Ep. 772: Bullwhacker, Dinky Rifle Calibers, and Whitetail Bucks | MeatEater Radio Live!

Summary

The MeatEater Podcast Ep. 772: Bullwhacker, Dinky Rifle Calibers, and Whitetail Bucks | MeatEater Radio Live!
October 3, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this lively Radio Live edition, host Brody Henderson is joined by Randall Williams, Jordan Sillers, and several special guests to explore a range of hunting and conservation topics. The episode focuses on a major public land access victory in Montana, the effectiveness of smaller rifle calibers for big game, and cherished whitetail buck stories to celebrate Whitetail Week. True to MeatEater’s ethos, the conversations are candid, insightful, sometimes irreverent, and always rooted in a deep appreciation for the outdoors.

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Main Segments & Key Discussions

1. Intros, Team Catch-Up, and New Content at MeatEater (01:04–07:05)

• Host and Panel Introductions:
  Brody introduces the crew and outlines the episode’s packed agenda.

• Whitetail Week at MeatEater:
  The team discusses Whitetail Week sales, new content drops, and a state-by-state whitetail hunting competition.

• Jordan Sillers’ New Podcast: Blood Trails
  Jordan announces "Blood Trails," a new true crime podcast focused on hunters and outdoorspeople.

  • Jordan Sillers: “We have eight episodes coming out in this first season. We have a story of a hunter who disappeared under very suspicious circumstances ..." (04:11)
  • The show promises factual, empathetic reporting, not just retreads of published stories.
  • Randall Williams: “This is very much like straightforward, empathetic reporting about pretty tragic situations.” (06:44)

2. Interview: Mike Kautz of American Prairie on Public Land Access and Conservation (07:05–27:11)

Who is American Prairie and What Are They Doing? (08:30)

• Mission: Restoring and preserving Montana’s shortgrass prairie ecosystem, working to acquire and connect large tracts for habitat and public recreation.
• Scope:
  • 603,000+ acres managed
  • Land acquired via willing seller/willing buyer
• Mike Kautz: “Eventually we have enough habitat to restore an intact prairie short grass ecosystem ... we've done over 50 land transactions at this point.” (08:30–09:13)

Addressing Controversy and Local Pushback (09:27)

• Brody asks Mike to address the visible opposition ("Save the Cowboys, Stop American Prairie" signs).
• Mike Kautz: “Any big conservation project is not without controversy ... we've had to go out there and earn trust, say what we're going to do and then back that up with action.” (10:09)
• The organization maintains ranching on much of their land and manages both bison and cattle; bison are not wild/free-ranging (12:59).

Land Management, Misinformation, and Community (14:00)

• Correction of rumors:
  • Funding (97% domestic, not Dutch)
  • Bison origin (from Canada, not directly Yellowstone)
• Mike Kautz: "A lot of that controversy is simply coming from a lack of understanding of what we actually do." (12:30)

Public Access and Acquisitions: The Bullwhacker Road Victory (15:10–27:11)

• Most properties open to year-round public access (hiking, camping, hunting, fishing).
• Major News: Acquired Anchor Ranch/Bullwhacker Road, unlocking 50,000 acres of previously landlocked public land for recreation.
  • Mike Kautz: “We opened the road right away and said, look, this one's too important to sit on ...” (17:00)
• Prioritizing public access and partnering with state’s block management hunting programs.
• Future Vision: Continue expanding access, maintaining transparent public access policies, newest tract open to access but not hunting yet (22:18).
• Invitation for the public: “Come out and visit us, come out and see what it looks like on the ground.” (26:21)

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3. Whitetail Throwback Thursday: Personal Buck Stories (28:47–37:59)

A fun storytelling segment where each panelist shares a memorable whitetail buck experience:

• Randall Williams:
  Tells the story of his biggest buck, lost his job, committed to a nine-day hunt in Kentucky, and scored with a well-placed .45-70 shot.

  • “Did the old Texas heart shot ... entered just inside of the ham right near the anus, came out the front of that left hip ...” (31:59)

• Jordan Sillers:
  Shares a recent hunt in East Texas—the thrill of shooting a buck with his son present for the first time.

  • “If hunting ever becomes boring ... take an 8-year-old boy ... because he was the most excited.” (34:59)

• Brody Henderson:
  Recounts shooting his first mature Pennsylvania buck—a rarity pre-antler restriction regulations.

  • Notes how point restrictions changed hunting culture and buck size in PA.
  • “In Pennsylvania ... you shot whatever buck you had a chance to shoot. This picture was taken ... after [antler point] restrictions.” (35:51)

• Consensus: Proper management can dramatically shift deer age structure; personal stories highlight how family and memory shape hunting traditions.

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4. Live Q&A: Gear, Hunting Ethics & Methods (38:16–45:35; 68:35–78:52)

Selected Highlights:

• Alpaca vs Merino Wool (38:18):
  Directs to product experts; minimal personal experience with alpaca.

• Venison Hot Dogs (38:50):
  The panel hasn’t made them, but is intrigued by the challenge of creating a good texture and snap.

• CWD Testing (39:31):
  Brody recommends testing all deer and elk harvested, especially in endemic areas.

  • Brody: “I've just gone to getting them all tested now.” (39:42)

• Introducing Kids to Hunting (41:17):
  Brody and Jordan advise starting with observation, unless the child has trained and really wants to try shooting; emphasize focusing on a fun, low-pressure experience.

• The Crossbow Debate (42:45):
  The hosts debunk fears that crossbows will decimate deer populations or violate hunting spirit.

  • Brody: “The arguments against crossbows ... I just don't get it. ... It's just a never-ending cascade of arguments.” (45:07)
  • Jordan Sillers: “Whatever species population, that should be the first concern.” (45:30)

• Packable Sleds and Game Recovery (68:52):
  Sleds are great in the right conditions—deep snow—but often humping out meat in a pack is more reliable.

• Meat for Landowners (78:08):
  Consensus is to clarify beforehand; many landowners don’t expect or want meat, but offering is courteous.

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5. Guest Interview: Tyler Friel on “Dinky Cartridges” for Big Game (46:30–64:57)

Background (47:10)

• Tyler is an Outdoor Life writer, podcaster, and Alaska hunter known for using small-caliber rifles for big game.

Hunting with Small Calibers: Experience & Rationale (50:43)

• Started with .25-06, .243, and .30-06 for sheep, moose, and bear.
• Critiques the hype and hate around 6.5 Creedmoor:
  • Tyler Friel: “Once the 6.5 Creedmoor got popular ... there was this kind of vitriol [against it] ..." (51:46)
• Real-world results prove effectiveness of well-placed shots, correct bullet selection, and modern bullet construction.
  • Tyler: “We've all seen... the advancement in some of these smaller caliber ... heavy-for-caliber projectiles ... and so I've started kind of getting further and further.” (52:20)

Bullet Technology (54:54–58:23)

• Modern heavy-for-caliber bullets have improved penetration and accuracy.
• Randall Williams: “The only thing when you're killing an animal, the question is ... what work that bullet does on that animal's tissue.” (57:54)

Terminal Ballistics, Magnum Arguments, and Shot Placement (59:05–60:49)

• Tyler refutes “hydrostatic shock”/energy dump justifications—placement and bullet quality matter most.
• Tyler: “Animal is gonna die ... might drop in its tracks ... or might not fall over for 15 or 20 seconds ... both were perfect shots.” (60:34)
• Reference to his video taking a Yukon moose with 22 ARC and an 88 ELD-M (61:00–63:29).

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6. Dream Whitetail Hunts (65:02–68:35)

• Jordan: Wants to try a “Western whitetail hunt” (open country, glassing, rifle).
• Randall: Dreams of tracking Northwoods bucks in snow, Maine or Adirondacks style.
• Brody: Bucket-list is a Saskatchewan rut hunt—brutal cold, massive deer, out of comfort zone but highly appealing.
• Randall Williams: “One of the cool things about whitetails is there's just so many different ways you can do it.” (68:05)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Brody on Whitetail Week: “You don't even have to be a whitetail hunter to take advantage of this sale. There's all kinds of all-purpose stuff ...” (02:00)
• Mike Kautz on Trust: “We're not asking for support or endorsement ... but we do ask for understanding ... just understand what we're actually doing.” (24:36)
• Tyler Friel on Caliber Hatred: “There have been quite a few fairly ignorant opinions on ... saying it can do things it can't do—or shouldn't really be used for.” (51:46–52:20)
• Randall Williams on Bullet Construction: “The only thing when you're killing an animal, the question is ... what work that bullet does on that animal's tissue ... the bullet is really like ... the most important part of the equation.” (57:54)
• Brody on Crossbows: “The arguments against crossbows ... it's just a never-ending cascade of arguments ... method of take arguments that end up just being horseshit.” (45:07, paraphrased)

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Additional Resources Mentioned

• American Prairie (Public access, bison lottery, conservation info): americanprairie.org
• MeatEater Whitetail Week: themeateater.com
• MeatEater American History: The Hide Hunters audiobook, available October 14th

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Listener Q&A – Key Timestamps (selected)

• 38:16—Alpaca vs. Merino wool
• 38:50—Venison hot dogs/brats
• 39:31—CWD testing practices
• 41:17—First hunt with a young child
• 42:45—Crossbows, long-range rifles, and method-of-take debates
• 68:52—Packable game sleds for meat transport
• 78:08—Etiquette: sharing meat with landowners

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Summary

This episode stands out for its practical conservation news (Bullwhacker Road), expert-level firearm and ammunition discussion (Tyler Friel), and personal storytelling that grounds the meat-eating lifestyle in tradition and family. The show's tone is warm, comedic, and debate-filled, with respect for varied hunting approaches and clear-eyed skepticism of gear and ethics controversies. Panelists don't shy away from addressing touchy issues while encouraging curiosity, inclusivity, and engagement with the outdoors.

