Ep. 825: Snowflake Man and the Cadaver Otter | MeatEater Radio Live!

This is an I Heart Podcast. Guaranteed Human. Welcome to Meet Eaters 12 and 26 presented by Moltremobile and OnXMaps. 12 of Meet 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 Bated Bear Hunt in Manitoba. If you've ever wondered what a Bated 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 Meet Eaters YouTube channel and be on the lookout for more 12 and 26 in the coming months. Welcome to Meet Eaters trivia. Meet Eaters Podcast. Welcome to Meet Eaters Radio Live at 11am Mountain time. That's also 11am for our friends in Moab, Utah on Thursday, January 22nd. I'm your host Spencer. Join us today by Janice and Seth. On today's show, we'll interview Sue Richardson about the historical figure Wilson, Snowflake, Bentley. Then we'll review some items for gear talk followed by a batch of top threes. And finally, we'll interview Michael Hadsell about the world's one and only search and rescue order. First, Seth. What do you boys been up to? Cold January. Cold? Cold this weekend. This is like the first week of cold you have. It feels notable. Have you seen the forecast for like east of us? Northern Minnesota negative 70 winch hill. Oh, well, Northern Montana like up on the high line Malta. They're getting real cold stuff. Everybody's getting real winter besides us. Pennsylvania is getting real cold stuff. A lot of snow right now. We boys been up to. I went and did a little, my wife and I went out to eastern Montana last weekend, did a little looking around for things, fossils and whatnot. You're the only one who goes rock counting in January. Well, I usually don't. He's like, I usually don't, but you know, it's been warm and there's everything's not covered up in snow. So yeah, it was a perfect. What'd you find? Founds of back lights. How big, show me. I found one that was probably four or five inches long. Good. And then we found like three of those. And then found the part of a bison vertebrae that has the thing sticking up real high on the. Oh, like the part on the back. Yeah, way cool. That showed me how big that was. That was probably six, seven inches tall. And then we found. I just, I can't like confirm how authentic this is, but we found some carvings in sandstone. That one was on June 25th, 1911, Frenchie the Trapper. Oh. And you're suspicious that may not have been in 1911 from Frenchie the Trapper. Yeah, you just can't tell, you know, like I want to, it totally could be. I believe it's hard, it's hard to tell. And then we found another carving that. You know, like the famous Western artist, Charlie Russell, like CMR's named after him. We found a CM carved in the sandstone that looks very similar to his signature. Okay. That's way cool. So Kelsey's big fan. Oh, yeah, huge fan. Yeah, we have his work, Prince of his work hanging in our house. But can't, like I said, can't confirm if it's really authentic stuff, but are you going to bring these findings to someone else's attention that could maybe authenticate them? Yeah. Yeah, we know a guy that's a part of like the, the Charlie Russell historic society thing or whatever. Wouldn't that be something? Yeah, it'd be cool. It'd be super cool. But yeah, that's what I've been doing. Lion man, you like the winter. Love it. You don't? I mean, if I were ranking the four seasons, it's an easy fourth place for me. No question about it. I've never thought about ranking the seasons. Because I like seasons. I would not live in a place that doesn't have four seasons. Oh, man. I agree. But I don't know. Yeah, that's one of those like Steve things of God's pointing a gun at your head. And you have to pick, you know, the great, like they're all great. Sure. Running is great in the winter. Running is great in the summer too, but for different reasons, right? Fall number one. Summer number two, spring number three, winter number four. Easy. You go now. Gun here. Oh, geez. Fall one. It's a good two two spring three winter four summer. Wow. What an upset. You love winter. You freak. A lot of good things to do in the winter. Okay. Tell me what you've been doing then. Well, yeah, we haven't been doing the normal winter activities because of our lack of snow here. But Ming has not been trying to catch lions, not doing real good at that. I've not caught a single one yet, being getting not really messed up by the lack of snow so much, but I've had a lot of one time we had too much snow happen while we were on a fresh track. That we knew was a fresh track from the day before. I might have already talked about this, but this track literally filled in. That was like the only snowstorm that we've had this winter. And I just happened to be on a track that day. But I've had a bunch where they've gone into private. It's just a thing with Montana man. Even though we have a lot of public, there's just always some private around. And then this cat's take a left instead of a right and they're going towards private. Nothing you can do about it. Sure. And you can get access to that private. Especially if you're within an hour of bozeman here. That private could be very skinny. And then he's already three private parcels away. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it doesn't make sense to call somebody to access 40 acres or even a couple hundred acres. Now, if it's like thousands, it makes sense. And I've been calling them. But we did catch our first bobcat ever solo two weekends ago, which was a, you know, it's a real proud moment for me as a hound owner. Does Mingus know the difference when he's like on a track? Like this is a bobcat. This is a good thing. Don't think so. Okay. No. I don't know. There's no way that I could. I would know. But what was cool about it is that he'd already tracked one for a while. And he's so poor at catching bobcats. There are a lot of times if I know it's a bobcat track and it's early in the day, I'll kind of let him do it. But I'm going to sort of start like keep me andering the way I'm going to, I'm going because I want to see if we can find a lion track. Right. Because, and the reason being, I've talked about this before too, but just to explain to everybody, lions have small lungs. They cannot outrun a hound. So when they get pressured by dogs, they immediately go up in a tree or they bay up or whatever. Sometimes there might be a quarter mile, you know, a little bit of a sprinter or something, but they don't have the endurance to do things like bobcats do, which have much bigger lungs. And I guess that it's just because a bobcat is prey to more animals than a lion is. Lion just sits on higher up the hierarchy. You know, the only thing that really chases the lion around might be a giant bear or a wolf. And they're probably not really chasing them so much as they're just running them off a kill. And whatever a bobcat though, he's, you know, pack a guy. Let's can take him out. You know, who knows what else. So they can stay ahead of hounds. And if they have a jump, then they start to do figure eights, backtrack, go up trees, jump from one tree to another tree, come down the other tree and do different things. So they're just harder to get close to to put the pressure on it. Because again, you got to put the pressure on them, make them go up into a tree. Well, while they're doing these loops and stuff, like if you're in the zone, there's a chance you can see a bobcat, right? And it's never happened to me, but Jennifer was with me, my wife, and we're staying there. And Mingus has been on the track now for, I don't know, half an hour. And I could hear it in his voice that something had changed. Like there was a little more intensity to it. The barking was becoming more rapid. I'm like, yeah, he might have jumped him, you know, like there, he might be on to something. And I said to Jennifer, wouldn't it be cool? Like if we just like saw a bobcat come sneaking through here, you know, while Mingus is on his track. And two minutes later, five minutes later, I look up the hill, and here comes the bobcat. Not worried whatsoever that he's got a hundred pound hound somewhere, a hundred yards behind him. He's just slinking through the woods, not looking over his shoulder. How far away was Mingus, you think? 100 plus, 100 to 150 yards. And yeah, his bobcat comes down the hill, comes by Jennifer and I at 10 yards. I should have gave this video to Phil, he could have shared it. And it was cool. I got my camera out fast enough and got, you know, maybe three, four seconds of him walking through. Did you hear him coming or you just saw him? No, just happened to look up the hill and saw him and he just flowed across the earth. