Ep. 816: New Year's Resolutions, Mutant Turkeys, and Goodbye (Sort Of) Cal | MeatEater Radio Live!

This is an I Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. Welcome to Meat Eaters 12 and 26, presented by Moultrie Mobile and On-X Maps, 12 of Meat Eaters biggest and baddest hunts from the last year, released throughout 2026. These are long form episodes. So you get more of what you love. The first one up is my baited bear hunt in Manitoba. If you've ever wondered what a baited bear hunt is like, you'll love this episode. My favorite part was watching a younger bear spend an hour trying to figure out how to get a creatively hung beaver carcass down from a tree. Check it out now on Meat Eaters YouTube channel and be on the lookout for more 12 and 26 in the coming months. Smell us now, lady. Welcome to Meat Eaters Trivia. Meat Eaters podcast. Yeah. Happy New Year's everyone and welcome to Radio Live. I'm your host, Brodie Henderson, and I'm joined by Corey Calkins and Ryan Callahan. Today we're not actually live. We're actually pre-recording before Meat Eater HQ shuts down for the holidays, but we still got a great New Year's Day show for you guys. Even the poor suckers who stayed up late last night and their nursing to hang over. Hopefully you're not one of those people, but I imagine there's a few of you out there. Is that going to be one of you, Cal, Corey? Hmm. Not with kids anymore. Nope. I'm going to bed at 8 PM. There you go. There you go. Avoid amateur night. That's right. Um, yeah, I get all my fun in, uh, early. Yeah. And it seems to really wrap up within like a beer and a half anyway. Yeah. That's smart. Yeah. That's smart. Uh, today we're going to talk to our friend, Jake Lovretzky about all those. Lovretzky. Lovretzky. Phil. Phil Lovretzky. Jake. Why don't I'm Jake in there. Right next to Phil in the window. I'm just reading. That's the problem with just reading a script. Sorry, Phil. Um, Dr. Phil. Three times. Damn it. Phil Lovretzky. We're going to talk to that Phil guy, not our Phil. Um, about all those funny looking, uh, color-faced turkeys, uh, getting shot out there these days. Um, we've also got a very special in-house interview with cow about why in the hell he decided to leave meteor to go get a real job. No one really knows. I didn't know that was in the script. All right. Welcome. Um, and for our crew segments, we're going to look back on our favorite hunts of the year and then we're going to look forward with some New Year's resolutions. You guys New Year's resolution guys. That semi. I like to think about it, but then it rarely follows. I'm going to force you into at least saying something today. It's a good idea. Um, lastly, since we can't chat with you guys in real time, we're just going to go over some questions and comments that have come up in emails in previous episodes. So we're still looking out for the fans out there. Um, before we get onto all that, uh, happy holidays, fellas. Yeah. Um, I'm looking forward to the break as I'm sure you guys are. Um, I got about a hundred pounds of meat that I need to grind and the burger and sausage. So that's a big project. And Cal and I were just talking, I'm going to, I'm going to try and get out, uh, with a dog for pheasants and maybe get the wife out for a late season cow elk. So yeah, that's like over the whole break kind of goal. Yeah. You know, the boys want to get after, well, one of them does the one already shot a late season dough. So the other one has to do what his older brother did. So we might try that too. What do you guys got going on? Yeah. Meat management is high on my mind because I really want to go hunt with this muzzle loader. Mm hmm. Um, the timing is not great. You've only got two, three days left of the season, right? Right. Yeah. Just, just this weekend. But like I would really like to get some ducks in the freezer. Yep. Now that they're finally around. Yeah. Geez. Yeah. Um, and just that dog work is so fricking amazing. I love that. But I am, I have, I do like in my chest freezer, I do a game bag, uh, storage. So like this game bag is a whole parted out and back sealed nice elk shoulder. Right. This one's like the nice cuts. And that's what I have left of my elk from last year. Mm hmm. Is it just a little bit of front shoulder and, um, some neck meat for slow cook and stuff and then, um, they'll, uh, kind of really just the loins, which is kind of crazy. Yeah. Um, and trying to, like I, I'm going to be cutting it close, but it'd be like a good full freezer turnover situation if I don't kill a deer. I think a deer would be. You'll be starting fresh after you get through this. Pretty darn fresh. Yeah. Yeah. Cause you got, um, you know, mostly two and a half antelope in there. Yeah. And that, that were this year. And, uh, and then yeah, the turkeys and pheasants, but that puts some pressure on you too, not having that backup meat from the prior year. I know. I know. And then, uh, I think I'll need to commit to grinding some, some stuff too. Yeah. How about you? How about you Corey? Yeah. Grinding between my bowl and a really old white tail buck that I shot this year. I'm going to grind all of him up. Stinky old, ruddy, tough ass buck. Yeah. Very funny color on him. Like real pink, said a dark red, like I'm used to. Really? Yeah. Uh, just found out, uh, I shot him here close to Bozeman in town, hundreds of other deer around. I was worried about CWD had him tested and just found out that it was negative. So I'm excited. I was probably going to eat him anyway, honestly, but, uh, better piece of mind. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure we've all eaten it at this point. Yeah. That's the thing. And we're all still sitting here, but yeah, I got a lot of grinding to do. And, uh, although your face looks, well, funny is that that's not like a CWD. This is tough for Corey because we've recorded, because we recorded the live show that aired on the 18th. And then in order to prep for the holiday, we filmed the show air airing on Christmas and the show, this show airing on New Year's all in the span of two days. And so every single one of those shows has a conversation about Corey's face. Yeah. And I want to say it looks better than yesterday, which would have been, uh, Christmas episode. So yeah, you'll have to go back if you haven't listened to the Christmas episode and find out what happened to my face besides the obvious. You wouldn't tell me a lot to watch the show. Yeah, you're going to have to. But, uh, and then it's turkey season still to the end of the year. So my boy and I, eight year old boy and I, I'd like to go out and get a bird. Yeah. Whether dependent on how the roads hold up. Yeah. I was pheasant hunting like, I don't know, week or so ago and cut a lone gobler track. Man, I tried to find that thing, but it couldn't. Yeah. I'll roam around somewhere. Yeah. Love in the fall. So yeah. And speaking of goblers, how's that Phil? That was incredible. You're a pro. People love you when you host, bro. We're going to do our first interview today and our guest is Dr. Phil, not Jake, Lovretzky. He's a hunter conservationist and geneticist. We've had him on the show before. So some of you guys may have seen him. Um, if you're not familiar, he's got a really cool duck DNA, DNA project going on. Um, where he's like figuring out the lineage of, uh, different ducks out there, whether they're hybrids, purebreds, whether there's like farm raised duck DNA and those things. And he moved on to doing a similar project called turkey DNA, which we're going to talk about with him today. We've got, got him on the line. There he is. Thanks for joining us, Phil. Hey, Phil. The whole world knows he is Jake now. Yeah. You were just thinking about turkeys that whole time. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Um, how you doing, man? Thanks. Yeah. Happy holidays. Yeah. Happy holidays. Happy new year. Now it's January 1st. Yep. Yep. Exactly. Uh, Phil, for folks who aren't familiar with you, just give us a, a quick breakdown of like your bona fides, and then we'll get into the, the turkey DNA project you've got going on. