I'm Travis Bader, and this is The
Silvercore Podcast.
Join me as I discuss matters related to
hunting, fishing, and outdoor pursuits
with the people in businesses that comprise
of the community.
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Today I'm joined by renowned hunter,
angler, gardener, cook, professional author, and
lover of Gwar, Hank Shaw.
Gwar!!
Welcome to the podcast Hank.
Thanks for having me on.
Absolutely.
Man it's been a while since screaming through
the Sierra Nevada in your Subaru, while I
chowed down on your lunch of salmon collars.
Yeah, I know.
And it's even been a long time since we met
each other in Vancouver for that dinner.
That was fun.
That was a lot of fun.
Yeah.
I enjoyed that.
That was abattoir, wasn't it?
It was, it was, I think it was 2018 was it not?
Going back a few years.
Yeah. Man.
And then of course COVID hit.
I got, I got to imagine with your background
and the videos you put out and the podcast
you put out and the books you put out,
COVID probably brought a lot more eyes to you.
Is that a fair assessment?
That is a fair assessment.
I was just talking to a fellow, food blogger
friend of mine, and we're all like shaking our
head because everyone got this insane COVID balance
in terms of traffic.
However, the flip side of that was at ad revenue
rates went in the toilet.
So I kind of made out not terrible, but I got
this gigantic boost in people like looking for
like, Hey, what do I do?
How can I eat my lawn?
Or how do I go hunting?
Or how do I, you know, catch a fish to eat it?
And then dah, dah, and then, but balanced off
with the fact that, that, um, the revenue that
was being brought in was pretty, pretty minimal.
But you know, that's a minor concern
given what we've just all been through.
I mean, it's, I can't really complain.
Why do you think it is an ad revenue would
have dropped off, yet the demand went up?
Uh, because everybody's was losing money.
Um, The only people who didn't really take it
in the shorts during the pandemic were essential
services and things that are entirely online, but
the biggest advertisers for a website like mine
are kind of national brands that revolve
a lot around retail.
So, um, I don't really run every individual ad.
I just, I worked with an ad network.
Got it.
And the Ad network um, you know, this is what
it was, you know, and fortunately things are
kind of back to normal, which is weird, right?
Because the United States went through
this wretched, horrible COVID pandemic, right?
Where everybody got it and homeless people
died, but were actually vaccinating people.
Whereas you Canadians, nobody got it, but
nobody's getting vaccinated either.
You got it.
Don't get me started on that one.
You know, despite the fact that I'm
married to a chef who loves to garden and
she loves the forage.
I credit you with awakening the
forger within.
Oh.
I had no idea.
It wasn't even on my radar goin' pickin'
mushrooms or looking for wild herbs and, it
wasn't even on my radar.
The very first time I ever actually picked
mushrooms was with you.
And that was.
Really?
Yeah, that was those porcinis.
And man, I had a lot of fun.
Well, I'm really glad that we actually found
some, cause it's not always a guarantee.
Oh, we found a crapload.
I know.
That was a pretty good day, that day.
I remember, we get out of the vehicle, you're
given a little, a little lesson, you said, so you
look around and here's some of the areas you
might find them and look for shrubs and we're
literally just out of the vehicle and you
just kick your boot.
And you're like, Oh, like this one right here.
Like, come on, this had to been planned.
It wasn't, it was just a really good day.
And I mean, you were you living in British
Columbia, there's all kinds of really
good mushrooms too.
Well slowly, I've been getting into it.
And I mean, my wife more so, and I just
kind of follow her lead because she's doing all
the research on it and.
But learning that most of the mushrooms actually
won't kill you and some will get you sick
and take your time and identify that was a, that
was a big one, but we.
Yeah mushrooms are kind of an interesting one.
They're like, uh, if you take a collection of
anything, human beings, whatever, whatever you're
going to find that like 2% will kill you dead.
And 2% you would get on an airplane to go pick.
Yeah.
And then there's another percentage that like,
Hey, you might go to the hospital and
then there's another percentage that like, Oh,
absolutely, if I see them totally picking them.
Then there's another percentage of like, yeah,
you're going to worship the porcelain God.
And then on the other side, you're like,
Oh, if I find him sure and I feel like it
I'll, I'll pick them.
And then there's this vast middle of blah.
Right.
You know, where there's just, they're neither
edible nor not edible.
Right.
You know, I've been seeing on a Meat Eater,
Rinella is really pushing the squirrel hunting.
He is, interestingly.
Yeah.
And I was, I would never credit myself as
a, a voracious squirrel hunter, but I've hunted
squirrels and I've eaten squirrels, all up until
that one day, when you said, what is that?
Some very minute percentage of squirrels
carry the bubonic plague.
I haven't had a squirrel since then.
That's ground squirrels, not.
Oh is that what it is?
Not tree squirrels.
Yeah, so I mean, the, I don't know that
there has never been a tree squirrel with
the plague, but, uh, what I'm referring to
are groundhogs and, and ground squirrels, they
have a much more, a much higher incidence of it.
It's still a little overblown, like, you
know, it's, I don't know the actual percentage
of danger that you would have if you
ate prairie dogs or, or ground squirrels.
Um, but I don't just because I, I prefer tree
squirrels, which are much cleaner and safer to eat.
Okay.
So I went, hyper cautious.
You have the western grey squirrel don't you?
We do.
Yeah.
They're good eating.
They're very good eating.
Other than that fear, I guess now irrational
fear, the possible bubonic plague in them.
So it's ground squirrels, got it.
Yep. Ground squirrels.
So the ground has to have that kind
of a rough on them.
And then that you do find them in trees every
now and again, but they were climbing up the
trees from their holes and they look different.
Right.
You know, we get a lot of marmots up in a
few of the areas that I like to go to um.
I know people who eat marmots.
Okay.
Well, I guess squirrel's back on the menu,
they better watch out.
So you've got a background, like from
a very early age, your mother got you
into foraging and gardening, and then
you got into fishing pretty early, wasn't it?
Very early, very early, like before
I can remember.
So, there you are heavy background
in foraging, heavy background in fishing.
And you started hunting when in
your thirties or 32?
Yeah.
And, uh, when I was 32.
Okay.
And so God, that's 18 years ago now.
Despite your background in foraging and fishing,
you then go on to write basically for wild game
hunting related books.
And you're just now writing a book on fishing
Hook, Line and Supper.
Yep.
How, how come you what made you decide to
do it in that order?
Primarily and I haven't written the fish, the
foraging book yet either.
So a lot of it has to do with familiarity.
So I was a journalist for 18 years.
So the job of a journalist is to learn
a thing of your beat, whatever your beat is and
learn it very, very well, and be able to relay
what you lo and what you learn to your readers
clearly and fairly.
And, and that's, that's, that's, that's
in the essence is what journalism is all
about, at least as a reporter, as opposed
to a commentator.
And so, given that I had already hunted for
quite quite a while before I even started
out put paper to, or put pen to paper.
But, uh, what I had found was that my
first book does have fishing and foraging
in it to be fair.
It does.
So it's, it's, it's, it's got a little
bit of everything.
So, but I decided to do deep dives into
waterfowl with, with Duck, Duck, Goose,
with, you know, the cervids and all things
antlered and horned is Buck, Buck, Moose.
And then with small game with Pheasant, Quail,
Cottontail, because I, uh, I find that.
Since I've really more or less stopped eating
domesticated meat with the exception of, um,
I have a couple of friends who are very
good hog farmers, so I got some, some really
good farmed hogs, um, once or twice a year.