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, just silent and deadly, you know, not butt deadly but silent and deadly. Unfortunately, Jennifer's like digging in her backpack when I look over at her. I'm like, trying to make noise, but not too much noise because she was, I don't know, 15 feet away from me. Luckily, she heard me and looked up and saw it too. And we're both sort of so astounded at what we had just seen. We're just sitting there and aw, being like, whoa, man, like, keep, leave that. You know, that was so rad. And it takes me a couple minutes and I'm like, oh, shit, I better call Mingus over here. That's a hot track right there. There hasn't been a hotter track ever. And Mingus calms, calm over. And it still took him probably 15, 20 minutes to put enough pressure on him to get him into a tree. Like, again, I wasn't thinking we were going to catch it. So we continued down the hill, went to the creek bottom, took off our pack, started snacking. And by the time we've gotten a couple bites in, I'm like, oh, he's barking tree. So we packed up and walked up there and sure enough, he had him. Good for Mingus. Did he see the bobcat in the tree? Oh, yeah. He knows. Good. He did not want to leave the tree because I didn't have my, uh, which Steve was here. So you can make more fun and move out of this. But in Montana, probably a lot of places, you got to buy a fur bear license before the season starts. If you want to go bobcat, I had not done that this year. Just slip my mind. So they're safe. And so, um, yeah, we had to walk away from a one in the tree. But honestly, it's like, I don't know, I'm trying to think how to put it. But if it's one or the other, like, I'd rather just have my dog catch and bobcats and looking at him walking away. Like that's way cooler than to say, I, like, I'd rather have three. The Mingus had caught on his own and taking pictures of it than one he had caught. I got to kill it. Yeah. Good for Mingus. Yeah. More, more Mingus stories to come. So luckily we have, you know, it's only the end of January. We still have February, March, half of April, um, to, uh, to keep hunting lions and cats. So the winter pervert lovers like the honest lot of winter to go. Speaking of winter, let's go to our first guest of the day joining us on the line now is Sue Richardson, the VP of the Jericho Historical Society. Sue is here to talk to us about her great, great uncle Wilson Snowflake Bentley. Sue, welcome to the show. Thanks. Let's play video. Uh, first thing Sue, please explain who your great, great uncle was and how he got the nickname Snowflake. Well, if you go around willing to know to snowflakes or alike, it's because of Wilson Bentley. He was the first person to ever photograph an individual snow crystal. He went on to photograph one of five thousand of them over the next 46 years. Not only photograph them, but he studied each photograph had a course on the entry in his journal with which documented temperature humidity. What part of the storm it came from all of this weather data. And from that, he developed many, many theories on how these crystals form and what factors impact how they change and grow. And in fact, most of the scientists today know about snow came from his research when they were teaching in early 1900. So the nickname was actually given to him by a reporter from the Boston Globe. We did a story on him in the early 1900s and even the handle of the snowflake man was kind of morphed into nothing Bentley. His images are beautiful. They're filled with so much detail that it's shocking that he pulled this off with technology from the 1800s. Tell us about the setup that he used to capture these pictures, which we're looking at right now. You can see these on our YouTube channel. He had a Bellows camera. And he replaced the lens with a microscope. Figured out a way to attach it. And that's how he got the magnification. And of course those cameras used glass negatives. So it was very stable for the time frame. Photography was pretty much in its infancy. Only from 2025 years. The photographs have been. Real easily taken, if you will. But it was a, he was a brilliant man. He was 17 years old when he started this process. And he was a great man. He was a great man. His mother bought him that camera and microscope for his birthday. And took three years of trial and error to figure out how to put it together. How to make it all work. The end of the experiment with different stops to get the to control him out of light coming in. And he worked in an unheated wood shed at the back of the house because it needed to be told. So snow crystals wouldn't melt. Well, he did the process. And snow flakes. And wouldn't trade. They made with wire handles. Um, he would step out of this wood shed into the storm, test if only snow on this tray. Then he would step back into the wood shed out of the wind. And grab a magnifying glass to do a quick scan to see if it was anything worthy of photographing. And if there was, he made a, he initially used a straw from wrong broom as a tool to touch it to the center of the center. It was a little snow crystal and transfer to the microscope slide. And later years he created a stylist out of wood with a sharp point and a larger end. So it was easier to manipulate that he would transfer to the microscope slide. And put it under his microscope, his observation microscope to make sure it was again worthy of photographing. And then he would, he had this weird process because the, the slide had to be vertical in the stage on the microscope slash line. So he used a turkey feather because there's often a press with cold snow crystal to the cold glass. Slide it into the stage and then microscope go to the back of the camera. The black cloth over his area, senior wheel, that's legit how those work. And bring it as focused and take a picture. Wow. That's cool. Snowflake was doing something that had never been done before. And I imagine that this elicited some strong feelings from those around him. What did his friends and family think of his work? It was crazy. These people are practical Vermont farmers. And messing with snow to them, they just could not have them any particular any purpose, any sense in doing this. And it doesn't add to your milk production community, Eric cows. It doesn't make a crop story any better. They just had a list of time and pure foolishness. Later years, they did come to. Appreciated after he became basically known all over the world. They did come to appreciate it, but they initially thought he was. What about the scientific community? What did they think of his work? Well, for the first. It was. Doesn't years or so. He was. He gave it right. He then wrote prolific over the next decade. And he was ignored by the scientific community for a decade. I think there was probably some arrogance there, you know, what are some from our farm, we know that we don't know. And also, he was very eloquent in his style of writing. And of course, scientific writing is supposed to be truly objective, just factual. And he would go off and he flowering prose because he was so enamored with the beauty he saw. And he couldn't help himself. So they ignored him until he couldn't. But in the meantime, colleges and universities come around. The world were buying copies of his negatives and his prints for teaching purposes. And he, he touched by a sense of peace, for duplicate, which is exactly what it cost him to make a duplicate negative. And when he died in 1931, he was still charging by a sense of peace. He never raised his price. He's got more money than he ever made. Besides the 5,000 snowflakes, what else did snowflake Bentley take pictures of? Well, he took, he had another camera. They took pictures of clouds and snow, where all those and different weather phenomena. In addition to family members and just life on the farm. He also photographed thrust on window panes and on plants and do on plants and spider webs and insects. And just he was fascinated with it. With pretty much everything in the natural world. Yeah. Sue, please tell folks how they can experience snowflake Bentley's work in person and online. Here in Jericho, Vermont, in a historic building, called the Old Red Mill, which is an 1800s crystal mill. We have, we have, this is not what Bentley exhibit, which is his cameras, his microscopes, all of the equipment that he worked with, some of these original photographs and negatives. It's a neat exhibit. We literally have people that come from all over the world to see this exhibit and actually see the equipment he worked with. There's a children's book that was published in 1998 that's still in front of the World of Calvary Award. So we get teachers from all over the world because there's publishing multiple languages. So it's really a fascinating exhibit. Definitely if you're anywhere in this part of the country, it's definitely worth your time to come home to you. Yeah, thank you for joining us, Sue. And thanks for continuing the legacy of your great-great-uncle snowflake Bentley. You're welcome. Thanks for having me. Thanks, Sue. Thanks, Sue. I'm fixing to order me one of those pictures of snowflakes, snowflake, and hang them up at home. Oh, yeah. I love that they're from the 1800s. Yeah, that'd be a great little print to have hang on the wall. Yeah. All right, our next segment is Gear Talk. Yani, talking gear again. Yani, you're up first. Great tune. What are you reviewing for us today for Gear Talk? Well, Spencer, I brought in my new favorite backpack. Okay. We loaded up with Gear 2. That thing must be what? 30 pounds? Yeah, I'd say somewhere around there. Did you pick it up? No. Yeah, it doesn't have any water in it right now. So it gets about two pounds heavier when I go out. The reason being is because my pistol and my rifle are in here. Yeah. And, you know, guns, they add a lot of weight. But if I continue to not shoot bobcats out of trees, then I don't need to carry either of those. Swap around it to camera gear. All right, tell us about this backpack. Yeah, initial a scent. I found out about them. I think it was right about a year ago. I was at the Western Hunt Expo and my buddy, Duke Wasney, from First Light, came by our booth, or we were maybe at the First Light booth. And he's like, hey, you need to go check, come check out these initial scent packs. And so I went over and I saw it. I'm like, yeah, whatever. It looks like a pack. Duke is the guy, the first light guys talk about is though he's a god in the mountains. Yeah. Like, Duke is the badass mountain hunter. Yeah. Oh, the crew. Yeah. Okay. He told you to check out this. He told me to check it out. So, yeah, when Duke tells me to check something out, I usually pay attention. They had it, man, I can't remember the exact numbers, but they had the pack itself loaded with like 80 pounds. And I put it on. I'm like, all right, yeah, it was all right. It was heavy. And they're like, okay, now we're going to add on, I forget what it was. 60 more or something. They basically hung these sand-filled dry bags off of these hooks right here on each side. And then they're like, now go walk around for 10 minutes and come back. And after that little tour, it was enough to be like, okay, I definitely need to try one of these. Okay. A lot of packs carry weight. I feel like decently well. Does this one excel at it? You know, better than the other ones I've been using. Maybe it's 1% better. I don't know. Like, I know I can carry weight with it. It's like, when you have 