Hank Shaw

00:00so I've never been to Woodland Hills it's a rare land the land of wood it smells like money does it yeah out here yeah really smells like like white people where white people come to breed Hank Shaw ladies and gentlemen we're live Hank Shaw said Woodland hill smells like money you got to go to Beverly Hills it smells like diamonds they don't let people like me in uh they don't Beverly Hills no come on man you look respectable barely are you looking fine you're a chef how do you go from being a political blogger you are a political blogger well I was a political I was a capital bureau chief in Sacramento and in other places and covered Congress so was bit more than a blogger but you were deep in oh yeah I was in the room several times watching this thing go down now this atrocity of justice and and voting and chaos and all everything that's going around the Russians are

00:48attacking all this stuff that's going on right now what what does this feel like to you it feels so good to not be doing this job anymore so good I just I feel like anybody that has any sort of intelligence that is a political blogger that's involved in it for any length of time or not just political blogger you know a columnist an author after a while you got to realize you're you're writing about pro wrestling this is a rig system you're writing about a rig system and then occasionally something like this happens it used to be I mean what got me into I did it for 18 years wow I got into it because when I got into it the essence of politics was people of different kinds of backgrounds and Persuasions different regions would all meet in a room I.E the capital either it's a state capital or Congress and solve a problem somehow so it was all about compromise and debate and

01:39wheeling and dealing and that kind of stuff which is inherently fascinating when you're a reporter like whose Ox is going to get gored who's going to win this and like you know Joe needs this and somebody else needs that I got to give him this thing otherwise I'm not gonna get his vote and da and then at the end of the day you'd have this bill this transport I mean I could go on about some hilarious Congressional stories and and state government stories do so there was a transportation Bill God it was a t-21 Bill in Congress in 98 and one of my guys a guy named Frank Wolf he was a he's a lawmaker from Northern Virginia he's not there anymore he was kind of a duger you know kind of a reformer Republican guy you know dudle dght kind of guy and he wanted he hated pork and he wanted to get rid of all the the E marks in the transportation bill but as you probably know the

02:25transportation builds what they call a Christmas tree so everybody got a little bit of an ornament on top of the tree so that they can go home to their district and say look what I got so Bud Schuster of Pennsylvania was the head of the transportation committee back then so Bud uh would shut the door and anybody in the transportation committee was one of Bud's boys you want to rep Republican you're w a Democrat you're one of buds boys and so they all play game like this and so except for my guy my guy would come out and hold press releases saying oh you know this is terrible you know this is this is corruption blah blah blah n this how the game is played you know everybody gets get a everybody gets a little piece so it comes out and the bill passes over Frank's dead body basically and he holds a press release or a press conference talking about how terrible it all was and then I'm coming

03:13out of this press conference and one of Bud shuster's AIDS comes and says hey check out page I can't remember it was like page 123 of the bill so I did and in there was a line item that gave the residents of Bud Schuster's congressional district a free pass to drive the Pennsylvania Turnpike for X number of years so basically anybody who lived in Bud's District didn't have to pay tolls for I think it was two years awesome that's ridiculous well there was a reason because the the the road that most of those people took to work was being was there was going to be construction on it for like the next two years oh well that's fairly reasonable then yeah you could justify in front of a court of law is not completely but you know I mean cases were like yeah check out the page 400 23 we stuck something in there that's kind it's still going on too I mean that

04:03that's what's so bizarre that even in this age of transparency they're still like stacking stuff in sliding things into bills and there's very few people to watch him now yes and there's too many things to look at anyway even if there is something yeah even if something does get in there's going to be some new Scandal tomorrow Kanye West GNA be visiting Trump at the Trump Tower and like you're not going to think about the bill anymore exactly there's too much to pay attention to hankshaw which is why find it fascinating that you went from that world to like like much more of an artistic pursuit of being a chef and that's something that I've like really come to appreciate over the last say uh 10 years or so and I I credit the initial push to uh watching uh No Reservations oh yeah when Anthony Bourdain show was on the Travel Channel um because I I always love food you know

04:54I I I like eating everybody does you know but I never really thought of food dietitians don't like which which ones registered dietitians they don't they don't like eating well they don't like the pleasure aspect of it they want everyone to just like there's a guy that I know is like I don't eat for taste I eat for performance he eats like uh oatmeal with water and he doesn't heat it up I'm like get the out of here you there people that just you're missing the point you could do both stupid but um the point being um that I didn't think I thought of food as being like great like oh this is this tastes good like this I didn't think of it as an art and then when I watched Anthony Bourdain Show when he would have this like great reverence for these people that he would visit who were these real artists and they would put together these amazing dishes and the enthusiasm

05:44and the passion that he had for describing it made me like super excited about it and then I started realizing oh wow I never thought about it like this this is an art form this is just an art form like you know in the way that you would like make a sand castle you know it's not going to last forever you're making a meal you can take a photo of it it is not unlike standup comedy it's performance art it lasts for as long as you're in the restaurant or as long as you're in that comedy Hall yeah if if like you couldn't record comedy where like you could record a meal and film it like on Anthony Bordain show and I can't appreciate it at home but I could watch you if you did stand up and I laughed at home I don't have to be there that's true it it it serves more people but in the sense the same way like like if there was no recordings would be kind of very similar in a lot of ways but shared

06:32for with larger groups of people right I and in cooking when you bring it up to that kind of a level and I still I I'd hesitate to use the word artist with with cooks and chefs it sounds pretentious right um we're we're Artisans we we're Craftsman where that's an artist too like what's the difference uh well okay so there are some people who will say that my cooking leaves you with a deep feeling of whatever you know unwe or happiness or joy farts or whatever and and like no we're cooking good food we are buying product we are making product in in a way that will make you interested in it and will Delight you in some way shape or form and you know there's a very famous old uh Spanish Chef whose Name Escapes Me it said the end of every Michelin starred meal ends with a good so I don't that's a great way of looking at it I just don't want to take myself that seriously you well good for

07:28you but that's the same thing as comedians like my comedy changes worlds changes Minds it influen I'm an influencer it's it's I think it's important to get my message out there and use my platform no dude you're joking you're telling you're making people laugh ultimately well what Comics are freed from that today uh in this very unique form because of the internet and because of podcast so because of podcast Comics if you have a if you have actually something that you want to say that is not necessarily fun you can do that now cuz podcasts are so open-ended there's no real structure to it whereas like if you go on stage and people did for the longest time they would go on stage and rant about the government or about abortion or about crime or whatever and it would be not funny and they would feel like it was it was something that was important so it had to be discussed even though it was

08:19discussed in this weird Forum where people go to pay to see comedy and you're not giving them comedy you're ranting and it was almost like respected under like some snobbish sort of sect of stand-up comedy fans and practitioners it was a real weird time it was I blame Bill Hicks do you know you know Bill Hicks is yeah Bill Hicks did it perfectly but the way he did it a lot of people imitated it to the point where there's a uh famous uh comedy club in Georgia called the punchline that went under and it had a back room the green room where the comics would hang out and everybody wrote on the walls and uh one section of this wood paneled wall said quit trying to be Hicks and uh Jamie the owner says he's going to get me that because they tore it down they saved that those pieces yeah put it up in here somewhere you can by by all means make a statement but make it funny

09:10yeah man that's where it's hard it's hard to do that but so some people like took the shortcut and they just wanted to be self-righteous it's hard to do Molecular Gastronomy and make it actually Soulful o Molecular Gastronomy is what he's calling cooking ladies and gentlemen not no not my cooking but that's tweezers Foams spherification calcium lactate yeah what is that all about like some people go too deep right yeah well you're kind of the opposite you're like one of the things that I've really enjoyed about um seeing some of your dishes that you like to cook things like say if you're cooking like a wild pork uh loin you want to use a lot of the ingredients that are in the area where that animal lives yeah I I I'm not the first person to do that but um it's one of the things that I do a lot um what goes together in the field or in the water or in the seashore or whatever

10:03almost always will go together on the on the plate so I mean I've gone to done such weird stuff as you know when I go grouse hunting what were the Grouse eating you can tell what was in the CR and like I'll never forget there was this moment in um we were in North Dakota hunting sharptail grous and the grous had all been eating rose hips so I'm like y got to make a rose hip glaze on these uh Sharpies a rose hip glaz what does rose hips taste like um they're a little bit like um well they're loaded with vitamin C so they have that kind of acity twang to them but they're like imagine a cross between a watermelon and an orange it's something like that that's what rose hips taste like mhm why don't we just buy rose hips at a store and eat them uh because the center of a rose hip uh is what they used to make itching powder out of that's what it looks like Jamie oh look

10:59at that that's that's a rose hip mhm it's a fruit it is it's it's the end of the Rose and I mean that's what a rose becomes really and there's a variety called uh yeah how the do I not know this I have roses well they don't all they don't always get pollinated oh so when they get pollinated the the best one is called a regosa rose and it is a it's a coastal Rose it lives in beaches and dunes and the rose up there is like the size of a cherry pepper it's like that wow yeah something a solid you know half dollar size if people remember what half dollar looks like um it's that big and it's juicy like a like a sweet pepper but you don't eat the center because the center is what they used to make itching powder out of itching powder oh Jesus Christ so it's like one of those you kind of eat around the edges Blowfish that can kill you like that kind of a deal but it just not that

11:51bad but it sus oh no but the outside's yummy yeah well how how bizarre put that photo up again I literally had no idea that they looked like that yeah so that center part is nasty right so you eat around nasty now if it dries and you um so what I make a rose hiip puree so I'll get these that kind of rose hip and dry it and um and then you rehydrate it and then you boil it just so you get soft and then you run it through a food mill so only the red flesh comes through and all those seeds stay in the food mill and you get this incredibly amazing looking paste that looks exactly like tomato paste but it's like concentrated rose hip flavor oh and it's ridiculously good wow and that's what is that back there back that up one Jamie that's like a a puree or something is that like how they would make that that you would grind that up in some sort of a way it's

12:40Pro yeah it's probably the extract I mean they make jellies out of it a lot and um the the the swed and and Norwegians make um fruit soups out of it how do I not know this this is so I I really thought rose hips Were Somehow another like a rose leaf I thought You' took like the cuz I know those things must taste good cuz deer eat them like crazy oh yeah they they like my friend's wife was like oh I love animals it's so cute we have deers in the yard then she started going they all go the same way they started planting the Roses the deer K beat the Roses she's like these need to die kill them she's out there the crossbow kill them all yeah so his I I saw I mean his wife like literally wants to murder these deer cuz they're killing her flowers it's funny it's like oh honey we need a tag yeah she's going to try to get a tag from Malibu oh Malibu lots of

13:32luck I know Malibu just uh granted uh a stay a pardon on that mountain lion who's been uh killing all the alpacas up there I don't know if you heard that story no but it's awesome it's a fascinating story because there's a mountain lion his name is p45 he's actually been collared and they know who he is they know he has a active radio caller on him so they know it's him and he's just murking these alpacas he killed what was 11 alpacas and one that's the stupidest slowest deer I've ever chased they're in a cage he just hops the fence and has a slaughterfest I mean he's not even eating them he's just them up you know I think he's plenty of food up there he just decided to eat them because they were or kill them because they were there and so they decided uh that they could P they could U pass a um depredation permit on him so they're going to kill him and so then

14:19there's outrage and the woman who owns the Alpaca Farm apparently was like really scared because she was like I just wasn't prepared for the vitri all mhm and so now she doesn't want it killed she's not going to use the depredation order she's instead wants someone to somehow or another take it away and put it somewhere else probably up in NorCal where I live well I've seen five mountain lions wandering around in the wild I mean we they're around oh there's a lot there's one today big kitties there's one today a video they put up of uh this guy in his home looks out on his front porch and there's a Mountain line killing a deer on his front porch it was just put out today did you see it Jamie did you see that one it's crazy I mean it's it's in a Suburban neighborhood it's a big cat too and it's just dragging this deer on his on his front porch like whoa Jesus

15:07Christ here it is like this is this guy security Mountain line was caught on camera Thursday attacking a deer in a resident's front porch in San Francisco San Francisco yes watch look at this I me this is San Francisco San Francisco and it's dragging the deer way this is crazy okay that's amazing because I mean both of us have been to San Francisco that thing must be living in Golden Gate Park well the crazy thing is or it came up from the peninsula where there's a fair bit of habitat for it there's a it's very strange what what they're able to do and how they're able to move around they're just so smart oh the deer had been eating roses well them sometimes you got to pay rent that's the mountain L hired by the Rose owners to Jack the deer yeah it's um they're it's amazing how they can get around they killed a giant one in Santa Monica in someone's Backyard Santa Monica which is like