Other than that, it pretty much everything
in our house has been hunted or fished, in
terms of the protein.
So the daily, day by day, week by week, year
by year exposure to game animals from all
over the North America.
And, you know, in every season you get a really
good intimate knowledge.
And I kind of already had that fish knowledge
and I had the reason why I started with
ducks because it's where, you know, you
can see the Duck, Duck, Goose right there.
Uh, and I started with that was because, um,
here in California, we have unbelievable
duck hunting.
And so I had far more experience with that
than I did with uplands when I wrote that book.
And you know, I, I do it on every year and I
hunt big game every year, but it's not like I'm,
I'm not like, you know, I got a friend named
John Stallone and John Stallone, like lives
for big game hunting.
He hunts big game for months at a time.
And I'll hunt big game until I get
one or maybe two.
And then I'm like, all right, good.
Now I can go hunt birds.
And so it took a while for me to develop the
institutional knowledge, to be able to write
a really quality cookbook about venison.
So, so kind of a long way of coming around to
those areas were popular.
Those areas were things that people
wanted to read about.
Those are also areas where there's
a, a bigger need.
So, especially with ducks, I mean, I think
ducks are probably the, the game animal that
is the most horribly destroyed in the kitchen
of anything, with venison being a second thing.
And then, then I think, I think a lot
of people cook upland animals in a decent
way, even without the help of someone like me.
And then that's also kind of true with
fish in the sense that pretty much everybody
knows how to fry a piece of fish or maybe
slap it on the grill.
Sure.
So to write a fish and seafood cookbook, a,
um, since I've fished in like five Canadian
provinces in 40 some odd States and you know,
for the better part of 45 plus years, right.
And I've eaten or cooked and catched,
caught, eaten, or cooked like 500 species or
something like that.
Every time I would write a sentence, I'd be like,
well, this is true.
And then over here, my head would be like,
well, but there's not other fish that lives in
Louisiana that doesn't really act that way.
So, so the, the problem with the, the eternal
exceptions of the diversity of fish made
it difficult to cook.
The second thing that made it very difficult
to cook is if or to, to write, is that for every
time that I want to write about, say the Pacific
Northwest fish, I have to be cognizant of the fact
that, well, nobody wants a recipe for halibut.
Nobody, because if you want a recipe
for halibut, you live where halibut live.
Well, guess what?
Most people don't live where halibut live.
So the recipe needs to be applicable to you,
to me down, you know, 1500 miles South of
you, in California, as well as somebody
in Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Colorado.
So you had to think about fish in a
very different way.
You had to think about fishes in kind
of a galactic sense.
Where you put them in broader buckets.
Where you have, this is a lean white fish, this is
a soft, lean white fish.
This is a very firm one, this is a fatty fish.
This is a fatty orange fish, like a salmon
or a trout, or as Canadians say tr-oot.
Um,
I don't know any Canadians that
say that, but.
I do.
There, they live in Alberta, my friend,
Kevin Casajuan likes to say tr-oot.
Tr-oot, tr-oot.
And he has a hard time saying tr-out.
Tr-out.
Yeah.
You do it better actually.
Um.
You know, we're a little closer to
the border here.
That's true.
But I mean, that, that was the thing it's like,
I wanted to write a book that is not only
useful for everybody, fresh water or salt.
But it also really gives you master recipes,
um, fundamental skills on cooking any kind
of fish or seafood that will then really
free you from recipes.
Like there are recipes, lots of recipes in the
book, but, but the really sort of structured as if
you want a beer batter fresh fish, this is how
you beer batter fresh.
But if you want to fry fish and like these
seven other ways, I've got these seven other
ways and they're all tested and they're all,
they're all ironclad.
And then what if you want to poach fish or
grill or cure, I've got a big section on salting,
smoking and curing because people have been
doing that with fish and seafood for as long
as we've been catching fish and seafood.
Totally.
Because if you catch things by the ocean,
you live near salt.
That's right.
You know, I, I think that's part of the
appeal behind the whole Hank Shaw brand
and HonestFood.net is the fact that you.
You look at the whole process and you look
at things differently.
You're kind of, you know, you're, you're
kind of a counter culture kind of guy.
Even your website, you got a .net website,
not a .com or you got a .net website.
But, but you look at when your contemporaries are
out there and chasing big game and posting big,
big game pictures and big flashy expeditions.
You're talking about pheasants, quails,
and cottontails, and how to basically eat
stuff that grows out of your sidewalk.
And you do that in, from a chef's perspective.
I mean, you've, you've got your, uh, James
Beard award winner for your website.
That's a pretty big deal in the, uh, in
the cooking world.
There you go right in the back.
Oh yeah.
You got it up there, I love it.
Man, yeah.
If I had something like that, I'd be flying it
loud and proud for sure.
That's, that's kind of, kind of like the Oscars
for, for chefs, isn't it?
It is.
Um, and, uh, very lucky and very, very
proud of to get it.
You were nominated what, in 2009, you're
nominated again in 2010 and in 2013 you got it.
That's massive.
It's even cool to be nominated because
in you're still on the podium right.
Cause they only nominate three.
Only three?
Yeah.
For any given category.
Right.
So in any given category, there's going
to be three finalists.
And so even just to be nominated is a big deal.
Wow.
So we were actually supposed to do this
podcast on Wednesday tentatively, but
you have Spanish classes on Wednesday.
Not this time.
Uh, this time I'm, I can't do it on
Wednesday cause I'm Turkey hunting because
our Turkey hunting.
Ahh, good for you!
Season has started, uh.
Good for you.
Well you've got a lot of.
Spanish, I think I have a week off of
my Spanish, but.
Well you've got some pretty good Turkey
hunting around where you are.
We do.
They're all, they're all Rio's except for
the far North of the state on your Oregon
where there's some Merriam's, but mostly
they're the Rio Grande turkeys, which, um, it
would be unfair to say that they're the short
bus Turkey, but they are significantly easier
to hunt than Easterns.
Easterns are notoriously the hardest.
So you'd see that in Ontario and then in
the American East.
Right.
So the Spanish lessons, there's a, I've seen
the big shift in how you cook over the years and
you're, you're getting a lot more of a Spanish
and Mexican flavor to a lot of the things
you're doing right.
Are you just doing the Spanish lessons
primarily to get a better feel for the cooking?
Or is there something more in there?
It's yes and no.
So, uh, I've been fascinated by Mexican
cooking, in specific in Latin American cooking in
general for quite awhile.
And the thing about Mexican cooking,
there's two, there's two, two main things.
One is proximity, like it's our other neighbor.
There's three main countries in North
America and, and yours is one, mine is the other
and Mexico is the third.
And, and so proximity matters, but what
really, really cemented it was the fact that,
in my opinion, a great world cuisine has to be
underpinned by a great world civilization.
So the reason why that is the case is
because you have to have had centuries, or
if not, millennia of a ruling classthat can
just sit around and have somebody cook for
them in fancy ways.
And that's sort of the underpinning and it
sounds weird and elitist, but it's true if you
think about it, like, is there a really good food
in, oh, I don't know.
Kenya, for example.
Sure.
Yeah.
There's really good food in Kenya, but
there was never any big, giant civilization.
Like there was an Egypt or in Zimbabwe,
um, or in Ghana.
So, you know, it's just use African examples.
