Gather 'round the hearth as we explore the visceral connection between the wild outdoors and the warmth of the kitchen with our esteemed guest, Jesse Griffiths. In a tale that marries the primal thrill of the hunt with the delicate art of cuisine, Jesse, author, chef, and culinary conjurer, takes us through the forests teeming with game and into the sanctuary of his restaurant Dai Due. His vivid recollections of hunting, paired with his role at the New School of Traditional Cookery, stitch together the fabric of tradition, respect for nature, and the gastronomic pleasure of field-to-table cookery.
As the leaves turn and the chill sets in, tales of turkey hunting unfold like the changing seasons. From the silent brush of the South Texas ranches to the camaraderie of pursuit in the Oregon mountains, each narrative pulsates with the anticipation and strategy unique to the sport. Reflect on the first brush with success, when the sound of a responding gobbler sets the heart racing, to the awe-struck moment of encountering a banded bird, a living testament to the wilderness's enduring tales.
Jesse's Linktree
Our Linktree
Gather 'round the hearth as we explore the visceral connection between the wild outdoors and the warmth of the kitchen with our esteemed guest, Jesse Griffiths. In a tale that marries the primal thrill of the hunt with the delicate art of cuisine, Jesse, author, chef, and culinary conjurer, takes us through the forests teeming with game and into the sanctuary of his restaurant Dai Due. His vivid recollections of hunting, paired with his role at the New School of Traditional Cookery, stitch together the fabric of tradition, respect for nature, and the gastronomic pleasure of field-to-table cookery.
As the leaves turn and the chill sets in, tales of turkey hunting unfold like the changing seasons. From the silent brush of the South Texas ranches to the camaraderie of pursuit in the Oregon mountains, each narrative pulsates with the anticipation and strategy unique to the sport. Reflect on the first brush with success, when the sound of a responding gobbler sets the heart racing, to the awe-struck moment of encountering a banded bird, a living testament to the wilderness's enduring tales.
Jesse's Linktree
Our Linktree
Howdy folks and welcome to the Hunting Stories podcast. I'm your host, michael, and as usual, we got a real good one for you today. Today we actually connect with Jesse Griffiths. Jesse committed a while ago. He fought the flu, he fought some COVID, but we finally got together. And I'm so happy that we did because I've been a big fan of his for many years. In fact, one of his cookbooks helped me get through COVID when all of us were kind of locked up for no real good reason. But that being said, he's a great storyteller and he tells some amazing turkey stories, as turkey season is right around the corner here. So I hope you guys enjoy. I'm gonna just stop it right there. Make sure you give him a follow. Links to everything are in the show notes. Give us a follow. While you're doing it, let's let Jesse tell you some of his stories. Thank you, alright, jesse. Welcome to the Hunting Stories podcast. Brother, how are you?
Speaker 1:I'm great Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, man, I talked to all my guests before we start recording and I've already said this to you, but I want to say it again when the listeners are actually here. But I'm a big fan, huge fan, in fact. Your cookbook got me through COVID 2020. I was living in Texas and, as the grocery store is emptied out right, no one could get meat. That year was probably my best year of hunting. I killed a couple hogs, access to your white tail and I grabbed your, your cookbook afield and cooked nearly everything in there, except for the osubuco, which I'm still trying to trying to get to, but the venison musaka is that how it's pronounced?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That was. That was the most intimidating thing when I was looking at it. And then I started cooking it and it was easy and it was delicious and I've cooked it like 10 times a sense, so like just a beautiful cookbook man. I love that recipe. Never would have thought that I would have, and I just want to say that I'm excited that you're here.
Speaker 1:Oh man, I'm excited to be here. That's a great intro too, and I love that musaka recipe and in the summer, especially like when cucumbers are in season, because it's like it's so good with a little cucumber salad. We make that all the time and it is great with venison. I'm glad you enjoyed it, especially that recipe. I think that's a yeah, that's notable.
Speaker 2:I remember when I got the book, I opened it up and I was like I don't, I don't think I'd like that. And then we just got around to it and I was like you know what I want to do it? I'm challenging myself here. Everyone had a COVID hobby right, mine was. I was a COVID chef, and so I did it, thinking I don't know if this is going to be a recipe for me, but it's my favorite one that I had in the book.
Speaker 2:So, the book's a field we're talking to Jesse Griffith. Jesse, why don't you introduce yourself where I'm getting ahead of things here?
Speaker 1:Oh no, no worries, yeah yeah, yeah, jesse Griffith, I'm here in Austin. I have a restaurant called Dai-Due. It's been open. For the restaurant itself, it's been open for almost 10 years now. The business has been open for about 17 years in its various forms. I am the head instructor at the new school of traditional cookery, which I just got back from yesterday, which is a four or five day intensive hunting, butchering and cooking course. I've been doing that for 14 years and I also write books about fish and game cookery. So, like the one you mentioned, a field which came out, I think, maybe like 14 years ago, 12, 14, a long time ago.
Speaker 2:It's great. It's a great book and it's the I don't know. It looks different to me than the average cookbook. The photography is gorgeous. Everything about the hog book is great too. What's funny is I bought the hog book and I've yet to kill a hog since I bought that one too.
Speaker 1:So I hope that's not some sort of a correlation some sort of curse. I really prefer not to get that out there to the listeners where they're like wait wait, wait, wait when you buy the hog book, you stop killing hogs. It's like no, no, no.
Speaker 2:I've told enough stories about how I suck at killing hogs and I'm a great turkey killer, so I'm excited for your next book, which is coming out. I've killed a turkey with a shotgun, with my bow and with a 270. So like it just seems like whenever I go out.
Speaker 2:I manage to pop a turkey, so yeah, but we're off track, jesse. But yeah, your restaurant, I love it. I mentioned it to you. It is the place that I try and go to on my birthdays. I've moved back to Colorado so it's going to be harder this April to get back there, but we'll see. We might come down for, like the Eclipse or something, because you guys are right there in that path.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so maybe, maybe I'll manage to make it down there again, but let's, let's do what we came here for. Man, I know that you probably have a couple stories prepared. Why don't you set the stage and tell some of your favorite hunting stories?
Speaker 1:Yeah, first off, I love, I love just the concept of this. When you approach me, you're like this is a hunting stories podcast and first off, I didn't have to be like well, what's the format? Because it's like, it's pretty straightforward and like. Secondly, I love stories you know, like I think, all my books are very strong on on stories and I remember when I was a kid.