16:05deeply populated and uh this this guy called up I don't know the police I guess and said hey there's a Giant mountain line in my yard and they couldn't figure out how to get it out of there they killed it it was you know 150lb cat in Santa Monica just wandering around pretty big they get bigger did they be 200 do they get two God that's a giant one huh big kitty you see them in like Utah well I was listening to this podcast yesterday where this uh they were talking about spotting jaguars in Arizona they're spotting them more and more lately apparently they've spotted a couple of them now and in a South in the in Texas too very southern part of Texas it's so interesting it's so it's like part of you is like yeah that's cool they're coming back here part of them like it's cool as long as there's only a couple of them like you don't want too many Jaguars running around where the

16:52kids are playing folks it's like sea lions I have nothing against sea lions but there aren't enough great white sharks to to make the sea lion population kind of normal so we're just blitzed with sea lions up in Northern California have you ever seen the video that they took of people right on Fisherman's Warf they took his mahi mahi it's no no no they they're killing seals or sea liines like they're killing seals on Fisherman's Warf giant huge sharks murking these sea lines right next to the Fisherman's Warf so these people are there filming and then see that while they're hanging out here is right oh yeah exactly yeah this is people yeah these people are hanging out and like yeah yeah well you know we're just going to oh boom and look at all the blood in the water I mean they all come to the to the side of the edge to look over over the edge of the dock

17:41and I guess this is a security camera that's on this boat that's filming this but I mean look at all the blood that is crazy know they're warm blooded mammals yeah this one's rapidly cooling um so I've caught all kinds of sharks you see where the uh that power boat is in the background go about 150 yards towards Alcatraz or you know or actually that's towards Angel Island um and uh and there are seven Gill sharks big big big seven Gill sharks that live in that channel Gil seven Gill sharks a different type of shark it is it's a really really primitive kind of shark they're actually quite tasty um and you're allowed one a day and they Cruise the bottom in the Deep channels in San Francisco Bay it's actually one of the best places to catch them outside of New Zealand um how deep is that can be over 100 so you just troll at the bottom or you just drop a line down you either

18:31anchor up or you uh or you bounce bottom off oh wow what a cool looking shark yeah they're crazy looking wow they do look really primitive you know it's interesting sharks because of the whole shark fin soup controversy um this which is not good by the way if you've ever had it I have had it I had it once and I'm like no thank you it was okay yeah I mean it wasn't anything that I think you should Slaughter sharks for precisely especially not just the fin like it's so bizarre there's so much meat on a shark that the worst you know but what I was going to say is that there's this new sort of uh liberal knee-jerk reaction to sharks that now you're not supposed to kill sharks so there was a I think it was the mayor of New York City or was it the governor that caught a thresher shark and it's not an endangered species it's a totally legal fish to catch and

19:21you'll see him at fish markets and he caught it and cooked it and people just jumped on the outrage train and started getting angry that he was killing endangered sharks and every was like whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa this is not we're not making shark fin soup we're not some gigantic Chinese commercial fishing vehicle right here it is New York governor in hot water over shark photo and that's a little thresher too it's total legal it's a fish I mean it's not a fish it's a shark but it's a it's it's no different I mean that's what it is I mean I get that a lot because um I fish for leopard sharks in San Francisco Bay and tamales Bay every year they're delicious they're fantastic and everyone gets I get the same reaction but I'm like wait wait wait wait first of all they're a species of least concern if you look at all the fish monitoring things and whatever and

20:08we're keeping like four for the whole season and because they can get reasonably big and they're they're it's just it's the it's the common shark that lives up there and everybody I I think that when you get down to it is is Americans are not really good at Nuance right and you know it's like oh well one shark's endangered so they all must be dangered I'm like no well there's a very cursory Glimpse at the facts and what it what what they're going to get outraged at before they decide to pull the outrage shoot they're just like pull it pull it he's got a shark pull it yep outrage they just they don't I mean there's not enough time in the day to really pay attention to all the different animals that are being consumed and how you what you should be concerned with and what not so you think I think I read somewhere that sharks are endangered and he's got a shark hey man

21:01you and they just meanwhile they have a fet of fish in their stomach you know they eating fries cooked in beef fat as they were on the way over there which are good by the way yeah they're great but these uh leopard sharks um now what is the difference in like I've had moo it's the only shark I've ever eaten what would you say a leopard would be it's pretty dramatically different because makos and Threshers are much more like swordfish so if I or swordfish sturgeon makos and Threshers all kind of are in the same culinary bucket they're like a steak like a thick me I like that a lot of people don't though right some people don't but yeah it's you know no accounting for Taste um but a leopard sharks which you have down here in SoCal um leopard shark is super super white uh it's very dense um it's a little bit more like grouper is how I describe it interesting it's it's an amazing now I

21:52mean there's a trick to it so if you're going to fish for these fish you need to have ice on board um and you need to basically you catch the fish you kill the fish um and then you gut the fish right there and then you get them on ice because um sharks skates and Rays effectively pee through their skin so they so if you don't gut the fish right after you kill it uh you get this buildup of ureic acid in the meat and it's basically your fish fillet is going to smell like ammonia which nobody likes so that's that's interesting skates and rays are the same as well huh MH so all three I think if I I have remember their alas I'm going to forget it's elasmo elasmo morphs or something I forget what the scientific name is but it's the cartilaginous fish now the the variations in sharks that's that's a very extreme variation the difference between like a grouper and a swordfish

22:43which is like a real thick meaty what what what accounts for that do you know diet diet yeah um leopard sharks like crabs Crustaceans uh shellfish that sort of thing although they actually really really dig um this nasty little fish called midshipman um which is this it looks like a the ugliest catfish you've ever seen and here's a pro tip for you the best bait to catch a leopard shark is what was ever in the previous leopard shark's stomach just bait your hook up with whatever was in its stomach and then you will absolutely catch another leopard shark huh and this is the that's the mid Shipman yeah midshipman what a strange looking fish well the other good thing about them is not only do the Sharks love them but they stay in the hook forever they like have a thick outer sh or something yeah there wow yeah there's and see the luminescent dots on the bottom that's pretty cool oh

23:33wow what a cool looking thing how big do those things get well about like that that's it big so they're essentially just little tiny Bait fish yeah yeah I mean I think get maybe 10 inches long maybe what a cool looking fish though that's so prehistoric looking there's a little Ray actually it's a skate yeah go back to that other thing again yeah look at that thing that's so little bioluminescent dots underneath it so in deep deep water that thing that's all visible yep it's like racing stripes on one of those uh tricked out sports cars you know on Maxima like my sneakers like if you rant these are like these things like you see them at night oh they you know what I'm talking about yeah they reflect so that's kind well that actually is like luminescent though it's not that it reflects light yeah it actually exudes light right wow that's a trip see the that's I am as fascinated

24:25by the ocean as any other part of the world and I just think it's so incredible that we've only explored like 90 I think uh 2% or something ridiculous like that yeah I think 90 something per is unexplored that's so strange yeah there you go look at that thing but it's funny I mean I'm known as the game guy right but I've spent most of my life dealing with Fish And shellfish and seafood and I I only started hunting when I was 30 that's yeah adult onset hunting is many people call it right yeah now um when you when you cook something like uh like a shark or anything that's controversial anything along those lines do you feel like you have to preface it with some sort of an explanation that this is not endangered species and there there's a giant misconception and this is no different than eating a tuna or I usually put a paragraph or something in there um to

25:17say when you're writing something about you be like you know hold on people this is not you know it's not a white shark it's not you know it's not an endangered species at all I mean just you know and I'll usually put a link to the the where it says uh it's I you can is the international Union of concern whatevers and it's basically it's the it's the marker that shows what's endangered what's threatened what's a species of least concern and you know even then if you think about it our our bag limit for leopard sharks in the San Francisco Bay is three a day and we typically do a self-imposed limit of only two a day and we almost never keep females when you say we meaning you and your friends no I'm meeting most most of the commercial fishing fleet in uh like so if you could take a charter in the you mean commercial like recreational yeah yeah yeah like Charter charter boats um

26:08they'll typically like do you need three fish like you can have for three fish but there it's sort of strongly encouraged just you know oh that's cool just take the two and we're going to throw these these big giant females back because a lot of times especially this time of year they uh they can have pups because they give birth to live young yeah and nobody wants to you know open up a a shark that's got little pups inside that's just wrong have you ever seen that um it's is it an x-ray or a sonogram of sharks with the baby sharks in their stomach no I've never seen it well most people don't know probably that sharks do what you say have live young inside of them but they're like these I put it up on my Instagram CU it look it's so crazy looking that it looks fake it's like they're little monsters living inside this this other shark's body see if you can find that well if

26:58you look at a human feetus like four days look at that look at his his mouth going open oh yeah but there's images of it that's better Jamie there's uh there's there's some yeah that's you can get a look at what it what it looks like I mean that's crazy I mean that's what that and some of them eat their fellow brothers and sisters inside the womb like they'll eat the weaker ones that's why you shouldn't have more than five kids but what the how do they eat and they're eating inside a womb like what kind of a monster is a shark that they can eat while they're in the womb and they have teeth already they have fangs well you know are you know human babies have teeth when they're born don't they no no that's right they don't you no you don't have kids do you no not that I know of he skated through he passed the breeding point I'm pretty sure got through how old are you now uh 45 or 46

27:52did you come close at any time not that I know of no no good for you there's plenty of picking people that's one thing people with kids will try to tell you like that everybody needs kids like I have kids let me tell you something everybody doesn't need kids there's plenty of people you could be a wonderful contributing member to our culture and Society without reproducing yep it's nonsense it's not everybody's path but one thing about babies is they don't eat other babies while they're in the womb that you know of they do absorb them though don't they like some weird twins this weird weird uh siamese twins where one twin will absorb the other one and then they'll found like a tooth in the baby's head oh yeah I've heard about that called dermoid o that's a good name for it be a good name for a kid what's your name dermoid but there are a lot of meals now

28:41that people look look down upon and that's becoming one of them right sharks sharks is becoming one of them squirrel's another one squ squirrel's mostly that's a mostly uh urban urban people like to make fun of rural people for eating squirrels it's a sign of like oh you must be a hick well if you go to C there's a in North Hollywood that near where I used to live and you can go there and feed them peanuts it's kind of cool they come right up to you you just lay down as long as you're laying down the squirrels will literally you lay down and hold up a peanut and the squirrels will literally come up to you and take your peanut and people feel bad about that like we have weird rules about what animals we like what animals we don't cuz if it was a rat that came over and took your peanut you'd be freaking out and there's not a whole lot of difference between a squirrel and a

29:23rat the tail dude yeah that tail is so fluffy and adorable and it sticks up it looks like it's talking to you tree tree rat with good with good PR tree rat with good PR and something about fuzziness we'll we'll let them in come on in come on in as long as you eat just plants you know which is not true apparently there's a u a video of a squirrel they caught eating some sort of a mammal like a mouse or something like that they eat eggs all the time too do they mhm like ground nesting birds eggs no well they go in a tree tree yeah oh wow there it is look at this look at this squirrel eating this mouse like it's sandwi python rabbit this is so crazy like how often does this happen you know ground squirrels in California uh there are guys I don't I haven't done it but there there are guys who go out and shoot ground squirrels keep that up keep that up there like when Louie when

30:17you shoot Louie Joe comes out of his hole and grabs Lou and eats him oh Jesus ah it's a little horrible it's like I instantaneously they just started I never liked you anyway you know I mean it's it's just horrible there's a ranch that I go to tone Ranch oh yeah yeah and uh tone Ranch the guy who one of the guys there's a guy there told me that the biomass this is a morbid Scene It is squir we're sitting here talking why this squirrel is eating intestines it's just pretty much eating the entire Mouse oh my God and he's going off too um the biomass of ground squirrels is he a ground squirrel he must be right he looks like it with his little squirly tail he does look like a ground squirrel yeah squirrly little bastard um the biomass of ground squirrels is more than any other animal on the ranch it's 27,000 Acres with mountain lions deer elk pigs pigs and there's more weight of

