05:40]
Randall introduces Kevin Hogan, the president of Rock Island Auction Company based in Bedford, Texas. With a 30-year history, Kevin discusses the relocation from Illinois to Texas in 2023 and highlights the vibrant gun culture in Texas compared to other states like California and Florida.

Notable Discussions:

• Historic Firearms Showcase:
  Kevin showcases two remarkable firearms up for auction:

  1. Steve McQueen's "Mayor's Lake" (Lot #44)

     • Quote:
       Kevin Hogan: "This gun embodies Steve McQueen's legacy as the king of cool." [07:52]
     • Origin: Used in McQueen's show Wanted Dead or Alive. Kevin recounts his first (and unsuccessful) attempt at shooting a flintlock rifle, adding a humorous anecdote about mispointing the gun, which was included in their material despite his hope otherwise.

  2. Smith and Wesson Model #3 "Annie Oakley"

     • Quote:
       Kevin Hogan: "This smooth bore was shipped directly from the factory to Annie Oakley in 1895." [09:48]
     • Significance: A personalized firearm with letters from the factory, authenticating its provenance. Kevin emphasizes the importance of provenance in historic firearm collection, sharing stories of other notable pieces like Han Solo's original blaster and John Wayne's favorite revolver.

• Marlin Model 1893 by Conrad Frederick Ulrich:

  • Quote:
    Kevin Hogan: "This engraving of a bull moose and a cow is a masterpiece of craftsmanship." [18:07]
  • Description: A highly ornate and rare firearm, expected to set world records at auction with an estimated value surpassing $150,000.

Authentication Process:
Kevin elaborates on the meticulous process required to authenticate historic firearms, including verifying factory records and obtaining letters directly from manufacturers.

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Hot Tip Off Segment

[21:03]
The hosts engage listeners with the "Hot Tip Off," where two listeners, Austin Rines and Joshua Ross, present their hunting tips competing for a $100 MeatEater store gift card.

• Joshua Ross's Tip:

  • "Maximize your floater spread by turning them into land decoys using dollar store items like paper towel holders and spray paint." [22:26]

• Austin Rines's Tip:

  • "Protect your shoulder mounts and deadheads during a move by using inexpensive pool noodles as padding." [23:18]

After deliberation, Joshua Ross's practical and cost-effective tip wins with 61% of the vote.

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MeatEater Movie Club: Wild America

[40:57]
The hosts dive into the "MeatEater Movie Club," reviewing the 1997 adventure comedy film Wild America starring Jonathan Taylor Thomas.

Key Points of Discussion:

• Plot Overview:
  The film follows three brothers on a quest to find a cave of hibernating bears, blending family dynamics with outdoor adventure. Randall humorously critiques the film's portrayal of wildlife and special effects, noting the mix of real animals and animatronics.

• Performance and Nostalgia:

  • Randall Williams: "I don't need to see this movie again. I don't need to recommend this to anybody." [45:37]
  • Corey Calkins: Shares personal nostalgia, mentioning watching the movie with his son, who enjoyed it despite the campy elements.

• Favorite Moments:
  Randall appreciates the authentic animal scenes and the film's nod to classic hunting culture, while Corey enjoys the simplicity and humor in the brothers' interactions.

• Critiques:
  The hosts highlight inconsistencies in the film's timeline and unrealistic elements, such as the use of animatronic bears and outdated special effects.

Conclusion:
While Wild America doesn't earn high praise, the hosts acknowledge its harmless, nostalgic charm suitable for younger audiences interested in the outdoors.

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Top Threes Segment

[60:22]
Each host presents their own top three lists in personalized categories, showcasing their individual interests and expertise.

1. Jake Hofer's Top Threes:

   • Top Three Fishing Hats of All Time:
     Showcases favorite hats with accompanying anecdotes about memorable fishing trips and humorous worst photo moments.
   • Top Three Worst Photos with a Fish:
     Features candid, self-deprecating photos illustrating fishing mishaps.

2. Corey Calkins's Top Threes:

   • Top Three Favorite Hunting Camp Meals:
     • Number 3: Campfire Nachos
       "Easily made in a Dutch oven, reheats meat, melts cheese, and pleases the crowd."
     • Number 2: Duck and Andouille Pasta
       "Hearty and easy to prepare with pulled meats and flavorful ingredients."
     • Number 1: Walking Tacos
       "Customized, portable meals perfect for groups with picky eaters."

3. Spencer Newharth's Top Threes:

   • Top Three Video Game Characters That Would Taste Good After a Smoker Session:
     • Number 3: Rat King (The Last of Us Part II)
       • Pros: "Harvesting a moose-sized meal in one go."
       • Cons: "Risk of contracting a cordyceps brain infection."
     • Number 2: Orphan of Kos (Bloodborne)
       • Pros: Nutrient-rich placenta.
       • Cons: Potentially getting trapped in a nightmare realm.
     • Number 1: Yoshi (Super Mario Franchise)
       • Pros: Clean diet of sweet apples, tender meat.
       • Cons: Not addressing the logistics of cooking a fictional dinosaur.

Honorable Mentions:
Includes characters like Banjo Kazooie and Tom Nook from Animal Crossing, adding humor and creativity to the segment.

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Listener Feedback and Q&A

[32:40]
The hosts interact with listeners' questions, ranging from preferences on camouflage to hunting plans.

• Hunter Tagges and Plans:

  • Jake Hofer: Shares excitement over obtaining a Montana pronghorn tag and plans for a mule deer hunt in Idaho.
  • Spencer Newharth: Discusses holding deer tags in five states and plans for diverse hunts across the country.
  • Corey Calkins: Talks about handling general deer and elk hunts, along with plans to store excess meat for Thanksgiving.

• Hunting Techniques:
  Corey shares insights on using multi-pin versus single-pin tuning in archery hunting, advocating for practicality and speed in the field.

• Hot Tip Slump Query:
  Randall addresses concerns about a temporary slump in trivia episodes, attributing it to the hosts' efforts in completing an audiobook project.

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Advertisements and Promotions

Throughout the episode, sponsored segments promote various products relevant to the MeatEater audience, including:

• BetterHelp: Mental health services.
• Montana Knife Company: High-quality, handcrafted knives.
• First Light: Outdoor performance gear.
• Poncho Outdoors: Performance shirts for outdoor enthusiasts.
• Liquid IV: Hydration products.
• Moultrie: Cellular trail cameras.

These segments are integrated seamlessly, maintaining the episode's flow while providing valuable offers to listeners.

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Conclusion

The episode wraps up with a lively interaction among the hosts, humorously reflecting on their passionate discussions and humorous mishaps. Randall, Spencer, and Corey express enthusiasm for future segments like trivia and movie reviews, leaving listeners engaged and looking forward to upcoming content.

Final Thoughts:
Ep. 748: Campfire Nachos and Jonathan Taylor Thomas offers a rich blend of expert interviews, engaging listener interactions, and entertaining segments that resonate with outdoor enthusiasts. The hosts' chemistry and diverse topics make this episode both informative and enjoyable for both regular listeners and new audience members.

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Notable Quotes:

• Kevin Hogan (07:52): "This gun embodies Steve McQueen's legacy as the king of cool."
• Kevin Hogan (09:48): "This smooth bore was shipped directly from the factory to Annie Oakley in 1895."
• Corey Calkins (22:26): "Transform your floaters into land decoys with dollar store items like paper towel holders."
• Spencer Newharth (71:33): "The Rat King would feed a whole family for months. It's like harvesting a moose-sized meal in one go."

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This comprehensive summary captures the essence of Episode 748, highlighting key discussions, guest insights, and the hosts' dynamic interactions, ensuring that even those who haven't listened to the episode can grasp its content and spirit.

Transcript

[Randall Williams]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Spencer Newharth]

You've got the land, you've got the deer.

[Corey Calkins]

But the season's closing in and your.

[Spencer Newharth]

Mind'S racing with more questions than answers.

[Corey Calkins]

I'm Jake Hofer and this is back 40, a limited series show on Wire to Hunt, part of Meat Eaters podcast network. Each episode I'll be asking eight whitetail hunting pros a focused, thought provoking question.

[Spencer Newharth]

About hunting and land management.

[Randall Williams]

How do I hunt the best part.

[Spencer Newharth]

Of the farm with less than ideal access?

[Kevin Hogan]

Should you?

[Jake Hofer]

That's what the real question is.

[Kevin Hogan]

Stand without good access is not a good stand.

[Corey Calkins]

Search Wire to Hunt and hit that.

[Randall Williams]

Follow button to listen to back 40.

[Corey Calkins]

Now.

[Spencer Newharth]

Smell us now, lady.

[Randall Williams]

Welcome to Meat Eater trivia.

[Phil]

Meat Eater podcast.

[Jake Hofer]

Welcome to Meat Eater Radio live. Today is Thursday, August 14th. It's 11:00am Mountain Time here in Bozeman, Montana. That's 9:00am In Tallahassee, Florida, the new black bear hunting capital of the country. I'm your host, Randall Williams, and I'm joined today by Spencer Newharth and Corey Calkins. Hey, today's show, we're gonna hear about some fascinating firearms from our friends at Rock Island Auctions. We've got another hot tip off for you. We're getting together the old Meat Eater Movie Club to discuss the film Wild America. And we will wrap everything up with a little segment we like to call Top Three. Corey, Spencer, how are you fine gentlemen doing today?

[Corey Calkins]

Doing great.

[Randall Williams]

Very good. Very excited to get to our top threes.

[Jake Hofer]

Excellent, excellent. Well, you've got to wait because we've got three wonderful segments before that.

[Corey Calkins]

I'm excited for the Meat Eater Movie Club because I know it, obviously a banger of a film and I know you have some wonderful notes.

[Jake Hofer]

It's a, it's a, it's a fan favorite, I think.

[Randall Williams]

A fan favorite. How did this recommendation come to you?

[Jake Hofer]

Oh, no, I'm sorry. I'm talking about Meat Eater Movie Club. Got Phil. Got Phil.

[Spencer Newharth]

You always do.

[Jake Hofer]

No, I, I actually the film was recommended by a couple. It was in a couple emails to us and I remember watching it when I was little and the only thing I could remember is the, you know, the climatic scene in the bear cave. So we'll get to all that. We'll get to all that.

[Randall Williams]

Can I, can I make requests for Movie Club?

[Jake Hofer]

Sure.

[Randall Williams]

Would you rank all of the movies we've. Not right now, but like in some future episode, maybe at the end of the year.

[Jake Hofer]

I think that's a tremendous idea.

[Randall Williams]

Do a recap. Here's the best and here's the worst. Maybe you've got some awards, like best cinematography goes to Wild America.

[Jake Hofer]

We can call it the not the Radies, the Randy's. That's great.

[Corey Calkins]

There we go.

[Jake Hofer]

We could just have a whole episode where I just reread all of the. All of the bits that I've done.

[Randall Williams]

We need some shows over Christmas break.

[Corey Calkins]

We do.

[Jake Hofer]

Yeah. That'll be some good filler. Now, before we get too far, we have a couple of exciting new things to announce here today. Actually, Rich Froning's In Pursuit podcast just took over what used to be the Cutting the Distance podcast. So you can join Rich every Thursday on the Meat Eater podcast YouTube channel or wherever you listen to your podcasts. And at this very moment, 11:00am Mountain Time, the Meat Eater YouTube channel has launched a video recap of the Mountain Men tour that Steve and I did earlier this year. We went around to a couple of different universities in the west and talked about our Meat Eater's American History Mountain Men audiobook. And Steve and I also got to visit a museum, Museum of the Mountain Men in Pinedale, Wyoming. And we got to shoot some black powder guns. And the video shows.

[Randall Williams]

That shows you boys.

[Jake Hofer]

It does. It does. It actually shows my first, my very first attempt at shooting a flintlock rifle.

[Randall Williams]

You say attempt?

[Jake Hofer]

It was. It went poorly.

[Randall Williams]

Oh, okay.

[Jake Hofer]

There was. I was prepared for the delay between the flash in the pan and the.

[Randall Williams]

Hang fire is what it's called.