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm a professor here at the University of Texas at El Paso. I run a wildlife genetics lab. We are geneticists, but we basically do everything else under the sun. We're out there collecting, catching, banding, bleeding, telemetry unit attaching, working with hunters, landowners, farmers and others, uh, to figure out what's happening with our wildlife and answering the questions that our state and federal agencies, uh, partners want to know. Great. That's just, um, so leading into this turkey DNA project, uh, I'm not sure if everyone's aware of this. Hopefully they are, but I'm going to tell them anyway. Like at one time, like all turkeys were wild. There was no such thing as a domestic turkey. And then North America got colonized. They domesticated those turkeys here, brought them back to Europe, then brought them back over here. And so now things are all screwed up. Um, sort of, um, sort of. Listen, if I got it wrong, yeah, correct. Are you just embarrassed because he did it so well? I mean, man, how much did you drink last night? Anyway, I don't drink at all. That's the problem I think. Um, yeah. So sort of the timeline. So turkeys, turkeys are a North American species. They're not, they're not European. There's no, there's no real tur, there's no turkey lineages in Europe, New Zealand, anywhere else. They are a North American, Meso American group of birds that evolved here. They were one of the successful domestication events by our ancestors that made it over the land bridge thousands of years ago. Oh, I gotcha. Okay. Yeah. So, so current ancient DNA work puts the domestication with ghouls, potentially with Miriams, potentially two different time points, uh, between different tribes that were around at that time, looking at 4,000 so years ago. So turkeys were domesticated, much like, um, cow and dogs and stuff in Europe, but they were specific to North America. So like European colonists didn't come over here, or maybe they did. Did, did they, were they grabbing those, those turkeys that had already been domesticated or were they also getting wild turkeys and domesticated in that? Are we, are we talking about Thanksgiving? Those would have been wild turkeys. The colonists would have been on the East eating Easterns at that time. Right. So did they also, did they also domesticate capture and eventually domesticate those birds? Yes, but like hundreds of years later. I gotcha. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So, so really Native Americans were the ones that had what you would consider domestic turkeys at that time. Yep. Um, eventually many, many moons later they would be brought back to Europe and there are, but they're not. So there's farms of turkeys, but wild turkeys as far as we know have been brought back by the Brits primarily back to Europe and then everywhere they go. So there's right. So there's turkeys in New Zealand. Um, there were no real, there were no turkeys in Hawaii. So if people brought them there. So turkeys have been expanded that way, but naturally occurring only in North America, origination of domestic only in North America, Mesoamerica. Okay. Before we get into the next stuff, um, yeah, real quick, North, like as is now North American wild turkeys laid on me the five subspecies and roughly where they live without getting into how they've been spread around. Like they're a regional kind of range. So if we'll go east to west, right? So east of the Mississippi River, where you had naturally occurring boreal forests, that would have been your eastern turkey. Once you get into the Florida panhandle or pan, yeah, Florida side, that would be Osceola. What we're trying to figure out is how different Osceolas are from Eastern right now. So there's those two. As you go west to west of the Mississippi, you start getting into what would originally be Rio's, right? So that would be Oklahoma, Texas, Nebraska, that area. Then once you get into more mountainous regions, before you, before you move on to the next one, Rio's typically, or originally, we're like river bottom turkeys that lived in more open country. Correct? Yeah. Okay. Right. Yeah. So then you're essentially changing habitats from low elevation to higher elevation. And that's when you get to Miriams, right? So where I go in New Mexico, that would be all the sky islands there, right? The Gila, the Sacramento mountains, those would be all natural Miriam habitat, right? Indicator, a little into Colorado too, correct? That's right. Yeah. Yeah. And then south of that, right? It would be Goulds. So almost, not almost all of the range in Mexico would be where Goulds, Turkey would have, would have been. And that's why all the studies have suggested that they're the source for the original domestication. Yep. Than Miriams. So that's where you got, oh, and then oscillated turkeys. We're not worried about those right now. I can talk about that. And that depends a lot. That's a whole different. But I feel like that is considering the advancement of civilization, like that's where the domestication had to have started, right? Like sweet potatoes. Mines and. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, it's still being so for sure, like some potentially we just don't have the, the fossil records and the ancient DNA to go along with it. But I'm sure some civilizations did go after the oscillated Turkey, but for one reason or another, what we do have good data for is that Goulds were Goulds and Miriams and a mix of them were part, were used for that, the earliest domestications as far as we know here in the Southwest. Yeah. And it just became like the cool kid trend. Yeah. It's like, well, let's follow those guys around. Yeah. And they're bigger than oscillated. They're, you know, more, maybe more delicious. I don't know. Yeah. All right. So we're, we're, we're getting into these like different color phases and weird pattern, color patterns that show up, which is I'm sure a large part of, of what you're working on here, like what's causing that. Yeah. And correct me if I'm wrong, but like we've got a few different things going on here. We got completely wild turkeys that have some type of genetic mutation, like albinism or melanism. Is that, that's, that's one cause. Then we've got breeding between wild turkey subspecies because these birds have been moved around a lot. We've got overlapping, naturally overlapping range and we've got like manmade overlapping range. For example, and here in Northwestern Montana, you've got Mariums and Easterns and hybrids, like kind of all living in the same zone. And then the third thing is you've got these like quote wild turkeys that are actually the product of, of some domestic ancestry. Like it could be like a, like a wild hen that rolls in behind the barn and hooks up with a domestic Tom or a domestic turkey of either sex that maybe goes rogue and joins a flock of wild birds. That's right. Are those the three like main things we're looking at here? Those, yes. So we're trying to now, originally this study was all about just asking the question of wild turkey DNA was born out of the question, is this a wild turkey? Yeah. But is every white smoke phase, red, black turkey, a wild turkey that some weird mutation, is it because of the hybridization between wild and wild? Is it because of wild heritage or wild domestic interbreeding? Or is it just a bunch of like domestic feral birds that are on the landscape and people are shooting them? Yep. I can usually tell because it's a lazy turkey hunter or somebody who can't call very good where I'm like, well that's obviously got some domestic DNA in it. Armoring. Yeah. Because you, you shouldn't be able to get a legit birth. Like that one Randall shot this year. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I did what I wanted to interrupt. So there is a caveat to domestic and heritage. So domestic, Yeah. your white turkey that you go to Costco and buy. Right. So this is a nuance within the turkey that I only recently learned. Heritage is essentially people taking a domestic bird, breeding it with a wild, creating some thing and then creating calling it some heritage. Think of it like, I guess back to ducks. There's a bunch of different duck breeds that people have done that with. Dog breeds, right? So it's mixing dog pools, especially when people do dog wolf and then create some weird looking thing and then breed that a bunch. Yeah. Then they get a tattoo. Yeah. Yeah. Same old story. Yeah. That's that. So that's the caveat. So we are looking at like, is it a bunch of heritage breeds? Is it a bunch of domestic breeds? What's occurring? What happens? Yeah. It's cool. And as far as like the domestic birds go, like I spent some time around those things. We raised a few every year when I was a kid and they're stupid. And they're like not very athletic. So it's like looking at back at those birds, it's like really hard for me to imagine one of those things just being like, you know what? I'm going with those guys and I'm going to live in the woods with them. And like that they'd survive long enough to like pass on their genes. Like I know like domestic pigs can go far like pretty rapidly. But it's like it's like how adaptable are domestic turkeys to surviving in the wild? Well, that's a great. We don't know. And I wouldn't have guessed it, but I would give you two caveats to that. Yeah. One, remember what I said, heritage breeds are technically wild domestic parents. So maybe