Speaker 1:I mean just growing up. I love any books that I could read that had the story in there. I think that was just the most compelling thing to me and I would. I actually loved reading stories or hearing stories more than you know, watching Saturday morning fishing shows and stuff like that, so it was a no brainer when you're like you want to be, you want to tell some stories. I'm like yeah hell yeah, I want to tell some stories.
Speaker 2:I love stories.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah so you know, and I thought I kind of thought about it a little bit. You know I've got a couple.
Speaker 2:I mean, maybe we'll even branch out for there.
Speaker 1:But you know you did mention, you know I do have a new book out, the turkey book also this time of year. It's time we're going to start getting fired up about turkeys. I was just down on the ranch. We had our final class down there. We were hunting deer and pigs but out of nowhere, all of a sudden, the turkeys started moving. From one night to the next they started gobbling, you know, when they were going to roost, and it was just like we were there for the first gobbles of the year. We started seeing them. It was just very exciting and that that ranch is in in south Texas and so you know it's a pretty good area for turkeys.
Speaker 1:But you know I'm I'm relatively new to turkey hunting and so just to be clear, this, this new book, is really written from kind of an amateur viewpoint. It's a journal of a season from four hunts that I, that I took over a season and then all the correlated recipes and the cooking that we did along the way and the cooking that other people did in that. But I've always been very enamored with turkey hunting and as soon as I kind of experienced it for the first couple times like in its real format, which I consider to be, you know, sitting under a tree with a shotgun in the spring, you know, hopefully surrounded by blue to blue bonnets, I mean if you're in Texas, and then you know everybody. You know if you're in south Georgia, or if you're in Tennessee, or if you're in Montana. You all have your, your very special situations.
Speaker 2:You know, it's very it's very turkey hunting who it's. It is special, especially in Texas, yeah in. Colorado it's still pretty damn cold and you're playing around in a lot of snow but in Texas and you get those blue bonnets coming up, it is just a magical place to be and it's always Texas. It's a little hot some of the year, but spring season for turkeys it's always perfect yeah, it's just perfect.
Speaker 1:We saw our first. Also this weekend we saw our first blue bonnet. So just I mean for references is like I don't even know the date right now, maybe like February 20th or something like that, but you know, latest February and we started to see blue bonnets pop and you know, again.
Speaker 1:That's just very exciting. I mean, crop year coming, turkeys are coming and so, yeah, we're about a month out on turkey season. But I, you know I had I didn't really have anybody mentor me with turkey hunting in the early years. Later on, my friend Ben O'Brien really stepped up and, remotely from from Montana, we would call and text and he would kind of work me through these different situations. But in the first couple years that I hunted turkeys it was a very self-taught deal and revolved around a lot of, a lot of mistakes as it still does.
Speaker 1:I mean any turkey hunting hunter will tell you that they make a lot of mistakes. Otherwise they're lying to you. You know it's, it can be, it's a very it's. It's really easy until it's, until it gets hard.
Speaker 2:It's a psychological game, right, because you've got a game that's telling you hey, I'm right here, and yet you still can't shoot it.
Speaker 1:It's just absolutely ridiculous, turkey hunting and that's probably why I love it so much right, I I had a friend of mine had called me. This has probably been about, I'd say, about five years ago and he called me up and he said hey, I've moved out to this property. I'm he's a farmer, like a small farmer and kind of a professional farmer, and he was working for a very well known we'll call him a beverage magnate you would actually know him and he was working for this guy.
Speaker 1:He was cooking at the beverage magnates beverage factory and so the this guy owned a lot of property and and then set my friend up with with the place to live and it was this 400 acre, just gorgeous property about 45 minutes from my house. And he called me up one day and he's like you know, I see a lot of deer and pigs out here, would you be interested in hunting? And I was like are you kidding me of?
Speaker 1:course I would be interested in a get out there and it's, it's just one of the most beautiful spots you can imagine. It's it's southeast of Austin. So if your listeners aren't familiar that Texas is just incredibly diverse. And you go west of Austin, you go to the hill country. You have clear flowing rivers and lots of oaks and cedars and rocky limestone hills. There's no soil to be to have. You can't really grow anything, but it is just. It's just very, very beautiful, very fun place to hunt.
Speaker 1:Yeah, to the east of there, it's this black land prairie is like dense, dense alluvial soils, very dense hardwood thickets, you know lots of oak and hackberry and cottonwoods, things like that, and it's also very beautiful. We get into south Texas, you know, and it's brush country, it's mesquite, just kind of thorny and a little little nastier. This was out in the in that black land prairie area and so we've got a whole a bunch of different oaks and these big open meadows covered in blue stem blackberry patches, just a very beautiful kind of rolling piece of property. There's some old homesteads out there, just the chimneys left. You know people have been living there for a very long time and very taken by the whole property. You know this is very, very, very blessed to be able to get access to this.
Speaker 1:And he just randomly called me. He's like I mean, I'm not going to hunt, but I know that you like it and I'm like I got you buddy. Thank you so much. So we hunted it a little bit. It was not a little bit.
Speaker 2:We hunted it a lot.
Speaker 1:We would just go out there and we would walk. We just all spot and stalk hunting on this spot and so we would. Every once in a while we would kill a pig. It was hard because we're just walking around trying to get in front of him. We killed a couple pigs out there and then maybe, I think, one deer. But you know, it was one of those wonderful like challenge spots where it was just as much fun to be there and walking and playing the wind. You could only enter from the north part of the property so even if you had a north wind, you already had a disadvantage when you entered the property. I never really considered hunting turkeys out there.
Speaker 1:And then one spring he calls me up and he's like we've got a couple turkeys in the afternoons they're doing this weird thing and I'm like I know what they're doing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm one step ahead of you. What do you want me to do about them? You know like they're pretty dangerous. You probably need me to come out there and take care of the turkeys Vicious critters.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, vicious. And he's like, yeah, come on out, you know we're seeing, we're seeing a couple of the big males you know every every afternoon. I was like, all right, I'll, I, you know, I'd love to. So I went out there First afternoon. Didn't really see anything. I think I might have heard something, maybe saw. I think I saw a couple of hens off in the distance and it was just one of those hunts where, just trying to get the lay of the land as to where these turkeys were going, but decided to come back the next afternoon and to be clear, you know, at the time. Well, to be even more clear, I'm not having a very good caller now. I mean.