And in Mexico you have to, you've got the
Maya and the Aztecs, not to mention there's
a couple other groups that, that are a little
bit lesser known, but you've got these major
long lived sophisticated civilizations that
underpin their food.
And so that connected with the ingredients
that they have available.
So the area that is now Mexico, has
everything from the origin of chilies, the
origin of tomatoes.
Um, and they also had to some extent potatoes,
although those were mostly from the Andes,
uh, not to mention lots and lots and lots of
other ingredients that we use on a daily basis,
you know, corn, beans and squash, for example.
Corn, beans and squash as we know them
originated in Mexico.
Now they were widely used all the way up to,
to Southern Canada when white people showed up.
Um, but they filtered North from Mesoamerica.
So you have these amazing ingredients.
You have these amazing techniques in the
civilizations that underpin it, and then
they're our neighbour.
So I got very, very interested in it,
uh, some years ago.
And then I very quickly realized that if you only
speak English, it is like seeing just a shadow of
the real cuisine, because while there is a fairly
large number of Mexican cookbooks written in
the English language.
There are an order of magnitude more cookbooks
written in Spanish.
And until, and unless you can read Spanish
and speak Spanish and really understand Mexico,
you know, like actual Mexicans, like it's
not just food ladies and gentlemen, it's the
human beings who make it.
Right.
And you cannot really, um, grok to use a
California term, the, the, the cuisine
or the people or whatever, unless you
speak their language.
So that's a prerequisite.
And when I was in high school, I took two
years of Italian and three years of Latin.
So those are really good underpinnings
for learning Spanish.
And, and so the goal eventually, one of
my best friends, uh, is from Monterey.
Uh, in Nuevo Leon and he lives here in California
and runs a restaurant called Nixtaco.
And so Patricio and I, our goal is to write a
Mexican cookbook someday.
And I refuse to be the gringo who's standing
there unable to answer questions in Spanish.
And cause you, you do see this, you see
this where there are American or Canadian
or other or chefs of any other country that
don't speak X language.
And don't, don't really, they just kind of
parachute into a culture.
And then, and then cherry pick things
from it without really fully understanding
the whole culture.
And I don't want to be that guy.
Like, uh, I want to be the guy who's like, Oh
yeah, that's really good.
Even if you don't like the fact that I'm a
wedo um, you have to, I want to be that guy.
They're like, yeah, you got to give the devil
his due, you know.
That's fantastic.
And I hope people will, will see our book, which
is years in the future.
I hope they will see our book whenever it
comes out as a positive thing and adding to
the overall knowledge.
And here's the thing, like if it does well,
shit, we're going to print in Spanish too.
That's pretty damn cool actually.
Have you already started kind of pre-writing it in
your head or do you have?
Yeah, yeah, it has.
It has, uh, it has, we have some structure
for it, but it's, like I said, it's,
it's a few years off.
Years in the making.
Yeah.
I don't know if I can get behind your, uh,
your love of Gwar but I did hear you rockin'
out to some Control Machete, and, uh, I
can get behind that.
Control Machete, they're from Monterey.
Are they?
I didn't know that.
It's interestingly, like a lot of the music,
a lot of the Mexican music, I like a lot
is from that city.
Yeah, that's interesting.
Like Kinky, Kinky from that city.
And El Gran Silencio from that city.
Um, yeah, there's a Jonas in Plastilina Mosh.
Plastilina Mosh you may know, because there
was, it had one hit that really made it
into English speaking world was Mr PMOSH.
Mr.
P M O S H.
And it was about 20 years ago, but it was, it got
major radio play, at least in this country.
Did it?
I may have missed that one, but yeah,
no si señor I always had that on my list
of, uh, of songs if I ever made a movie.
And there's some Latino gangsters kind of
cruising through that's what would be playing
in the background.
Oh yeah.
Well, they were of course heavily influenced by,
um, by a Cypress Hill.
That's right.
Yeah.
Now I remember reading one time, there was a
quote that you had there and it was, uh, I'll,
I'll read the quote.
It says, I, I think it's just because
Americans fear food, plain and simple.
We're probably the niche in that is the
most scared of our food supply because it's
failed us at times.
And I, and that was in regards to people's fear
of getting foraging is it and getting wild game?
And what, what was the, uh, uh, the
impetus behind that one, because I just saw
that one cut and paste it out and I thought,
yeah, that's kind of an interesting one.
I think it is really more of a reference to
the general food supply.
So, and that of course bleeds into the wild
world as well because they, the thought the,
you know, the general thought, I think this is,
this is true in Canada, too, where, Oh God, you
know, what if my burger's got e-coli or what if my,
my lettuce has listeria and dah dah dah, in, in
the thought process with that is, well, if that's
the case in a regulated, farmed food environment,
how much worse must the wild environment be?
So that's the thought process.
Ahh.
So, and the other, the approximate thing
is every time I take somebody on a, on a
edible plant walk.
Oh yeah, that's edible.
That's edible a hundred percent.
I could, I could eat at the French laundry
as much as I want, if I had a dollar for every
time, I've heard this.
What if a dog peed on it?
Well, don't you have a sink?
Yeah.
You can wash it off.
Number one, or maybe don't pick from the
section on the side of the sidewalk that's at
dog pee level, right?
Just go back a little bit.
Hey, it's strangely yellowed and burnt.
Like let's, let's pick that one, you know?
Oh my god.
That's the thing like mushroom poisoning, 50%,
give or take, the stats are roughly that, but
it's not an exact stat.
Roughly half of all mushroom poisonings
are caused by people having panic attacks
from eating perfectly edible mushrooms or
eating perfectly edible mushrooms that are
like rotten or moldy or something like that.
Ahh. Yup.
So like they're not actually eating
a toxic mushroom.
They're either eating a rotten edible mushroom,
or they're just freezing because they don't
trust themselves.
Interesting.
50% of the time, it works every time.
Roughly, roughly about that.
Do you find as you're through your writing
and through your website and your books, and do
you find that you're seeing more people out
in the places that you would typically go to?
Like, are you kind of creating your own
competition out there?
I think that's true.
I, I, I think I'm not the only person doing
it, but, um, I've been doing this publicly
for quite a long time.
So, uh, it is why I don't do many
plant walks anymore.
And if I do do them, I do them in public
places where it's illegal to pick.
Ahh yeah.
So that if you want to go back there and
pick up this illegal spot, that's on you.
Um, years ago, like where I took you.
Yeah.
That's a spot that you could go back,
you could go back and you could pick at it.
Now I trusted you because you're a Canadian and
we'll not only because Canadians are generally
trustworthy, but.
Difficult access.
Yes.
Difficult access.
So, yeah.
Like I would take people in and we would actually
go to a place where we could gather and about
90% were good people and would respect my spots,
but that leaves 10%.
And when you're dealing with, you know, maybe a
hundred people over the course of the year, then
that means 10 people are stealing your spots.
And then that can kill a spot.
Totally.
And they tell their friends or friends
tell friends, and then.
That's the thing.
That's like, people don't get that.
So here's, here's etiquette.
Like if you're listening to this outside here,
this is, this is, this is true to knowledge
I'm dropping on you.
If either of us or anybody takes you to
one of our spots, it is for you and you only.
So if I take you to my mushroom spot and you
want to return to that mushroom spot, you need
to ask me if you can return to my spot and
you don't bring other people, unless you have.
100%.
Trust in that other person that, that other
person is never going to, to burn your spot,
which is very difficult to do because there's
even good friends.
Who'd be like, Oh no, oh yeah.
