Ep. 768: Sasquatch Calls, Exotic Pets, and English Muffins | MeatEater Radio Live!

Summary

The MeatEater Podcast – Ep. 768: Sasquatch Calls, Exotic Pets, and English Muffins | MeatEater Radio Live!

Date: September 26, 2025
Host: Spencer (with Randall & Maxwell); Guests: Brandt McDuff, Cheryl Pitti, Paul Bartholomew

---

Episode Overview

This energetic live episode of MeatEater Radio brings distinctly outdoorsy humor, offbeat debates, and insightful guests. Host Spencer, with regulars Randall and Maxwell, covers quirky in-house food feuds (the "English Muffin War"), interviews taxidermy historian Brandt McDuff, referees a "Hot Tip Off," reviews the wild documentary Elephant in the Living Room on exotic pet ownership, and, in peak irreverent style, chats with the organizers of the 2025 Sasquatch Calling Contest. It’s a blend of natural history, hunting culture, and jaw-dropping tales about people and the outdoors.

---

Main Discussion Topics & Key Insights

1. Opening Banter & English Muffin War (05:20–11:16)

The crew dives immediately into a passionate, mock-serious debate regarding the best English muffin—a long-simmering office rivalry between Spencer and Maxwell.

• The Contenders:
  • Spencer: Stone & Skillet (dense, doughy, “bagel-like”)
  • Maxwell: Furrow & Fly (“classic” English muffin style with nooks and crannies)
• The Tasting Judges:
  • Randall offers a diplomatic “it depends” verdict based on butter/sandwich use.
  • Phil casts a definitive vote for Spencer’s, loving the thick crust and chewy dough.
  • Result: Debate remains “unsettled," but passions run high.

Memorable Moment:

"Which one was good thing I'm here so someone can take a GD stance in this room... Spencer's takes the cake. It does. Honestly, on every single level. It's what I want." —Phil (09:27)

---

2. Interview: The Art and Oddities of Taxidermy with Brandt McDuff (11:16–22:16)

Taxidermy historian and author Brandt McDuff joins to share delightfully weird and wonderful stories from animal preservation’s past.

• On Becoming a Taxidermy Historian:

  • “It’s a thing if you make it a thing.” (11:48)
  • Taxidermy as a way for animal lovers to “have elk and bison in a Brooklyn apartment.”

• Heroes, Villains, and Elephant Testicles:

  • Heroes: Martha Ann Maxwell (pioneered lifelike mounts); William Hornaday, Carl Akeley.
  • Villains: Lack of regulation in global taxidermy trade; urges listeners not to buy framed bats from curio shops.
  • Elephant Testicles Story: Carl Akeley’s dynamic elephant mount at Chicago’s Field Museum originally included gigantic testicles. Museum staff forced him to "castrate" them for decorum, but rumor has it the testicles remain stored onsite.
  • Quote:

    "There’s tale that they are somewhere in the back, because what were they going to do? Just chuck them out with the trash?" —Brandt McDuff (16:40)

• Regional Variations & Taxidermy’s Golden Era:

  • Victorian era (mid-1800s to 1940s) was “heyday”; UK had towns with 18+ taxidermists.
  • "Split half mounts" (bisected-animal mounts, common in Colorado) admired for their artistry and space savings.

• Top Museums for Taxidermy Lovers:

  1. American Museum of Natural History, NY
  2. Denver’s Natural History Museum
  3. Wonders of Wildlife Museum (Bass Pro, Springfield, MO)
  4. Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium, VT

Links:

• Brandt’s book: The Shotgun Conservationist
• Website: immortalanimals.com
• Instagram: @stuffinmyapartment

---

3. Listener Segment: Hot Tip Off (26:05–31:41)

Two listeners compete for the hottest hunting tip and a $100 gift card.

1. Lane: Custom decoy carrier—use PVC pipe and paracord to prevent duck decoys tangling.
2. James: Attach reusable earplugs to hoodie strings for instant hearing protection in the field.

• Panel Verdict: Lane’s tip is more practical for duck hunters, impresses the chat, and wins the contest.
• Quote:

  "Anything that you can do with PVC pipe for a non traditional use, I'm all in." —Randall (29:47)

---

4. Listener Feedback & Taxidermy Confessions (31:59–37:01)

The hosts answer chat questions and share their own taxidermy and hunting memorabilia mishaps and favorites.

• Notable shares:
  • Maxwell’s disastrous college duck mount (“dead mount hanging by the neck, with a foot-long neck—became a running joke”).
  • Randall’s multiple bear mounts, including a rare shoulder mount.
  • Spencer’s most unique piece: framed raccoon baculums (penis bones).

---

5. Movie Club: Elephant in the Living Room Documentary Review (37:01–51:34)

A deep-dive, often-dark discussion of the 2010 documentary about exotic pet ownership in America.

• Film Insights:
  • Explores Ohio's wild subculture via “public safety officer” Tim Harrison and lion-owner Terry Brumfield.
  • Themes: Cognitive dissonance; “rationality itself might be nothing more than a shared hallucination.”
  • “The documentary doesn’t try to bridge the gap. It lets you chew on the discomfort.” —Randall (37:32)
  • Aftermath: Many central figures have passed away; the magazine Animal Finders Guide (a classified for exotic animal sales) ceased publishing in 2018.
• Broader Debate:
  • Is Ohio uniquely plagued by exotic animal subculture, or is that just the film’s focus?
  • “The market...was the vibe I got from that scene, except instead of selling weapons to murderers, it’s just people in tank tops going ‘oh, that’s cool, how much?’” —Randall (48:23)
• Cultural Impact:
  • Echoes of Tiger King, Zanesville Massacre, increased regulation.
  • The crew reflect on seeing beautiful animals in “tortured situations.”

---

6. Interview: 2025 Sasquatch Calling Contest Organizers (54:19–69:08)

Cheryl Pitti (festival organizer) and Paul Bartholomew (Bigfoot researcher/author) from Whitehall, NY, give an inside look at the famed event, Bigfoot belief, and ongoing local fascination.

• Event Details:
  • 9th annual Sasquatch Festival (Whitehall, NY), draws 3,000–4,000 people—more than the town’s population.
  • Features: 150 vendors, lecturers, music, children’s area, and the main event: Sasquatch Calling Contests (kids and adults).
  • Winners “just get the title,” but the reputation is “very meaningful.”
• Bigfoot Belief:
  • Cheryl: “There’s castings of footprints. I think there’s one out there somewhere. At least one, if not a lot more.” (55:29)
  • Paul:

    “Whatever this phenomena is, it’s real and it has been sighted by reputable people.” (58:50)

  • No personal sightings but both cite numerous credible accounts and a thriving Bigfoot network.
• Regional Sasquatch Characteristics:
  • New England “Bigfoot” is typically 7–8ft tall, dark, photophobic, with “gait like a man, but looks more like a gorilla.”
  • There are regional variants (e.g., Skunk Ape in Florida, Yeti in Nepal).
  • Omnivorous, opportunistic feeders sometimes observed sifting through garbage.
  • “The most common sighting is the creature crossing the road in three steps.” (66:48)
• Sasquatch Calls & Evidence:
  • Referenced the Sierra Sounds (link via Ron Morehead): guttural noises, high-pitched screams, and grunting.

---

7. Panel Reflections: Do You Believe in Bigfoot? (69:13–77:22)

Consensus:

• None of the hosts believes in Bigfoot, but all value the cultural tradition and the spirit of the search.
• Spencer:

  “I do not believe in Bigfoot...But I love the folks dedicated to finding them and keeping this a thing.” (70:43)

Fun Moment:

• Randall performs an impromptu, much-requested Bigfoot call for the audience (70:30).
• Discussion of what would happen if someone “harvested a Bigfoot”—some states have made it illegal, others offer tags or “seasons,” but Spencer and Randall joke that “you’re probably going to prison...not a wildlife management issue, it’s homicide.” (76:15)

---

8. Closing Listener Q&A (72:09–77:22)

• What would keep the team outdoors if hunting and fishing were banned?
  • Spencer: “Looking at the ground for rocks and mushrooms.”
  • Maxwell: “Walking my dog.”
  • Randall: “Just being outside. Dogs got me to the river yesterday.”
• Tips for cooking upland birds; advice is to “let Cal cook for you,” specifically pheasant pho.
• Final play of a genuine Bigfoot vocalization from the Sierra Sounds (77:02–77:13).

---

Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• "There’s tale that [the elephant testicles] are somewhere in the back, because what were they going to do? Just chuck them out with the trash?” —Brandt McDuff, 16:40
• "The documentary doesn’t try to bridge this gap for the viewer. It lets you chew on the discomfort..." —Randall, 37:32
• “I have a story about the time I killed 180 inch whitetail. And then the other guy said, I have a story about the time I saw bigfoot. I would say bigfoot story. Give me that one first.” —Spencer, 71:20

---

Episode Structure & Timestamps

• 00:05–05:20 – Announcements, Live Tour & Whitetail Week Plugs
• 05:20–11:16 – The English Muffin War
• 11:16–22:16 – Interview: Taxidermy with Brandt McDuff
• 26:05–31:41 – Listener Hot Tip Off
• 31:59–37:01 – Listener Feedback & Taxidermy Mishaps
• 37:01–51:34 – Movie Club: Elephant in the Living Room
• 54:19–69:08 – Sasquatch Calling Contest Organizers Interview
• 69:13–77:22 – Bigfoot Belief Debate & Listener Q&A

---

Tone & Style

The episode is both irreverent and informative, peppered with dry humor, good-natured panel bickering, rich natural history stories, and a love for the oddities of outdoor culture. Quotes and extended stories channel the original voices, staying true to the podcast’s lively, communal spirit.