Speaker 1:I can decent on a slate call and I'm still very hesitant to use a diaphragm or mouth call in front of in front of other humans.
Speaker 2:I think I can do is the the like the warning call from a hen you know right, it's the wrong one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I'm just scared.
Speaker 2:It's the only thing I can do, which? Is also funny because I insist on hunting with my bow, so it's like slate calls are extremely difficult to play around with, so I have the? I don't know if you ever heard of the bow hitch. But I can attach my bow directly to my backpack Awesome product. But just hangs there and throw that and then if I something's coming, I just throw my, my slate call into the ground and pick my bow up. It's not very efficient.
Speaker 1:There you go.
Speaker 2:I like you, I can't really mouth call.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, well, you got to make it work. So I mean, and then even at the time I was only able to use a box call like this was before I'd even graduated to the slate and I was just using a box call. And of course I mean, if you're only using a box call, you're only using one call, and that is like a seven note yell and you do it all the time and if you ever, if a gobler ever gobbles back at you, you're just going to can, you just going to hammer him with that yell because you just made a turkey talk.
Speaker 1:And it's a miracle, you know, because I mean that's the mindset. So I go back out there and I brought a couple decoys and I set them up and I will say I set them up in a great spot. You know, I had these, just like the line of vision from multiple avenues, I mean in this huge open meadow dotted with some mesquite trees which are very low hanging trees, really easy to hide under. They're also in the spring they leaf out to really nicely where you can still see through them. They're very green. A lot of camouflage works really well with mesquites, you know. So if you get under a mesquite, you can, you can stay very well hidden.
Speaker 1:And I put two deep, two hand decoys out, kind of at a big intersection of what we call senderos here, which is basically a pathway or a road or kind of a natural opening between trees. And you know, I feel like my positioning was very good. You know, if a, if a gobler is to come into this field and this field is probably 60, 80 acres all told, but just kind of dotted with a few random trees here and there I might eventually be able to get them to at least see the decoys, and I think that was my point. I had a group of hens come in after a couple hours and I was just sitting in one spot.
Speaker 1:You know, I didn't really know how to move around or try to like strike up a gobler or anything. So I was like this is this is where I'm hunting today. And so a few hens move by which I, you know, at the time didn't know how to interpret that. You know, I'm like well, is that good, is that bad? Are they going to see me? Are they going to attract a gobler to them and then therefore leave? Are they going to attract a gobler to this general area? I really just don't know. I'm also in a part of the state that has turkeys, has turkey hunting, but it is it's known as like a far less a smaller population. In fact it's a one gobler county. So most places in Texas you can kill four in every county. In this county you can only kill one and the season is shorter.
Speaker 1:It's April 1st through the 30th, so just a month of April, and you can only kill one gobler, which generally means that there's not as high of a turkey population out there. So I've got all this kind of like you know, in the back of my head, you know, but still, I mean, there's somebody seen one out here?
Speaker 2:So, great.
Speaker 1:And finally I hear a gobble, you know. And then when you're a new turkey hunter and you hear a gobble, it's just like you know the light shines down out of the clouds on you and you're like huh, like wow, wow, this is happening. And then I you know I don't fire up a series of clucks and purrs and scratching in the grass, but I hit him with a seven note, yelp off the box, call because it's the only the only phrase that I know.
Speaker 1:it's like I've gone to France and all I can do is say bonjour, you know and so.
Speaker 1:but he responds, and then you know, of course, what I do is I just, you know, I just say bonjour, right back you know and over, and, over, and, over and over and I am finally able to ascertain that this scholar is actually coming closer to me, and originally I would put him at about 500 yards away. It was a very calm day and maybe even on another property, but you know, I was like definitely a sounding a little bit louder.
Speaker 1:I've got my decoys kind of set about in front of me and he's coming in from pretty much do left, and to my left, at about 250 yards, is a pond, or tank as we call him, with a dam around it and finally, after about an hour, he is just moving closer and closer, and closer and I'm just, like you know, just getting really fired up. I've got plenty of daylight left to make this happen and you know, it's like you know, this is awesome. I also am using a new shotgun. So for many, many years I did all of my hunting, because I'm kind of old fashioned about everything I did all of my hunting with a over under a.
Speaker 1:No, what was the brand? I can't remember Il-D's. No, no, no, it was a Russian over under. I'm sorry, I can't remember the name of it right now, but just like a beater, like a heavy 12 gauge over under, like if I was shooting ducks or doves or geese, I was shooting that gun. And then I finally saved up and splurged on a semi auto and I got, you know, a camouflage gun. You know three rounds instead of two. You know kind of live in life here. And so the first time I had taken it out, and so I was very, very excited. You know, I've got this new turkey gun. I've got a full choke in it. I've even got a special turkey round. I got a special turkey shell in there.
Speaker 2:You know this is everything's lining up, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm pro, I got my box cog and my Camo on Bonjour, bonjour. I'm just like belting out bonjures left and right over here and you know it's looking good. And so eventually I look over and I see this, this Tom. He gets up on top of the tank dam, you know about 250 yards, and there's kind of a line of trees blocking his vision of the hens. But I can see them. The hens are probably 30 yards in front of me, but there's this little stand of mesquite that's blocking that.
Speaker 1:And then he proceeds to get up on top of this tank dam and strut back and forth for, let's say, 45 minutes and the whole time you know, I'm just like, I'll just try that a little faster, a little slower, with a little more intention, with a little more desperation, but he's just like. I mean you know he's doing what a Tom is. He's like yes, I hear you. I want you to come to me. Can't you see me and all my glory on top of this tank dam? I mean, he has puffed up and is driving me crazy, my heart's beating out of my chest and I'm just like I can't get him to move.
Speaker 1:And he's doing the back and forth. He's basically walking kind of perpendicular on this tank dam back and forth and back and forth and then finally, once and one of his back and forth he goes a little bit farther on that tank dam and when he does so it enables him to look over and he sees the two hendicoys and he hops off that tank dam, puffs up and probably about takes a three minute fast walk, puffed up the entire way. I am about to have a heart attack because I'm like.
Speaker 1:I'm dragging his feathers. Yes, he is, he's. He's drumming, he's dragging his feathers. He is just all puffed up, looks like a monster. Yeah, and he sees these two hens. And I am in a very good position at this point. I am off to the side he's coming in to from my left, not even looking in my direction, but still I'm still calling to him, even though I don't need to at this point.