I posted it on Instagram with a geo tag.
You're like rubber hose now.
Yeah, no, I get behind that 100%.
You know, we, we caught some heat, you
know, April Vokey.
Uh, you've podcast with her.
Actually I was on her podcast in April and
I are going to do our first virtual book event,
uh, in May together.
That is so sweet.
That is so cool.
So, uh, when she was with MeatEater, we did a video
doing some crabbing and just handpicking crabs.
And although we didn't give any locations and
we're very careful about making sure it was just
like views of the water.
Man we caught some heat from people who
were local in the area and they could
kind of pick it out.
And it's, it's something that has to be taken
very, very seriously.
You don't want these to get these spots
kind of burned out.
Yup.
At least, at least.
So with crabs, they, they move like I've had my
clam spots just raped.
It was the worst.
Like I went there, it was, it was money.
Like you, you, you would get your limit of clams.
Absolutely.
And then I, I took a few people there
and it was gone.
Yeah. It's gotta be tough.
I guess that's part and parcel with getting the
information out there, even if you're not giving
them your secret spots or locations away, you
are encouraging people to get out there and
search for themselves.
I don't mind that.
I mean, uh there's uh, again, if you
want to swing back to MeatEater, uh, very
recently, uh, Steve Rinella's brother said
something to the effect of like, well, I don't
know that we want more, to be recruiting more
hunters, which caught a lot of flack actually.
Mhmm, I saw that.
And they did a retraction.
I can't remember.
But anyway, um, there is that theory
out there though.
There's a lot of people who are established who,
and you see this nimbyism with, with all things
in human experience.
It's like, I got mine, I'm going to
shut the door by me.
I just don't think that's very fair.
It's just not very fair for, for anybody,
especially if what you're doing is you're
teaching them how, you're basically teaching them
how to learn themselves.
So I don't necessarily, this is why I will take
somebody to, or, or talk to somebody about a
public area where maybe isn't legal to hunt or
fish or whatever, but I'm going to show you
what it looks like.
Like, if you see this habitat, if you see this
kind of rock structure, if you see this kind of,
of, you know, area in the marsh, it's, that's
kind of what you're looking for and yeah, it
does it get them close?
It sure does.
And it helps them be successful on their
own so they can find their own spots.
And yes, of course, there's a great example.
Um, I didn't take you there, but,
uh, on the coast of California, there's,
everyone's secret spot.
I'm going to say it because it's, it's
just hilarious.
So, uh, over the last 10, 15 years I have had
people, hey man, you know, like the secret
spot it's Mount Vision Road in Point Reyes
National Seashore.
I have heard that a dozen times from different
people, who don't know each other, that that's
their secret spot.
Like dude, really like everybody, the planet is
at that particular place at that at a particular
time as porcini on it.
Right.
But in you know, it's, it's not a secret.
So, so that kind of stuff, like at least it
gets them to like, that's what it should look like.
And, and I'll be honest.
I mean, I don't, you know, yeah there's more,
there's more pressure here and there, but
I don't think it's that bad, you know?
And if, and if it does get that bad, people
are doing something positive, like I'd rather
that than, you know.
Yeah.
You know, there's a million things that they
could be doing that is more harmful to not only
the environment, but to, to my experience
doing my thing.
Have you heard of them a fellow by the
name of Shane Mahoney?
Oh yes.
Santa Claus.
Yes.
He's from Ontario isn't he?
Uh, he's from Newfoundland actually.
Oh, he's a newfie.
Okay.
Gotcha. Yeah, he's a newfie.
You wouldn't guess it by his accent.
And a little Irish comes up when you
talk with them.
Little Newfie can come up, but for the
most part, man, he's a hell of an order.
Not like Lori from Cod Sounds.
Yeah, that's right.
I love Lori.
And she's got the best accent.
Well, he was saying something, circling
back to about talking about recruiting hunters
and he's talking about the North American
model of conservation.
And he said, everyone talks about, we got
to get more hunters, we've got to recruit
hunters, we've got to get women into hunting
and he's taking a different approach as
opposed to saying, Oh, we got to get these
more hunters out there.
So we have more people on our side to fight
the other side, who would be anti hunting.
He says, why don't we ride a trend that's
already moving as opposed to trying to stop the
flow of the water, get on the water and ride
it down in that trend that he's looking at
his food, essentially.
And he, and he set up this, so he's
got Conservation Visions and The Wild
Harvest Initiative.
And I thought it was kind of an
interesting concept.
So it's not that you need more hunters, you
need more people to understand why hunters
hunt and to appreciate where their food comes
from and understand why they should care
about their food.
I thought that was really interesting.
And when he was saying that, because I did
a podcast with him recently, when he
was saying that you sprung to mind, because
that's sorta your whole thing, you, I don't
know if you're taking it from a conservation
approach, but it's, it's what you're doing.
You're, you're getting people excited about
something that's already something that's sparked
in their curiosity.
I, I think I, I don't know that I take it
specifically from a conservation perspective.
Although I, I I'm aware that it is important.
So the ansul is kind of like, um, it would be an
add on to what Mahoney is talking about is that
when you are invested as a gatherer, or an
angler or a hunter, you have skin in the
game, in the places in which you do your thing.
So what Mahoney is talking about, I think,
is that, so here's me, I'm a guy who does these
things and, um, like we mentioned off the air,
there have been years where I have, um, or I
have hunted more big game meat than I, that I ended
up, could use in a year.
So I distributed that big game meat as gifts
to friends and family.
And so there everybody who does these things
gathering or angling or hunting has this
halo around him or her, who have people
who can appreciate the gifts from the wild.
So everybody who receives those gifts or who does
the actual thing has skin in the game of keeping
the environment as, as, as healthy, healthy is
probably a good word for it as possible.
Um, if you are an urban dweller, typically it's
an urban dweller, uh, who has zero connection
to the wild world.
If you ignore it, it'll go away and they don't
have any connection to it whatsoever.
So what that means is they don't have, there's
no real reason to value it, except as a pretty
thing for that they see in TV commercials or
maybe they drive through it once in a while.
And the interesting thing about that view
is because there's quite a lot of urban dwellers
who, who say they feel quite strongly about
the environment, is that when you don't live in
it or don't participate in it, you view it as
a museum to look at and not as our home.
And it's our home, wherever we're just
animals, you know, we're, we're hairless
monkeys with thumbs and.
And we're just a little bit more clever than most
of the other animals.
Just a little bit, you know, like
think about it, if dolphins had thumbs,
we'd be in trouble.
Yeah.
You know, so, um, The fact that we're
incredibly divorced from our natural origins
is something that's the larger picture of
what I'm trying to do.
I'm trying to have more people had more
skin in the game so that when it comes time
to, and you're seeing this, you're seeing
this in American and in Canadian politics to some
extent, um, where, yeah, there's even staunch
conservative Republicans when some other facet
of the Republican party wants to, um, wreck
a natural spot for, usually mining and
gas sometimes logging.
Um, then, but they're hunters, you know,
they're staunch conservatives, but
they're hunters.
Uh, and they're like, no, you can't do this,
you're going to wreck the spots because
they skin in the game.
And so that's a way for, um, I guess wise
uses one word for it, there's a lot of use, you
know, buzz words for it.
But the bottom line is the, the perspective of,
of the wild world as a home to not, don't mess
your home up, versus you museum to never touch.
Like a great example is logging.
So there are lots of ways that logging can
be done to the advantage of, of the forest,
it's selective logging.
