The MeatEater

If Doug Duren placed historical markers on his family’s farm in southwestern Wisconsin, one would mark the car crash that killed his brother Matt in January 1995, and the other would show the log landing where a chainsaw nearly killed his father, Vince, in April 1991.

Matt died near the farm’s driveway on State Highway 58 in the Driftless Area, and Vince dodged death across the road from there, just past the unnamed creek that flows north toward Cazenovia. Doug points out both sites from the farmhouse uphill. Heck, he could easily throw a baseball to Matt’s site, and in his prime, could bounce a good throw to Vince’s log landing.

Ever since Vince’s chainsaw accident there, Doug can’t park anywhere without considering his dad’s close call. Vince served his community as a volunteer firefighter and fire chief, and started the area’s EMT service. To ensure he stayed ready to roll, Vince always backed into his parking spots, pointing his cars and trucks at the nearest road.

Always.

His kids did the same and still do. No questions asked. They nicknamed their father “Power,” after all.

And nearly a decade after Power died at age 92, Doug still uses sarcasm and rolling eyes to urge friends and visitors to show similar respect when parking at the farm to hunt or work. Most learn and quickly comply. By their second visit, they’re all backing in to park, pointing their vehicles nose-out and ready.

Besides paying tribute to Vince, nose-out parking also hedges against accidents, fatal or crippling. Farming and hazards share long histories. Tractors still upend on sidehills, machinery still gobbles arms and legs, rolled haybales still crush full-size men, and protective cows still squash owners who get between them and their calves.

Vince constantly warned his six kids how fast farms can turn deadly, snapping his fingers for emphasis before warning, “Be ready for it!”

But being ready is easier some days than others, and with some tools, too. When Doug picks up a chainsaw, he knows he’s holding dynamite once the chain starts flying around the bar. He can’t forget his father’s complacent moments at the log landing.

“My dad was there to cut firewood,” Doug said. “He backed his truck up to some logs and parked with his nose facing the road. But after that, he did a lot of things wrong. He was by himself, he was in his mid-60s, it was late in the day, he was already tired, he wasn’t wearing safety gear, and he was using a bigger chainsaw than he needed. It was a 450 Homelite, the worst chainsaw ever made. It didn’t have a chain-brake or any other safety features, but it had a brand new, really sharp chain.

“The logs were scattered everywhere, too little for lumber but OK for firewood,” Duren continued, “They were the butt-ends, all tangled up and lying close together. As Dad cut through one log, the chainsaw tip hit a log on the other side, and the saw kicked back. He was leaning forward a little too much, so he couldn’t control the kickback. The saw hit his chest and cut him, stem to stern. It sliced his ribs and cut through his collarbone before the chain got snagged in his Carhart vest.

“He dropped the saw and started doing his EMT checks. He pulls his handkerchief from his pocket and stuffs it into his wound. He’s in bad, bad trouble. He hops into his truck and drives himself with one arm to Cazenovia. He turns the corner into the center of town and walks into Doug’s Pub. He’s bleeding all over the floor and says, ‘Somebody get me an ambulance and a beer.’ Two guys at the bar are EMTs he helped train, so they call an ambulance and get him ready for the 12-mile drive to the Reedsburg hospital.”

Doug pauses, anticipating that listeners might wonder if he’s stretching things a bit. Well, yes and no.

First, Vince never made it inside Doug’s Pub, and so he never asked for “an ambulance and a beer.” That’s just how Doug and his family like telling the story, and probably what Vince would have said if conscious. But when Vince drove into Caz’s Main Street intersection that day, he was about bled out. He stopped his truck, laid on the horn, and passed out; his blood pooling and covering everything.

Second, two EMTs who Vince trained were at the bar, and they helped save him.

“Remember, this is Caz, it’s 1991, and it’s rural Wisconsin,” Doug said. “Seven years earlier, when I was teaching school in New Hampshire, I bet everyone in the teachers’ lounge that I knew who was sitting at Doug’s Pub in Caz right then, at that moment. No one had cell phones in 1984, but those teachers got on a school phone and called the bar to fact-check me. We agreed I’d win the bet if two of the five people I named were at the bar. When they reached the fourth name, I won.”