100 pounds on your back, it all starts to hurt after a while. No matter how good the pack is. What I really like though is, because 95% of the time when I'm wearing this pack, it doesn't have 100 pounds of meat in it. Instead, it's got 30 pounds of gear in it, or maybe even just 20. And I'm sneaking through the woods, trying to put an arrow through an elk or whatever it might be. And so how it rides in those cases and those scenarios is probably more important to me than how well it carries the weight, right? It's one of the things that stands out for this pack for me is that when it's on my back, there's, I have to really try to get my elbows or my tricep to touch the pack behind me. And so it's not like it's a big bulky thing sticking out my sides. It's very slim profile. And looking at it, it doesn't necessarily look like that when you see it. But yeah, wearing it, like I can draw my boat freely. It's just not in my way whatsoever. I'm a fan of simple packs too. And as you can see here, it's basically got the one main compartment. The main compartment has I think another two zippers inside of it. And then it's got this one outside compartment. Very tidy. Very, yeah, super, super tidy. I'm not a fan of the packs with, you know, 50 pockets and 50 zippers. It just adds weight and complicates things. But I don't need it. So yeah, the frame, carbon fiber frame. And who else does it? People have stays that are carbon fiber. I don't know anybody else that has a full frame like this. Yeah, that seems pretty unique. Catches your eye right away. Yeah, for sure. The top part of the frame here. Is that like a, can you like hook your, your rifle sling? Rifle sling on that? Oh, yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, definitely. Very easy to take the bag off and put it back on. If you're going to take it off just to, if you don't want to carry the bag itself while you're packing meat, it's got a load shelf in there. So yeah, just simple. I like simple things at work. And this pack definitely does that. So I put a few pictures up the fill's showing now where I think I've packed at least half dozen animals in it. That was my bull elk there. The picture prior was my Idaho mule deer from this fall. There's a caribou. That was a short pack job right there. It wasn't like you really tested the pack out. But anyways, been putting it through the faces. And yeah, I'm pumped on it. So is that going to be the backpack for the fall of 2026 as well? 100%. Okay. You convinced? Sweet. Welcome to Meet Eaters 12 and 26 presented by Mulchry Mobile and OnX Maps. 12 of Meet 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 Meet Eaters YouTube channel and be on the lookout for more 12 and 26 in the coming months. I'm going to go next for gear talk. I'm going to talk about my favorite gloves that I have ever owned. They are the first light Cody gloves ever. I don't I can't think of a pair I've liked more than these. Maybe my first pair of glomit. I had a pair of glomits from Cabellus back when I was in high school. And I really loved those for ice fishing specifically. Do you know what a glomit is that's like the fling over mid. Still got the F. So I love those at the time. Now they wouldn't be as practical for me but for ice fishing specifically. Anyway, the Cody gloves from Versa Light. I love these things. They are soft but durable. They're insulated. But you can still like use your fingers when you're wearing them. I've had these I think for two falls. They're the gloves that I use the most for hunting and fishing and snow blowing. And you would think I just got these yesterday. Like they do not show. Much sign of where at all. And I'm not doing anything to take care of them. I'm not like oiling them or something like that or making sure that they don't get blood on them or water. I think they are really special gloves. And they are first lights. They say they are their ranch inspired hunting glove. I use these pretty much all fall when I was deer hunting in Illinois, when I'm deer hunting in Montana, when I'm deer hunting in Nebraska. And in Nebraska, I have a rancher there that I have deer hunting permission from. He said cattle rancher. He also farms. I asked him one time. It says, are you considered a farmer or a rancher? And he says, well, I farm so that I can ranch. So beef are his passion. Anyway, I gave him a pair of these gloves that he's now used for two calving seasons. Caving season for much of the north is happening right now, like January to March. He texted me the other day. He said, I love these gloves. You gave me best winter gloves I've ever had for calving. So if that's not an endorsement, I don't know what is. That's great. The first light Cody gloves. I bet his look a little bit more worn in yours. I would get some real work. He's got extra fluids. By the way, the ears look. You're actually not doing that much work out there. I think so. I love that glove too. I have burned through the very first pair I have. Finally now has quite a few holes in the fingers, but that's, I don't know, three, four seasons. And I wear them almost every single day, especially cat hunting. Those are your cat gloves. Yeah, snowmobile. If I get that warm where I can't wear them because they're too warm, I just take them on pockets and go gloveless. But you need something that's, you know, protecting you from the elements, but keeping your warm, not too hot. Mine will, if it's been wet, it's kind of snowy conditions. They'll start to wet out. And so I do nickwax them periodically. You know, I don't know, maybe three, four times a winter. And yeah, just when they're wet, I squirt, you know, a couple tablespoons of that stuff on there and just rub it all in. And then stick them on a couple of times of an antler in the house. Let them dry for a day or two and they're ready to rip again. But yeah, I'm a big fan of that kind of glove. I wear them skiing too. Oh, there you go. First like Cody go glove, they're $70. I'm looking right now. We have small through XL available in both colors. Seth, what do you got for gear talk today? Um, I got a little homemade piece of gear. Okay. So this is a, and it does not look homemade. It does look homemade. It's like you bought it like this, which is a compliment. It's a mobile power station. Like, you know, like Jackery or Blue Eddie or Gold Zero makes. But those things are so expensive. What is the average price for something like that? Oh, look it up quick Spencer. Okay. Uh, give me, tell me what brand I should be looking at. Look at, uh, Jackery. And this is no shade on these companies. You keep telling us about this. But anyway, this is, so what I, what I did here is I took just, uh, the Yeti. What are these things called? Like load out box or go box? Yeah. And, um, I went on Amazon and bought a 100 amp hour lithium battery. That was like 160 bucks. And I put it in this box and then hooked up to cigarette outlets. And then this one is two USBs and a USB C for charging. And it's all kept in this little box. Nice and neat waterproof. Very nice and neat. Um, and I, I use this thing to run my Dometic refrigerator. I use it to run my diesel heater. And, um, the lights in the back of my pickup truck bed. And yeah, I use it literally all, all season long. Every time I go on a trip, the thing comes with me. If I'm truck camping. And yeah, it's just like a cheap alternative to the mobile power stations that you see online that are very expensive. And all together, I think this box, and you don't have to buy a Yeti box. I just happen to have this one. Um, it fits it real nice. Yeah, it fits it perfectly. It, I think this thing's like 125 bucks. Batteries 160. And then, you know, another probably 30 or 40 bucks for all the, the outlets here. So, you know, very cheap compared to the alternatives. Yeah, I'm looking at the a jackery base model right now. It's on sale for 800 listed originally at 1500. Yeah, and if you look at that, it probably doesn't have a hundred amp hour with the battery on it. No. So, what does that mean? How many, like, can you go for a full weekend and not charge this thing and do all do all the things? I bet he could go for a month. I went, I went a full week. You want to run in a refrigerator? I go a full week with the refrigerator for sure on this. And charging phones. Yeah, charging phones and stuff too. Wow. It's a great little tool. And I bet you'll use that thing like 365. Yeah, totally. And like, you know, eventually the batteries do go bad in those things. And this one I just go on Amazon, buy another battery and pop it in there. Keep on trucking. You got a nice little spot in the back of your pickup where that gets dead and down. Yeah, and then it's nice because I can just like pick it up and take it wherever I need it to. Bring it into the office. Yeah. So, yeah, check it out. Very good piece of gear. Yeah, yeah. I'm sad. All right, let's take a break for some listener feedback. Bill, what's the chat? I have to say, uh, yes. First, uh, shout out here. It's from Catherine Berglund Mama. Hey, gang, I was wondering if you could wish my beautiful mountain girl is a Bella happy birthday. She'll be eight tomorrow and she loves me to eat her happy birthday. Should we sing? Yannis is going to sing for you. Yes, go on. Yeah, I'll take it away. I'll sing with you. Happy birthday, Isabella. Happy birthday, mountain girl. Isabella turning eight tomorrow. Another question for Yannis. Well, another, the first one. Is there any thought of a meat eater roast tournament? Either a one V1 playoff bracket style or some sort of competition format? Where there's an elimination thing happening. There has been thought of a playoff bracket style cooking competition. Yes, you know what I think we should do before that? Is that Yannis compete? Mm. I feel like you and Steve are something. There you go. You versus Steve. Mm-hmm. I get host. I'll volunteer to host or whoever you want to host can host. Bob, but we should put Yannis on the spot. Yeah. We know in that. That would be a good idea. What else you got, Phil? Melody asks for some tips on