And in some cases like, especially
in the East grouse, for example, grouse
really dig clear cuts.
Um, and, and historically, before
we showed up, um, that would have been
a side effect of, uh, microbursts and storms,
which would knocked down a whole bunch of
trees at the same time.
So then once humans showed up, you're
talking about native Americans and you know,
and First Nations people you are talking about
managed use of fire.
So for a hundred years, I don't know about Canada.
And I just think it's the same in Canada,
but in the United States, we had a no
fire at anytime policy.
Right.
So what that did is that that allowed the
understory of our Western forests to get so thick
that when you do have a fire, you get what's
called a ladder fire and it will wreck a forest.
Whereas when the natives were there and they
were like, yeah, yeah, we're going to burn this
stuff at the right time.
And we're going to run this fire through.
And it's essentially like a brass and
little stick fire.
And it's, it's not that hot and it goes really
super fast and it clears out that underbrush
and it actually helps trees and it helps a
whole bunch of conifers actually set seed.
But there's a whole bunch of conifers that won't
actually, their seeds wont germinate, unless
they've been burned or chared, you know,
obviously they can't be incinerated, but.
Right.
And then that's the thing it's like when you get
these big old ladder fires through like,
Oh no, it's a museum.
You can't touch it.
Then what happens is the fire burns so hot,
you burn the seeds to a crisp and then you've
gone the other way.
So, let me ask, this sort of one little
example of yeah.
You know, we live here and sure we can
mess things up, but we can also be an agent
for positive change.
I think what Shane said, he said something along
the lines of, it's not that there's a different
set of rules for the animals and for me,
the issue is, is that I am one of the animals.
Right.
Exactly that.
For people to get skin in the game, 32 years
old, you started hunting.
Yep.
What kind of tips would you have for
a late onset hunter?
Cause we get people calling up saying,
ah, you know, I, I never, I didn't have
hunting in my family.
I'd never be able to pick it up, I'm never going
to be able to master it.
Maybe I'll dabble a little bit.
And I don't, I don't necessarily think
that's true and case in point yourself.
I mean, what, what would you tell
people to look at and concentrate on if they
wanted to awaken that interest in themselves?
Uh, well, number one is to try the
fruits of the labour.
So first and foremost, if you want to be
involved in gathering, or angling, or hunting,
you need to enjoy the fruits of that labour.
So you have to, I think most people have bought
fish from, this is, you know, this is a side
note um, fish is the primarily wild food that
the world still eats.
It's the last gathered food, you know, I mean,
there's, you know, obviously the wild
mushrooms, but that's kind of a boutique
product where most of the people listening to
this, if not all of the people listening to this
have eaten wild fish.
So that's number one.
That's a good point.
Uh, for gathering wild mushrooms is
probably be a good way to go about it.
Um, if you live in the East ramps or
fiddleheads, and you know, there are some
commercially available wild food products
that you can buy.
Um, and then with hunting, typically you
have to have a friend who does it, however,
you can try farmed game, which is a game
meat, that's not really wild game because it's
because of that North American model that Shane
Mahoney is talking about.
You cannot, you haven't been able to
buy real wild game from North America
for over a century.
It's been illegal.
Now that said there is a company called
D'Artagnan, where they will sell
British game online.
It's expensive, but it's real, real wild game.
I mean, you know, pellets and all.
Um, so the, you kinda got to get your feet
wet and that's kinda how I got into it
was, um, as a child, I had the privilege
of being, uh, sort of situational only child.
So, cause my, my next sister is seven years
older than I am.
So it was just me and my mom and my
stepdad for quite some time in the house.
And so they really like to eat at
nice restaurants.
So when the only the one kid in tow and a kid who
like good food, uh, I got exposed to game meats in
a very high end setting in Italian or French
restaurants in New York city back in around 1980.
And so I always had it in my mind, a, um, that
game and, and squab and duck and goose
and venison they were always luxury foods.
They're always high-end foods.
Right.
And so then flash forward, my friend,
Chris Niskanen, who is the outdoor writer, the
newspaper that we both worked at in Minnesota
at the time he started just giving me a duck or
giving me some pheasants or giving me some venison
and because I knew how to cook and because I
had this early experience with high-end game meats,
this is, I got to have more of this, you know,
and I'd already fished and gathered things
for my whole life.
So I knew what the end result was going to
be before I got and did the hard work.
So the hard work for, hunt, hard work, hunting
is hardest of the, all of the 3 to get involved in.
Now with gathering, it's probably the second
hardest because, uh, let's just knock fishing
at first, fishing is easy, hire a guide,
do what they say.
Don't gut the guide and, and you will eventually
catch fish and you will, you'll, you know, you buy
my book, Hook, Line and Supper available wherever
fine books are sold.
Get it.
If it's anything like the other books it's
going to be fantastic.
It's actually going to be better, um.
Well I look forward to it.
Because of the, my long experience
with this stuff, but anyway, I digress.
Yeah.
Um, there's lots of information out there
for the budding angler.
It is a, it is a pursuit.
I mean, it's one of those things where the
difference, a real true angler is not just a
person with a rod and reel in his or her hand.
Um, but you can start like that.
So similarly with gathering, um, I always
tell people to start with your own property.
Start, start with learning the names
of the plants that are on your property.
You will find that probably 50% of them
are edible in some way, shape or form,
unless you've, of course you've only have
grass, which is weird.
Um, but some people do and.
Fi, even the process of learning the names
of those, um, it will open you to this world.
Like, so there's homework involved in
gathering because there are poisonous plants,
not many, but there are poisonous plants.
And there's a couple of families, notably the
carrot family, which has hemlock and it's
got water hemlock and you know, so there,
there are toxic plants in that category.
So you're like, Oh, okay, this family,
but first of all, you have to know that it
is a family of plants and, and that they're
all related in some way and that, and that
they share structure.
So yes, there's some homework involved,
but you can do that in your couch.
Um, there are apps like iNaturalist, or
I forget what they're called they're okay.
But they're the kind of like the wikipedia
of gathering, in the sense that I don't know
that I'm going to trust it a hundred percent.
Like, I don't know that I'm going to
trust my life on a cell phone app when
I'm in the woods right.
Right.
So use it as a tool.
And this is the thing, I mean, this is a, you
know, you have to learn how to learn and, and,
and, and many, any decent college will tell you
how to learn, how to learn, which is to say
that's one source, work with other sources.
I can tell you that if you live anywhere,
other than where you and I live.
In other words, the West coast, um, the
books of Sam Thayer, he lives in Wisconsin
are very, very good.
Um, he's got three or four out, um,
and they are they're worth or buy them.
They're worth every penny.
And they, they, um, they involve plants from
about the great Plains to the Atlantic ocean
from about the boreal forest, all the way down
to Northern Florida.
Now with hunting, that's the hardest.
So you have to really want to be involved
because hunting, the act of hunting is the
hardest of the three.
And the aftermath of the hunting is hardest of the
three and the skill set you need to, to know, is
the hardest of the three.
So I highly recommend you start with, well,
what's the result.
Do you really like venison?
Do you really like upland game birds?
Do you really like squirrels?
Do you really like ducks?
Um, then that will start your, your journey.
And when you decide that this D this is the
thing, or these are the things that I want to
pursue, number two, do they live where you do?
So I might want to hunt grouse and
pheasants all I want.
They don't really live in California.
I mean, there's, there are a few wild pheasants
and there are a few wild grouse where I live, but
it's really, that's not really what you do if
you live where I do, you hunt ducks and geese.