[Jake Hofer]

It was. It wasn't a full on hang fire, but by the time the rifle discharged, I was pointing it elsewhere. I was pointing it at the ground. My flinch had already hit me. So it's embarrassing. And I had hoped they cut that from the film. But that is included. And certainly Steve had some choice words to say at that point to you. Yes, he was tickled. He was tickled by my failure to hit the target.

[Randall Williams]

See that now on the Meat Eater YouTube channel.

[Jake Hofer]

Indeed.

[Spencer Newharth]

Also, we have a note from Mark Kenyon in the chat. He would like everyone to know that there are brand new Wire to Hunt hats and T shirts in the store.

[Jake Hofer]

Shameless plug from Mark.

[Spencer Newharth]

I don't know if they're in the store at this moment or if they're coming. Mark, let us know. You know it's Yanni's favorite hat.

[Randall Williams]

Yanni wears that hat every day. I see him at the office.

[Jake Hofer]

You see him at the office every day?

[Randall Williams]

Every day that I see him at.

[Jake Hofer]

The office once a month.

[Spencer Newharth]

It's an important distinction.

[Randall Williams]

It's his favorite hat from our selection.

[Corey Calkins]

Excellent I could butt in here and say the hats and shirts are available. So make my story.

[Jake Hofer]

Geez. Another. Another shameless plug. Let's get away from the commercial nastiness of this whole enterprise and get into the good stuff here. Speaking of historical firearms, to connect the thing I just said a few minutes before we got into the T shirt selling to the upcoming segment for our first and only guest on today's show, we're talking to Kevin Hogan, the president of Rock Island Auction. Kevin, welcome to the show.

[Kevin Hogan]

What's up, boys? We got hats and T shirts, too.

[Jake Hofer]

Oh, really? Would you. Yeah. Where can we find those? Rockislandauction.com.

[Kevin Hogan]

No, you actually got to come here and buy them. We're not. We're not that advanced yet, but proud of them, too.

[Jake Hofer]

So could you tell us where you are? And I know you got a couple guns to show us, but you could tell us a little bit about where you are in the auction that these guns will be in.

[Kevin Hogan]

Yes, sir. So we're in Bedford, Texas. I'm Kevin Hogan, president of Rock Island Auction Company. We're located in Bedford, Texas. We've been in business for 30 years. We were kind of on the. Well, we were in. We were in Illinois for up until 2023, and then we moved down here to the Lone Star State. And it's. It's been great. So we're right in the middle of BFW. We're 30 minutes from Fort Worth, 30 minutes from Dallas, 10 minutes from DFW Airport. We got down here as soon as we could. So it's been. It's been absolutely wonderful. We handle the finest guns in the world. We do it three times a year. And we got a great sale this weekend, so we'll be selling Friday through Sunday.

[Jake Hofer]

Excellent.

[Randall Williams]

Kevin, being in Texas seems like what I would imagine to be like the core of the. The demographic of your buyers. Is that case. Is that the case? Is it very Texas?

[Jake Hofer]

Yeah.

[Kevin Hogan]

I mean, at the end of the day, I mean, like, country is countrywide, right. And I mean, we have 34 countries that'll participate in our sales. But, you know, Texas has. It's not the best gun culture. United States, it's the best gun culture in the world. And, you know, you draw that line from Dallas to San Antonio, San Antonio to Houston. You got the golden triangle there. I mean, there's 9 million people here in DFW and, you know, more and more. There's. There's more. There's more business done on the deer blind here than there is on the golf Course, and it's been, it's been a great place for us to be. But if you break it down, you know, by population densities, I mean we're, we're from the formerly great state of Illinois. And I mean Illinois is a great state, but you just have, you know, 30 miles surrounded by reality, which is Chicago. But it's population densities that by guns. So Texas is number one, but California is number two. Florida, Pennsylvania, Illinois, all right up there, it's population densities.

[Jake Hofer]

Interesting. Can you, can you tell us about the first firearm you have to show us here?

[Kevin Hogan]

Sure, man. We got some, we got some fun stuff. So everything I'm going to show you, we're going to start selling tomorrow. This is, this is lot number 44. We'll sell it within the first 30 minutes. Tomorrow morning. We start selling at 9:00am Central Time. This is Steve McQueen's Mayor's Lake. I don't know how much introduction it does or doesn't need to to the viewers. For me, I'm 37 years old, you know, what does, what does Steve McQueen mean generationally to, to my generation? What does it mean to that baby boomer generation? But this gun, for so many, we've had it on display for three weeks. I mean we've had people come from around the country to kind of pay homage to it. The imagination that it inspired them right when they were, they were used, kind of how they've, whatever formulated their lives. It was, it's meaningful to a lot of people. Steve McQueen, the king of cool. This was, this was the mayor's leg from, from his show Wanted Dead or Alive. And it's a, we sold some really cool like pop culture items. I'm looking forward to this one. Most notably, we had Han Solo's original blaster from the original Star wars movie, New Hope. We actually made the Guinness Book of World Records with, with that gun. That gun brought just over a million dollars. We had John Wayne Single Action, his favorite kind of screen used gun that he used, and Rio Bravo, True Grit, Rooster cockburn. But Steve McQueen strikes different chord with people obviously again that the king of cool. And I think, you know, this gun kind of embodies that. It's because at the end of the day it is, it is cool.

[Jake Hofer]

Can you, can you, I've always been curious, can you tell us about the origin of the term mare's leg? I mean it typically refers to a lever action that's been shortened and then the stock has been cut off just below the, the sort of wrist of the Stock. But do you know about the history of that term?

[Kevin Hogan]

Yeah, I mean, like, I think just from the, from the visual, you could say it's there. But what we were reading is. I can't. He did a. I think it's in his autobiography, and he's talking about the development of this gun with Kenneth Von Dutch, which is just another cool piece of American pop culture. The famous fabricator. And McQueen was a method actor. And so he, he took, he took. They made three of these. He took one of the original examples that didn't have the plug barrel because this is a blank firing gun, only he took it to the range. And I think the one that he said he was shooting was like a.45 70 and like a mare's leg was, Was basically apart from the visual. Yeah. They said even this gun on the blank load, it was, it was so short and so powerful, they had to like shorten the blank load.

[Jake Hofer]

Okay.

[Kevin Hogan]

That they were doing like a third of the power.

[Jake Hofer]

That's great. That had never occurred to me. But certainly the experience would probably bring to mind getting kicked.

[Kevin Hogan]

Absolutely.

[Jake Hofer]

What, what, what have you got for your second gun here today?

[Kevin Hogan]

So also we're selling this sucker tomorrow. Smith and Wesson new model number three that letters to Annie Oakley. So if you, if you take a look, like just a few things are. You can see it's like shotgun sight on the front and it's, it's a smooth bore. So the gun was made in 1895 and it was shipped directly to Annie Oakley. And so, like, we get a lot of, like, historical guns that, that get run past us. And provenance is everything. And like, my, my story is not, like, great, but it's almost every time we get a historic gun. I mean, for every historic gun we sell, there's there's 50 or 75 that we don't. Because they don't. They don't quite read mustard, but like, you know, the great cinema classic hat baked. And he's talking about how he bought Jerry Garcia in a pouch. How do you know that or who told you that? It's the guy that sold it to me. And so, you know.

[Corey Calkins]

Right.

[Kevin Hogan]

So many stories about, about guns, but. But provenance is everything, unfortunately. Some of this stuff's real and it's lost to time, space, and history. But this one letters right from the factory to Annie Oakley as a smooth bore. And she's, she's as relevant now as, as she was, you know, in 1895 when the gun was made. She would, if you think about it, she was really like one of the first real international female superstars. She was her, her shooting prowess. And she, I mean, she was, she was tough as nails too. She tried to raise a regiment of all female sharpshooters both in the Spanish American War and in World War I. She was tough. I mean, she started fishing, hunting and trapping when she was seven years old. And, and, and did it for, for the right reasons. They're putting food on the table. She was, she was tough. And so it's free. I mean, you think about what this gun saw. This is 1895. She's 35 years old. She's 5 foot on paper, 100 pounds soaking wet and sitting, sitting bulls watching, watching her, you know, shoot and shoot this guy, you know, and he's the one that tagged her. Little masher shot.

[Jake Hofer]

And that's incredible. That's incredible. Could you tell us what you expect the. That, that pistol to, to make it auction? And also, I forgot to ask you about the mare's leg too. Do you have an expected valuation of those?

[Kevin Hogan]

Yeah, the mare's leg, I think we got in around like 50 to 75,000 as a low estimate. It's really hard to comp some of this stuff, right? So you have an intrinsic value, exercise versus history. But we. Our estimate on the mayor's legs, 50 to 75, Annie Oakley, I believe, is 60 to 90,000. We have sold several Annie Oakley guns. I mean, that was her craft. She. Guns were her tool. She had a lot of guns. Most of those have been lost in time, space, in history, but they were actually hers. But we've sold them. We've sold Annie Oakley guns for, for huge dollars. We've never sold a revolver. I mean, typically, you think of Annie Oakley, you think of like a.22, 1890 Winchester or right or shotgun. But yeah, I mean, I, I expect it to be spirited. I expect it to be spirited, but I don't have a crystal ball. I'll tell you. I'll tell you tomorrow night when it's all said and done.

[Jake Hofer]

Excellent. Excellent. And what to wrap things up here, what's the third and final item you got?

[Kevin Hogan]

Yeah, this is. I mean, we say we handle the finest guns in the world. That's what you're looking at here. This is the. I mean, this is the best marlin that we've ever had. We've been in business for 30 years. We handle the best guns in the world. But this is as good as it gets. For we do find in historic firearms collecting, we trademark the phrase not all artists Framed. I mean this is, this is for that very reason. It's a Conrad Frederick factory engraved gold and platinum midlife. It's a marlin model of 1893, manufactured in 1896. And apart from it being, you know, jaw droppingly beautiful and extremely rare and likewise extremely expensive, it's kind of a neat story. It was maintained by the same family in Connecticut for well over 100 years. Just been passed down as a family heirloom. You know, it's like the old thing, he would take it, the owner would take it to the gun shop once every two or three years to have him oil it. He didn't, he didn't feel comfortable doing it. And you know, naturally people start showing up at the gun shop and offers start getting made. And I think it went from $5,000, $8,000 to $12,000 to 15,000 DOL. When we talk to these folks, do you think, do you think it could bring 30 grand? And I think that gun's gonna set a world record for a. Wow. 1893. I think it's gonna, I think it's gonna blow past 150, 000 pretty quick.

[Randall Williams]

You had talked about the Annie Oakley gun and if it would pass the mustard. What is the authentication process like when you get a gun that was supposedly owned by a famous person like that.

[Kevin Hogan]

So this one, this one made it easy. You can contact like Smith and Wesson, they have their factory archive and their factory factory ledgers. Now what they were doing back then, if someone was having a bad day, what was being reported, what wasn't being recorded, there wasn't a great standardization. But this gun lettered specifically adds shift to Annie Oakley right from the factory to her. And that's, that's as good and solid as you can get. I think it's also worth mentioning, you know, this gun. I believe it was discovered at a gun show. You know, I think, I think the gentleman purchased it for $2,000. It was unknown. And then he did the legwork on getting a letter from factory and it going straight to her. But you know, that's incredible. And we see it in everything. I mean what human air and people. I mean like Colt, very famously the cult records burned in 1818, 61, 1862, the factory had a huge fire and we lost all their records. Winchester has really good records. Unfortunately Marlin has, has poor records. But luckily with this gun, Smith and Wesson had the, had the records.

[Jake Hofer]

We, Steve and I have been working on an audiobook about the buffalo hunters. And I think one of the more fascinating sources that you can come across. There's a whole archive from the Sharps rifle manufacturing company that they have all these letters from buffalo hunters. And it's just amazing that, that those records are maintained by those companies and then all of the, the little tidbits you can pull out of it.