31:13ground squirrels than anything else pretty and it would I would love to be able to tell you that yeah they're delicious but they tend to carry Bubonic plague oh which does not make them good eats yeah you can eat regular squirrels but you can't eat ground squirrels tree squirrels yes ground squirrels no what is the the difference in the species are they interchangeable are they hybrids ever no they're totally different species and uh uh the Western gray tree squirrel is really really big uh he's over two pounds and he's kind of a very cold slate gray and uh it's actually it's quite good good eating squirrel um there used to be a very high limit on them here in California but um when Southeast Asian immigrants the Mong came so the Mong um are very fond of squirrel hunting and so it was a big thing what they did back in Southeast Asia and so when they caught here they're like sweet

32:04they're all these squirrels and I guess they shot them out because they uh the limits were 10 in the 70s and early 80s and now they're just four uh which is fairly low uh you know for example in some of the uh Appalachian States is 10 H so that's interesting the mongs I've heard that before they're a big Hunting Community h of the of the recent immigrants to this country the two most huness groups are the are the Mong and the Russians interesting and when I say Russians I mean sort of VAR you know Russians ukrainians movans that you know do they have a preference for like what they go after well I know the Russians been putting a herd on our sturgeon up north sturgeon yeah interesting uh and it's mostly poaching and fishing game is having a hard time getting a handle on it now do they like sturgeon for the caviar for the meat yeah for the caviar oh wow so how do you but that would have

32:58to be a female so how do you differentiate when you're catching them uh well you can can they're pretty slow they're they're pretty calm slow fish so it's pretty easy to determine if it's a male or a female um and if it's it'll look sort of they call it gravid but um it looks pregnant if it's a big female okay and the other thing is um they're almost almost always oversized fish so we are allowed three a year in California legally and they have to be oh I'm going to forget this I think it's 40 to 60 in from the fork of the tail um that might be a slight lay off but that's basically the legal size how hilarious is that legal size is 40 in oh yeah you have to catch something 40 in that's that's a big ass fish State record's I think 8 and 1 half ft long wow in California yeah it's either eight or 10 it's huge the state record was caught by a dude in uh in valo he caught

33:48it in the Carz Straits in like um I want to say the 80s judging by the haircut now where are they are you catching them in deep water like how do you catch a St you can catch them in Sacramento you can catch them in kaoa you can catch them in the Delta they Rivers like what are they in yeah they're in rivers they're and then they go out into the bay wow but the the general place you're going to fish for them is going to be the Delta out of Antioch out of San Pablo Bay that kind of area now these sturgeon are are they biting hooks or you snagging them no they're you're they're biting hooks what do they get what do they feed so depending on who you talk to there's a friend of mine named Jay Lopes who runs a guide service there um um he's a specialist in Sturgeon he really loves cured salmon row oh so and he's got some special thing that he does with his salmon row but some people use ghost

34:36shrimp some people use cut Herring um they'll eat all kinds of stuff the largest freshwater fish on record for California is a white sturgeon caught by Joey Pala 19 knew was knew it the huge fish weighed an amazing 468 lbs whoa that's a big Fish Man that's amaz that's amazing the story of that fish is pretty hilarious too because he C he's a he was working he cut off work at you know I think it was in June or oh no July yeah so it was still it was still light out late so he caught this fish after work and he couldn't get the damn thing in so he's like it's dragging him all around the Carin Straits and I guess he gets on another boat like mid catch and it was a bigger boat that could actually control it cuz the sturgeon was just dragging them up and down and it's just the story if you can find the story of it it's just hilarious is that it wow look at the size of it and it is a story that

35:31will and that that fish will never be broken because that's a that would be an illegal fish right now why is it illegal uh because you're not allowed to land anything bigger than 60 in from the fork of the tail oh well how the you going to measure that like what if it's like you're like hold on get the fish close I'm going get out the ruler oh if it's a if it's close um you just cut the line well now if it's close you you can they're really survivable fish they don't die easy so you can um um I think you bring them on board you bring them on board measure them and then throw them back huh now is that a good fish to eat outside of the row I love sturgeon how do you eat it uh sturgeon again I would say if you've never eaten sturgeon imagine swordfish oh it's a lot like that no kidding it's it's a signature dish of Sacramento Cuisine actually so if you go to restaurants in Sacramento

36:20you will see sturgeon all over our menus people don't know about Sacramento Sacramento is so different than California you know in in terms of like how La people think or you know San Diego people think Sacramento might as well be like Iowa I I don't mean in a bad way I mean not I love Iowa I I mean in terms of like the hunting and fishing and the outdoors people and the it's more like the Twin Cities okay that's a good way to put it yeah like Minnesota yeah yeah that makes sense so here's a stat for you that I just my uh my girlfriend Holly just told me she was doing some research for a piece that she was working on 95% of Californians are Urban 95% of California is rural o isn't that crazy that is crazy wow and over a third of the state is public land really mhm wow it's it's remarkable and it's uh you know it's why I stay here that that whole public land private land thing is

37:23a is something that I had literally no knowledge of no no interest in never discussed until I met ranella and when ranella started Steve Rella started explaining to me the difference between public land and private land and how it was all put in place by Teddy Roosevelt and all the conservation that was done in the 1800s and how much resistance was behind it and he um actually talked about it pretty in depth in a podcast we did here a couple of weeks ago and I just I can't believe it took me till I was like 45 until I heard about that it's you know actually Steve's got a really good example of why you might not necessarily have to because I he was talking at the back country hunters and Anglers and he has he used to live in Brooklyn weirdly yeah well his wife was working there when I met him he was there it's still kind of odd but uh it is cuz he's about as Michigan as you get

38:13yeah um and so he's like yeah well everybody in New York City knows can can you know site you chapter in verse the Subway Lines mhm no one who doesn't have reason to has any reason to know about the Subway Lines so when somebody who lives in rural Montana or whatever says why haven't you ever you know this issue with public land blah blah BL well if I live in New York City I don't have to know um and it's just like we got we were saying at the beginning of this it's like there's too many things to look at there's too many distractions in our in our world right now and it's just it makes it hard to do anything anymore there's no quiet at all in our lives anymore most people's lives yeah yeah that's Steve's got got a real good way of breaking things down like that he's he's got a good way of uh providing you with examples that you go oh yeah that that's a good one you know because yeah

39:07if you lived in Montana you wouldn't give a about the subway lines of Brooklyn and if you lived in Brooklyn the infringing on public lands or Paul Ryan's plans to sell them off to corporations so they could pay off the debt it doesn't even register well here's a good one for you so depending on where you live like most of us call it public land mhm other people call it government land which a very different connotation yeah because the government land means it's not ours but it's really ours right so if you call it government land seems like well if they sell it it's not yours anyway right but it actually is yours which is that that is a weird one that takes a while to absorb like the land is actually the own we've the people of the United States are the owners of the land right so if you go hunting on public land you're you're like you know the back hun Back Country

39:59hunters and angler shirts they have it says public landowner I love that shirt because we're all public land owners you pay taxes you live in America you own public land similarly all the game on everybody's land public or private belongs to the either the people of the United States or if it's migratory the people of Canada the United States and Mexico or if you're in Texas and it's a high fence well that's legally livestock yeah that's real weird right that's that's a strange distinction the the the difference between public land and private land and the animals being on it even if it's private land those animals are owned by people right by the people reading public which is why we actually have deer yeah that's the only reason why well that in large scale agriculture the populations are higher than ever before and all that good stuff actually it's there's a great book called

40:46deerland that talks about why if you go to the Northeast they're overrun with white tails because white tails like the edges between field and and Forest and suburbia is their perfect habitat for it yeah well the and the problem that goes with that is of course deer ticks yeah and Lyme disease which is run rampant through the Northeast it's just Steve has it yeah Steve has it his son has it and they they are amongst two people out of I don't know maybe 10 that I've ever met that have been misdiagnosed I had this guy Steven Cotler on here the other day who was misdiagnosed for a year for one year and because of that it got so deep into his system that he was in bed for three years in the hospital oh man he was hospitalized for three years from Lyme disease unreal it's a Horror Story it's so scary you know and you talk to people that have had it and one of the really fascinating

41:37things about Steve he's really smart Steven CER and when he was discussing it he was talking about the neurological aspects of Lyme disease that it really wrecks havoc on your cognitive function to the point where one time when he had it before he was diagnosed he didn't know what was wrong with him he was at a green light and he couldn't figure out what green meant oh wow then he couldn't figure out how to drive his car he had a stick shift he could not figure out how to do it anymore he didn't know how to drive his car like in the middle of driving he forgot how to drive it and he was like oh my God I'm going crazy there's something wrong with me like bad and that's like right before I believe he said it was right before they checked him into the hospital and I bet pumped them full of IV antibiotics and figured out exactly what it was well I had plenty of ticks on me but you know KN on

42:20wood never had line yeah man I wish there was a way to stop it like I wish there doesn't seem to be any I I think it's in California in particular it's misdiagnosed a lot because it's not here yet mass is it's they found it in Menino but it's not in Mass not like yeah right not in Mass yeah yeah in the east coast they think something like I think they were talking about I think they were talking about Long Island where they were saying some absurd number like 50% of the ticks have Lyme disease M there's something crazy like that I went mushroom hunting two summer ago so ago with um a fellow Chef friend of mine Anita low and uh so we were at Mushroom in and and by her place in eastern end of Long Island and uh you know we cook some mushrooms had a good time blah blah blah so I get back like 48 hours later and I find two tick nymphs right in the right in the band of my boxers and I'm

43:12like oh and so I immediately rushed to the doctor and I got that they basically they give you a three pack of cpro and you go boom boom boom and try and knock it out and seemed to work you got to get it quick huh yeah you got to get it really quick those little we I did this show for sci-fi called Joe Rogan questions everything and one of the things that were we investigated was this weird disease called Morgellons have you ever heard of this uh not by that name well it's a weird they think it's a psychosomatic disorder where these people believe there's something wrong with them but there's not and they have these uh parts of their body where they just itch incessantly and they can't stop and then they believe fibers are growing out of their body and they'll get like um carpet hairs in there and they think that it's growing out of their body you know carpet fibers

43:58and they're convinced but one of the guys that I interviewed was a doctor who also had morgelin and what he he had a really unique insight to it because he said that as a doctor one of the things that he found is there's a direct correlation between people who have this disease and Lyme disease they almost all have Lyme disease and he thinks that what's really going on is that PE and this is a guy who is like talking about his own like his brain malfunctioning on him he was saying that people who have Lyme disease that there's some sort of a neurotoxic effect of Lyme disease which distorts reality to the point where these people think these fibers are growing out of them and he was talking about himself like he saw something moving around in his eye like saw something wiggling around on the surface of his eye and then it wasn't there anymore and he realized like okay this

44:45is not real like I'm seeing something that's not real and then as he got deeper into it he found that all these people that had this bizarre more gelin thing also had Lyme disease makes sense I mean if you you know you know about the symptoms of toxoplasmosis yeahh where which it makes mice really dig cats yeah well makes them sexually attracted to cat urine people don't know what we're talking about Google Robert sapolsky from Stanford University in Northern California I've been trying to get that guy on for years he's just so not a publicity he just I can't get him on I'm like I'll fly to you dude he's like I'm busy I'm like he's um an expert in well he does a lot of primate work too he does a lot of work with baboons and stuff too but he's like the foremost expert in the United States of toxoplasmosis and the the effects of it it gets it gets them horny for cat

45:38urine it literally changes the the sexual hard wiring of a rat gets it horny for cat urine they literally get erections and they go running around near cats they're not scared of cats takes away their fear the cats eat them and because of that it gets into people the cats around doesn't seem to affect the cat's Behavior yeah the cats are just carriers and then it gets into people makes people more aggressive makes people more prone to get in accidents disproportionate amount of motorcycle victims motorcycle crash victims have toxoplasmosis that's what spolski pointed out when he was doing his residency they did some he was did doing some work in emergency rooms and one of the surgeons was saying there's a disproportionate amount of motorcycle victims that have toxo plasma so when a motorcycle victim would come in they would test him for toxo huh interesting

46:27ly toxo is one of the few diseases you can pick up from Deer really M how do you get it from Deer uh I'm not entirely sure I think it's contact or eating undercooked venison really but it's very rare it's it's actually I think there's only been like six cases in the last 20 years that the CDC reports but ironically there's a a guy who who um is on the the Facebook Forum that I run was one of the six oh wow like one of the odds right like well you know you I'm one of these guys and it was it it messed him up pretty bad like in what way what did you say it did to him uh a lot of the same a lot of the same uh symptoms that you were talking about you know risk taking risk taking and aggressive behavior there were some blood problems too like I I I can't remember for for the life of me but it was you know like his blood pressure spiked and I mean it was significant