For more on public land access, rifle selection, or to reminisce about the good old days in the deer woods, this is an extra-rich episode for hunters and conservationists alike.

Transcript

[Brody]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Sponsor/Announcer]

This week only, it is Whitetail [e-mail] this is our biggest whitetail gear sale of the season. It runs from now through October 6th. You can get up to 50% off on the gear we all trust in the field. We're talking tree saddles, trail cams, game bags, coolers, knives, and exclusive meat eater apparel. It's all marked down. Whether you're hanging stands or breaking down your buck, this is the gear that gets it done. Head to Theme Eater.com and shop Whitetail Week before it ends on October 6th.

[Phil]

Smell us now, lady.

[Randall Williams]

Welcome to Meat Eater Trivia.

[Sponsor/Announcer]

Meat Eater Podcast.

[Brody]

Welcome, everybody, to Meat Eater radio live. It's 11am here at Meteor HQ in Bozeman. That's 1pm in my hometown of Edinburgh, Pennsylvania, where archery season. Archery whitetail season is now open for all you bow guys and crossbow guys. Yeah, arrow guns, we call them. I'm your host, Brody. I'm joined today by the only person who occasionally threatens my total domination of Mediator trivia, Randall Williams. He beat me yesterday. And spoiler alert. What's that?

[Randall Williams]

Spoiler alert?

[Brody]

Well, it's not really a spoiler.

[Randall Williams]

Can we cut that out? Phil, can we cut that out?

[Brody]

Is it a. Yeah, I'll get right on that. I mean, not really.

[Phil]

Yeah, if someone's expecting it already, is it really a spoiler?

[Brody]

We've also got Jordan Sillers. He's our very own expert on all things firearms. Aren't you?

[Jordan Sillers]

I do my best.

[Brody]

Yeah, I do my best. I read your stuff. It's good.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah, thanks.

[Brody]

This week we've got a couple great interviews. First is about a huge public access win here in Montana. And we're also going to be talking to. You'll like this, Jordan. We're going to be talking to someone about shooting great big game animals with little dinky rifle cartridges. And first, since this is Whitetail week at Meat Eater, when we celebrate all things whitetail hunting, we're also going to share some whitetail buck stuff, a throwback Thursday and a whitetail dream hunt deal that we're going to talk about. Speaking of Whitetail week, which is brought to you by our friends at Sig Sauer, not only do we have deals across all the meat eater brands, including up to 40% off at first light, and. And there's great deals on the Mediator website, too. We're also dropping a steady supply of fresh whitetail content. We're running a real fun competition to decide which state is is the best Whitetail hunting state. You can go check that out atthe meat eater.com. go check out first light.com to get yourself outfitted for like all the different conditions you're going to run into during three, four months of whitetail season. So like there's something there you're going to find that you need. And you don't even have to be a whitetail hunter to take advantage of this sale. There's all, there's like all kinds of all purpose stuff on sale at first light too. And again, discounted merch@theme eater.com. so get on there. How long does this thing go on till Sunday?

[Randall Williams]

That would be a good question.

[Brody]

I think you got like a couple, few more days to take advantage of it.

[Jordan Sillers]

It's all over the website.

[Phil]

If you were here, he'd go, come on, Randall.

[Randall Williams]

Yeah, he wouldn't know either, though.

[Phil]

Yeah, exact.

[Brody]

I mean, we're busy doing this stuff. We can't keep track of everything. And we're so busy that we're going to skip the chit chat today because we have a lot we're going to cover. And in place of chit chat, real quick, Jordan, you haven't been on the show that much, so introduce yourself.

[Jordan Sillers]

Sure.

[Brody]

And tell everyone real quick about the crazy new podcast you're doing.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I'm Jordan Sillers. I'm a managing editor for the website and then I also help Cal with his podcast, Cal's Week in Review. Starting up a new podcast, we launched a pilot episode in March that you may have seen. It's called Blood Trails. It's a true crime podcast about hunters, anglers, campers, hikers, you know, everyone sort of in our world and really excited about it. We have eight episodes coming out in this first season. We have a story of a hunter who disappeared under very suspicious circumstances. We have a story of a hunter who was found stabbed 17 times and the medical examiner ruled it a suicide.

[Brody]

So that's Randall. Where were you during that time?

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah, I'd have to.

[Randall Williams]

I'd have to know. I need the details because I was not involved.

[Jordan Sillers]

Noted, noted. There's a story of a hunter who was shot with his own rifle. And there's thoughts about whether it was someone close to him who may have done it. So lots of really interesting stories. We think it's, you know, we hope people like it and we're really excited.

[Brody]

Oh, man. I mean, of course they're going to like it. Like the true crime genre is like bananas these days and. And I think you've already got like the hunting crowd locked in. So you need to market this to, like, suburban soccer moms who spend their time watching true crime on Netflix.

[Jordan Sillers]

Right. Listen, if, if you love meat eater content and you've always wanted to get your wife to watch or listen to me. Eater content.

[Brody]

Yeah.

[Jordan Sillers]

This is, this is for you. You know, you guys can do this together. I feel like I'm just bringing, you know, strengthening relationships through this.

[Randall Williams]

Every time I get into Sydney's car to go somewhere with her, as soon as the car is powered on, it's just immediately. Then he plunged the dagger in up.

[Brody]

Yep.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Randall Williams]

And.

[Jordan Sillers]

And one thing I just wanted to say. So speaking of the true crime genre, a lot of it out there is, you know, it's, it's someone, they read some news stories, they read Wikipedia and that's. And then they kind of chat about it. This is not that. This is original reporting. I talked to the people.

[Brody]

Hard hitting journalism.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah. I mean, I talked to the people who were involved. As long as they're willing to talk to me, the family of the victim, the law enforcement who investigated it. And we tell you things that no one else has reported before.

[Randall Williams]

And I will say too, like the, the genre occasionally leans into, like the lurid.

[Brody]

Sure.

[Randall Williams]

Voyeuristic. And this is very much, not that it's very much like straightforward, empathetic reporting about pretty tragic situations.

[Brody]

I just gave Jordan a lead today or yesterday on something that maybe someday it will end up in the podcast.

[Jordan Sillers]

We'll see.

[Brody]

Yeah, I'm not going to say any more about that.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah, we'll see. I'm looking into it.

[Brody]

Yeah. All right, guys, we're going to move on because we got a bunch to talk about today. For our first interview today, we've got Mike Kautz. I hope I pronounce that right. Mike is the vice president of access and infrastructure at American Prairie, which was formerly American Prairie Reserve. They recently simplified it and they're just American Prairie now. I hope I'm getting that right. Anyway, American Prairie is an organization with, with a goal of restoring and preserving short grass prison prairie ecosystems in central and northern Montana. It's a ecosystem that's kind of suffering all over the country. And these guys are doing a lot of good work here in Montana. And a big part of that plan, what they might be known for, the best, is reestablishing wild bison populations in that part of Montana. We got Mike on the line.

[Phil]

Phil, here's Mike.

[Brody]

Mike. Hey, guys, thanks for joining us today. Thank you having us to start out Just give folks the real quick version of who American Prairie is, what they do and how they operate as far as acquiring property to build into this collection of hopefully interconnected short grass prairie landscapes.

[Mike Kautz]

Sure, sure. So American Prairie is a Montana based nonprofit. We've been around for over 20 years now. And as you mentioned, our goal is to, and our work is to, to buy and acquire land that we manage for public access and for wildlife habitat along the Missouri Breaks and the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge so that eventually we have enough habitat to restore an intact prairie short grass ecosystem. And we work on a willing buyer, willing selling, willing seller model. And we've done, I think over 50 land transactions at this point.

[Brody]

And how many total acres, Mike?

[Mike Kautz]

Right now we're sitting at about 603,000 acres of deeded and leased land.

[Brody]

Just a little bit.

[Mike Kautz]

It's, it's a lot of driving.

[Brody]

Yeah, yeah. My favorite part of the state up there where you guys are working now. Now you mentioned that it's a willing seller, willing buyer situations when you're acquiring these properties. But I'd kind of be remiss to like not address the fact that up in that part of Montana there's like a certain group of people, like not everyone, but like there's definitely like some pushback from some of the locals in that part of the state about what you guys are doing. And I just want to give you a chance to like speak to that and, and let us know what's going on with that.

[Mike Kautz]

Yeah, absolutely. I think any big conservation project is not without controversy and, and we're certainly no exception to that. So when you drive in that part of the state, you'll see Save the Cowboys, Stop American Prairie signs. Those are produced by United Property Owners of Montana, which I encourage anyone listening to this and folks are from outside the state and trying to study up on this. You can just go to their website and see what they're, see what they're about. And some of this is simply, you know, a disagreement over how you, how you manage landscape. And some of it is, I think, concern over, you know, changes, you know, in the region. And some of it's just that we're new, you know, again, 20 years in Montana is an eye blink. And so some of it's just been, we've had to go out there and earn trust, say what we're going to do and then back that up with action. And so I think what you find is we go out, you talk to our over the fence neighbors, you talk to the more than 60 ranchers in the region that we partner with on, on leasing grass or working through our Wild sky program together. You find that actually we, we have great relationships and I think, you know, head on. We are not the enemy of Montana agriculture.

[Brody]

Sure. Yeah.

[Mike Kautz]

I mean agriculture does great. The reason that we can do this in this part of the world is because all of the good stewardship that Montana ranchers have carried out for generations on this landscape and often we find that we actually have the same goal, which is that we're hoping that, and working to have this landscape look much like it does right now.