keeping toes and fingers warm during below freezing ice fishing trips. She has terrible circulation, she says. Hot hands. Yep. Every, every person who lives north of the Mason Dix and can use hot hands and it will genuinely keep you warmer when you see guys got. I went to a bunny boot this year. Mm-hmm. And it's been phenomenal. Oh, they're amazing. Yeah. If you don't know what a bunny boot is, it's say, uh, it's like an airfields old school military all rubber boot. If you're if you're always white. No, no, no, there's black ones that are they call Mickey Mouse boot. Yeah. But Alaska Gear Company is like they're like doing a remake of the original bunny boot. Is there like military surplus? Yeah. And yeah, this company, Alaska Gear Company is making bunny boots now. And they make like a lighter version and like a heavy version that are rated to, you know, minus 70 or something crazy. But um, keep you warm. Oh, yeah. Yeah, very warm. Yeah. And I struggle with my feet getting cold. I think the other thing you can do to skiers have had heated footbeds forever. And they're amazing. I don't use them. I don't eat them that bad. But I don't know for a couple hundred bucks. You can get battery operated, you know, heated insoles. And you're not going to have cold feet or cold toes going that way. If you don't want to go that route, I think having a boots that are a little bit bigger than smaller. This is going to always help to keep the nice air layer in there. Because that's what's actually doing the insulating. And keeping it dry in there. So once you get sweaty at all, you're getting cold. Like take the time, undress, put on some fresh dry socks, get them back in there and you'll be definitely toasty. Or you were beforehand. Another like reasonably cheap piece of gear that I love for cold weather is a handmuff. Especially for ice fishing. If you don't want to be rocking your biggest gloves, you want to be using your fingers, handmuff, you can find a real good one for pretty cheap. Or you can spend a lot of money on one. It's something that like once it's below 40 and I'm doing something active outside, I like having a handmuff. Yeah, and you can load those full hand warmers too. You can. You can put whatever you want. Load it full of cell phones, snacks, hand warmers, all kinds of things. Good luck ice fishing melody. Kale Flynn is in the market for a new spotting scope, debating between compact or full size, which do you prefer, and have you ever had a compact outhunting and then wish you had a full size? Or vice versa. Yannis, where you got for Kale? I always go full size because the reason I'm packed in a spotting scope is not to just see if it's an animal or if it's a deer versus an elk, it's going to be to see details like how big the elk is or the deer or you're looking so far out that you're going to need something big to tell the difference between elk or deer. Yeah, the compact ones, I've just always felt like if I put my binoculars on a stable platform, I'm getting the same performance and getting the same result doing it that way. Yeah, so yes, and I have been out there with small spotters and every time I'm like, oh, should have brought the big one because right now we could actually tell what's going on over there. Seth, what do you got for Kale? Yeah, I would say, I guess it also, he doesn't say worries. What is hunting for? Where is that, right? No, I don't think so. No, so piping Kale if you get it, just kind of depends on what you're hunting for and where, but I would always go full size because you can use kind of full size for everything. Yeah, that covers all the bases. A compact is not going to, you're not going to want to go coos deer hunting with a compact. My endorsement for full size is that I have found, it's like obviously annoying to carry around because they're so big and heavy. But if I'm trying to get the details on a mule deer bucks antlers, I have to now get half a mile closer for something. If I don't have a full size, I would have saved myself that half mile of hiking and moving around if I just would have had the full size with me. So it's like bigger and more annoying to hump around, but it might save you some hiking in the end as well. I feel let's do a few more. Yeah, sure. We got multiple people, Seth, asking for more specifics on your build. Someone was even like, you should make a social video kind of exactly. Yeah, I do plan on doing that at some point. Cool. And then another one, mostly for Seth, I would say, is the great adventures of Mitt and men. He asks for just kind of like getting started in beaver trapping for someone that doesn't have people to learn from. And it looks like he's in the Great Lakes for step based on that photo. Yeah, I guess if you don't have anyone to mentor you, just go on YouTube and try and find as much info there to get you started. But then other than that, just get some get some traps that are legal in your state and go look for some beaver sign and set them out. It's kind of the best way to learn without a mentor is just by doing it and sometimes doing the wrong things. You know, there you go. Makes you learn a lot faster. But yeah, a lot of resources on YouTube about beaver trapping. Thanks to YouTube, the learning curve has never been smaller. I know. It comes to stuff like this. Let's do one more fill before we move on. Sure, this one got a lot of chatter in the chat, but we'll ask for go twos of American Classical literature to read with your kids. I'm guessing outdoor themed stuff. I've got to pass on this because I'm going to cover it in our next segment, but set the yeah, you're going to cover it for reading with the kids. For top threes, I've got some book recommendations. I don't need to spend another minute beyond what I'm going to talking about books on this podcast. So go for a young. I got it. What can you recommend? I'm trying to think that top, man, we read all the classics, which which were where the red fern grows, summer monkeys. What about hatchet hatchet? What a hatchet. Yeah, hatchet's a great one. Yeah. Gosh, what else? It's been a while now. Seth soon to be father. What are you going to be reading? Well, hatchet was the first thing that came to mind. There's a book called My Side of the Mountain. And if you guys ever heard of that, it's like this kid kind of leaves town and goes up in the mountains and lives in a hollowed out tree. A couple people in the chat were suggested. Really? That's a good one. It's cool. It's kind of like tells a story of a young, young boys like adventurous spirit and yeah, it's cool. Great book. Tom Soar and Huck Finn. Yeah. We'll have some more book recommendations for you in a second. And Spencer, actually, can I suggest we call an audible and switch segments since looks like our next guest has his neck has his guest. We're going to do that. Joining us on the line next is Michael Hadsell, the founder of Peace River canine search and rescue. He's here to talk to us about splash the world's one and only search and rescue honor. Michael, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me on. I appreciate that. You can see and hear splash is with us right now. Please tell us about splash. How old is he? Where did he come from? What kind of otter is he? Splash is a two-year-old Asian small plot or he came to us from the world wildlife zoo out of Phoenix, Arizona. And so he was donated to the program and we put it into work. So he's all trained up and out in the field right now working. What we call his proofing year right now is working cases in the field. And those noises we're hearing, is he happy? Is he annoyed? Is he snugly? What is splash his current mood? He is, I think he's warning. I think that's what the program is. Oh, wow. I think he needs a woman. I think he needs a woman. That's his problem. Okay. He's actually just giving me a lot of a lot of sass at the moment. Lot of sass. What specifically is splash trained to do? We use splash. I'm going to put him down real quick. Oh, wow. Bicep wash. Cute and welcome. Just like that. He's got him up. He's going to go pick on the dust for a while. That's my dog. What is splash trained to do? Splash is a what we call a recovery otter. He is trained to locate human remains underwater. So that's what he does. We use it for cold case work. His original concept is a lot of our cases, murder cases and stuff. And where the victims were disposed of in water, you know, water environment. And water is very harsh on human remains. And the bodies go away fairly quickly. The tissue does and the bones sink down into the buck. And that buck can be a foot two feet three feet deep. And once the bones get down in there, the dive teams and myself being a forensic diver, we won't ever find them because we just know where they are. The cadaver dogs working from the boat can alert and say, yeah, the otter from the bones are coming up. It's there, but we get down to the bottom. We can't find them. So what splash's job, original concept was to deploy from the boat, go down, find the area down in the buck where the bones are settled in and then identify that area. Tell us about it. We put a grid over the top of it. And then we go in there with troughs and we start working our way down through until we finally get the bones and make the recovery. That's what his original purpose was. It's expanded now because we've got other agencies, law enforcement agencies like Fish and Wildlife and Subject Hall. And we have a fisherman that's following off the boat. They can't find them. He's drowned. Their dive teams don't have any luck finding a book called. He sits slash out and splash goes and makes the recovery. So his mission's kind of morphed. So he still does a lot of co-case work that we do, but his job kind of changed over. It's expanded. And it's good. I mean, no one's ever done this before. The only ones that have ever tried to do anything like this. And so we're learning as we go on. It's needed. We go out and change the mission around whatever was required. Michael, I got a question. How does he notify you? How does he