---

For Further Exploration

• The Shotgun Conservationist by Brandt McDuff
• Sierra Sounds: Ron Morehead’s Bigfoot Recordings
• Sasquatch Calling Festival Info

---

This episode is a must-listen for:

• Anyone who loves offbeat hunting camp debates
• Fans of natural history, taxidermy, and the stranger side of wildlife
• Curious souls who wonder just how weird outdoor America can get, and the folklore that keeps it alive

Transcript

[Maxwell]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Spencer]

You can make a difference in someone's.

[Ad Reader]

Life, including your own, with a job in home care. These jobs offer flexible schedules, health care, retirement options and free training. They also provide paid time off and opportunities for overtime. Visit oregonhomecarejobs.com to learn more and apply. That's oregonhomecarejobs.com First Lights Navigator hoodie was built and tested where plans fall apart and weather doesn't ask permission. It's built to perform, built to last. Breathable insulation that dumps heat fast on the hike in stretch fabric that stays silent for close encounters. Moisture control that wicks away sweat on the packout because in the field, the plan shifts, the wind changes. The moment comes sooner or later than you thought when when it does, you adapt without hesitation. First Lights Navigator delivers on versatility no matter the situation and happens to be my favorite piece of gear they make right now. I live in it. Check it out at first light.com that's F I R S T-L-I-T.com.

[Phil]

Smell us now lady.

[Spencer]

Welcome to Meat Eater Trivia Meat Eater.

[Ad Reader]

Podcast.

[Spencer]

Welcome to Meat Eater radio live. It's 11am Mountain Time. That's noon o' clock for our friends in Madison, Wisconsin on Thursday, September 25th. And we're live from Meat Eater HQ in Bozeman. I'm your host Spencer, joined today by Randall and and Max. On today's show, we'll interview taxidermy historian Brandt McDuff. Then we have a hot tip off followed by a review of the 2010 documentary Elephant in the Living Room. And finally we'll interview the organizers of the 2025 Sasquatch calling contest. First off, we have some plugs to get to Randall. Take it away.

[Randall]

Well, first of all, I want to wish a very happy vacation to our friend Moore.

[Spencer]

Happy vacation.

[Randall]

Happy vacation, Mo Gore. Hope it's a good one.

[Maxwell]

You deserve it.

[Randall]

Now onto serious business. Meat Eater is headed south for the holidays. We are thrilled to announce Meat Eater Live the Christmas Tour coming to you this December. We have stops in Birmingham, Nashville, Memphis, Fayetteville, Dallas and Austin. Come hang with Steve Giannis, Clay Randall, that's me and Brent for a night of laughs, trivia, prizes and stories from the outdoors. Go to themeater.com tour to sign up for pre sale access which is happening right now. Today is your last chance to buy tickets before they officially go on sale to the public. That's Themeater.com Tour and I will note if you are hoping to attend the Fayetteville, Arkansas show you need to do that immediately because Those tickets are 90 plus percent sold out.

[Spencer]

Wow. We're only in pre sale.

[Randall]

I know, I know. Birmingham and Nashville, there's. There's quite a few tickets sold there as well in Memphis, Dallas and Austin. I was told to relate to you all to get your business in order and buy your tickets because there's still some. Quite a few seats left there. But again, tickets are not officially on sale, so I'm not worried about it.

[Spencer]

Randall's going to be there. He's going to entertain you all night long at the Meat Eater Live tour Holiday cheer.

[Randall]

We're going to be spreading it thick in the south.

[Spencer]

Also, our tailgate tour rolls on and this Saturday the 27th, we will be at Penn State for their game against Oregon. Stop by and say hi if you're in the area, eat some food, hang out with the Meat Eater crew. We will be playing games, giving away prizes and showing off how Meat Eater tailgates. This week it is Seth and Brody who will be there. And I wonder if those boys are in the loop for just how big of a deal this game is. It's like the biggest game.

[Randall]

Probably not so far. Yeah, probably.

[Spencer]

Do you think they know to wear white?

[Maxwell]

I hope so.

[Randall]

I'm sure they do. I mean, Seth. Seth's a. Seth's in. Well, did Brody go there as well?

[Maxwell]

Brody was there last year.

[Randall]

No, but I mean attend school.

[Spencer]

He can be an honorary graduate.

[Randall]

They're both Pennsylvania boys.

[Spencer]

Okay.

[Randall]

I'm sure they know the program.

[Spencer]

This is their warning. Wear white, cheer really loud.

[Maxwell]

We are.

[Randall]

No one IO.

[Spencer]

I wanted rambling to do it.

[Maxwell]

All right.

[Spencer]

One last plug. Our annual week of celebrating America's most pursued game animal, the whitetail de is just a few days away. Whitetail week kicks off Monday and runs from September 29th to October 5th. A whole bunch of whitetail gear from First Light FHF Phelps and Meat Eater will go on sale next week. Be on the lookout for that Starting next Monday, September 29th, we'll have some great whitetail specific content that rolls out next week as well. All right, boys, we. We have a war going on in the office.

[Brandt McDuff]

It is not a war.

[Spencer]

This is the English muffin war. It's been very contentious debate. This started in a meeting a few weeks ago where at the end of the meeting, Max and I had declared that I had recently found the greatest English muffins in the world. And then Max, he says, well, are they the furrow and fly English muffins? And I said, no. They're the stone and skillet English muffins.

[Maxwell]

And I said, what?

[Randall]

Both alliterative.

[Spencer]

And Max said, interesting to note. Max said, well, they're not as good as my English muffins. And I said, yes, they are.

[Maxwell]

And then Max, no they're not.

[Spencer]

And then I said, yes they are. And it got really nasty. Max called me some names, I keyed his pickup and we just had to like. We declared we would settle this as gentlemen. And so we decided that I would go buy Max's English muffins and try them and Max would go buy my English muffins and try them. Max, what did you think of my English muffins?

[Maxwell]

Spencer, I gave your English muffins a fair chance. I tried them one day and I was like, oh, these are just so doughy. And just then I didn't like them.

[Spencer]

Yeah.

[Maxwell]

And I was like, you know what? I'm going to give these another shot. Tried them the next morning, same taste, same flavor and everything. And what did I say? A 6 out of 10.

[Spencer]

You went as far as saying that your wife did not like them. Your in laws did not like feed any to Ruby.

[Maxwell]

I should have.

[Spencer]

So Max, Max did not like my English muffins. I went and tried Max's English muffins. I didn't care for his. So we now know how that works. Furthered the divide in how, how we think of who makes the best English muffins. So what we decided to do was I brought in both kinds this morning for Randall and Phil to try them themselves. And so we are going to allow them to declare which one is indeed the best English muffin. My English muffin, the stone in skillet or Max's English muffin, the furrow and fly. I'm sorry, Randall, go ahead. First give us, give us your thoughts.

[Randall]

Are we doing this now or right now? This isn't just a teaser. First of all, I'd just like to say that I think there's no like food argument that I have less invested in than what is the best English muffin. It's a question I've never considered until.

[Spencer]

You have a really good English muffin. And then you're like, what have I been missing my whole life?

[Randall]

When I ate these English muffins, I thought to myself, maybe I don't know what an English muffin is.

[Spencer]

Oh.

[Randall]

Because I'm used to McDonald's English muffins, Tom. Yeah, well, Thomas, English muffins with the nooks and crannies and then an egg McMuffin, which delicious both of these were formidable creations. When they came out of the bag, I was surprised by the size. To me, they looked more like biscuits.

[Spencer]

Yes.

[Randall]

I don't. They both have very different qualities. Spencer's. Your English muffin is. I would compare it more to like a bagel round. It's doughy. It's chewy.

[Spencer]

Dense.

[Randall]

It's dense. You don't have to tear it. I feel like the other Max's. Max's English muffin. They're both exceptional. Max's English muffin is closest to my understanding of what an English muffin is.

[Spencer]

Yeah. We didn't make and lie to you. We just buy them.

[Randall]

It has the sort of cratered. The cratered surface with. I don't know if nooks and crannies is a trademark term.

[Spencer]

That's good.

[Randall]

But it has those. You do have to sort of tear.

[Spencer]

Tender.

[Randall]

No. Well, I think you have to tear. I think yours is tender. It's got like. It's got a, like a crust to.

[Maxwell]

It because it's doughy and not cooked.

[Randall]

So I'm going to go wishy washy. I'm going to say Max is. If I was going to eat one with butter, probably Max's. If I was going to eat one with like as a sandwich or with jelly, probably yours.

[Spencer]

Okay. I don't think you've settled anything.

[Randall]

Yeah, no. Well, again, as I said, this is the question that I have nothing invested in. In fact, the whole time this has been going on, I've actually been shocked that this is a thing. The world is going to judge us. Seriously.

[Spencer]

Yeah.

[Randall]

Have you heard about the English muffin debate at the meat eater office?

[Spencer]

Geez, Bill, give us a hot take here.

[Phil]

Which one was good thing I'm here so someone can take a GD stance in this room. Listen, both muffins, I would be satisfied if I made one of these at home. I'd be happy with either. That being said, Spencer's takes the cake. It does. Honestly, on every single level. It's what I want. Like, like the. The boys have already insinuated. It's a little bit doughier. It was thicker. But the way Spencer cooked it had a nice crust that you bite through. And then you got to that chewy bread that wasn't undercooked.

[Maxwell]

We are not grating the cookie.

[Phil]

The chew was very satisfying. And on top of that, Spencer's butter was better as well.

[Spencer]

We used the same butter. We used the same butter, so that's how much better this is the cheese.

[Randall]

Well, maybe I screwed up. In shaking the butter off of Spencer's, because there was. There was butter pooling.