[Brody]

Right.

[Mike Kautz]

Slightly different methods there sometimes, but at the end of the day we want this place to, you know, as you were saying, it is one of the most spectacular parts, not only Montana, but the entire United States. And we're all working to make sure it stays that way.

[Brody]

And something I'll point out is that on like, I'm not sure like what percentage of, of the acreage this is true on, but there's still cattle ranching going on. On, on some of your properties.

[Mike Kautz]

Yeah. And again, that's, you know, I think, you know, when folks say, hey, there's controversy around this. A lot of that controversy is simply coming from a lack of understanding of what we actually do.

[Brody]

Yeah.

[Mike Kautz]

So, you know, we're sometimes get cast as like these bison folks who want wild bison everywhere. We manage our bison as livestock, so we disease test them. They're contained behind fences. They're not wild. Free roaming bison.

[Brody]

Yeah.

[Mike Kautz]

They're an important part of conserving them as a species, but they're not wild and free roaming. And we have about 850bison right now on two properties. We have over 7,000 cattle on our properties. So most of our properties, the grazer that does that role in the ecosystem, you know, which again is a really important one, is cattle. And, and again, I was listening to Cal on the Joe Rogan podcast this week while I was driving and it was awesome to hear him talking in front of such a huge audience about the value of prairies and that prairies globally are disappearing faster than any other ecosystem. And we have one of the best chances to, to, to set aside and protect some of our remaining grasslands anywhere in the world right here in Montana. And so hearing him talk to Joe about that was awesome. And yet even Cal, who again, I mean he's, he's here in Montana, you know, had a couple of bits of misinformation about American prairie. You know, our, our money doesn't come from the Dutch 97 is from within the United States. And our bison don't come from Yellowstone. They came from Elk island in Canada. And. And we've done trades with some of our tribal neighbors who have Yellowstone genetics in their herd.

[Jordan Sillers]

But.

[Mike Kautz]

But again, I think that's not to give Cal a hard time, because.

[Brody]

No, no, we'll make sure he hears this for sure.

[Randall Williams]

We don't. We don't let go any chance to correct Cal on.

[Mike Kautz]

Oh, well, you can tell. You can tell me. Shanked it on that one. It's just a mess.

[Brody]

But he's a good guy. He'll acknowledge that he got it wrong and make a correction. But.

[Mike Kautz]

But, you know, I think it just speaks to. Look, you know, here's somebody who's really well educated on conservation in Montana and around the US but still had some of, you know, these sort of persistent, you know, misinformation about what we actually do. And a lot of that's on us. Like, we gotta make sure we're out here talking to folks saying, no, actually, you know, we're a bunch of Montanans. We're a Montana nonprofit, buying land, opening up to public access, managing it for wildlife habitat.

[Brody]

Yeah, let's. Let's talk about that. I mean, one of the great things about American Prairie is that most, if not, I'm not sure if it's all of your properties, but most of the properties are open to public access for recreational purposes, which, you know, it could be hiking, wildlife viewing. I think you guys have a campground. There's fishing opportunities, and there's hunting opportunities. American Prairie runs a lottery for. For several bison hunting opportunities. Randall's wife last year took advantage of that and got herself. Got herself. Was it great? She sat a big bull.

[Randall Williams]

No, no, she. She had one of the yearling. Oh, I got one of the yearling tags. But honestly, one of the coolest, wildest hunting experiences of my life.

[Brody]

You guys still eating that thing?

[Randall Williams]

Oh, yeah.

[Brody]

Nice.

[Randall Williams]

Yeah, we just got the hide back.

[Brody]

So beyond the bison thing, like, you can go on these properties and hunt small game, upland birds, waterfowl, big game, through Montana's block management program, which is a public access to private land program. It's, like, one of the best programs, and if not the best program of that type in the entire country, as far as I'm concerned. So, like, I mean, if you're an outdoorsman, you should just be, like, supporting this. I think it's a very good opportunity. Which leads us to kind of the latest big story that involves American Prairie. So, Mike, tell us about Bullwhacker Road, the Wilkes brothers and your, your latest acquisition and why it's such an important public access win for all kinds of outdoors enthusiasts, including hunters.

[Mike Kautz]

Yeah, I mean, this has been one of the things we've been most excited about over the last couple of years. Here we closed on a property called the Anchor Ranch that's on the north side of the Missouri river, about 70 miles southeast of Havre on the High Line, and 66,000 acres of deeded and leased land. But most importantly, the deeded land includes a four mile section of the Bullwhacker Road that was, you know, in and out of court. You know, Brett French from the Billings Gazette has done some awesome reporting on this. Anyone who's really interested in this kind of stuff can, can look up his articles, but essentially you had a four mile section of road that was landlocking over 50,000 acres of public land, mostly BLM, few state sections in there. And normally when we buy a property, we take about a year to figure out all the public access and do a full review of it. We were so excited about this, we opened the road right away and said, look, this one's too important to sit on for a year. We're going to open it at least this section. And it's, it's just one of the most historic parts of the northern Great Plains too, and has a fascinating history. It's, you know, part of the Cow Creek which runs through part of the property was part of the Nez Perce Trail. So where Chief Joseph led his people up from the Missouri river and the ford where they crossed on foot up into the Bears Paw Mountains. The Bullwhacker Road. I mean, it's named that because there were guys, you know, whipping bowls up out of the Missouri river because a lot of years the steamboats from St. Louis could only get up to about that point. So incredible history and just an incredible landscape. You know, whether it's in hunting season or whether it's in the spring, you go down in there. I mean, it's just, you know, an absolute maze of coolies and prairie canyons and, you know, an incredible place to get lost and to go explore.

[Brody]

And again, again like this, this will now open up 50,000 acres of what was landlocked public land. Correct?

[Mike Kautz]

Yep, exactly. And so, I mean, again, a lot of your listeners have probably seen onyx and Theodore Roosevelt conservation partnerships reports on landlocked public land around the country and there's millions of acres. And you know, one of our goals with, with property purchases is to look at those Ones where, you know, boy, if we bought that, deeded, it opens up this amount of public land, too. You know, we. A couple of years ago, we bought one on the muscle shell called the 73 that had 10,000 acres landlocked by. I mean, it was essentially 100ft of two track.

[Brody]

Yeah.

[Mike Kautz]

Across the deed.

[Brody]

Yep.

[Mike Kautz]

So wherever possible, we do that. And yeah, as you mentioned, you know, the vast majority of our deeded acres are open to public access year round.

[Randall Williams]

And, Mike, when that 73 ranch sold, I mean, I know there was an attempt to buy the blm, I believe, to acquire it. They were unable to, given the sort of strictures around federal land acquisitions. But someone was going to buy that land. Right. Like that property was for sale, someone was going to buy it. And so in this case, because American Prairie was the buyer, all that landlocked public land is now open to the public, in addition to the access that you guys provide through block management.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah, it's just a big win.

[Randall Williams]

Yeah.

[Brody]

Yeah.

[Mike Kautz]

And both of those properties, too, are examples of, you know, large properties that were formerly owned by out of state owners, largely as either private hunting properties or as, you know, amenity properties or investments. And so, you know, again, we think a Montana based nonprofit, now owning them, now managing it for public access and for wildlife habitat. I mean, that's. That's a net positive. I'm sitting in the room having given a presentation last week where I was showing these, you know, these charts for what the growth of populations in Montana have done over the last couple of years since COVID I mean, we're sitting here in Bozeman and see that, you know, it's grown by 86% in the Gallatin Valley.

[Brody]

This is supposed to be good news, Mike.

[Mike Kautz]

Well, so here's the other, you know, to set up the good news. This is what public land, you know, has done. It's essentially flat. Yeah, not only flat, but I mean, Cal has done such an incredible job and all of you, you know, at meat eater, backcountry hunters and anglers, in fighting the efforts to sell off public land recently. But so not only have we not been creating more public land necessarily, you know, we've even had, you know, proposals to sell it off. So I think that's part of the bigger, bigger world in which we operate is, look, we are trying our hardest to shift that a little bit, you know, because we as a species, we certainly are making more people more of ourselves. We're not necessarily, you know, doing as much to create more good, publicly accessible land. And that's a big part of what gets me up every day and into the office and out in the field.

[Brody]

Yeah. So got asked, new property, is it open to hunting?

[Mike Kautz]

Not this year. So this is where we got to take it there to. And as you were saying, you know, BMA contracts, generally, we finalized those in May or June.

[Brody]

Yeah. So it just wasn't. The timing wasn't right.

[Mike Kautz]

Exactly. Exactly. So I'd say stay tuned. You know, we'll have a public access, you know, policy, I'd say by, by next summer and certainly by the, the next hunting season. So. But what about.

[Brody]

But the road is open.

[Mike Kautz]

Road is open.

[Brody]

Okay.

[Mike Kautz]

So. So folks can access all of the BLM and state land to the south. And also I'll just give my usual safety plug like, don't drive your minivan down in there. Don't take the Corolla.

[Randall Williams]

Watch the weather forecast.

[Mike Kautz]

Watch the weather forecast right now. I just had a meeting with some of the BLM monument folks this week, and they were saying there's a, there's a VW SUV rented from the Billings airport that's been sitting down in there since about May, and they couldn't get it out. So it's, it's rugged. You know, you got to do your homework before you drive down in there.

[Brody]

Yeah. Don't even try. If it's going to rain or snow is good advice, I think. Mike, before we let you go, thanks for all this. It really is good news. Can you pull out your crystal ball and kind of give us an idea of what we can expect from American prairie kind of in the near future and kind of lay out, like, what best case scenario end goal would be for you guys?