Speaker 1:It's he's like he sees his ladies and he comes up to these hens and he gets within range and I'm and I still incredulous. This whole thing is happening. I pick up my gun, flip off the safety and the gun goes click. Oh, no. And I realized, you know, after the fact, this gun especially you need when you you let the charging bolt it needs to really ram that shell home and I had, I think, kind of eased it in a little bit and it hadn't fully rotated and hadn't seated the shell Gotcha, I at least had the knowledge to know that that is likely what happened.
Speaker 1:But now you have to understand that I'm sitting under this miski. I've been talking to this bird for almost two hours now. He is a large turkey, I mean, I know, whatever Turkey size. You got your beard, you got your spurs, you got your. What? All this stuff, but this guy is big.
Speaker 1:And he is standing at 25, 30 yards right in front of me and just strutting around these hens, and my gun, dear listeners might recall, just went click. So I at least had the fortitude to lower my gun, ejected the shell and repeated the whole process. And the next time I did it, I let it seat fully and it, you know, it slid forward, and at which point Turkey turns around and looks right at me like whoa, what are you making all this noise and movement over there?
Speaker 2:At which point I picked up the gun and I killed him. Oh, I mean oh, you're worried.
Speaker 1:Oh, I'm so sorry that you had to go through that three minutes of absolute awful listening to that story. Yeah, it was two hours for me. He dropped and flopped and was, you know, one of those situations where you just know that Turkey's not going anywhere. So all the things I mean if you're, if you're a Turkey hunter, you know that at this point it's just the, the, the adrenaline surge or I don't know if it's just like leaving your body or what, what physiological things are happening to you at this point, but it is pretty extreme. I would probably count this as the first Turkey that I effectively called in and it was just such a sequence. You know, it just took, it took everything. I get up and I go over there and I pick him up.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I'm admiring him. I mean, he's just a big. We have Rio's here, so you know it's like it's just giant Rio, big, big turkey. I am not much of a measurer and I'm not going to be able to tell everyone how long his beard was. It was huge, he had big old spurs. But I think the most interesting thing about this turkey is that he had a leg bad.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's cool. Yes, I've always wanted to get a spitted bird. That's awesome.
Speaker 1:So not only am I sitting here looking at this turkey, but I'm looking down and I'm like this turkey has a metal leg band on him, yeah. And I grab him in the decoys and I go walk back up to the house. The house where my friend lived is probably 150 yards from here. They sat on their porch and watched him strut across the field to me and then they heard the boom and they're super happy, turns out also my friend's girlfriend was a photographer and so she took these beautiful photos of me with this bird and of course, I'm just like almost speechless. That's amazing.
Speaker 1:I'm just like, first off, all of this happened and then it's a banded bird and so I clean the bird, I pull the breasts and the legs and I get the heart and liver and a gizzard out and get the wings off of it. You know, save a few feathers here and there. Obviously, I saved the band and I go home and then the next day I call my friend Graham Jones, who used to be the Colonel of Game Wardens in Texas and he's now works a lot with BHA. He's also a fishing guide and all around a super wonderful guy, like really, really amazing person, and I call it. I was like Graham, I shot a banded turkey what do I do? And he was just like, well, first off, that's real cool.
Speaker 1:And so, beyond all of this, beyond all the story, the you know, just like the tension, the hunt and all these things, I also was able to talk to two biologists, like the head biologists, turkey biologists at Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and the regional biologist about this bird that's so cool, which was even cooler, like, just like unspeakable, like when you don't ever get the opportunity, you know, like my, it could have been over without the leg band right, and it could have been magnificent. But at the same time, now I've also got this insight into this bird that no one is ever really able to possess except in these very, very obscure and random situations. And so, again, I just these stars aligned and I was able to find out about this bird. The bird was banded about three quarters of a mile away from where I shot it.
Speaker 2:That's not far at all.
Speaker 1:And this is where it gets really interesting.
Speaker 1:It had been banded three years prior to me shooting it Okay so, which would make it a very old Tom, but it was also banded when the biologists estimated that the bird was either two and a half or three and a half at the time meaning that this turkey was five and a half to six and a half years old, which is ancient, like I mean three old, four, whoa Five, no way I mean, but we're talking potentially a six year old Tom here and that had survived in this on this property. Hundreds of coyotes right here and this place is just reeled with coyotes, great horned owls, bobcats.
Speaker 1:I mean you know every conceivable predator would have been out there trying to get after this old guy.
Speaker 1:And then, but I did it, you know, and it's just like it's humbling all kinds of things you know about this bird, but what a very, very, very special bird that was, you know, and I got, I called it in and so and I think that really sealed the deal for me and turkeys, because it's like what an incredible interaction you get to have with them in so many different ways. It's not just the calling, it's not just that you're sharing spring, you're experiencing them at a real vulnerable time, but also very active time for them, where they're they're just so, you know they're, they're hormonally charged, you know they're, they're just on these missions, and so it's a very frantic time punctuated by extreme patience and stillness, and it's such an interesting interaction that we get to have with turkeys specifically. And then and then that one.
Speaker 1:I don't know if I'll ever beat that one, but the thing is I feel like every turkey I kill, I kind of do you know. It's just like everyone is still like a great, a great story, but not always all along those lines. And maybe I shouldn't have opened with that story, because that's a good one.
Speaker 2:Let me ask the bird being that old, was there any obvious, like you know, how deer sometimes their bodies get heavier, their antlers get smaller? Is there anything more obvious about that bird compared to the other ones that you put down now that, like we're like okay. Now I can tell that bird was definitely on the older end because of some wear and tear to its body or no, just just big old boy, nothing noticeable.
Speaker 1:And I regret to this day what I, what I like to do with turkeys, and sure, I will measure a beard, I mean, but it's kind of rare. I usually just estimate, I don't really care. I mean there's something I mean, like if you're in the mountains, I mean, a freeze can freeze part of the beard off, and it's like it is not a rubric or any kind of measure as to the turkey, but as humans we have to measure everything. And let me digress for a moment to just tell you how funny I think it is when people are like he's got one and three eighths inch spurs.
Speaker 1:And it's like, I'm like let's see if we're bragging about one and three eighths inch, anything. It's just, it's patently funny. I mean it's just funny from the beginning, like you know. Like one and three eighths inches isn't impressive for anything.
Speaker 2:But it is, I don't get it so funny.