47:18well it's what people when they talk about crazy cat people that literally is what they're talking about probably yeah oh the 60% of France at one point in time Toxoplasma because of all the cats roaming around they think they've gotten it down to as low as like 35% uh same as Brazil Brazil is somewhere around 40% 40% plus of people that live there have toxo there's also a disproportionate connection between toxoplasmosis rates of infect in infestation or infection and successful soccer teams they're risk-takers Yeah well yeah Risk Takers more aggressive it's very strange you should test MMA people they also yeah people would be off the chain be a real problem I love my kitty I'm cat crazy bro it's I think there's also um some sort of a connection between uh sexual promiscuity and females yeah there's a lot of weird stuff they're working on to try to figure out what exactly these

48:14parasites are doing to people's brains well you've heard of the corps right yes yeah make the zombie ants oh yeah yeah well there's good there's good strains of Corps too you want to climb to the top of that leaf well they they this is what people don't know what you're trying to talk about is there's an a mushroom that infects the spores infect an ant convince the ant to go somewhere high so that these Corps mushrooms grow inside the ant's body and then it explodes and sprays spores through the air infecting all around them it's so gnarly dude so crazy Nature's so nuts like if you watch the movie like the movie Alien so I don't know if this is 100% true but I've always heard that that the creature is a is a mashup of real insects is that the the uh bug okay so this is this a dead one that has it already is he about to blow see time lapse so in the time lapse

49:09this mushroom is growing out of the back of this ant's head like this ant has been killed by this fungus and it's now manifesting itself in this growing form that's not really a plant that's another thing that people misconstrue about fungus it's actually closer to an animal than it is to vegetation they they breathe oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide so this is some freaky ass alien life form that's growing out of this ant's head look at the size of that thing it's huge that's so narly kills The Ant And it grows mushrooms out of it and then the spores blow up and oh my God that's a CO that's so bizarre look it's popping through its exoskeleton that's so creepy like now you know where Ridley Scot got it oh yeah well do you know about that aquatic worm that infects grasshoppers no oh this is a great one this aquatic worm I love how focus and direct our

50:06conversations are yeah so every one of them I do I don't have anything focus and Direct in my life but um these aquatic uh worms or uh what is it aquatic yeah it's aquatic worm right yeah um it gets inside a grasshopper and this this is one that's infected a um a prag mantis and this one's going to burst out of the prag Mantis but when this aquatic worm gets in oh because you get it wet that's when it'll it'll come out and but the Aquatic worm that gets inside grasshoppers when it reaches gestation when it reaches its uh it's it's when it's time to be born it rewires the grasshopper's brain and talks the grasshopper into committing suicide so the grasshopper jumps into a lake and drowns and the Aquatic worm comes out of its body and swims away like look at this thing that's so nasty look at the size of this thing that was living inside this praying mantis while it was alive so it takes

51:10over the mind of these these beings I mean look at the size of this thing I mean it is a solid 30 to 40% maybe more of the mass of the body of this being wow that's so gnarly it's hard to believe when you look at the size of this thing cuz it's continuing to come out the grasshopper let's just if we had a scale the grasshopper is maybe 2 in long well that's the Mantis that's the that mantis is probably a Solid 4 in Long yeah I'm sorry mantis so whatever length that is the Aquatic worm is three times that yeah which is just nuts and it's living in its body and it's still coming out as we're talking now it's out it's huge man and it's trying to find water it's gravitating towards the water but with grasshoppers thing on fire now right that's evil we're lucky they're little if uh if you find um the grasshopper there's one where it talks the grasshopper and jump the grasshopper

52:04just jumps in the water and just starts drowning and then it pops out of its body it's like Nature's such a creepy creepy thing in in a lot of ways like the parasite World in particular like somehow or another predators to me are less disturbing than parasites oh yeah here's one that's coming out of a was that a cricket or something is it could be look at that creepy ass thing yeah um aquatic worms yeah not good let's uh I wanted to talk to you about more uh bizarrely edible uh things that maybe um a lot of people don't think sturgeon is one of them uh I didn't know I knew that people eat sturgeon eggs but I really wasn't aware that sturgeon was that delicious as a fish I also wasn't aware that it was legal to catch them like I I for some reason thought that they were endangered it's weird which is one of the reasons why poaching is such a big issue is because we're one of the last

52:56Rec recreational Fisheries in in the country for sturgeon really yeah because of populations yeah because the um the East Coast um East Coast sturgeon was fished out around a 100 years ago and they're only now coming back in the east coast and there's still no fishery for him so all of the sturgeon you see in restaurants in Sacramento is farmed oh that's interesting MH so how do they Farm a sturgeon slowly I would imagine I I think they have to be seven years before they can they get to Market size so it's like making bourbon yeah because I was reading like uh what it was another commercial fish they were talking about the amount of time that it takes to grow a commercial fish to the point where you can Harvest it and it was some insane number like two inches a year where it takes forever to grow these things to the point I think it was catfish they were talking

53:48about like large catfish that's what it was they were talking about um what's going on in the Ohio river that um they're they're put putting these catfish in lakes and they're taking them out of rivers they're putting large catfish in Lakes but they can't survive they can only live in these Lakes for so long but everybody wants to catch a big catfish so they have these commercial catfishing businesses where recreational catfishing where they'll take these people and they'll have them fishing in these lakes and they use some sort of chemical in the lake that forces the catfish to bite yeah and this this chemical a catfish bordell yeah it's really gross man cuz it causes these Legions on the catfish's skin so these people catch these catfishes and they have catfish rather sorry and they have these red sores all over their body because some chemicals been introduced into the water

54:41which I guess the irritant causes them to like they're biting out of frustration I guess maybe the Unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible what's just so bizarre like what a strange choice that people have decided let's take this animal out there there's one with Legions on it oh yeah yeah yeah see another issue arises when bigger catfishes are introduced into pay lakes yeah P legs yeah they have these legs it's so I didn't even know that I didn't even know there was a pay like look at the all the spots on that one look at the spots on that thing gross and um see if you can find what it says that chemical is that they dump into the water J just go to the the Han River in Virginia you'll catch a nice one I've caught 70 Pounders well in a river really mhm yeah I mean how many of them are out which which fish do you catch is it blue blue cat fish white cat a white cat cuz it's a

55:33big one white cats blue cats Channel Cats but yeah blues and whites are usually the biggest fly heads get really big too but they don't live in Virginia I don't think it's called juicing okay chemicals they put in the water make the fish bite in the Pay Lake industry it's called juicing W weird look at the lesions on that thing scroll up a little Jamie back up look at that that poor thing's body that's just wrong it's it's bizarre it's not just wrong it's bizarre I I don't really understand how that ever got passed how people are like accepting that like that's a natural one the one below that this seems totally healthy that some got caught from a river so these pay lakes is is like I guess it's like a private land thing somebody owns and just keeps dumping these fish in there and apparently they don't live there very long yeah it's the fishing equivalent of

56:21a of those little teeny high fence places you see in the East you know Goan Gohan El 40 acres do they have those in the East yeah the East Coast like so you know in Texas a lot of the the high fence places are thousands and thousands of Aces but they have them in the in the Midwest and in the East and sometimes they're painfully small you know like tens of acres oh where effectively you know you're it's like shooting something in a pen I saw one that was 10 acres was on eBay yeah there or Craigslist where this guy had put up this um hunt in quotes I'm doing air quotes for this enormous buck that they had used for breeding on this commercial deer property see if you own a piece of land in Pro uh in Texas or in any place where they allow this you can buy deer and then have these deer released on your land and then you can air quotes again hunt them so they raise these things to

57:20maturity and they give them this massive protein Rich diet and then they also have great genetics on top of that so these deer have these insane antlers Franken Buck oh they're so strange looking it's such a weird thing when you see them and you know that is what a regular wild Colorado mule deer looks like it just looks normal it's like that's what you see everybody recognizes it that's what it looks like when you see one of those bizarre farm- raised bucks it looks like they have bushes growing out of their it does it's really bizarre I don't even think it's attractive you know it's gross it doesn't it doesn't have that you know that classic line of a of a reg of a deer that is kind of I think is imprinted on our brains yeah no I agree it it's it's some weird thing like double e fake boobs right like okay what are you doing like you went you went crazy he went too

58:13far like he did something that doesn't make any sense anymore yeah um another fish that I wanted to ask you about is what are you going to what's up I found out I found out with the juicing okay what's the chemical copper sulfate oh it says that it forces them to feed and move excessively and then it also is used to like uh treat vegetation and algae and other leges kill kill yeah but and then us it in t an excess it can kill fish too but it says it's designed to kill unwanted Lake vegetation yeah when you look up it's copper sulfate and fish and it also used to be put in canned green beans to keep them green what mhm oh my God I wonder if it made people move around a lot after they ate them how strange man God what kind of an monster pours that into a lake to get the fish to eat more um I want to talk to you about gar have you ever had gar fish I actually haven't I know guys who

59:12have um I know you have to pretty much clean it with a hatchet um yeah and I know that everybody I know who's eating gar says it's awesome yeah I've heard smoked gar is awesome Jamie that's a little tiny one pull up yeah look at that go yeah that is a crazy fish that's been around for what how many millions of years that thing been for aot like over 100 I think totally primitive I mean it literally looks like some kind of a dinosaur fish and those are in Texas natural Texas Oklahoma Arkansas yeah like Louisiana and can you catch those on a hook or do you spear them you can catch them on a hook what do they what do they have Wire yeah you've been have a lot of wire right like those teeth if I remember right they like live bait oh okay what what an enormous crazy weird animal yeah there's a big one okay that's a perspective shot though that's still that's probably an

60:028ft car what's a world record gu let's take a guess I'm going to say I'm going to guess 12 feet 12 feet really that's going to be my guess wow I'm going to go with 10 you're probably right though new world record that doesn't look like 12 feet let's find it on the web what is the world record 279 lbs wow how big is that how long is it 279 pounds caught in 1951 that's the world record yeah whoa that's not from 1951 they we at the size of that thing alligator gar now is there a difference between an alligator gar and a regular gar yeah I think there's a couple different species oh and you can eat them all uh as far as I know see that's another animal I didn't know that you can eat these fish until I watched one of those uh crazy reality shows where people live in the mountains you know there were one of those subsistence shows make people eat on Fear Factor we made

60:58people eat animal dicks we never made people eat gar it's a and literally has an armor plate on the outside of it right it's like you need like a hatchet to get through it yeah I've seen people cutting through them with what looks like um sawall and stuff no it was what they were using was like something you would trim branches off a tree with crack crack crack just try to cut through that stuff 47 Ines in girth 8 foot five oh my God that's said giant things but that's not a world record right that's just a giant one H what a weird animal and it's just strange to me also that some animals figured out how to stay alive like alligators and crocodiles for you know x amount of million years well all these other things like largemouth bass are like so much more recent mhm and these things swim amongst them these strange remnants of a much more Savage past like the

61:52cican yes that's a great one because one they thought until they caught one it was like the early 1900s they thought it' been extinct for millions of years off coast of South Africa yeah now apparently like you can catch them there like there's you know there's a place where you can catch them it's it's and it's legal well I think it's Catch and Release but it's uh but it's it's not that you know was oh see C but when you catch they're super common but it's not like a news event when they catch one anymore oh there's one right there wow what a strange looking prehistoric creature too actually I think honestly I think the is more impressive that's bizarre looking but the um the cican if it's is it a deep water fish yeah it's a deep water fish now when you catch and release a deep water fish aren't they though bringing them up through the top like Rockfish are in the Pacific

62:39they certainly are they don't have their eyeballs pop out of their head right that's weird but link Cod don't oh so if you catch a link Cod you can bring them up to the surface and there is that a cican that someone caught in a hook looks like it and so when you catch a ling cod on a hook you can just throw it back in the water and even though it goes go 500t I've never seen a LOD with the Benz really and Rockfish always get them H so it's just a matter of the Frailty of the uh it's just the way the fish is built I think you know in here I'm just guessing but um but link will come from the from the bottom all the way up to the top to hunt whereas um beautiful fish too whereas rockish yeah bucket mouth God what cool looking fish and delicious too right yeah big old bucket mouth yeah Ling cods are that's a another one that looks like it's not supposed to be alive anymore they're so

