Ep. 308: The Crawfish Pond

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
This is me eat podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You
can't predict anything presented by first, like creating proven versatile
hunting apparel from Marino bass layers to technical outerwear for
every hunt. First like go farther, stay longer. All right, everybody,

(00:35):
this is a special Louisiana edition. In fact, Rannie Collins
explain what we're on right now. Uh, we're sitting on
a hundred and two foot house boat in the middle
of Bay Lafouche. That's right, man, it's like a cruise ship.
It is. How how do you how did you guys
wind up with this thing? So my grandpa actually built

(00:58):
it from scratch. Yeah, he um, he got a good
deal and some steel. Uh. Took about a year. He
built the barge. He made it from the barge up.
I was talking from the barge up. So anytime we
had like it was kind of slow at work, he
would take our to keep our welder's busy, he would
send them work on the houseboat. So he built the
barge first, which took about a year, and then he

(01:20):
built the first story in the second story, and then
my mom lined up some carpenters to do the inside,
and you guys can move this thing around depending on
where you want to hang out. Correct. We Uh we
have uh four or five tug boats and uh whenever
we want to move it, whenever one of them not
on a job, we'll move it. Uh. You better explain

(01:41):
your family business. So my family business is oil field construction,
marine construction. We actually uh build oil platforms out in
the marsh and then the bayous, and we have a
handful of tugs, um probably another eight arges and then

(02:01):
we have our our work crews. Do you guys pull
this around to job sites to and stay on it? No,
this is strictly just the family houseboat. We don't, dude,
this house boat. I want to set the scene. This
house boat has a Christmas tree in it, It has plates,
a full kitchen, decorations, multiple bathrooms. How many bathrooms? Three

(02:23):
uh to appear and then three upstairs, so five by
by full bathrooms. This house would be a sweet house
if it wasn't even on a boat. Yeah exactly, Yeah,
you put it on a boat. Next level you can
fish off the porch. Dude, I'm gonna steal this thing
some night on the hot wire. One of them tugboats

(02:44):
dragged this thing the southeast Alaska. They got they got
one right there and they can push it. Oh, it's
two stories, yeah, two stories, right, yea, two stories. Uh.
I'll probably leave the Christmas tree out on the deck there,
but on the dock because I don't want to really
like add insult to injury. I'm taking a whole old
damn deal. The top and the top of it all
off a kind of rocky to sleep at night. When
those little when those shrimp boats or whatever boat passes,

(03:07):
you get a little rocking motion and that's nice. Man. Oh,
we have been like immersed in the culture also so
that that that's a Ronnie Collins, not a junior, right,
not a junior. And uh gean Paul to give the
proper bouge Jean Paul, bourgeois, sir, good French name. Yep, yep.

(03:30):
You're learning also from the state correct. Give a little background. Yeah.
So I'm from Thiboda, Louisiana, which is a little north
of where we're at right now in Galliano, and I
grew up um An Assumption and Lafouche Parish um and
uh I was kind of raised cooking. My mom and
dad were great cooks. I kind of followed suit by

(03:52):
their hip the whole time. And when I when I
had to decide what to do with my life, the
only thing that I kind of kept thinking about, I'm
pretty good at cooking. So I went to culinary school,
did culinary school, and I've been in and ever since,
I've never had a job outside of the kitchen. Tell
him what your first job was. First job was boiling crawfish,
crab and shrimp that expressed seafood in Toboda, Louisiana. That

(04:14):
was my first job. I was fifteen years old. And
the thing I remember the most, of course, we borrowed
a whole bunch of seafood. But you go home, um
after that shift, and your pores would be on fire
with just with some of that powdered seasoning, because when
you put that in the water, it steams up and
that gets all on your skin. But it's a good memory.
That's a good memory. It's like one of those things

(04:34):
that only happens if you do that job. And then
you went up and chef. You went up to the
big city and chef in New York for a long time.
I did. Yeah, I was in New York from two
thousand and nine to two thousand that uh one. Actually
was it kind of like if you can make it there,
you can make it anywhere kind of thing. Yeah, I
mean I think so, I I was. I'm kind of
a chameleon in the sense of that I like. I

(04:55):
like the adaptability of being in new places. And New
York was one of those places that I've never been.
And I didn't have a job. I didn't I didn't
I went without a job, and um yea. In my head,
I was like, well, let me put myself in the
most uncomfortable situation I can, and that's how I know
I'm gonna learn to learn the most and evolve the
most and just change. And So, did you boil any

(05:17):
crayfish up there? We did? Yeah? I probably, oh man.
I used to ball about five hundred pounds a year
for a certain event every year while I was up there.
H L s U has um L s U actually
has an alumni kind of gathering there that I've done
a couple of times. Even though I'm not an L.
S U alum, I'm a Louisiana in and boiled crawfish

(05:39):
for them. And different things. I mean, people love crawfish
no matter where you're at in the country, and especially
love it if you have somebody authentically from Louisiana doing
it for him. And then, uh, but I don't even
know your name. Man, say it again. Okay, Gri, you

(05:59):
know why you're here, Budding? Not really. We only just
met Budd yesterday because Buds, Yeah, probably my favorite person
on the planet. He passed up half a finger he
passed up during blew way past Seth and Chester. We
met Budd yesterday because Bud's gonna give a dispatch about this.

(06:22):
We met Buddy yesterday because we went this. I didn't
know this existed until yesterday. We went to Bud's private
personal crawl fish pond. Crawfish pond. Like you know how
some people have a garden that they take care of
and everything. He has a crawfish pond that puts off
how many pounds three pounds a year to waker to

(06:43):
waker pald Okay, puts off three thousand pounds of crawfish.
I went over there thinking that he was in the
commercial crawfish business. No, he just eats him and gives
him to his friends. Yeah, that's like a zucchini gardener. Yeah,
and it's just like the greatest thing on the plants.
We're gonna hear all about how to have how to

(07:04):
have your on crawfish pond. It's a it's a hobby.
It's just uh, we enjoy eating it and it's something
for me to do. I was a commercial shrimp all
my life or you were, Yeah, that's what I did
all my life, a big trawl of working their golf

(07:26):
and when I got out of that, I had to
find something to do. So you started carbon ducks, carving
decoys starring an Alex harmon flies and raising crowfish. It's
a renaissance man, I've ever heard. Yeah, and you you
uh won some competitions for decoy carbon then just quit. Yeah,

(07:48):
it got boring. It's just I didn't. It wouldn't stimulate
my mind enough. It was always the same routine carve painting,
and uh, I've been in art all my life that

(08:09):
it didn't do it for me. I had to find
a different form of art to keep my mind stimulated.
What do you want too right now? The flies? Yeah,
tying an alex salmond flies for display. Yes, everything is
for display that I tie every flying tie is one

(08:30):
of her coin it's framed. It's collect as that buy
my work and I tie on hundred year old hooks.
The tensils and chilks I used date from around nineteen. Yeah,
it's uh, I'm gonna have to show you. Just uh,
pull up my name on Google. Tell everybody how to

(08:52):
because people at home can do it on their phone.
Right now, go to Google and type been bud gidry
and no one's gonna know how to st g g
u y d r y b b u d. There
is bud images. If you get a sense of what
he's getting for one of these, let me know. I

(09:13):
don't want to make him feel awkward. Two hundred Yeah.
Like an art, it depends on the crawfish farming. Like
if I have a fly I've done and it's been published,
process a lot of higher Um, I'll have work on
display at the Smithsonian Institute, No at all, four National Zoos.

(09:37):
When you're walk in front the Corey Bustard exhibit. That
fly that's in that big acrylic deals, that's mine. I
did work for the Smithsonian. Yeah, who are you man?
When I steal this boat tied up in it? Take
this guy out and take this guy. Yeah, rant ransom

(09:58):
off draw the flying Uh because every piece I dues unique. Yeah,
it's it's not the same routine. So it stimulates. My
mom keeps me on it. So I want to I
want to cover off on this too, because I feel
this is very like this is kind of like a
test of the culture here where we're at um. Ronnie

(10:23):
talking about how you and Bud, like you've known Bud
your whole life. Yeah, I've known Bud my whole life.
I mean does everybody around here, You guys are all
sort of or been here long. Yeah, we're family and
like unrelated. Budd's close cousins Mr Chris and his son Kade.
Me and Kate were best friends growing up. So when
I first thing I did when I got home from

(10:43):
school was id topping my full wheel cut across the
pasture the Cade's house. And then we go find Bud,
and Bud would bring us do all kind of cool stuff.
We go, we go, frog in, we go fishing, crawl, fishing, whatever,
depending of what was going on that time. We're chomping
up the world right here, he's right here, are you're
sitting next door? You're the frog champion in the world.

(11:04):
Oh my god, butting frogs. But that would put me
in All right, Okay, we're gonna get back to the crops.
We gotta do a couple of things. We're gonna get
back to the crawfish pond. We gotta cover off on
a little. You just gotta hang tight. But comment if
you feel like you need to comment. We had a
couple of news items. You gotta go through, uh, two

(11:27):
little things. I don't like hacking on vegans man at all.
It's not my thing to hack on vegans. God bless him.
But this guy rolled in with an interesting picture where
he's in Honolulu and he sees a restaurant called Vegan City.
It's called Vegan City, plant based comfort food. But above

(11:48):
the bar is a big TV and they're all watching
Meat Eater. So I thought it was cute. I love
I love to just as Here's another one. This is good.
This is like this guy is talking about the coolest
vegan he knew. Um. When this guy was in school.

(12:14):
They were at the University of Iowa. There's a class
you can take at the University of Iowa. I would
have taken the ship out of this class called the
history and culture of hunting in America. The instructor had
a friend who was had been vegan, but made it
their thing that they eight road kill because it's like

(12:38):
it's dead, it's dead by human cause, would otherwise go
to waste. And they would eat a possum, squirrel, raccoon, coyote, deer,
didn't matter. Huh. Lived down road kill back in college
of eating a little bit of real kill. Oh yeah,
it's not a vegan. You guys date road kill because
that you need anything that moves pretty much. My favorite

(13:04):
was that my favorite vegetable is boiled crops. I'm with you. Uh,
it's kind of a weird deal out of Pennsylvania right now.
That's that's from Pennsylvania. So he's gonna talk about this.
Do you want me to lay the groundwork? Lay the
ground man? Okay, as people know, as people know, I
don't know if you know if this or not, but

(13:24):
it's interesting to know everybody's familiar with police have to
do warrants. Yeah, okay, Like for instance, right now, for
policeman's driving by. He can't just decide to come in
here and see if we're in here doing illicit drugs,
right He can't be like, yeah, I don't know, there's
people in there. Maybe I'm gonna barge in and see

(13:46):
what they're doing. And he can't sneak in here and
hide behind the Christmas tree over there to see if
someone does something bad, because he did, he probably cause
and all this. Game wardens and any states have long
held like a special privilege where a game warden can
go on to private property and do investigations, do steakouts,

(14:12):
sneak around, go to your tree stand, check your license
without probable cause, without any kind of warrant. Some fellers
in Pennsylvania are bent out of shape. They got a
hunting club and they had some wardens come on to
their hunting club and give them some citations. They're not

(14:33):
challenging what the citations were about. They're challenging that that
person they got some libertarian attorney, and they're challenging that
it's unconstitutional for a warden to have the ability to
go onto private property without without do it, to do

(14:53):
warrantless search. Yeah, lay out some of the cultural implications here, Seth.
Seth sounds that thinks they sound whiny. Well, I I
almost like, I don't know, there's there's a whole. There's
like one very much one side of the story here, Um,
the side of the people who are not happy because

(15:15):
they got tickets. Yeah, like, it doesn't. It doesn't say
what they got tickets for. It does. You're wrong on well,
it goes down, it goes they got it. There's two citations, honey,
without a license, having a loaded gun in your vehicle. Okay,
I missed that part. The Horneck went on acense. So

(15:42):
they're saying that dude had no right to come on
our land anyway. Well, I guess, well he did, because
it's long that he's well, okay, they're they're challenging his
right to do this. I don't know. I like growing
up in Pennsylvania. There's so many people that were anti

(16:04):
game commission right, oh buddy. And typically I won't say everyone,
but I'd say those people were anti game commission because
they were doing a legal ship. Mhm hm hm yeah,
strong words, Seth. Most of the time awarding the only
anti game commissioned person I know in Pennsylvania has related

(16:25):
to you closely the oddly enough for this oddly enough
what you just said. Most people that don't like warrings here,
it's because they were caught you're doing something illegal or
aren't they breaking the law? Yeah, well that might be
the same reason. People may be the same, Yeah, I think,

(16:46):
I think. Yeah, yeah, we're kids driving around. If you
saw a policeman you turned to the radio down and
everything and everybody sat up real straight and stuff. You
just felt like you were doing something bad. But let
me let me give a cup more details. What it's
called is open fields doctrine um the game ward's ability
to like like for instance, if a game ward. We're

(17:07):
talking to a game ward one time and he was,
I'll bring this up. This is an interesting story. He
was explaining why he was leery about suppressors because he
was saying, I rely on the sound of gunshots. Then
he went on to say it's hard for him to
finish a night of bowl hunting on a day off.