And that's important because if I was a
dedicated tuna fishermen, which I used to be, I
wouldn't lay where I live now because I have to go
a long way to even get on a boat, to fish for tuna.
I have to go a long way to, to hunt a rough
grouse or a woodcock.
So proximity is important because if you have to
travel, you'll do it once or twice a year.
And like, meh, you know, I mean, you only at
best be a dilettante.
Um, then you have to learn your weapon,
whether it's a shotgun or a rifle or a bow,
you have to learn your weapon and you have to
be good at it because you, this is, this is,
this is really important because you can't,
unshoot a bird, you can't unshoot a deer.
And so you owe it to yourself and
to the animal that you are pursuing to
be a clean killer.
And it sounds harsh, but it's true.
So flip the script for a second.
If I'm Mr.
Deer walking around in the woods, would I rather
be shot in the heart and be like, Oh my God,
I'm dying and then dead.
Or would I rather be shot in the liver and
die over the course of 24 hours, I think,
you know the answer.
You know, both suck in the end because you're
dead, but one's a harsher nastier way to go.
And if you're constantly behind on your birds and
which is the big, single biggest problem for,
for beginners they're behind on the bird.
Um, I always say if you're new to hunting any
bird, if you're going to miss miss in front of it.
And if you just think that you're going to be
a better bird shot, and I have actually missed
in front of birds where you see the bird go ehhh.
That's right.
Put the brakes on.
It's like Daffy duck and air brakes.
See pellets, I think they feel the air
or something coming at 'em or something.
But anyway, you owe it to be a marksman,
in whatever it is that you do.
And that, that requires practice.
You have to practice it that.
And so that's your homework there and plus
you have to learn the habits of the animal
where the animal lives.
None of this is, is plug and play.
The closest to plug and play you get is a
party boat for fishing.
And, and all of this is, is becomes
part of who you are.
So 30 years ago, 20 years ago.
20 years ago, I ha I defined myself in a
large part as a runner.
Right.
Cause I was a very good distance runner
and, you know, I would walk in the room and
somebody, well what are you, I'm a runner, you
know, I'm, yeah, I'm a journalist, but yeah,
I'm really a runner.
And you kind of do that with hunting and fishing
and gathering as well.
It, it becomes part of how you define yourself.
Cause it's not just something that you pick
up and put down, you can do that with fishing,
but you really can't with anything else.
And if you do with hunting, cause I seen
'em, I've seen 'em where we'll do guided hunts,
forage where I cook and you know, I help guide
some times and process animals and stuff.
And you'll see people who have like, yeah,
they're really just here for the food and they,
they hunt maybe once a year or twice a year.
That's fine, in that environment, because
we are doing a very level best to make
sure that everything comes out okay.
But that's not really a hunter.
That's a shooter.
Yeah.
Good point.
Yeah it's a heck of a commitment
that's for sure.
It is.
So small game or big game what's
your favorite?
Small game, a hundred percent.
Like I like hunting deer and I like it.
Like I put in for an oryx in New Mexico this year.
I don't know if I'm going to get it, but, um,
you know, I put in for big game stuff because
I think it's exciting.
It's an adventure.
But it's, it's a lot of it's serious business.
You know, elk hunting is serious business.
Um, even deer hunting is serious business,
whereas, you know, you can go out duck
hunting and sure it's serious cause you're
actually, you're killing animals to eat.
Um, but it's somehow more, it's
somehow lighter.
It's somehow, um, nobody's pissed off
of serious when you're hunting pheasants,
if you are, you're.
Right.
Not somebody I wanna be with.
You're doing it wrong.
Yeah. You're doing it wrong.
And plus, I mean, just from a very
specific, forget the actual acquisition
of the protein for a second and, and big
game is all red meat.
Period, end of story.
It's all lean red meat.
Now there's differences.
Like I shot a nilgai last year and it
was pretty cool.
Um, it's a bovid so it's more related to the cow
than it is to the deer.
So the fat is more like beef tallow than
it is like deer fat, which means it does
not coach your mouth.
Interesting.
So it was very lean, but the fat that
it had was amazing.
So that was kind of a neat little thing,
but it's still, it's, it's basically beef.
It's like super, super lean grass fed beef.
Or small game, you have the diversity of colour.
You have the diversity in texture, you have the
diversity of flavour.
You have some of the strongest, no, you have
the strongest flavoured wild animals that we eat
in the small game world, ptarmigan, muskrat,
um, sharp tail grouse.
Right.
You know, squirrel has a significant flavor.
I like it, but you know, it's a squirrel.
Yeah.
Like if you a squirrel, you're like,
that's not chicken.
It looks like chicken.
It's not, doesn't taste like chicken.
So you have these, um, powerful flavours.
And, and this is where you would talk about
gamey meat in the sense that, um, that it's
gamey in the way that the may, that word was
meant to be used, in the sense that is a, it's
a meat that has its own flavor as opposed to off.
Right.
So that's an interesting thought too.
I've seen discussions and arguments over what
makes game meat tastes gamey where some have
a very strong gamey flavour and some don't.
And I think, uh, Rinella did some stuff testing
meat by rubbing a knife on a scent gland,
and then cutting the meat with it to see
kind of what flavour that would impart.
And some people will be put off by the
whole gamey flavour and some meats will stay
stronger than others.
Do you have any thoughts as to what will make
one game meat taste gamier than the other
of the same species?
I actually wrote an entire article on it.
If you Google the words, gamey meat, you will
see my article on it.
Oh, there we go.
Um, so the short version is this.
Yes, absolutely.
Um, there's a number of things that affect
flavour and the strength of the flavour.
Number one is diet.
Okay.
So a sagebrush eating animal is going to be
more strongly flavoured than a animal that
eats farmed grains.
Uh, two, species, which is sometimes
also deals with diet.
So a white tail in Iowa is going to eat GMO corn.
A white tail in the Sonoran desert of
Arizona or Mexico is going to eat whatever
it is you can find in the Sonoran desert, is
going to taste radically different at the same
species, different, different region.
So now you've got ducks.
There are, I don't know how many 20, some odd
ducks that we hunt.
There's a lot, a lot of different species.
And they range from they range from
scooters and sea ducks and harlequins, which
are the most pretty, but most disgusting
duck on the planet.
They're vile.
Never had one.
They stink.
Um.
Yeah okay.
I mean, if you skin them, you can eat them.
But like, basically this is like Newfie food you
know, they eat ters um, and ranging from them
to, um, to pintails, which are never bad.
Right.
Wood ducks, which are never bad.
To then you've got the, you know, ducks like a
Mallard, which can be anything from vile to
sublime, depending on now, again, diet and diet
also involves region.
So even within California, you've
got wigeon on the Humboldt coast.
So the North coast it's visually exactly the
same as British Columbia.
And they, these particular sets of
wigeon fly up and down the coast and the eat
sea lettuce and seaweeds and stuff, they are
legendarily disgusting.
Like disgusting, horrible, just stinky,
stinky, stinky.
I mean, yes, you can skin them, but.
However, same species, if it flies inland and
ends up in the rice fields where I live,
it's unbelievable.
It's one of my favorite ducks in the world
because it eats rice there and same bird, same
region, different diet.
Interesting.
So there's one other big thing that affects
gameyness in terms of just no matter
what you do with it.
Cause we're not, we haven't really
discussed game care yet.
Um, but, and that's hormones.