[Kevin Hogan]

Absolutely. It'll shock you both ways. Like what we have and then what we don't have. I mean, I think we did. One of our guys did, did one of your shows previously and we had that. It was a 70 caliber Hawking rifle that came out of Sagamore Hill, out of Roosevelt stuff. And in Teddy's own writing it said Kit Carson's rifle. But like where the connection was or wasn't to, to Kit Carson was lost to time, history and space. But in, in Teddy's own hand, it was Kit Carson's rifle. You know it very well, it probably was, but we, we couldn't place it there. And that's kind of the frustration you get on chasing down historic guns and trying to, you know, you'd like it to be as simple and straightforward as if this gun shipped from Springfield, Mass. To Annie Oakley in 1895. Unfortunately, that's not always the case.

[Jake Hofer]

Fascinating that, that marlin you pulled up, that looked like an engraving of a deer on the, on the side of it. Can you describe for our viewers sort of what the visuals are like on the receiver?

[Kevin Hogan]

Yeah, so we call it a, it's a panel scene. So on your, on your loading gate side. Yeah, we have a, a running deer. Then you can see like the oak leaf and acorn pattern. Then you can see the multi. Precious metals. When I roll it, you can see gold and platinum.

[Jake Hofer]

Wow.

[Kevin Hogan]

And then the, the large panel scene is a bull moose and a cow. And I just. When I roll it, you can see the condition and condition and what we do is like location, real estate. It's condition, condition. And this is, I mean this is a time capsule. And so like you can see the, in the gold inlay on the hammer, the carving, the checkering on the wood. I mean Marlin, you know, Colts and Winchesters are always what we consider the blue chip of fine and historic American firearms collecting. You always think of Colts and Winchesters, but you know, Marlin is to lever actions like Smith and Wesson is to the revolvers on, on the Colt single actions. And Marlin doesn't get the, the credit that it deserves. The, the artist and we, I say that in every sense. The word. Who engraved that gun, Conrad Frederick Ulrich, actually started at Winchester and then would move to Marlin and become their head engraver. And they gave him way more creative freedom on. On his guns. He'll sign a lot of his stuff. A lot of his great guns are signed and a lot of them are hidden signatures. So it's, it's really neat. But, you know, you think of that as like the ultimate. The ultimate artistry. When you're chiseling steel. I mean, there's no such thing as a mistake. And you think back then, it's. This is pre electricity, right? You know, you're doing stuff in modern. And I mean, it's natural light and candlelight. This isn't. There's. There's no technology. It's very, very basic and simple. So I don't, you know, modern engravers don't have what it. What they. What these guys did.

[Jake Hofer]

That's incredible. Well, Kevin, thank you so much for your time and for sharing those guns with us here and good luck this weekend. We'll be curious to see what those end up selling for.

[Kevin Hogan]

Absolutely. Pleasure. Thanks for having me.

[Randall Williams]

Thanks.

[Jake Hofer]

Thank you.

[Corey Calkins]

Thank you.

[Jake Hofer]

Boy, my gun budget is lacking.

[Corey Calkins]

Oh, boy.

[Randall Williams]

Do you own any historic guns?

[Jake Hofer]

None at all.

[Randall Williams]

Is it like on your radar? Is it like an aspirational thing to come in possession of?

[Jake Hofer]

Not really. I mean, it's. I enjoy going to firearms museums and looking at guns and especially something like that where you can sort of marvel at the artistry. But, yeah, I don't. Guns for me are very utilitarian or, or they're just sheer novelty. But I still want to fire them, you know? You know, I don't want anything that I have to lock up and keep. Keep pretty.

[Corey Calkins]

Yeah. I don't know if you'd want to shoot that marlin.

[Jake Hofer]

No, never.

[Corey Calkins]

Yeah. I mean, value would go down, I imagine.

[Jake Hofer]

Oh, I think so. I think so.

[Corey Calkins]

It's too beautiful.

[Jake Hofer]

Alrighty. Sorry, my. I got a phone call and moved my, my browser around, so let me just pull that back up and. And get back into the swing of things here. We're live. Our next segment is a Hot Tip Off.

[Randall Williams]

H O T T I P A. Let's all do a hot tip. H O T.

[Jake Hofer]

Salt to a hot tip.

[Corey Calkins]

Yes, let's.

[Jake Hofer]

Speaking of artistry. Wonderful. Wonderful, Phil. Thank you.

[Spencer Newharth]

You're welcome.

[Jake Hofer]

Hot Tip off is where two listeners go head to head with competing pieces of advice. And after we hear each tip, we'll declare which one is hotter. If you have a hot tip, take a minute, one minute video on your phone and email it to radio themeateater.com with the subject line hot tip off. This week we have Austin Rines versus Joshua Ross, and they are competing for a $100 meat eater store gift card. You can get a pile of killer meat eater shirts, hats and hoodies with $100. And a little birdie told me that select logoware will be bogo next week. Or buy one, get one. Omg, that's huge news, gang. Huge news. Phil, take it away.

[Kevin Hogan]

Joshua Ross.

[Jake Hofer]

Hey, I'm Joshua Ross from upstate New York, and this is my hot tip. If you're just getting into waterfowl or you're stretched a little thin, you can maximize your floater spread.

[Corey Calkins]

Turn them into some land decoys.

[Jake Hofer]

Under 30 bucks with some dollar store.

[Corey Calkins]

Paper towel holders and a couple cans of rust oleum.

[Jake Hofer]

I do. Start with this. Bend it down into this shape. Spray paint it to match your decoys. Maybe add some orange for some feet. Go ahead. Slide it on to the keel.

[Kevin Hogan]

Yes.

[Jake Hofer]

Stick it in the gravel, sand bank, embankment. And then boom. You turn your floaters into some land.

[Randall Williams]

Decoys, some field decoys. And you can put some in the water or leave some up on the shore. This is what it should look like.

[Corey Calkins]

Tan orange, orange feet.

[Jake Hofer]

That's my hot tip.

[Corey Calkins]

Love it.

[Jake Hofer]

My God. Austin Rines. Hey, meat eater crew, this is Austin from Arkansas, and I've got a hot tip for y'.

[Kevin Hogan]

All.

[Jake Hofer]

I recently moved from Oklahoma back to Arkansas and I had a little bit of an issue. I got my shoulder mounts and my dead heads and my European mounts, and I didn't want them to get damaged in the moving process. So I came up with an idea. Go down to your local Walmart and get you some of those five dollar pool noodles real cheap. And I don't know about the size bucks that y' all are killing, but for me, the ones I'm killing are you can get about one pool noodle for every two deer. And I got a whole pile over here that I'm gonna get started hanging up on the walls and decorating. That's my hot tip. Hope you all like it.

[Spencer Newharth]

Y' all have a good one.

[Jake Hofer]

Oh, my God. I love. I love that guy.

[Corey Calkins]

I could feel the burn from both those hot tips.

[Spencer Newharth]

Yeah.

[Randall Williams]

Two of the hottest tips we've ever gotten.

[Spencer Newharth]

Strong.

[Randall Williams]

If you are listening or watching at home, those should be aspirational videos. Strong submissions when you send us a hot tip.

[Spencer Newharth]

The pool. The poll is live, by the way.

[Jake Hofer]

Poll is live.

[Spencer Newharth]

And get in the live chat.

[Jake Hofer]

Hop in there, gang.

[Randall Williams]

Ask yourself, is is my hot tip as Hot as Josh's or Austin's when you send a hot tip. Because those. Those were perfect.

[Jake Hofer]

Yeah. Yeah. And just it's so fortunate that they went head to head because this, I think, is a tough, tough decision here. Tough contest.

[Kevin Hogan]

Yeah.

[Corey Calkins]

What do you guys.

[Jake Hofer]

Any initial thoughts, gentlemen?

[Randall Williams]

I like Austin's. That is creative. I've never seen that. But I love Joshua's. The dollar store decoy legs to turn your floaters into field decoys. Super clever, super cheap. It's like a problem solving thing. I'm all about Josh's. Josh's would have my vote. Big fan.

[Corey Calkins]

Yeah. Both very thrifty, which this day and age, gotta be thrifty. Use what you got, you know, it's tough.

[Jake Hofer]

Yeah. I think for me, what. What might tip it towards Joshua is that I wish Austin had a. Had included whatever he uses to protect the nose.

[Corey Calkins]

That's what I was thinking.

[Jake Hofer]

Skulls. Because when I move, I'm not so much worried about the antler points. I'm worried about the nasal cavity. I just had one fall off the wall.

[Randall Williams]

Who hung it there?

[Jake Hofer]

Yeah, I did. Oh, no, I did. And it knocked another one off. That was fine. And. But. But the one shattered the nose bone. And I just feel like as a society, we need to come together and figure out a way to make those things bulletproof.

[Randall Williams]

That gave me shivers.

[Jake Hofer]

I know that.

[Randall Williams]

Two Euro mounts.

[Jake Hofer]

Wildest thing. We're sitting there watching television, you know, as we do every night for a few hours, and. And just heard a noise in the other room. Said, my God, what is that?

[Randall Williams]

You just assume it's dogs.

[Jake Hofer]

Yeah. With your living situation, they're all doing what they're supposed to do, which is just laying on their sides in front of us.

[Randall Williams]

Okay.

[Jake Hofer]

And yeah, this. This one was hung at about 6 foot 6 on the wall, and it fell down and knocked one down that was at about 5 foot 6.

[Randall Williams]

Damn.

[Jake Hofer]

And then they hit my computer monitor. And I don't know how the one survived, but. Yeah, it's a. It's a buck that I shot in 2016.

[Corey Calkins]

Everybody wants to know how it fell off the wall. Drywall rip.

[Jake Hofer]

I think it's. I think it's. The drywall anchor seemed to be loose.

[Corey Calkins]

Yes.

[Jake Hofer]

And so then I went and got, you know, the drywall. I'm getting so far afield.

[Randall Williams]

I put so much confidence into drywall anchors.

[Jake Hofer]

Same. Well, the one. The one that I moved to is the drywall anchor. That's more cone shaped. That has the threads. The threads on the outside. And not just one of those that sploots out and grabs the back.

[Randall Williams]

I'm fully on the drywall anchor. You're describing the threads, and I feel like those are, like, I have 50 pound ones and 75 pound ones.

[Jake Hofer]

No, they make some. They make some hefty ones.

[Randall Williams]

Yeah.

[Corey Calkins]

500 pound ones. That's what's holding on to my elk. But I'm going to go double check those screws.

[Jake Hofer]

Yeah. Yeah. It's a wall. I've got, like, nine different bucks all hanging on the same wall, and now it makes me want to take them all down and replace all the drywall anchors.

[Randall Williams]

All right, I'm voting Josh the Dollar store. Dollar Store decoy legs. Corey, you're voting.

[Corey Calkins]

I like the pool noodles.

[Randall Williams]

Okay.

[Jake Hofer]

I like the decoy legs. And I just. I think, like, anytime you can buy something real cheap and it just adds to your. Your experience in the field, like, that's pool noodles.

[Spencer Newharth]

Well, with 61% of the vote, the winner.

[Jake Hofer]

Oh, I forgot that we weren't important.

[Randall Williams]

No.

[Spencer Newharth]

Is Joshua Ross with the dollar Store decoy list. Congratulations, Josh.

[Jake Hofer]

If we're just going off vibes, Austin would have had my vote. I like that guy's. I like that guy's energy.

[Randall Williams]

Randall is encouraging you to send another hot tip off Austin, because your aura alone might just get you to win one of these.

[Jake Hofer]

Yeah. And if that's. You know, I just wonder what else you got in the. In the hopper, what else you got in the quiver there?

[Spencer Newharth]

You have a lot of people yelling at you to just hit a stud when you're hanging and not use drywall Anch.

[Corey Calkins]

Well, sometimes they're not.

[Jake Hofer]

Well, not if you're doing a spread.

[Spencer Newharth]

That's true.

[Jake Hofer]

This wall is incredible. It's just. It's. Artistically, they're scattered across the wall. Perfect. So I just think you're wrong.

[Randall Williams]

He doesn't have enough studs in his house for all these.

[Jake Hofer]

You got too many studs. Not enough of the other kind.

[Corey Calkins]

Josh, if you're watching, I'll email you that gift card. Just be on the lookout for that.

[Phil]

Anywhere worth going is worth going in good boots. You can find your perfect pair with the copas. My.

[Jake Hofer]

My.

[Phil]

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[Jake Hofer]

And now it's time for some listener feedback. Phil, what do we got going on in the chat?