[Mike Kautz]

Yeah, absolutely. So I think, again, we recognize, hey, being around for 20 years, you know, we're still earning trust. And that goes for, you know, the general public. It goes for ranchers, it goes for hunters. It goes for, you know, folks who are just curious about, you know, what this thing is they've heard of. So I'd say continue to look to us to, you know, illustrate our. Or to underwrite our words with deeds, you know, in terms of public access. You know, I used to get questions like, hey, are you guys, you know, is this some sort of bait and switch? Are you guys just offering public access and then you're going to like, lock the gates up?

[Brody]

Right. That's something I absolutely not like.

[Mike Kautz]

We buy properties that have conservation easements on them. This year, we donated 109 acres to the state of Montana to create a state park at Judith Landing. You know, we open previously landlocked public land across our deeded roads and then assume the costs of maintaining those roads. So I'd say continue to judge us on what we do. And, you know, I think we often say, look, you know, we're not asking for support or endorsement. You know, do your homework, come to your own conclusion. But we do ask for understanding, like, just. Just understand what we're actually doing. And in terms of public access, yeah, I think it's probably going to look a lot like what you see right now, where, you know, we're in the top 10 largest landowners in the state, enrolled in that block management access program with fwp. They're an incredible agency to work with for your listeners outside the state. I mean, Montana, truly the last best place, I think, as an outdoors person and as a hunter in particular. So it's a lot of, you know, it's over 80,000 acres available to hunt in that program. We're building a couple more backcountry huts in our hut system over the next two years, so you'll see more of those and just more chances to explore different parts of the prairie. Those of you who've been up there know that, you know, some of it's like incredibly steep, rugged Missouri breaks, Ponderosa pines, kind of bighorn sheep habitat. And then you get out on other parts and it's kind of the rolling sagebrush sea. And, you know, we want to create opportunities for people to go out and explore that and understand why this place is. Is so special and so worth protecting and handing on to the next generation.

[Brody]

Cool. What can people do to support you if they're interested in doing that?

[Mike Kautz]

I'd say, you know, hey, from my standpoint, it's come out and visit us, come out and see what it looks like on the ground. And you can plan a trip by just going to our website, American Prairie.org we do have campgrounds, we have huts, but you can also just go out and load up your backpack and walk off, you know, into the prairie and. And spend a night. So I just encourage people to go up there and make a visit and put your name in the hat for the bison harvest we offer. It is.

[Brody]

Yeah, I've done it so far. Haven't drawn Mike. So, you know, just saying. Just saying, keep coming in. Yeah, thanks a lot, Mike. It was great talking to you. We'll have to check back in with you, you know, and. Absolutely, if something's happening, get in touch with us and. And we'll talk again.

[Mike Kautz]

Will do Will do.

[Brody]

All right, thanks, man.

[Mike Kautz]

We'll see you guys.

[Sponsor/Announcer]

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 Emry. 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. And 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 Hide Hunters, 1865-1883. Wherever you get your audiobooks. And you'll be ready to dig in when it's available to listen on October 14th.

[Brody]

Okay, it's time to move on to some Whitetail Week stuff. We're gonna do a Throwback Thursday. Whitetail edition. Throwback on a Thursday morning. Stephen Brody, take me back to 1974.

[Randall Williams]

Good tune.

[Brody]

Throw back. I can't believe it. Did I mention Steven Brody or old as shit? I think you have mentioned that.

[Phil]

Yeah, several times. I think.

[Brody]

All right, guys, we're gonna pull out the memories today and let you guys share some whitetail stuff with us. I think you're up first, Randall.

[Randall Williams]

Alrighty, Phil. Oh, yes, I'll point out this picture is colored very strangely. It's an archaic digital camera. It captures my skin tone and blaze orange in a really weird way. But that blood trail on the right. Oh, yeah, shows up real nice.

[Jordan Sillers]

See that? Wow.

[Randall Williams]

This, this. This is my biggest whitetail buck. I was working construction at the time in 2008, and I was gonna go down to a property in Kentucky that we had permission to hunt. And on Friday, I was at the job site, had my truck all loaded up and they pulled me aside and told me I was getting let go. And as soon as. As soon as they handed me my cobra paperwork for poor performance no, no. 2008, man.

[Brody]

Oh, I got you.

[Randall Williams]

Yeah, it was a big slowdown. So, yeah, I said, you know, I. I'm 22, I think I'll be fine. And I'm going deer hunting. So my buddy went down there and hunted with me the first weekend. I just stayed through the week. And then he came down for the second weekend. And on day, there's probably like day nine. This is what I mean. This is my idea of whitetail hunting was just. I'm gonna sit in the same tree, right, for like eight days, nine days in a row. I had a little crotch board set up there. And at some point, like, my buddy was just gonna walk across the property at about 10 or 11 o', clock.

[Brody]

Do a little push.

[Randall Williams]

Yeah, it's like a. It's like a hilltop property that's sort of bald on top and then like real dense stuff going down these fingers down to the creek. So my buddy went across and I could hear him walking. And then all of a sudden, this buck. I'm basically set up on an old tractor road, like an old tractor path going down this hill. And this buck just crosses. And so I whip around and shoot off the back of the tree as he's about to dive back into the woods. And he turns and runs straight away from me. And I got off another shot. Sort of ironic that we're talking to Tyler here in a bit, because that was with a.45 70 shooting.

[Brody]

Because Ohio is shotguns and straight walls.

[Randall Williams]

This is. This was Kentucky.

[Brody]

Oh, that was Kentucky. I gotcha.

[Randall Williams]

Well, it's just because the romance of the right, the big straight wall, cartridges the size of your finger. And turns out that first shot missed, but that second one did the trick. Did the old. Did the old Texas heart shot.

[Jordan Sillers]

Very good.

[Randall Williams]

Entered just inside of the ham right near the anus, came out the front of that left hip and. Yeah, it was.

[Brody]

Now, normally that's. That's not a shot that we would recommend here at Meteater, but Randall is like such a marksman.

[Randall Williams]

Well, that was just like. That was a follow up.

[Brody]

I know that was a follow up.

[Jordan Sillers]

We don't really think that.

[Randall Williams]

Yeah, and you know, we went over there and actually the. The landowner, who was their scout master, showed up, like right then. And he's. He's British and doesn't. I mean, he was just excited to have us hunting. There he goes, oh, you got a buck? You got a buck. Let's see it. And he drove the tractor down and we chained it up to the.

[Brody]

He.

[Randall Williams]

He like Just fixed up antique tractors. Then we hauled that thing up out of the bottom, and that was all she wrote.

[Brody]

That's still your biggest buck to date. Biggest whitetail buck.

[Randall Williams]

It is, yeah.

[Brody]

Where. Where is that. What's. Where is that thing now?

[Randall Williams]

Oh, it's. I've got. In my home office, I've got like nine deer heads just kind of scattered. Euro mount on the little wall above it.

[Brody]

Yep.

[Randall Williams]

Euro mount. That's a homemade Euromount, too.

[Brody]

Nice.

[Randall Williams]

So, yeah, nice fun place. I wish I still got to hunt that every year because. Yeah, deer in the rut with a rifle.

[Brody]

Yep.

[Randall Williams]

Speaks to me.

[Brody]

All right, Jordan, you're up next. Let's see what you got here.

[Jordan Sillers]

All right, so this isn't from super long ago. This is a few years ago. This was at a property pretty near to where we live in East Texas. And I really like it. I don't own it, but we have permission to hunt it. And I like it because it's so close to our house. I can take the kids evening, Sunday evening, which is when I shot this buck. And I also like remembering this hunt because it was. I don't think it was quite the last day of the season, but it was the last day that I was gonna hunt. I think it was right before the last day. And this buck came in like five minutes maybe before shooting light ended. If. If he'd been in the tree line I was looking at in the stand, I might not have, you know, been able to see him, but he came in across a field, and so I could see his silhouette, you know, against the sky that was still bright. And in Texas, we have antler restrictions, so it has to be 13 inches between. And I saw him, you know, silhouetted against the sky, and I said, looks good. Yeah, it looks. Looks like it's going to be good. So shot him from maybe 50 yards. It was not a far shot with. With a six five Creedmoor. And he went, you know, maybe 40 or 50 yards, but he ran kind of into the tree line. And so there was a little bit of tension. And my. My son was with me, and he, you know, if. If hunting ever becomes boring or, you know, kind of a drudgery, like take an 8 year old boy, you know, with you. Because he was the most excited. He was high five.

[Randall Williams]

Was that the first deer he'd been a part of?

[Jordan Sillers]

It was, yeah, He. He'd been around when I'd brought deer home to like, you know, clean them and butcher them. But this was the first one, the first hunt that he'd been a part of.

[Brody]

Is he now. Is he hunting now?

[Jordan Sillers]

He is, yeah. He got. He got a doe last year.

[Brody]

Oh, great. Yeah, great.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah. So he came down with, you know, with me, and I like, wanted to do it right, like find some blood, follow the trail.

[Brody]

Yeah.

[Jordan Sillers]

But he just like, right into the woods, you know, and of course he found it first and just like.

[Brody]

That's okay. Yeah, that's okay. Well, cool. You're going to get him after a buck this year.

[Jordan Sillers]

He. Yeah, he wants to. Yeah, that's for sure. But we'll see.

[Brody]

All right. Guess that leaves me. This is. When was this, like, I don't know, mid-2000s, a little. No, it's like same.

[Phil]

Same camera quality as Randall's picture. That's how he.

[Brody]

Right around the same time as would you say? 08.

[Randall Williams]

Yeah. I bet this camera ran on a double A battery.