[Spencer]

It doesn't have the craters in it to absorb.

[Randall]

Oh, the screen went black.

[Phil]

Anyway, back to what I was saying. Cause it was incredibly important. Spencer's muffin was better. And this may. I mean, the fact that you guys were using the same butter and I had no idea. Maybe completely disqualifies me from being a food judge in any capacity, But I think that just speaks to the quality of Spencer's muffin. Yes, that's all I'll say.

[Randall]

I just.

[Maxwell]

I will not be buying them.

[Randall]

I liked Spencer's muffin a lot, but as I ate it, I thought to myself, this isn't what I think of when I think of an English muffin. It was like a treat.

[Maxwell]

So the debate hasn't been settled yet. It sounds like Randall's voting for mine and Phil is voting for yours.

[Spencer]

I will just take a tie, Max. I'd be satisfied with that. I did enjoy your English muffin. I felt a little hurt, though, that you said the one I liked was a 6 out of 10. And your in laws didn't, as we all know, in laws have the worst taste imaginable. And they didn't even like it. That's a tough one.

[Randall]

What does the chat think? I think we're ready to put this one to bed.

[Spencer]

Yes, the English muffin war wages on. All right. Joining us on the line first is taxidermy historian and author Brandt McDuff. Brandt, welcome to the show.

[Brandt McDuff]

Hey, thank you for having me.

[Spencer]

Absolutely.

[Brandt McDuff]

I've never had my work have to compete with debates about bread, but I'm honored for it to be the first.

[Spencer]

Okay, Brant, what is a taxidermy historian, and how does one become a taxidermy historian?

[Brandt McDuff]

You know, it's a thing if you make it a thing. I do work for museums, and I had always loved animals. I had always loved taxidermy because I felt like taxidermy were the only animals that I could bring that many of into my house. It's really difficult to have live elk and rams and bears and bison in your Brooklyn apartment, but I could do that with taxidermy. So I've always just been a fan of the animals and taxidermy and the history that surrounds it. So the more. The more obsessed I became with taxidermy and its history, the more I became someone that people went to when they needed to know about taxidermy history.

[Spencer]

Okay, that is us today. Now, you give lectures on the history of taxidermy, and you Say that the story of taxidermy is told through heroes, villains, and elephant testicles. What does that mean?

[Brandt McDuff]

Mostly, it's just a catchy tagline that gets people interested, so you can see that it works. But mostly I talk a lot about different characters who were in taxidermy. Important historical characters, like Martha Ann Maxwell, who really sort of pioneered the idea of putting animals in natural poses and natural settings, as opposed to just sort of having a very static mount with no idea of how they would behave in their natural habitat. William Hornaday and Carl Akeley, they continued that, but Martha Ann Maxwell was doing that well before them. So there are a lot of historical characters. Robert Rockwell learned taxidermy from Carl Akeley, but he was a better sculptor, and so he became a much better taxidermist, because being a good taxidermist is really about being a good sculptor. So there are a lot of wild stories associated with all of those characters. So I usually like to start with a time period, find those characters, and then tell some stories about their lives. And that kind of gets people their. Their foot in the door for appreciating the taxidermy, the art itself, through those people.

[Spencer]

Okay, so we just heard about the heroes. How about the villains and elephant testicles?

[Brandt McDuff]

So villains, villains gets me to talk about poaching and how aside from poaching for bushmeat or poaching for medicine markets, there's poaching or markets for. For taxidermy. I also try to get people not to buy certain pieces of taxidermy. At a lot of curio shops, you might see a framed bat, and I encourage people not to buy those, because unlike the very healthy, regulated market that we have for furbearers, let's say, in the United States, if you buy a framed bat, it probably came from Indonesia or a place where there is not such a regulated market for that species. So when you buy those products, you really don't know what your money is going to support. So that I would consider more the villain side. The photos that you're going through here have more to do with our testicles. And this would be the Field Museum in Chicago. And these are these fighting bull elephants that Carl Akeley put together. And it's a wonderful, dynamic centerpiece of the museum. And the Field Museum actually saw Jumbo, the elephant that was owned by PT Barnum and was hit by a train. Well, Carl Akeley made a mount of Jumbo, and people at the Field Museum saw that mount and went, wow, he's pretty good. Let's have him do Some elephants for our museum. So they sent him on safari. He brings back these elephants. He makes this incredible mount and unveils the mount. Everyone's flabbergasted. They've never seen anything like it. And they say, now, look, Carl, we love it. But there's a problem. There's two big problems. There's four big problems, and it's the elephant testicles. They're like, this is a family place. You can't just have balls all over the. All over the museum. So they made him castrate the elephants, and he was pissed. That's George Dante right there. He's one of the greatest museum taxidermists working today, getting up close and personal with one of the bulls.

[Randall]

But.

[Brandt McDuff]

So that would be the testicles and how they tie into that story.

[Spencer]

Okay. Are the testicles there today, or are those bulls still neutered?

[Brandt McDuff]

They are still neutered as far as you see when you're walking around the museum and looking at the mount. But there's. There's tale that they are somewhere in the back, because what were they going to do? Just chuck them out with the trash?

[Spencer]

Brant, what is your favorite era of taxidermy?

[Brandt McDuff]

For most taxidermy nerds, the era would loosely be described as the Victorian era. Specifically, the Victorian era is the era of Queen Victoria's reign, which was like, 1837 through 1901. I would bump those numbers out a little bit and just say kind of roughly 1850 through the 1940s. And that was really the heyday for taxidermy. There was a lot of taxidermy happening before that, earlier periods of the Victorian era. But people were really honing in on their skills and artistic displays and what people loved and were fascinated by with animals in wherever they lived. Taxidermy was huge in the UK they have a much richer history of taxidermy there. So a lot of taxidermy nerds focus specifically on the UK during that period. This was a time where some towns had 18 taxidermists in one town. That's how popular it was at the time.

[Spencer]

I imagine that today taxidermy is kind of a monoculture, but at one point, there were probably regional variations. What are some of those regional taxidermy variations when it comes to different parts of the world and different parts of the country.

[Brandt McDuff]

So something I'm a big fan of that I don't really see any more and really haven't seen that much outside of Colorado specifically are these split half mounts. So if we think of a half mount, you might think of A, a mountain goat with like a shoulder mount with its front legs coming out maybe on a rock or something. Well, a split half mount would be if you went straight down the nose and bisected the whole animal. And so you've got the half the animal on the wall. And just by cocking out the neck and head, you can get the full head, both antlers, or you can split the head right down the middle and have half and half next to each other with one antler on one side of the skull, one antler on the other side of the skull. I think this is a really cool style of mount. Saves a little bit of space, but you still get the whole animal. You really don't see it that much anywhere. And I personally haven't seen it outside of Colorado much. It's a really cool mount. I'd like to see more studios pick it up again.

[Maxwell]

I've never seen that.

[Spencer]

I, I not seen anything like that either. You can see photos.

[Brandt McDuff]

That's a single head split, bisected in half and you get one half on each side.

[Maxwell]

So is that, is that considered a full body mount or a half body mount?

[Brandt McDuff]

I would consider it a split split full body mount. Okay, so I'm gonna request that next time body mount. But you can see there's all four legs and the full neck and head. You're just kind of shape. It's almost like if you picture at home, if you picture a fish mount.

[Randall]

Yeah, that's what I was thinking.

[Brandt McDuff]

The whole side of the fish, but the one side that's against the wall is flat. So it can be up on the wall.

[Spencer]

Okay, love it. Now, you spend a lot of time in museums looking at stuffed critters. So I asked you today to bring us a list of your top three museums for the best, most interesting taxidermy. I'm excited to hear what they are. Number three. What is it?

[Brandt McDuff]

Well, I kind of flipped them into two different groupings so I could cheat and get one more.

[Spencer]

Okay, great.

[Brandt McDuff]

Or as traditional natural history museums are concerned, you're not going to do better than the American Museum of Natural History right here in Manhattan. The, the downstairs hall of North American mammals was finished up in around the 1940s. And they are excellent examples of taxidermy and habitat dioramas. Denver, incredible taxidermy dioramas. And then I'd say, really? The wonders of Wildlife Museum in Springfield, Missouri at the Bass Pro. Unbelievable insane museum. Unbelievable insane museum. And if you want really old school traditional taxidermy, amazing mounts and beautiful museum, check out The Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium in Saint Johnsbury, Vermont. Incredible museum. Gorgeous space. Really traditional, cool mounts and displays.

[Spencer]

Okay, bucket list places. I wrote down all four of those. Brandt, if people want to know more about your work in the history of taxidermy, what should they do?

[Brandt McDuff]

My website is immortal animals.com. my Instagram is stuff in my apartment, and you can get in touch with me there. I give all kinds of lectures. I travel for lectures on conservation history, taxidermy history, wildlife conservation, economics, all sort of related topics. And I'm a mentor for the Kinfolk Hunting Collective in the New York area.

[Spencer]

Okay. Brandt's book, the Shotgun Conservationist is available right now. Brandt, thanks for joining us.

[Brandt McDuff]

Thanks for having me, guys.

[Spencer]

Have a good one. American Museum, Natural History in New York, Natural History Museum in Denver. Wonders of Wildlife in Springfield. And I think the last one he said was the Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium. Do you say in Georgia? No, in Vermont. I'm sorry. How many of those places have you been to, Randall?

[Randall]

Three.

[Spencer]

Okay, not the Vermont one.

[Randall]

Not Vermont.

[Spencer]

How about you, Max? Have you been to any of those?

[Brandt McDuff]

No.