[Spencer Newharth]

Well, please shoot some more questions my way in the live chat. And we'll do this again at the end of the show. Nate says, asks if the meat eater crew were in the Hunger Games, who would win?

[Corey Calkins]

Cal.

[Spencer Newharth]

I think I might be with you.

[Jake Hofer]

Can you win by not? I don't know how the rules work.

[Randall Williams]

Well, PETA famously just, like, camouflaged himself and then laid next to a stump. Right.

[Jake Hofer]

That's what I. Oh, yeah. He was.

[Spencer Newharth]

He was really good at camouflaging himself because he was a pastry chef and decorated cakes. That is true lore in the Hunger Games.

[Jake Hofer]

Whoa. I didn't realize that. Yeah. Thinking if you had to score points by killing people, Cal might not be it. But I also thought Cal would be really good because he would just refuse to participate and he would just kind of sit on the sidelines.

[Randall Williams]

He could go to the edge of the map, but then the overlords would, like, send wasps at him and hit him with lightning or something.

[Spencer Newharth]

Philip Seymour Hoffman would move the map around.

[Randall Williams]

I'd give Cal a vote. He'd be very good at being uncomfortable in the Hunger Games experience.

[Jake Hofer]

And Steve, I think if. If you had to just go on, who might kill the most people, it would probably be Steve.

[Kevin Hogan]

Yeah.

[Jake Hofer]

He's just angry because he loves to flip knives around.

[Spencer Newharth]

He'd love an excuse.

[Jake Hofer]

Yeah, yeah. I think he's just waiting for that green light.

[Corey Calkins]

I've had the same conversation, but not Hunger Games, but the show alone, you know?

[Jake Hofer]

Yeah. I also think that's Cal.

[Corey Calkins]

Cal.

[Jake Hofer]

Because he just wouldn't want to come back. This is great. There's no phones.

[Corey Calkins]

Whatever it takes to stay.

[Jake Hofer]

No one's asking me to do anything.

[Randall Williams]

No one's bugging me about radio. Bringing a show and tell them to radio live.

[Kevin Hogan]

Y.

[Jake Hofer]

No. That'd be good.

[Randall Williams]

What an experience.

[Spencer Newharth]

Leland says, do y' all have any strong feelings on orange camo? Does it work? Not work. Is it a bad compromise?

[Corey Calkins]

Orange camo?

[Randall Williams]

I. I'm not passionate about this. If I was in a. A state where I was archery hunting during a gun season, where it was required as an archery hunter that I had to wear camo, which I think is. Is Illinois or Missouri one of those states, I would be like, okay, I will wear orange camel. Outside of that, if you are gun hunting, if you are killing an animal that is further than 20 yards away from you, I'm not sold on needing to wear orange camo.

[Corey Calkins]

Good point.

[Randall Williams]

I like how it looks, though.

[Jake Hofer]

It does look cool.

[Randall Williams]

It looks cool. It looks like, you know, you got that item from your dad who wore it in the 80s.

[Jake Hofer]

I also like the. I used to have a. An orange vest, I think when I moved out to Montana. That had, like, sort of the black tree bark print on it. Yes.

[Corey Calkins]

That's tough.

[Jake Hofer]

That looked tough. But, yeah, I'm more of just an orange mesh and function guy.

[Corey Calkins]

Yeah.

[Jake Hofer]

You know, in Montana.

[Corey Calkins]

Here you're so broken up. Anyway, at least backpack, straps, binocular harness.

[Jake Hofer]

I don't know all my. All my fixings.

[Corey Calkins]

Blood stains from last year.

[Spencer Newharth]

Nate says. Spencer, how long till the next Wives and Girlfriends trivia episode? My wife loves them and wants more. Definitely some of the best episodes.

[Randall Williams]

I was just checking with my wife this week about dates that would work with her. Now I have to reach out to the other wives, but I will try to do one this year. It's our most viewed trivia episode in the history of YouTube. So if we need to, like, juice the numbers, we'll just get all the wives and girlfriends in here because folks want to run over to YouTube and watch them play trivia. So we will do it again. Nate.

[Jake Hofer]

Excellent. Our household looks forward to that. What else we got?

[Spencer Newharth]

Phil Mogor says, hi. Steve hunted in Africa. Yani in Lithuania. I would say. Was he in Lithuania?

[Corey Calkins]

Latvia.

[Spencer Newharth]

Latvia. Do you have any Baltic states similar dreams or plans outside of the United States for hunting in the future?

[Corey Calkins]

Always wanted to kill a Siberian tiger. I don't know if that's legal, though.

[Jake Hofer]

You're not taking this question very seriously.

[Randall Williams]

I want to hunt Canada real bad. I want hunt Alberta or Saskatchewan for a big old whitetail buck. There you go. Their laws make it hard to do that. As a DIY hunter from the United States, you have to have a guide. Their guide regulations are. Are fairly stinging about, like, what your relationship with the guide can be as far as, like, if they drop you off, if they are within eyesight of you, if they, like, pick the location where you're sitting. So while I feel like I have some connections to go hunt in Canada at some point, it wouldn't be with a guide in a traditional sense. And so I just don't want to even mess with it as a dude who prefers to just, like, go do a DIY thing. But if I could kill a big old whitetail buck in Saskatchewan or Alberta, that would satisfy all my foreign hunting dreams.

[Kevin Hogan]

There you go.

[Jake Hofer]

This is a dream, not a plan, because it won't happen. But I think if I had, if I were given the option of one, international hunt would probably be an ibex in central Asia, just in those giant, scary big mountains that just looks like a super cool experience. And obviously, like, you do it with a network of local guides and get to eat weird stuff and drink weird stuff and have a weird time.

[Randall Williams]

All those guys are expert falconry folks, it seems like.

[Jake Hofer]

Yeah, no, it'd be cool. Africa also would be very cool. We did. I got to go hunt in old Mexico. Oh, yeah.

[Randall Williams]

I am an international hunter.

[Jake Hofer]

Guess I am an international hunter. Straighten the necktie on my T shirt.

[Corey Calkins]

That does look like a lot of fun.

[Jake Hofer]

Thank you, Mogur, for a great question.

[Randall Williams]

One more. I have what I have deemed to be the whitetail time zone slam. Just like the traditional time zones. But there's one way, way east. Is it Nova Scotia that has. It's in its own.

[Jake Hofer]

Would it be maritime?

[Randall Williams]

I think it's maritime. So if I wanted to, like, you know, there's like the grand slam of turkeys and then like the super Slam or whatever the tiered system is there. If I want to go to the next tier of the whitetail time zone slam, I need to get to Nova Scotia at point or whatever is in that furthest eastern time zone.

[Jake Hofer]

I love that for you.

[Randall Williams]

Someday.

[Jake Hofer]

Let's do it someday. Is that it for listener feedback? Phil, should we move on?

[Spencer Newharth]

Yeah, let's go ahead and move on. We can hit some more at the end of the Show.

[Jake Hofer]

Sure. There's some other good ones.

[Spencer Newharth]

Yeah, I got a couple started. There was one that. I'll just go ahead and bring it up now because you guys might plead the fifth on it. But this is for Corey. This is also from Nate. He said, what's the coldest tip anyone's ever submitted? I don't know if one stands out to you as like, wow, this is. This is rough. But also, if you don't want to hurt people's feelings, we're a very positive show.

[Jake Hofer]

No, you should name them.

[Corey Calkins]

Oh, man, there. Yeah, there's a few that I certainly don't finish watching because it's like this is either way too, you know, out of reach, way too common, way too. Whatever. I don't think there's any cold ones because everybody brings the enthusiasm. If you have the time to film and send us an email. They're all, we're great. Warm enough.

[Jake Hofer]

Everybody's got a trick or two up their sleeve.

[Corey Calkins]

Keep them coming because it's kind of dry out there.

[Spencer Newharth]

I get those hot tips in.

[Corey Calkins]

I wish I had an answer for you, but nothing, nothing jumps out. That's ice cold.

[Spencer Newharth]

Yeah. Because otherwise we have to ask Giannis and then he sends something that's, I mean, pretty cold.

[Randall Williams]

Yeah, I've seen some of the hot tip submissions. I would say the coldest ones are ones that come in and I hear it and I'm like, I know you heard that on the Meat Eater podcast. That thing that you're saying is a hot tip. You heard from.

[Jake Hofer]

Put your binoculars on a tripod.

[Randall Williams]

Yeah, y. So that. That was probably the coldest tips that we get.

[Jake Hofer]

Another great question. Geez. Well, our next segment is Meat Eater Movie Club. This week we're pauser sound. I put the. I put the pause for sound in the wrong place. We're live this week. We're reviewing the 1997American adventure comedy film directed by William Dear, written by David Michael Weiger and starring Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Devin Sawa and Scott Barstow. See, I think the sound would go better there.

[Spencer Newharth]

Well, you also didn't name the movie yet.

[Jake Hofer]

Wild America. Thanks for putting that together, Corey. All right, this is the film, the COVID of the film, the poster so serious says take a ride on the wild side. And it has our young heroes. Child actors don't get more coyly camera wise than Jonathan Taylor Thomas, the 15 year old star and narrator of Wild America, a tepid family adventure film whose grizzly bears appear only slightly more threatening than giant stuffed animals. As Marshall Stouffer the youngest of three brothers growing up in Fort Smith, Arkansas, in 1967, Thomas looks like a baby Brad Pitt and acts as though he's been born and brought up on the MGM lot in the 1930s, then whisked 60 years into the future with his Shirley Temple meets Mickey Rooney mannerisms intact. All three lead actors in the film have the kind of delicate looks that make Tiger Beat readers go hummada, Hummina. And their cute foxiness will have to be enough to drum up interest in this movie. Those very words were published in the New York Times on July 2, 1997. Except for the second sentence. Or the third, I should say the one that mentions Tiger Beat. That's from a syndicated piece published in the St. Paul Pioneer Press the same day. I included those words here only because I thought they would be funny to pretend that they were my own.

[Spencer Newharth]

Fooled me.

[Jake Hofer]

That fell flat.

[Randall Williams]

Jeez, I liked it.

[Jake Hofer]

The premise of the film is fairly straightforward. Three brothers, whose father has spent a lifetime lying to one of them about his ability to fly an airplane, decide to drive across the country in search of a cave full of hibernating bears. They do this, as best I can tell, in the middle of the summer. The oldest, Marty, is a maniacal bully, dead set on making wildlife films so he doesn't have to suffer the indignity of inheriting the family carburetor cleaning business. The middle brother, whose name I do not recall, serves no real purpose. The youngest, played by Jonathan Taylor Thomas, I think, was named Marshall. Yes, their misadventures along the journey, most of which I'll admit from this review, are partially explained by how bad their map is. We only get a glimpse of it once, but it's a bad map, although it's hard to explain why it's so bad without a visual aid. At some point, a strangely proportioned moose carries Marshall into a river the brothers encountered. The brothers encounter Danny Glover, who makes an uncredited appearance wearing antlers on his head. He tells them to go look for a disfigured woman whose dead fiance was eaten in the bear cave after the mean brother breaks the boring brother's leg as they take a tumble in the snow, and then that brother immediately forgives the other while still lying there in the snow with a broken leg. They then see a woman in the graveyard, and the youngest brother impressively remembers the disfigured woman's name as well as that of her dead boyfriend, Judd, although she only refers to him, curiously as my Judd. And he he also remembers the date of his death or was it his birthday? Which also was the day they were going to get married, which stuck out to me as one of the stranger little details in this film. Anyway, they follow the tracks of the woman's horse to the bear cave, which is oddly close to her home. They go in, the bears wake up, and there's a lot happening all at once. Then the brothers sing about Mountain Dew to put the bears back to sleep. When bats start shitting on them. The resulting explosion of their flashlight stirs up the bats, who seem to form part of the cave wall. So when they fly away, there is now a hole in the cave that lets in light that wakes up the bears. Why the boys don't try the Mountain Dew jingle again is not explained to the viewer because it worked so well the first time. Then there's actually another hole in the cave that the youngest brother climbs out of. It would seem that this cave would not be a very good place to hibernate due to all of the holes. Then someone else falls in the snow here. My review gets scattered. The younger brother drives home and begins pretending he was in an airplane. While pretending he was in an airplane, he crashes the car. There's still 30 minutes left in the film is the note I have here.