Then Doug continued: “So anyway, the two EMTs get Dad into the ambulance, and the Reedsburg staff stabilizes him and loads him into a helicopter for Madison’s University Hospital. As they flew off, one of the EMTs was sure Dad was a dead man.

“I was living in Door County by 1991, and so I started driving for Madison. When I arrived three hours later, he was out of surgery but still in the ICU. It’s now late at night, and the only one with Dad is my Uncle Ryne, Dad’s brother, the former New York Yankees pitcher. My uncle’s sitting there, glasses slid down his nose, cheating at a crossword puzzle, as usual. I look at him and ask, ‘Is he …’ and my uncle says, ‘Yeah, he’ll make it. He’s a tough ol’ bird.’

“And so I walk over, put a hand on Dad’s hand and say, ‘Hey!’ He kind of grunts and looks up with one eye. He’s all groggy, but when he recognizes me, he doesn’t say a word. He just snaps his fingers on his other hand. I knew what he meant: ‘Stuff on a farm; it happens like that!’

“My dad would’ve died if he hadn’t parked his truck facing out,” Doug continued. “That landing was an obstacle course of logs and firewood. He couldn’t have backed out of that mess with mirrors, and he couldn’t look over his shoulder. And thank god that truck had an automatic transmission. Standard transmissions were still common then, especially in trucks.”

Meanwhile, sometime earlier that day, before dark, Vince’s youngest kid, Matthew, drove down to the farm to retrieve whatever gear Vince left at the log landing. As Matt neared the fresh firewood and sawdust strips, he heard a familiar grumbling.

That old 450 Homelite was still idling, its oily 2-cycle smoke wafting downwind, with frayed fabrics of Vince’s Carhartt vest twisted through its teeth.

Feature image via Matthew Jefko. Hunters and other visitors to Doug Duren’s farm in Richland County quickly learn to back their vehicles into parking spots, a silent tribute to the late Vince Duren, the family’s patriarch.

This past winter, a Minnesota sheriff allegedly overstepped his bounds by issuing an “elk possession tag” to a farmer who shot and killed an elk after elk herds had damaged his crops and feed. A case report from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) obtained by MeatEater explains the situation.

On January 10, Carl Christopherson complained to Kittson County Sheriff Matt Vig about elk eating hay, beet pulp, and seeded crops on his farm. Christopherson said he’s been chasing the elk off his land, but they keep returning; he’s even had to start growing his alfalfa crop several miles away.

“I informed Carl that he should have the right to protect his property from animals,” Vig wrote. “I told Carl that shooting an elk may be an option to protect his property from damages.”

On January 31, Christopherson notified Vig that he shot and killed one of about 15 elk that were in his yard eating beet pulp meant for his cattle, while another 40 or so elk were munching on his hay bales.

“Carl said he was frustrated and upset,” Vig wrote. “He grabbed his .223 rifle, opened up his kitchen window, and shot one of several elk that were walking by his house. He shot the elk in the head, which died on impact.”

Vig told Christopherson he could keep the elk and process it without concern of being charged with a crime. On February 3, Vig gave Christopherson an “elk possession tag,” which he claimed gave Christopherson the legal right to possess the illegally taken elk.

But here’s the hitch: the DNR is the only entity in the state with the authority to issue possession, take, or hunting permits for wildlife. The elk-possession permit issued by the sheriff was not authorized or issued by the DNR and, therefore, was not a legal permit.

Minnesota's elk population is small only consisting of a few hundred animals in three primary herds in the northwest portion of the state. While tags are available, the total harvest in the Land of 10,000 Lakes is generally only between five and 20 elk annually. With such a small population, poaching in any form poses a significant threat to the viability of the state’s elk herds.

Neither Sheriff Vig nor Christopherson reported the taking of the elk to the DNR. In fact, the DNR was not made aware of the situation until April.