[Brody]

Yes. Anyway, this is back in Pennsylvania where, like, this is a place I. I grew up hunting. It's my buddy buddy's dad's land. My buddy's dad has now passed away, but my buddy still hunts his property. And this, this was the. The first like, big, nice buck I had ever shot in Pennsylvania. Grew up deer hunting, but like when I was growing up, man, like, there just wasn't very many big bucks around like this one. They just didn't live long enough. We. We would see a shit ton of deer hunting, but it would be like 22 does and a spike in a day of hunting. And like you just shot whatever buck you had a chance to shoot. This picture was taken I think maybe a couple years after they. The state implemented antler point restrictions. In Pennsylvania's antler point restrictions aren't like width like Texas. It's. At the time it was most of the state was three on one side. And this in northwestern Pennsylvania, it was three on one side plus a brow time and. And a lot of guys were like very against this new regulation at the time, but it really started paying off quickly. Like, you know, a percentage like of those year and a half old bucks, a large percentage of those year and a half buck old bucks that would have gotten shot now had a chance to at least get to another year. And now in Pennsylvania, like they're killing big bucks, which was just not a thing that happened very often when I was a kid. So yeah, that's my, like my one and only nice big Pennsylvania buck there.

[Jordan Sillers]

The same thing happened in Texas where, where people were very against the antler restriction at first. And now you talk to pretty much Everyone. And they say it was a good thing.

[Brody]

Yeah.

[Jordan Sillers]

You know, we're seeing a lot more big deer.

[Brody]

It works some places. It doesn't work. Others, they've like, Colorado, tried it with mule deer. It was just like. It didn't work. Just like it was a failed experiment, but, like, it's definitely worked in Pennsylvania. All right, Phil, do we got some action in the chat?

[Phil]

Got a lot of action.

[Randall Williams]

Oh, geez, look at that.

[Phil]

Incredibly, I'm being less picky about my questions here since I've been getting so many complaints about it. Leland, I've heard you ask this question, I think, for a month now. So I'm just going to bring it up. Let's get it out of the way. What are the functional differences between alpaca and merino wool, if any. If any of you can speak to this?

[Brody]

This question should be directed to the experts at first light.

[Randall Williams]

Yeah, this sounds like a first light.

[Phil]

That is why I have customer service question. Sorry, Leland, thanks for being here.

[Randall Williams]

Never tried alpaca socks.

[Phil]

Here we go. Question for Randall and the chat regarding hot dogs. Anyone made venison hot dogs? Have you done this, Randall? Tips on doing so.

[Randall Williams]

I have not. Steve and I were just talking yesterday about making a video, trying to make the best venison hot dog.

[Brody]

Yeah. Closest I've come is making brats.

[Randall Williams]

You do. I mean, my understanding is that you do truly, to address the last sentence there, you do truly have to emulsify it. Just make it into goo. The tough thing is going to be the snap. So we're. We were discussing that yesterday. You want a good. A good, positive snap on the dog, but we will hopefully address this in a video at some point.

[Phil]

Cool. Ian asks, on the heels of the CWD podcast, how often do you guys get your deer and elk tested?

[Brody]

I get them all known areas.

[Phil]

Or. Or would signs on the animal. Cause you.

[Brody]

I've just gone to getting them all tested, man. And some places, like where I'm going to hunt in Colorado this year, it's mandatory, and other places it's voluntary. But I've just like, I do get. I just get them all tested now.

[Randall Williams]

I just. I test them when they're required. And obviously, like in Montana here, we have big game checkpoints, and so they sort of catch you in a funnel to track animals moving across the state. And so some of those they'll test. But, yeah, I haven't. I don't think I've ever voluntarily submitted something for testing.

[Brody]

Yeah.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Brody]

If you had kids.

[Randall Williams]

I'm not proud of that if you.

[Brody]

Had kids, you might look at it.

[Randall Williams]

Yeah. Or if I valued my own health.

[Brody]

Well, I mean, it's not.

[Randall Williams]

Yeah, that's a joke. That's a joke.

[Brody]

I, I know, Jordan. You do any of that down in those Texans, just don't care.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah, I don't. Well, our, our CWD problem, you know, tends to be with the breeding facilities.

[Brody]

Well, it's like that everywhere. I mean, when you look at like the spread a map from like the U. I think it's usgs, maybe it's Fish and Wildlife, I don't know. But you can look at a map and see where these outbreaks start and it's like almost guaranteed that in the center of that thing.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Brody]

There's a high fence. That canned hunt operation.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah. And there are, I know there are areas where the wild population, you know, there is a problem and there may be mandatory testing there, but not where, where I've been hunting. So.

[Brody]

Yeah.

[Phil]

Speaking of kids, question for Brody and Jordan. Adam's taking his six year old daughter on her first hunt this weekend. DIY blind in the woods. Do I let her try and shoot or just sit and watch me do it? I want to give her a good experience.

[Brody]

There's too many unknowns here. Like has she practiced? Has she put in the time?

[Randall Williams]

Does she want to?

[Brody]

Does she want to. Has she been exposed to it at all yet? I, what hunt? I'm assuming deer, but I don't know. I'm assuming it's a deer from. In my opinion, like you see a lot of pictures of five, six year old kids like holding the buck up. In my opinion, it's a little too early simply because they don't really know what they're doing. Yeah, they, they like don't understand it yet. It's not that you can't set them up with a rifle that'll work and, and stuff like that. So I would probably do the shooting and see how she reacts if she hasn't had any exposure to it yet. Jordan, you.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah, no, I totally agree with that. And you know, if you get something that's plenty of excitement for us.

[Brody]

Sure. And walk it. Walk through the skin and in the gut and all like, all that stuff tends to like, as long as you don't be like this is going to be a little gross, like don't do any of that, just like do it and they're probably going to be fascinated by it.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Phil]

Jackson asks, do you think the same arguments against crossbows, AKA arrow guns, according to Brody, should be applied to the use of TSS turkey loads and long range rifles. Never used a crossbow. But I've always thought the hate was odd.

[Brody]

I, I agree. I don't get the hate. What's he talking about? Turkey loads?

[Randall Williams]

Yeah, like the super.

[Brody]

No, like, like no way. They're just like, like you argue against being more effective at killing turkeys. Like, I don't, I don't agree with that. And I don't think there's like any possible way you could like turn back the clock. Turn back the clock. And the long range rifles. It's like, like I don't see how you could even come up with an enforceable regulation. Yeah.

[Randall Williams]

I mean the only thing, the only thing that I'm familiar with is the Idaho restriction on you can't have a rifle heavier than 16 pounds.

[Brody]

I had no idea.

[Randall Williams]

And I do have a rifle that doesn't meet that Idaho restriction.

[Phil]

Yeah, you do. Oh yeah.

[Randall Williams]

But no one should really own a rifle over 60.

[Brody]

But I agree, like the arguments against crossbows, like, I just don't get it. Like everybody's like, oh, the sky is falling, all the deer are going to get killed. Like why you can go hunt elk with a crossbow. As far as I know, in Wyoming during archery season and like there hasn't been like any change. There's. And there's still plenty of whitetails where crossbows are legal. Like I don't get the hate, but whatever.

[Randall Williams]

Some, some bow hunters, I'd rather that they have a crossbow.

[Brody]

Sure.

[Randall Williams]

For the sake of the animals.

[Brody]

Yes. Yeah. I know there's people, other people here at Meteor that probably wouldn't agree with the crossbow.

[Randall Williams]

I, I started hunting with a crossbow because I didn't have like an archery background. My parents didn't hunt, but I was, they were encouraging. And you could go out and get a crossbow and you knew how to sight it in and. Yeah. We're drilling deer at, you know, 50 yards and, and super effective.

[Brody]

Yeah. What do you think?

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah, I mean I, I agree. It's, you know, fears of all the deer being gone. Definitely overblown. I think if you've spent, you know, hours and hours trying to shoot a compound bow accurately and then someone comes in with a crossbow. I, I do understand that.

[Brody]

But you could say the same. You could say this like the trad bow say the same exact thing. Like those compound guys, it's so easy. They got sites and all. Like it's just a never ending cascade of arguments.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Brody]

Method of take. Arguments that end up just being horseshit. As far as far as I'm concerned.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah. Yeah. I think the, the, the whatever species population, that should be the first concern.

[Brody]

Yeah.

[Jordan Sillers]

You know, and if that's not a concern, it's maybe not worth getting too worked up about.

[Brody]

There you go. Any more, Phil?

[Phil]

I mean, we've got a lot of. Let's do one more and then save the rest for the end of the show and then any additional one publishing team is here. When is Meat Eater going to come out with a book made for babies?

[Brody]

I. I don't. I don't think you're going to see that. Never say never. Maybe Jordan will write one. Oh, you still having babies?

[Jordan Sillers]

We have a one and a two year old.

[Brody]

Jordan's your man. Yeah, yeah, I'm like way past that point, man. I don't even remember what it was like for my kids to be babies.

[Randall Williams]

And, And I'll just put out there that we know what books we're writing until.

[Brody]

Till we die.

[Randall Williams]

20, 28 at this point.

[Brody]

So. Yeah, not something I'd count on. Right. All right, we're all done with those.

[Phil]

Phil, Unless you want to keep going, but we can. We've got the end of the time.

[Brody]

Is it?

[Phil]

We're running a little long, so there we go.

[Brody]

Let's move on to our next interview. All right, everybody, our next guest is Tyler Friel, who is a writer for Outdoor Life and he host his own podcast called Tundra Talk. And if you didn't catch Tyler on the Meat Eater podcast we had him on, I think, I don't know, a.

[Randall Williams]

Year, like maybe last hunting season, I think.