that gives them a bit up and coming that they're like, oh, there's something in some of them being like, I want to be wild a little bit. Right. The other thing that's happening on the landscape, unfortunately, is that there are tales of people now creating breeds. Like there's an Eastern heritage that looks like an Eastern, but is not a wild bird. Right. And people are, and I've heard through the grapevine, people are breeding things that look like osteolas and other things and putting those on the landscape during right before hunting season for everybody can envision that picture. So now you got birds in the spring. So now they only have to really survive for not very long to have that breeding experience. Yep. Yep. So now the waters out there. Yeah. So unfortunately, people are doing what people do. And, you know, once there's a dollar to be made, people do all sorts of things. This might be too big of a question. You might not be able to really get at it. But based on the evidence that you're seeing, the DNA evidence, what seems to be more common when one of these weird color-faced birds show up? Is it like truly wild birds or is it more birds showing up with some barnyard heritage? It's a mix of both. So there's so, in fact, I had an email exchange with Mike Chamberlain today. Where I said to him the most recent results and he's like, there's still a bunch of whitebirds that you're calling pure wild. And then there's a bunch of, there's plenty of whitebirds and smoke-faced birds that are completely heritage. And then there's stuff in between. The answer to that is, I don't know. We went into this thing thinking like, ah, this shouldn't be that hard. But turkeys are incredibly much more complicated than ducks and waterfowl more generally and probably most wildlife. For a variety of reasons, their genetics is incredibly complex. And that is muddying the water even further. So we are trying to build up the data sets big enough where we could be more certain about like, what are we looking at? Are we really looking at a wild bird that's not white? And if so, why is that? Yeah. One of the things that we're trying to do is I've got a new student that has identified most of the genes responsible for plumage. And so what we're going to layer on is the genotypes of those specific genes. And what we're fighting, super preliminary, but there are at least two ways for a bird to be white. There are these two genes that if you knock them out, you have a white bird. If you partially knock them out, you'll have white barring. Right. So now we're trying to figure out how often or how frequent is that are those found in wild populations? How frequent are those introduced from heritage or domestic birds? And how quickly does that disappear from the population? Right. You shoot a weird looking bird. What is the probability that that's a wild bird and be how much of a unicorn is that? Yeah. Hunting demands preparation, persistence and gear that will not quit on you. That is why I wear first light. This isn't about hype. It's about no compromise gear built to perform, built to last, whether it's their industry leading merino wool, keeping me comfortable through the cold and the hot or their durable outerwear shrugging off the elements. First light is built to help you go farther and stay longer designed by hunters. Four hunters with a deep commitment to conservation and land access. No shortcuts, no excuses. Just gear you can count on. Head to first light.com. That's F I R S T L I T E dot com. You know what you're getting with a wedding? Wedding hats. A baby in a waistcoat crying throughout the vows. Themed tables. Awkward best man speech. The plus one. Hello. People dancing in a circle. Ruin drental suit. Sometimes in life you just know what you're getting like a luxury bed and a great night's sleep. You know what you're getting with Premier Inn. I imagine too. I mean, there's a lot of states now. Nebraska, Montana. You know, I'm sure you could name Washington where like California, Utah, Idaho. Yeah, like where like you could go out in Nebraska and potentially in the same area run into Mariam's Rio's and Eastern's like all within spittin' distance of one another. Or at least things like that. I mean, I think that's a good thing. I mean, I think that's a good thing. Like all within spittin' distance of one another. Or at least things that look like that. Yeah. One of the things that we're sort of gauging now, places like California, Washington, Idaho, Montana, like you talked about Oregon where agencies at the time were like, you know what, we're not going to, we're not, we don't know what's going to take. So we're just going to put all the subspecies into there. Right. So what do we have left? Are there any actual populations representing true Rio's, Mariam's, or Eastern's? Or do we just have what potentially what we're going to coin as the American Turkey? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we're, we're, while Turkey DNA is expanding substantially this year, so we're not, we're initially it was all about weird looking birds. Now we're trying to get geography. Yeah. Right. So if you are getting your gobble on this spring or thinking about it, we're going to have while Turkey DNA is going to start doing a draw, much like duck DNA has been doing for the last few years, where if you get drawn, you get a kit, you have some vials in there, instructions. And if you shoot a bird, you can cut off that tip of the tongue, put it into there, ship it back to us. We're going to do our, our thing. You'll get a certificate for that bird. And then we're going to start compiling datasets, hopefully to answer many of these questions. You could eat that whole project. You could really bum out some Turkey hunters that are like their goal is to get each subspecies. And then they find out they're like, Oh man. What is actually, I was actually thinking the same thing. You know, Turkey slam, the only way to get to Turkey slam is you actually got genetically vetted. Right. Eastern goals. Otherwise you got the Mutzlam. Exactly. Yeah. I can't wait to go to a National Wild Turkey Federation convention and be like, are they peer reviewed? Is this Turkey real? Really. Phil, you want to pull some pictures up? I was talking Phil the engineer. Now I'm talking Dr. Phil. What are the most like common and easily identified color phases that a Turkey hunter is like likely to shoot or might shoot? You know, when I was thinking of this question, I phoned a friend, Mike Chickerland, Katie with our Wild Turkey DNA and tried to figure that out because I'm only now looking at Turkey's, right? You've got a duck guy expanding into the edible domain here. So I'm only, I didn't know that this was even happening in Turkey's until a year ago. So some of the most common would be what you're looking here, that reddish, that red phase. There's a bunch of, oh, this is something I wanted to say. So just like a black lab can actually make all phases of lab, right? So you can have yellows and you can have chocolate and black come out of a black lab. All heritage breeds, some proportion of them also can make white turkeys, right? All have it. And so people are just maintaining these different color forms by that selective breeding. Anyways, I just wanted to put that out there. No, it's good info. So that itself could be why we're seeing more and more white turkeys out there. Again, we'll be able to source because the mutations that occurred in the heritage and domestics to result in white type is what it looks like quite different than what we see in wild populations just naturally occurring. So we'll hopefully be able to actually track that. But right there, what you see right there, so that white and black barring, that interchange, right? I think that breed is supposed to be known as like a narrow-gazin. We see that quite often. And that's what I told you there's two genes. One gene says barring. The other one is a melanin production gene that's turned on or off. So that's how you get barring, where you get on, off, on, off plus barring. So that's what you're seeing in that turkey right there. So can you go back to that last one you had up? Yeah, sure. Maybe that. So that there's a red one, I'm guessing. Yeah. So that would be what is known as like a color phase red. There's there's turkeys. If you look them up, they're called barnyard reds. People have made all sorts of stuff. Yeah. But yeah, that would be one of the things. The other more, more reddily observed are called smoke phase. I don't know if you've got a picture of that. So we've got a gray one up there, Phil. I can add it really quick. It'll just be a second. Well, yeah, just throw it up there when you get to it. So those are kind of the big, big ones, Phil. Yeah. What but you got like I've seen