63:29awesome they're so awesome looking my biggest one I ever caught was a was a hitchhiker it had hit a rockfish wow and so I brought the Rockfish just to the surface and the linkai wouldn't let go no gaffed the link Cod wow that's interesting 23 lbs whoa it wouldn't let go nope wow it'll let go if you if you let its head break the water but if you keep its head in the water it won't let go oh so when his head comes out of the water he's like oh this is right he's like huh that's peculiar let's go look at the mouth on those oh yeah blue one wow so how you had you like that to be the last thing you saw yeah that would suck it would be like tripping in Hell sucked into that Vortex yeah that looks like something from that movie The Event Horizon when the demons had taken over the spaceship like get sucked into that yeah that teeth on that this it's a hard ass world that thing lives in

64:22don't don't lip them when you catch him oh yeah right yeah yeah you got to grab that thing around the gills or Gaff it or what is all that we're looking at here uh he's gotting it what a strange stomach looking yeah they turn blue like that um it's oh I used to know they turn blue because of what they eat and I think it's like salmon when you buy commercial salmon they have to dye the skin because they're not eating the same kind of bugs yeah well farmed farmed Atlantic salmon yeah yeah um well they're eating the uh the red is from krill extremely rare blue Cod okay so this is hilarious so I've seen this article extremely rare blue Cod caught in Australia which is okay so it was explained to me that they are extremely rare in Alaska does that say Alaska or Australia Alaska Alaska but they're incredibly common where I live oh I once I once hooked into 13 lingcod and one

65:18fishing trip and six of them were blue wow so and this is all off the Northern California this is off the Marin Sonoma Coast and that's a great area to fish right it is but it's like not extremely rare yeah but apparently up there they're they're rare but it has to do with their diet okay so maybe did it migrate from up there all the way up to Alaska well they're native they're native all the way up to Alaska like the really biggest ones are if you catch them in Alaska oh really like 50 Pounders o yeah the ones that would eat a toddler well Alaska has those goddamn hbit that are like mhm barn doors giant so I I was sort of sad because I went up there because I wanted to catch a giant and then I was reading about it before and I realized that every every H bit over about 125 pounds is Big breeding female so it's a bad idea to land it because actually the hit stocks in alask

66:10are not doing that well so get it to the surface get a picture of it so your ideal halit apparently is like an 80 pounder or an 85 pounder that's plenty big right which is plenty big and it's not necessarily big breeding female and so you're not really hurt the species it's like like the guys who keep the 400 Pounders absolutely and the weird thing about fish breeding behavior is that it's it's exponential so uh a buddy of mine guy Nam R.J Waldren uh he landed 53b striper in the Delta um actually was his it was his fishing buddy and they tried and tried and tried and tried to revive it but it just it died which sucked um and and then but it that thing there would be like the super mom for thousands and thousands and thousands of stripers whereas 18inch striper that was a female would not be it's not linear it's not like they get a little bit more they get

67:11exponentially better more you know they get they have exponentially more breeding power as they get bigger and bigger and bigger so it's generally not a good idea to to eat your seed corn even if they're fish wow um I had a friend of mine who caught an enormous hbit on a boat it was one of those uh charter boats fishing boats and when they were pulling it up they cut the line on him and he was so pissed off he's like they were trying to tell him like look you can't keep this one right it was huge he was like I go how big and he's like more than 300 lb we have I don't even know how big it was so big took forever to bring in but once we got it to the surface they wanted to cut the line they let it go and he was so pissed off he the right thing to do biologically makes sense it totally makes sense and they're such a cool looking animal too like what a strange

67:57flat the size of that that one's too big 255 lb they up they shouldn't have killed that one right I wouldn't have I mean it's it's legal it's not illegal but it's you're supposed to do it because the stocks are they're okay but they're not doing super great it's just you know because the chances are the next the next drop down you're going to catch a 75 pounder anyway right so really there's Jesus there you know if you see the ones in the right uhhuh that's what you should be keeping the 287 I'd let that go because think about it how much H are you going to eat really right I mean yeah I know most guys are going to go up to Alaska once a year so but still those other ones are in the 70s you there's easily three or four of those in the 70 pound range 287b fish is a big ass Fish Man and the the flake the the flake on those big hbet is so big that it's it gets so

68:50coarse that they're not they're okay I mean they taste fine but the they're harder to cook well when my uh oldest daughter was I guess she was like 12 somewhere around then 12 or 13 she she's real sensitive she's a very sweet person and she wanted to be a vegetarian and uh you know and she was a vegetarian for a while then she started eating meat again but she always loves animals and I said well listen let's go fishing and this is before I ever hunted I'm like let's go fishing we'll catch a fish and we'll cook it and it's a kind of a cool experience cuz you get to experience catching something cooking it so we went out this boat 5 minutes into the trip we catch a Marlin all right and where are you fishing Hawaii oh we're in Hawaii and five minutes in we we it's not a big marlin it's about a 70 lb Marlin um it takes a while to get it on board we get it on board and then the

69:42guys who run the boat beat this thing to death in front of her with a club because that's what you do you get a Marlin on board you beat it to death why that's the only way to stop it from flopping around and going why they keep Mar they kill it e it oh they eat them yeah they smoke them apparently but that was another thing I thought Marlins aren't good I'm glad you just said that because the most recent trip that I had I was in Hawaii just a month ago and that's the only state I've never been to oh my God you got to go that's a magic place that's a real I think Hawaii has an energy that when you get off the plane you go oh we're here like it's got a feel to it cuz you're on a volcano you're on a volcano in the middle of the ocean I mean that's really what it is volcano popped out I mean you could you could we took a helicopter where you fly over the volcano as it

70:29leaks into the ocean you see the steam coming up as the lava flowing it's amazing um anyway they pull I mean she's such a sweet kid she's so sensitive and friendly and nice and they beat this Marlin to death in front of her and then they're covering it with bags of ice and they're all psyched and it's making all these weird noises and then like she just starts to calm down and get over it and then 20 minutes later starts flopping again it's not totally dead she like oh god I've never been able to take her fishing since she's 20 now she's like You you dad what did you do and I'm like honey this is where we get fish this is where fish come from yeah it was just it was the size of a dog it was like you know a dog sized thing it was a it wasn't like we brought in you know a 12in trout right it was a giant ass living creature that these guys beat to death I mean it's a

71:27small boat it's they they beat it to death 5T from her so 5T away they're beating this thing with a club wow yeah and I that's kind of dramatic it was very dramatic it was so that was the end of that see she we we've talked about taking her hunting but I don't think I think still that one Marlin messes with her um but they were telling me that you had to smoke it but on the last trip that I was on um which was about a month ago these guys were telling me that no no no you can cut it and eat it like swordfish yeah you cut it and Grill it there's no reason why you couldn't have you ever had you've ever had it though I've never actually eaten it so why were you saying why would you keep Marlin because almost nobody does like you know like if you go to Costa Rica or Baja or the Caribbean they're caught they catch in release only now do they do that to ensure the

72:16population I think they do I mean because I've I've I've heard that the Hawaiians eat them but I've reading it and that's just but yeah I mean almost all marlin fishing is catch release hm that's interesting yeah that's a that's the big trophy fish right that's the one they want to the wall yeah it was the only time I ever caught one and we caught it maybe 10 minutes into fishing now swordfish get that big yeah uh but that one's coming over the rail yeah that's a delicious fish right now you think that tastes sign significantly different than a Marlin I bet they're pretty similar I would like to know well I just wanted to ask you about gar because i' I've always wanted to go gar fishing cuz I've seen them and when you you know you see those images we just looked at like God damn it I want to see that thing in real life I would wish that you had tried it I've tried a lot of things

73:05yeah how have you not pish bofin paddlefish is an interesting one right that's a Sacramento fish too isn't it no that's a Missouri River thing their cousins of a sturgeon oh okay and that's one that doesn't really have um they don't have any bones right neither do you sturgeon oh really mhm oh so sturgeon is a lot like a shark in that sense yep but sharks have bones only around the jaw right now they there's also some weird thing with the paddlefish where you pull that spinal cord out of them right mhm what a weird looking thing that is they're pretty tasty though that's what I hear and uh if you've ever had lump fish caviar that's what that is no I've never what is a lumpfish caviar it's just caviar out of a paddlefish I don't know why they call it paddlefish but they should just call it paddlefish caviar which I think they are now something about the restri on Commercial paddle

73:56fishing because of concern no I think it's all recreational now and in some states wow look at that that looks like a fake animal that doesn't even look real football fish but I think that concern was about the caviar right right so there was again um there was a an illegal trade in in uh in paddlefish caviar so there's some states where you can keep your fish but fishing game keeps the caviar really mhm how B it's not I don't think that's pretty I don't think that's cool I think it should be illegal to sell but like in Missouri in why fishing game keep the caviar what are they going to do with it I think it's going to go to waste I think they sell it oh that's even weirder yeah that's really weird well I would I mean they probably I would I would hope you know missourians will will will tell us but I would hope that the the proceeds from selling the caviar

74:47by fishing game would go back to like habitat restoration or something I would hope so too but I would hope so that you could pay like an additional tag and get to keep the caviar say if you CAU a female and you pay an extra $30 or something like that and you keep the caviar yeah I know you can in some states like in Montana for sure you can in Montana what they have paddlefish in Montana yeah they're all in the giant Rivers like you know name a big giant River in the middle of the country and they live there that's looks like another one that just made it through it did Evolution Y how long's that been around 100 million years easy there's a show on TV I forget the name of it but it's this guy who uh who cooks weird stuff on like the Sportsman's channel oh that's Scott lf's dead meat yes Scott Scott lives like one like 10 miles from my house that's why I

75:37was going to bring him up cuz he's a Sacramento guy yeah and he cooked paddlefish yep that's what he he like he pulled the the spinal cord out of him he's had an interesting show he cooks everything he has one of the best self-deprecating sense of humor ever yeah ever yeah it's hilar I mean he's on the the dude's on the road like 300 days a year really yeah he does a lot of stuff for like um a group called huntfish feed so it's gets Hunters together to to donate tons and tons of game meat for homeless shelters and they do big like a big cookout thing so that everybody gets a meal oh that's cool yeah it's cool stuff yeah but he's found a lot of fish and a lot of game that people thought was inedible it actually turns out to be quite delicious I'll tell you one that he didn't what python oh really not good he said it was like mainlining Mercury who he said it was

76:25the worst thing he's ever put in his mouth wow python python and the Everglades huh did he try to do anything with it marinate it I think he tried it Every Which Way but Sunday and he just like no none of no dude now how do you know when you're eating something like that whether or not it's actually edible well I think you can do some like all birds are edible for example all birds yeah some say disgusting and fishy but uh and most mammals are edible but like you know the livers on polar bears have so much vitamin A they'll kill you if you eat them really yeah so don't eat polar bear liver just just dud I was about to Pro tip uh another Pro tip two in a show folks what a show I know it's like so Random polar bear is an odd one right that's a that's a strange animal in that it's just 100 it's a bear but it's 100% carnivorous there's not a vegetable to

77:17be seen up there and it's adapted I've seen them eat seaweeds on TV really yeah I think I think it's because they're freaking out cuz they have no sea ice anymore and so they're just doing whatever they can do to survive oo yeah that's creepy there's a really scary video of this uh polar bear there's a seal on an ice shelf and the polar bear slips up behind the seal and the seal doesn't know and the Seal's like oh Jesus and then just tries to get away he's got really sad look in his face I've seen that video just like you lose seal and he gets into the water and then the polar bears in the water right behind him seconds later and then the polar bear comes out with it in it in his Jaws that's a goddamn ruthless animal Poppy's got to eat well there's no other way you know there's no and it's enormous so yeah there it is look at it he just slowly creeps up I mean

78:10literally like a shark look how slow he's just moving around and that sea line is that a sea line yeah no it's a that's a regular seal so apparently they they differentiate seals so like that one's the good tasting one and then I think if if this is the one that gets eaten it's the good tasting one and then there's another one that is really nasty with sharp teeth so the polar BD is like I'm going to leave that one alone like a leopard seal is that what you mean yeah it's not that bad but it's a it's some seal that lives up in the Arctic that's kind of badass leopard seals are amazing oh yeah that's a crazy animal I remember that marching of the Penguins movie I didn't even know that a leopard seal was real thing he's like well we're just chilling look at him he's like yeah and he just right in the water after him sorry dude you ain't going to make