[Randall]

I've noticed my favorite museum for taxidermy is, as a world traveler, the. The Natural History Museum in Vienna. Because all of that stuff is like a hundred plus years old and it's not maintained at all. Oh, the animals are the wrong colors. The elk look like whitetail deer because they're so bleached out, but just like every animal you can imagine. But it's. I mean, it's just like a. A chuckle fest.

[Spencer]

Yeah, I've been to the New York American Museum of Natural History and the one in Denver. Both very exciting. The one in Denver in their planetariums or no, what's it called? Their dioramas. In their dioramas, the artist has painted some little trolls into the scenes that you go around. You try to find them all.

[Maxwell]

The trolls?

[Spencer]

Yeah, try to find the trolls.

[Randall]

It's like the hot springs at White Sulfur.

[Spencer]

Just like that. Yeah. I texted Randall last night. I said, randall, if you could go to a great history, natural history museum or a great zoo, which one would you pick? What was your answer?

[Randall]

A great natural history museum.

[Spencer]

Because he said a zoo just feels like a strip club.

[Randall]

Yeah, I did say that in a private text exchange.

[Spencer]

Oh, I'm sorry.

[Randall]

I said you walk around and just go, huh? Whoa. You know, there's no depth of. But a natural history museum that, like, either. It just has a way of, like, blowing your mind and you actually learn stuff. I don't. I don't find that I learn very many things at the zoo. I just see cool things and I go, oh, wow.

[Spencer]

Yeah, I'm sorry. It was actually Max who texted me.

[Randall]

That's right.

[Spencer]

Max is the one who said zoos are like strip clubs.

[Randall]

No, no. Of all the things that I've blushed about in this room, that's not one of them. I did say that on a text exchange, you can make a difference in.

[Ad Reader]

Someone'S life, including your own, with a.

[Spencer]

Job in home care.

[Ad Reader]

These jobs offer flexible schedules, health care, retirement options, and free training. They also provide paid time off and opportunities for overtime. Visit oregonhomecarejobs.com to learn more and apply. That's oregonhomecarejobs.com our crew at Meateater has centuries worth of collective experience procuring and preparing meat. Hunting, butchering, preserving, cooking it for ourselves and our families. I've chased it from one end of the world to the other. Grilling caribou steaks in the Arctic, Butchering elk in the high country of the Rockies. Drying fish in the headwaters of the Amazon. The main thing I've learned is that there's nothing better than knowing where your meat comes from. So when we set out to make jerky and sticks with our own recipes perfected on wild game, I wanted to start with the American buffalo, an iconic North American native that's fed this continent for thousands of years. These are recipes I use in my own kitchen, not meant to mimic what's already out there. They're meant to showcase everything I've learned about good meat from the wilds or from the ranch. This ain't your typical phony gas station jerky. It's American buffalo done right and it's just the beginning. Meat eater snacks from folks who know meat.

[Spencer]

All right, moving on. Our next segment is Hot Tip Off.

[Maxwell]

H O T T I P Off.

[Spencer]

Let's all do a hot tip off. H O T T I P Off. Let's all do a hot tip. Hot Tip off is where two lists 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 one minute video on your phone and email it to radio the mediator.com with the subject line Hot Tip Off. This week, Hot Tip off is brought to you by Mountain Ops. Mountain Ops supports your daily journey from mountain training to overall well being, optimizing performance enhancing, recovery and bolstering health, preparing you for any challenge. Okay, this week it is James Chapman versus Lane Acre. They are competing for a 100 meat eater gift card. Take it away, Phil.

[Phil]

Lane Acre. My name is Lane Anchoring. I got a hot tip for making sure your decoys don't get tangled all duck season. All you need is some paracord PVC pipe, a couple carabiners. So what you do is you cut your PVC down a little bit shorter than your lines on your decoys, and you cut the paracord a little bit longer than that.

[Maxwell]

I know exactly what he's gonna do.

[Phil]

Got the finished product painted black. The line runs through it from the top, and from there you can hook the decoys on, pull the decoy through. You got a bigger carabiner here, hook it on, you got a handy dandy decoy carrier. So I've got a few of these in my boat. When I carry in, I can carry a couple of these pretty easily. About 15 decoys per. Keeps them from getting tangled. And you don't have to worry about buying those expensive decoy lines. I just use like 100 pound monofilament. Works great. Hot tip.

[Maxwell]

I like it.

[Phil]

James Chapman.

[Paul Bartholomew]

I've solved the problem for hunting hearing protection hoodies. Got these dagum things on them. End of your string ties, these reusable plastic earplugs.

[Spencer]

Right there, right there.

[Paul Bartholomew]

You just jam them on the end.

[Randall]

Oh.

[Paul Bartholomew]

And they're literally right on your hoodie.

[Brandt McDuff]

Ready to go in your ear all the time.

[Spencer]

All right, two very hot tips there from James and Lane. Max, I'm gonna have to really rely on you here for that. Custom decoy carrier. How hot of a tip was that? And before you answer, Phil is going to put this poll in our chat for them to vote as well. If you and our listeners are going to decide who gets that $100 meat eater gift card.

[Randall]

Get in there.

[Maxwell]

All right, Maxwell, in my experience, they get tangled either way, no matter what. I would love to try that out and see if they actually don't get tangled, But I would use it for sure and give it a shot.

[Spencer]

Even if not tangling, though, is that not like a convenient way just to carry them 300 yards to the water hole?

[Maxwell]

Oh, for sure. I mean, it's a lot better than putting the actual string on your shoulder and then the string or the decoy lines are digging into your shoulder. But yeah, I think I would love to try it sometime.

[Spencer]

Okay, Randall, what do you think?

[Randall]

What was the second gentleman's name?

[Spencer]

We have Lane, who had the custom decoy carrier, and we had James, who had the hearing protection hoodie strings.

[Randall]

I Think Lane's tip was maybe more practical. I liked James delivery and I also would love to just bump into someone at a gas station who's got stuck on like, I love my heart wants to go with that, but I think ultimately my head tells me that it's the PVC pipe. Plus anything that you can do with PVC pipe for a non traditional use, I'm all in.

[Spencer]

Rod tubes, potato cannons, both very hot tips. I, I liked that James is one with the hearing protection on hoodie strings. That's like a 10 second project. And lanes, you're probably spending like a Saturday morning rigging that thing up. But it's not very cheap or, excuse me, it's not very expensive or very difficult to make that custom decoy carrier. You can see the video of what he's doing there on the Meat Eater podcast YouTube channel. We're going to give the chat like 20 more seconds. I think I would also vote though, with Lane with the custom decoy carry.

[Randall]

It's never occurred to me to put hoodie strings, earplugs on my hoodie strings.

[Spencer]

Me either.

[Randall]

It's just fantastic. I love this so much.

[Spencer]

That's. That's a good.

[Maxwell]

What happens if you're not wearing a hoodie with strings, though?

[Randall]

Like the hoodie I'm wearing now?

[Maxwell]

Yeah.

[Spencer]

A lot of people go de.

[Maxwell]

A lot of people like taking those strings off because they're scared that they're going to get caught into something.

[Spencer]

Yeah.

[Randall]

If you're. Yeah. I mean, it depends if. If it's like you wear the same hoodie all the time, you know, or.

[Maxwell]

If you have like a hunting hoodie or working hoodie.

[Randall]

Yep, yep. Yeah. Work. Yeah. I mean, that's great for the job site too.

[Spencer]

There you go. Real, real blue collar hot tip. All right, Phil, what's the chat have to say?

[Phil]

All right, well, with about 59, 58% of the vote, the winner is Lane with the decoy.

[Spencer]

All right, well, congratulations. You earned that one. Our podcast producer is going to reach out to you about how to get that gift card. And again, if you want to submit a hot tip, send it to radiothemediator.com with the subject line hot tip off. All right, let's take a break for some listener feedback. Phil, what's the chat have to say?

[Phil]

Yeah, just full transparency here. There was some sort of like, I don't know if it was like a static short that just reset something with our computer or. So it wasn't the Internet. I think I might have just, you know, rubbed my Shoes on the carpet a little too hard or something like that. But in when that happened, it completely borked up the resolution of the TV I use and the TV that the guest see in the studio. So it's a little bit harder to read the comments. I can only read about two at a time, so I've been scrolling through there, but we've got a few that I can pull from. Christopher asks Spencer, who sent in a gas can. Well, he's asking the live chat who sent in a gas can for Spencer. If mine doesn't at least get an honorable mention, I'll be disappointed.

[Spencer]

Yeah. Two episodes ago, I asked for our listeners to send in their recommendation for the world's best gas cans because I have yet to be satisfied with one in the last decade. You guys really provided. I think I have 150 emails as of this morning to go through. I'm still going through them. There are two brands, though, that seem to be ahead of everyone else. On a future episode, we'll go through them and tell you what the meat eater listeners recommended and love. Cool.

[Phil]

This is another question for Spencer from Spencer crew. How'd the Milwaukee store opening go? Spencer, I think you were there. You, Mark and Chester were there.

[Spencer]

And Chester, it was awesome. We had, I think a thousand people show up. Was the number that they guessed. The store looks awesome. When you're inside the Milwaukee store, you feel it. You're like, I am in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Just like I think if you're in the Bozeman store, it's. It's very clear to you that you are in a meat eater store in Bozeman. So the people we talked to were awesome. I love Milwaukee. I love Wisconsin. A lot of good people there was a lot of fun. Thanks to everyone who showed up there and the Madison tailgate tour the next day.

[Maxwell]

Any cheese curds?

[Spencer]

We did have cheese curds. Yes. We had there. We had multiple. I think we had three people bring us a case of spotted cow. So Wisconsin, really provided they brought their best.

[Phil]

On the heels of the taxidermy conversation, Isaac's asking if the crew has any unique or interesting pieces of taxidermy that you haven't talked about on the show before.