(17:30):
He said, every time I'm in my tree stand, I'm
sitting there and around dark, I hear and He's like, since,
depending on the timing and everything, I'm down out of
my tree and I'm heading that way. Now, a gunshot
would not like you should have gone off for all

(17:51):
manner of reasons, but he would you. He would hear
that and head off onto the neighbor's place. Right, open
fields doctrine, but high courts in New York, Montana, Oregon, Vermont,
Washington state appeals courts have begun to strip wildlife agencies

(18:11):
of these special powers, arguing that the state constitutions grant
greater protections to citizens. We've got an email from a guy,
a civil engineer in Pennsylvania who just unrelated to this,
a big long, like a big long, very well articulated

(18:35):
email about what he feels has become a very aggressive
in his tape, in his mind, a very aggressive approach
to um game wardening in his state. But again, he
had some violations. Yeah, it's just his side of the story. Yeah,

(18:57):
the the officer, I'm hesitant to read a letter because
I'd have to go and get a letter from the
officer about what happened. So it's it's it's kind of
like a moot point. But he points to that there's
a lot of tension he feels as an increasing amount
of tension in Pennsylvania around enforcement approaching tactics. Yeah, and

(19:19):
he went on to say on how he feels that
hunting is gonna go away in the state because of that.
I don't think that that's probably true. I don't think
that's true either. I think that's a far stretch. Um,
but if a game warden wants to come on my
property and he's like, if he's suspicious that something's going
on for me, I'd be like, by all means, go

(19:43):
do what you have to do. I mean, you're not
gonna like, you're not gonna find anything. All I'm gonna
do is prove to you that there's like nothing for
you to worry about here. Yeah, you know. And the
game wardan that they're talking about the I don't know.
I don't know if we want to mention his name,
but I've guy's checked me two different times in Turkey season,
had great encounters with him. That we had someone poaching

(20:07):
turkeys on our property, called the game commission. He showed up.
He sat in our camp at the table that we'd
all sat around. Um, tell the big Elk story. Yeah,
this guy is speaking of gunshots. This same guy, there's
a bull elk. He ended up scoring like four or
sixty right around four sixty something that doesn't even make sense.

(20:29):
SI grows massive elk. Anyway, this guy I had, we
had trail camp pictures of that bowl on our property.
Um he one night there. I think he was like
suspicious of some elk poaching going on anyway. Um one
night he went up close to our property just at

(20:50):
night in September, UM and just sat up there in
the dark, listen listening, had listening post, and all of
a sudden just heard a gunshot and went over there
and found that it's actually a kid that went to
my high school, graduated I think a year or two

(21:13):
ahead of me. Um had killed this bowl and was
cutting the antlers off of it when he showed up.
Yeah yeah on private property. Uh yeah, most likely because
all it's all private around there. Called him red handed. Yeah.

(21:33):
So you've had a lot of adjacency and interactions to
this individual and it has not been you're finding that
he's coming around busting your balls unnecessary. He's been nothing
but helped us. M hmmm. Plot dickens. So plot thickens.
I feel like, and I know, like I don't know
this guy real well. I just I've talked to him,

(21:55):
you know, a handful of times, and all my interactions
with him have been great. I feel like he's not
going around and harassing people for no reason. I feel
like if he has probable cause or you know whatever,
you think something's going on, he's gonna do something about it.
So I don't know, I think I think you're you're

(22:16):
taking these guys got a little chap ass because they
got some tickets. Yeah, they're obviously doing illegal ship and
they got caught doing it. So they're bitter about the
game commission sounds like it thanks with reports. I don't think. Yeah,
I don't have a problem with the game warden coming
on my on our like our family's property, you know.

(22:37):
I always that's That's one of the things I always
asked laid On man, is remember when when they had
those uh they had some domestic terrorists and they wanted
to get into their phone real bad. Yeah, and uh,
they couldn't get it. Took him forever. Apple wouldn't let
him into the guy's phone, the guy's wife's phone. Part
of my mind's like, I don't know, man, have someone

(22:58):
to take a look at my phone. I'd just belay
here could be board ship. Yeah, I just I don't,
I don't, I don't know. I guess I'm just playing
Devil's advocate a little bit. I have no problems with you,
I see, but like you know, I see the civil Yeah,
I definitely see the civility, the sorry, the civil liberties

(23:18):
end of it. But I also see that uh that, Um,
I don't know, man, I guess I'm comfortable with the
distinction between between of someone's like a wardens, right to
roam across the landscape. I don't think they're coming into
houses and busting down doors like their right to roam

(23:41):
across the landscape. UM. Doing that sort of work feels
different to me than then saying okay, So then if
that's true, police can just enter your home when they
want for no reason. Like I just don't. I don't
feel that there's the probability of a ton of confusion there.
I'm curious about what the optics would be if they
didn't have any citations drawing on like they did have

(24:04):
a license, they didn't have the gun, would they still
have the same opinion about the game warden coming on
their property. They probably forgot about it very quickly. I
can see if a game warden was like had a
strong feeling that. For instance, I'll put myself in this situation.
If if a game warden thought I was doing something
wrong on on my property, and it was constantly harassing me,

(24:29):
but constantly not not finding anything, but still like constantly
harassing me. Like first day, opening day of deer season.
He like at first light, he shows up my tree stand. Like,
I could see getting pretty irritated about that. Yeah, that's
a good point. Nothing's turning up, but it was making
your life hell because of some unfounded suspicion. I could

(24:50):
see that being very frustrating. But I just I've never
experienced anything like that. I have a hard time, a
hard time, like believing that a lot of that goes on.
If they're not finding anything and they you know, I
feel like they're just gonna move on to other ship. Yeah,

(25:12):
try to go right, some tickets somewhere. Yeah. I feel
like if if that would go through and they would
not allow the game warrants to go without a warrant,
I feel like that'd be a huge loss for wildlife
because I feel like a lot of people with private
land would just take advantage figure that, Oh, I can
make my own rules now, Game Warran ain't coming over
unless I guess, I guess they get reported. But or
dudes that hunt public land and start getting help with

(25:34):
more tickets. Be like, dude, all the pressures on us now? Uh, okay,
we got a couple of chetakot are you I will? I?
Can you quickly tackle all three of these? Chester I
was actually coming up with a plan how to tackle
them real quick. Okay. Um, so chett, well, let me

(25:54):
team him up. Okay. So this is the chettackot section
and we find out whether they are chetical or not.
Do you like a new one? I don't know who
came up with that? Yeah, um the first one. There's
three of them here. First one's about your your honeyholes,
or you're hunting fishing spots. One guy um was hunting

(26:16):
with his ex wife and his father in law. Um
or he was hunting with his wife and his then
wife and his father and then father in law. UM
took him out to his spot and his wife shot
a buck of a lifetime. And uh, he must not
have liked his ex father in law because he had
to throw in there. My ex father in law wounded. Um.

(26:40):
I noticed that. Yeah, and that was um. I learned
a new word with my wife the r D. I
think that that's called a microaggression. Yeah, just the he's
like what what what? He wounded one? I'm just telling
you he wouldn't, you know. But it's like it's like
a little it's a little jam. Yea. So the ex

(27:01):
father in law wounded one. Um, but it must have
been a pretty good spot because that four years later
the guy goes in this spot and there he sees
his ex father in law. We left out that they
had a divorce, yes, well ex father in all okay,
yeah yeah, so this this guy is in there hunting
this hunt this spot. And I know we've covered this before.

(27:24):
Spots and my take on this, and it's real simple.
If some dude shows you a spot, um, especially like
a smaller spot, well, just in regards to anything like
any spot situation, like, it's always good to ask if
you're going to go in there. That's like a very

(27:45):
simple way. Here's the thing. Go on, don't don't go
on to number two. But I got something to say
about number one. All of these things have a bunch
of gray area there too. Like I don't know how
big this spot is. It could be a giant public
land spot. Um. I got to you can go off,
go fight, You're right, I agree with you in general. Yeah,

(28:08):
if you have a spot and you take your father
in law out, and then you get a divorce and
he stops being your father in law. I feel the
father in law needs to move on and find a
new spot because the divorce ended that relationship. But I
don't know the details of the divorce. If this guy
that wrote in was a flanderer and that behavior led

(28:33):
to the divorce, and there was some other ugly factors
involved in the divorce, this father in law might not
even like hunting. He's just doing anything. You can you
ever say a movie in the bedroom, he's just doing everything.
Lobster Fisher, Huh, But I wouldn't guess that by the title. Well,
it's it's a part of a lobster trap, got you

(28:55):
in the bedroom part of lobster Anyways, this father in
law kills his wife's ex husband. I kind of ruined
the movie. It's in the end, but spoiler. So it
might be that he was sticking it to the guy,
sticking it to him over something that we don't know about. Yeah,

(29:16):
but you do. But here's the thing. In your position
as the check at man, you can't be bogged down
by all the unknowns. Yes, and here's another lesson on that.
For this guy who took the father in law, it
sounds like he didn't quite really like him. If you're
gonna take someone out to your good hunting spot, make

(29:38):
sure you really like him. Make sure they like good buddy,
you know, which can you know, things can change, things
can change down the road, But just do your do
your best to you know, have a good good buddy.
You know, I don't. You're a married Manchester. Yeah, I've
been married a hell but longer than you, uh in

(29:59):
that situation, and it might not be that he could.
It might not be that he could. Uh, you know,
you gotta be like, there's about there's some politics involved
and being married man. Yeah, she's like, well, how come
we don't take my dad hunting? Look, let me come on. Oh,
I know what you're saying big time. It might be

(30:19):
like if someone you know, your wife asked you to
do something, you just do it. Yeah. So that's why
you have B and C spots. Yeah, there you go.
I got just a spot for you. It's not right hunt.
Put him in the car, put him in the bring him,
bring him to the muck. Okay, another one here next,

(30:39):
whether or not the next cheddicker question, So this is
a property thing. This guy bought forty acres of land,
wanted to have his own little chunk to hunt. Oh no,
thirty acres of land um and the back thirty um.
And he is got a little confrontation maybe or not confrontation,

(31:02):
but his neighbors have uh deer stands set up right
on the property line in an old ground blind set
up right on the property line. Even mentions that it's
potentially on their property just a little bit, but he's
not quite sure. And anyways, uh, and he's like, should
I confront these guys? Is that wrong? Am I being wrong?