[Randall Williams]

I had that same feeling.

[Jake Hofer]

Then there's another broken leg. The grumpy old dad breaks his leg too, but the kid's broken leg is healed now. And then the dad, who has a cigar in his mouth while bedridden in the hospital, tells the family that a guy in Pittsburgh will give them six bits apiece for some auto parts that represent the family's emergency savings. Jonathan Taylor Thomas fires up the plane that the dad pretended he could fly, but the kid can actually fly it, and he imagines his dad in the backseat when they make amends with one another at the hospital. The Voice the boy tells the viewer in a voiceover that he's never told anyone what happened between him and his dad that day, which is odd because you'd think everyone could tell that they've forgiven one another. Describing this film made me like it.

[Kevin Hogan]

Less.

[Jake Hofer]

Overall Thoughts.

[Randall Williams]

I don't need to see this movie again. I don't need to recommend this to anybody. I don't think I watched this when I was a kid.

[Corey Calkins]

Obviously not.

[Randall Williams]

I would have been five years old when it came out. I'm a little surprised that I wasn't more familiar with anything about the movie. And then I watched it and I was like, well, that's why I wasn't familiar. Nobody was like, really? Parading this around as a great piece of cinema from when I was a kid.

[Jake Hofer]

Yeah, yeah.

[Corey Calkins]

Unless you watch this as a kid, it doesn't have the same, you know, vibe.

[Jake Hofer]

It's. There's a lot of elements that are difficult to believe in the film.

[Randall Williams]

Can I tell you some things I liked?

[Jake Hofer]

I'd love to. That's next in my prompt here.

[Randall Williams]

They had some real ass animals in the movie sometimes, which was like here and there.

[Jake Hofer]

Yeah.

[Randall Williams]

It's like a hard thing to do is have like the owl. Initially I was like, oh, that's a real owner. The kind of fun.

[Jake Hofer]

Yeah.

[Corey Calkins]

Landing on Jonathan Taylor Thomas's arm without a glove on.

[Randall Williams]

That's right. And then it shows up in. In Valley of the Gods of Arizona later on. Oddly I, I liked that the boys were filming Jackass 30 years before. I was like that. That should be the movie.

[Jake Hofer]

My thought, my thought at that moment was God, it was so nice when like kids did this stuff and they couldn't put it on the Internet so it didn't become their entire personality.

[Randall Williams]

Sure.

[Corey Calkins]

Like the M80s in the pool.

[Jake Hofer]

Oh yeah.

[Randall Williams]

Some good music. I, I like. You know, they had Suzie Q by ccr. They had a magic carpet ride. I just enjoyed the music they served me. And then I enjoyed the scene where the, the two older brothers are peeing upstream and Jonathan Taylor Thomas is filling his canteen downstream. Yes, I enjoyed that.

[Jake Hofer]

And then he, and then he gave it to them to drink.

[Randall Williams]

Yes.

[Jake Hofer]

And it was unclear, I thought, whether or not he was in on the drink.

[Randall Williams]

Yeah, I felt the same way.

[Jake Hofer]

I don't think they played that up enough.

[Randall Williams]

No, it seemed like he was sort of cheeky about it. Yeah, he did know. Yeah, I liked that. That's the end of the list of the things I liked.

[Jake Hofer]

Corey.

[Corey Calkins]

This brought back some serious nostalgia as I watched. Yeah. It came out when in 97. So I would have been 9. Probably didn't watch it right away, but watched it, you know, fairly quickly. And I watched it with my 7 year old boy last night.

[Jake Hofer]

He loved it.

[Corey Calkins]

And he loved it. There was scenes where I'm just like, are you kidding me? Like when JTT gets picked up by the moose and it's very apparent that it's two dudes.

[Jake Hofer]

Yeah.

[Randall Williams]

Was it a horse?

[Jake Hofer]

There were two guys. There are two guys just sort of skipping. Wearing a moose suit. There's one, there's one shot in particular where it's very clearly just two guys in a brown bag with holding a moose head in front of them.

[Corey Calkins]

Yeah. And I was watching him. I looked over and looked at my son Marshall, which is fun, too. Oh, yeah.

[Jake Hofer]

Himself as the bullied younger brother.

[Corey Calkins]

Yeah. He loved hearing his name yelled a lot. And he's loving it, so. And I'm, like, rolling my eyes, and he's just, like, in heaven watching this. And then when it came to the. The Cave of a Thousand Bears or ten bears or whatever, ended up being. Same thing, super cheesy. I don't know why. Or who came up with the idea to bring in the fake bear costumes when they had live bears.

[Jake Hofer]

Yeah. It was a weird mixture of robots and taxidermies.

[Randall Williams]

Yeah. Animatronics. Real bears.

[Jake Hofer]

It reminded me of this time.

[Randall Williams]

Cgi.

[Jake Hofer]

I went to a Chuck E. Cheese as an adult.

[Corey Calkins]

Yes.

[Jake Hofer]

And it was horrifying. I was like, how is this even. How can a kid even withstand this overwhelming sensation of just being surrounded by robots popping out of the wall?

[Spencer Newharth]

But.

[Jake Hofer]

But that's what it brought me back to.

[Corey Calkins]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Jake Hofer]

Well.

[Corey Calkins]

But again, his imagination was able to follow and track the whole thing. And it was much more fun to watch as a kid. No doubt.

[Jake Hofer]

Yeah. I think. I think if I were to have to show a movie to a child, this is not a bad one to show. Like, there's nothing. There's nothing horrible about it. It's just like a series of sort of bizarre scenarios involving wildlife caught on film. And there's nothing offensive. It's just very campy. It reminded me of the sandlot.

[Corey Calkins]

Yes.

[Jake Hofer]

In terms of the vibes. But I think for me, one of the things I like the best is it just harkens back to the golden age of older brothers bullying younger brothers. And no one seeming to have any. Like, they're tying him to a chair and then hoisting him into a tree and then cutting the rope and throwing fireworks on him. And it's just. It goes. It's unremarkable to everyone where they're dragging him around behind the truck.

[Randall Williams]

Although the college girls.

[Jake Hofer]

The college girls didn't like that. Yeah.

[Corey Calkins]

No, they weren't impressed.

[Jake Hofer]

And Danny Glover, I think, was probably my favorite part. But, like, they shot a deer in the beginning of the movie. I mean, like, with a crossbow. I was in the summer. Yeah.

[Randall Williams]

The college girls were home for Christmas or summer break.

[Jake Hofer]

Right.

[Randall Williams]

And then the brothers declared. They say you can't hunt with us, D.C. if you're going to do it the wrong way. Or something like that.

[Jake Hofer]

Yeah. And they're reading Outdoor Life. Like, I think there were. It was more true to, like, hunting and fishing. Nostalgia than I would have. Would have guessed. You know, like, it was. It wouldn't be made today in that same way.

[Randall Williams]

Yeah.

[Jake Hofer]

Like, in the 90s, it was still sort of like, this is just traditional Americana. Sure. So I don't know. I think there's a lot of things I found wrong with it, but ultimately, like, it's a harmless piece of cinema that if you have kids that like the outdoors, it would. I think it would work.

[Randall Williams]

Yeah. It's not for us.

[Jake Hofer]

Yeah.

[Randall Williams]

It's not for us to be like. Well, they got every single wildlife seen wrong in this movie. They were in Valley of the Gods of Arizona, and they encounter, like, an Asiatic deer who's getting hunted by a big gray.

[Corey Calkins]

Look. Yeah. Roe deer.

[Jake Hofer]

And then F4 Phantoms. Oh. And I. It was so funny because when the planes came in, I write down on my notepad, F4 Phantoms. And then Jonathan Taylor Thomas, like, Two seconds later, F4 Phantoms. Wow.

[Corey Calkins]

Wait a minute.

[Randall Williams]

You felt good there.

[Jake Hofer]

Oh, I mean, there was no doubt in my mind. It's such a distinctive. Such a distinctive silhouette of an airplane.

[Randall Williams]

But, Phil, I had slacked you a picture. Could you pull that up? When we were talking about the scene of the bears, I had to stop it in this one. I had to stop it because of the clearly, like, animatronic bear. But then also, you see a cameraman or, like a boom mic. You see someone who's not supposed to be in the shot holding something off to the side. That was a real treat to watch that.

[Jake Hofer]

Wild.

[Corey Calkins]

They could have done without that.

[Jake Hofer]

They were doing great. I mean, like, the sandlot sort of stand by me. It's also an age when, like, child actors are just sort of. There's no real depth to their performance. And the brothers are just, like, snapping at each other. My favorite part was he goes, goes, I'm sorry. I forgive you. I know it was an accident.

[Corey Calkins]

After he breaks the leg, he does a great job tromping through the snow with that broken leg.

[Jake Hofer]

And then the cast is gone.

[Randall Williams]

Yeah.

[Jake Hofer]

Also, the quick crutches were so small. Yes. The doctor gives him the crutches, and they come up to his waist, and he's like, have you used crutches before? I was like, have you given crutches to a patient before? Because these are clearly the wrong size then.

[Randall Williams]

And the bear scene, that was like, climax one of four. The movie had, like, four climaxes.

[Jake Hofer]

The alligator chase, the. The planes bombing them, the horse stampede. And then the weird scene with the disfigured woman where she Pulls out, like, a portrait that was taken in the 90s at, like, a mall photo studio, even though this is taking place in 1967, which also bothered me because Steppenwolf's Born to Be Wild was not really special the following year.

[Spencer Newharth]

Oh, snap.

[Randall Williams]

I did personally enjoy seeing DC in the movie the redhead character, because he was in two episodes of Deadwood as the hotel clerk, and he becomes a very pivotal part of the story because he craps his pants because he was drunk. And he goes down to the creek to wash the crap out of his pants. And while he's there, he finds another pair of his pants that he theorizes he'd left there from a past drunk incident where he also crapped his pants and went to the creek to wash them out. And in one of his soiled britches, he finds the last letter that Wild Bill Hickok ever wrote, which sort of, like, propels us into this new series of characters and bad guys.

[Corey Calkins]

That's right.

[Randall Williams]

So that's a role that D.C. plays. My favorite show ever, Deadwood.

[Jake Hofer]

I just like that there's sort of a trope. Thinking of the Christmas story, there's this trope of a bully who's actually just sort of incompetent, but he's just a bully. And it's a guy with red hair.

[Randall Williams]

Yes. I bet that hits hard.

[Jake Hofer]

Yeah, I'm kind of like, God, maybe I'm not a unique individual. Clearly, I had a past life somewhere.

[Randall Williams]

You were destined to be a bully.

[Jake Hofer]

I know. Yeah, I know. But, like, Scott Farkas and that guy, I feel like came out of the same gene pool.

[Corey Calkins]

I could feel after this, my son and I'll probably go down the Wild America Marty Stouffer rabbit hole.

[Jake Hofer]

Oh, yeah.

[Randall Williams]

Oh, yeah. During the credits, when they play actual footage from what I assume is Marty's documentary work, it's phenomenal. It was so charming. I loved that.

[Jake Hofer]

And he's in the film somewhere, I think.

[Randall Williams]

I think I was watching for that, but I didn't. I never saw him. And I was like, oh, there's Marty.

[Jake Hofer]

So I deleted this line. Right? Shouldn't say I deleted. I just didn't read it. Said, if you like the sandlot, if you like Forrest Gump, if you like wild animals or Danny Glover, you'll enjoy this lighthearted romp. If you like Marty Stouffer, you probably won't like this film because it makes him seem like a really bad guy.

[Randall Williams]

Yes.

[Jake Hofer]

I've never, like, seen a story that's, like, the true story of. Of this Beloved figure.

[Randall Williams]

Yeah.

[Jake Hofer]

And the guy who's playing him is just sort of like the.

[Corey Calkins]

Yeah, he's the older brother. Got to be tough.

[Jake Hofer]

Yeah, yeah. Not. I don't feel like he's really redeemed.

[Corey Calkins]

Yeah.

[Randall Williams]

Or if your name is Marshall and you're seven years old.