[Spencer]

Maxwell, anything?

[Maxwell]

My first ever duck mounts look like crap.

[Spencer]

Okay.

[Maxwell]

And the next, I asked for, like, a dead mount hanging by the feet. And I got them back and they were hanging by the neck. And the neck was about, like a foot long on each duck. And so it, like throughout college, it was just like a running joke. I was like, oh, yeah, do you want to see my shitty ducks? You know, that's the only interesting and okay. Really the only taxidermy I've ever had done. Everything else has just been your. Your amounts and beetle clean. And so that's about it.

[Spencer]

Randall, anything exciting?

[Randall]

The first bear I shot, I got a shoulder mount. And I feel like that's a little uncommon to do a shoulder mounted black bear. Not like weird or anything, but it's also funny because it's not a very big bear that's in Chili's office. That one along with my old couch.

[Spencer]

And then it's your office.

[Randall]

Actually, the most recent. The most recent bear I killed when I was up in Alaska with Steve. I got that into a half. They call it a wall pedestal, which is essentially like a shoulder mount, but it has more of the chest coming out of the wall. And very happy with that. But I do sometimes chuckle to myself that my only two and I have a bear rug. But my only, like, taxidermy, other than some fish when I was little are bears. Bears.

[Spencer]

I think the most unique taxidermy in my house is probably Clay Newcombe gave me a couple raccoon baculums, which is a penis bone. And so we have those in a nice frame on the wall. And then I haven't had this one in about a decade. But when I was in college, my buddies and I would heavily pursue the keystalope, which was the hunting season promotion that Keystone Light did with the gold can or something. Exactly. Bushlight did one where I think it was a gold can. And Keystone did one where it was either gold or orange.

[Maxwell]

Orange. I think orange.

[Spencer]

I think it was the orange can Hunters Orange hunt for. Yeah. And then if you were to get one, you have like a box cut out where you put it on the wall. And there's like a keystaloupe. And I think there was a keys to fish or a keysta trout, something like that. So when we had. We had a couple orange cans. Those used to be up in my college apartment, but now that I'm an adult, just don't have it anymore.

[Maxwell]

And no more keystone.

[Spencer]

I'd like to bring it back, though. I'd put that in Chili's office.

[Randall]

Empty my hands and liquor bottle. Home decor has really gone away for me in recent years.

[Spencer]

Yeah, like once you turned, like, 34.

[Randall]

Yeah.

[Spencer]

I probably gotta get rid of these things. All right, moving on. We have the Meat Eater Movie Club. This week we're reviewing the 2010 documentary Elephant in the Living Room.

[Randall]

Thank you, Phil. Although that sound effect rings hollow in my ears since our Bennegan's review and I've lost all confidence in this bit.

[Spencer]

Given. Are you saying it peaked then? Yeah, okay.

[Randall]

Exactly. Exactly. I'm basically a heavily concussed Brett Favre playing for the Vikings at this point in year two. It's got a straightforward review, but I think there's the film is ripe for discussion. We're reviewing the Elephant in the Living Room, so I'll begin my commentary. The award winning 2010 documentary the Elephant in the Living Room Plums a fundamental mystery of the human condition, the capacity of people to do things that are completely inexplicable to other people and how those inexplicable things somehow make perfect sense to the people doing them. It's the type of film that forces you to confront the unsettling reality that the mind is capable of justifying nearly anything and that rationality itself might be nothing more than a shared hallucination we've all agreed to participate in. Your neighbors might well be living entirely different lives that follow logic so alien it might as well be from another planet. The film follows Tim Harrison, a public safety officer who specializes in exotic animal emergencies, as he responds to calls that sound like a five year old wildlife enthusiast filled out some mad libs, escaped lions in Walmart parking lots, pythons trapped in suburban basements, bears held captive in backyard sheds, and cougar. This is my favorite. And cougars prowling next to pretzel bakeries. Which actually is a thing from the film Mr. Harrison serves, or Officer Harrison I should say serves, as our guide through this parallel universe where owning a 400 pound tiger is somehow not only worth considering, it's worth fighting for. He has the thousand yard stare of a man who's seen too many things that shouldn't exist, but absolutely do. But the real enigma and star of the show is the late Terry Brumfield, a truck driver who keeps a pen full of African lions in his mud spattered Ohio backyard. Watching Brumfield interact with these animals, you're struck by how completely normal this seems to him. He feeds them, he talks to them, he worries about their health. Exactly like any pet owner, except his pets could horribly maim him in a moment. The cognitive dissonance is staggering. Terry has decided that sharing his property with apex predators from another continent is a rational choice and scoffs at those who have called him, quote, brain dead, selfish and immature. The documentary doesn't try to bridge this gap for the viewer. It lets you chew on the electrifying discomfort of Knowing that human beings can arrive at completely opposite conclusions about what constitutes reasonable behavior. This extends to everyone in the film. There's the woman who sees some measure of irony in escaping the totalitarian regime behind the Iron Curtain, only to find that keeping tigers in Pahrump, Nevada, is unnerving to her neighbors. There's the dealers who trade in poisonous snakes that they coil up inside of empty potato salad containers. Director Michael Weber wisely avoids trying to explain these people to us. Instead, he lets their own words reveal the vast gulf between how they see themselves and how the rest of us see them. There's something anthropological about the film, like studying a culture whose basic assumptions about risk, responsibility, and sanity are so different from mainstream society that meaningful communication between the two becomes nearly impossible. So that's my take, but I have a whole list of things before we get into the discussion. I tried to check up on some of the folks from this.

[Spencer]

Where are they now?

[Randall]

Well, the man, the. Terry. The man who kept the lions actually died. Died the same year as the film's release.

[Spencer]

I mean, it kind of felt like it was trending that direction.

[Randall]

Yeah, the guy. The giant guy that. Oh, the wrestler who looks like Goldberg. Yeah. He also passed away. I looked up the Animal Finders Guide, The. The. The class. You know, it was like the Auto Trader, but for exotic pets. That stopped publishing in 2018. I went to the website. I went to the. Because when. When I saw that on the screen, I. It's. I wrote down. I should get Animal Finder. I know. I wrote Animal Finder Guide. Can we get it? And Sidney turned to me and said, I'm surprised you don't have that. There are some articles still on the website, including advice on what to do if your large animal escapes. He says, my standing rules. If an animal of danger leaves my compound, there shall be no effort to capture, but only to destroy.

[Spencer]

Wow.

[Randall]

Because no single animal is worth the harm it does to all the other exotic pets when someone is mauled.

[Spencer]

Oh, okay.

[Randall]

Thought that was insightful.

[Spencer]

I feel like that's usually not the take these people have. Yeah, well, it's like animal above human.

[Randall]

I think this person has a larger view because they're part of the trade. And then finally, I tried to look up the folks from Pahrump, Nevada, who were sort of political, and so I couldn't remember their names, and I didn't want to go back and watch the film. So I Googled exotic pets. Perump, Nevada.

[Paul Bartholomew]

Nevada.

[Randall]

Big cats. And I found a guy who very recently claimed his seven tigers were Emotional support animals so that the government couldn't take them away.

[Spencer]

Wow.

[Randall]

But the government still took them away. And I thought, surely that's got to be the same people that were in this film. And no, Scott Shoemaker and Susanna Cocole are not the people involved in this. That guy was named like. Like Cal something. I don't know. So I don't know. I guess I've got a lot of thoughts here. The final thought was, I mean, this movie is actually darker and more disturbing than I imagined or than I remembered you had declared.

[Spencer]

This is one of your favorite documentaries.

[Randall]

Before we watched it. Yeah, I watched it a bunch. This probably is the documentary of most I've watched third most only behind Grizzly man and Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia. But I hadn't watched in a very long time. And it's darker than I remember. And so I have some dark. The worst part of the movie is seeing the lion die. And then second is when they have the. They take the starving elephant away from that woman. And the elephant's name is Twiggy. And I wrote down in my notes, if I were starving an elephant to death in my backyard, I wouldn't name it Twiggy. I wouldn't, like, make a joke about it. So I don't know. What are your thoughts, guys? What are your thoughts?

[Spencer]

Well, Pahrump, Nevada, the only thing I have any awareness about to that place is that is where Lamar Odom overdosed on cocaine.

[Randall]

That's right.

[Spencer]

At a. What do they call it, like a bunny house? Just a brothel.

[Randall]

Yeah, it's like. It's like 40 or 50 miles outside of Vegas, I believe. Yeah.

[Spencer]

So they. They really like their brothels and their big tigers and lions.

[Randall]

Yeah.

[Spencer]

My. My takeaway watching this was, why is this Ohio's culture?

[Paul Bartholomew]

Yeah.

[Spencer]

As our token. It's just Ohio, mainly our token Ohio. And Randall, why are your people like this?

[Randall]

I see. This is one of those questions. This is one of those questions you have about any work of art. Is it just Ohio or is the film just in Ohio?

[Spencer]

Sure.

[Randall]

Because if you watch Chimp Crazy, I don't think any of those chimps are in Ohio.

[Spencer]

Is that Connecticut? No, that was Missouri.

[Randall]

There's. Yeah, it's all the country. Oregon, Connecticut. I think this is also one of those things where it's like, this doesn't exist until you look for it.

[Spencer]

Sure.

[Randall]

And then when you're this officer, you see it everywhere. I love the officer. He's great.

[Maxwell]

He's got a great heart.

[Spencer]

Yeah.

[Randall]

And it reminds me of, like, the old dare, like, anti drug campaigns. But if. If marijuana was, like, as bad as it was in the 90s.

[Spencer]

Yeah.