(31:25):
Since they were there first? What should I do? We
grew up on our property in Wisconsin that is pretty
good hunting. Um a lot of deer, especially during big
box um running all over the place. Anyways, our neighbors
definitely know that, and they set up right around the

(31:49):
outside of our property and there's not on our property.
But it definitely is kind of like, I don't know,
it's a little annoying, you know, because it's like if
that guy saw that big back walking on our property
line just inside, would that guy be able to hold

(32:10):
out and not shoot that deer. You know, it just
depends on the person. But there's really nothing you can
do there there If they're on their property, Um, you know,
they have every right to set that blind up. I
would recommend if you have that situation, we don't have
any any tree stands set up right on our property lines,

(32:32):
just to avoid that conflict. But you know, potentially so.
But help this guy out with this question. I know
that he doesn't He probably knows that he doesn't have
any authority to make them move, but he's trying to
figure out how should I feel about them? Sure? Yeah,
I mean that's like depends on what kind of people

(32:52):
they are, too, Like if he gets to knows his
neighbors and they're kind of shysty like if they could
shoot a dear, then I would feel a little worried.
And you know, I think you should go talk to him.
Does it like to say that he knows him? Well,
it's his neighbors. He he says, Should I confront them
about it? Should I suck it up and avoid it

(33:14):
or bring it up to them? And I think if
they're your neighbors, you might as well go over there
and have a chat with them, because you're living right
next time, regardless, I would go over and be like, listen,
I see you have a stand close to the property line.
Does he have a stand closer there too, No, he's
It sounds like he's staying off the property lines. I
was gonna say, I'd go over there and be like, listen,
if you like, if we communicate a little bit, you

(33:37):
let me know when you're hunting that stand. I know
it's close to the property line. If you know, let
me know when you're hunting that, I'll haunt a different spot,
or vice versa. I'll tell you what I think. Maybe
I don't know. I'd have to know a little more
about the neighbors. You could also go over there and
propose a solution. You could say, you know what, really,

(34:00):
I could put a stand up and we could sit
back to back. Right, you're looking into your place, me
looking at my place. No one really wants that. Would
you want to agree to a little gentleman's agreement that, uh,
we don't put stands within a hundred yards of that
Border'll honor that. Yeah, you want a little co op? Yeah, now,

(34:24):
I know. Here's I don't want to tell you. I
don't want to say where This is because I don't
want to embarrass anybody. But I know some folks with
the with the property in Texas low fence, this is
not a high fence property, and they have a very
tightly managed deer program on their property and they've had
a lot of problems with these neighbors. Have a parcel
that borders there's and they don't have a tightly managed

(34:47):
deer program, and that all their stands we're on the edge.
Because they knew that they had they were that they
had big box um, they Avenge Sleep made a They
eventually put a deer fence on one edge of their property,

(35:09):
had a buddy do the same thing, put it do
their fence just on one They got so tense between
them and the neighbors. And I know, and I know
from just from hearing from the people. I know his
perspective that they did share with the neighbors here like
here's what we're trying to accomplish here with like a

(35:29):
deer management program. Um, you know, let's try to work
together on it. Um. But they just felt they're being
a little bit taken advantage of and that was their solution.
M Interesting. I had a buddy and they have a
ranch over in the King's Ranch in Texas, and they
have the same issue that their neighbor on the bordering side.

(35:52):
It was putting up stands and um guiding hunts to
shoot the bucks coming off of the bow only ranch.
So they were real strict on their management, you know,
certain only certain hundred fifty plus inch deer being shot
with a bow. And that guy was putting a hunter,
a different hunter every day in that stand on the border.

(36:14):
And they did the same thing. They put up a
deer fence and cut them off with the just just
a high game fence on one side the border, just
to keep those deer from going to that dude that
guy at him just killing them all, Okay. Chadic at
number three, Jack at number three. This guy lives in
California's Sacramento Valley between two mountain ranges. He says, it's

(36:37):
let's just say it's not San Francisco. Bear hunting was
outlawed ten years ago with dogs. You can't run bears
with dogs out there anymore. Um. And this guy was
out bear hunting one day and he ran across a
couple of pickup trucks with some guys with dogs, and uh,

(36:58):
the guy said, they made it clear that they weren't hunting,
they weren't after bears with these dogs, But sounds like
they're probably clearly houndsmen training dogs, training dogs, which I
would have to do some research on this, Like I
don't know what the laws are for running dogs, you know,
for training purposes during bear season in California. It sounds

(37:20):
like there could be some illegal activity going on there.
I already, but I'm not a percent sure on that. Anyways,
these guys are, you know, let their hounds out, and
this other guys trying to bear hunt legally. Um, and
you know, dog it's kind of obviously blowing his hunt

(37:40):
because the dogs are barking three ridges over. Um. He
just feels, you know, that it's not not right or
not ethical to be doing that during bear season. Um.
He says he hates to report people, but laws are lodged.
Laws are laws, and I don't by bus. Um. So

(38:02):
it sounds like this guy thought these guys were running bears,
is what what I gather from this, which obviously is illegal.
So I mean, I'd have to just research this one
more because I don't know, can you run do you
think you could run dogs? During bear season just for
training purposes. Uh. I don't know the answer to that. Yeah, Uh,

(38:26):
if it is that you can. It brings up this
question that we've had people right in about before. Remember
when Kevin Murphy got harassed by archery deer hunters for
hunting squirrels because they felt that their activity, they felt
that archery hunting deer, their archery hunting of deer, was
more important than his hunting of squirrels. He was actually

(38:47):
in Michigan, so he got harassed by bow hunters who
were mad that he had the audacity to be out
hunting squirrels during the white tail rut. Yeah, and he
thought that was some bullshit. Yeah. I mean, every everybody
has right right to do to use the landscape, like

(39:08):
if they're if they are filling the law. Do you
not go do certain things because other people are doing
certain things. I'll point out that, Um, just recently, when
I was home visiting my mom, I was taking the
kids out squirrel hunting, and I was aware and cognizant
of the fact that it was firearm deer and I

(39:30):
didn't wanna like go into places where a truck was
parked because some guy was hunting deer and I felt
like me coming through with all my kids hunting squirrels
would have been a little I don't know, it felt
a little rude to me, So I would I kind
of like stuck to stuff real close to the road
and whatnot because I don't want to blow something. Dudes,

(39:52):
deer hunt. Was I allowed to do it? Sure? Yeah?
I think communication Like if these guys are legal and
able to run dogs during during bear season, I think, um,
communication would be huge there. So these bear these you know,
houndsmen aren't ruining this guy's bear hunt. Try and send
him another way, and the actual bear hunter had the

(40:15):
other way. But yeah, I gotta note a little more
about what's going on a couple more things on hound hunting,
because you know, the whole Vermont thing, right, Like we
covered that dude in Vermont. I think it's gonna come

(40:36):
on the show. I think we're working on the gold
Shaw farm dude. And he made a very good YouTube
video like a rebuttal. We came after him pretty hard.
He made a whole YouTube rebuttal. The guy's driving this
petition to end hound hunting or a change hound hunting.
Someone rolled into like a little bit of the story
that that I didn't know about, because there was this

(40:57):
very publicized case from two thousand eight teen in Vermont
about the tension between hound hunters and the non hunting public.
A there there this thing got a ton of attention
where a pack of hound hunters dogs apparently attacked this

(41:17):
couple of walking in the woods and attack their dog
pretty good, and it went out a long time. The
people got bit, their dog got bit, and that caused
a lot of uh consternation about to what degree are
these hounds under control? Because these people it sounds like
I don't fully understand it. It sounds like this attack

(41:40):
on them and their dogs went on for like ninety minutes. Jeez.
In the end, the hound hunter walked away with five points.
I don't know how the point system works, walked away
with five points on his license and a couple hundred
bucks in the fine. And people are pointing out that

(42:01):
if you were in a county park, if you were
in a city park and your dog came up and
bit some people and attacked the dog for ninety minutes,
your dog be euthanized. But people felt that this dude
walked with a slap on the wrist and certainly did
not have his dogs under any kind of control for
them to be able to chase these people around for
ninety minutes. That is bizarre. Again, Man, two sides of

(42:26):
the story, I think. Man, I love hound hunting, absolutely
love it. I want hounds of my own someday. Um,
there's always conflicts with hound hunters and the general public.
I just need to be like very responsible about it.
I think it would end a lot of problems. Here's
nothing to just happened in Vermont, kind of the rus

(42:47):
oude of the coin. You know, we always talk about
the right to hunt laws and whatever happens. Well, some
hound hunters we're out uh Groton State Forest. Okay, they're
they're tracking a black bear and the bear goes on

(43:07):
to private property. Okay. The hunters legally enter the woods
from Buzzy's Road it's called, and they retrieve their hounds.
So they're in there within law because they go to
get their dogs, but don't kill a bear out of
the tree. Leave the bear in the tree, get their hearts,
their dogs, get back to their truck, and there's two ladies.

(43:29):
They're letting all the air out of their tires. Then
one of these ladies releases a German shepherd hurt. Let's
hurt German shepherd out, which then gets into a fight
with the bear hunters hound and beats the hound dog
up bad enough where it needed veterinarian care. The women
got fined, found guilty in court. The bear hunters were

(43:52):
acting awfully. She was acting unlawfully. Sons, legit to me,
she's shotting that turned those dogs loose. That chap right,
you shouldn't let their other tires. Well, no, I mean,
if if the hunters were following the law, she had
no right to do what she did. I could see

(44:12):
when the courts. I mean, we're all sitting here and
probably we'll all agree she was wrong. I think so. Yeah.
I don't know about that state, but in some states
they the houndsman probably could have legally killed her dog.
Mm hmm. Yeah. There's gotta be some kind of formal
animal cruelty to to make your dog attack somebody else's dog.
I mean, yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I

(44:35):
have my property in Mississippi and where we did hunt.
We still hunt only but we have neighbors that hand hunt.
It's a constant problem. You guys get a lot of disputes.
I tried to avoid it, but the others around us
that it's gotten serious. Lord, really serious. Grant Uh. I

(45:04):
can be sitting at camp and at midnight you hear
a bunch of hounds chasing the deer on my property.
They'll run their dogs in the evening and the dogs
will run off, and the hunters don't retrieve their their hounds.
So the dogs are staying in the woods all their lawn,

(45:26):
chasing deer all around my property. It's it's a hard
thing to swallow when you know you're dedicated to still hunting.
You you're trying to manage your property for still hunting,
and you got and look at hounds. We see them
in the morning with their collars, they come to the

(45:46):
we feed them. You can tell some of them are starving.
They all have callers with the owners names on them. Um,
it's a constant, it doesn't stop. It's cons that if
I was a hound hunter, I'd take a two pronged approach. Man.
I would be fighting like like, fighting like hell to

(46:09):
protect my rights as a hound hunter. And I would
be fighting like hell to like to have a buttoned
up program and avoid conflict with other hunters. You know what,
you have to understand a dog. He doesn't know what
a fence line is. He can't read it, keep out saying,

(46:29):
I mean it's in his nachere to run. He'll cross
property lines. And and I can understand a dog running
five ten miles. It's hard for mental and foot to
keep up with a dog running through hilly territory. So
I can. I can deal with the occasional hound running

(46:54):
around my place at night, but it's constant. It doesn't
top there was a problem. What's the benefit of of
running hounds aside from actually like what what do they
get out of it? Besides the exhilaration of actually owning

(47:15):
hounds and hearing that and chasing a lot of areas.
That's the only way to effectively hunt bears, beder hounds, lions.
I mean it's like a traditional youth practice, man. You go,
I mean people were, people were you know, like this
is a little known thing. You go back like Daniel Boone, Okay,

(47:36):
that's how they hunted bears. Yeah there there if you
go reader even up into the hundreds, like the Cherokee Choctaw.
I mean they hunted bears with dogs, going back it's
a traditional youth practice. And I'm asking the question to
somebody who has very little insight into hound hunting, like

(47:58):
this is all very new information. And so it's been
kind of really interesting to hear this conversation go on
because we used to hunt rabbits with beagles. Yeah, and
it's always like it's always you know, so you got

(48:18):
people to do one thing. I feel like I've told
the story hunter times. I'm not gonna tell it again.
People tend to think that what they've always done is
dead on balls, right, and that what everybody else does
is bad. So you've got guys that hunt birds with dogs,
and that's that's the kind of stuff you make paintings
about and hanging your house. But the guy that hunts

(48:41):
something else with the dog, that's the savage. You know.
It's like you shouldn't be able to trap because what
if something happens to the dog that I use to
kill stuff that I like to kill. Mhm. It's just
you know, people are there's a ton of tribalism. There's

(49:04):
a ton of tribalism. And before, like before I had
such a before I had the luxury of being around,
traveling around throughout the country so much and being exposed
to all the different hunting cultures that exists in the country,
I was guilty the same stuff. I was like, what
I do is very right. I you know, I we

(49:29):
hunt dear the right way and everyone else does it
the wrong way. It's just this very like provincial attitude.
I think it's got a lot to do it what
you were raised in too, sure to generations. You know,
the grandparents brought their kids. I'm runting a certain particular way.