Speaker 1:And so there, I didn't measure his spurs. I mean they were big, his beard was big and but for me I weigh them. You know I like to weigh a turkey and I think that mean there's like there's a lot to that. Last spring I did kill a and this is documented in the book, the, the turkey book at 25 pound Rio and it was like when I picked him up. And when I picked him up I was like oh, oh, wow, this is, this is 20% more bird than I'm used to picking up, and I think I mean he was just big and actually on that bird this one last spring his snood was exceptionally long.
Speaker 1:I mean, again, we didn't measure it, but it was just like it was just massive. So there's, you know, I don't know, for me it's going to be the weight of the bird and also I mean honestly, like the tenderness you know, but I didn't experience anything different. You know, like you could get a six and a half year old buck in the December rut and he's going to have noticeably different textures to his meat versus, you know, a, a, a Jake, you know a year, a year old bird versus a six year old Tom, but I didn't notice anything different about this turkey and maybe we ate him.
Speaker 1:I mean, and he was, you know, that's kind of one thing that I love about turkeys, too, is they're all you know, if you get a mature gobbler, they're all kind of the same, I'm sorry to say you know, I don't care. There's spurs and beards and this and that, but then, so at the end of the day, for me I'm like Well, how much did it weigh? Like which I'm, which was really. What I'm trying to say is like how much fried turkey did you get?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's really what's important, Right? My first turkey was a Colorado Miriam and then I have shot to Texas Rios and like even species to species like my Miriam is maybe three quarter inch spurs, but that's just the species. So I decided pretty early on I'm not really interested in measuring, I just love. I love cooking turkey up all sorts of different cookies, turkey stuff, so I have a pretty funny turkey store a few.
Speaker 2:As long as we're going down this path, I have told this on the podcast before, but not in a while. It's actually this bird right behind me. That's my Colorado Miriam. So I did find a mentor for my first turkey hunting, literally went on Facebook and was like my wife doesn't want me to go into the mountains alone. I know nothing about turkey hunting. Is someone willing to just sort of help me out? As this guy reached out, he lived in rifle. I lived near Denver, so like four hours apart, nowhere near each other. But he he's just throwing knowledge at me, just sharing everything he possibly can to help me get this done. And then he comes to the Denver area to go to a good sport and good shop or something. I offered to buy him dinner. We have dinner. He invites me to go turkey hunting with him. I'm like All right, like this guy seems to know what he's doing, I'll absolutely take him up on this. So I just drive four hours, bring a little camper with me and end up standing at the guy's house and not in my camper, but I was. It was a really fun experience. So him and his son his son at the time, I think, was maybe seven and we hunted turkeys. You know, miriam's are mountain birds. So we hunted.
Speaker 2:It was one of the hardest hunts I've ever done, equivalent to most elk hunts that I've been on. We're going up and down mountains, we're just going all over the place. We are driving a lot. First day not really anything. It's freezing cold in the mornings, 70 degrees during the day, so like just huge temperature swings. The second day we get into some birds, literally because we're driving down a road and it's they're standing in the road. So we just park, reverse back out, go forward, try and call him in. Nothing happens but we still hear him. So then we go around Same thing, just big mountain birds dancing, having a good time, but but no luck.
Speaker 2:Long story short, we spent three or four days calling birds and never really get a real opportunity. And every time we come up on a bird I'm like should I, should I crawl in? She's like what should I do? And he's like, no, just sit here, we'll set up our decoys, we'll call, and every time I'm like we sure I should just like go after him because I don't know. I don't know what I'm doing. But it comes to the final day of the season or at least finally my season, because I have to take off and we hear some birds and so I'm like, okay, well, let's sit here, put the decoys out. He's like, no, you're crawling, time to start crawling, like we're doing everything we possibly can to get you a bird.
Speaker 2:So I drop down and start crawling. You know, up there there's just deer crap and elk crap and barb wire and all sorts of stuff just everywhere. So I crawl from one tough to trees from my buddy's app and he's calling for us, and I crawl to another tough to trees. We know they're right, right behind. So I end up crawling through and getting to where I can see them and they're probably about 80, 90 yards. It's to Jake Ernie, to two toms and two hens and they're just having a great time, this big open field, beautiful grass, and I'm like, all right, well, just keep crawling.
Speaker 2:And again crawling over barb wire, crawling over just tons of shit, just like I've probably crawled about 80 yards to get to 80 yards. As soon as I get there, of course they take off. They just start going away. They don't see me or anything. They're just heading kind of like north up this tree line. I'm like, okay, I'll keep crawling. So I just sort of turn sideways, crawling 90 degrees that way and all of a sudden I don't hear my friend calling anymore. But they're still making plenty of noise, so I don't think much of it. As it turns out, he saw where they were going. He ran back to the road around to that tree line and was just sitting there waiting for them to pop out on the road, because he knew that's exactly where they were going. So last track of him. But I crawl, for I want to say another 120 yards where I'm just on the ground crawling as fast as I can. Even should I do get up and do a little bit more of like a really like ducked walk.
Speaker 2:And eventually I spook him and I'm just like, oh my God, and these birds just get up and they fly, they just fly you know, however far away, and I'm like damn it.
Speaker 2:So I get up and it's a, it's an old burn area, right, good, good eating form. So I just get up and I lean on a tree and I take a leak and I'm just sitting there enjoying the surroundings and I hear them gobble, probably 400 yards away, because it just flew down this hill. And then I hear another gobble about 30 yards to my left or maybe 50 yards to my left. So the big guy that was the leader, he didn't see me. The other three saw me, they took off, but they took off and he didn't even notice. So I'm standing there, literally pecker in hand, and I'm like, oh, I still got an opportunity. And I see him. And now he's turned around and he's heading right back where he came from because he hurt his friends and he's like I'm alone, something's wrong. So I literally just like scoot up to the next tree, stand right there, and he walks right back on the path that he came.
Speaker 1:Can I hit her up? Yeah, of course, have you pulled your pants up.
Speaker 2:I wasn't drinking a deuce. The zipper was, I guarantee still down. I can't recall whether or not I was hanging out or not. I just remember being in the process of peeing and being like, oh, I got to go. I mean, I got to figure out what I'm doing. So I dropped down, lean up on a tree and just wait, because he's belining it straight to these birds and and like with you know, while standing there in an open field peeing, I managed to take out my first bird. So it was actually ridiculous experience.
Speaker 2:It's funny. Of the three birds that I've killed, they all every story I'm like well, I was dumb, Everything about that story was dumb, but somehow it got it done and that's just turkey hunting, I think. I think that is.