[Brody]

Yeah, episode 506. You can check it out. And if you're not familiar with his work, just like Jordan Sillers here, he has a wealth of knowledge about firearms and rifle cartridges in particular, and that's mostly what we're going to chat about with him today. Tyler, you. You on the line, buddy?

[Tyler Friel]

Yeah, I think so.

[Brody]

Great. Thanks for joining us from up in. Up in Fairbanks, Alaska.

[Tyler Friel]

I'm in. I'm in Wyoming right now.

[Brody]

Oh, man. You're.

[Randall Williams]

What are you hunting in person?

[Brody]

What are you hunting in Wyoming?

[Tyler Friel]

I shot a nice antelope yesterday.

[Brody]

Great. I'm about to do that in a week or so before we get into shooting great big animals with teeny little rifle cartridge. How'd your moose hunt go?

[Tyler Friel]

It was pretty disappointing this year.

[Brody]

That's funny because I heard the same from some other people. It was a tough hunt this year up there.

[Tyler Friel]

Yeah, you know, I don't. People like to blame it on a lot of Things we, we spent 14 days hunting, and the first 10 days are kind of in the prime time. And where we hunt, we have to call them. We're just in this swamp that you can't. There's a couple spots we can see.

[Brody]

But you hunt out of a elevated stand, don't you?

[Tyler Friel]

Yeah, we, we got a big. A tripod so you can get up over the brush. Otherwise you just, you just can't see anything.

[Brody]

Yeah.

[Tyler Friel]

And the first 10 days, basically, you know, we hunt, you know, five, six hours in the morning and five, six hours in the evening usually. And every time we went and called, we heard multiple bulls. Yeah, they just would not. They just would not come.

[Brody]

Yep. So as an Alaskan who hunts like, like that, getting that moose every year is, I'm assuming, kind of important. So, like, how's your winter meat supply looking? And, and what are you going to do to, to make up for not getting a bull?

[Tyler Friel]

Well, I'm, I think I'm sitting okay for now. We do depend on it. But I like having a little bit of a surplus just the way, you know, I've usually kill a bull every year. And so we at least the, the, the, the size of my children now we aren't consuming the whole thing every year. Oh, yeah, we've got, we got a fair bit of moose. And then I've got about three to four hundred pounds of black bear meat.

[Brody]

There you go.

[Tyler Friel]

That, you know, I make into various.

[Brody]

Yeah, you guys really get after those bears, man. Yeah.

[Tyler Friel]

I don't know what I, I just kill bears. Like, I'm angry at them.

[Brody]

Well, it sounds like you'll make it through the winter without starving. What, what I really wanted to have you on today to talk about is, is I feel like you've got like a very realistic take on the effect, the effectiveness of what many hunters, not all, but a fair amount of hunters consider to be like, undersized, underpowered rifle cartridges for big game animals. Like, I've kind of always found the hate from like, the Magnum, the Magnum crowd for like the 65 Creedmoor in particular to be frankly, kind of stupid. I've killed a pile of deer and elk with a 65 Creedmoor and have nothing but good things to say about its, its effectiveness. What, you know, a lot of whitetail and antelope hunters are. They aren't strangers to use in smaller rifle cartridges. But, you know, you've taken it a step further and proven that these smaller cartridges are capable of like, cleanly killing everything from, from bears to moose. So, like Talk us through how you got to that point, like how and why you became kind of like whatever you want to call a small cartridge evangelist. Yeah.

[Tyler Friel]

And whether. Whether it's by my own choice or not to. That's I guess, I guess where I'm at. I, I grew, I grew up in southern Colorado for the most part. And you know, it was a lot of.25 ought six stuff. But even after I moved to Alaska, you know, I started out with a.30 06. I bought and killed just about everything with it. And then I quickly got really into sheep hunting and bought a.25.06. So I just started shooting everything with that. And you know, my family over, over many years of, of hunting up there. You know, my uncle always swore that to 43 Winchester's one of the best black bear guns. And it just killed piles and piles of black bears with it. And it was just kind of something that I just took as a matter of fact. You know, kill a moose with my.25.06 or you know, whatever, whatever I was using. And you know, and the 65 Creedmoor is kind of its own thing. I was shooting competitively across the course doing service rifle when that was introduced and I kind of thought this sounds like it'd be a good cheap cartridge.

[Brody]

And. Right.

[Tyler Friel]

A couple years later when the first rifle, the first hunting rifle was public was released in it by Ruger, I got one and shot a sheep with it and with a match bullet and that's cool. Shot some blacktail deer and kind of moved on. And it was, you know, once this. 65 Creedmore got popular, you know, then there was this kind of vitriol and responsive hate to it, which I, I understand a lot of it that a lot of the annoyance because there are, you know, quite. Have been quite a few fairly ignorant opinions on, you know, saying that it can do things it can't do.

[Brody]

Right.

[Tyler Friel]

Or shouldn't really be used for now. I mean, that's kind of where I got to where I'm at. And then, you know, over the last, you know, we've all seen over the last few years, just the advancement in some of these smaller caliber, you know, heavy for, heavy for caliber projectiles that are super efficient. Buck the wind really well. And so I've started kind of getting further and further and I'm not afraid if I, if I'm do my research and I'm convinced something will work okay. I'm not afraid to try it.

[Brody]

Right.

[Tyler Friel]

So far the results have been like really, really pleasing. And, and since starting you know, since go working full time for Outdoor Life, I mean, my. I shoot, I shoot a ridiculous amount and it's just kind of just solidified a lot of points that I think a lot of times, you know, we focus on things like cartridge when. When there are a lot more important things that are going to contribute to our success.

[Brody]

Yeah.

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[Brody]

One thing I wanted to ask you, like, I'm kind of curious how you feel like when you're using, say a.6 5 Creedmoor even smaller cartridge and you're shooting like larger game animals, maybe not like whitetails or, you know, antelope or something like that. Like, how big of a role do you feel like bullet selection is playing, like, to be effective and, and, and like has like, advancement and bullet technology, like really made it possible for these newer, smaller caliber cartridges to play a role in big game hunting?

[Tyler Friel]

Yeah, I think it plays a role. I think it's kind of raised the. I think it's kind of raised the bar over, you know, the capability overall has increased. They've always been effective in, in some ways. I mean, even in the early 1900s, you know, the Frank, Frank Glaser was killing moose with a.220 Swift and claimed it was the killed everything, you know, with just these super crappy 40, 48 grain bullets.

[Brody]

Yep.

[Tyler Friel]

And so I think that that bullet manufacturer has or bullet technology has really contributed to that. And also it's, it's made it easier to hit. You know, it's made it easier to shoot accurately.

[Brody]

Yeah. And yeah, we're past the days of like round nose Remington COR locks that everybody. Yes.

[Tyler Friel]

Yeah. And what, you know, one thing like the heavier for caliber bullets are so much longer. I don't, I don't play into sectional density too much, but you know, you get a much longer core of lead even in these expanding bullets that.

[Brody]

Yeah.

[Tyler Friel]

That you'll get better penetration than say, you know, an older or like a larger caliber bullet of the same weight that's a lot shorter. And that's just one little factor I'll try not, try not to get too far in the weeds on.

[Brody]

Sure. Yeah. We want to keep it simple. Do you guys have any, any questions for Tyler?

[Randall Williams]

Yeah, I guess you're shooting primarily match bullets or real frangible bullets out of these lighter times.

[Tyler Friel]

Yeah, I've been, I've been shooting more particularly like the, the Hornad ELDM bullets. But I, I mean, honestly, like, if I had to just pick, you know, one of my favorite bullets overall, it's that eldx, which is, it's. It's not quite as I. And even saying frangible is. I don't know that that's, I wouldn't say that that's really, really accurate, but it is a more rigidly construction, constructed bullet, heavier jacket, and there's a locking ring in the jacket that they are going to tend to hold together a little better, but you still get really good rapid expansion and, and performance. So I mean, I would say that that that style of bullet is probably my favorite.

[Randall Williams]

Yeah.

[Tyler Friel]

Still.

[Randall Williams]

Yeah. I always get, I'm always confused, I guess. I don't know. It strikes me as sort of strange that people talk so much about cartridges and then they don't talk about bullets and bullet construction.

[Brody]

Yeah.

[Randall Williams]

Because the only thing when you're killing an animal, the question is like, what work that bullet does on that animal's tissue. And that's like, what is the bullet made out of? How fast does it hit it and does it hit it where you want to hit it? Right. And like none of that is really. You can do it like depending on whatever the head stamp is, you can do a lot of. You can do a lot of different things and end up with a lot of different wounds on an animal, but the bullet is really like to my mind, the most important part of the equation.

[Brody]

Yeah.

[Tyler Friel]

And I think. I think you hit the nail on the head. I mean, that's. We are kind of, you know, as a whole, a lot of hunters tend to. Whether it's just the way we're brought up in it, you know, we. We think cartridge power, kinetic energy, where, you know, what your bullet construction and what's your impact velocity going to be, you know, because there are people that have done stuff that's, you know, kind of stupid with the 65 Creedmore, where. But if you. If you stay within a reasonable impact velocity range, you know, where you can still shoot really well and what you need to, like, it's. It shouldn't surprise anyone that it works.

[Brody]

Because you poke a couple of holes through their lungs, they're going to die pretty quick. Jordan, you got anything for Tyler?

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah, I guess one of the things you hear from, you know, the folks who want to use the more powerful magnum cartridges is, you know, I want to dump as much energy into the animal as possible, maybe induce hydrostatic shock so it just kind of falls down right there. What do you. What is. Where do you stand on that sort of argument?