[Randall]

Because he's like. He's like sort of. He's like, I, you know, I have this connection to it, but let me tell you, it's bad kids. You don't want to get into. You don't want to get into tigers. You don't want to get into lines. And they're sort of walking around the neighborhood on this crusade, like, and going. And, like, showing the cameras how bad this is.

[Maxwell]

Yeah.

[Spencer]

The casting for this documentary was very strong. Like, the cop looked like a copy. The exotic pet owners looked like exotic pet owners. The exotic pet rescue people looked like exotic pet rescue people. They. They nailed it for bringing us those characters.

[Maxwell]

Max, did you notice how Tim was wearing a Live Strong bracelet?

[Spencer]

I did not, no.

[Randall]

Yeah, and then, like, there's a lot of mossy oak and realtree in this document.

[Maxwell]

But then also, like, at one point, like, Tim had this hat. It said ambulance on it, but it was like, instead of spelled left to right, it was spelled right to left, which I thought it was extremely awkward. And, like, I just thought it was like, oh, just like looking into a mirror. But then I read his shirt, and his shirt was reading perfectly fine.

[Randall]

Well, you can't see his shirt if you're looking in your rear view mirror, but you may be able to see his hat.

[Maxwell]

No, it was just like, just, I'll find it. I'll send a picture to you guys later. But it was just like, it wasn't even looking in a mirror.

[Spencer]

Weird. They were also a weird government agency of first responders, whereas, like, police officers were the firemen and the firemen were the EMTs.

[Randall]

Yeah.

[Spencer]

I didn't know that.

[Maxwell]

They're all crossing. Is that just because it was a small community?

[Randall]

Well, he said it was very rare. He did say it was very rare. I enjoyed my. One of my favorite moments in the film is when he's walking through the woods. Max pointed out that it seems like it's a little bit of a setup cheesy. But he's walking through the woods, and he describes it as a little slice of heaven. And he's, like, very genuine about it. And it's just sort of like, dark. There's nothing that's like.

[Spencer]

It's Ohio Woods.

[Randall]

Yeah. Like, there's nothing about it that's spectacular. Yeah, it's like this gray, gray woods. But you could tell the guy was like, this is a piece of heaven.

[Spencer]

Yeah.

[Randall]

And I loved That I think he.

[Spencer]

Just needed some quiet in his life. That was something he was missing. I had when I used to think about SeaWorld, I was like, it's probably bad, but I imagine there's like a lot of nuance with keeping whales and dolphins in a place like that. And then I went whale watching for the first time and saw how like a pod of orcas very quickly could move miles. Like you would see them here, they disappear for a minute or two and then all of a sudden they are miles away. And I was like, oh, never mind. It's actually not nuanced. It's just pretty evil to have those things in captivity like that. There's no, there's no reason, probably almost no reason where that should be okay. Where you can have whales and dolphins in a place like SeaWorld. I think I had a similar experience with this documentary that I was probably beforehand like. I imagine there's some real nuance. And owning a lion if you live in Texas is cool, you know, it's just not for me. But then when they go to the exotic pet show and you see all those critters just. Yeah, like a nine foot snake in.

[Randall]

A little salad or a Rubbermaid container with an alligator in it.

[Spencer]

It was awful to watch.

[Randall]

I wrote down this. The market, like there's sort of like an Mission Impossible or James Bond. You always see like the scene where there's an arms bazaar and there's like arms traders selling weapons to terrorists.

[Spencer]

Yeah.

[Randall]

And that was like, that was the vibe I got from that scene.

[Spencer]

Yes.

[Randall]

Except instead of selling weapons to like fanatical murderers, it's just that but for people wearing tank tops going, oh, that's cool. How much?

[Spencer]

Yeah, I like the guy that was.

[Randall]

Buying the alligator for his kid or something.

[Maxwell]

Yeah, the kid was so pumped up.

[Randall]

Yeah, the kid was so pumped up. And I'm just like, just not going to end well.

[Maxwell]

Like I. In 2025 right now, how prevalent do you think the reptile trade is or like exotic animals? Do you think it's like still a thing?

[Spencer]

I imagine in parts of the country it very much is.

[Randall]

Well, there's been a, there's been a big crackdown in recent years, I think. I think, you know, there's obviously like an organized movement to bring an end to this stuff and Tiger King certainly brought popular attention to it.

[Spencer]

Yeah.

[Randall]

There was also the infamous Zanesville Massacre where the guy, another Ohioan, released all of his animals and they ended up shooting.

[Spencer]

Oh, did he kill himself too?

[Randall]

Yeah, he killed himself. And they ended up shooting like all but four. There's lions, tigers, bears, wolves. And that. That also brought, like, national attention to it where, you know, they have like, you see a CNN broadcast and they're talking to some expert and they're like, well, actually, there's no rules about this, so I don't know, what do we do? Yeah, so I bet, I bet the scene has changed somewhat since this, but I think it's. I think it's still thriving in certain places.

[Spencer]

A tough watch. You see some, like, very beautiful animals who are like tortured situations in the movie.

[Randall]

But the part about it is they talk to someone who loves having animals and then they talk to that old guy who's just sitting in the chair and he's just like, I don't understand these people. There's just such a disconnect. There's something that's just very compelling to me about that. One final note here. I don't know how much time we have, but I paused when they showed the animal finder guide. When he's flipping through it, I paused it and I looked at what was on the page and there was an ad that said. Where does it say? It says, need 100 shooter bucks. 130 inches to 250 inches. Call Jerry.

[Spencer]

Okay. Did you call him?

[Randall]

No, I didn't, but it was like a big half page classified ad in there. Just like, I need 100 for the fall. Can you get. Can you get some shooter bugs for me?

[Maxwell]

That's funny.

[Spencer]

So, yeah, where I grew up, there was a free, like, newspaper you'd find in any gas station that was called the Green Sheets. And it's basically agriculture advertisements where people saying, I'm in need of 20 hay bales, or, I have a 1986 Chevy pickup for sale. Yeah, I would like us to bring something like that to Meat Eater Radio called the Meat Sheets, where we do similar advertising for people. Someone in Mississippi is looking for a buddy to go fishing with. Someone in Iowa would like a 20 acre deer lease near Des Moines.

[Randall]

Yeah, if we can. If we can draw up an ironclad liability waiver for this, I think it's a great idea.

[Spencer]

Yeah, we're just like doing Tinder for some folks who need some outdoor projects or a hunting buddy or whatever.

[Phil]

Yeah, I like it really quick, Max. People are talking about it in the chat, but they print ambulance backwards on the front of ambulances.

[Maxwell]

Oh, really?

[Phil]

So that when you look at. When you look at your rear view.

[Spencer]

Mirror, look at that.

[Maxwell]

Learn something new.

[Phil]

Every day it shows up, you know.

[Spencer]

Written the thank you chat. Very good. You can make a difference in someone's life, including your own. With a job in home care. These jobs offer flexible schedules, healthcare, retirement.

[Ad Reader]

Options and free training.

[Spencer]

They also provide paid time off and opportunities for overtime.

[Randall]

Visit oregonhomecarejobs.com to learn more and apply.

[Spencer]

That's oregonhomecarejobs.com.

[Ad Reader]

Mega important announcement. In fact, the most important announcement you ever heard. The third volume in our Meat Eaters American History audiobook series is available for pre order right now. Meat Eaters American History The Hide Hunters, 1865-1883 tells the story of the commercial buffalo hunters who drove North America's most iconic large mammal to the brink of extinction in the years after the Civil War. You'll learn all about these guys, guys like Dirty Face Jones, Skunk Johnson and Charles Squirrel Eye Emery. How they organized their hunting expeditions, what they took with them, how they hunted, what rifles they shot, how they processed their kills, how they suffered and died in the field, and the true stories of what drove them to do it in the first place. You'll also learn about the economic factors that made this a viable profession and what happened to those millions of buffalo skins once they were shipped east. And like we do in all of our Meat Eaters American History projects, you'll hear a ton of wild stories and bizarre details from this era. And don't worry, we didn't leave out any of the gory details. Pre order. Meat Eaters American history, the Hidehunters, 1865-1883, wherever you get your audiobooks. And you'll be ready to dig in when it's available to listen on October 14th.

[Spencer]

Our last segment today is about the 2025 Sasquatch calling contest. But before we do that interview, I want you to hear what it sounds like to be there. Here is a 30 second clip of the 2018 competition. The final call you hear is from the winner. Play the clip, Phil.

[Maxwell]

I thought Randall was just gonna make. Wow, she's got some lungs on her.

[Spencer]

She did. She was the winner. Good. All right. Joining us on the line now is Cheryl Pitti and Paul Bartholomew from the Sasquatch Festival and Calling Contest in Whitehall, New York. Cheryl and Paul, welcome to the show.

[Cheryl Pitti]

Hi. Thanks for having us.

[Spencer]

Thanks for being here. All right, we're going to talk to Cheryl first. She is the organizer of the Sasquatch Festival. Cheryl, I have to get this question out of the way. Do you believe in Bigfoot?

[Paul Bartholomew]

Yes.

[Randall]

You do?

[Spencer]

Okay. Have you ever seen or heard a Bigfoot?

[Cheryl Pitti]

I have Not.

[Spencer]

Okay. So why then do you believe in bigfoot?

[Cheryl Pitti]

Well, we have all our researchers who bring us all this information. There's castings of footprints, So I think there's one out there somewhere. At least one, if not a lot more.

[Spencer]

Excellent. I would be disappointed if the person organizing this festival did not believe in Bigfoot. So I'm glad to hear that. All right. Cheryl, what is the Sasquatch festival?