some of the stuff you guys have posted on Instagram. Some of this stuff is like very subtle. Like I don't like if you're just out hunting and not paying attention, like you might not even notice it. Absolutely. Yeah. No, I mean, it takes Mike Chamberlain who, you know, looks at these things every single day, be like, oh, that one feather is not right. You're right. Most of us, including myself, would be like, sweet, I got a turkey. Yeah. But yeah, no, as we're learning more, what we're hoping to do also is to create some field guides where we start showcasing so people can actually start learning about it as we learn it. And we figured this stuff out and get this in the hands of both agency and private individuals out there so we can better potentially monitor some of these populations. One of the things that one of the things that we're worried about in through these introductions of heritage or domestic birds on the landscape is that what we're finding in heritage and domestic when we have reference set is that they're incredibly in bed. Every single one looks like a brother, sister, right? Full siblings. And then what's happening on the landscape is our natural populations through fragmented habitat, fragmentation, translocations, all of these other things also are not are are are highly are more in bed than other wild populations I study. Right. Including animals and other birds. Why? Is there some concern that that could be? I mean, it's probably more habitat driven, and I'm sure Mike Chamberlain could weigh in here, but is there some concern that that could also be at least a minor driver and where you're seeing turkey populations decline? 100 percent. So as you up that inbreeding coefficient, what we know from every other animal, Puma or Florida Panthers are a great example of it. You lose that that connectivity to other populations. More and more of them breed amongst brothers and sisters. You increase that inbreeding. What's happening is that even if you had all the habitat in the world, the individuals that you have now are making eggs that are either in viable or individuals that have lower survival because they're inbreeding so high. So turkeys also don't like to cross the road, apparently like right to ducks will fly across the road. But turkeys don't. So as you get more and more of that fragmentation, bigger issue in the East than in the West, you you basically force the population to become more and more inbred and as you put. So let's say you're you're creating artificial islands, the island population. And then if you throw a bunch of highly inbred heritage birds into there, what we show genetically is that if you breed those two birds together, instead of decreasing inbreeding, you actually artificially jump the inbreeding between the birds. So a nest that should have been outbred, meaning, you know, good to go, you artificially already spike it up. And turkeys aren't the only ones we're seeing the same pattern. We're seeing it in our ducks when when Game Farm Mallards and Wild Mallards interbred, interbreed, you should have an inbreeding coefficient of zero, but it jumps to point two within the clutch. So you're artificially inbreeding your own population through those actions. That's no good. Yeah, a cyclical effects, especially for turkeys that have a hard time with habitat, connect and population connectivity. Would you mind, because you guys just got some some good ink on the genetic depth in the eastern mallards, would you mind just hitting that real quick, like an update for everybody on on the percentage of domestic DNA within your and I'll I'll I'll buzz kill this. Was that that map that got posted? Did you see the map? I was on. Was that just yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, within your wild population. Yeah. So so basically. Yeah, basically, I need an hour to talk right now. But what we're doing right to duck DNA was what we started with in the wildlife world being like, all right, does citizen science at this level with hunters work? And the answer is overwhelmingly yes. We're in our third year where we've doubled the participation, doubled the number of samples every year. Thankful, thankful to all the donors that provided the funding necessary for that. And essentially, we're over almost 3,000 samples collected in three years. And one of those one of the aims of that study is to monitor the popular mallard populations across north, across the US for now. We're about to get Canada into the mix. But across across the US for now. And what we've seen, what we've tracked is that the eastern population is not doing great. And it continues to get worse and worse. And so during the fall flight, when you got an influx of birds out of Canada, which are mostly wild, you have 75 percent of harvested birds from duck DNA. And we have got other data that support this even more in the Atlantic flyway. Our feral or feral hybrids. And when we look at summer birds and my other work working with the state agencies, that proportion actually jumps to like 100 percent or even less than 2 percent for most of the states. And so 75 percent there, we jumped down to about 40. 40 percent on average in the Mississippi. Huge amount in game of Game Farm Mallard ancestry in the Great Lakes region. Less so if you go south of Tennessee, there's this interesting population dynamic going on there. You jump to the central flyway and essentially disappears less than 10 percent. You jump over the Pacific flyway and it jumps back up, unfortunately, to 20 percent, mostly driven by whatever's happening in California. Yep. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So we're tracking this thing. And unfortunately for the for the wild mallard, it continues to be quite the problem. We're hoping we're starting to try to figure out some solutions. But obviously, everybody always asked like, is that so they're inner being? Is there any sort of actual biological problem with that? And in the next year, we'll be we'll be putting out papers showcasing that not only does it change their migratory capacity, their feeding behavior, their ability to nest. But in fact, we showcase that their brains have actually been changed to to not to be more domestic like than they are wild type when you integrate. And all of these traits have a correlation with genetics. So the more game farm you have, the more game farming you look like. The problem with the Atlantic flyway that we're starting to see, or at least now we can analyze is that we randomly now get a game farm mallard phenotype and behavior by just by chance. There's so many hybrids that some proportion of nests just by chance recapitulate game farm all of a sudden, which is just not great. No, I mean, that's why all those fellows who you know can't blow a duck talk or post in all those pictures of limits. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And it's like we're not getting what, you know, me as a big duck eater would call like the benefits of having some domestic strain in there. Like, yeah. And I will tell you, so people will be like, oh, no, yeah, whatever. Duck's a duck. I'll eat that. Fun fact, they don't put on fat, super fat content the way a wild type. That's why they can't they can't we publish this now. And we were like, why can't they move? Maybe they don't know how maybe there's some weird thing happening. But one of the physiological differences is that even if we put them on high fat per unit child, they will not put fat. Oh, I feel like if we were in like the doctor who, you know, like bomb shelter, the DEF CON level for me would have just just rest. I'm like, yeah, my God, there's a real issue here. Like, fanny ducks are like the most prized possession in my freezer. Yeah. And and if you don't have a fat duck, when that polar vortex happens, that duck doesn't make it. And the more of your population proportionally grows with those types of traits, the lower the survival and the fecundity or baby making we expect. And that is what we're seeing in the Great Lakes. We're seeing in the Atlantic flowery. So what I have to caveat all of this, it's all suggested. It's at least explaining some of the population declines. Right. We don't have a habitat is definitely everything. But even like just like the turkey, you need a you need an animal that knows how to use that habitat. Yeah. Oh, all right. We got to keep moving here. Yeah, we can go all day. The human responsibility thing here is really like once again a factor. Um, how can folks take part in the turkey and or duck DNA projects? Yeah, yeah. Please. If you're interested, oh, if you're still duck hunting, like how and you shoot something super awesomely cool or you're like, I don't know what this is, both duck and goose, go to www.duckdna.com and sign up for the hybrid