79:01it there I like the silence it's kind of Epic there's a standup comedian Uh Kevin Fitzgerald he's a also veterinarian and I work with him once in Denver and he told me that polar bears are one of the few animals that when they come out of the womb they're like the little alien from uh the movie Alien that burst out of the chest like like they're looking to bite you and he's like they are predatory from the moment they come out of vagina yeah you said they just look at you different they look at you like your meat well that's interesting so uh another friend of mine woman named Rebecca who's really good with animals she um she works with she's worked with all kinds of animals but she mostly focuses on Raptors now but um she worked with cats back in the day and she said that um Mountain lines are big kitty cats they're giant house cats so if you can understand a house cat you can

79:51understand a mountain lion leopards and jaguars very different like it's just it's exactly what you were saying you know they are looking at you for you to make a mistake and it's just a very different vibe from those cats for the mountain lion it's not that I remember that yeah don't make yeah it was interesting because it's you know back to our talk about jaguars coming back into the United States well any animal that's forced to kill things with its face in order to stay alive sketchy thing to have in your neighborhood in San Francisco they're just so big they need so much food too I mean you think about how big a polar bear is how much actual meat a thing must need to consume in order to keep that mass a lot I mean they uh I've there's a place called O's Big Game Lodge in Paxton Nebraska and it's one of these places it's the middle of Western Nebraska's kind of in nowhere

80:42but it's where you get off the highway if you got to go eat and uh and you walk in there like holy there's this giant 12T tall polar bear stuffed like right at the door when you open up the door are and it just it gives you an instantaneous notion of how small you are compared to a polar bear they're the biggest right yeah they're bigger than Kodiak bears yep wow yeah that's a weird thing right an animal that lives where there's no vegetation and just the all the life comes from the sea and it's bigger than all of them see you know blubber must be good well isn't also that principle that the larger mammals bergman's rule yeah the the further north they go the larger their body has to be in order to maintain heat it's called man's rule the Scandinavians yeah well that's another animal bear are that Steve Rella likes to call charismatic megap yeah that's a that's an old

81:33biological term for um for when back in the 70s when you know save the whales and everything and everybody who was studying keyan species like Krill or you know things that aren't very charismatic we like everybody wants to say the charismatic MEAP and what really is the key to everything of these is this indiscriminate you know Krill or you know this little teeny for fish or whatever whatever or like ants we were talking about they say if all the ants died there would be no life on this planet inside of 100 years wow would be dead even I think it might be less than a hundred years find out what would happen if all the ants died I think it's actually less than 100 years fire ants I hate fire ants well they're not nice they're definitely mean I I I first discovered fire an I knew they existed all the time but I never actually encountered them until I was in

82:21Texas in Austin digging wild onions uh and these ants crawl over my hand like oh look there's ants I used to live in Florida Florida they were all over the place what the hell and my friend Jesse's like but people have died for sure there was some little old lady who I remember the story she she tripped and fell like right onto a mound and they just consumed her with bites wow yeah just her up they just thought she was a threat and time to take you out God what's that what's going to be on that poor lady's tram Stone I don't know I don't know um you're wear of bullet ance right oh yeah yeah that's a that's an interesting one didn't steveen counter bullet Dan yeah in Bolivia it's the same place where he ate a monkey yeah no thanks dude you wouldn't eat a monkey no that's where you cross the line but if someone cooked it in front of you and it smelled good it was in the bowl and you

83:12were with these people and they were all eating it you wouldn't take a bite I don't know I'd have to judge that when I got there I think you would I would probably try and get out of that situation before it ever happened I would worry about primate to primate diseases like I know they're cooking it really well but I know that prons like the prons that cause mad cow disease that come from brain matter well you know with chronic wasting yeah is that from prons as well same thing yeah then chronic wasting disease for folks who don't know what we're talking about is a disease that affects deer and it's really common in the Midwest and they think that it may have originated at least this is the rumor from these weird commercial deer farms where they grow all these deer and they all live together because Apparently one of the things that happens is if deer eat out of the same

84:00spot like that's where it develops like if deer like if there's like a feed tray and they're all eaten out of the feed that's unnatural for the wild right yeah yeah it's a it's you know it's one of those things that are difficult to I I get asked about it all the time like well what do I do with you know if I want to make chops or if I want to make stock out of the bones of the deer I shot what do I do with CWD and it's it's I've done an exhaustive look at all the science that's out there and it's never jumped the species barrier to humans to humans it's um it's primarily going to be located in in spinal tissue so you're going you know pelvis to skull and that's about what we know so if it was me uh and there was testing available for my deer I would absolutely do it and if you're in the clearer you're in the clearer and if not it was too hard I would probably keep the limb

84:52bones but not the uh but not the anything off the spinal column because I've just you know and you would keep the limb bones for marrow uh yeah either marrow or um or making uh stocks and broths and then you know cooking cooking Shanks on the bone right and when you do Shanks you braze them and slow cook them and that's a neglected part of a lot of ulet right I think it's probably the single easiest way of you know to use the stupid catchphrase open your game um because grinding shank meat sucks because there's so much connective tissue and they're easy to saw off with a sawall or or a hacksaw they usually will fit in your pot and they're amazing brace like that and even if if they if that's all you do different and besides your butcher will like you because all he's got to do is just saw them off and put them in a butcher Pap butcher paper and bring it back to you now you started

85:44your your hunting and cooking career off you started as a chef and then you wanted to get closer and maybe understand what you were cooking better is that a good way to describe it is that accurate H sort of I mean I uh I started hunting in Minnesota and my best friend was the uh outdoor writer for the St Paul Pioneer Press and we had been fishing at the time and then hunting season came around and he invited me out and it he well let me preface this but he'd been sort of plying me with malards and with rabbits and with some venison prior to me ever going out so I stuff that he had he had killed he wanted you to try and and you were already a chef by then well at that point I was a newspaper reporter so I started as a restaurant cook you know lion cook and a lowlevel sue Chef then I went into newspapers and I was still as a newspaper reporter at that point and I I

86:36got into it because I wanted to eat these things I loved cooking the mards I love cooking pheasants I love cooking you know Venison and you can't buy it so got to learn to get it and the other thing that was really you know life-changing about it was so I'm a pretty good fisherman and when I'm in a place for a while uh you learn to read body water you know in my case back on Long Island you learn Tides you learn weather patterns you learn all of the little intricacies of what it takes to actually get on fish so most Anglers are just Hooks and lines the real fisherman knows where to put the boat to find the fish knows how fast to troll knows what what angle to the waves you want to be and all these little detailed things and I knew that uh my friend Chris knew this by looking at the land like he could just take at a glance he could look at a field like nope no f are going to be in

87:31that and I didn't how how do you know and he just knew because he'd done this a zillion times and his ability to read land like I could read water I wanted that ability and that every bit as much as um the eating part of it was what brought me into it now when you say that you really enjoyed cooking them and you really enjoyed eating them is it because the flavors are different they're more complex they're more like you know one of the the main criticisms that uh people have said to me when I talk about wild game they're like ah I tried Venice and I didn't like it it's gy I'm like God damn somebody ruined you because it's just it's not like they did something wrong with it that's I mean there's two things to G so one I think we both agree that what we would call G is somebody screwed up right so poor poor you almost 75% of all good venison care happens before the meat ever gets

88:30the kitchen so that can give you what we would call G but I mean I've had people eat backstrap that it was perfectly prepared perfectly cared for and they say well it's kind of gy what they're talking about is that it doesn't taste like corn every meat animal including to some exent salmon that we will get in a supermarket is cornfed they they corn feed salmon yeah it's in the pellets that they feed them it's part of the pellets Christ yeah I know this goddamn corn industry that has its tentacles deep into America right and you know this corn tastes like has a very particular favor profile and so with a with that flavor profile is broken by you know deer that ate something else people like ah it's different well yeah it tastes like something tastes like something that actually lived to life tell me that about mu deer that they don't like mu deer because mu deer

89:22tastes like the sage that it eats and that they like white tails because they eat corn I'm like Jesus Christ man like I've had mule deer they taste great you're out of your mind it's uh you know and then people will say elk is so much better than deer I'm like okay I get it I like I mean elk is there's some minor differences and subtle differences and if you put one next to each other yeah there's a little bit of a difference but it's not that dramatic like I'm a duck hunter the difference between a spoony and a pin tail is profound what's a spoony and what's a pin tail so a spoon is a northern shoveler and it's one of the least desired ducks that we have Northern shoveler yeah and is it a a diver duck is that what it is it's kind of a hybrid um it's it's technically a puddle duck but it Dives more so than the other puddle Ducks if you don't mind explain to people what the difference is

90:09okay so every duck that you've seen in a park with his butt up in the air that's a dabbler or a puddle duck so a diver duck is uh is a duck that dives very deep and the deepest of all are a third kind of duck called a sea duck which as you might guess lives in deep deep deep deep water so divers would be like blue bills canvas backs redhe heads buffleheads golden eye um and then puddle Ducks would be obviously the malard which everybody knows malards uh pintails spoonies wigon uh teal and so in general puddle Ducks taste better than diver Ducks because of the what they eat and and so but but ducks are all omnivores much like pigs and bears so you have a spoony which loves to eat shrimpy things and algae versus a a pintel which loves seeds it loves seeds of all time all kinds and that's more tasty bird any bird that eats seeds as a matter of habit human beings are going to like to

91:07eat it more because it it's just a creates a set of flavors that we're more familiar with now the exceptions of that are kind of fascinating if you talk to newlanders or icelanders um or Inuit U people who are grown up eating seabirds they love that fishy low tidy flavor thing that going on yeah the same I see you're what's getting the hairy eyebrow I want to try even though I know I'll hate it I want to try that fermented shark that they love in Iceland no you don't have you had it mm tell me what it's like fishy Nat what's Nat it's fermented stinky soybeans so oh I've heard of that stuff too it's disgusting supposedly it's stinky blue cheesy fishy ammoniated it attacks your mouth ammoniated yeah heavily ammoniated now the Iceland people are they drunk when they eaten this I think it's just was there was nothing it's like a polar bear there's nothing else so so it developed

92:10a taste for it well apparently you can't eat that that shark fresh what yeah I think wow I I think it's another vitamin A or something like that there's some reason you can't eat that it's a Greenland shark and you can't eat a Greenland shark fresh so it was the only way to eat it was to ferment it how bizarre yeah and so they became the first guy to figure that one out yeah right let's eat the rotten one and how to how to prepare it you have to figure out how to ferment that thing because I I have never s seen or heard I've seen videos of people trying it I've never heard anybody's tried it that enjoyed it anybody who lives in Iceland though will tell you like it's a it's a delicacy we like it like I don't understand I wonder what our delicacy is what is the thing that we either in California or in the United States really really like that everybody else in the world is like holy

92:57crap how can you eat that that's a good question I don't think we have anything like that our food is so Bland like an American food is like you think of a cheeseburger and fries or steak and mashed potatoes you don't think of anything that has like incredibly potent flavors to it yeah I mean I can think of some regionali like scrapple right but but that's not you you call scrapple Regional American but not not dominant American food what's scrapple again it's basically lips and ground up really small and mixed with either cornmeal or or sometimes you know oatmeal yeah but that still won't be like potent it's baked is it yeah liver mush is even more potent liver mush liver mush mush really it's basically that but it's made with liver and they're both breakfast meats and you know I've had good scrapple I've not had liver mush that I really really enjoyed

93:48it's kind of a uh a you see a lot in south central Pennsylvania West Virginia Tennessee that area Well w that's it right there huh wow see that's scrapple yeah so it's like you cut it like a loaf like a meatloaf yep and then you fry it oh wow so you do you boil it how do you get it to that state oh it's all liquid Jesus look at this I don't look good it's all liquid liquid it's basically like scrapple is the scraps from the from slaughtering a pig so is it almost like a gelatin thing like a head cheese type of a scenario yeah it is but I kind I would say head cheese is probably a more wholesome product oh Jesus Christ well head cheese is very strange I didn't know what head cheese was from yeah until probably like five years ago and uh I remember watching a video of someone making headed cheese I like headed cheese I've never had it it's okay so here's the thing all it is is

94:47well there's German way that is really dig on the the gelatin and I'm not super heavy on theel comes from the collagen that breaks down in the tissue it is so take a pig's head okay and typically you will either have the ears thrown in there or you'll have an extra foot thrown in there for some more collagen you boil it slowly with a lot of spices and herbs until practically falls apart then you fish everything out and then the iron rule of of HED cheese making is if it looks like meat keep it fairly big if you have no idea what it is chop it very small and then and then you pack it into a a loaf pan or uh a sausage casing and then you boil down the the cooking liquid by half and then that really concentrates the the gelatin and then you pour that hot broth over the mixture that you packed into the the loaf pan or the or the sausage casing or whatever