Speaker 1:I think that we both told like very classic turkey hunting stories.
Speaker 1:Like both of those make perfect sense, like either it's going to happen that way or it could happen this way. And it's like, you know, like trying to talk about it with people that have never done it, or you know, I've been doing some press for the book, you know, and people are like, so what's turkey hunting? Like, and I'm like, well, you're going to get up early, yep, you're going to sit still, and then you might move a lot too Like beyond that. I can't really get beyond these generalizations because what it is is like it's going to be defined by the moment, by you. You might shoot one while you're peeing, or everything might work out Exactly like you planned it to work out, you know, and it's like, but that's pretty rare, but it could happen and it happens, kind of enough to kind of to keep you thinking that your plan is working.
Speaker 1:But and I think that the entire skill set around it is just pivoting like constant, like learning to pivot and taking your, taking your losses and and also realizing that when things change, the change fast and they can change it any moment. I mean, you can hunt for five days and it could be that last 30 minutes where you turn around and boom, it's happening and you have to, you have to just maintain that attitude.
Speaker 2:I think you know yeah, that's the fun part.
Speaker 1:You know, I think also just being accepting your, your, your losses with some grace is also fun, because that's common. You know you have to do that. I was on it. I went on another hunt, which which I thought was really interesting, like in comparison to this one. You know and not to negate the intelligence of turkeys, but this, this other hunt that I went on last spring, you know we were documenting for the book we went on four turkey hunts for the turkey book and one in Texas, one in Georgia, one in Oregon, one in Connecticut.
Speaker 1:And over those four hunts, I managed to kill five birds you know yeah.
Speaker 1:The spoiler alert. Yeah, I mean two in Texas and then one in every other state. A lot of this is because of the generosity of the people that I'm hunting with, who are keenly interested in me shooting a bird in their home state or you know, with them. You know which was, which was great, but not to say we did not put in a lot of work. We hunted a mix of public and private, every situation that you could possibly imagine you know.
Speaker 1:Swamps of Georgia to three foot snow in Oregon, to just what, whatever. When you close your eyes and you think of Connecticut in the spring, that's exactly what it's like. It's very pretty.
Speaker 1:You know, it's how it was like there was. There was a lot of kind of just expect expectations met and then also a lot of surprises and stuff, and so I killed five birds on that trip. But I actually killed six birds last spring, one of which is an undocumented gobbler that I didn't talk about in the book and we're going to talk about him today.
Speaker 2:So yeah, my favorite stories, yeah.
Speaker 1:So a friend of mine, uh, romy, and Romy runs the Devil's River Conservancy. He's the director and deeply involved in conservation and he's begun a very good friend of mine and he has another friend named Chance. And they have our chance has a small property out west of Austin not far at all. You know I'm talking about from my house, not under an hour A curvil area north of there.
Speaker 2:So more dripping springs actually, yeah, along the river my wife grew up. Actually, my wife went to the Springs High School. There you go.
Speaker 1:So, um, a very a small property, and he showed it to me on onyx and so I did, you know, like just tons of, just like fanatical research on it when, looking at it from above and I can see where a creek ties into the river you know, and then there's like a big barren bald hill on it and you know when, if you've done some turkey hunting, you're like oh, I know generally where these birds are going to be.
Speaker 1:They're going to be either along this creek or along this river, yep, um. So I arranged to meet them. They're going to show up, uh, at the gate. I'll meet them at the gate. I get there. Everybody's running a little late and two thirds of us are also looking a little haggard like maybe the night before. Um, they might have stayed up a bit late. I'm, you know, just like ready to go fired up.
Speaker 1:Fresh as a daisy. I'm like, let's go kill a turkey. And they're both kind of like I don't think either one of them had done much, If any, turkey hunting before. And so, um, and they're kind of like, oh well, all right, we'll go see if we can find one. And I'm like, yeah, let's do that. And so we get up there and I am, I, uh, I split off.
Speaker 1:You know, we park our trucks kind of at the base of that, that the hill which and this is, I mean, I think this is less than a 300 acre property and much of it being this one hill, so I mean a pretty small amount of space to work.
Speaker 1:But, like I said, very confident that the this bird is going to be are these birds are going to be roosted along the river and they're going to fly down from these big old cypresses into these open areas and they might work their way up under the hills. You know, it seems to be a fair bet. So they choose to go off to one side and kind of just camp out and sit there and they're like, yeah, you take this other, this other side, and go down to the river and see what you can see. So it's still pretty dark, suns coming up and I get down to the river and I realized what I didn't notice off of on X. What it didn't tell me is that there's a ledge, there's a drop as this hill goes out, and it is not an insignificant drop. It is literally about 80 feet of sheer cliff that goes straight down. But in on on X it just looks like a big, very verdant tree line right next to the river, but instead it's a cliff that goes all the way down to the river.
Speaker 2:There is a little tighter topographic lines on on X right.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, and I mean my bad. I didn't really notice like that how distinct it was, and so I was like, well, I'm just going to roll down to the river. No, you're not. There is a ladder. I take one look at that ladder and I'm like I'm going to die if I get on that ladder. I mean one bad rung, and I am. I am definitely the best case is going to be a massive head injury, and so I'm like I'm not. I'm not going down there.
Speaker 1:And so I start to work my way along this ledge and nothing, nothing is improving. It's, it's still a drop, and finally I get to where the creek kind of tapers in and it opens up and it's, it's a little more doable, but it's still very steep down. There Heard a couple gobbles early in the morning. Obviously these bars are down on the river, that they're probably going the other way, where it's not an 80 foot impediment, and that for them to have to get up, and so at this point I'm like, well, this is just crazy, I don't. I am at a point where I have no idea where a turkey might be and I mean I feel like they're, they're over there, I can't get to them and.
Speaker 1:I don't have that much space to work, I'd send under a tree and I'd call, and I say so. My calling has improved a little bit over the years, but I'm still not getting any replies. And I'm sitting under a tree and what I can just assume to be a decent location. There's a bit of a draw coming off the hill. I'm just trying to on a road. You know I'm always looking for some sort of crossroads, some kind of path they tend to like that and a Jake just randomly, just like trot by, he kind of comes. He's coming towards me enough that I know that I definitely haven't spooked him, but I also know that from his pace that he is not coming into that call with any interest. And then by the time I get my gun up he's just gone and he's just trotting. You know he's like kind of he's got him, he wants to be somewhere else. So at that point I'm like you know, I'm just trying to get him to you kind of reach this.