(49:52):
The grandkids learned how to find out where, and it's
a mind said that this is the way to do it.
I think the only like when when weighing all these
things out, I have found and this is after this
is what where I've arrived after spending um many many
many days and hours like sort of like looking at

(50:13):
these controversies, um, I feel that there's two things that
there's like two sort of aspects of all the stuff
they need to be considered. I put an enormous amount
of weight on traditional youth practices, and I put a
lot of weight on resource allocation, meaning if you could

(50:35):
come and say that a certain activity like hound hunting
for bears is as conducted is detrimental to black bear
populations in the long term, Like you're on an unsustainable path. Uh,
then that's a conversation that needs to be had. How
are you gonna how are you gonna rectify that? So
you have a traditional youth practice like hound hunting with bears,

(50:55):
it's something that people have always done. So we're gonna
honor that traditional use up to the point where someone
can look and say, you're on a bad path from sustainability.
And the way that's usually the way that's usually handled
is through resource allocations, like what what what part of

(51:15):
the pool of black bear tags are going to go
to that user group? Um? With the emerging technologies that
have a different attitude about it, because emerging technologies haven't
haven't yet entered traditional use practice. So someone's gonna come
and make the case that, like like using thermal night
vision stuff, Um, what are the implications for game management?

(51:39):
I think that that's a much more fair question to
ask because it's an emerging technology without a culture built
around it. It's not a traditional youth practice. Let's weigh
it on its merits as it emerges, rather than going
back and telling people that have been involved in some
activity for three hundred years that we've now decided that
what they've been doing for three years sustainably is no

(52:02):
good anymore. I agreed. You know. Let me just say
it's like one approach of many, but it's kind of
how I tend to look at the stuff. I want
to talk about this damn crayfish pond though, I want
to talk about it too, because you said it was yours. Okay,
layout like like uh layout for me? Um? How one

(52:26):
like the process of making a personal crawfish pond. I'm
gonna try to say crawfish out of difference bulldogs and
an escavena and five days I was pumping water into it.
So you dug that hole was a needy. What we
did We brought in an asked cavena and dug a
keys set about six ft down. What's that word? Um?

(52:51):
We dug about six ft down a bucket wide to
create to break the soil. Turn cut any avenues that
the water could see through, because here we have a
lot of the top of soil we have you have
you're you're running into a lot of veins of water

(53:12):
running just a few feet deep. So we gotta break that.
We have to cut that. So we cut a key
way six eight feet deep, bucket wide. The dimensions of
the pond. You're gonna build the perimeter all in yards.
Tell people what the dimensions of this crawfish pond. It's

(53:32):
too weir because it's five five ft long, a hundred
fifty foot wall. Um, so we build a key way.
You're just digging and you and you swinging the bucket
around and dumping it right back. You're dump in the
dirt right back into the key way. You just want

(53:54):
to break that if there's any channels that water is running,
because you're gonna lose water. Then a bulldozer comes in
removes about a foot of top soil where all the
grass is growing. You gotta get that out of the way.
Then you just keep pushing dirt to build your levees.

(54:16):
You can't have any grass. That's why you remove that
top soil. You can't put that grass in your level
because then the grass the cares and it will form
little channels that the water could start seeping through and
it will lead the way you leve it. So you
get rid of the grass and you start pushing dirt

(54:36):
with the bulldozer. Bill you leave it and crank cup
your pump and fill it. And uh, I built upon
and five days I filled it. Uh, wait in a
week and then I dumped the crawfish planting in it.
One week after I filled it with water. But how'd

(54:57):
you get the rice going in there? Ah? Have to
wait the following spring. So you put crawfish in before
you start even growing right there? Yes, because I had
to get crawfish into the drill into the ground. That
was my crop for the Uh what we do? How
their life cycle works? And me, I drained my pond

(55:19):
in me and I forced a force him. I pulled
the plug in twelve hours, drained all the water of
the pond. Well, the crawfish is instinct to survive is
to drill into the ground. So when I when they
feel that water dropping, they start drilling and they drill

(55:42):
all on the inside the lever. They're drilling into the ground.
And then I leaved upon dry all summer, cut the
grass around mid September, planting the rice seed. So the pond. Yeah,
I'm confused, now, why do you why do you need
the crawfish to drill into the ground, Because they're going

(56:05):
to the ground and they've they've been bread, they have
eggsam them. They're going to the ground and they span
two three months in the ground. Then when the females
come out, they're carrying babies under their tail. And when
I'll filled the pond, they start coming out the field.

(56:26):
Let's let's build a timeline. So like Ronnie's he's raising
his hand, go ahead running. So so what the whole
point of the crawfish, point of the flooding and the
draining is to is to assimilate the river. So naturally occurring,
the river would flood in the spring and the crawfish
would come out their holes, and then when the river

(56:47):
would go back low again, the crawfish would would drill.
So you got imitating their life cycle and sort of
life history is to deal with this flood, the flooding
and water, yeah, drying periods and and then we can
we can artificially control. So you're mimicking the natural cycle

(57:08):
of the flood. Soa what what month do you drain?
I drained upon in May in May, so they breed
prior to that. They're breeding all some I got crow
fits that are drilling right now. And the reason they're drilling,
it's because they came out of their holes two months ago,
released their babies, their bread, and it's tom to go

(57:31):
back in the ground to go through the life cycle
of having there's their bread in the all right, so
you drain in May. Yeah, they start to drill and
their bread already, they're they're drilled before I drink the pond.
All the pond is full of water, you'll see there.

(57:51):
So they're drilling prior to May. Yeah, you start seeing
chimneys all then you drained and it's all spring, and
like when do you start to fill the pond again.
September September, So all summer when they're just down in
the mud. They're down in the ground. Yeah, okay, And

(58:13):
then in that time period, that's when you plant your rice. Yeah,
well it's dry. Plant while my punds dry. I plant
my rice. When the rice gets about eight ten inches high,
I'll start flooding. But you said they breed all summer long.
So while I'm fishing, the crunfish breeding underground, underground, and

(58:35):
the ponds got in the water in it. Yeah, during
the summer and up up until they're not breeding. They're
not breeding in the hole and the hole they're actually
almost like hibernating. But how are they breeding all summer
if there's no water. There's water up until me. So more,
what do you call the summer march? I think, I think,

(58:57):
but I just had had a tongue tied. You may
say they breed when when there's water, and once you
drain the pond, they're gonna hibernate and they're gonna just
incubate those eggs and hibernate in the mud and the
ground with the babies. Once they fail, once the water
table comes back up, the crows say, oh it's time
to get out. They come out, and then they release

(59:17):
their eggs. So, yeah, they breed in the spring, and
then once the water table drops, they drill incubate those babies,
staying in their whole water comes back up, they come
out and they spill there In the dry time, the
rice gets gets planted. Yeah, September, it starts to grow
right September. You float again when it gets somebody, it

(59:40):
just high. I start flooding and I follow the rice
and then and then they come out release their eggs
correct and then that's when the life cycle. Then days
from the time they come out and they release their
babies Uh, biologists, they're figured about naughty days for baby

(01:00:03):
crawfish to reach maturity to be able to harvest it.
And then all winter long they're in there feeding on
the rice. Well, the baby is actually feed on the
microorganisms that grow the algae that grow on the rice stalks,
and they will feed on that as long as possible.

(01:00:24):
When that food sources depleted, then they'll start eating vegetation
like rice and whatever the grass is growing in there.
Vegetation is not a crawfish's main diet. They they'll feed
on tiny organisms or whatever. If you pull one of

(01:00:45):
those rice stalks out, you'll see it's, uh, it's all
full of algae and that's what they're feeding on. This
dominy here and being in the ponds are so shallow.
If you, I mean you theoretically could keep it flooded longer,
but the water just gets so hot you'll start killing,
your started losing. But in a test one time we

(01:01:06):
ran in my pond, we had what kept the water
to what mid June? They June, And when Bud went
to pull the plug, he said that one is hot. Yeah,
listen at this timent of year. I don't I don't
even I don't hardly have a run my pump. You
gotta have a lot of oxygen. I'm tests oxygen levels.

(01:01:27):
Um the water is cool, sweat holes oxygen in the
spring when that water is gonna start warming up, I
gotta pump every day to keep my oxygen levels about
four or five. It's are you crawfits? You're gonna die?
Are You'll see them crawling out trying to slip. You're

(01:01:49):
go ahead night right off the dark and they'll be
all along the one is the edge crawling out. That'll
be bailing out to the to the to the water
source that you pump into the pond. Ure's things are
getting hard. There's a large drainage canal that runs in
the back of our property. We call it the forty
acre canal. And then uh, like bud in myself, we
we on our properties. You dig a large ditch going

(01:02:12):
all the way to the front, and then that's what
you used to get your water into your pond. Okay,
I got I got more questions, but too, I haven't
to do do with this whole drain cycle deal. Do you
have to drain it to plant rice? You can't plant,
so you can't sell rice in a in in eighteen
inches of water. No, but I have a friend across

(01:02:32):
the bay. And then how's a pond. He told me.
He throws his dry seed and three or four inches
of water. It wouldn't work an eighteen inches of water. Okay,
So there's that. And then let's say you never drained
your pond, but you kept it at a stable eighteen
inches year round, it go to hell, right, most likely

(01:02:56):
like the crayfish production would go to hell. Yeah, we
I used to. So the pond, one of the ponds
I had was a hundred acre one and it was
actually more of a swampy or style pond. It was
pond that was not well taken care of. It was
just left to be full and flooded. They did have
crawfish in it, but it was Yeah, it was not
nearly as productive as they say Bud's pond because the

(01:03:18):
fish getting it to it and once to fit the
small goggles and the batasas the perch, they the baby crawfish.
And in that case also we the bullfrogs took in
and the bullfrogs were eating out a crawfish. You could
ask Bud in that pond that pond hadn't had no

(01:03:39):
one had done any kind of anything to it in
about five years when we took it over, and there
were so many bullfrogs in there that we couldn't literally
could not make crawfish. And when I say bullfrogs, I'm
talking in plus no. The first time we decided to
go frog in this pond, bud Bud got there first
and he was texting me. He says, man, the frogs

(01:04:02):
are so big at here, they're not gonna fit in
the kiss of my truck. Seventy frogs. You couldn't catch them.
You couldn't. You couldn't grab him. They couldn't wrap your
hand around him to catch them. We don't have to
whack them with a paddle. Yeah, you couldn't go and
grab one of those frogs. And the cool thing about

(01:04:22):
frogs though, when you hit him with a paddle and
knock them out, they have a mechanism that they inflate
their their lungs or something some kind of they roll
over and they just floating there. Just grab throw them
over your shoulder. Watch this my pawn. I flood and
chep mbo And I dreamed in me that chart amount

(01:04:43):
of time when I dreamed that pawd. You would not
believe the stuff that's that's living and growing in there.
Fish I'm talking about brim big enough to eat, blue gill, eels, garfish.
And I don't plant any of that in there, just

(01:05:06):
finds its way in there. Yeah, it's always it's always
exhilarating when you pick up a trap and they've got
a big cone in there, which is which is what
it's like a It's like a eel, but it's got
little legs. It's it's like actually, let's say a giant
salaman there about like lasagni sides like a hellbender. You
know what the hell bender is? I'm not sure. So

(01:05:27):
how does that stuff get in there? I have no
idea that every year when I dreamed that pond, you
would not be to leave what's in there? The fish
I think coming through the pumps, like the bram and
bull frogs. We catch them in the trap. Well you
pick up the trips in there. Um, oh, go ahead,
because you got I want you to explain the harvest

(01:05:48):
process now, because you're talking about the trap. So it's
a good segue into the harvest process. Well, we real sample,
we harvest them and need him. No, but talking you
just used you trap them out of the pond. Yeah,
I got pyramid traps that we use. We use uh,
artificial bait palets fabaite, because we we're not big on that.