95:49and then you put it in the refrigerator and it sets and you eat it cold so so the best head cheese is um is where the gelatin is set just enough where it kind of melts when it hits the heat of your mouth and so it's not you know sort of you know chewy nox jel like um and it's it's actually very very good and it's a it needs pickles and or Mustard Pickles Andor yeah there's head cheese see it looks good that looks better than scrapple oh yeah it's much better than scrapple but it's weird distinction I mean I guess it's cuz it's not dicks and right more uteruses please I mean I've always been fascinated by chartrudery just the idea that people figured out a long time ago how to dry things and preserve things that's it head cheese right there that's my that's how I make it that's cat Testa that's an Italian style okay and then you you slice it very thin see that Arc

96:45thing in the bottom left hand corner that's a little beady slice of pigier oh wow really and that's edible you can that down yeah well it's been boiled for hours and hours just become super tender cuz I think of them as things I feed my dogs I buy those at the pet store if they're not boiled yeah yeah pigs are a weird one man that's such a weird thing because you find out how smart they are and like commercial Pig farming becomes very disturbing when find out that's another reason why I got into hunting is to to I have not bought meat or fish for the house since ' 04 that's awesome with maybe a handful of exceptions I bought a chicken a couple times but part of that is I I would prefer opt out of that system because you're exactly right yeah I just did a podcast really recently with my friend Ari Ari shafir who's a standup comedian it was his podcast it's

97:33called the skeptic tank and we we went into that because he's never uh hunted and he asked me about it and that is what what I gave him is pretty much my reason for doing it in the first place I felt like I didn't want to be a part of that system anymore and I wasn't sure if I wanted to be a vegetarian I was like it's going to be one of these things either a vegetarian or Hunter so let me try this hunting thing and then I got into it but it's the the connection with the food it becomes becomes a completely different experience and it's so hard to explain that without sounding pretentious or without just repeating myself over and over again which I've done many many many many times on this podcast but when you if I'll I'll pull like an elk backstrap out of the freezer tonight and I'll thaw it out and uh I'll you know marinate that put some kosher salt on

98:18and some pepper and Grill it and it's a a wonderful experience like while I'm cooking this thing I'm all excited I remember the hunt I remember you know seeing the elk the whole thing I mean it's just it's a totally and when you're eating it it's just rich with vitamins and flavor and it's alive I mean just it's definitely not alive but I mean it it has this taste to it that's just so different than anything you're going to buy in a store well for me as a cook uh having entered this whole game as a as a cook or you know this pursuit of hunting um it really challenges me to make great food out of every bit because you know you broke it you bought it and takas delanga made from Elk tongue phenomenal um head cheese made from a doze head uh bra Shanks uh hell I even ate I even made uh venison tripe one of the most delicious meals that I ever cooked with

99:11Wild game was on our first hunt ranella um cooked a deer head in the ground oh yeah like the big sky like uh he he read about it in that book Big Sky the uh Guthrie book and he decided that he wanted to try it that way so this is like the first time we ever tried it and we buried this thing we put hot coals he wrapped it up in uh cloth and U wet cloth put it underground poured hot coals all overed I do not remember but it was amazing whatever he did he did it right maybe he didn't salt it I don't remember I love how Steve will like always take the hard way out oh he's the hardest on the Earth every time I hunt with him I feel like a he's just always wanting to do everything hard and if if he doesn't get miserable like I watched a show Once where he saw this giant bull elk on the first day of his hunt within like first couple hours and he didn't shoot it cuz he didn't

100:02want to be done hunting that's why you go fishing afterwards I'm like he out you're out of your mind dead time to go fishing he explained it to me afterwards it made more sense and it was because he had just come from Kentucky where he had did another show and he had shot an elk in Kentucky like literally the week before so he felt bad about shooting one right away I'm like it's not like you're going to let it go to waste right and he's like well we have to make a show and I can't just shoot it on the first day shoot it on the first day and then pretend you're looking for an elk for three days afterwards Jesus Christ don't you know about editing you're on T he's so he has so his ethics are so strong and his inability to be disingenuous is so powerful that he won't do that well the hunt I did with him was like I'm older than he is I'm like I'd like to climb to

100:51the top of this mountain and look for things and then sit here for until I find something and then walk to that thing and shoot it he's like let's climb all over to these mountains like woo and I'm like ah dude I'm just going to sit here like this is where we saw deer I'm GNA go no as it turned out he was right oh he's always right he knows what he's doing I went on a meal deer hunt with him recently and you know I was like let's go after them now he's like no no no just sit and wait you don't want to blow them out I'm like you sure just go let's go he's like you can go if you want okay I go down the hill they're gone they take off he's like we'll go after him tomorrow I'm my tomorrow like but it's like one of those things where your friend could read the land like you have to listen like when you when you have someone that has like this deep experience in something that's

101:35very odd information like where the quail will be like how do you know dude I've been doing this I have that with ducks I can do that with ducks and geese is that your favorite bird it's well I don't do you have a favorite bird uh maybe grous grous maybe gr never had it um what's it like imagine it's what a chicken dreams about being when it grows up and goes wild it's a wild chicken and just a little tiny wild chicken they're not that tiny no um what's a fat Grouse I shot a big blue grouse in Utah that plucked gutted and dressed just it looked just like a chicken you buy in the store was 2 PBS oh that's pretty heavy that's about as big as they get that's a about like like about like that that's a pretty big animal mhm no kidding and Sage grer even bigger uh really mhm what's like the biggest world record grous like a 5B grous uh be a caper K in Sweden they're I think

102:31they're like 15 pounds or so oh it's a turkey pretty much but they don't have turkeys there so wow so I mean I guess the biggest ginus bird would be the turkey I was interested in um what the difference between wild turkey and regular turkey is and surprisingly not as big as you might think yeah the breast was almost identical except it's very narrow yeah yeah but the wings and the or the rather the drumsticks did have a different flavor to them yeah it was more um just more distinct MH and they work for a living yes they're out there hustling yeah which is the same you could say about pigs like the darkness of the meat of wild pig is uh so preferable to uh domestic pigs I love I love shooting wild hogs well you have to first of all that's one of those things that's that's one of the animals that really when you talk to people that are anti-hunting and

103:23anti they just want to let nature run its course like there's some animals where you literally can't do that like pigs are one of them especially invasive pigs I had no so I've hunted pigs in California for years and years and years so and I've heard all these stories about Texas and a few years ago I finally went down to Southeast Texas to do I do hunting and cooking schools and um so the guy I was working with is in Bay City and so we're down there and uh he's like okay first thing you have to understand is that these are a problem like well what are you talking about so we went out and there are these herds of pigs and like 90 pigs in a shot they'll walk into a field and do $100,000 of damage in one night and it's it's astonishing this is all year round and I had no idea like because you know if you've hunted pigs in California it's a hunt if you go to Texas it's like how many can you

104:16kill and you still won't make it down on the population there's a story that I've told before but I'll tell it again just for the sake of this convers station there was a new highway that they opened up in Texas and the first night they opened up the road 40 car accidents with pigs wow just just overrun they were just overrun with pigs wow yeah car accidents and Wild game and population control is one of the most surprising statistics when you you give them to tell people two million car accidents with deer every year or 1.5 million at least in the United States with with deer and they go what like people don't know go what oh you 1 and a half million car accidents with deer a year just in the United States yeah and they're delicious yeah years ago I did I was working at the pie press Pioneer Press in St Paul and uh I did a data analysis one of the first

105:09ones that was ever done on track deer vehicle collisions and apparently if you're in an NOA County north of the Twin Cities on November 8th at dusk watch your ass that's the one day that was like so you like there's this huge cluster right there well then November it's the rut yeah November is the rut that's when they just get completely Bonkers they go running into traffic and well you've been to a singles bar closing time yes well I've also been to Iowa in the Rut I was just there a few weeks ago you got an Iowa tag yes I got a Governor's tag from my buddy of mine owns some property out there and knows people you're lucky yes very lucky yeah you can get one there it takes a couple years you know you put in points you can get one every five years but um I was amazing like the the white population is so strong and one of the reasons is they don't have a rifle season right it's

105:57shotgun only shotgun and archery so you got to work for it because if you're going to shoot some with a shotgun you got to be pretty close I'd rather use a a bow even with a with a sabit rifle barrel slug you still talking 100 yards is that the most you could shoot one out I've heard guys shoot farther but week in and week out 100 yards with those rifled sabit slugs and I would imagine there's a giant drop to how far it falls in 100 yards yeah you got to be aware of it it's like shoot at the top of the back at 100 yards where you know I shoot at 270 and I I lose like 2 Ines at 300 and I've heard that with some places some states they allow you to use shotguns but you can't use a scope oh that's interesting yeah you can't use a scope on the shotgun you have to use the old old timey Iron Sights yeah or you could probably use a peep site do you have a favorite game that you enjoy cooking is

106:47there anything that you like this is my favorite game to cook in a variety of different ways or do you just like all of them well I think if you're talking about a variety of different ways ducks and venison um but if you're talking about favorite thing to cook in general go back to Grouse um but there grous are not as versatile but I love the flavor of grous but it's you know it's a whole bird that you're cooking and is it it just is it because of its wild diet it just has a more complex flavor to it is it very much so it's it's there's nothing that tastes like a grouse the it's sort of like a chicken but you'll know you're eating a grouse now well I didn't know this either until fairly recently that the well as you explaining before that there's different kinds of ducks and the ducks that eat seeds are preferable but diver Ducks you can eat oh yeah but they have like do

107:35you do you enjoy them oh yeah and but they have like a fishy taste to because they eat primarily Seafood so uh this is a great example of diet so Brandt which is like a sea Goose um there's East Coast brand and West Coast brand and the season just ended yesterday I think on Brandt and and they um and so on the west coast they are the best eating water foul there is period Baron because they eat eelgrass and they're have a very clean almost saline flavor it's very it's not fishy it's not pondy it's just it's it's a they're fantastic Birds you shoot a brand in the east coast and they eat sea lettuce a sea a seaweed revolting like barely edible really like barely you just got to chew through it yeah yeah but you know so canvas backs or they're a diver redheads they're a diver uh for the most part I'll always pluck them because they have a different diet and but on the other hand golden

108:32eyes buffle heads most blue bills but not all ring necks uh a lot of those birds you know they still taste good but I'll I'll tend to skin them it is really fascinating to me that the taste of when you eat an animal depends so much on what the animal's diet is and then it makes me think about my own diet and like what is going on with the cells of my own body and you think about people that are on poor diets that have terrible food that they consume and they choose to drink soda all the time and they their their tissue itself is affected so drastically long Pig this one's sweet Oh Long pig that's cannibals called human I don't know what that accent was but I don't like it um have you ever had blueberry bear um I've had manzinita bear what's that so manzinita is just a different bear uh just a different Berry that bears love to eat in Northern California oh okay

109:24and how was it similar like the the blueberry bear concept well it didn't turn anything blue but uh but it was uh it was amazing I mean it was super sweet super fatty just very mild yeah that's what I hear that blueberry bear is like the ultimate game like then you get a bear in the fall that's been eating blueberries and like ranella did a whole episode about it on his show where he cut one open and it had purple fat yeah isn't that crazy amazing there's actually a better one and it lives right near you so Legend has it so I believe the state record black bear in California is a 700 Pounder from the S Gabriel Mountain Jesus in ventur so or it's from Ventura County from Ventura yes 700 pound that's not far so apparently these bears live in the mountains and they come down to the avocado Groves and Gorge themselves on avocados and it's been it's one of my

110:17bucket list goals is to get what they call a guacamole bear a guacamole supposed to be good only imagine how delicious a avocado eating bear would taste I wonder if it would affect it that much cuz avocados are a fairly mild fruit it is a fruit right would you consider avocado fruit but the fat quality would be amazing yeah well it's very rich in fat right I eat a lot of avocados I wonder if I would hm see the thing about the blueberry bear though is that it's got that engaging sort of sweetness to it that I think would be really interesting I don't think you'd get that from the avocado no no you'd have an urge to eat Mexican food I think is that what is this though the rella one yeah he's just showing how when he cuts into it this uh this fat has this insane sort of bluish hint to it huh um yeah he say see how that I was like is this when he gives himself Tris no that was