[Tyler Friel]

I would say that it's. It's kind of a misconception or not like a poor understanding of a, you know, what you should expect when you shoot an animal and, you know, just the capabilities or like terminal ballistics itself, because animals react totally differently. And I've heard this and whether it's framed as. I want more margin for error, but what does that. What does that really mean? Yeah, and, you know, I've heard people, you know, because talking about shoot, even shooting moose, it's a. Well, if they soak this up, then this other cartridge isn't going to work. Well, that's just poor understanding of what we should expect from the animal because there's a variety of reactions. And the only thing you can really control is putting, you know, using a bullet's gonna put a, you know, an adequate sized hole through that things vitals and placing it accurately. And the animal is gonna die. It might. It might drop in its track. You know, the antelope I shot yesterday folded like a lawn chair. And then I watched another one with a bullet that was. Did some, you know, more damage to it, shot perfectly and it didn't fall over for 15 or 20 seconds.

[Brody]

Yeah.

[Tyler Friel]

You know, and both were perfect shots.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Tyler Friel]

You know, it's just the result. Results will vary. And, you know, a lot of times we. We have, you know, a spectacular result or what we interpret is that. And we don't, you know, it's. It's a small sample size that kind of falls within a wide range of possibilities.

[Brody]

All right, let's, let's. Speaking of results, if any of you are still doubting like what Tyler is saying about the capabilities of some of these, these smaller bore cartridges, I want you to check out a video that he, he made last year when he killed, you know, in Alaska. Yukon bull moose is probably like 1600 pounds with. It was. With a 22 arc. Tyler, is that right? Yeah, yeah. 88 eldm and. Yep, 88 and. All right, enough nerd. Now, Randall, I'm an ELDM man myself. Before, before you chime in to like talk trash about how this plays out, I want you to first think about this. I killed an Alaska bull moose last year with a.300 win mag. And it took three good hits to put that bull down. So like, keep that in mind as you're watching what this, this video. Phil, you can go ahead and roll, roll the tape here. Okay, I'm ready. Whenever. If you got clear shot, a lot of brush.

[Randall Williams]

You'Re gonna want to do it.

[Mike Kautz]

He's done.

[Brody]

Sounds like my boy's hunting squirrels.

[Randall Williams]

He's down.

[Brody]

Or.

[Randall Williams]

No, no, he's standing.

[Brody]

Now. Like, this is kind of what I'm talking about. Like before you, you chime in talking trash. He's getting woozy and there he goes.

[Jordan Sillers]

Wow.

[Brody]

Yeah. So no matter what you or me say, Tyler, like, there's gonna be some grumpy haters. That would be like, you had to shoot him three times. It. It took forever for him to tip over. But like with a big bull moose, that's not unusual with a, with a great big caliber because it's a huge animal and it just takes them a long time to bleed out, right? So. So I've gotta believe that like part of the advantage in the situation you were just in is that you were able to like bear, like stay on target and like get real quick accurate follow up shots. Because you're just like not dealing with recoil, right?

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Tyler Friel]

No. And you know, and that was a, that was a gas gun and the first shot. And the funny thing is like say if, if you shoot something more than once with a small cartridge, you know, it was, it wasn't enough gun. But if you shoot them more than once with a big cartridge, they're tough, right? You know, like the first shot, the first shot was perfectly through both lungs and that, you know, it may. It's only. It's all speculation. He may have gone another 50 yards.

[Brody]

Right.

[Tyler Friel]

You know, but just based on that's one of the reasons I chose to do that is because I have quite a bit of experience with how moose die.

[Brody]

Yeah.

[Tyler Friel]

You know, the situations that we're shooting them in there and felt, you know, obviously confident enough to try it and, you know, and actually getting the. The second shot where he turned, it hit him unfortunately in the hind quarter. But, you know, all, you know, making lemon lemonade out of lemons. It was pretty imper. Like that bullet went through 10 inches of meat and then completely shattered the femur and was. Ended up somewhere. Ended up somewhere in the guts.

[Brody]

Yeah.

[Tyler Friel]

But the first and third shot were both. Both through the lungs.

[Brody]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was impressive, man. All right, we're. We're going to have to. To move on to our next segment, Tyler, but thanks for joining us. Stay in touch. It's like, probably almost winter up there in Fairbanks. I'd imagine it's getting close. So have a great fall and winter up up there and we'll talk to you. Talk to you another time.

[Tyler Friel]

That sounds great.

[Brody]

All right, thanks a lot.

[Jordan Sillers]

Thanks, Tyler.

[Tyler Friel]

Yeah, thank you.

[Brody]

Okay, our next section. Next segment. Again, if you didn't realize, it's whitetail week here at Meat Eater. And since everyone loves just kicking back and talking hunting, shooting the breeze about hunting, which is something I think we should do more of on this show and so does. So does the honest. I think we're gonna have a little chat about what our dream whitetail hunt would be. So, boys, do you got, like, do you already have, like, a bucket list whitetail hunt in mind, or is this something you had to, like, really stop and think about?

[Jordan Sillers]

I mean, I feel like I'm. I'm still trying to figure it out in east Texas a little bit, but I would love to go do a western whitetail hunt. I grew up in Virginia and now in east Texas.

[Brody]

Well, west is big, man. You got to pick a spot.

[Jordan Sillers]

I. Well, what would you recommend for that?

[Brody]

Montana, if you like whitetails.

[Jordan Sillers]

There you go. Yeah, I'd love to do that. Just getting out of the tree stand, you know, it's. It's. It's what you got to do.

[Brody]

Plenty of opportunity for that here. I mean, Wyoming's got some good whitetail hunting. Colorado, like, has some giant whitetail bucks, but they're most. They're almost all in the eastern half of the state and it's almost all private land.

[Jordan Sillers]

Right, right.

[Brody]

Like, if you want to do a public land hunt It'd be hard for me to pick somewhere other than Montana.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah. Yeah. I mean that, that just sounds great. Getting to see that landscape, walk around, do a rifle hunt would be a lot of fun.

[Randall Williams]

I. I had to think about this a little bit. I don't necessarily know that their bucket list bucket list hunt. A bucket list hunt for me would be like going to the most exclusive whitetail property that has the biggest bucks and shooting it. But the one hunt I've always wanted to do, just been fascinated by is doing like a Northwoods tracking in the snow.

[Brody]

Like.

[Randall Williams]

Like.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Randall Williams]

Like in Maine. You know, you see some of those like I just think that's. That would be sort of the coolest, most.

[Brody]

Yep.

[Randall Williams]

Mind expanding the Adirondacks in like New York would be super cool I think.

[Brody]

Like low deer densities.

[Randall Williams]

Yeah.

[Brody]

Like tracking a buck.

[Randall Williams]

Yeah. Wear a wool hat, Carry a lever gun.

[Brody]

Y. Yeah. Yep.

[Jordan Sillers]

Very cool.

[Brody]

Yeah, I like that idea. Mine would be something like it's like totally out of my, my comfort zone and like hunting style. I would like. This is something I would like mentally have a tough time with, but I'd still want to do it. Which is one of those Saskatchewan hunts where you're sitting in a blind and it's like minus 10 degrees but you're hunting during the rut and like you're hunting for these like 300 plus pound white tails. Like they, they'll have like 150 inch rack and it looks small because the deer just so giant. I think that would be a super cool experience. It would like be miserable but it would be cool too.

[Randall Williams]

Yeah. No, I think one of the cool things about whitetails is there's just so many different ways.

[Brody]

Yeah.

[Randall Williams]

You can do it.

[Brody]

That's. Yeah. Like pick a spot.

[Randall Williams]

Stands, drives. I've also been really intrigued whenever I see an image of a white tailed deer in a canoe.

[Brody]

That just likes me.

[Randall Williams]

A little tickle something in my brain.

[Brody]

Yeah, definitely. Definitely. A water based hunt would be real cool. Okay Phil, let's. Let's jump back into the chat. Is everyone talking about whitetails or guns or what?

[Phil]

There's a lot of gun talk during the Tyler real conversation. Not a lot of questions. There's, you know, I love this chat because they just talk amongst themselves and share info and opinions and they're all very kind about it. You guys rock. But we do have a lot, a lot of questions still. This is from Harrison. He says question for the crew.

[Brody]

Do you.

[Phil]

Do you use a packable game sled for deer and elk if so, which one do you recommend? He's rifle elk hunting this year and wants to use.

[Brody]

Funny you should ask that. Like I'm going to be trying one out this year. Hopefully I'll get the opportunity to try out a packable sled. I've used sleds in the past, mostly for elk, but like the ice fish and sled type things like where you shoot it then go back to get the sled and then bring it out and use it to pack the animal out, the quarters out or whether we had to do that with my kids elk last year. So I'm like I'm definitely interested in the roll up sleds or packable sleds.

[Randall Williams]

Yeah. I've. For Sydney's bison we used like a pelican sled. Like a big ice fishing sled. I've used an orange. It's. It's like a burlier kid sled.

[Brody]

Yeah. And the roll up ones are like.

[Randall Williams]

No, like an actual. Like like.

[Brody]

Yeah.

[Randall Williams]

Yeah. And that has been. I had one miserable experience with it and. One experience.

[Brody]

That's the thing man is like when you're running that kind of sled like the snow conditions got to be just right for it to work. Well.

[Randall Williams]

I feel like if you, if you count on packing it out in a sled you're kind of setting yourself up for like it's a nice thing to have if the conditions are right. But like there's, there's something that's really straightforward about I will put this on my back and carry it out.

[Brody]

Right. Right.

[Randall Williams]

Because. Because oftentimes I feel like the sled can be way more work than just carrying it out.

[Brody]

Yeah.

[Mike Kautz]

In.

[Brody]

In certain snow conditions for sure. I agree.

[Randall Williams]

Good luck to you. Harris.

[Brody]

You. I imagine you're not using a sled too much.