communicate with you that he's found something or hasn't found something? Well, if he hasn't found anything, he's not going to come back. He's on what's called a refine. And the refine in search work means that he finds what it is that we're looking for the target. He comes back and tells me about it and then takes me back to it after it's high splashes. See you down there. Thank you for giving me my foot. Okay, so he, if we launch him from the boat, he goes out, you know, swim around the surface. He finds the odor and the surface just like the dogs do. And then he'll zoom down and he goes down. We learn them about 30 feet of water. We don't want to be in many feet further than that. And then he will come back and start squeaking and making a lot of noise and letting us know that he's found something. And at that point, we tie a line onto him because he's free. At that point, we don't have anything on him, just as harness. And we could cook a line on him. He goes back down to where the odor is present. Lays there. The diver will follow the line down to him and then he waits for the diver to get there and then back. Now he can hold his breath. We let him five minutes is what we average is, but he's done eight and we're scared to hell out of me, but he's longer if he needs to. And so, and that's, and he just waits for the diver to get there. Then he comes back once he's, the diver's on scene, we release it from the line and then comes back up to the boat and gets his fish. He's refee of his reward as salmon. He likes farm raised salmon. That's his thing. And so he gets his salmon for his reward and he goes back in his crate and his job's done for the day. And when he's not working, is he just cruising around your house? Yeah, he was at the house. He was out earlier when we were talking. He's out swimming in the kitty pool and burning up some calories. And now he's in the house screaming at me. I don't know what he wants. He's been fed. So I'm not sure what he's after. He may want to go play or something. I haven't done a lot of work. He worked last week for, we were for Georgia Bureau investigation, GBI last week. And then this week he's kind of not had a lot to do. So I think he's got a bullet. It's kind of like, yeah, I work kind of ignoring him, but I've had other stuff. We would train, this our training season for the canines because it's cool right now in Florida. So we put a lot of time in to get the dogs tuned up and the horses we have horse team as well. And so Splash is kind of getting pushed off a little bit. He's not getting this training as much. So I think he's a little irritated that he's not getting attention. What is the training process Ben like with Splash? Is it just like training a dog? Very similar in a lot of ways. The biggest problem with the the otter is that he's not a dog. Dogs are brought up to work with humans through breed programs, you know, in genetics. And so the dog that you buy now, it was very packaged to work with humans and to do a specific job. Otters are wild creatures. And this is even though this guy came from a zoo, he is, he's very much a wild animal. They have a different set of priorities. And so the biggest thing I have to do is find out what motivates them, what rewards system will be worked for. And can I get the trust from him to work for me and will he work with humans? And so that's the big deal that we had to work on with him. And we did, we found out he's actually about the fifth otter that we've trained up for this work. And we we had American River otters before that, which are much bigger. They're very bitty. They're very aggressive. Yeah, you got to wear thick gloves when you work with them because they can take your finger off in a heartbeat if they want to. So you've got to be careful with them. I've got a lot of scars. And they're stoic. They're not as animated. So one of the reasons that we went to Asian otters is that they're much more animated. They're very chatty. They're very vocal. When they get excited, they let you know about it where the river otter doesn't do that. So as much, they're a little bit like that. But I had one that was named Squeakers. She was very animated. She was really good. And did a great job. But the boy ones like condo and that's using like a question for you. How long, like how many years will you get out of splash? Like how many years will you be able to work with them? They say from talking to the zoo people that the lifespan of a captive otter can be 15 to 20 years. Oh wow. His grandmother is 16, currently. And the longest otter that I know, oldest otter that I know of in captivity was at the Miami Zoo was 26 years old. And she just passed away recently. So we're hoping to get 10 years. He's not, he is in a wonderful environment. He is the best food, best medical care lives in the house, sleeps with me at night. He doesn't put the bed over the blanket. It's really likes to be at night. So he gets exercise and stimulation. He's got a job. So he's got a pretty good life here. But he works in a lot of different environments, meaning a lot of different water environments. And sometimes the waters are not as best as we like them to be. And so that could probably cause a problem for him to improve. We don't know. We had another otter squeaker, so we had long bad to another law enforcement agency that was using her over in Europe. And she got in this of bad water and passed away about a month ago. So she gets sick. So it's one of those things that we're finding out about as we work with them. Honors are very susceptible to human diseases. So they get sick. It flutes colds. They pick them up from people. And then COVID wiped out a bunch of otters. I think we lost like a quarter of the otter population in that states for COVID. When I get back in 2020. So I have to be really careful with him. Making sure that you just get handled by people that are sick. So he doesn't pick up. He's been really good so far. We've got a little frostbite from last week. We were working in Virginia when that storm hit and it got down to seven degrees. And he loves the cold. But he was walking on some concrete. I think his foot was sticking to the concrete. He's got a little frostbite on his foot. He's been nursing that back up. Michael, can you tell us about some of the successful missions that Splash has been on so far? Yeah, he's got one evidence for recovery so far and one recent drowning and then three that are human remains related. And the evidence one was really kind of lucky. It was the first time out. We were working for long-forks in the agency out in the south Mississippi area and they wanted to check this lake area, which we did. And we had done it with the dogs and Daima, who was my can't out at the time. She had been alerting like crazy that there was could ever ever enter this lake. And we couldn't locate it. And so the doctor, the doctor was with who's a forensic anthropologist. As much as he throws splash in, I said, well, he's all the six months old. He's only had two months of training. And he said, well, go ahead and throw him in. We will help. We're here. We're responsible to do it. So we put him in and he identified an area down at the bottom that he was real interested in. So we dug it up and found a brick in there, you know, a clay one of those clay-red bricks that's very common in the area for construction. And we brought it up and as soon as we brought it up, the doctor says, I want that and we gave it to her and she backed it up. Took it in, masked it up to the big end of that and the x-ray from the killed the guy that was on the other victim. And turned out there was still DNA on the brick because the clay and the clay soil had held it all together so they were still able to get some DNA off of a brick and match it up. So that case, you know, the suspect had passed away at this point because it was 22 years old case and there was nobody to charge in the case, but the case was finally cleared, which made the sheriff very happy because he was one of the original detectives on the case. So he was happy to get that off. And that got him started after that, things just started happening very quick. So we weren't originally attending on him using him for what we call law enforcement searches. So we use a private work. Most of that was for a lot of the universities like University of Tennessee and Florida State University, West Virginia, these places they get calls out to do private co-paste work that they do using their sciences, what they call fast team stuff for, and they could provide science work. And so Splash is going to be working in that category. But then once law enforcement realized they had them available, we get calls from the Department of Justice, DOJ, FBI, S-D-L-E, G-B-I-T-V-I-L, these groups, Southeast three-letter, you know, alphabet groups, call us up and say, hey, could you bring Splash out for help? So we've been really busy on having on the road consistently with him since he got discovered in the last year or so. He's got the one evidence recovery. He's got four body recovery so far. So it's a total of five recoveries. Maybe six, we're waiting to hear on the southern one that happened recently. So he's on his way. So this is a silent program. We don't know when we started it, it was going to work or not. It appears to be working at this point. We do have some challenges if you wish. So with him, we got him trying to resolve and we'll work on it. But this is a long, mature territory here. So we're blazing away here. He's the world's only cadaver author. What gave you the idea to employ him? And do you think that this is something you'll try again in the future? Well, I had seen authors used in the Orient. They used it for hunting, and at the hunting fish and hunting clams and oysters and all kinds of stuff. They trained him up in the Orient to do this kind of work. And I was flying home from Los Angeles after working on a cold case. And I was reading like a Smithsonian type art magazine that had think about authors and how they used sentigabilities underwater