(01:06:13):
A lot of a lot of crawfish fishermen use fish
um and hayden or pole is fabit. One of the
reasons I built my pond. My wife wouldn't need crawfish
that and you can smell it. You can tell crawfish
that's there's been. Fish use fabait, and we didn't like that.

(01:06:35):
So one of the reasons I built my pond. We
use a pallet form fabaite. Crawfish are clean, Uh, your
crawfish are bass. We enjoy more about that first month
the meat this has a sweetness to it. Later on

(01:06:57):
when the water starts warming up, the flesh changes, Uh,
it even tastes different. It the texture and as your
crawfish get older. When the crowfish are really young, that's
when they're the best. So a run the traps every
every day, and my wife and I eat what we

(01:07:21):
can and we give the rest away. That so you
give them away all bagged up. You don't make your
neighbors and friends come and pull their own traps, A
lot of them, A lot some of them, like Ronni
likes to bring his son. So I'll tell Ronni, yeah,
y'all come, it's more of a stiff having an outing

(01:07:42):
with friends. You know, jump in the board, let's go
and we go run the traps, and whatever crowfish we
pick up, I give it to them. It's like the
kids to bring kids. Man, you wouldn't believe. I mean
the kids, I'm having that pond and they I mean,
you made their mutt, you know, you bringing two or

(01:08:02):
three up four or five year olds in there, and
it's all new to them. And I mean to see
the small on their faces. And there are is a
little up watching picking up all the crawfish. That's my thing.
I mean, I love doing that. So can I play
a little just a little bit of antagonists and kind

(01:08:25):
of in this conversation? No, can I come on? You
can say something bad having a crawfish pond. So what
Bud does in this small in this small town community,
and this is what we're at. This is a community
gathering place that allows people to get this wonderful resource
of Louisiana. And I love that about this pond. But

(01:08:45):
what I want to actually ask Bud about in the
crew here is about commercial rice field fishermen out west
who have hundreds and thousands of acres of crawfish ponds, right,
you know that for a fact, and they make they
make a make a great living. In fact, Ronnie said
the other day, is that maybe the main source of
their income is off that commercial fishing and rice just

(01:09:05):
pays the bills. Right. Then you take the old school
fishermen and the chaff flai basin and the spillways that
are that are fishing for crawfish wild chaff flay basin
crawfish that yeah, that go through the natural life cycle
of the swamp and its feet and has no pumps
going in and out of it. They're using bait and

(01:09:28):
they're big ripe. Is that the rice field farm and
crawf is just killing there, killing their business because the
majority of people buy from the rice fields now because
of what a lot of what budg just said taste different,
the cleanliness from the thing. Now, a lot of people
will say, what's the difference between farm and duck and

(01:09:52):
wild duck. You get a different, cleaner, more mild, mellow
taste out of farm raised u than wild duck. And
then in the same sense stuff, so like, what do
you make its own grave? He don't. Did you go
walking in my pond? Yeah, it's hard, like it's hard
the floor. So I guess, I guess. My whole thing

(01:10:14):
is is that his his pond is a different beast
because it's it's something that he does a hobby. It's
not a commercial thing, doesn't make money. It's a confusion. Yeah,
it's a difference between a garden yea and an industrialized
farm landscape. And I'm not condemning that. I'm saying there's
a big difference between a garden and an industrialized So
you talk to these um basin crawfis the spillway crawfishermen

(01:10:38):
who are wild by the wild crawfish guy, Yeah, you're
good and wild crawfish guys, and they're saying, what about us,
because these guys out west have thousands of acres of
controlled farmland that they're pumping water in an out planting
natural seed and then n of Louisianans and all over
the country. Now where you can get you can get
crawfish express shipped to you and then to day or

(01:11:01):
a cross or rice field crawfish and the spillway guys
are like, oh shit, our commercial fisheries are going down
the drain because no, we can't harvest near as much
as the is the rice fields. Yeah, you know what
it's all about this because you made you made the
little money symbol where the rice fields start producing. Because

(01:11:22):
it's it's it's like it's gonna search for about a month.
The price started dropping, and the price drops right now
every year. The crawfish started at about six dollars a pound.
Here gonna break up in the spring. This is gonna
drop to the dollar when the rice fields are gonna

(01:11:43):
start putting it all. But they're putting out so much
volume that they can sell it from the dollars they're
still bringing in. And I think the chuff goes, the
Chuffali goes killing themselves working trying to catch the wild
ones and get and a lot of people. And you're

(01:12:07):
gonna hear people say, no doubt is that there's a
difference in flavor size consistency between and they're they're trains
of thoughts. I say, wild crawfish now to buds point
using that pellet, you're not using decaying fish matter and pokey.
That's gonna change the dynamic of what that crawfish tastes like.

(01:12:27):
But I wouldn't say it. It's like buying. Buying spillway
crawfish is a bad thing, and they're gonna taste bad.
You just have to do a little bit more work
to purge them, to clean them, to make sure they're
nice and rents so that they do taste good. Because
there is something about that wildness personally that does make
that crawfish its own thing. I'm not gonna say more

(01:12:50):
special less, it's a different They have a different flavor.
Uniqueness personally come from I love fish from the chal
It tastes different the crawfish in my pond. I personally
love spillway crawfish like I like. I like the change up,
you know, because a lot of times you're gonna get
your your rice pond crawfish first because you know the

(01:13:12):
river hasn't done this thing yet. The spillway crawfish aren't
aren't out there because your rice crawfish pond is gonna
come out first. That's just six dollar pound crawfish that
you're getting right now in the wintertime. You're not gonna
get spillway crawfish in the wintertime. And I find that
when the spillway kicks up, the spillway it's where the
Mississippi comes or the chap when when when the river
comes up, there's some overflows over and far from it. Yeah,

(01:13:40):
it floods the swamps swamp crawfish. Yeah. So when the
spillway crawfish spillway, I think of the uh in the
middle of a beaver dam. They make a spillway, you know,
they believe they don't make it, They leave it there,
they unbuilt on. So h So I find like, actually

(01:14:00):
when the spillway crawfish kick in, that's actually actually does
bring the price down, which which it kind of sucks
for the spillway guys because yeah, they don't get that
six dollar pound crawfish to sell. They are selling at
three dollars a pound when they when when the spillway
comes in, that price is gonna dropped about three dollars
because then the original dudes are kicking in there. They're
so much crawfish coming on farms, the rice farmers crawfish,

(01:14:24):
and just it's more and more and the warmer it gets,
the more they catch. People search out spillway crawfish because
they know they can always get rice field crawfish. They
search out the spillway like the spillway crawfish. Here buzz
kill man. Listen if jump Paul, if he buzz killed
me yesterday and he buzz killed me with the same thing.

(01:14:46):
I'm just trying to drop a list, like you know,
it's great knowledge. My favorite thing on the plane right
now is boot in. Ronnie turns me on to like
gas station boot in where he going to the gas
station and get boot and wrapped up boot and is
like a rice. Here we go. This is all information.

(01:15:09):
This is all next level cultural information people need. Give
me an unbiased what boot and is boodas rice sausage
traditionally made with pork rice and pork livers. Period, Ronnie.
These guys are always walking around in the morning. When
I met Ronnie last summer, we're down here spear fishing,

(01:15:30):
and everyone's walking around in the morning where you might
be eating the breakfast burrito or or a bacon sausage
and egg thing you staid you walk around the sausage
tinfoil like a of soft sausage wrapped in tinfoil made
out of like meat and rice, and that's what you
eat in the morning. Did you put some hot sauce

(01:15:52):
on it? And I'm gonna rig up a thing when
I moved down here and start my restaurant called I'm
gonna start a restaurant called the Real Cajun, and I'm
gonna have a thing that sits. I was explaining this yesterday.
It's gonna be a reservoir of hot sauce that bolts
to the top of the truck with a drip line
that comes down and it hangs right by your steering wheel,

(01:16:13):
and it's got a little squeeze bowlb on it, like
the thing you use the prime gas in your boat.
And as you're eating your boot and driving around, you
can just because you only need each drop. You only
get a bite because it's so you gotta, like, see,
you can't season the whole damn thing. You gotta season
each bite. So with that hose coming down full of

(01:16:35):
hot sauce, take a bite with that reservoir and then
you just set for life a syringe with the long
needle and you jam it in long ways, oh, and
fill it up and squeeze it. As you're pulling out
everybody from right now. Then they tried everybody from what

(01:16:57):
the hell are these guys doing putting hot sauce on boot?
If you don't do it, they had some good that
that's where the story gets good. So Ronnie last Summer
turns me out and he's like, go, what's that town?
Golden Meadow? Go to Golden Meadow, Go to tea Pops.
When you walk in Teapops, they sell like basically three

(01:17:19):
things gas, red Bull, and so we're going there and
they got two kinds. They got pork crawfish. Now we
see me and Seth patronized the last summer, ate the
dickens out of it, and this trip all I've been tom,
I was wanting to go back to that damn place
and get more of the Boodhan. So we're going to

(01:17:41):
get the boot, and we got there ahead of Gan Paul.
We go in, get some eat that, go back in
to get more. Some guy comes to get another bottle
of hot sauce. Some guy comes in waware in her
second run and walks in there and goes, y'all seriously
out of red Bull right now. That's want to talk
to you. A couple of days are going to your

(01:18:02):
torment we had teep offs right now, that's where y'all are.
So then so yesterday we go in buy it. We
buy the boot, and Lauren had a bottle of hot
sauce with him. Ate that one. I don't know what
happened to his bottle of hot sauce. Chester went back

(01:18:22):
in to get more and to get a new bottle
of hot sauce. Jean Paul pulls up. He goes in
and he's like going in there and he's shooting the
ship with the people in there. And he comes out
and says, I don't mean to be the antagonist like
we just heard him say a second ago. And he said,
that's not boot. Is in my turn to comment here

(01:18:48):
to take it away. You can defend yourself. I don't know.
I don't need to defend myself. I'm eating Buddha all
over this state. I make it a point to go
to eat bud and real quick. He pointed out that
he said, and I bought two of them too, and
I ate two of them too, and I it is
delicious that boot and Quota air quotes is delicious. But

(01:19:11):
even the people working there would say, it's more like
they actually told me this The people there when you
derogated them. I was at because I want to know
where it was from, which is from Texas, which explains
a lot. Yeah, it's from Texas. And they said it's
more like a rice dressing than a traditional boudant, and
I said, oh, it's all putting. Now. It is a

(01:19:33):
delicious link of sausage, because that's what it is. I
mean boot as a sausage if you put the hot
sauce on there, especially so I have never ever seen
anybody put hot sauce on Buda. So a bunch of
Yankees sending a rent old suburban with a bottle of
hot the real Cajun over here with his reservoir idea,

(01:20:00):
and I will promise you that the any Louisiana and
that's listened to this podcast right now saying them some
bitches there's never been out west, um and out south
west southwest Louisiana, and um, you know, there's all kinds
of different side. So I like, look, I like tpops
Buddha and I'll call the Buddha because that's what they