[Jordan Sillers]

I'm not even sure what a sled is to be honest. Or something. Snow. I've never heard of this either.

[Randall Williams]

I do like, I do like using for like a winter backpack hunt. I'll. I'll pull a sled behind me and I do like if you just. If you're putting like 30 pounds in it that you're not going to have in your backpack. That's, that's nice. But yeah.

[Brody]

And I, I think there are situations where it doesn't. Even with some of these packable sleds you could probably pull it off without snow in the right like landscape. You could still use a sled where they're slack. Slide it. Yeah. So hopefully that answers the question.

[Phil]

This one's very Funny to me. And I don't know if it means anything. We can just move on. If it doesn't. Rashad says, last week I did an expensive fishing charter.

[Brody]

Is there cheap fishing charters?

[Phil]

Good point. We limited out and the captain told me to leave one of our fish. I thought he was joking, but he took one out of my bag. Never discussed beforehand thoughts.

[Randall Williams]

That's not cool.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Brody]

I mean, it's not. He should have. Captain Price should have said something advanced. But like, if you're walking out of there with just like, I don't know what they're fishing for, what the limit was, you know, I don't got a problem with leaving the guy a fish necessarily. If it was like done in a rude way where, like, give me one of those things.

[Randall Williams]

Or if he, I mean, I think like, it comes down to if you really. If it was a question.

[Brody]

Yeah.

[Randall Williams]

And he's like, I'd appreciate a fish.

[Brody]

You're not stepping off my boat.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Randall Williams]

Yeah. I mean, I had people had people give me some of their fish if they didn't want to take it all home and, But I didn't ask people for it.

[Brody]

There's also situations where the captain's gonna fish and give you his fish.

[Randall Williams]

Right, Right.

[Brody]

So, I mean, I, I again, like, I don't know the details here.

[Randall Williams]

I don't like it. Thanks, Rashad.

[Brody]

Great.

[Phil]

Jordan says, Phil, if you don't bring up Randall's DIY chili dogs at the football game, it will be a travesty. I told. So this is about a new real Randall posted on Instagram where one of.

[Randall Williams]

One of the new reels where he.

[Phil]

Brought a Ziploc bag full of chili. I don't even. You guys. Okay, if you have not seen this, just go to Randall's Instagram. It is, it is obscene behavior from Randall.

[Randall Williams]

It's missing. I was really hoping because I looked up all the regs on getting stuff in there. I was kind of thinking I was going to have to stash it, you know, like a, like keep it warm.

[Brody]

In your pocket, bring it into the.

[Randall Williams]

Movies, feel like a Gatorade bottle of liquor tucked in your pants like we used to do at the Bengals games. But no, if you have food that you want to bring in, it's totally fine. And it abides by the NFL's bag policy. You just fit it in a gallon sized baggie. And so I was really hoping that I would have a confrontation and then I could pull out my phone where I'd screenshotted the rules and said, I Know my rights. But that didn't happen. The infiltration was actually very anti climatic. But I'm glad you enjoyed it nonetheless. I enjoyed it. I tickled myself with that.

[Phil]

Colin's wondering what piece of first light gear is the crew's favorite for cold late midwestern late season archery hunts.

[Brody]

You got a guy from Texas who hunts when it's never cold and you got two other guys who don't hunt cold late season archery hunts. I don't like sitting still and I don't hunt from tree stands too much. But I would imagine like going with a bib system is the way to go for that situation.

[Randall Williams]

I, I gotta look up the name of this jacket.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Randall Williams]

As a bad.

[Brody]

Yeah. Insulated bibs.

[Randall Williams]

As a bad person.

[Brody]

And some great big warm jacket that you can still draw a bow with. Yeah.

[Randall Williams]

There's a fleece. Jeez, this is embarrassing.

[Brody]

They just didn't pick the right like whitetail experts for this show. Randall.

[Randall Williams]

No, I know, I know. There is a fleece jacket that's got like a, like a windbreak.

[Brody]

Yeah.

[Randall Williams]

Layer in it and I, I can't find it at the moment, but that thing is incredibly warm. And yeah, it's fleece. So it's very quiet. Like it's shockingly warm. It's probably one of my favorite jackets that I just wear.

[Brody]

Do this, go on first lights website and just go to like the whitetail section and they'll have like cold weather gear. You'll find some good stuff there.

[Randall Williams]

Yep. Sorry. I'm bad at this selling.

[Phil]

Cody, this is, I guess general just traveling with meat tips and things to keep in mind for getting my axis deer, cape and meat home from Hawaii. Humble brag. But I guess if you guys have any sort of tips about flying with.

[Brody]

I've not flown with a cape but like you probably want to like get it frozen and keep it frozen. That's a good question. I don't know. Would you salt a cape before traveling with it to.

[Randall Williams]

I possibly. I don't have a ton of experience.

[Brody]

Phil, you're just picking really bad, like difficult questions for us today. The meat's easy. Freeze it and keep it cold. I, I would think the same thing for the cape. And there might be like call a taxidermist and they'll tell you like if you want to salt it or whatever.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Randall Williams]

I don't know that. When I flew back from Alaska with my beer hide. I don't know that we salted it. And you had, you couldn't freeze it because they had to check it yeah, well, you froze it, let it thaw, and then we threw it in the freezer again at the hotel.

[Phil]

But yeah, Brody, it's either these questions or the ones about video games and dnd. I'm trying to spare you from the questions.

[Brody]

I feel like we're like, just not like these people are going to be disappointed with our answers.

[Phil]

Well, that sounds like a you problem. Let's see here.

[Brody]

You're picking them.

[Phil]

Oh, yeah, I saw Brad. I'm late. A late in life, first time Hunter at 35. I've listened and watched you guys for years and read a bunch. A huge part of me wants to test myself and go alone versus going with anyone else.

[Brody]

Go alone?

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Brody]

Like, you will learn so much by hunting alone. You might. You might fail or where you otherwise might succeed if you had someone who knows more than you. But like, go hunt alone. That's all I'm going to say.

[Randall Williams]

It depends on what you're doing, I think, like, if you're doing. If you're doing a wilderness type hunt, you have to, or anything. I guess, like, it depends on how you do being by yourself. Doing something.

[Brody]

It can be tough in an entire day, for sure.

[Randall Williams]

If you're going to struggle without someone and not be able to keep your head in the game, you know, find a buddy or find a mentor. But if you're. If you're, you know yourself and you know that you can handle that sort of thing, go for it.

[Brody]

Yeah, I like. I mean, I don't know if he's saying go alone for the first first. It does say late in life.

[Phil]

I think the implication is that it would be his first time going out.

[Brody]

Oh, then I retract my answer. Go with someone else the first couple times, but don't be afraid to go out hunting by yourself.

[Randall Williams]

The chalice jacket.

[Brody]

There you go.

[Randall Williams]

The chalice jacket. To sort of clean up one of our earlier misses there. Feel like we're back on track.

[Phil]

JRP fellow Bob Cratchit over here. I'd give you the secret Bob Cratchit handshake, but you're not in the room with me. You want to do one more?

[Brody]

One more.

[Randall Williams]

Okay.

[Phil]

I think we've talked about stuff like this before. Chester's not here, but I'll ask it anyways. It's from Jer, maybe Jerry. Here's an etiquette question for you all. Do you get a. You get a deer on private land. You are given permission to hunt. How much meat would be appropriate to give the landowner as a thank you?

[Brody]

I try to clear that up before the hunt and just say, look, if I get one, do you want some? Yeah. And go from there.

[Jordan Sillers]

I made tamales. Venison tamales.

[Brody]

Yeah. Bringing something like prepared. That's a great idea. Yeah. I think, you know, it's going to depend on the person, but a lot of times they may not even want any.

[Randall Williams]

Yeah, yeah. Asking ahead of time.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah.

[Brody]

Cool.

[Randall Williams]

Phil. Anything else?

[Phil]

I mean, we. We can do more, but.

[Brody]

But let's move on. I'm about to. I gotta. I got a frog in my throat.

[Phil]

Sounds good.

[Brody]

I gotta try and get through this.

[Randall Williams]

Do you want me to do this?

[Brody]

Yeah, you can let her rip.

[Randall Williams]

Hey, everyone. In case you haven't heard, this December Meat Eater is doing a big Christmas live tour through six cities in the Southeast. You can get all the info on locations and venues on our website. But here's the catch. Tickets are going fast. In fact, Fayetteville, Arkansas is already sold out. So if you want to catch a fun evening with Steve, Giannis, Clay, Randall and some very special guests, you better buy your tickets asap.

[Brody]

I forgot Brent. He's going to be there too.

[Randall Williams]

And Brent Reeves, everybody. Yeah, those tickets are going fast. Fayetteville, sold out. I think like, overall, a majority of tickets, like, if you look at the collective body of tickets, the majority are gone. So don't wait too long. It's nice to get some Christmas shopping out of the way. So if you've got a friend, a family member who would appreciate a fun evening of laughs and outdoor themed entertainment, why don't you hop on to themeatr.com tour, I believe.

[Brody]

Yep. And go to our Ben's page. They'll be easy to find.

[Randall Williams]

Yep.

[Brody]

So get on that. And one last thing. Next week's show is going to be a pre recorded episode because Randall and Phil are going out of town to play video games in Nashville. But you guys aren't going to believe this. Steve and Ranella is going to be on radio live, which I don't know how long it's been, Phil, since he's done that.

[Phil]

Few months for sure.

[Brody]

Yeah. So you don't want to miss it. And that's it, man. That. That's it for today's show. Thanks for listening and tune in next week.

[Randall Williams]

Thanks, everybody.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah, thank you.

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[Brody]

Is an I Heart podcast.