Speaker 1:It's almost like the worst thing that could happen. Because you reach this level of frustration, we're like, well, I, this is not going to happen. You know there's the turkeys are down in the riverbank, they're on the other side of the river they're not gonna be up on the, on this knobby when blown hill. Nothing is answering me. And then I found, and then I finally do see a turkey, and then it adds just enough hope to kind of throw you back into this like confused, confused state, like well, now I really don't know what to do. So it's pushing lunchtime and you know, we've been out here all morning and I finally figure, you know, like this is you know this was a fun hunt.
Speaker 1:I got to see this property. It was cool. I mean I I would know better how to maybe approach it next time, like if we could get down to the river somehow. You know if there's a better way to navigate down there Also seems like a great spot to hunt pigs. They also said there was axis and all dad had come are starting to move along the river.
Speaker 2:There's then that far, buddies, like why they didn't tell you there was an 80-foot cliff, like I feel like that's important information. Still, hey, you go over there, watch out for the death cliff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't think it was done on purpose. I mean they definitely sent me the on-ex, you know, and it was really on me, you know, for not noticing that. I think they might have described it but maybe I didn't really interpret it as being like, oh it is, this is an extreme cliff.
Speaker 1:I mean and also very beautiful when you're looking down it and like there's these, just rocky drop, and then there's huge Cypress and cotton woods that come. They were so tall, they come up to almost eye level on this creek. And then you look down there and it's just this, this woodland, but but a very open understory and it looked like a really wonderful spot to hunt pigs or deer Also, and I was like kind of like distracted by that. But you know, no, they, I think that you know, and invite is enough, you know, and it's like I probably should have done better research or the path that I chose in, I kind of I kind of hid it at its steepest point and had I gone to either side I might have been able to navigate it, but it was still dark too. So, yeah, pretty dangerous trying to navigate these hill country rocks, I mean very steep. So it's it's getting to be lunchtime and I'm thinking, you know it's it's time, this is a fun hunt, this is a beautiful spot and it's like let's go, let's go get some.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna hang out with these guys and we're gonna go drink a beer and have some lunch and call it, and so I work my way To the far western side of the property. We're parked, our trucks are parked at the almost the crest of this hill, kind of along the the, the road that kind of circles it, and I'm just gonna walk back by to my truck and I vaguely know where my truck is at this point. I just know what direction it's in. It's kind of parked behind some trees and stuff and you know, it was so dark when I when I left it. I I really I don't have a great sense, but, like I said, this is a under 300 acre property. I'll be able to find my truck. So I get up almost to there's a little, there's a little saddle on this hill and I get up to it and I'm standing wide open. It's just this big rocky field with them, with this cedar here and there, and I mean I've let out that Hail Mary Yelp and I mean.
Speaker 1:Everyone listening knows what happened. You know exactly what happened when I let out the Hail Mary Yelp and I am just floored by the fact that I just heard my basically the first gobble of the day that wasn't a Roosted gobbler on the other side of the river, so a very Excited gobble comes right back at me. But then I realize I'm standing in the middle of this field and he's got to be up on the side of that hill right there. I would estimate that this gobbler is 150 to 200 yards away. For me it's a windy day.
Speaker 1:It's kind of hard to to to be really sure, there's sporadic Cedars along the hill, but I'm like I am why I'm standing wide open right now, and so I immediately just dropped below that little ridge Just to get out of view and then also to be to try to figure out what my next move is. I had him kind of Pointed. I was walking to the west, he was a little bit to the east and so I was like, well, I'm gonna drop below this ridge and cover as much ground as I can, circling back to the east, try to get a little cover, to where I can just poke my head up over this ridge and see onto that hill and hopefully be able to see him. So I get down, I close about 200 yards and then I just very, very I find a cedar and very cautiously poke my head up over the side of this ridge and I see him and he's probably about 80 yards and he's kind of just pacing back and forth. And at that point I started like lightly calling to him and he starts gobbling back.
Speaker 1:But he's he's in that kind of frustrated mode where maybe he saw me or something. He has. His body, body language is a little tense, you know. He's pacing, he's moving real fast. At the same time he hears a hen and he's getting pretty excited. He's gobbling back pretty regularly. I'm not doing the full hen yelp. You know, I know that by now I'm just doing like little clucks and purse, but I'm also just under this ridge.
Speaker 1:So, but to even be able to get my shotgun up, I'm gonna have to make some movement.
Speaker 1:And he's pretty keyed in on the sound coming from where I am. And so he finally just paces and paces and paces and Goes behind some bushes and I just use that opportunity to get my shotgun up. He's probably at about 60 yards at this point and he gets behind some bushes and I think that he's about to bail and I get my shotgun up and I'm ready and I'm just like, well, you know, either he, if he comes in a little bit closer, I've got this, or he's about to just get out of here, because he, he seems pretty upset. And then he pokes his head out and he's probably at about 55 at this point and he closes a couple more yards, he's got his head out, and then he walks out of the open and I'm like I'm gonna do it and and I mean I have switched over to the TSS and TSS choke, and I'm not saying it's always appropriate to shoot a bird at 50 yards, but I did it and dropped him and I was just like I cannot believe this.
Speaker 1:And again it's like one of those situations where you're like I did not think, you know. 11th hour, there's no way that this is gonna happen. How strange this, the whole thing went down. He's at the top of the hill, he's not where I thought he was gonna be, all this and that, and just say you know, it's like I said, you know you never really know. So I get up, I walk over Birds dead, pick him up, I look to my left and there's my truck.
Speaker 2:Of course.
Speaker 1:Like I mean, my truck is parked 80 yards away on the road. The whole time he has been doing this entire dance in full view of my truck. It's not like he couldn't see it, it's there. Even better, parked behind my truck are my friend's truck and, even better, they're sitting in their truck and they saw the whole thing happen. They watched it and they were just laughing when I walked up there.
Speaker 1:I'm just like you know, I'm proud of this bird, but also I'm not sure he was the smartest one in the bunch, but I didn't know. I mean, I was like I knew the truck was somewhere around the edge of this hill, but I didn't know it was that close until I literally walked out into the meadow that I shot this bird in and looked over. My truck is parked right there and they're just sitting in the truck behind. Thankfully they didn't shoot him when he started gobbling or go after him, but I think they knew that I was. I was chasing him. They heard, they heard my awful hen yelps and were like, oh, that's definitely not a real hand, and so I was able to steal the deal. So that's the unspoken sixth turkey from this last spring. So you can read about turkeys, one through five in the turkey book. And then this is number six, bonus track. What do you call it? Like, yeah, like back in the CD days hidden track.