The DNR may authorize tags for licensed hunters to take nuisance elk, but the sheriff’s department does not hold the same legal authority to do so. So, the DNR has filed a lawsuit seeking an injunction against the Kittson County Sheriff to prohibit such action in the future.

Essentially, the lawsuit asks a judge to declare that sheriffs do not have the authority to issue permits or tags for the taking or possession of wild animals and instruct them to refrain from doing so in the future.

As for Christopherson, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension conducted a criminal investigation and submitted a recommendation to Kittson County Attorney Robert Albrecht. It will be up to Albrecht to decide if he wants to pursue charges against the farmer.

Farmers and ranchers are by no means left hanging by the state regarding elk damage. In addition to the DNR’s ability to give tags for nuisance elk, the state also administers a program through the Minnesota Department of Agriculture that can provide grants to farmers who suffer crop damage from elk.

Feature image via Adobe Stock.

This week, Cal talks about how to win a fight with a mountain lion, why an African lion named "Blondie" is making the news, and how to get cancer from shooting a shotgun.

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Steven Rinella talks with Kevin Monteith and Randall Williams.

Topics Discussed: The Monteith Shop; Hornography and how we’re gonna make a t-shirt; bad winters; die offs; what impacts horn size and how healthy mamas birth big bucks; what’s going on in the Wyoming range; and more.

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Well, this is strange: blue meat has been turning up in wild hogs killed in California.

Dan Burton, the owner and operator of Urban Trapping Wildlife Control, first noticed the unusual tissue in feral pigs back in March, when he began trapping the hogs on a commercial farm in Monterey County, a known hot spot for non-native wild hogs in the state. The property was on the edge of the Salinas River, and the pigs entered the ag field from the riparian habitat.

Burton donates meat from the pigs he traps under depredation permits. But as he was cutting some of these pigs open, he noticed something was amiss. “The fatty tissue was a fluorescent blue,” he told MeatEater. “It reminded me of a slushy blue. It was very obvious something was wrong with this animal.”

Burton reported the incident to a local California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) biologist, who told him it was likely that the pig had ingested rodenticide poison and to let him know if he found more strange-colored pig meat. Burton, unfortunately, did. Regularly.

“I started going out at night to see what these hogs were doing,” he said. “At this point, I had started seeing ground squirrel bait stations knocked over. Sure enough, we saw these hogs come in off the Salinas River. They were specifically targeting these ground squirrel bait stations. They would circle them and hit them with the bridges of their noses. And they were trying to knock it off the fence.”

“They were just beating the heck out of these bait stations, knocking the poison out,” he adds. “And then they were fighting over this ground squirrel poison. When they got done, they would beeline it to the next one.”

Burton spotlighted the hogs and shot several of them. He submitted the tissue from one of them to CDFW, and unsurprisingly, it tested positive for rodenticide bait, particularly the anticoagulant rodenticide diphacinone. Anticoagulant poisons disrupt blood clotting in animals that consume them.

“The ground squirrel traps had oats covered in the blue poison,” says Burton. “I don't know if the hogs had become almost addicted to the rodenticide or if they were just hooked on the oats. Pigs don’t really go crazy for just general oats… that makes me think that they kind of got a taste for this rodenticide.”

In July, CDFW issued a press release warning hunters and the general public to keep a lookout for contaminated meat in pigs and other wildlife, particularly near urban areas and ag operations.

“Hunters should be aware that the meat of game animals, such as wild pig, deer, bear, and geese, might be contaminated if that game animal has been exposed to rodenticides,” said CDFW Pesticide Investigations Coordinator Dr. Ryan Bourbour. “Rodenticide exposure can be a concern for non-target wildlife in areas where applications occur in close proximity to wildlife habitat.”

In the meantime, Burton finished trapping the property with the contaminated pigs by the end of May. The farm also installed more tamper-resistant ground squirrel bait traps. CDFW information officer Krysten Kellum told MeatEater that, despite Burton’s observations, the agency has not had any indications that there’s a wider issue with feral pigs targeting bait traps.

“We haven’t had any additional reports since that occurrence in March, but it depends on people reporting it to us,” she said. “That’s why we’re asking wildlife trappers and hunters to report abnormalities in wildlife. We need people’s help to track this.”