kit. If you get chosen, we'll send you a single vile kit. You send it back to us. We do the analysis. You get some answers. Do we get a little favoritism there? Like, can you send us a bunch of those? Come on. I think Korean got a bunch of them. Yeah. We'll have to talk to Corinne. Yeah, but we can definitely send you some. That being said, on the turkey, go to www.wildturkeydna.com. Start signing up. We're going to have those polls right before turkey season. That being said, if you do shoot a turkey during, if you have a fall hunting season, like you guys do for a few more days and Idaho and others, and you shoot something, give us a ring or an email through the website or get in touch at www.wildturkeydna.com on Instagram or at www.duckdna.com on Instagram or at www.labretzkylab.com on Instagram. And we'll take care of you. I got one more question about that, especially for the people who might end up with one of these kits. It doesn't have to be some weird looking bird, correct? No, anything. Like it could look like just pure white tail fan mariums and you still want to start. So for turkeys this year, we're looking for geography. We're also part of the selection criteria is where do you hunt? How many birds do you usually harvest? Those are going to be some of the information that we're going to want to know. If you are a person that has access to three tags, we'll send you three vials. If you're someone that shoots one bird, we'll send you one vial. So we're going to gauge that so that way we can get as many hunters involved and as much of the geography captured as we can this year, for sure. Great. And this year, for sure, if you're like my kid shot a bird, send that thing in. Cool. Yeah. Yeah. It'd be super awesome. Thanks for joining us, Phil. It's always a fascinating conversation. And on a side note, I'm looking forward to heading down to Texas. Corey, you're going to. Yep. For a collaboration meteor has going on with you involving our dad, which the audience, I'm sure, will be hearing more about later. So we're looking forward to that. I thought we were just doing birds. No, no, no, we're doing doing our dad too. But thanks a lot. Happy holidays and thanks for coming on. Yeah. Thanks, everybody. Very cool. Happy New Year. Thanks, Phil. Happy New Year. Hey, folks, that's it for today's show. That was awesome. I mean, come on, that's great citizen science. No, that was good. We might have to trim some of these listener questions, but that was a good. That's cool. We can do that, Phil. Right. Skip them, maybe just do one each or something. Well, it's like it's part of like what hunters bring to the table for the greater good. And when you get a chance to talk to someone like that, it's just like, I got another question, I got another question. Like you don't get a chance to talk to people like that very often. Yeah, some of the other critters that he'd love to dive into with other DNA. You know, he's got duck and turkey going. There's other things he's got in his head that he wants to pull off here. So hopefully there's more more to come. Do we got a throwback Thursday song filler? Did you just abandon all that? No, I still do the drop. Isn't that your favorite one? Let's do the drop. Throwback on Thursday morning. Stephen Brody, take me back to 1974. Throwback, I can't believe it. Did I mention Stephen Brody are old as shit? I need you to fill out the whole song. I want all the lyrics. Yeah, that'll be my winter break project. Sure. All right, guys, it's time to look back at the last year and share your favorite. I think it's I'm doing hunting, could be fishing, but I don't know what you guys are doing, share your favorite trips of the year. So Corey, you're up first, man. Yeah, well, gosh, it was hard to top my spring black bear hunt. I think I got a video up there and a couple of photos. But hunting a spot, the best part about it was I've been hunting the spot for about five years without being able to take aim and shoot at a black bear. And finally, it all came together this last spring. Early May, solo hunting overnight, backpacked into a spot. Bruiser spotted him the night before, put a stock on him. He eluded me. He zigged and I zagged and then was able to dig him up the next morning, stalked him, I spotted him at probably a mile and a half away and then stocked into 90 yards and shot him on the run with a 300 wind mag, which rarely happens. I feel like spot and stock bears, you see him far off. And you're like, oh, yeah, it looks like he's headed that way. You know, they usually go a different direction or something. The odds of like lining up the planets to get them within range are so slim. It's so tough, but so addicting too. And I got lucky with this one. I couldn't tell he was that big from that far away. But holy cow, it'll be probably the biggest bear I ever kill in the state of Montana, at least in fun note, I just got the hide back from Mr. John Hayes and he told me that was the biggest Montana black bear that's ever come through his shop, ever just pat him back. Wow, that's great. What does the skull measure? When it was green, it was just under 20 inches. I haven't measured it since since I boiled it. So were you by yourself? Mm hmm. And then a buddy helped me pack it out. That's what I can say. If you had to pack all that out by yourself, even the two of us, it was brutal and it was hot too, it was like 70 plus degrees. That hide in head was insanely awkward and heavy to pack out, had to cross creek multiple times. So you got him rugged? It's just the hide right now. Thinking about getting eventually you get a rug. Yeah, that's not good. Things to hang on. You have a place to like hang it or throw it in the house in my office at the moment. Oh, OK. Yeah, right upstairs. It looks pretty good up there next to my mountain line. Sweet. Got a couple more here, Corey. I got one more. Just it was hard to pick out of the two. Got to kill a white tail buck and a doe with my son this year. It was alongside with me. It was really fun. Got some private land access, not too far from home here. I don't think I would. I got the access if I said I'm hunting by myself. But I said I was bringing my seven year old boy along and I was like, heck, yeah, bring him in and we shot a doe out of a blind within the first couple minutes. And the landowner said, if you see this super old unicorn buck dragging his feet around, you should shoot him because he's probably not going to make it through the winter. And as we were dragging out the doe, that buck came out of the out of the cotton woods and we got him too. So doubled up within about an hour of hunting. So he literally just had the one horn on the one side. There's a tiny little nub on the other side. Did that thing have any teeth left in its head? Barely. No, I'm dying to see how old he is. I sent him in to get CWD tested. Well, did you send in a tooth to the lab here in town? It takes about eight months, though. So we'll find out more to come on that one. But that was pretty special to have my son there with me. Yeah. Cool. Cal, what do you got for us? That eight month waiting period for old Marshall is going to be tough. I know. He's already forgot. That buck's probably older than he is. Yeah, very possible. Easily. Yeah, I'm guessing eight or nine. Yeah, that's cool. I had great hunting adventures this year. Obviously, there's Big Brown Bear in Alaska, which was great. But we talked about that a bunch and I just wanted to hit, since we're coming to the end of the season, I get, it's depressing, but I get a lot of people who write and tell me how bad hunting is. That was not good. There's no animals anywhere, too many people. And why bother? I spend the vast, vast, vast majority of my time on public land. You and me both. And my secret to success is just trying. Like, that's all, like, it's that simple. I see spots that I've never hunted before and I just go, yeah, probably nothing here, but we're going to give it a shot. Yeah. And that's just once you pull the bandaid off of like, well, I got to go to the place that I know, a whole new world opens up to you. And, you know, if a bunch of people dump into your spot and your choices of finding something new or pissing and moaning and rah, rah, rah, rah, go find something new. Go ruin somebody else's spot. Yeah, that's the thing, man. Like, if you're griping about too many trucks at the trailhead in your park there, guess what those other people are doing? Griping about your truck being there, no doubt. Yeah. So this this picture that Phil's going to pop up is from one of these times, where I was driving, it was getting close to end of shooting light. It was a cold, snowy day. And here I'm looking at this river bottom or creek bottom and I'm like, dang, that's good looking pheasant. Wish some lucky son