Speaker 2:There you go, the green day. I'm all by myself, that's pretty.
Speaker 1:That's, that's amazing.
Speaker 2:And I'm glad your friends had such a good vantage to watch the whole thing unfold. It actually is so funny that, like our first stories have some similarities, I have another one. I'm not going to share most of it because I think I told it in a podcast recently. I, when I shot my bird with the 270, is right there at 50 yards and it was like I got back to my blind. Let out one call, thinking I'm about to tear everything down and go go home for the trip, and a bird goes off and you know I go full draw on him with my bow but he's behind a bunch of brush and now I can't call because I can't mouth call for anything, and so he ends up going away. So I put my bow down, pick up my 270, because I was hoping to actually shoot an axis here.
Speaker 2:And he pops up at like 60 yards and I was like, well, this is what I got to do. So I shot him and it's it's just funny that that last call of the day always give that last call because we've both put birds down, just on, basically on our way home.
Speaker 1:Definitely. I mean, I think that a turkey hunt has gone the way that I envisioned it. You know, the night before when you can't sleep and you're just mapping it out and you're like, okay, well, I'm going to slip in here, I'm going to try to get into this tree, I think that this is where they're going to be. I think it's only happened to me once, and you know, and then, and which was also profoundly satisfying, you know when it did happen, exactly like I thought it was coming they flew down out of the tree that I thought they would be to the spot, that that I wanted them to be.
Speaker 1:They looked at my decoy, which was, you know, to off to my side, and then I shot one. And you know I was eating tacos at like 745 that morning and you know there's a real satisfaction to that.
Speaker 1:But then also, you know there's a there's a lot of satisfaction to giving up you know, kind of having that kind of dejected feeling and just being like, well that's, you know it's done, deal, it was a great day to be in the woods, but I don't think it's going to happen. And then it does happen, and then that just teaches you like the lesson is just like you really can't ever think that it's not going to happen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, that's 100%, and especially with turkey hunting. Yeah Well, jesse, I know I booked an hour of your time and we're about there. I'm going to listen all day if you have more stories to tell, otherwise we can wrap this thing up. It's really up to you, sir.
Speaker 1:No, I think that those are my favorites. I really smart old turkey and a really dumb turkey and then a really a really amateur turkey hunter to tie it all together. So, yeah, I mean, obviously you know, very excited about turkeys. They're they're just so special. And you know, this time of year I think everybody's starting to get real fired up. And also, you know, just encouraging people that are new turkey hunters or that haven't done it for a long time. You know, just get back out there.
Speaker 1:Also, you know, like what an opportunity you have to support turkey conservation. You know there's some very dedicated groups out there that do profoundly good work. You know the National Wild Turkey Federation is one of them and they've got a lot of people behind them. You know it's got a huge membership and what they do for, like habitat restoration and being part of an organization like that, I think is really important because you can. You can participate in the hunting of turkeys and also the preservation of turkeys simultaneously. And I think it's just like a very exciting time of year. You know everybody's getting fired up, the blue bonnets are pushing up, the birds are singing, the sky is blue, it's about to happen and we can go out there and we can participate in this really amazing sequence of events, you know, with this ancient native bird, and what a, what a, how lucky are we that we get to even fail for a day and get out there and chase them.
Speaker 1:So you know, I hope everybody else is as fired up as I am and you can pre-order the turkey book. It will be available in probably around the first of March, so good timing on that. Yeah, 115 recipes in there for Turkey and then a bunch of stories about Turkey and, as you were saying earlier, the photography. You know we've had two excellent photographers work on this, so it is very, very heavy on photographs. There's tons and tons of pictures. There's butchery breakdowns.
Speaker 1:There's just different ways to slice and cut up breasts and legs and things to do with the fed there's, and things to do with the hearts and the livers and the gizzards and the wings and the legs and name it. But just like really celebrating the bird, I am obviously quite fired up about it. I think I might even let somebody else hear my mouth call this year, I think. I think, maybe just.
Speaker 2:I'm going to pick.
Speaker 1:There's going to be. There's a buddy of mine who's just kind of an amateur Turkey hunter. He won't know any better.
Speaker 2:So I think, he's the one that I'll be like oh yeah, man, this is how you do it, man. Oh yeah yeah.
Speaker 1:And then if it doesn't work and it's like well, you know that's Well yeah.
Speaker 2:And everyone. If you're not Turkey hunting, go do it. It is so much fun. And get out there and get Jesse's other books. Like I said, a field got me through COVID and the hog book. It's been great. I love, I've read it, but I have not had the opportunity to really dive into it yet. But great stuff, great food and if you're in Austin, died away, check it out, jesse. Thank you so much, man. This was a ton of fun. I'll put links to everything in the show notes, but I appreciate you taking the time from your day to connect with me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you so much, michael. That was very enjoyable. I loved your stories too, and hope to hear more of oh yeah, absolutely, I got plenty.
Speaker 2:Maybe we can get together on a turkey hunting Texas sometime and I'll share my other stupid. Turkey stories.
Speaker 1:Love it. We can both mouth call it's a safe space. It's a safe space, yeah.
Speaker 2:I'll do it.
Speaker 1:I'll just scare everything away and you try and call him back. Yeah, I love it, I love it All right, thank you. All right, thank you.
Speaker 2:Hey guys, that's it. Another couple of stories in the books. I want to thank Jesse, of course, for coming on the podcast. Like I said, I was geeking out when I actually got him to commit to coming on the podcast and I'm so glad we're able to do it. Hopefully we can actually get together for some turkey hunts, because I do have some funny stories that I know he has not heard yet. But that's it, guys. Thank you so much for tuning in. Please make sure you check out the links below.
Speaker 2:Buy all of Jesse's books. I have all of them except the turkey book, because it actually comes out, I believe, the week this podcast is being released. So no, I will have it soon. Get cooking and check out what he's doing online. It's some really cool stuff. Beyond that, while you're there, make sure you check us out, share our podcast with a friend, give us a review, give us some likes, whatever you want to do but hopefully, with you doing that, we can get more people listening and more people reaching out with some crazy hunting stories. And that's it, guys. Thank you so much for tuning in. Really, do appreciate you. Now get out there and make some stories that you're on. Thank you.