Past research has shown that wildlife in California can be exposed at significant rates to poisons. In fact, a 2018 scientific study there showed significant exposure to rodenticides among the state’s big game populations. The results were particularly shocking for wild pigs and black bears that frequented agricultural and residential areas where rodenticides are common, with 8.3% of wild hogs and a whopping 83% of bruins testing positive for them. Thankfully, the poisons were not detected in any mule deer from the sample.

The agency is urging landowners to be diligent about not exposing wildlife to rat poisons by using appropriate bait stations and taking other steps to ensure that wildlife other than rodents aren’t using areas where they apply pesticides. “We’re definitely taking this very seriously and looking into ways to spread the word and inform the public,” Kellum said.

One man's trash is another man's treasure. Finders keepers, losers weepers. Both of these phrases describe fortune and misfortune depending on how you view the discarded, lost, or found item. Brent shares a crazy story of a found item from 40 years ago that sat neglected in a box until he found it again and learned its historical significance. A rare duck call whose value can't be measured by money alone. You're gonna like this one. It's time for MeatEater's "This Country Life" podcast. 

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Hosts Spencer Neuharth, Ryan Callaghan, and Randall Williams chat with Bryan Jones of the South Carolina Shrimper's Association about seafood fraud, talk gear, hold a crew v. crew round of Hot Tip-Off presented by MTN OPS, root for Cory in 1-Minute Fishing, and sniff out some fake news.

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August might as well be "drive around and look at deer" month. The long, warm evenings are the perfect time to hop in the truck, roll the windows down, and start scanning the fields with your hunting buddy or a good dog riding shotgun. Maybe the kids tag along and point out every cow like it might sprout antlers. Either way, you can coast by fields and glass for those velvet antlers in the golden hour.

For a lot of folks, driving and glassing is a way to scratch the deer-hunting itch until opening day. But done right, it’s more than a drive. It’s a low-impact, high-reward way to scout late-summer deer. So if you’re looking to scratch that itch, here are a few ways to make those evening drives actually count.

Some folks might say driving around to look at deer is about as outdated as a .30-30. Quaint, even laughable, in the age of cellular trail cameras and mapping apps. But I still kill deer every season with my grandfather’s Winchester ‘94. Sure, I’ve got access to flashier, faster rifles. But that old lever gun just works. And just like Grandpa’s rifle, a slow evening drive still gets the job done.

For one, glassing from the truck doesn’t pressure your spots. You won’t bump deer or stink up a field edge. Instead, you watch from a distance, which means the deer are usually relaxed and unbothered, especially on this side of hunting season.

Modern trail cams can text you a picture of a buck the second he walks by, but even the best camera only sees what’s right in front of it. You're limited by where you stick it, what it’s pointed at, and how many you can afford before your cell plan starts looking like a mortgage.

But glassing from the truck gives a wide-angle view of deer behavior. In ag country, that means from the right spot, you can see an entire field. You see where they come in, where they leave, how long they hang around, who bullies who, and which one disappears the second the wind shifts.

After a few nights, you start to notice patterns: which corners the bucks like, which edges show the most activity, and which fields stay quiet. That’s the kind of pattern recognition you can’t just phone in.

Evenings are typically the best time to glass from the road. Late-summer bucks feel most comfortable stepping out into the open around the last 90 minutes of daylight. Thanks to long summer hours, this should give you plenty of time after work or dinner to hit a few spots. You don’t have to cover the whole county. You just need to be in the right places at the right times.

Late summer is like a buffet line for whitetails, and they’re big-time thinking with their stomachs. As the heat of the day fades into evening, deer head for food, and that’s where you want to be watching. Look for beans, clover, alfalfa, hay, almost anything green and lush, especially if it’s away from human traffic.

Hot spots are edges near thickets, overgrown fence rows, thin strips of timber, and crops tucked behind a tree line. Focus on areas with a good range of visibility, especially where you don’t have to stop evening traffic. You don’t want to be the jerk who blocks the road with his hazard lights on while he whips out the spotting scope. Instead, strategize your stops for easy pull-offs, tractor entrances, or along roads with wide shoulders.