to help look at prey and food and things underwater. His flash. What's in that? Now you want to be held or what? He may be younger, he might have to be. He's a noisy bugger. Yeah, he is today. He's chatting today. So he's been quiet. I know that they used him for hunting and I thought, and you could do sent work out that. Well, I've been transent dogs. I'm going in my 46 year doing this kind of stuff. And I said, maybe we could train an author because I dive all the time. There's nothing more frustrating than diving on a case, and knowing that your victim is somewhere in this lake or wherever you're at. And you've got visibility that's this bad. Or I can't see my hands in front of my face. And we're using guide ropes and we're down there. It's all tactile running along, trying to feel our way around, down there, trying to find something. You can't find it. And you got to end up trying for a day, maybe two days out. I can't get it right near it. Can't figure out what's going on. And you have to walk away from the case. And it's one of the most frustrating things that we do, knowing that this family is trying to get resolution. And we can't get there because we just don't have the technology to do it. And hopefully it would splash that we would be able to figure out if we can do this or if you can do that. Maybe we can resolve more of these cases. And that was my thing. I came back from there and I started doing some research on it. We had an aquarium that far from me up here in Sarasota that I thought I would go up and talk to their people about it. And they said, yeah, and I said, if I would drive some do some testing, test work with them and they said, sure. And so we went and we started doing some testing and found out that they were very good at order work on land and on in the water. But since we've been working with them, we found out that it's not just order work and how they find things. They're very related to their first cousin to a wolf ring, but also a platypus. And platypus is a electromagnetic sensor. So they use the sense magnetic fields is how they find stuff on their water. And we found out that the whisker array on the front of these hours, which is massive, it is high and lead. And so it gives them the ability to detect magnetic fields with their whiskers. And we found out that they hunt the same way that the platypus does in using their whiskers to find what they're looking for. So they basically learn the magnetic signature of what a human being is. And they're down there with their whiskers to pile it along there until they run into that same resonance frequency. And they're like, oh, hey, it's right here. And then you'll see them pump these bubbles out. And they start spitting bubbles out like crazy. And they taste some of them they suck back in and they taste them. And they taste it as the order confirmation because they have glands in their mouth that transfers this into a set response. And so they say, oh, that's what I'm looking for. And then they confirm it that way. And that's how they do it. So there's a two-pronged thing. They use magnetic field and they use the bubble sent technique in order to find what they're looking for. And it's pretty amazing. We got a lot of video of it working. And trying to because I used to see them find stuff in the videos, but he wasn't blowing bubbles. And I kept looking at that going, how does this work? And he's sent working. He can't pull this set through his nose because he drowned. Okay, you can't do that. So if they're mammals like we are, they can't do that. So how is he? I see the bubble technique working. We figured out the bubble part. And then but then he would find stuff with his head and put it on there. And then I'll send him start blowing bubbles at it afterwards and I'm thinking, okay, what drew him to that to want to put the bubbles on that? And then we realized that they're working. So they're like, bus goes to us. So we said, okay, all right, so now we kind of figured out how this is working. And it's amazing. I mean, they're really very accurate. So he's good at his job. He's he's learned it and seems to really like it. And he's got nowhere. He's part of the family now. Part of the pack when I put this blue shirt on, which is my search shirt, and I'm going to have work and he's right at the back door with the dogs saying, all right, where are we going? So you know, we load up and he jumps up with the front of the van and gets in his crate and the dogs get in their crates in the back of the van and then we're off around. So he's he's become part of a pack, so to speak, although others don't have facts they have what they call roms. They're not called packs. They're called roms. And so he's very much important on that. What are you doing? Incredible stuff, Michael. Thank you for joining us and thanks for having this nonprofit and training splash to do the work that you do. You're welcome. Thanks for having us on. So it's fine. Bye now. Thanks Michael. Thanks Michael. Cool stuff. Yeah, that's all I could see a little Disney movie being made about splash finding dead bodies. We have a lot of people in the chat torn on whether to be pro or anti-honor going between the women who are attacked. Oh yeah. That was an American river otter. This one was a machine. They're not a son. They're not as fun. Yeah, well, I think he was what was he talking about? What did he say? A sea otter too? Or no, was he just talking about river otters? I think just. Yeah, like these fingers. Yeah. Yeah. And this one was some some Asian fella. That'll be fun for our audio audience. Maybe not. They might get sick of that squeaking. But you should go watch it too because you just see the otter running around in the background the whole time. I think one time you went in the pantry and then someone closed the door and he had a come scurry and out of there. Welcome to Meet Eaters 12 and 26 presented by Moltre mobile and on X Maps. 12 of Meet 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 Meet Eaters YouTube channel and be on the lookout for more 12 and 26 in the coming months. We are now going to do our top three's. Such talent. That's a word for it. Wow, that's a heck of a note there Phil. This week we've all brought our own top three list sects. Start us off. What are you ranking today? I'm going top three turkey hunts. Okay. Ever. Well, yeah. Yeah. That I can that I one had in my phone too that I can recollect sure. Yeah. Ever. So this one this was last year. Oh, triple. Yeah. This was all all in one morning night before we put these birds to bed and the forecast was calling for like a nice calm morning. Get up the next morning and the wind is just cranking. And if you know anything about turkey hunting, it's not great. You know, very windy mornings aren't great for here in gobbles. So we kind of get down in the area where these birds were. We couldn't the night before we couldn't exactly like locate the tree that they're in, but we kind of had a general area where they were. So we get down there, get down there in the morning, can't hear them. So we just kind of start sneaking into where we think they are. And I eventually see one like I'd just glassed it up. So we moved into where we thought the birds could hear us start calling, do that for a while, nothing. Then we get up and move a little closer. And I call it again and struck them up there. Just like they're pretty close, but there is there, they're about 45 yards from us, but there was like a deep ravine. And turkeys don't like crossing that kind of stuff. No. And we didn't really have any other play. So we sat down and started calling. And eventually, those birds went down in that ravine and came up the other side and there was five of them all together. All goblers? All goblers. Yeah. All longbirds. Yeah, we end up getting three out of that pack. How far apart were the shots? Did you guys have a double and then later you get a single or what? Well, Kelsey shot first. And then I shot two after that. Yeah. It's great. So just three trigger pulls, three trigger pulls. Yep. And Seth has his little otter with them there. Oh yeah, that's why she's always with it. She's been on multiple turkey hands. What's her role during a turkey? Well, so she's she's a very smart dog. And and she knows now like once like once I start calling and she hears turkeys goblin. It's funny. She starts shaking like real real bad. And she just like lays lays down the ground and hunkers down doesn't really move like a lab waiting for a cupping duck. Yeah. Yeah. And then it's got his core. Yeah. As soon as you pull the trigger, she's up and like looking for whatever, whatever's dead. What is she way? I think she's like 14 to 16 depending. Yeah, like a small goblers. Yeah. Let's do those goblers. Yeah. And then this morning, we end up with so we took those birds back to the truck. Got them all cleaned up and then ended up going about 10 minutes down the road to another spot and struck up like a late morning bird and Kelsey killed that one. So we killed Ford in one day. Pretty marium snow white fans. All right. Seth's got another picture. Yep. This is the opposite end of the country down in Florida last year. Kelsey and I went down there and got our first Osceolas. This was a buddy's place. He invited us down to go. Hon is his little hunting club that he's a part of. And this this hunt's actually, I think on the first light YouTube channel. It's called the heart of Turkey. It's kind of the story of Kelsey and her artwork and and us turkey hunting together and stuff. So you can go watch it if you want. But this one was, you know, your typical Osceola turkey hunting. They got what a bunch in the morning on the tree and flew down shut up and we got these guys midday just sitting kind of calling every once in a while and just sitting in the spot where we knew they were traveling through and those two goblers came in and we doubled up. And yeah, that was that was our first Osceolas and man, it's like Osceolas are cool because of like for me at least the country you're in. It's just like