(01:20:21):
call it. And I'm just I'm just personally saying for
the fact, literally a thousands of different brands and types
of Buddha and that I've eaten that is the most
unlike a Buddha that I've ever had. It is because
it doesn't when I go home and say, when I
go home and tell people that I've developed a real
love for rice dressing done, that doesn't sound like anything,

(01:20:46):
doesn't really pop off that I'm not like a real
boot and man and you are. That's not stopping you
say so if it doesn't have livers, not Buddha. But
what about crawfish Buddha? Is it that not Buddha? Either?
I don't like crawford bud or I don't like any
of that. I mean, I like it, but it's like,

(01:21:06):
but is it not Buddha? Now at some point is not? Okay?
Let me ask you. They make they make cauliflower bud.
They replace the rice with cauliflowers that bud. No, why
isn't that bood? I guess I call it because he
doesn't have rice in it? All look like a vegan.
Well they still they still put pork in it. They're

(01:21:28):
doing it because they don't want It's not a vegetarian thing.
It's a keto thing, now you know what I mean
couliflower in there, cauliflower rice. So I think, so there's
I'm gonna go back home. This is your boot here,
this is y'allays, this is yallas bud And I'm sure

(01:21:49):
you could win across the street and it maybe have
been the more traditional liver Buddha. But I mean to me,
in my in my opinion of Buddha is so me, sausage, sausages,
just no no cauliflower, no, no rice, just meet in
intestine like encasing, yeah, boot and then and then to me,

(01:22:12):
budd is just meet and rice. If there's rice in encasing,
that's boodh. In my open rice is what makes rice
rice are If you want to use cauliflower, it makes
the boodant. To me, what makes it boot and too me,
I appreciate that. I'm ready to move on. I know
I can go to Tea Pops and get that their

(01:22:33):
boodan and sleep easy calling it boodan. I'm gonna have
a very hard time going home and saying that I
was eating. But this, this is what I'm gonna do.
Three being deceived. Yeah, all three of y'all, y'all gonna
send me and I'm gonna send you three different boodants

(01:22:56):
from three different places in three different distinct sections of
southwest Louisian Anna, and I don't want to hear if
it's better or worse. I just want you to try it.
You don't have to give me feedback. I like teapops better,
I like this better. I don't care about that. What
you like is what you like. I don't give it.
I don't even damn you know like. But I'm just saying, listen, man,
I'm interested. I'm only I'm hacking on. But I'm Steve

(01:23:20):
very interested in knowing. I'm very interested in all this.
But from an outsider perspective. Okay, you go down to
you know, this whole thing like you because you're you're
you're pretty familiar with like all the cuisines in the country, right,
I am. They do all the same garbage about chili
in the southwest now southwest southwestern US. This whole like

(01:23:46):
outrage if it's got this in it, outrage if it's
got that in it. Right, So, when you live in
an area, you get you get like invested in that stuff,
but you're not. It seems a little it starts to
feel a little academic like I would be like my

(01:24:06):
mom used to make chili and she put kiddy beans
in it. And then some guy wherever the hell what
part of the country do you then go like, if
it's got beans in it, it's not Well, you just
said it about hunting. It's where you grow up. And
some people think because where you grew up, you think
this is the right way, right. But as you grow
out and expand your world of hunting or Buddha or

(01:24:27):
of any other thing, it becomes to evolve and say,
oh wait, my way is not only the right way.
There's other right ways and nobody is right or wrong.
In this conversation was brought over to Venice with us
rabbit os. That was great. See what in my favorite?

(01:24:50):
I think there's better boots, but it's not my favorite.
I want to move on from boot as I want
to get into cooking the crawfish, because we left the
cooking and I want you to tackle cooking John Paul,
But just just out of fairness, I'm endorsing tea Pops.
What would you like to endorse if you if if

(01:25:10):
you want, let's say, let's say a listener out there
wants to experience sort of like what you would regard
as sort of like the baseline definition of boodan, you
would suggest that they buy some from who. If you
are traveling I TN West and you're going through uh Scott, Louisiana,

(01:25:34):
are anywhere in those parishes out west on I TN
stop at Billy's are stopped at? No buddy knew what
he was going to stand. Best Stop is great, but
there are literally on a cooking program on TV. Best

(01:25:56):
there's literally hundreds of places. I tend you get west
of laughing that way you can pick up bootan and
every gas station and every little meat shop, and so
Billie's is one of my favorites. Best Stop is different,
but also good Dons is good, Rabbit is good, New
news is good, long as is good g and M
meat market. It goes on and on and on um.

(01:26:19):
But I would say this, I love your Teapops endorsement.
I'll tell you why, because if you were coming to
southeast Louisiana and you're traveling down by La Fush and
you're going fishing and poor fouch on a grand ol
stop at Teapops at that shell station, stress get you
some boot like, because this is bootan here. I wish
I was knowing on a tea with that right now,

(01:26:40):
it sounds so good, sounds good, so good. Right in
the bottom right they got a chest like a thing
door opens from the outside. You serve yourself. Bottom right corner, Yep,
the top stupid stuff. Bottom left is bottom left is
crayfish boot and which is good? Bot him writes sport

(01:27:00):
bood You tried the crayfish one? Yeah, that's that one's main,
Homer asked, crosses boodans main Homa the port Boudins madeen
in Texas. Layout for me? Now, how to do a

(01:27:22):
crawfish boil? As we ate last night? That's the one
I'm interested in because that was the best I've ever had.
And I'm not saying there's not eighty ways of doing it,
but I'm talking about, like last night, you did one. Yeah,
So I took a little bit of how I grew
up doing it and a little bit how how Bud
how Bud, and I spent fifteen minutes talking about doing
it outside the craw fish ponds yesterday. And so what

(01:27:42):
I did is I basically filled up my pot with
water and made a vegetable stock with a lot of onions, salary, garlic,
mushrooms and a lot of citrus and oranges, like twenty
four lemons cut in half, and like ten oranges cutting
half school ease in my hand and put them in
the thing. Rolled that to a boil, and um, I

(01:28:04):
added just a little bit of seasoning dry seasoning in
the in the water and some liquid. Craball brand. What's
your what's your preferred brand? Man, there's a there's a
couple of different ones that are really good. Um Loco
makes a good um crab boil Chack bass season it
makes a good crab ball. Slappy Mom makes a good one.
Zataran's is what I grew up with and is what

(01:28:25):
we used last night, because that's what we had. And Um,
I used a little bit of the powder, a little
bit of the liquid, and I started rolling that to
a boil, adding my potatoes and sausage. And I like
to get my potatoes about three quarters the way there
before I add my crawfish. And what was that sat there?
That was smoked richards smoke sausage, and um, then my

(01:28:46):
crawfish go in. Now like these are early in the season.
The crawfish hadn't gotten to their full maturity, so they're
on the smaller side, so you got to boil them
for a little less time we did. Once you drunk
dump your crawfish in, it knocks that water down too,
you know, down the heating down down below the boil. Yeah,

(01:29:07):
and that and that pot will And that's why you
gotta have it that high, that high burning you know,
propane burner to really keep that that recovery short, because
once that crawfish goes in, it lowers the temperature. It's
got to come back up to a boil. Like I said,
we balled for three minutes. After that three minutes, I
dump a little small bowl of ice in it and

(01:29:29):
I just let it soak for I was soaked for
thirty minutes. And that's where this is like the part
that this is the part that gets controversial. Yeah, well
the soak is a little controversial. And also what I
did once I put it in the cooler, I took
a and this is kind of where a bud came
in because I wanted Sometimes those crawfish seasons can be
overly salty. A lot of times they can um so

(01:29:51):
I'll use less powdered seasoning, more liquid boiled than I
usually use because liquid doesn't have any salt. Then once
the crawfish went into the cooler or ice chest, I
sprinkled them with extra salt and a little bit of
extra powdered crawfish seasoning, and Lennon let them sit and
steam and kind of do their own thing. It's not
enough to get all over your hands like a lot

(01:30:13):
of places do in West Louisiana, you know, But but
it it lets that crawfish really speak for itself without
overpowering it with a whole bunch of seasoning and spice.
And when we talked about that, yester uh, for people
that love the flavor of crawfish, I just never understood

(01:30:34):
why so much seasoning that it masque the flavor of
your crawfish. If you know, I can't see myself heeding
crawfish in my eyes are crowing because it's just yeah,
I mean, you understand what I'm saying. And maybe it's that,

(01:30:54):
maybe maybe we got used to adding so much seasoning
because at some point we were used to maybe spillway
crawfish a lot of fishiness on it where people didn't
purge it really good. Because that's when you get in
those wild crow fish. You have to purge, and so
maybe purge wild crawfish because we used to pull the
mud veins on them, so you don't find saltwater kills them.

(01:31:15):
I like to just so this is my my purging method.
I take ice chest or or a big bucket and
I'll put them in a champaine or a basket. Put
the crawfish in a basket in the water, and I
put a hose pipe in there running and just circulate
that water until that water becomes clear. How many how
many hours? That take? Minutes? I mean with rice with
those crawfish doesn't take and it takes I mean probably

(01:31:37):
one or two fill ups and it it's it makes
like I'll fill it up the first time, letter over
for a little bit, pull the crawfish out, dump the water,
and that water is gonna be dirty, dump it, put
them back in, fill it back up. At that point
water is gonna be a little bit clear, starting to
get clear. And then one more time and that water
is crystal clear you can drink it. It's at that
point that's when I feel my crawfish are ready to

(01:31:58):
go in the pot. And that's for the wild crow
of fish, rice rice praw fish too, don't get me wrong,
I've gotten fishy rice pinn crawfish because it's not a spillway.
Crawfish aren't fishing because they're in a spillway. They're fishy
because they're using fish for bait. I mean, ways, I
don't spell away guys. They use pellets for bait, and
there's no fishing as to them. I mean, that's more
about what you're using for bait. A lot of people

(01:32:20):
use fish early in the year because those those pellets
take in the cold water take a lot longer to dissolve.
So fish brings those crawfish in fast, like come Good Friday.
When I used to sell crawfish, I would use I'd
use fish or or beef malk with the pellet. To
get that fast, I could run my traps twice a day.
Verse you sell a lot of a lot of crawfish

(01:32:41):
on Good Friday. Good Friday is the like the pinnacle
of crawfish. Everybody everyone around here is Catholic, or for
most part are Catholic. It's very, very predominant religion around here.
So the thing is you don't eat metal. It's kind
of like it because on part of a tradition to
have be that death and then like like Good Friday

(01:33:03):
is like the day that everybody gets together with their
families and boils seafood and eats seafood, and and at
that time of year, a crawfish are in the height
of their season. Like that is like the the pinnacle
of crawfish season. They're not they're still that they're not
fully mature where they're red hard and hard to eat
and you know, but they're not that little baby crawfish.
They're just right perfect in the middle is just that

(01:33:24):
perfect crawfish. That's and you've got spillway, you got rice
and look spillway crawfish. I've seen dirty rice pine crawfish.
I've seen clean spillway crawfish. Spillway crawfish tend to be
a little more muddy or sometimes just because they've they've
been in that swampy mud, so you may have to
give them one additional rents down. But I like the
perjursa built crawfish more for what it's what they're eating,
because the crawfish has been eating fish. When you go

(01:33:46):
to suck the head fat out, you get that yeah,
got that fishy, you'll smell it. Kick uh Jehan Paul
quick hit the the soak. What's happening during this so
the soak, it's the crawfish are gonna float when they boil,
when they're done, they they're they're gonna be sitting at

(01:34:07):
the top of the water. And the soak is when
you add that ice and let them sit, they start
to absorb all that liquid and become you know, they're
not boiling anymore. That water goes into the head cavity,
into the tail cavity and they sink um and how
to hit like an equilibrium with and I like, I
like juicy crawfish. When I suck the head, I want
to get all that interior fat and the juice from