[Cheryl Pitti]

Well, it's just a big event in our community here in Whitehall, New York. There has been sightings of Sasquatch a few years back in our community. So people got together and decided this would be a great, fun festival to bring people into our community. So here we are, nine years later, Bigger. It grows bigger every single year. It's got attention of people all over the country. So Whitehall is a very small community with only about 3000 people. And we bring in at least 3000 to 4000 people just for this festival.

[Spencer]

Amazing. And what is there for people to do there?

[Cheryl Pitti]

Well, we have 150 vendors that come in all down, up and down the streets. We have lecturers and researchers who start all day long. There's eight. Eight of them. And they come in and bring us all kinds of information so people can listen to all their lectures all day. We have live entertainment. We have a beer garden. We have all kinds of fun things, Children's areas. So it's a fun day.

[Spencer]

And the festival is best known for its Sasquatch calling contest. It takes place this Saturday at 5pm Cheryl, how many competitor do you expect to have this year?

[Cheryl Pitti]

Well, generally, in the past, we have two divisions. A children's division and adult division. So up till age 14, we probably get about 25 or 30 kids that do it. But the adult, we could have 60 to 80 or maybe 100 this year. Callers.

[Spencer]

Great. And what are they competing for?

[Cheryl Pitti]

Just. Just to have the title. I'm the winner of the Sasquatch calling contest.

[Spencer]

Okay. That. That is very meaningful, I would say. Who are the judges of the competition?

[Cheryl Pitti]

We bring some people in from out of town, people who want to have fun, people who want to be involved. So we have some business, a couple business people. We have a high school guidance counselor. We have the chairman of the tourism division for our county. We have a high school student. So we get a little variety of everybody. And they're all very supportive of the festival.

[Spencer]

Have some of those folks heard a Bigfoot before? Do they know what they should be listening for?

[Cheryl Pitti]

I don't know the answer to that question. I don't Think they've heard one.

[Spencer]

Okay.

[Cheryl Pitti]

But maybe they've gone online and heard some calls.

[Spencer]

There we go. Okay, now I want to talk to Paul. Paul is a bigfoot researcher and the author of the book Bigfoot encounters in New York and New England. Paul, do you believe in bigfoot?

[Paul Bartholomew]

Whatever this phenomena is, it's real and it has been cited by reputable people. And so, yes, I believe that whatever is being cited out there, there's something being cited.

[Spencer]

Okay.

[Paul Bartholomew]

And it's not the normal, you know, culprits such as bears and things like that. This creature does different things. It crosses the road in three steps, and that was witnessed by police officers outside of Whitehall back in 1982. There was a major incident involving various police agencies back in 1976 out on Hebert road. So we've got a lot of respectable witnesses who have seen this creature or some of these creatures.

[Spencer]

How about you? Have you seen or heard a bigfoot?

[Paul Bartholomew]

I have not.

[Spencer]

Okay, but you've been studying bigfoot for over 40 years, and in that time, you've interviewed dozens of Sasquatch eyewitnesses. When is the last time you investigated a sighting? Paul?

[Paul Bartholomew]

Sightings are continual. They're basically broken down into three categories, which are eyewitness sightings, track finds, and vocal reports. And it's just a continual process of reports. And if you go to the BFRO site, which is Matt Moneymaker's bigfoot field research organization site, you can actually just track where you want to look to see if there have been sightings, you know, what counties and what states. So it's a grassroots thing to check out. And in Washington county, which is where Whitehall is here in upstate New York, we have hundreds of sightings on record.

[Spencer]

Wow. So when is the last time you investigated a sighting, though?

[Paul Bartholomew]

Last year.

[Spencer]

Okay. Now, a Bloomberg article stated that bigfoot sightings peaked in the early 2000s and have been on a decline ever since. Have you witnessed the same trend?

[Paul Bartholomew]

No, not at all. In fact, back when I started, of course, I would be considered ancient because I can remember typing a manuscript, you know, with carbon paper. But, you know, now we have social media and instant messaging, and so the information flow is really instant. And as far as I'm concerned, what I've seen is more reports than ever and reported faster. And so you have now a loose network of researchers connected through social media that constantly put their information forward. You know, back in my day, we had to look for news clipping services and things like that and mail things out. Now everything's instant.

[Spencer]

Good Good, I'm glad to hear that the Bigfoot sightings are still strong. What percentage of the time do you walk away from an interview and come to the conclusion that that person saw a genuine Bigfoot?

[Paul Bartholomew]

Yeah, I don't know what the percentage would be, but there are certain things what I call confirmation moments. And that's like what? Cliff Sparks was a family friend and the, the former owner of the Skeen Valley Country Club in Whitehall. He had a sighting back in May of 75 out on the Greens. And the only reason we got that sighting is because we were friends with, with Cliff. Dan Gordon kept his name private for 20 years. He didn't want to be known as the Bigfoot cop. And then finally he came forward with, with his information publicly. So there's information like that that seems to confirm that there these are reputable witnesses who have everything to lose and nothing to gain. And there was a fascinating incident back in the early 2000s up in the Dresden area, which is just outside of Whitehall, and a couple of Hong Kong nationals were fishing and they saw this creature wading through the water at chest level. They described it as ape like. And I said to him, I said, well, what did you do? He says, well, we went fishing. In other words, in their cultural expectation, they weren't all that surprised. They just didn't know that we had primates in this area. So you get in a case like.

[Randall]

That and you're like, wow, that's very interesting, fascinating, amazing.

[Spencer]

What are some things that those credible eyewitnesses have in common when it comes to the details of their story?

[Paul Bartholomew]

Well, what's being cited here? If I gave out a general description, you're talking about 7 to 8ft tall is fairly common, dark colored usually. But you, you know, you can go back into to New York Times articles and there was a case in the, the 1800s on the front page of the New York Times in Paul. No, Vermont, where the creature was red in color and only 5ft tall. But you have these various descriptions making a sound like a squealing or a high pitched scream, being photosensitive, light sensitive, photophobic, having a gait like a man, but looking more like a gorilla with long swinging arms down at knee level. So it's, I guess it'd be your traditional Harry and the Hendersons type of creature being cited in a lot of cases occasionally like down in Kinderhook, New York where Bruce Hellenbeck is an expert. These site, these creatures were seen in groups.

[Spencer]

Oh, okay, now we know what to look for. Paul, you Literally wrote the book on Bigfoot in New England. So I want to ask you some questions specifically about Sasquatch in that region. Does a New England Bigfoot differ from a Bigfoot that lives in Tennessee or Montana or California?

[Paul Bartholomew]

That's.

[Maxwell]

That's a.

[Paul Bartholomew]

An excellent question, because this is a global enigma. Whatever is going on here is going on around the world. If you go to Nepal and the Himalayas, we call these creatures the yeti or the Abominable Snowman. Whether they're a cousin, but they're. They're closely described, the same type of, you know, unknown primate type creature. If you go to Australia, where my brother was at for many years, it's called the Yahweh or the Yahoo or the Devil's Devil. If you go to the former, you know, Soviet Union, it was the Chichuna or the El Misti. So. And then we talk about the States. You can go down to Florida, which racks up a lot of sightings, and it's called the Skunk Ape down there. Momo in Missouri, the Falk Monster in Arkansas and so forth. Now, the Honey Island Swamp Monster appears to be a little more aggressive, and that may be because it's in an environment which has, you know, you know, alligators, reptiles and things, and it just may be more aggressive in that regards. So we do have these regional differences, but they seem to be some sort of. They seem to be related in some. Some way.

[Spencer]

Okay, what do you think a New England Bigfoot eats?

[Paul Bartholomew]

Dr. Cook, who I studied with at Castle State College, he was a Pulitzer Prize nominee and an anthropologist, and he wrote Flood Tide of Empire through Yale University. And he had studied this with myself, and he felt that whatever these creatures were, they were probably opportunistic and omnivorous, meaning, you know, plants and animals. They're often seen in swampy areas and things like, you know, maybe a down deer that would be edible as well. And down in Kinderhook, it was actually seen going through garbage, so. Or at least a group of these creatures. So, yeah, It's. I think Dr. Cook's observation of being opportunistic would be probably the best answer.

[Spencer]

Sounds like Randall is a Bigfoot dangerous.

[Maxwell]

Kind of looks like Randall, too.

[Paul Bartholomew]

Well, I mean, any wild animal or creature in the wild that you're not used to, you should obviously use caution. But in my span of research, I haven't come across very many negative encounters. One encounter that I have heard fairly frequently is people say, well, it started to chase me, and then they say, well, it seemed like it could have caught Me at any time. And I'm not, I'm wondering if that might be some sort of a bluffing display to, you know, to get rid of the danger near it.

[Spencer]

If someone in New England wanted to see a Bigfoot today, where would you send them and what would you tell them to do?

[Paul Bartholomew]

It's like hitting the lottery. The most common sighting of a creature is driving around at night and the creature crosses the road in front of you. That's. That was the Dan Gordon police officer sighting. He was with another officer at the time. And the creature crossed the road in three steps. They were stunned. He gets out of the car, draws his weapon, tries to follow, but it's, it's long gone. And, you know, Dan took a polygraph regarding this incident and there was no deception. Of course we knew we weren't. I went to school with Dan. Very honest person, brutally honest person. And so, yeah, you, you just have to be lucky. I mean, obviously there's certain areas that they have had a lot of sightings like Kinderhook, Chitten in Vermont, the Whitehall, New York region, the Rutland, Vermont region, and so forth. But there's different hot spots all over the place. You know, if you look on a national level, you go to like the ranch in Utah, which has been studied by George Knapp, the investigative journalist, and that has a plethora of paranormal phenomena occurring there routinely.

[Spencer]

Okay, circling back to the Sasquatch Calling competition. What do we know about Bigfoot vocalizations?