111:12later that was yeah well it's just he's just crazy he's too crazy he's had everything this guy he's had trichinosis he's had um lime disease got yeah oh he got Gardia he got Gardia yeah if you um the other cool thing is that if you were to get one of these guacamole bears you can freeze it and be free of tricking offis because south of about Oregon draw a line all the way across the country the Bears there if they have it will tend to have a uh a variety called Tri Trella spirales which you can kill by freezing interesting so but north of there from the northern interior of this country and all in Canada and Alaska it's called triai nativa and that one is resistant to freezing so it stays alive even if you have it in the freezer for months right that's sick what a creepy animal I know well I mean it's from up there so it must be you know Frost Frost

112:07resistant I was surprised how good bear taste I was too yeah that's one of those ones where you go I don't know if I want to eat this this is just a teddy bear this is Yogi this is all the amorphization of charismatic megap that's the weird never had people more mad at me for anything I've ever shot than bear like they don't people don't seem to be that mad about a deer some people are but most people understand it like you ate that you're going to eat it that's why you shot it we are who we are because we hunt deer yeah you know anthropologically speaking I mean there's all kinds of evidence to show that the reason why we can run we the only primate with an arch MH the reason that we can actually throw properly the reason why that we can communicate so complicated and so many complicated ways there's all kinds of reasons of you know the structure of our shoulders the

112:56structure of our hips are a great amount of the way we're built and the way we think and the way we act has to do with us teaming up to hunt large deer-like things really M where'd you get this all over the um the anthropological literature I mean I could site you a bunch of books but um but there's I mean obviously this it's debatable but the consensus is that there's an enormous amount of uh of development that stemmed out of pursuit hunting and ganging up on things like mammoths and rhinos and large basically large large herbivores and you know that's why I mean we're hardwired to hunt deer well one of the things that I said uh that I was describing to my friend Ari about it is there's this strange familiarity yep uh and almost like this uh deep reward system that gets plugged into that you did weren't even aware that you had when the deer's down and you know when you're

113:57quartering it and cutting it up it's like oh I kind of know how to do this or at least I don't know how to do this but this seems normal to me it seems familiar I mean we've been you this is the other thing about some of the research I've been doing lately is that everybody hunts deer or something like a deer so all over the world so my banker guy named Omar uh I was doing some banking stuff and I was talking about the this this book just wrote and he said oh yeah you know I I really miss hunting gazel in the Eastern deserts of Lebanon whoa right the same reaction you know I have a friend from the yakatan who hunts deer in the yakatan and you know I have a another friend from Hokkaido in the northern Island in Japan who who hunts the same sick of Blacktail in Alaska now that he used to hunt in hoko as a kid and you know South Africans and new zealanders I mean even

114:50if you can you know if you're if you're smart and thinking out there you're going to say what about Australia in Australia I mean if I don't know if you've ever eaten kangaroo but kangaroo looks exactly like venison and pretty much tastes like venison yeah it's a crazy deer right kind strange sort of a weird hopping deer with a tail ish yeah yeah ish H so I mean there's so the the human connection with hunting and eating something like a deer is very very is worldwide and and very very deep now this new book that you have here I've been reading it I was reading it today actually buck buck moose there's a lot of like really interesting information about animals and about how to prepare them and the difference one of the things that I thought was really funny is uh the whole point about testosterone testosterone stinks and like the animals that everybody wants like the big bucks

115:39with the big racks they're going to be smelly animals they're going to be tougher if you get them before the rut which is not easy but if you get them before the rut they're perfectly fine but that's the the rub is that that's when they're easiest to get when they're all horny and fused yep um but you got some great recipes and ideas in here man how how long did it take you to put this together over I've started uh I don't know maybe some of it 10 years but but actually sitting there writing it two years um you know because all the recipes I had to test and I had to send the recipes out to um you know lots of readers because one of the things is important for me is that my recipes are as watertight as possible so I send them out to civilians I don't let other chefs test my recipes because I first of all they're not going to follow the recipe second of all I really they wouldn't

116:29they would have their own to oh yeah I mean because it's they can't help themselves so wow no kidding it just is it's I'm I'm a piece with it but uh but I what I want is for somebody who reads what I write to be able to make what I made so anybody who's ever sent a text message knows that if you've ever sent a text message what you write is not necessarily what the person hears in their head right so that can't I that can't go if I'm writing a recipe because especially cuz think about it right if I'm going to tell you to do X Y or Z with a with a tenderloin there's only one you only get one shot at it there's only one set of tenderloins on any animal and if I'm going to tell you to do something with it that's beyond whatever it is that you normally do it better damn work because you don't you can't just go to the store and get another tendal loin right like

117:17you can get another chicken you can't get another tenderloin so you mean tenderloin from a moose or from deer and and so everything has to be airtight and and tested will any of these recipes work with domestic animals like if somebody's really curious about it sure um how would you know how to substitute I would say uh bison or grass-fed beef will get you pretty close in flavor and uh lamb or goat will get you pretty close in size now lamb doesn't taste like venison but in terms of size like a shank recipe for example or a shoulder recipe or a neck recipe lamb would be a perfect sub Institute but if you want to get close to what a good deer or an elk tastes like grassfed be for bison and when people do buy commercially available venison uh and and Elk doesn't it all come from other countries does it come from New Zealand most of it at least most of some most of

118:07whatever it is that you will see it called venison will be red stag from New Zealand uh but there are elk farms in the United States that I've seen elk commercially for sale really commercial elk grown in the United States that seems wrong I you might say that but I couldn't possibly com it doesn't it seem a little but that's one of the weird things about wild game is that you can't sell it right I mean that's one of the really appealing things about because they belong to all of us yeah yeah it's well it's also the market hunting is what wiped them out at the turn of the century and that you know even as late as the 1950s it was a news item for somebody to got an eighto wow I know guys who an eight point buck what he's talking about cuz they were they were almost wiped out yeah I mean it was a news event even in the 60s and some places so it's like these are the good old days of deer

118:59hunting yeah yeah well when I was in Iowa we saw a lot of we didn't see any big deer that got close but we saw like wow like this is crazy they're they're here the biggest white tail I ever saw was this giant in Western Kansas when I was quail hunting Kansas is supposed to be Mecca right it's a Mecca I mean Kansas Iowa you know Iowa and Kansas for big giant white tails yeah I know people that move there my friend John Dudley moved there just just because of the deer hunting he's an Archer you he's a little obsessive he's a little crazy he's a little crazy um do you have a a favorite me um mammal that you like to cook you know okay but the first thing that popped to my head was Havalina Havalina and I think it's because I'm a fan of the underdog ah so I shot a couple of skunk pigs um so I have they call them skunk pigs yeah they do yeah it's it's not really a pig

119:52right well it's it is but it isn't it's a Peery um and it's native to the United States where pigs are not and they look like pigs they act like pigs they are related to pigs on the family tree but they're not they're not that close and there is no reason why people should hate Havalina so like if you go to Arizona or New Mexico everybody loves Havalina like yes to eat yes to eat really and you go only to South Texas there you go creepy um if you go to South Texas they're like ah they're disgusting or they're rats or whatever and and so I was in South Texas and I said to the land owner I was with like let me let me shoot a couple haval like all right so and I cleaned them cuz I was I was wondering about this mysterious sunclan that you're not supposed to break up which is on the small of back it's like you know it's kind of like a Havalina stamp um

120:38and and so if you if you skin the animal like you would skin a pig you never see it it's in the skin so if you come underneath the skin you'll never Nick it you have no problem oh and it's just like a little teeny Pig and they taste fantastic there there's no off taste to them at all describe it is it Pig like Pig like like no more like pork like domestic pork than wild boar is really yeah they're they because they're almost I don't know if they're obligate vegetarians but they're V primarily vegetarians I know my friend Doug Stan hope told me that one killed his neighbor's dog they they surrounded the dog and mauled it well that's have you ever seen havina teeth yeah they got big ass crazy te they're spikes they're actually like spikes where where uh where wild BS have like uh arcs like Cutters yeah well they hunted this thing like they they killed it on purpose look at that

121:29creepy Bastard Jesus Christ Roar ferocious looking weird Hobbit animal Hobbit Pig yeah it doesn't look a real animal right it looks like something from a movie like Lord of the Rings movie but you know that said um I just um I like it I I love cooking them because they're fun and I like pork and and you prepare it the same way you would cook like a pork loin or I tend to go a lot of Mexican Central American recipes because that's where they live um and you know desert Southwest kind of stuff but you know don't get me wrong I love anal probably pong horn antalope wouldn't be my second I've heard this delicious see you'll hear it's delicious and you hear it's disgusting and here's why because uh prong horns are they're super nervous animals they're like high strung deer basically even though they're not deer um pseudo cpra something or rather that's their that's

122:16their genus they're their own thing weird side note they're so fast because they were evolved to run away from the cheetah this will bullly your mind so the cheetah in Africa was actually a cheetah and the American Great Plains before the Ice Age it migrated back over the landbridge and got itself into Asia and Africa so the cheetah that exists now is our cheetah except our cheetah died out in the Ice Age and the and the Pronghorn analou did not so the antalope is essentially waiting for the cheetah nothing can catch it yeah they're so fast nothing can catch cat it people call them speed goats speed goats yeah and so they're super nervous and they die really easy usually it's like ow I'm dead and they fall over and and and so you go what what you do is you go up you take your little shot Yay good and then got him right there throw the wobbly bits in a bag and throw

123:10it in a cooler and get them out of the skin as fast as possible if you do those two things it's some of the best venison you'll ever why do you have to get it out of the skin as fast as possible because they burn hot their their body temperature is hotter than a deer and their hide holds heat better than a deer so those two things plus the fact that they're super nervous like this they can go off in a hurry so what you see a lot of guys do is like let's say you know you and me and Steve we're hunting analou and you know I shot mine first thing in the morning and you shot yours an hour or two later but Steve can't buy a shot which is probably not how it would work but for the sake of the story so let's say Steve finally gets wi at like 3 o'cl in the afternoon yay then we would start getting him that's you see that happen a lot and our our anal will be ruined his will be fine oh let

123:59see so you just got to jump on it right away and get it to a cooler as quickly as possible because you often hunt anope in warm weather too very hot right like New Mexico in the summer right that's the late August September so it's it's like many things like we were talking about gaming it's just a preparation and an understanding of what what you are required to do in order to make sure that this meat is edible exactly and tastes good um there there's there's a bunch of animals that people you got to get out of here soon soon we'll wrap this up we could wrap this up yeah um there there's a bunch of animals that uh I think uh have no equivalent in um domestic food right like what would you say like if you wanted if you were trying to Coke someone into uh trying Wild game or being interested in Wild Game what do you think would be uh one that you would start them off with

124:50something that's familiar so duck um venison backstrap anything with wild boar cuz it's basically B if you had to pick a a recipe out of this B oh out of this one I would do just a simple seared backstrap with like a Cumberland sauce or uh or state Diane Steak Diane Ste Diane so Steak Diane is uh it's a 150 year old recipe That's a classic for a reason it's it's back it's Diane is is for Diana the goddess of the hunt so originally in Fr it was a it was a venison recipe and it became a beef recipe later and it is a recipe with KAC or brandy a little bit of mustard a little bit of cream the drippings from the pan sauce look at that yep good Lord that looks good and uh and that's actually my recipe is it yeah I did that I did that on Simply Recipes oh nice and so it's a it's a million years old and uh it is amazing there's not I don't think I've ever encountered anybody who has made my

125:52recipe for it who didn't like it God damn it I want to cook that tonight it's easy too that's the other thing it's like it feels sort of cheffy and date nighty but it's it it's the 30-minute meal wow that's awesome well listen man your book's awesome I I've enjoyed a lot of your videos I've enjoyed you on television before it's a pleasure to have you on and get to talk food and the origins and everything with you and uh I I like our nonlinear conversations it was great it was fun all mine go that way I I urge people to go out if you're uh if you're a hunter or if you're just a fan of delicious food go out and check this out buck buck moose by Hank Shaw and you have other books available right what the other books my last one is duck duck goose which as you might guess is what about waterfoul you silly goose and then my first one is called hunts gather

126:36cook okay and you are hunt gather cook on Twitter and the same on Instagram Y and do you have a Facebook as well I do and it's Hunter angler Gardener Cook okay thank you brother this was really fun I really appreciate you coming on absolutely thanks everybody we'll be back tomorrow with James headfield from Metallica