(01:34:29):
the broth. Which makes purging the crawfish that much more
important because they're sitting in all the water they've been
boiled in for thirty minutes, just soaking all that in.
So if you don't purge it, you're gonna be soaking
in dirty, nasty, seasoned and salty water but not clean. Fine,
you get a grittiness to them too, like if you
don't like, if you don't purge them, sometimes that'll be

(01:34:50):
will be the soak will make them juicier will also
make them more seasoned because they're taking in that liquid,
you know, from that silk. Another thing too, with the
with the shock. I find the shock helps with the
peeling and when you hit them with that, it makes
that that that the tail meat separate from the shell.
Got it. And the soak, I think soak does the

(01:35:12):
same thing as well. To put salt in the water
that you're baled him in, I put a little bit.
You see, I don't put salt at all, because I
find if I had salt at the water, they don't
peel as good. I just put a little bit of
the the powdered boil, not any And I'll ball crow
fish three minutes and you don't do a soak. Yeah,

(01:35:36):
but fun about turn a seconds to man it and
I take I just take all the basket. Wait about
a minute, just that slide cool down. I'll take that
basket and put it back in the same pot. And
they all sank that every one of them will sink

(01:35:57):
when they do that. It's because they're sucked up. They
got it, was shocked, and they suck up the seasonings
that are in your water. I'll leave them in about
that second deep turn the seconds a minute and I
pull them out and that see it, And we don't.
We cook a lot with crawfish meat, so we don't

(01:36:20):
over salty or overseason them. Because when I make an example,
my wife makes a crawfish freakacy m hm uh. I
don't want to sit there and need and it it
tastes like I'm eating saut of ran scrab ball. I
want to I want to point. I want to eat
the crawfish. Can taste the flavor of those crawfish. Crawfish

(01:36:45):
to fear another and look, any fancy restaurant in the city,
you can walk into an auto crawfish had to fear.
Do you know that you're you're not gonna walk in
one of them and eat and it tastes zataran scrap
ball or whatever. When you walk into a grocery store
and buy a pack one pound pack of crawfish tails,

(01:37:09):
and you can buy Louisiana crawfish tails, but you can
also buy Chinese. You buy the Louisiana crawfish tails. When
you open it and taste them, no salt, there's no seasoning,
it's just a natural crawfish and you use that to
cook to get that you understand. So when I when

(01:37:32):
I cook crawfish, we're only cooking for me in my wife.
You could you're cooking for a secondary use, not just
the boil. Yeah, I'm heeding them for me and my wife.
But then I got twenty pounds, I got a peel,
and I have a commercial vacing packing machine. How long
you been married? A hundred twenty three years? Next year

(01:37:53):
reincarnated what's y'all? What's you'all pay you on? Freezing? With
the fat? I do because I'm fat tail fat, the
fat though, the yellow fat. Oh yeah, as much as
I can, I'd keep you where. Yeah, you can't leave it.
You gotta lose it within three or four months. I'm

(01:38:14):
not gonna leave crawfish and my freezer for a year.
We eat, we eat it twelve months off here we're cooking.
We crawfit. So it doesn't it doesn't stay long enough
in my freeze that I get Ran said, Okay, do
you know what it? Just you gotta if you're if
you're planning on keeping some longer. You pulled the gut line.

(01:38:38):
That's what we do a lot. Ran ranch them good
with fresh water and then pack them and you can
keep on a wall. Okay, Ronny you ready, Yeah, what
you got, We're gonna move on. The last thing we're
in the cover today is potentially my new favorite way
to eat ducks. Walks through it the routie teed, but

(01:39:03):
you down on it. That's the way we were. We
were raised on that. My grand my grandmother. Listen, this
is gonna blow your morning. No listen, I'm listening. Recently,
the building got knocked down. I can go short to you,
Hurricane Ida. That was my grandmother's building. She would clean

(01:39:29):
duck in and up until ot of knocked it down.
She died in nineteen seventy six. You walked through the
door and there was still duck fellers and the spotty
webs in the ceiling. It was not a lot of
people taught that. It's why we knew so much about

(01:39:52):
duck hunting in my family. A lot of people thought
market hunting in that in the thirties. My grandmother was
still cleaning ducks in the seventies from three or four
or five ducks are there in front of God. What
I'm telling you, and all the game wars knew about it,

(01:40:14):
and not once when she have a bonded they never
came and they could have came there and not once.
Then added her. She did that all her life. She
would she'd save all the brass feathers and in the
summertime my grandfather would put it in some long tubes

(01:40:35):
and draw it into yard. And then in the fall
my grandma would make pillows down. I still got a
down pillow from my grandmother. There's a spoonbill head in
the pillow. Have it? You're kidding me? I guess a
dug head fell in the pillow and they never found it.

(01:40:57):
And you can feel it. It's a spoon bill. I've
been sleeping on it since Tom six, seven years old.
That's that's my grandmother. And she liked to cook the
root heat what's that word to get? That's the way
the height. What's the dish called. It's a French word.

(01:41:21):
It's it's a French word for roasting. It's just slow cooking.
You're brown it out. A little water comes back that
it's just grease out a little water and you just
cooked for hours. Out a little water, bring it brown

(01:41:42):
out a little water. In a black pot correct mostly
black potter magnetite pots, you can really scrape the bottom
we call that. We'll do that with Doug with our
deer rules. Be frolls when a pork rolls rooted anything
real negative? Stay about this, John Paul, Why am I

(01:42:02):
being portrayed person? So I'm just giving some perspectives. He's like, yeah,
let me know. I love that routine. I love that.
So the routine duck traditionally, like budd said, you're gonna
you're gonna brown it, I like to I like the
you gotta back up, okay, because here's this, it's very

(01:42:24):
important for people to know. Okay, I got a dead
duck land there, all right, you getta getta walk the
three your three stage fucking method. Just shot it. It's okay,
it's still flopping, all right, just stop flopping. Just finished
ringing his neck ring. Sorry, So I got you the

(01:42:45):
fresh killed duck. Get back to the to the camp.
What I'm gonna do. First thing, I'm gonna cut the
wings off at the joint, because I don't like, you know,
if you don't first joint, don't have the first joint,
you're not cutting it off with the body, but the
first yeah, the first joint out. You still got that elbow. Yeah,
at a sailboy, you cut them at the eilboat. I
like to cut them at the joint because I can't
stand when I got those sharp bones poking into the

(01:43:06):
small pellets, you know. So I cut him at the
wing joints, and I'm gonna give them a rough pluck.
You know, I'm not gonna focus a lot on those
wing feathers because they're really hard to get. I'm gonna
get all the breast feathers off, back feathers off but
falls off, most of the leg feathers off, and then
once he's pluck, when yeah, plucked, and then I'm gonna

(01:43:27):
get get my water to a rolling boil. I'm gonna
get a small, small crawfish spot and I'm gonna boil
the water. Once I got that water boiling, i'm gonna
take that duck and i'm gonna dip them for ten
to fifteen seconds. And once once I'm done dipping, pull
them out and I'm gonna dry them with an old towel,
get them nice and dry, and then I'm gonna then
remove the rest of those big feathers, which they'll come off. Yeah.

(01:43:55):
The boiling is gonna open up those pores and and
allow those, especially like in particularly wing feathers comes off
real easy, and everything that would have been a pain
in the everything there in the painting ask comes off
the plug a chicken, yea factory hot water. Yeah, let's
rub it off. So and then once once we do that,

(01:44:17):
I'm gonna so if if I'm at my house and
I don't have to keep a head or a head
on the head on, I'm gonna go straight to the
d bowing process before you burn it. Oh you got me?
And what's your after the boiling process, Once you got
your ducks all nice and pretty, you're gonna gree am.

(01:44:38):
I'm gonna take the hot water off, and I'm gonna
use that burner and I'm gonna hold the bill and
the leg and I'm gonna pass that that duck through
the fire just for a few seconds each burn all
those little hairs off. Any other rain maybe feather I
missed or something. I don't know what the hell those
little hairs on a duck or called. I don't know,
but you have a I know like so I know

(01:44:59):
like of the pin feather, the pin feather. That's another
thing that that's really good about boiling is the pin
feather comes out really easy. And I like to take
a knife in my thumb and that's a good trick
and feather between your knife blade and your thumb. We
call we call it the pin feather. A pouss on,
didn't It wasn't Kid's grandma. They used to hearn. Her

(01:45:21):
nickname was pouss On because she used to pull all
the pouss on out. Pew. Okay, Kid's grandmother's nickname was
pew because she used to shoot her good was to
pull all the pin feathers out. Um. So yeah, so
once you got the pin fails out, going to create
that duck. And then once once you create them, you're
just gonna give him a little slap, slap around, pat
off those those that that burnt hair off then like so,

(01:45:45):
and at this point it looks like a beauty, beautiful
you you ain't You're not ever going to see a
more beautiful duck that's been just been boiled and create.
I mean that's just yeah. You put that shot on
the front of Better Homes and Gardens man one of them.
So so if like I said, I, if I'm at
my house, I'm gonna go straight to the de boning process,
because that way I gotta stick my hand up in

(01:46:06):
the cavity to pull the guts out. So what I
do is, I'm gonna take the duck like I showed you,
and I'm gonna split right down the breasts. I'm gonna
come around the wing joint, around the back of the
duck to the leg joint, and then you get those
halves of ducks like we had. And then once I've
got the two house, you've got that that body core,
the boneless breast, full wing, full leg correct every edible

(01:46:27):
thing is off that duck. Everything. There is not a
piece of meat left on that duck. So now i
haven't gutted them yet. So what I'm gonna do now
is I'm gonna make a slit under the breastplate and
I'm gonna pull that breastplate up, opening the hatch. Opening
the hatch, the heart, the liver, and the gigs thats
gonna be sitting right there and you just pull them out,
put them to the side, and I'm gonna do all

(01:46:48):
my ducks like that, and then I'm gonna come back
to the to the gizzer, which we call it a
and um, I'm gonna cut on each side of that
silt sack. And I'm gonna have two pieces, two little
nut gives a nugget. That's nur trick I learned from you. Yeah,
because I had to go through all the hassle open
the sun's bitches up and scraping them and scraping them.
But then I wind up with exactly what you wind
up with. Just cut it off, just like a stupid

(01:47:11):
I had no idea. I wasted so much time. Same here, man, like,
I wind up with exactly the same thing. Yeah, maybe
you lose no meat, and then no, you want up
with with I don't know what I was doing, Yeah,
And then it makes much I like. I like. I
like to reward my dog after a good hunt of
you know, she's she's she does more work than any
of us out there, so I like to give her.

(01:47:33):
I'm not a big liver fan. I'll feed her the
livers and uh, I give her the gizzard corpse and
uh and the and the trips and how many ducks
have you and I cleaned together? So we shot some
shot some gallan new. Would you do the same thing

(01:47:54):
with gallan New? What you mean I mean that same process?
Or is it so the Gallanu. I like to start
by cutting the wings off, and then I'm gonna slit
their throat and put there's a where their crops at.
You got a lot of skin. I gave it a
little slit. Peel that skin a little bit off the breast,
and I'm gonna stick my finger down the I guess

(01:48:15):
where the wishbone is. I'm gonna pull the head and
pull the wishbone, and that breast is gonna come out
nice and pretty. And like I said, if I'm in
my house, I don't need to leave a wing. So
by cutting those wings off, the skin just peels right
off and you get a perfect breast, no feather's no
clean up. Let toss that in a bucket of water
and then just like with then handed to Chester the
d braster dude, I will say about those gallon new

(01:48:38):
wholely cow. Yeah, it's a good bird I'd rather eat. Yeah.
And the thing too bout that Argalls does from y'all
tarking American. Oh Yeah, very similar. So and another thing

(01:49:02):
back to like when gonna pull the breasts out that way,
just like the duck, It's like when you open that hatch,
there's the gizzard the heart and the liver just sitting
right on top, you know, having the dig through the trips.
None of that flips. So so then there you are.
You got your duck. Go on, keep keep making the dish.
Got your halfs now. Now I've got my two halves

(01:49:23):
in my duck. I'm gonna go and get a magnelite
pot or black pot, and I'm gonna put a little
bit of olive oil, a little bit of grease, just
enough to wet the bottom that way, I don't get
a hard stick when I throw it in. And I'm
gonna take those I'm gonna take those duck hives, and
I'm ana laying fat down on a medium heat, and
I'm gonna start to cook that skin down and get
as much fat out of that skin to make my grease.