[Corey Calkins]

Yes.

[Randall Williams]

You'll love this movie. It might, might become a little bit of your personality.

[Corey Calkins]

You got to watch out for those late 90s PG movies because there's a few curse words in there, which he looked at me after every single one.

[Jake Hofer]

That's good.

[Corey Calkins]

But if you watch this show, you're used to that.

[Jake Hofer]

Yeah, that's good. He needs, he needs exposure.

[Corey Calkins]

Oh, he gets plenty of it. He listens.

[Jake Hofer]

Going into second grade, he's going to be using profanity like a pirate. How are we doing, Phil? Should we move on to the next segment or do you need more information about Wild America?

[Spencer Newharth]

I think I'm satisfied.

[Randall Williams]

Phil, can you tell me like something about Jonathan Taylor Thomas? Just anything like what your memory is of him? In the 90s, he would be in like a child actor tier of like Topanga maybe Keenan.

[Spencer Newharth]

Oh, Jonathan Lipnicki. He was big back then. I mean like, I mean jtt. Not. Because unlike Lip Nikki, he was a heartthrob too. No offense to Lip Nicky, but he had that, I mean, that whole Tiger beat waka waka, whatever you said over there. Hum. And a homina. The waka waka is Fozzie Bear.

[Randall Williams]

Haley Joel Osmond. He'd be like in that tier, I feel like of 90s child star.

[Spencer Newharth]

Well, I mean, yeah. JTT had trouble breaking out of TV though.

[Jake Hofer]

Yeah.

[Corey Calkins]

Improvement.

[Jake Hofer]

Well, Tom and Huck.

[Randall Williams]

I like Tom and Huck.

[Jake Hofer]

I just think it's unconscionable that we've been talking about JTT this whole time without acknowledging the cultural masterpiece that is Home Improvement.

[Randall Williams]

Yeah.

[Jake Hofer]

And he's joined by another three named child star Zachary Ty Bryan on that show, who's the doofus with the, the blonde hair.

[Corey Calkins]

Let's not forget JTT was Simba, right?

[Jake Hofer]

Oh, that's right. Yeah. And God, he does look like a legitimate child of Brad Pitt, doesn't he? That's not my thought.

[Spencer Newharth]

That's just because Devin, Devin Sawa also had big teen beat energy. I think they like this movie. The casting was definitely, I think, purposeful in trying to get that those 13 year old girls to the theater.

[Jake Hofer]

Phil, has everybody dropped out of the chat? Oh, no, we haven't lost anybody in our.

[Spencer Newharth]

I think, I think our viewership is actually at Its peak right now.

[Jake Hofer]

Oh God. God.

[Corey Calkins]

Better keep this going.

[Phil]

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[Kevin Hogan]

Them, you send it to them and.

[Phil]

They'Ll work on it. They'll get it sharp. Phenomenal hunting knives. If you want to see them in action, we just did. Me and John Hayes, the taxidermist just did a video about how to properly skin a black bear. Watch that video and in that video you'll see Montana knife Company knives in action. MKC products usually sell out in minutes of being released, which is true. But now for the first time, they're dabbling with having knives in stock on their site. So right now you can grab yourself a Blackfoot 2.0 or the ultralight speed goat. Use code Meat Eater and you get 10 off your first order. Montana Knife Company working knives for working people. 10 off with the code Meat Eater. That's a good deal. Hunting demands preparation, persistence and gear that will not quit on you. That is why I wear First Light. This isn't about hype. It's about no compromise. Gear built to perform, built to last. Whether it's their industry leading merino wool keeping me comfortable through the cold and the hot, or their durable outerwear shrugging off the elements, First Light is built to help you go farther and stay longer. Designed by hunters for hunters with a deep commitment to conservation and land access. No shortcuts, no excuses, just gear you can count on. Head to first light dot com. That's F I R S T L I T E dot com.

[Jake Hofer]

That's good. Let's roll on into the top three.

[Spencer Newharth]

Wouldn't it be cool if we just had like a light show going on? That's why we need a new studio. Because people who are just listening to this, they're probably like, okay, I'll sit through this stupid song for 15 seconds. But people who are watching are just watching. Randall, Spencer and Corey stare at their computers.

[Jake Hofer]

I used to do the dance thing, you know, I used to Dance along. And I feel like that bit has run its course, and I like to just enjoy the music.

[Spencer Newharth]

Okay, I get that.

[Jake Hofer]

I don't have any text prepared to introduce this segment, but top three is where we rank our top three of things in a certain category. Although we're doing a new spin on that today, where we each got to choose our own category. Yes.

[Randall Williams]

In the past, we were all ranking from the same thing, and then Giannis and I about went to fisticuffs over a topic, and so we said, here's the solution. We're all just going to bring our own list. Freestyle subject. That's right. Phil included. Phil is going to do one.

[Spencer Newharth]

That's right.

[Randall Williams]

And I asked him to really fill it up today, so I'm excited to hear whatever he has.

[Jake Hofer]

And I really struggled with this assignment. I like to have clear orders, marching orders. So, Phil, you can bring up my number one or my number three.

[Randall Williams]

Oh, wow.

[Corey Calkins]

Oh.

[Jake Hofer]

Oh.

[Corey Calkins]

Hope this works for Phil. Oh, good.

[Jake Hofer]

This is. This is my number three. And I had a hard time going.

[Randall Williams]

Back to your list.

[Corey Calkins]

Yeah.

[Kevin Hogan]

What's the title?

[Jake Hofer]

I was gonna go with my favorite fishing hats of all time. So I started going through my list, my photos of fishing. Then I thought I could sort of combine that with the three worst photos of me holding a fish. So this is a photo of me floating the Missouri river breaks in the summer of 2008. And I. I'm gonna go with the.

[Phil]

Why?

[Jake Hofer]

It's a bad picture. The shirt is terrible. It's a terrible fishing shirt. I got it at Bass Pro Shops. I think I wore it on that trip. And, you know, it's filled with clay gumbo mud. My eyes are closed. Which also makes it a bad picture. On the good side, I love that hat. It's a Bass Pro Shops camo hat in a mossy oak pattern of some sort.

[Randall Williams]

Walking billboard Bass Pro.

[Jake Hofer]

Yeah.

[Corey Calkins]

Holding a bat.

[Jake Hofer]

Cincinnati kid. When that thing opened. Oh, you couldn't get me off. I275 but that hat I wore for a number of summers staining decks for a company called Pro Clean. And so it is covered. I started. I never like to bring the rags when I start out. I get the roller and the brush. Never bring a wet. So I started wiping my. My deck stain with that hat. So that hat ended up weighing like three pounds.

[Randall Williams]

Okay.

[Jake Hofer]

It was solid. You could have taken a knife and it wouldn't go through the fabric. It was just co coated with layer upon layer upon layer of deck stain.

[Randall Williams]

Really nice and breathable for a summer. Fishing.

[Jake Hofer]

Oh, it was on. It was incredible. It was incredible.

[Corey Calkins]

More of a helmet.

[Jake Hofer]

And then the final note I have on why this picture is bad is I'm just really fat in it and it's a bad angle for my cheeks and neck.

[Randall Williams]

I can't tell.

[Corey Calkins]

It's the pocket in that shirt that makes it look like. And you obviously have.

[Jake Hofer]

No, clearly, there's probably a can of grizzly wintergreen in there.

[Corey Calkins]

Okay.

[Jake Hofer]

Yeah. The eyes closed. Stupid haircut. I couldn't grow a beard yet. I've been hiding. I've spent the rest of my life hiding from that version of me.

[Corey Calkins]

Nice smally, though.

[Jake Hofer]

Yeah. Oh, that's a great trip. Every island we hit would. Would pull the boat over and get to the tail of the island. Just chuck like rattle traps and stuff and hammered smallmouth and it was a great trip.

[Randall Williams]

Randall's. His favorite person to bully is himself.

[Jake Hofer]

Yeah, well, I mean, what's life all about other than doubting your own worth? Picture number two.

[Randall Williams]

Yes.

[Jake Hofer]

This I couldn't get.

[Randall Williams]

This isn't a bad picture at all.

[Kevin Hogan]

I love this.

[Jake Hofer]

Well, there's two things about it that make it bad. One, one is that I'm making the same face as the fish. And then two, my sweatshirt looks like the fish.

[Randall Williams]

Okay.

[Jake Hofer]

So I don't think there's nearly enough contrast in there. But this also. That hat is a Carhartt beanie. I still own it today. I've probably owned it for almost 20 years.

[Corey Calkins]

You're probably the reason Carhartt hats are back in style now.

[Jake Hofer]

Well, probably not. That thing's so stretched out, there's not an ounce of elastic to it. Just pulled it over this head so many times. But I do like that photo. We were catching burbit on jugs on fixed lines like limb lines and jugs.

[Corey Calkins]

Juggin.

[Jake Hofer]

Eh. And got back to the lodge and made ourselves a nice little bourbon dinner, I think the day before I flew out that summer.

[Randall Williams]

I love that photo.

[Corey Calkins]

That's a good one.

[Randall Williams]

A lot of synergy going on there with making the same face as a fish, wearing the same pattern as the fish.

[Jake Hofer]

It works. Yeah, so I don't know, I just had to include it. And then the last one. Phil, if you'll indulge me here. Yeah, this is a good one.

[Randall Williams]

Oh, wow.

[Jake Hofer]

Ugly. That's a real ugly fish. That's a spawned out male pink salmon. Big old dip in my lips so that my head, my face is crooked to the right side and then the hat is offset to the left side there.

[Randall Williams]

What year Is this.

[Jake Hofer]

That's probably 2010, 2009. We bought those Mountain Dew hats at the Walmart in Wasilla, Alaska. One time we were driving out to go to the lodge and before we got on the boat we stopped at Walmart and we all bought matching Mountain Dew hats and wore them for a summer. So that was also a hat.

[Kevin Hogan]

There you go.

[Jake Hofer]

Part of my collection. But just. Yeah. I mean the face is weird, the glasses are weird. It's sort of that old style of glasses that was more like a swim goggle. And then the hair poking out the sides of the hat is just a bad look all around.

[Randall Williams]

I like that.

[Jake Hofer]

So plus it's a gross spawned out humpy.

[Randall Williams]

That's a good picture. You should post that on Instagram, Randall.

[Jake Hofer]

I should.

[Randall Williams]

That would do some numbies.

[Jake Hofer]

Oh, I've got. I showed Corey a little bit of the archive. I've got some. I got some weird ones.

[Corey Calkins]

Yeah. Fishing pictures. Probably really tough to pick the top.

[Spencer Newharth]

Yeah. Between Randall's drummies and Spencer's Numbies, I'm having a really hard time hanging.

[Randall Williams]

And Randall's awards. The Randy's.

[Jake Hofer]

The Randy's. Yep. Nice. Well that, that concludes my top three. Top three fishing hats I've owned. Slash top three worst pictures I've taken with a fish.

[Randall Williams]

Very good.

[Corey Calkins]

Who's next?

[Jake Hofer]

Randall?

[Spencer Newharth]

Corey's next.

[Corey Calkins]

Oh, okay. Well, this is not going to be nearly as fun, but I'm proud of these. This is my top three favorite hunting camp meals that I enjoy making for a group of buddies. If I'm going hunting solo, I do. I'll eat whatever freeze dried meals. But if I got a group of buddies. Day four, day five into a hunt. I like to make something big and scrumptious, you know. Let's see. So my number three, I hope I have this in the right order would be campfire nachos. Oh, and this photo if you're watching, is some pulled bear meat. I believe it came off the rear shank of a black bear I killed a couple years ago. This cooked in a Dutch oven. You just throw everything in. All your nacho toppings, throw the lid on, put some coals on top of it. You could do it on the stovetop too, but it works. It's a lot more fun over a fire. Let the cheese melt, let the meat reheat, and then you can go on top with your pickled jalapenos, your salsas, your tomatoes, what have you. Very easy. It's usually a crowd pleaser. You just stick that in between your chairs and just go, oh, man, that.

[Jake Hofer]

That is a good one.

[Randall Williams]

Pretty photo. Martha Stewart would put that on her cover.