of a gun could go out there and knock on a door, maybe, I don't know. And there's this little chunk of public land that attaches to the highway. Just this place where you'd be like, there's no way there's any birds here at this point in the season, maybe opening day type of thing. But swung off, grabbed the dog and Snort and I at a very fast pace went to go check this place out and cut a pheasant track. We followed it and all of a sudden, like, I was so surprised I did everything I could not to shoot this bird. Because I got the gun over my shoulder was just like not in the game at all. And just barely caught this rooster that Snort had flushed flying over the hillside and was lucky enough to get him. And I celebrated the moment in a very unserious pheasant hunting way by taking a picture of the dog and being like, God, how cool is this? And then we flushed another rooster right after this, after talking and taking pictures and laughing. And obviously that shotgun going off and 50 yards later, flushed another rooster, got that bird because I was prepared. And then we walked in serpentine fashion five more miles, never found another pheasant track at all. So we were just the right place at the right time and it never would have happened had we not just tried something new. Amen, Cal. Amen. Spot that maybe was overlooked days before. Yeah, exactly. So and it's just like those two birds are way better than shooting a limit of birds on. Like it would have been a win to go out there and flush a bird. Right. Right. So cool. Yeah. Hunting demands, preparation, persistence and gear that will not quit on you. That is why I wear first light. This isn't about hype. It's about no compromise gear built to perform, built to last, whether it's their industry leading marino wool, keeping me comfortable through the cold and the hot or their durable outerwear shrugging off the elements. First light is built to help you go farther and stay longer designed by hunters, four hunters with a deep commitment to conservation and land access. No shortcuts, no excuses. Just gear you can count on. Head to firstlight.com. That's F I R S T L I T E dot com. Yes, that leaves me. My favorite hundred of the year is always going to be like the youth deer hunt with all the kids and all the family. But like I also like to get in, you know, a solo hunt now and then. And this year we got we got it going, Phil. This year I drew Colorado Mule Deer box tag. And it was in November. And for anyone who's never experienced a really good Mule Deer rut hunt, it's pretty special during a typical whitetail rut hunt, especially if you're archery hunting in the woods. Usually you only get to experience it in like flashes, right? Like here comes a buck chasing a doe and then he's gone. But in like more open Mule Deer country, like when the rut's going, like you just like kick back and watch the show. And it's amazing, like just watching bucks, push does, watching bucks, push other bucks around. And that's what this day, well, that's what happened on this day. We just like hit it right. That's my buddy, Dan, and like pretty much from first light on, we were looking at ready bucks cruising around solo or looking for does or bucks that were chasing does and Dan killed this buck like maybe an hour after shooting light started. We'd already glassed up two other bucks and we're like, which one should we go after? How should we go after them? And then that buck like is just like there in front of us, 200 yards away. And and Dan was like, yeah, man, I'll shoot that one. So he killed that buck. We got him cut up and stuff that meet up in a juniper and kept hunting all day. And pretty much all day long, we were like looking at bucks. It was like amazing. It was a warm day, like it was cold here in the morning, but warm day, but didn't matter. There's still like deer out bucks looking at does all day long. And I guess about it would have been about like an hour and a half before dark, I found this buck glassed him up and uh, that that deer was that buck was like, obvious you got the picture film. There he is. Like that buck was like, like he's not a big scorn buck, but like he was the freaking man, like he had all the does he was chasing other bucks around, keeping him away from those does and like after watching him for an hour, I'm like, yeah, he's the one. And part of the thing that gets me going, like on whether I'm going to shoot a buck or not is not necessarily the antlers. It's like when you're looking at a buck that's twice the size of the does that he's hanging out with, like literally twice the size, like you're looking at a good one no matter what his antlers look like. And that was this buck. So ended up doing a pretty steep downhill stock, got to 400 yards, ran out of cover and shot him and killed him. It was cool because the deer never knew I was there and I killed him instantly. But we walked down like I had a good landmark on what like that deer just disappeared out of the scope. And when I asked Dan what happened, he's like, I don't know, I blinked when he shot and the deer's just not there. And you're like, that's not your job. So we get down there and it's like getting on towards dark. And I'm like, he was right in front of there was like a lone pinion pine. I was like, he was standing right in front of that. Get down there. I'm like, man, not a track, no blood, no hair. Like you start panicking, you know, because I'm like, if he ran, he ran this way. Went down that way, no tracks, no hair. And I'm like, I'll fully admit it. Like I started swearing. I'm like, Dan, what's the what's the ass? One job. What? Um, and then I go back to where I'm like, this is where he was standing. Like I don't know why I didn't do it earlier, but I turned my head to the right. He's like 10 feet away. The tenor in a door. Like, and then you're like, I am too old to let panic drive my decision making. Exactly. But it was a long day, man. Like well before dark to well after dark, a lot of miles, big packouts. And it was just great. Heck yeah, man. Beautiful buck. Super cool. You can see the fat rolls on him. Oh, yeah. Shank looks like it's just swollen. Those Colorado bucks that can spend the summer up above tree line and then migrate down a good winter range, like they're huge. Huge deer like, you know, two inches of fat on the back, like pushing 300 pounds, I'm guessing. Yeah. So yeah, that was a real good hunt this year. Um, I guess, Phil, you just want to like how much how much time? It's up to you, Brody. I mean, we're almost at an hour right now. So let's just do this first one. You can just you can cherry pick some questions. We'll do it. We'll just do one. We're going to do a little fan Q&A section in lieu of the live chat with our listeners. And this one, the guy's name is AJ. I forget his last name. He sent in an email. It's a little long, but it's pretty juicy. So bear with me. I'm going to read it. My wife's college roommate is married to a guy who asked to go deer hunting with me every season. On paper, it should be perfect. He lives near great public land. Our kids get along and it's become an annual trip north to visit them. The problem is his idea of hunting couldn't be further from mine. He rode hunts almost exclusively, shoots deer from the truck, targets fawns on purpose and only takes headshots. I've made it clear I won't shoot from the road or hunt that way. Even so, he insists on helping me get one. He pressures me to stay in the truck and keeps telling me I don't need to unload my gun when we get in the truck. If I say I want to hunt alone, he takes it personally. I end up spending spending most of the weekend riding around instead of actually hunting. This is where it gets real good. There's more to complicate things further. My wife already dislikes him due to him cheating on his wife shortly after they were married. I don't want to interfere with my wife's friendship with her former roommate, but we're both on the same page that we don't like him. Yada, yada there. Curious to know what the question is. Heavy yada. So my question is, how do you handle someone whose ethics fundamentally clashed with yours, especially when family and friends are involved? What's the line between being polite and enabling behavior that gives hunting a bad name? Man, I understand the dilemma of the wife friendship here, but other than that, this is very simple. You're talking about a guy who's hunting illegally and unethically, not to mention being a cheating scumbag. So you just got to cut ties and not worry about being polite. I don't know if you guys have anything more to add, but like... That one seems pretty cut and dry. The email, he's basically trying to convince himself that this is what he needs to do, I think, like he's talking himself through it and just needs