Once you’ve mapped out a loop, make sure your approach doesn’t blow the whole evening. Coast in quiet if you can. Don’t slam the door (seriously, it still needs to be said). Bring good glass. You can use a solid pair of binoculars or a spotting scope to pick out antlers without ever setting foot in the field.

It’s easy to get tunnel vision when a big velvet buck steps into a field, but if you want your scouting to count, you’ve got to zoom out.

Watch how deer enter and exit. Are they slipping through a low spot in the fence? Following a ditch line or hugging a brushy corner? Those entry points are often their exit routes, too.

Take note of timing. Are deer showing up 10 minutes before sunset? Thirty? Velvet bucks tend to be habitual. If they feel safe, they’ll keep using the same routes at roughly the same time.

Watch how long they feed and where they hang out. Are they deep in the beans or lingering near cover? If you spot a bachelor group, study their behavior. Who’s cautious? Who’s cocky? These dynamics matter once it’s time to hang a set.

And don’t overlook does. If the field looks jittery, ears twitching, fawns stiff-stepping, glances darting to the treeline, something’s off. That could be coyotes, trail cam traffic, or another hunter making loops. Jumpy deer in August means you’re probably not the only one watching this spot.

It’s not flashy intel, and it won’t show up on your map app. But knowing where the pressure isn’t can be just as useful as knowing where the bucks are.

So take notes. Seriously. Whether it’s a field journal, a voice memo, or a crumpled napkin, jot it down. Patterns emerge fast when you’re paying attention. And those patterns are how opening day plans take shape.

Seeing a buck step into a field is great, but watching the arrow disappear behind its shoulder is even better.

Once you observe where deer enter and exit, drop pins, outline trails, and use satellite maps to backtrack their likely travel routes. Look for things like low spots, ditches, and benches that bucks may be using to get from bed to feed without being seen.

Then figure out how you can get close without blowing it. That might mean a stand 40 yards off the field on the downwind side of a staging area. Or maybe it’s a quiet sneak along a creek bottom to hunt the backdoor trail no one else is watching. Either way, don’t rush in. Early-season deer are patternable, at least until they’re not. You don’t want to be the thing that blows that pattern because you hung your stand in the first good tree.

If you’ve seen the same buck enter the same field at the same time for three nights straight, and the conditions line up, go for it. But one sighting at last light isn’t enough to hang a stand on. Keep watching and taking notes until you build a pattern.

Driving and glassing in late summer might feel like a throwback, but if you’re paying attention, it can shape your entire early-season plan. You don’t need a dozen cameras or a PhD in deer movement. A tank of gas, good binos, and a few quiet evenings will do just fine.

"In Pursuit" is your definitive guide to fitness and performance in the wild. Hosted by Rich Froning—four-time CrossFit Games champion and founder of CrossFit Mayhem—this show goes beyond the hunt, diving into what drives us to test our limits in the backcountry and beyond. Each episode features raw, wide-ranging conversations with athletes, hunters, doctors, and thought leaders—from the gym to the lab to the wilderness—connecting the grit of mountain hunting to the pursuit of something deeper: purpose, resilience, and human potential in the wild.

Tune in for Episode 1 with Kip Fulks on Thursday, August 14th.

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In this episode, Jason sits down with CrossFit legend, Rich Froning, to dive deep into the mental and physical toughness it takes to succeed, not just in the gym, but in the mountains. Rich opens up about his passion for hunting, what drew him to it, and how it’s challenged him in ways he didn’t expect. They explore how the intensity of elite fitness compares to the patience and grit required in the backcountry, what training really matters when you're preparing for a hunt, and how to stay disciplined when life’s full of competing priorities. From workouts and recovery to mindset and motivation, this conversation is about pushing limits, building resilience, and finding growth through discomfort, whether you’re on the trail or under a heavy barbell. If you're serious about becoming a tougher, more capable version of yourself, in the field and beyond, you won’t want to miss this one.

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