So it is 100% true that a rutty buck
is going to taste differently from the
buck that is after the rut or before the rut,
because their hormones.
Now stress hormones are a big deal and anybody
who raises animals for food knows this.
This is why the, the, the meat industry has
developed enormous protocols to make sure
that the animal that is about to be killed is as
calm as possible because you can taste adrenaline,
just like, you know, you hear it, they'll say you
can smell fear, which you can cause it's, you know,
there's their hormones and things excreated
through the skin.
Right.
You can taste adrenaline.
So people who shoot running deer or running
pigs or running antelope, that's going to be a
different flavor from an antelope that never
knew what was coming.
Interesting.
And people who shoot rutty bucks, um, which
is unfortunate because everybody wants to,
because that's when they get really dumb, I guess
if you've ever watched videos of, of rutty
bucks, it is exactly like watching 23 year
olds in a nightclub at about midnight.
All they're doing is staring at
the girl's ass.
Yep.
And they're like, Ooh, let me look at
that, oh that's perty.
And they're doing dumb things and they're
fighting each other and it's it's, it's it.
Anybody who says, Oh yes, we're so much more
elevated than animals.
Like yeah, you should just look at that, it's
pretty much the same.
That's funny.
So yeah, that affects a lot.
And then there's game care.
I mean, I'm assuming everybody is taking care
of their game cleanly and nicely and with ice
and coals, you know, that kind of stuff.
So bad game care can cause off
flavours in a hurry.
Um, putting game meat on a tarp is one thing
I've heard is a big no-no and then other
people will do it.
Some people lay down bows of branches.
And so they can put their game meat on that.
Cause they say the tarp will infuse
a terrible flavour into the game meat.
I don't know about that.
Not unless it's a disgusting, dirty tarp.
Right.
Like if you wash the in between
hunts, you're fine.
Right.
Like. That kind of makes sense.
I mean, if you enclose it, you should make a
bag out of the tarp and the meat sort of stews in
its own heat, you know, then yeah that's bad,
but just laying it on the tarp, that's just,
nothing wrong with that.
Yeah.
I know a fellow and he's, he'll get a whole bunch
of ice and he'll put it inside the, uh, the
cavity on his deer and then washes it all out.
And I don't, he swears by it, I can't imagine
that's the best game care method out there.
It's not ideal because, and this is why,
because the, I mean, assume he's not talking
about big blocks ice.
No.
Even if he did, where ice touches meat,
it, it damages meat.
Right.
Um, and when ice melts, uh, once the Meltwater
gets about 40 degrees, it becomes a reservoir
for bacteria and there's lots of bacteria, the,
in a cleaned gut cavity.
So I, but let's assume he's hunting where
I do in that a zones where you can hunt
a deer in a hundred degrees of weather.
So if you were to gut that deer, take the
tenderloins out because otherwise tenderloins
are going to get hit by ice and wrecked.
Um, and he threw a bunch of ice in the cavity for
like an, I don't know, half hour, an hour.
That's not going to hurt anything.
It'll cool the carcass down pretty quick.
But soaking, that's an entirely different story.
That's a Texas thing, they do that
in Texas a lot.
They like, they will bury a game, a skinned
game animal in ice.
And yeah, they're like, Oh, it takes
all the blood out.
And like, yes, it does.
And as long as it's say it's under 40 it's, it's
food safe, but it results in a very white washed
out meat that lacks any kind of flavour.
And if that's what you want, go for it, but most
people don't like that.
Okay.
Well, while we're on the topic, I've
got another fellow and he says, talking
about hanging meat, hanging your big game.
And I always approach it from the sense
that hanging or aging your meat is an enzyme
related thing that helps break down the tissue.
I might be wrong.
Uh, he approaches it from it's the weight of the
animal, and that's why you don't hang a lighter
animal as you would, perhaps a heavier animal.
The weight will help stretch out
the tissues and.
Nah, he's wrong. Help break it down.
Wrong?
Wrong. Yeah he's just wrong.
Okay.
I have to play this for him.
Now I'm not saying that there is zero
mechanical effect of, of, of aging, but that's
not what aging does.
Like, no, it's, it enzymatic.
It's enzymatic and, um, in some ways, I'm
trying to think how I'm trying to make
him right somehow.
And if you were to make him right, he's
kind of, he may be observing an effect that
he's not, that isn't, that what's going on.
So, so if you hang a deer, let's say
it's blacktail.
Okay.
Because we're both on the West coast.
So you're hanging a blacktail in the garage,
the mechanical effect of hanging that deer in
a proper temperature, um, we'll just let
it get through rigor.
You know, it'll take a day, two days, sometimes,
sometimes three days to get through rigor mortis.
And when it gets through rigor mortis, that's,
that's not mechanical, but the hanging process
keeps, will keep the deer from like, doing
this right, to rigor.
Um, it'll keep everything stretched out, but
I've, you know, I've put skinned quarters in,
in a cooler above ice say, it's not touching
it, but it's cool.
And they don't curl up.
So I, no, it's it's, that's a hundred
percent enzymatic.
You hope it's not bacterial because, um,
you, you can get that.
There's a thing called bone sour with things
like elk and moose.
Right.
Where there's so much heat in the animal that
even if you skinned it and hung it, um,
it can still go south, right at the ball joint
of the hip usually.
Um, and so typically what you'll want to do
in a big ass animal, especially if it's
in a hot weather, is open that meat up.
So quarterings fine.
But even then, like, I've seen, I have seen
the thighs, so the full hindleg haunch
of a moose or a, or a nilgai, or an elk,
it'll rot at the bone.
So what you do then is you, as you take these to
say, you have a hindleg and you, you make a cut
from the ball and socket joint, tapping your
knife on the femur bone all the way to the knee.
And then just, you can kind of open up that
meat just a little bit.
You're going to make that cut anyway to debone the
leg anyway, but it just adds another angle to
cool off the interior that may cause that meat,
because like, you know, it's, you know, can't
even, it's huge, it's
It is.
This thick and it needs time and, and,
and the ability to cool off very quickly.
So, but yeah, this is, it's not mechanical.
It's, it's within the meat.
Cause you can, you can stick a piece of meat
on a rack and through enzymatic action
over the course of several days at 33, 35
degrees, uh, anything under 40 is okay.
Okay.
Um, and it will loosen up and it'll get tender
now real aging, real aging is 100% enzymatic
and that's then you're talking three weeks.
Okay. Minimum.
So the, the, all of the studies show that if you
dry age, a piece of meat.
And by the way, you only dry age things
that you're going to cook medium rare.
There is zero reason to dry age, a
shoulder or a neck.
You could, it's not going to hurt it, but you,
you braze those anyway, so what's the point.
So you, you dry age things like a hind leg
or the back strap, and nobody can really tell
the difference between something that's been
aged like five days and something that's
been aged 14 days.
You start to notice once you get to
be about 20 days.
Okay.
So, and in fact it's a, it's a, it's a
logarithmic curve.
Like it goes from, eh kind of, to whoop.
And, and then, um, once you get to be all
the taste studies that I've read, say three
weeks the sweet spot for broad acceptance
in and pleasure ability of eating that
meat three to four.
Once you get past four weeks, you start to get
kind of cheesy notes.
Um, I don't know if you've ever had
really super, super, super aged beef.
Um, but it's cheesy.
It's sort of. Yeah.
Blue cheesy.
Um, and not everybody likes that.
That's an acquired taste.
Right.