[Paul Bartholomew]

Yes, you can actually look up online, look up Ron Moorhead and you look up the sierra sounds from 1972, and he put them right out there, there. And these were sounds. He and Alan Berry and a group had gone up into the Sierras and recorded these incredible vocal displays. And they've been studied by various institutes and scientists and they're right open for everybody to listen to and to study. And I think those are the real thing. I think that's. And it's a, it's an assortment of sounds ranging from guttural noises to high pitched screaming to what sounds like a, a wild, you know, violent type display to a more, more, more like grunting and things. So, yeah, you can actually hear them right online. Ron Morehead.

[Spencer]

Okay.

[Maxwell]

Yeah, I just pulled it up and it's got 1.3 million views.

[Spencer]

We will check that out after the interview. You can hear Paul speak about Bigfoot and Whitehall's role in the unexplained at the Sasquatch Festival this Saturday at 10:30am The Sasquatch calling competition starts at 5. Cheryl and Paul, Good luck with the event, and thanks for joining us.

[Cheryl Pitti]

Thank you for having us. We really appreciate it, guys.

[Spencer]

Randall, do you believe in bigfoot?

[Randall]

I don't. I don't. I like that there are people who do.

[Spencer]

Yes.

[Randall]

I like. I like to think and I feel fairly certain that we don't know everything about everything. Right. The size of bigfoot gives me pause.

[Spencer]

It's hard to hide all those skeletons.

[Randall]

And I just feel like not get.

[Spencer]

Him on trail camera.

[Randall]

But I like that people believe.

[Phil]

We're getting a lot of requests in the chat for a Randall Bigfoot vocalization.

[Spencer]

Please. Randall. Max is gonna tell us if he believes in bigfoot. Randall, you think about what a vocalization would. Would sound like. We'll get that in a minute.

[Randall]

I've got it a minute.

[Maxwell]

Ponder it. I personally don't. My biggest thing is, like, you out in the woods and you run into dead critters all the time. A dead deer, dead whatever, Dead birds. Why haven't we ran across a dead bigfoot yet?

[Randall]

Yeah, I never found a dead wolf.

[Spencer]

Oh, they believe in wolves.

[Brandt McDuff]

There's been confirmed sightings.

[Spencer]

Sorry.

[Randall]

It's supposed to go longer than that.

[Spencer]

Very good.

[Phil]

That is a cat giving birth.

[Spencer]

That was great. I do not believe in bigfoot. I've never believed in bigfoot. I think there's a zero percent chance he's real. But I love the folks that are dedicated to finding them, and I love the folks who are dedicated to, you know, making this a thing and keeping this a thing. If I was at the Madison, Wisconsin, tailgate tour and two people came up to me at the same time, and one of them's like, I have a story about the time I killed 180 inch whitetail. And then the other guy said, I have a story about the time I saw bigfoot. I would say bigfoot story. Give me that one first. I'm very interested in that. That is something that I will always be entertained by, despite not ever going to believe it until, like, you know, the thing shows up as a carcass.

[Randall]

And I think, like, just being. Being outside, there's an element of it that's, like, mysterious. You never know what you're going to see. You never know what's going to happen, good or bad. And so the bigfoot is, like the embodiment of that. It's the distillation of all of the unknown of the outside. For that reason, I'm glad that bigfoot exists in our culture.

[Spencer]

I like the culture aspect of it, and I like that it gets some people outdoors who seem to be, like, singularly interested in that thing that is their outdoor activity. Good for them. All right, that brings us to the end of the show. Phil, let's get some final feedback from the chat.

[Phil]

People who devour all of our content on the YouTube probably know this, but Tim Allen asks, what does Max do at Meat Eater Max?

[Maxwell]

Well, Tim, I run around chasing people with cameras.

[Phil]

Yes.

[Maxwell]

So videographer, photographer, extraordinaire.

[Randall]

And you do a little waterfowl hunting content.

[Maxwell]

Yeah, do a little duck hunting on the side when I'm not working, but yeah. This is only my second time on radio live.

[Phil]

Right on. On. On that. Does anyone here. Is anyone here an upland person? Max?

[Maxwell]

Yeah, sort of. I mean, Cal would be better.

[Phil]

We. Yeah, we had. We had a pheasant question. I'm just not even going to bring it up then. I know Randall and Spencer are not.

[Randall]

My best advice is if you. You shoot a pheasant with Cal, you give it to Cal, and you have Cal cook dinner for you.

[Spencer]

Okay.

[Randall]

It works every time. Never been disappointed.

[Maxwell]

What is the pheasant question?

[Phil]

Oh, just. Just meal. Meal prep.

[Maxwell]

So there you go.

[Phil]

Send Callan a dm. I'm sure he'll respond to that.

[Randall]

He made a lovely pho.

[Phil]

A pheasant pho.

[Randall]

He made a pheasant pho last year with some birds we shot. It's delightful.

[Phil]

That sounds great. See, I think we had a Leland question. Yeah, Leland says, I just learned Randall was a fellow Eagle Scout. Makes me even more of a randomal. How many eagles are there in the Meat Eater crew?

[Spencer]

Probably one.

[Maxwell]

I was thinking Cub Scout. That's about it.

[Phil]

Oh, my God.

[Maxwell]

That's about it.

[Randall]

Didn't even make it to Tenderfoot.

[Spencer]

I think it's just random.

[Randall]

A lot is. Giannis was in Latvian Scouts.

[Phil]

Latvian Boy Scouts, yeah.

[Randall]

He was in some sort of Latvian fraternal organization.

[Phil]

Reed Duvall says we should do a Sasquatch calling on the live tour. Put that together.

[Spencer]

Yeah. The last live tour, it was a barred owl calling contest.

[Randall]

Yeah.

[Spencer]

The problem is Steve will be there, so it will not happen.

[Phil]

Yeah, we actually had another person say, does Steve know that you're talking to Bigfoot people on the podcast today?

[Maxwell]

Yeah, he does not.

[Phil]

I also think he still does not know we played DD on his podcast feed either.

[Spencer]

Can't wait till he finds out a few months from now.

[Maxwell]

But he doesn't know. Won't hard.

[Phil]

This is a question from Nate. If hunting and fishing was banned tomorrow, what would keep you outside? I think we know that. Know the answer from Spencer.

[Spencer]

Looking at the ground for rocks and mushrooms. That's what I would do. How about you boys?

[Maxwell]

Walking my dog.

[Randall]

Oh, dogs is a good one.

[Maxwell]

Yeah.

[Randall]

Dogs got me to the river yesterday. I like just seeing animals, and I like just. Just being outside.

[Spencer]

Yeah.

[Randall]

Like, it would be great this weekend to be outside at sunrise.

[Spencer]

There you go.

[Randall]

That's like. That's enough for me.

[Spencer]

I. I spent some time on the coast this summer in southern Oregon and northern California, and I started doing tide pooling, where I'd get up right at sunrise and go out when the tides are very low. And I had so much fun doing that. I had it all to myself. And I also like that it felt like I wasn't consuming anything. I didn't, like, walk away from that with a bag full of rocks or mushrooms or sheds or meat. And I kind of realized then it was one of the few things I do outside where I'm not consuming something. But I'm still thrilled to do it. It was so much fun. I wish I'd lived closer to a place where I could go tide pooling. Bill, anything else?

[Phil]

Noah says if someone were to harvest a bigfoot, how would a typical state wildlife management agency treat that harvest? An illegal harvest. Right. And he says he doesn't have to say how hypothetical he is.

[Spencer]

Some states, I believe had out. Have outlawed it. Where our last two guests came from, Whitehall, New York, they have a bigfoot sanctuary where they have made it illegal to kill a bigfoot within city limits. So some states have outlawed straight up killing a bigfoot. Oklahoma is on one side of it. Either they've outlawed it or they've made a season.

[Maxwell]

They offer a tag.

[Spencer]

Okay. That's it.

[Maxwell]

That's what? Just someone. I just read someone's comment and said that. So.

[Randall]

And I. If you see a bigfoot in the wild and you shoot it, you're killing a man in a bigfoot suit.

[Spencer]

Yeah. You're probably going to prison.

[Randall]

So I just. It's not a. It's not a wildlife management issue. You're talking about homicide.

[Phil]

Yeah. If they have a legal bigfoot season and someone shoots a man in a bigfoot suit, would they go to prison?

[Randall]

If I go out in my black.

[Phil]

Bear, I don't think they'd be going to prison.

[Randall]

If I go out in my black bear costume, no one's gonna say it's a good idea during spring bear season. But if somebody takes a poke, they're probably going to the pokey.

[Spencer]

Max. Before we get out of here. Can we hear the Bigfoot call that our guest Paul was referencing? This is the official sound of a Bigfoot.

[Maxwell]

A lot of background noise, but there.

[Randall]

Is a lot of background noise.

[Spencer]

That's just nature. Okay.

[Phil]

Is that the Bigfoot?

[Spencer]

Okay, now we know we know what to listen for. Thanks for joining us this week on Meat Eater Radio. We'll see you guys here next week, same time and place by now.

[Randall]

Thanks, gang.

[Maxwell]

Bye.

[Ad Reader]

First Lights Navigator hoodie was built and tested where plans fall apart and weather doesn't ask permission. It's built to perform, built to last. Breathable insulation that dumps heat fast on the hike in stretch fabric that that stays silent for close encounters. Moisture control that wicks away sweat on the packout. Because in the field, the plan shifts, the wind changes. The moment comes sooner or later than you thought. When it does, you adapt without hesitation. First Lights Navigator delivers on versatility no matter the situation. It happens to be my favorite piece of gear they make right now. I live in it. Check it [e-mail] that's f I R S T L I T E Com.

[Maxwell]

This is an I heart podcast.