(01:49:45):
I hope people are listening to what you're saying right now,
So yeah, I get that, get that that duck. Like listen,
I don't I want people understand something you got like
your ten Commandments, okay, get like the Constitution, you got
like the Declaration Independence, and then you got this recipe.
Ship is all sort of like you know what I mean,
So listen, so I get those ducks half down, fat down,

(01:50:10):
and I'm gonna brown them down till the just the
tops of them start to cook. And the big thing
is you do not want to over brown them, because
then those ducks arena get real not in hard, and
they're not gonna get tender. So as as they get
to where I like them brown, I'm gonna pull them
out and put them in a metal a metal bowl
and get them all that. Once I've browned all my ducks,

(01:50:30):
I'm gonna take my my trinity, my my, my, my onions,
my bell peppers, and my salary diced belt. Okay, so
it's diced diced bell peppers and Jehan Paul give them
give the official ratio. Yeah, I mean I always used
like I go one one so more onion to two

(01:50:52):
parts onion, one part bell pepper, one part cellery, and
I don't really tell are completely avoid I see a lot. Yeah,
but I asked you a quick question. One word answer
is fine to three word answer. What ratio do you cook? Rice?
M hmm, first joint, first joint. That's how I've done. Yeah,

(01:51:19):
you can cook you apot of rise. It's my dad
working off shore. I learned I can cook anything. My dad,
I saw my doubt what you're doing. I'm cooking ross
or what you? Why you? Why are you sticking your finger?
He said, doesn't matter how much trust you put in there.

(01:51:39):
You imagine the water up to that first joint where
you touching the ros is gonna come out perfect. Every
time I've been doing it for sixty for fifty five years,
it comes out perfect. Every time. There's your three word answer.

(01:52:04):
So back to the back to the your trinity. Onions belt,
two onions, one part bell pepper, one part cellery, diced
up and throwing the Pope's hat, which is a little
bit of garlic, a little chop garlic. So I'm gonna
throw that into my duck fat grease that I've just
made by browning down those ducks. And also with my trinity,

(01:52:26):
I'm gonna throw in my gizzards in my hearts. I'm
gonna brown that down, get them, get them onion sweating,
and I'm gonna brown down to the consistency I like,
which you know, with any anything, you just get it
browned down and thickens. And then once I'm to the
browning process, I like, I'm gonna take those ducks I'm
gonna dump them back in to the onions and give

(01:52:47):
them a little more of a browning down in there.
And I'm gonna take that bowl, and the ducks are
sitting in a lot of a lot more grease and
blood's gonna have to licked out those ducks. And I'm
gonna put some water in there, throw that around, dump
it in, and then gonna fill the pot up just
above where everything's sitting in in some chicken stock and
some chicken broth with a little bit of water, and
I'm gonna bring it just to where it's above that

(01:53:10):
um there. And so I'm and then I'm gonna bring
get that boiling now this so most people would just
continue to add as the water would drop or the
stock would drop, they'd add a little water out, a
little water out of the water. I have three ways
that I like to do it. I do it that
way where you just add water every time it drops down.
Or I'll put it in the I'm adding water when

(01:53:33):
it's on the burner. Um Or I'll put it in
the oven for a couple of hours is my second
way I do it. And then my third way I
do it like if sometimes I'll just sit there. I'll
throw it if I if I don't really have a
lot of time to cook it, or if I want
to eat the next day, I'm gonna take those ducks.
I'm gonna throw them in a slow cooker overnight and
then then then So the next step is once you

(01:53:54):
either way you do it, you're gonna so you can
do the ball down process where you just bail it down,
added water, ball down to the ducks are tender and
and it's ready. So Ronnie, really, yesterday when we made
the recipe for this, we had a we had an
extra ingredient that we got from the bodies. Oh yeah,
so yeah we didn't. But you don't always have that.
You don't always have a lot of times, I'll add
mushrooms whenever I don't have gizzards and hearts, just just

(01:54:15):
to kind of imitate that that feeling. But we we
actually went out and got those uh those oyster mushrooms
champions will the while champions, and we we did add
that in there too, So um, that came out really good.
Um yesterday I used the oven method because we went
out crawl fishing, so it was easy. I just I

(01:54:36):
got it. I got the water hot, took it off
the stove, stuck in the oven for two hours while
we were crawl fishing. Came back. So with the ball
down process, once you're done, once you've got it the
ducks tender and the gravy to the consistency, you like,
it's done, it's ready to put it over some rice. Um.
Now with the slow cooker and the oven method. Once

(01:55:00):
I've got the ducks to the tenderness I want, I'm
gonna put it back on the stove and I'm gonna
finish off with the ball down method to ball down
and get that gravy just to the consistency in the
darkness that all light. So then you just let it
rip and boil that water off, cook it down, brown
it a little bit, get it, you know, get that
if it's not if it's because a lot of times
when you when you use a slow cooker in the oven,
your gravy is gonna be a little lighter. Like last night,

(01:55:22):
the gravy was a little a little lighter than I
So you just just roll boil it off there, yeah,
roll roll boil, But you don't want to start too heavy,
especially because then the ducks will fall apart. So you
just want to kind of have brown. Just make sure
nothing sticking down that the word routed. We cook everything
like that just if your days or go up. While

(01:55:44):
we were at the pond, I mentioned to you we
had a campside where we go do two trinadas and
coyotas annoyed. We cooked a rabbit the same way, but
with all the trinity just brown died, kept out of
it over account farm in a black pot, little water,
salt and papa. And when the rabbit got timned it

(01:56:08):
we haved out over rice. Me and my friend Jameson
that was there. We cooked died a couple of times.
So far. We've done a rabbit, swamp rabbits, no raised
farm rabbit, Jason raises rabbits California, something in a New

(01:56:28):
Zealand the huge drabbit. It's pretty good that that cleaning
method I was telling about both the ra pudos and
the ducks actually came from. But but in their family,
that was a trick that they showed me. I used
to my dad, No, I just used to just give
him a real good plug and then we create him
that boiling action. Actually like that boiling action, that's something.

(01:56:53):
And the thing with the with the ra pudos that
that that process. A lot of times like we go
do these coot shoots and where we go out there.
We'll go out there with a whole bunch of us
and we'll shoot. But it was a coot shoot. Man.
He was the one who showed us the coot shoot too.
And we used to go camp out there in high
school in the blind just I got a T shirt,
I got I got them all. I don't know, I
got one shot poor, I got them all some T shirts,

(01:57:20):
uh like Buff. But yeah, there was many times we
had enough people we came back with over a hundred
poudos because a lot of fifteen a day, fifteen per
person per day. We would go out there with a
big group. When he told you how to pull the brass,
the whole brass off, we'd sit there, three or four
of us. Yeah, we we sit there. We make an

(01:57:44):
assembly line. Like one guy was cutting wings, one guy
one or two guys pulling brass, the next guy was
pulling gizzards and hearts, and it was an assembly line.
And like you said, we would we clean a hundred
poutos and we wouldn't hunt like Buff. We had to
have some type of assembly line. Yeah, frogs you, Yeah,

(01:58:05):
we had to have an assembly line. We go, we
go to launch hed lawnch Hed was the cleaning factory.
Was the cleaning fact same thing with ducks. It was
like an assembly line. We had some people plucking, a
guy cutting wings, everybody plucking, someone boiling, someone rubbing, and
that the process would be Remember the episode in Mississippi

(01:58:26):
when the snow hut. That was an assembling line. Yeah,
I mean there were fathers. When we got through, it
looked like it had snowed and that it was windy.
We were plugging, we were we were cutting them feathers
over the snow geese and we're skinning the snows and
plucking the specks. Yeah, it looked like it had snow.

(01:58:46):
In that whole field behind the camp. There was all
the feathers from the s and the ducks. We shot
what we had. We don't know we had ten of us.
We mean we shot we shot like sixty ducks and
like ninety geese. I wanna, um, we're gonna close out,
But I want to share with you guys a recipe
I think you'll be interested in. Already told John paul

(01:59:08):
I wrote it down. The reason you like it is
because it involves ducks, involves rice. But this is from
a northern and our first joint. I didn't know about
any of that. Man, My right sucks compared to you guys. Rice.
The back of my rice bag has been lying to
me my whole life. They tell you in the back
of the bag what I told you. I'm not joking trying.
Oh listen, man, I'm tip of your finger touches the rice.

(01:59:31):
If the waters that this first joint, it's gonna come
out perfect. This man's paused now every single time that
knuckles high, got a high knuckle high. Us should do it.
It's gonna be perfect. Every time I have been when
you I don't know if you've ever read the back
of a rice bag. What they tell you to do

(01:59:52):
is they tell you to do two to one. Yeah,
So you put the parage cup. Yeah, you put the
rice in there. You put the water there and bring
it to boil, and then I cook it till the
water is gone. I cook it till the water is gone.
It just kind of looks right now, let it sit.
Then I fluff it. But my rice sucks compare to
you guys. Right, you kind of you kind of fluff it.

(02:00:12):
I cook it in a pot too. When we're camping
them all rice cook on a pot, the fingers and
when the water is gone, don't fluff your ice. You
just put the cover on and turn the fire just barely.
Like you, you try to mimic what the rice cooker

(02:00:35):
is doing. He knows what I'm talking about. You. Yeah,
you just turn it down, lo lo lo. I leave
it a few minutes, and when you open that rice pot,
it's gonna be perfect. Let me tell you real quick, though,
what I what I made the other day that I
thought was good, like phenomenally good? Is I cook? I
cook my ducks in a what you guys call a

(02:00:57):
black pot like cathline scale. So I got my halves.
I sear hum skin side down. This is the way
I eat the ducks. I e. I sear the half
just like Ryan described. I steer the half skin side
down on the on the stove top. I flip it
skin side up and put in a four degree of

(02:01:17):
and for a few minutes I eat him very rare.
When you pull them out, you got all that duck
fat that rendered out in that skillet. Then I took
old rice that I had cooked the day before and
make like a fried rice, duck fat fried rice. That
sounds good. Man, Come on talking to a real Cajun

(02:01:44):
restaurant near you. When I come down and get my restaurant,
the real Cajun, I had that rice dressing, and we're
gonna have that fried rice, and every table's gonna have
a tank with sauce coumbing up. You know, there's not
even gonna be a sign. You'll know it's the right
restaurant when you see a reservoir of hot sauce bolted

(02:02:07):
to the roof. It's like the water the Gallean of
water Towns eighteen wheeler coming from every all and every
week bringing a hot sauce. Alright, guys, this has been
a great trip. Man. I learned so much about cooking
down here, a lot about cooking. I really appreciate it.

(02:02:27):
And but I appreciate your generosity yesterday letting us go
over and pull the harvest off your pond. Actually, it
wasn't honor for me to have y'all hears on your faces,
and y'all look like y'all had a good time, So
I mean, that's all that matters. It was a great time.
And Ronnie Collins, thank you for everything showing us all
around Johan Paul, all the great cooking stuff, all the

(02:02:50):
hanging out, all the corrections. I was waiting for some
sorry listen man. It made it uh having the uh
you know, all the context, the culinary context was very helpful.
I'm only teasing about the like, yeah, uh, everything I

(02:03:14):
learned about Buddin and what isn't it isn't. I appreciate
all that stuff. Thank you, do you do until next episode?
Thanks everybody,

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