[Corey Calkins]

Well, that's why I took the picture. Okay, that was number three. Number two, I've copied Jean Paul Bourgeois duck and andouille pastas. Pasta Lia recipe, which you can find on the meat eater website. Actually, I butchered the name. So sorry, Jean Paul, but I don't duck hunt. So I use multiple different types of red meats in this one. I've made it years in the past. If you're watching, here's a photo of me whipping this up for Giannis and another friend of our, Mike of ours, Mike, on an archery elk hunt a couple years ago. It's very hearty, extremely easy to make. I'm using the same Dutch oven, actually. It's a GSI aluminum dutch oven that's just with me anywhere I go. It's usually just in the back of my truck, but it's got noodles, it's got multiple types of meat and dewy sausage and whatever pulled meat. His recipe calls for duck, but again, I've done bear. I think I've done mule deer. It's a pulled meat variety. You cook all that down with some mushrooms, some onions, some garlic, and then you add little base of some sort, bullion cube and water if you have to.

[Spencer Newharth]

How does this picture relate to it?

[Corey Calkins]

Thank you for bringing that up because after that meal, this is the next day, I called this bowl in for Yanni, whether he wants to admit it or not, and he shot this thing at 45 yards.

[Randall Williams]

You fed him and you called in his bull. That's basically your elk, Corey.

[Jake Hofer]

Ooh.

[Corey Calkins]

Yeah, I don't know about that, but this is. That was a memorable hunt and we had some full bellies. That was probably at. At 7pm and I bet we were still, wow, well fed and comfortable at that point the next day. But I mean, make that pasta. Pasta Laya. I should have looked this up. How you say it and look what can happen to you.

[Jake Hofer]

Good vibes. Yeah, good vibes from that.

[Corey Calkins]

That was number two. Number one is walking tacos.

[Jake Hofer]

Oh, this is.

[Randall Williams]

You take this photo.

[Corey Calkins]

No, it is not my photo. Stole it off of Google images. Hopefully they're not watching. But I. I wish I would have taken this, the photo because last weekend my wife and I and our neighbor couple took out our families on a camp float on the Yellowstone and this was our meal that we made. It's so easy. We actually heated up some ground elk burger and threw it in with. We had a plethora of choice chips for the kids to choose from. And then we had all the toppings laid out. So if you have picky eaters, if you have, you know, folks who don't want lettuce, don't want a certain type of chips, whatever, you can just make it on your own. And it's your own little bag of. Of goodness. You just make sure you bring a fork with you because it's very simple. Takes up some space.

[Jake Hofer]

Do you use the nacho cheesers or do you like to vary your. Your base?

[Corey Calkins]

I like the Cool Ranch.

[Jake Hofer]

Yeah. I mean, that's the only civilized Dorito out there.

[Corey Calkins]

I believe the original would be Fritos, but yeah, you can go wild. You got to go to the gas stations to get the, like, medium sized bag of chips. That's big bags, not the size bags.

[Jake Hofer]

That was. I had a couple critiques of your list there, and one of the ones was that the walking nachos wouldn't be good unless you had a giant bag of chips.

[Corey Calkins]

The medium bag.

[Jake Hofer]

Yeah.

[Corey Calkins]

From the gas station.

[Jake Hofer]

Yeah.

[Randall Williams]

Nobody in a group would be disappointed to see Cory making walking tacos in camp. Jeez.

[Corey Calkins]

Pretty scrumptious.

[Randall Williams]

Good. Number one.

[Corey Calkins]

Thank you.

[Spencer Newharth]

All right, it's my turn, I guess.

[Jake Hofer]

Yeah, let's do it.

[Randall Williams]

All right.

[Jake Hofer]

This is a well organized segment.

[Corey Calkins]

I'm going to turn my computer off.

[Spencer Newharth]

It's good. So my top three are the top three video game characters. That would taste good after a few hours on the smoker.

[Randall Williams]

All right. Perfect.

[Jake Hofer]

It's a beautiful.

[Spencer Newharth]

So first off, we have the Rat King from the Last of Us, Part two. There are some pros and cons to these. I'm not gonna say these would all be perfect, but the pros of the. For those who are listening and don't know, the Rat King is like a big kind of squishy zombie monster made up of a bunch of different cordyceps monsters that were, you know, infected by this brain virus that turned them all into crazy mushroom people. And then those came together to make this abomination. Pros would feed a whole family for months. You know, basically like harvesting a moose, but probably more meat.

[Corey Calkins]

Yeah. Look at all the shanks.

[Jake Hofer]

Looks like there's a lot of bone in it, too, though, with all of the limbs.

[Spencer Newharth]

Yeah. I mean, we'd be diving into uncharted territory here. We'd be doing a lot of, you know, experimenting, exploration. I'm not sure. See these kind of like fat pockets, these pustules there, cut around that, you know, still a lot of food. Another pro already has a nice char on it after dispatching it with a flamethrower. So you're already just. You're kind of halfway there.

[Jake Hofer]

Sure.

[Spencer Newharth]

Con. You may contract a cordyceps brain infection, which is not ideal, but, you know, there are risks with everything.

[Corey Calkins]

So maybe just smoke it to what, 170?

[Jake Hofer]

Yeah, I was gonna say, you just get that temp up, you're probably okay.

[Spencer Newharth]

You're probably fine.

[Randall Williams]

My familiarity with the Rat King is Dennis Duffy telling Liz Lemon on 30 Rock about the Rat King and how it's all the rats in the subway system that have fused together to create the Rat King.

[Jake Hofer]

Spooky.

[Spencer Newharth]

This is kind of a deep cut. The next one is gonna be the orphan of Kaas from bloodborne. As we all know. Let's say it together. The orphan of Kos is the stillborn child of an eldritch God that was worshiped by fishermen.

[Kevin Hogan]

Sorry.

[Spencer Newharth]

Okay, now this one might be confusing you if you're watching at home, because you can see that the actual humanoid figure here is. Doesn't look too appetizing. Mostly skin and bones. But he famously uses a placenta. His placenta, as his weapon. You can see him holding it right here. Yes, I think I would want to put that placenta on the smoker.

[Randall Williams]

Okay.

[Spencer Newharth]

Yeah. Pros. So he is a stillborn child of an elder Scott. Who knows what kind of sort of supernatural, cosmic Eldrich powers you might inherit by consuming his placenta. But as we know from Giannis, the placenta is filled with nutrients like iron and B12. And also is rumored. Not rumored. I mean, there's no evidence. We'll call it a rumor that it helps the mother recover after birth when you consume the placenta. Cons. You could be trapped in a nightmare plane of existence from consuming the blood God. This is going in a God offspring.

[Jake Hofer]

Totally different direction than I thought.

[Spencer Newharth]

That's number two. Number one is Yoshi.

[Jake Hofer]

I was about to make the joke. I was about to make this very joke. Phil, I'm glad you got us back here.

[Spencer Newharth]

Yoshi, of course, the. The dinosaur mount from the Super Mario franchise. Pros of eating. Yoshi. He eats a clean diet of sweet apples. That's the only thing he eats.

[Jake Hofer]

Huh.

[Spencer Newharth]

I don't know how that would affect the meat. Tenderness, flavor, mouthfeel. But how about like. How about animals that are fed like a clean vegetarian diet, Right? That's probably what you would.

[Randall Williams]

A bear hunter like Corey would tell you that a bear who's been eating berries is far superior to a Bear that's been eating dirty die fish.

[Jake Hofer]

That's right.

[Corey Calkins]

I do wonder, with all the Goombas and the Koopa troopas that he eats and regurgitates, if that would mess with anything.

[Spencer Newharth]

No, he's not actually processing right.

[Corey Calkins]

You wonder if that would.

[Spencer Newharth]

He kind of spits him out sometimes. They spits him out into an egg. I don't know how that works.

[Jake Hofer]

Yeah, Phil, I thought you were gonna go with, like, Sonic the Hedgehog and.

[Spencer Newharth]

Well, see, there are some. There's some cheats here because there are some. There are some Pokemon that just are food. Like, there's a. There's a Pokemon that's just an apple pie with legs. And I. You know, that's kind of cheating. I'm not gonna do that.

[Jake Hofer]

What's the name of the. Is it Blanca? The character from Street Fighter? Oh, yeah.

[Spencer Newharth]

The big. The Big.

[Jake Hofer]

That'd be a good one, too.

[Randall Williams]

What are the cons, Phil, of eating Yoshi?

[Spencer Newharth]

There are no cons.

[Randall Williams]

No cons. He's listed.

[Spencer Newharth]

He's. You don't have to listen to him. Just. Just jabber on whatever the.

[Jake Hofer]

This has been a delightful mashup.

[Spencer Newharth]

I do. I do have some. Some honorable mentions here, of course. The Metroid from Super Metroid.

[Jake Hofer]

Banjo Kazooie.

[Spencer Newharth]

Both Banjo and Kazooie. And the raccoon Tom Nook from Animal Crossing. He's a piece of shit landlord who's always trying to squeeze you for everything you're working for.

[Randall Williams]

And he's plump. He'd have some good cuts of meat on him.

[Spencer Newharth]

Exactly. And raccoons. Clay would be excited. We can invite him to the cookout.

[Corey Calkins]

Awesome. Good call.

[Jake Hofer]

Oh, Phil, you're a real gem.

[Randall Williams]

That was perfect, Phil. You filled it up as much as I was filled it up.

[Jake Hofer]

Spencer, here. You're last.

[Randall Williams]

I'm last. Apologies in advance. I. I'm going to take this very seriously. My list is the top three state game agency logos. So once I pulled all 50, then I was like, why? I now have an obligation to myself to. To do this right and. And make a critical judgment on who has done this. The best. Please pull them up, Phil. All right, all right. Number three here is Alabama. Alabama's logo is just so authentic. I'd say it's like the most authentic game agency logo. It looks like it was designed in 1989 by a guy who hunts deer and owns a bass boat.

[Jake Hofer]

It.

[Randall Williams]

It looks vintage. Like, your dad would be part of a hunting club that had this exact logo on a hat that you would, like, fight your brother for in the will, I would want to own a hat with that patch on it.

[Jake Hofer]

I want a nylon windbreaker. Green windbreaker.

[Randall Williams]

Exactly. Now, it's. It's not. It's not even good design work. Like, no professional would produce this logo today. But that's also what makes it so dang cool. I. I love it. I see this logo, and I'm like, yep, that's Alabama. That's what they're all about. Whitetails, largemouth bass, and a patriotic bald eagle. So Alabama is my number three. Specifically, the Alabama Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries Division. That's my number three.

[Corey Calkins]

The eagle was well placed, too. It looks like he's just about to snag that bass.

[Randall Williams]

That's right. All right, number two. Number two is Alaska, the Alaska fishing game. Alaska's logo is really aesthetically pleasing. The color scheme of baby blue and turquoise, it's just super unique. It feels very Alaska to me, and it has a lot going on while still being balanced. You've got a salmon. You've got a caribou. There's a large bird that looks like it's either a swan or a goose. So they've covered land, air, and water. But to me, the real star of the show are the actual stars. They have the Big Dipper and the North Star in the logo, both of which are correctly placed for how they appear in real life. And this is also a nice nod to their flag, which is just the Big Dipper and the North Star. It's not a coincidence that Alaska has one of the best state flags and one of the best game agency logos. I. I wish Montana state flag was that cool instead of just being the seal.

[Jake Hofer]

You know, it was created with a. A competition among school children to design the new state flag in Alaska. Yep.

[Randall Williams]

I did not know that. I love that little wrinkle. Good for Alaska. Their logo, it's. It's just perfect. And their flag is awesome. If I lived in Alaska, I would fly that flag everywhere. It would be a core part of my personality. It'd be on my house. It would be in my office. Good on Alaska. They crushed it.

[Jake Hofer]

Nicely done.

[Randall Williams]

All right, number one, if you've listened to trivia since the beginning, this will be no surprise. But it is Missouri. I've made this declaration before, and I'll say it again. Missouri has the best game agency logo in the country. I like that it's the only state with a triangle logo. It's one of two logos that has a raccoon, the other being Tennessee. It's one of seven Logos that has a bass and I would say that looks specifically like a smallmouth. In which case it would be one of two states that has a smallmouth, the other being Indiana. And it's also the only logo with an oak leaf. I just really appreciate that Missouri is giving a nod to a raccoon in an oak tree. In fact, I think it'd be stronger if they just got rid of that bass in there. But I won't be too picky and similar to what I liked about Alaska and Alabama. It just feels very authentic to Missouri. It works. It's the perfect logo for that state.