super cool to hunt turkeys down and stuff. They're just not like your typical, you know, Eastern or Mariams where they're just like coming in gobbling and hammering. We swat mosquitoes that whole hunt. Oh yeah. That looks like the State bird would be a mosquito there. And then the next one another trip another triple. This was another morning. So the bird I'm holding there killed that one right off the roost was trying to get Kelsey a bird and that that one ended up skirting around her and came into me. So I shot that one. And then about mid morning we we struck up those two birds that she's holding there and called those in and she ended up shooting both of those with one shot. Ooh, that's great purposely. No, no, not purposely, but she had two tags. So yeah, it worked out. Sess ties to nature. He hunts. There's some open country there. Yeah, difficult to carry on in country. Unless that's just where you took the picture. It was it wasn't that open where we killed him. How many turkeys you're going to kill this year? This year's going to look a lot different with the baby coming in March. Still like five or six. We'll see. We'll see how much some, some much time I get. But well, you just got to take the baby and Kelsey with you. Oh, that's the plan. Yep. We're there. That easy. Well, yeah, when they're that little, they're easy because they're they don't require much. Yeah, they're not moving. You don't have to walk. They're not going to get in trouble unless you put them in trouble. Easy. Yeah, I'm telling you we're fully playing with some good advice. I got man from a doctor early on. They're like, man, before they start actually being able to grab and walk take advantage of it and go do things because you won't have that time later because when they're two, it's not like you could have them out on a turkey, huh? Yeah, I mean, let's say unless you can just plan it like they're falling asleep, right? When they're going to come off the roost or something. All right, I'm going to go next. I'm ranking the top three books that I read in 2025. I read 40 books last year. Most of them about the outdoors or history or in some cases, both. And so here are my three favorites. Number three, in the heart of the three, in the heart of the sea, by Nathaniel Philbrick, this was written in the year 2000. It's about a routine wailing voyage that's flipped on its head when a sperm whale attacks and destroys the 240 ton Essex ship. This happened in 1820. It's actually the inspiration for Moby Dick. The book explains the wailing industry and its global impact and its impact on New England at that time and how it just changed the economy and the culture. And then it also tells the story of the 20 men who were aboard the ship that day. They spend months floating across the open ocean just getting destroyed by the sun and saltwater. And here's the spoiler. There is some cannibalism in the book. One of the most shocking things about this story, though, is just how young the crew is. Most of the men are in their 20s. Six of them were actually teenagers with the youngest crew member being 14. So it just makes like this whole awful adventure really hard to fathom. That is in the heart of the sea. I love this book. That was my third favorite book that I read last year. Number two, the art thief by Michael Finkel. This was written in 2023. This is about Stefan Brightweiser. He's a 20-something year old from France who steals two billion dollars worth of paintings and artifacts in the 1990s. He does it over the span of six years. He lifts 239 items from 172 museums in Europe. Some of the things that he thieves include a medieval crossbow, ancient pottery, ivory statues, an antique pistol, Napoleon snuff box, a Rembrandt painting. And you're probably thinking he does all this with the elaborate heist that resemble Ocean's 11 but it's actually nothing like that. I won't spoil how he does it. You'll just have to read the book for those details. This is a super fun read if you're into true crime or artifacts or museums. And the author of the book actually interviews the man. So you get all the details just as they happened. And there's a really tragic ending for the stuff that he stole. And it's a surprise ending for the actual thief himself that the author tells you about when he meets this man. All right, the number one book that I read last year was Endurance by Alfred Lansing. And that was written in 1959. This is about Sir Ernest Shackleton's attempt to reach the South Pole in 1914. He has a 28-man crew aboard the Endurance Ship and it gets crushed by ice. They then spend two years stranded at the bottom of the globe. They're fighting the cold and snow and starvation and depression and the ocean and leopard seals and each other. It's a really incredible story and it's so fantastical that you'd think that this is fiction. But what makes Endurance extra special is that it was written in the 1950s and the author, Alfred Lansing, got to interview a bunch of the people who were on the expedition. So you're getting first-hand details from the men who experienced this. The storytelling is just as good as the story itself. That was my favorite book I read last year Endurance by Alfred Lansing. And then I've got three honorable mentions here, other books that I really loved. Killers of the Flower Moon that was written by David Grant in 2017. It's a historical account of how Oklahoma's Osage tribe became the most wealthy and the most hunted people in the world. The story is probably well understood by people who live in that area. But I had never heard of this and it's just like a really fascinating bit of American history that more folks should learn about. I have not seen the movie yet, but I hope it's as good as the book itself. Killers of the Flower Moon. And then God's Country by Percival Everett. This was written in 1994. This was the best fiction that I read last year. It's a clever spoof on the Western genre. The book follows a drunk gambler, Kurt, and the best tracker in the West Bubba as they go on a big misadventure. It's got a lot of colorful dialogue, ridiculous characters, dark humor. And it's a really quick read, just 200 pages long. God's Country, Percival Everett. And then Squato by Andrew Lippman in 2024. This is the best account of how Squato traveled from North America to Europe and then back to North America. And then he changed the history of both continents. The story of Squato has been very disnified. I feel like in this book does a great job of giving the tourist possible Squato account. And this would be an extra fun read if you're from the New England area, specifically Massachusetts because it talks a lot about that part of the world, you know, before written history really existed. It's Squato. Those were my six favorite books that I read last year. Cool. Have you guys seen Killers of the Flower Moon? I haven't. I saw it. Yeah. Phil, give me a review. Did you love it? I loved it. I know people complained about it being too long that it didn't feel long at all to me. I thought it managed different tones very well. There was some really striking imagery in it that I had never seen before in a movie. You also loved Leo's most recent movie, right? One battle after another. You say it was the best thing you've seen what this year. It's my favorite movie I've seen this year. Oh, yeah. I thought it was in 2026. No, well, I mean, 2020. I said this year, 2025. Okay. I'm talking movies in terms of this year just because there's a lot of Oscar talk happening. The nominations are really disappointing. So just make it makes me think this year. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Big Leo fan. All right, Yani. What's your top three? We're going to watch that. But these days we have to do like a is there's some kind of website where you can check to see exactly what the rating means. And then like if you're 12 year old movie can watch it the one battle after another. And turns out that it's not for 12 year olds. And so I might be a little bit to like get to watch it. What ages it for? Oh, I don't know exactly. But just like reading like what's actually in there. And you know, the things that happen that yes, not for 12 year old. Yani's your top three. What do you have? Top three. I chose to tell you about my top three filmed haunts for 2026. It's hard to pick these like favorite haunts for there for 2026 because I get to go on a lot of them. If I could just have it my way, I would just go on haunts with my kids. And my gal not to any haunts with Spencer, Seth, Brandt or anybody else. But for work, I'm going to go to a an Alaska bear hunt with the Newcombs. Both bear and clay in myself drew Prince of Wales, Island bear tags. And we're going to go out there and test the theory if hunting those bears with a wetsuit is the way to get close. So all three of us are just the theory. Well, yeah, because they did it last year. And in a couple of stocks, Clay gets to like 10 yards and kills a bear. Maybe two years ago now. Yeah. And you know, after that happened, they're like, wow, that worked. Okay. Like everybody should do this. And so now we're going to go and test to see if that's truly the case. So yeah, it should be fun. I've got a Wyoming elk on my dad. He's got enough points to draw. How many points? Wyoming elk. I 27 or eight. Oh, it's a good general tag. But we've got to through a friend of mine. We've got a sweet ranch so we can get in on. It's very much a old guy hunt. You know, we're rifle. We're going to go during our tree season. There you can use a crossbow. So my dad is graduated to crossbow use. And yeah, sounds like he's been doing getting in shape for that hunt. So that'll be it'll be fun. I don't know how many elk hunts, you know, he's got left in him coming up on mid 70s. Shopping mountains is not in his future. He's in his crossbow prime though. Crossbow prime. We'll see as long as he can see down the scope, you know, and take good aim. And then Kansas deer hunt with Mr. Brent Reeves. Yeah, super fun. Human that I've gotten hang with a little bit. And I'm excited