a gentle push to be like, no more. Yeah, there's your push. Yeah. So AJ, get rid of him. Don't get drugged down, buddy. Yeah. It sounds like you already have some good morals and ethics around hunting, and it's just not worth being around that guy. I will say the only defensible thing here is there's nothing wrong with shooting fonts. No, there's nothing wrong with shooting fonts. But if you're doing it, leaning out of a truck, running truck, then it's a problem. Yes. So yeah, I didn't figure you guys would have a whole lot to say, but I felt like AJ really needed a friendly push in the right direction. Yeah, nowhere to go but up, buddy. We're going to do another one, Phil. OK, and also I do think just partially because Nick already made the thumbnail on the title of Set Stone, I think it'd be good if we hit on just some brief New Year's resolutions. Oh, yeah, we're going to do that. OK, great. Yeah, we'll get there. Let's move on. All right, because we're using up a lot of time. We're going to do our Cal interview. Is that good, Phil? Can we move on? Yeah, let's do it. All right. OK, for our next interview, we've got our very own Cal, the conservation man, Calahan, as most of you hopefully know, Cal is officially the new CEO of Back Country Hunters and Anglers. He's going to continue doing some Cal stuff for meat eater on a part-time basis. But he's going to have his hands full at BHA and this may be his last appearance on Radio Live. So this whole thing is kind of like a bittersweet farewell, Cal. First off, congratulations. Yeah. Oh, thank you. I don't think BHA could have chosen a better person for the job than you. But I got to know it. Is that like that CEO title making you a little nervous? Oh, my God, the things I don't know. You know, like that's not the. There's no motivation there to be a CEO. There's a lot of motivation to just like fully embrace the things that I that motivate me. Yep. Right. And a whole bunch of other people. Yeah. And this, yeah, I was asked, would be like the simplest way. Like, yep. Why'd you do it? Well, they asked. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Um, and so I'm very, very excited. Yeah. Um, and I'm just like gung ho to like be able to just like fully embrace, you know, this big thing that's been a big part of my life that I've kind of been like moonlighting and for a long time as a volunteer. Yep. So, um, super stoked there. And then the meat eater side of things, is going, you know, to continue hosting the podcast, doing some some video work. And, you know, that's going to be like a supportive role. Yeah. Which is pretty darn amazing to be able to do that. Yeah. Cool. Um, can we expect anything different from BHA with you at leading them? I, you know, that's a interesting question. So it's a membership chapter model, nonpartisan organization. I think the need in the conservation space is like true representation of, you know, like folks like us in this room, right? Like a lot of conservation is the speak is aimed at folks with with big money and deep pockets that want to give. And like we definitely need some of that. Sure. But the goal, my dream is to have like, you know, the rank and file folks that go out and do this stuff. The end user of public lands. Yeah. Uh, you know, represented well. We're in a lot of conservation pickles right now, because it's like I swear to God, people at the very top are working off of like public land theory. Well, we've been told, right? You people like these things, right? Well, let's let's get into those people at the top. I want to read you a quote from an article that popped up in my feed this morning. Earlier this year, Utah Senator Mike Lee's efforts to slip permission for federal land sell off into a Senate Republicans budget reconciliation reconciliation bill failed after outrage citizens forced them to withdraw the proposal on Monday, December 15th. Lee launched another gambit to sell or transfer your public lands to private interests by adding amendments to the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, which the US Senate is now considering. Lee's ploys disguised by complex legalese, but if it is adopted, the effect would be to eliminate the legal language that requires the Department of the Interior to protect public lands, national parks, historic trails, wild and wild and scenic rivers, etc., etc. Um, I imagine you're going to be spending a little more time in Washington, DC. So if you were to run into Senator Mike Lee in a bar, what would you say to him? I would say thank you for putting together such a perfectly public list of working against the wishes and best interests of the American people. It's like he's writing his own resignation letter. It's like if you're dealing with a bad employee because of all the laws of protecting employees with employers and things like that, you can be kind of hard to fire people for cause. Yep. But it shouldn't be. Yeah. And this guy's like, I'd say, thank you. Yeah. Senator, like you are an obstinate employee that has gone rogue and you are publicly working against the best interest of the American people. Yeah. Thank you for filling out the paperwork for us. Really? Yeah. And so like what's and I don't know if you guys get like here my phone blowing up, but it's over what is going on right now. And it is this, you know, it's complicated like backdoor dealing where he submitted amendments at like the very much eleventh hour to this appropriations process that was largely getting wrapped up. Yeah. So again, he's not making friends with a bunch of people. Yeah, probably even people in his own party are like really? Again, the people within his own party, the people within the committees that he works on. Like he is just working against people like nothing's ever easy. Yeah. Because like if there's a compliment, I can give this guy is like he's a zealot. Like he's he truly believes beyond the wishes of anybody that we shouldn't own public land, we shouldn't have public land. We shouldn't have the freedoms that we get to enjoy on public land. Why that is, we will likely never know. Yeah. But. And it is just it's just like this death of a thousand cuts like type of thing. Well, if I can get a little win here with this amendment change and then that'll stack up to this other little win and this other little win and it's just going to be easier because the other thing that he's doing right now, right, is there's like 20 or 25 acres in Brianhead, Utah, that the little municipality there, Brian, Ed would love to use this public land for the municipality. There's all these systems in place where we, the American people can facilitate that. Right. We can lease that land to the municipality and retain ownership and then we, the American people, get to use those lease fees for the maintenance or creating new public land. Do a land swap or some sort of there's a land swap. There's the sale through the Federal Land Policy Management Act, where the revenue from that sale gets used to get public land of higher value. All these things that are within the Congress of the United States, we the people. They're existing levers that can be pulled. Yep. And the people of Brianhead, Utah can get what they want and it doesn't shortchange the rest of us. Yeah. However, Lee doesn't want to do that. He's like, no, free. Nothing. Right. And are you really going to come out and work against these fine citizens of Brianhead, Utah? And he's like, yeah, I am. Because we have all these systems in place that are public and they're for the benefit of we the people of the United States. Right. Let's work within that framework and everybody can get what they want. Yeah. But he's just like not willing to do that. Moving, moving past good old Mike Lee. Real quick, what are some of the other big issues or fights you think BHA is going to be tackling this year and moving forward? I think awareness is a huge part of this. You know, we it's, you know, from the top down, like we're being told there's a campaign running to tell people of how our public lands are not good, they're not working for us, not in the best interest of the American people and, you know, hunters and anglers. Like if you just look at BLM, like we are uniquely poised to be like, actually, this stuff's incredible. Right. It's insanely valuable. You can't put a price tag on it. And then the ecosystem services that those lands provide in addition to being like the home of like our extractive industry. A lot of times it's like the case to sell this stuff off is so thin, like it is just like it should be a non-starter. So that's going to remain like a goal of the organization. Getting the message out. You got to get the message out. There's a lot of people out there who are in full alignment on this, but they don't pay attention to