[Jake Hofer]

I mean, but a triangle? A triangle, really?

[Randall Williams]

Well, if every state had a triangle.

[Jake Hofer]

Star Trek it would be different.

[Randall Williams]

But them being the state with a triangle logo. Good on Missouri for, for having something unique.

[Jake Hofer]

Gotcha.

[Randall Williams]

That's my number.

[Jake Hofer]

I won't, I won't, I won't. No complaint.

[Randall Williams]

I have some honorable mentions that we'll get to here. Vermont. The Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife. Vermont's logo, it feels like a family crest that English royalty would have. It's the oldest looking logo of all the state game agency logos. It seems like it should be on a suit of armor that a knight is wearing. I really like what Vermont has going on there, there. Then there's the Pennsylvania Game Commission. I love that it has what appears to be a muskrat hut in it. I love that it has their state flower, the mountain laurel, that's. That's represented. But what's really satisfying is that the whitetail buck there is a two and a half year old eight pointer. It's not an aspirational 180 inch booner made for the COVID of magazines. It's just a standard buck that is barely graduated from being a basket rack. And this is the type of deer that I just associate with the big woods of that part of the country that gets killed by a lot of folks. So I really like Pennsylvania's logo. And then the other, the other honorable mention here is the Delaware Division of Fish and Wildlife. Delaware's logo is famously weird. It's a Canada goose and what I believe is a weak fish. And they're positioned in such a way that it looks like the goose is carrying the weak fish. I just like how absurd that logo is. And it's, it's so bad that it's good now. Sadly, that logo was replaced in 2021 by a new logo that's very sterile and forgettable. The new logo just looks like it'd be for a city parks Department. It sucks. So Delaware went backwards with that logo change.

[Jake Hofer]

It looks like an anti pollution initiative.

[Randall Williams]

It does.

[Jake Hofer]

The. My first reaction to the original one is that it looks like they started with just the fish in there. And they're like, shit, there's a lot of empty space. Can we just chuck something in there? But don't change the placement or the size of the fish. Yeah, for God's sake.

[Randall Williams]

It's crucial to the second thing.

[Jake Hofer]

Go over it.

[Randall Williams]

So it has a Canada goose carrying a weak fish, which just tickles me. So those are the top game agency logos. Missouri, Alaska, Alabama.

[Corey Calkins]

That was fun.

[Jake Hofer]

Well done. Well done.

[Corey Calkins]

We should probably do that again.

[Jake Hofer]

Yeah, I like that. I think the come up with your own category is a real winner. Winning segment, if you will. Well, Phil, it's time we dive back into that strange, strange world that is the chat. Let's see what folks.

[Spencer Newharth]

We've come to that part of the show.

[Jake Hofer]

Folks have had to say about this madness.

[Spencer Newharth]

Get some more questions in. We only have a couple right now, and I will read one of them. Now, Jackson says, randall, if you could bring back a historical figure to life and go on a backwoods hunting trip with them, who would it be and what would you hunt for?

[Jake Hofer]

Oh, cool question.

[Spencer Newharth]

This might take some thought here for a second. You can talk through it.

[Randall Williams]

I'll answer a different version of this question. A person who's not dead that I'd like to fish with. Jeremy Wade. I love Jeremy Wade. I just respect everything about his show and how he fishes. I watched every episode when I was a kid, all the way through college. Big fan of Jeremy Wade. But Randall's bringing someone back from the dead and haunting with them.

[Jake Hofer]

I'm struggling here. I'm really struggling.

[Randall Williams]

Too many people.

[Jake Hofer]

Yeah, well, I mean, like, the obvious one's tr. But then I'm like, I don't know. Is he a nice guy? What's it like sharing a camp with him? He's a large man. Wouldn't share a tent.

[Corey Calkins]

You need a lot of bags of chips, boy.

[Jake Hofer]

I. I mean, I feel like I've lost all my momentum with this question.

[Corey Calkins]

Might have to come back.

[Jake Hofer]

Jackson, I'm gonna think about this. Let's move on for one second.

[Spencer Newharth]

Come back to it, you know, just to make the people upstairs happy.

[Jake Hofer]

Oh, God. It's embarrassing.

[Corey Calkins]

We're live.

[Spencer Newharth]

One piece of first light gear. What would it be if you could only have one?

[Jake Hofer]

Whoa. But we can have, like, the other clothes on. Stuff that we'd wear.

[Spencer Newharth]

Like, I think. Yeah, I think that's kind of.

[Jake Hofer]

Yeah, okay. Yeah.

[Corey Calkins]

Favorite piece.

[Jake Hofer]

I'd go. I know what it is. It's the. The Chamberlain jacket. It's like. It's like a sleeping bag. Don't own another jacket that's that warm. And for hunting big game in the west and just glassing somewhere in the wind or sitting on a mountaintop when it's early November. Chamberlain jacket goes with me everywhere. Yeah.

[Randall Williams]

I'm still in summer mode, so I'm thinking about my favorite things from first light in summer. Number one. I've worn it all spring and all summer is the flash storm jacket. That is their lightweight raincoat. It's 6.5 ounces. It performs really well in rain. It's also light enough that I'll throw it on if the bugs are bad, if I need to keep mosquitoes off of me. I am a huge fan of that. That flash storm. And it's. It's cheap as far as raincoats go. It's listed at 185 right now. If I had $185 spent at first light, that's what I would spend it on. That's like going to be my go to raincoat for a long, long time. Big fan. Gosh.

[Corey Calkins]

I don't know if anybody's in this room has tried our new socks, but they're pretty bomber. Gotta have a good pair of socks. Our midweight merino sock over the calf. So there's no stock.

[Jake Hofer]

Good pair of socks is mission critical.

[Corey Calkins]

Yep. We have great jackets, great pants, great underwear.

[Jake Hofer]

You're taking this too far.

[Randall Williams]

I'm wearing their underwear right now.

[Corey Calkins]

Watch out.

[Jake Hofer]

What do we got, Phil?

[Spencer Newharth]

I don't remember. I'm just trying to avoid the dumb questions for me. So I don't remember if you guys specifically have talked about this, but for the Mediator crew, what hunts do you have place for the fall? Some of you might have shared. I think I. I've asked this before, but I think Brody was. There might have been somebody else.

[Jake Hofer]

But I've got standard Montana general tags. I've got a Montana pronghorn tag, and I've got. I'm going to do a mule deer hunt in Idaho, and that should keep me busy. Keep. It's going to be a busy little mid October. November stretched there.

[Corey Calkins]

Congrats on the pronghorn tag. Those are hard to come by these days.

[Jake Hofer]

Well, we. We struck out last year, so. The Williams family. I feel like we weren't owed, but I feel like it was. I spent a lot of time thinking about the next Pronghorn tag. Yeah, now it's here. You know, it worked.

[Corey Calkins]

I haven't drawn pronghorn three years in a row now. They don't give them to Montana natives anymore.

[Randall Williams]

Yeah, why would they?

[Corey Calkins]

I just have general deer and general elk. Oh, and I do have an extra cow tag this year, so if all goes well, it'll be an overflowing fre freezer by Thanksgiving.

[Jake Hofer]

That's exciting. Now Spencer's got a lot.

[Randall Williams]

I have. I have deer tags in five states. Idaho, Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Illinois.

[Spencer Newharth]

Wow.

[Randall Williams]

So my first deer hunt will be early October in Idaho, and my last deer hunt will be early to mid December in Illinois, with my other three states between there. Very excited. Hmm.

[Spencer Newharth]

Phil, without, you know, giving away any episodes of meteor trivia that might have been filmed already, Lance says, as a random, I need to know what's up with the trivia slump.

[Corey Calkins]

Lance Williams.

[Jake Hofer]

Well, Lance, there's a. There's a short answer, and there's a longer answer. The short answer would be everybody's got a bad day or two here or there, and sometimes they string together five, six weeks in a row. The longer answer is that the past, like, month and a half, we've been working to finish up the next audiobook, and my entire faculties, mental, physical. Have all been depleted significantly. So rest assured, the old doctor's back on his horse. So stay tuned. Now that that project's wrapped up, I think we're gonna get back in the swing of things. Okay. You know what I mean?

[Randall Williams]

Randall was injured, but now he's. He's at full health.

[Jake Hofer]

Well, not quite full health. 39 years old and sliding to the grave, maybe head first, but, you know, we're doing what we were doing a couple months ago.

[Corey Calkins]

He's back.

[Spencer Newharth]

Are you guys archery guys in here?

[Jake Hofer]

Nope, not at all.

[Spencer Newharth]

Corey is. There's a question. A while ago, it was pretty basic, but it's basically like single pin versus the multi pins. Multi pins, if you have a preference. Because they were saying that adjusting pins in your. Maybe when you're drawn or trying not to distract or anything like that is a. Would that be a problem? Is that a problem for you?

[Corey Calkins]

Well, I've used them both for sure, and single pin just gets you into trouble more. Taking that extra second to have to move your hand up to your sight to dial in, to adjust that one single pin can be that half second that you needed to be a little faster. So I. I have four pins that I don't adjust at all. Just aim and shoot.

[Jake Hofer]

Beautiful.

[Corey Calkins]

Got to Be quick.

[Randall Williams]

There's also hybrids. If you were torn, you could get a three pin where your top one is the floater that you dial with, and your other two are fixed. And so you have fixed yardages out to, say, 20, 30, 40. And then if you have to go beyond that, then that's when you would dial.

[Corey Calkins]

Yep. To each their own on that one.

[Spencer Newharth]

We can wrap it up there. But just. I for. I didn't mean to say the dumb questions people ask me, like, the questions are dumb. I just. I. It makes me uncomfortable to address them.

[Jake Hofer]

You don't want to talk about cheesecake demon stillbirth again.

[Spencer Newharth]

I would talk about that all day if I had the opportunity, but I don't think I do, but just to fire him off. Leland. I see you. I hear you. The Red Dead redemption stream is still tbd. It is happening. I don't know. When am I going to play Dungeons and Dragons with the people here. I will force multiple people in this room to play D and D with me soon.

[Jake Hofer]

I've been asking you to do that.

[Spencer Newharth]

You're going to have no choice.

[Randall Williams]

Yeah. The tables have turned. From Phil requesting us to play to us requesting him to host the game. It's gonna happen.

[Spencer Newharth]

Yeah. We will find. Just as a sneak peek of something you may never see, we're gonna find out once and for all what happened to Steve's fish. I'll just. I'll leave it at that.

[Randall Williams]

Very good.

[Spencer Newharth]

And that's pretty much it. If you guys. I mean, this is. This is a good show. This is a hefty show, man.

[Jake Hofer]

I feel like we could sort of had a thin lineup, but we. We really squeezed all the juice out of each segment. It was a rich text that I'm sure will go down in this podcast history.

[Randall Williams]

Yep.

[Corey Calkins]

That was a great show.

[Jake Hofer]

Well, gang, thanks for joining. Always a pleasure, Phil. Thank you. Corey Spencer. Thank you. And we'll see you next week.

[Randall Williams]

Bye now.

[Phil]

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[Randall Williams]

This podcast is supported by BetterHelp, offering licensed therapists. You can connect with via video phone or chat. Here's BetterHelp head of clinical operations Hes Yu Jo discussing who can benefit from therapy I think a lot of people think that you're supposed to be going to therapy once you're like having panic attacks every day. But before you get to that point, I think once you start even noticing that you feel a little bit off and you can't maintain this harmony that you once had in relationships, that could be a sign that maybe you want to go talk to somebody. There's always a benefit in talking to someone because we can all benefit from improved insight about ourselves and who we are and how we behave with other people. So if you're human, that's like a good indicator that you could benefit from talking to somebody. Find out if therapy is right for you. Visit betterhelp.com today. That's betterhelp.com for gear that can handle.

[Phil]

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