to hang with him more, get to know him some more, but he's also got a friend who runs an outfit in Kansas who said that we can come and hunt and outfit like an outfitter. Yeah, okay. Yeah, we're going to go hunt his spot. Sounds like this guy's quite the character too. I'm not going to spoil that because he's going to be a big part of the episode. But Brent and I are going to self film the whole thing. So we're sort of going to film each other, self film. We're not going to have videographers there. And I think it's going to be something different that we've never done that. What season you go that way. Like archery. Okay. Yeah. Like primerot you going. I don't know if we'll go primer or not. We're going to we're I'm going to I'm going to let the outfitter, you know, point us in the right direction as long as that lines up with schedules. Sure. We'll do that. So Kansas has some unique seasons. They've got like the October muzzle loader I think and then they've got a rifle season in December. And that October muzzle loader. A lot of people like that for especially for finding big box. Sounds like it's fun spot and stock. But, uh, you know, Brent and I both like hunting with the bow. Okay. And so we're going to yeah, go do that. So. Top three hunts I'm looking forward to. Good stuff. I'm filming. Not jealous at all. Phil, your top three. What do you got? Goodness. Okay. On a previous episode. Just I want to be slow on a previous episode. I went over my top three video game characters that I would like to consume. So this this time I decided to go with 90s cartoon characters that I would like to eat. Oh, wow. So first up, we've got. We've got cat dog. Oh, great. Um, you know, I don't I don't know if cats or dogs taste very good. I've had mountain lion before. It was it was it was all right. Um, but you know, I just it's it's an abomination. And I want an off of the planet. Yeah. Um, also, it's, you know, long backstrap. It's kind of kind of lean. I don't know. That might be a might not not not be a great thing. But I'm honestly, I'm just curious. I think it's like all that. Yeah. Um, so anyway, it could go either way. Next up, we've got Mr. Crabs from SpongeBob. I've always been a crab. Crab over lobster guy. It's the Pacific Northwest in me. I think the keeny bottom is technically, I think it can't canonically. It's like in the martial islands, like between Hawaii and like Malaysia. Okay. Somewhere around there. I don't know what kind of crabs would be there. But I'd like to imagine that he's like a like a like a human size dungeon asset. I could just dig into it. And that's what I choose to believe. He's got some real meaty claws. Definitely. I think I think that would be tasty. Number one, we've got crumb from real monsters. Again, this could go either way. For those for the audio listeners who haven't seen real monsters, crumb is just kind of like a big blob of flesh. You as arms for ice stocks and holds eyeballs in his hands. Got some hairy armpits and really disturbing looking feet. Basically no leg. It's all just kind of can't go and foot. But you know, it looked I bet he tastes incredible. It's kind of humanoid little humanoid. I'm just going to look past that. And we also could be a scrotum. That could have been the artistic inspiration. You're not wrong. And I'm just going to move past that. And the Honourable man. Tasty. They do. Yeah. And then under honorable mentions, we have Reptar from Rugrats who's a fictional dinosaur in a fictional cartoon. So I don't know if that really counts. We've got the angry beavers. And then from season four, episode 11 of Doug. This isn't a character, but they just make a really cool look in lasagna. That's the episode where Judy has a date with her art school boyfriend and she wants her family to be cool. So she makes them pretend to be different people. And there's a bomb of fake bomb in the lasagna that Doug pretends to deactivate by diving into the lasagna. Is Reptar is he the mascot for a chocolate bar? Or is that wrong? No, I don't think so. They might have made like a tie-in candy after the cartoon. Okay. Now he's his own thing. Yeah. He's just kind of his own cartoon character within the show. Yeah. Yeah. He's like the Mickey Mouse of that universe. That's our lost. Yeah. Oh, I know all those cartoons. I just I don't even know what's going on anymore. Are you following along? Yeah. You were. Okay. Yeah. Here's where we're at. Yani, that's the end of this week's show. So we're going to get some final feedback from the chat. Phil, what do you got for us? I haven't been reading it for a while, but we've got someone and I've heard this feedback before. Some people said they people who read the book didn't like the killers of the flower moon movie adaptation because the book doesn't really reveal what's going on. It's more of like a mystery. I don't know if you can speak to this Spencer. It's kind of like a mystery to the end. Whereas the movie lays it all out in the beginning and you just kind of like live in the horror and the rot that's like kind of consuming this community. Yeah. You certainly are not told off the bat in the book as to what is happening. So if the movie does reveal the whole plot at the beginning, that would be it basically does. Yeah. Just do you have both have the movie and the book? Yeah. This is an update from Christie Holmes, who was part of the 36 women who went smelting and asked for good luck from us on the show. They had a wicked good time and the smelts were running and they're inviting us next winter. Christie, that sounds like a blast. So glad you had a good time. Christie, I think last year joined us for one minute fishing while she was smelting. She had a baby on a hip and did not catch any smelts that day. So maybe we need to bring Christie back again to see if she can redeem herself for a $500 donation. Uh, young tro says, Yani and Phil, which one of you two could grow a better mustache to compete with Seth and Spencer? I've never seen Yani with facial hair, but I can almost guarantee that he could grow a better mustache than I could. I would have said the same about you Phil. Maybe we should make this happen next week. We'll can put up a picture because there's one time where I grew some facial hair. It was COVID. It took me the entire pandemic to come up with a beard in a mustache and still look like shit. So um, you gave up. You're not going to bring that back? No. No. No. Any recommendations from CSC Broncos, fan on red dot sites for a turkey shotgun? Do you guys use red dots? I don't use red dots. No, I do. I use a sig. I believe it's the Romeo XL. Now, uh, nice and low, whatever you get, uh, make sure it's low profile because there's nothing worse than having a site that makes you get, have to get your cheek up off the, uh, your shotgun. So yeah, get get the mount to be low profile and the red dot itself to be low profile. Let's do two more Phil. No, I don't even know if we have two more. Um, or at least ones that I have, we can see more. There was a geared talk question about the, uh, about, yeah, if you guys have seen anything like instead of doing a wall tent, he was going to save some money and just like double up on, uh, ice shelters, reading about that stuff. Yeah. I feel like that's become very popular in the last like five years, uh, guys will take their, what, like their Eskimo, that be a classic example, insulated ice shack and, and front country camp out of that. Well, there, there are a lot of those, uh, I, well, those companies are making ice shelters like that are building them for ice camping. Mm hmm. And I'd imagine if you'd camp on the ice with them, you can camp on hard ground. So, um, yeah, they're, they're, they're just putting in features that are sure more conducive to like camping. I've bodies that have done it. I've slept in a few of them, and most of them don't have floors. So they'll take in the lay down like the sort of mat that you would put in a workout room. Yep. Um, just put laying out as a floor. All walks together. Yeah. Yeah. Together. Um, that seems like a pretty important thing to have with you and not very expensive to make happen either. Um, yeah, it seems, seems like it's become quite popular. Yep. Floors are for babies. Yeah. The only thing I would say about it is that the, uh, the wall time thing is going to outlast like the ice fishing pop-ups. Sure. I feel like those have a little bit of a, a disposable fuel to them. But maybe you're, you're just like solo hunting so you don't need a whole wall tent set up. Uh, maybe you only got $300 instead of 1500. Sure. Yeah. But, but I'm just saying, yeah, that if you, yeah, you only spend 300 that it's not gonna last you. You're like, you can't make it out in here. No. Uh, is this the gear talk thing you want to cover? Yeah. That's the thing he was talking about. Yeah. I just had it on the screen. Yeah. We'll do one more shout out. I don't really know the specifics because this question came in or statement came in an hour ago. And I don't know if he can provide more details. But he just, he said he's, this is from actually T says he's here in South Carolina. He just formed a state branch of end of the National Deer Association consolidating local chapters into one statewide branch. Maybe send a shout out to spread awareness. I don't know if it has a name or anything, but South Carolina people South Carolina branch of the National Deer Association. Uh, maybe they could receive some trivia funds in the future from a winner like Yannis or Seth. He keep that in mind for actually T. All right. That's the end of this week's episode. We'll see you guys back here the same time in place next week. Bye now. Welcome to Meet Eaters 12 and 26 presented by Mulchry mobile and on XMaps. 12 of Meet 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 Bated Bear Hunt in Manitoba. If you've ever wondered what a Bated 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 Meet Eaters YouTube channel and be on the lookout for more 12 and 26 in the coming months. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.