So that'd be like a René Redzepi sort of thing.
Oh yeah, yeah.
That milk cow that he did.
Yep.
No, no.
I think that was Magnus Nilsson.
Oh, was it Magnus?
Yeah, I think it was Magnus who did it.
Okay. Yeah, that's right.
That's right.
So birds, I had one guy say he likes to hang
his birds until their heads fall off, then
he knows they're done.
Stop, stop, stop.
So you had one guy who says that he does it?
I've never seen him do it.
He says, Oh yeah, this is how you do it.
I've never seen him do it.
Of course you haven't because nobody does.
Thank you.
It's a rural myth.
Thank you.
As far as I know, this originated in the eternal
fight between the French and the English, of
which you Canadians are very aware of.
So it used to be said by the English, that
the French would hang their pheasants until
their heads fell off.
And it used to be said by the French, in
French, of course, that the English would hang
their pheasants until their heads fell off.
As some sort of denigrating, kind
of like yeh-he.
That's right.
Now that said you do hang, you do hang, um,
birds quite awhile.
You know, you can hang them in the
right conditions for a couple of weeks.
I don't, because again, you get to
that high gamey, that sort of cheesy, um,
funky, really funky aroma that you either
like, or you don't.
I like five days.
Um, five days with the wild pheasants
are really good.
That's like the three weeks with, uh, with
the beef or the venison.
Five days, under 40 degrees.
Yes.
Well, it doesn't have to be under 40 degrees.
In fact, pheasants, um, and upland game birds.
And I don't fully understand why, I don't
fully understand, I need to look into this, but,
but red meat aging is always done very close
to freezing and below 40.
Birds aging, and this is includes things like
rabbits in England.
I don't really age rabbits, but well,
who do they want it just below 60.
So it's much more similar to the, um, to
the aging of salami.
So you don't age salami under 40, or if you do,
it takes exponentially longer for that salami
to be worth eating because you don't get
that ferment, that is bacterial action.
Um, And so they're, they're, the sweet spot
in the bird studies because there's been
a lot of them because they, you can sell
wild game in, in the United Kingdom.
Is that 55 is your sweet spot because above 55,
you start to get listeria bacteria growing.
Okay.
And over 60, the listeria kind of take
over, which is bad.
Right.
But this between 50 and 55 is the ideal
temperature for birds, which I find fascinating
because it's like 34 or 36 for, for red meat.
Interesting.
Not entirely sure why it could be the feathers.
It could be the, the fact that you're, you're,
you're aging a bird hole.
Um, now the caveat to that is you can't age
a goose or a turkey or something of that size
without cutting it.
Um, all the others, you can, you can gut or not.
Okay.
And you?
And I don't.
You, you don't gut?
No, because I mean, with a pheasant or a grouse
or something, I don't, because it is a lot
harder to pluck a bird that has been gutted than
it is a bird that is, where its skin is intact.
That's a good point.
And the skin's where all the flavour is.
Uh, yeah.
Yeah.
Like if you're going to age it, you better
damn well pluck it, cause otherwise,
why did you just go through that exercise?
You know.
A hundred percent.
Is there anything else that we should
be talking about about this new book?
Yeah, I mean, I think I just said super
excited about it.
Like it feels like a culmination book, you
know, it feels like, you know, this is arguably
the last in this series because we've covered
the game animals and you know, now efficiency food
and I'm I'm, I may or may not do a plant book.
Uh, and if I do do a foraging book,
I'm not going to step on Sam's toes.
I'm going to focus on the West coast.
Um, and it feels kind of like the, the,
uh, maybe this is the kind, the last of that
triplet title, you know?
Cause all my books are like Hunt, Gather, Cook
and Buck, Buck, Moose.
Right.
Cottontail. Hook, Line and Supper.
Yeah.
Um, I think the cool thing about it is
that the process of writing this book
took a lifetime.
Whereas the others were more of a project.
This feels a bit more like a memoir.
There's a lot of personal information in it.
Uh, there's a lot of stories in it.
There's fam, my family's in it.
That's cool.
Um, and I think the, uh, accessibility of this
book is exponentially larger, especially in
the last one because there's only 2 million
upland, upland hunters in North America and
that includes Canada.
Anybody can buy fish and anybody can, anybody,
you know, can just go to a fish market.
And so this book is accessible to anybody
who goes to a fish market as it is to an actual
angler and it like, it is the first book I
think I've written where gunfire is not involved.
So, um, I am really a little nervous,
definitely excited about, uh, the possibility
of having a book that is applicable to,
uh, not just the hook and bullet crowd.
And, uh, I think the hardest part about
this is going to be to spread the word.
So, um, it will, in Canada, it'll be
available on amazon.ca, but it will also
be available, um, distributed in regular
bookstores by Chelsea Green is actually the,
the, uh, the company that is distributing
the book in brick and mortar stores all over.
Okay.
Um, so you'll be able to get it just like you
would any other book in Canada and definitely
United States too.
And the only thing I, I like, I, this book
is going to live and die off of whether
people like it or not.
And if all I can say is if you get it and you
like it, tell somebody else, because in this,
in media environment, the only way that these
things have any success is through word of
mouth and through, uh, they call it social
validation is the actual term is like,
so, you know, leaving a review on Amazon or.
Right.
Or, or social media or that kind of thing.
And it's, it's daunting.
It's daunting because here's a book that could
potentially do very well.
And because it could help a lot of people
become better fish cooks, not just anglers
and, but people have to know it exists.
Right.
So get it, read it.
Yep.
Leave a review.
You can pre-order it now.
What's that?
You can pre-order it now, it will, um, via either
through Amazon or through my website, uh, which
is, which is the easiest way to get to my website
is HuntGatherCook.com.
Okay.
But that just redirects it to Honest-Food.net.
Hunter Angler Gardener Cook is the name
of the website.
That's really the core of what I do.
I mean, it's, I, I have a pretty strong Instagram
presence where I'm hunt gather cook on Instagram.
I, and I that's the social media
I like the best.
Um, the website is of course Hunter
Angler Gardener Cook.
And then I do run a Facebook group, that's
a private group called Hunt Gather Cook.
And it's cool because it's got guys got
22,000 members now, and it's a no drama group.
It has everything from, you know, people who
really adore the former administration to people
who really hated their former administration.
That's awesome.
And everything in between.
And this, there's zero politics, there is, um,
I police it very heavily for that because it's,
it's important for people to come together over
what they do share, which is a love of wild food.
And, you know, you have to answer questions
to get in so that, um, uh, so I know that
you're not some weird bot from Indonesia
or China or wherever.
Yeah.
It's a fantastic group actually.
And you police that, you moderate that
whole thing yourself?
Yeah, I am.
I mostly do all the moderating.
There's a couple other, my, a couple friends,
a guy named Sean and a guy named Christian
who help me out.
Very cool.
Well, Hank, thank you very much for coming on
The Silvercore Podcast.
As usual, it was a pleasure
speaking with you.
Always.
I can't wait to get to Canada.
Someday you'll let us back in.
Soon, soon, it's happening soon.
Is it?
They actually have plans for that?
Ah they say.
Ah yeah they say.
They said that you're going to
get a vaccine too.
Yeah they said that too, yeah.
Well, they say 4th of July or no, you guys
said that, 4th of July, the borders are opening.
Oh really?
That's what the, that's what we saw brandin
around in there.
That goes well for the hunting season.
It does.
Yeah.
Thanks Hank.
Yeah. Thanks for having me on.