what hunting and angling groups do or think. So that coalition part of the package is something that that we can definitely help bring to the table, right? So I've done a lot of work in the past with big green conservation groups, as well as big businesses that more align with the quote unquote green side of things. And the fun thing here is like you don't have to give anything up in order to bring some education into all sides here. So like, you know, very succinctly, it's America. We can have our guns and our public lands. Sure. And if somebody tells you that we can't, they're working against you. Yeah. Like there is nothing that we have, nothing that we have and enjoy right now that is not here because we didn't demand it. It's not here because we got lucky. It's because we hit the brakes and said, oh, my God, there's no more freaking ducks left. Yeah. We got to do something about this. Yeah. Oh, my God. Remember how cool elk were? Let's come up with a giant program to reseed elk across their native range. Like we're in this memory lapse situation right now where it's like people have forgotten all the hard work and dedication that happened to give us what we have right now. Yeah. And we just need to remind people that this stuff is not here by chance. We didn't get lucky. It's here by choice and people demanded that we have this system of public lands, that we want wildlife, the stakes are high. And we want access to them. Yeah. Stakes are high. Exactly. Yeah. All right, Cal, I'd like to end this interview by saying that you've been a big inspiration to me over the years and I'm sure the same goes for everyone here at MeatEater and the fans who are listening. So thanks for the work that you're done and the work you're about to do. Fighting the good fight for all of us hunters and anglers. Well, thank you for taking your hosting job and putting in this opportunity. So membership. Yeah. Got to grow the membership. We need more names on the list so we can advocate more effectively for our public lands, waters and wildlife. So if you can do something for all of us, just get a solo membership and tune in and see what we've got to say. Cool. Cool. All right, Phil, we're going to end it with some New Year's resolutions. Cool. Imagine we've got enough material by now that we can end this thing. Corey. Hey. That's 2026. Well, yeah, I mean, obviously I could try and eat more exercise or sorry, eat healthier. Sure. Exercise more of this and that. That'll probably come as a roller coaster ride as it typically does for me throughout the year, start out gold and then end up not so healthy. But then it comes back and forth. But my New Year's resolution is my son's going to be eight next year and I want to do more hunting with him, certainly watching you and Giannis and Steve take your kids out and hearing all the tips and tricks to have a great outing in the woods with them. It's been tricky up until this point, I would say we've done a little bit more this year than in years past, but now that he's eight, he's a couple of years off being able to do it himself with me in the woods. So we're going to try and get out a little bit more. A couple of squirrel outings, some spring turkey. Cool. Every day in the summer and up next fall, too. So nice. More time in the woods with my boy. That's a good one. I support you in that. Oh, thank you. Yeah. Got anything specific or? Oh, boy. I. Not really. Just improve on all fronts. That's fine. That's all. No, that's good enough. Day by day. Yeah. Yeah. Baby steps. My resolution for weight loss comes with like I have always kept like the same stable of t-shirts. Mm hmm. Like the new ones come and go real fast. Yeah. But I'm like, if I throw on an old t-shirt that I really like and go, oh, my God. Yeah. That's that's my. I don't view you as someone who's got a weight loss problem. Oh, man, it's just like, you know, older we get. Yeah. The old beer get becomes like a real thing. Yeah. And you go, oh, who is this? Oh, oh, oh. Yeah. Cool. Big one for me is I'm doing a marathon with a gold time of 3.30, which is it's going to be tough, but it's doable if I stick with the training and get lucky and stay injury free. It's going to be a tough one, but I'm giving it a good go. What's your timeline? September. Also, I'll start like the actual like regimented training program in early April. So between now and then it's just putting miles on, you know. Yeah. Plus around here, you'd need, you know, there's a good chance you need like indoor training. Yeah, exactly. Like I was looking at spring marathons because you can't like it's too hot in the summer, right? A lot of places, but like Missoula has one in June. But then when you think about Montana's winter, it's like, do I have time to get ready for that one? Not really. So it's better that I'm doing one. I'm doing one out in Billings in September. Nice. Yeah. And then like for like our world, our hunting world, whatever we want to call it. Like Corey, it's pretty much I've kind of had the same one going for a few years. And it probably shows my age and it's corny and cliche, but it's like focusing on the fun, the experience, the people, the places. Like that's what I'm worried about these days, rather than like what in animal scores or something like that. I just want hunting to be like it was when I was kid and everything was special and fun. And then there's like the old man element to it where you like grow wise enough to just like appreciate whatever you're given. You know what I mean? Like that. So that's my like hunting resolution for the year. That's a good one. Yeah, I was going to say I have not done like my big wilderness backpack hunt for two years now. Yeah. And time to get back to it. I have like for mental health purposes, I got to make that thing happen. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And that's like a big buck dreams type of deal. But yeah, I mean, consequently, like I haven't shot a deer in two years because I'd the whole scene is so important to me. Yeah. Or it's like is way more. You're spending all your time protecting that stuff rather than going out. Well, that's the attitude that I want to keep, though, is like I don't want this to be a career. I want to like put myself out of a job as soon as right and possible. Right. So like as fast as people can make yourself obsolete. Oh, absolutely. And I think that is like a real difference in goal. Like career people and all sorts of things like like there's people in this space that I think a third of the time, they're working in a way that will never put this shit to bed. Right. Right. I'm like, oh, great. You just created more enemies that are galvanized against you. I'm like, how about we just do the good thing and get it done. And then everybody understands and respects the stuff and we can go. I'll go back to swinging a hammer, being happy. Nice. I think that's a great place to end it. What about fill a hammer? Fill. Where's Phil? Phil. We're going to jump back in time. What I need you to address something. I'm following. Oh, Phil, this is we're going back to a podcast question. I swear to God, we're going to end it after this. OK, it's a lot of pressure from Tate Green. At the beginning of some meat eater podcast on YouTube, there's a dude wipes commercial. I've never heard this commercial, but continue. There's a singing voice that sounds like it could be Phil. Oh, is this you, Phil? No, I wish I could say it was me. It is not me. I'm flattered. You think I can sing as well as that guy? He's he's built in it and he's he's really reaching for the stars there. Nope, that's not me. But I don't know if I get tired of meat eater. I might like Nancy Karrigan him and then I'll maybe take his job or something. Yeah, that's the only way. Yes, it's the it truly is. I mean, you're already the best podcast engineer in the business and in demand, stage actor, semi professional gamer, world renowned Dungeon Master. World renowned. But you know, you might have time to get a side hustle singing jingles. I was at songgo again. He won't sing it. Oh, you told me it wouldn't. Well, yeah, dude wipes needs to pay us more money if they want us to sing the song on this show. So yeah, nothing's free. All right, work it out, dude wipes. What is your resolution? Don't we get a Phil resolution? Oh, I was wondering. Mine is to read more. Hey, there you go. That's a good one. Solid. Always a good one with you on that. Any genre? Oh, nothing, nothing. I mean, it's fantasy, Cal. I'm not reading any nonfiction around here. The Dungeon Master's manual, 23rd edition. I it's in my backpack up in my office right now. Amazing. All right, everyone. Happy New Year. Happy holidays. Do good in 2026 and tune in next week. Later. Here. Here. 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