The MeatEater

This week on the show I’m joined by Kent Boucher and Nicolas Lirio of Hoksey Native Seeds and The Prairie Farm Podcast, to explore exactly why native prairie is so important for whitetail deer and other species that hunters pursue and benefit from - and how we can help get more of this habitat on the ground.

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Join Rich Froning and the Mayhem hunt team as they dive into all things happening at Mayhem Hunt. From a brewing 5K grudge match and Ironman training to a 24-hour trail relay, fitness is front and center as always. The crew recaps their whirlwind trip through the NWTF Convention and Western Hunt Expo, where new connections were made and new hunts potentially landed on the calendar. They tease an exciting fall lineup that includes archery antelope, elk, mule deer, and a backcountry spring bear hunt that's equal parts exciting and uncertain.

The big news? Hunt Camp is coming. Rich and the team break down their vision for an intimate beginner-to-intermediate Western hunting experience set in the Colorado mountains. Think full bow setups, glassing breakouts, pack skills, rucking, and plenty of campfire time. Whether you've never been out West or just want to tighten up your game, this episode gives you a first look at what to expect.

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Calling contests or video tutorials can help you learn how to make realistic turkey sounds. But, if you want to know why and when to make those calls, you should get it straight from the horse’s mouth. Especially if that horse is a turkey.

A crisp, realistic calling ability is a great tool to have in your bag, but knowing how to use those tools makes the difference. The more you put yourself around turkeys, the more opportunities you can observe them acting and reacting in various situations. In fact, they can even bust a few calling or hunting myths that have somehow become gospel truth.

Next time you observe turkeys in the field, try to forget about beard lengths or punched tags and make note of how they act, the sounds they make, and consider why they might behave in certain ways. It pays to observe, and these are just a few things you can learn from watching turkeys in the wild.

A lot of hunters want to know how much calling is enough or too much. The truth is, it depends on the bird and situation. As much as I hate that answer, there’s no way around it.

When it doubt, it’s probably best to call less. I’ve killed some turkeys that I called to sparingly over the course of several hours, while some came running in after only a few series of yelps. I recently observed the latter while scouting. I watched a hen scratch around within 100 yards of my observation spot while a longbeard gobbled his head off a few hundred yards down the river bottom. Finally, that hen let out eight (yes, I counted them) yelps and went back to scratching. Ten minutes later that tom popped out of the river cane. Eight yelps were all it took for that gobbler to cover a few hundred yards.

No, it doesn’t work like that every time, but that’s the fun and challenging part of turkey hunting. You have to relearn how to call to a gobbler each time. It makes the stubborn birds rewarding and the enthusiastic ones super fun.

You don’t have to be a grand national champion to call turkeys. Does it help? Sure. But, I think this point gets overblown most of the time (with a caveat). You can’t just scratch out any old sound and expect your calls to be effective. However, you don’t have to make perfect turkey sounds to call a gobbler into shotgun range. Hens can teach you that.

A lot of hunters, myself included, have watched hens make “bad” calls. I’ve heard a few that I would have sworn were other hunters choking on a mouth call, only to be surprised when a real hen emerged.

Believe it or not, not all turkeys sound the same. In fact, that’s why sounding like multiple hens can be an effective way to break a stubborn gobbler. I’m not the greatest caller in the world, but my calling is miles ahead of where it was when I first started turkey hunting. But, even then, I killed plenty of birds with subpar calling. Instead of trying to perfect sound, focus on cadence, especially yelping. Once you can mimic a hen’s cadence, then you can work on perfecting your sound.

Turkey hunt long enough, and you’ll have a hang-up story. Gobblers are notorious for sometimes refusing to cross creeks, fences, thickets, or whatever else sets them on edge. I once had a pair of longbeards that came running to my calls—over an embankment and through a fence—before they made a dead stop in front of a large clump of vines. They refused to walk around it as I watched them make a 180 and go back the way they came. In these instances, no amount of calling will convince that gobbler to close the distance.

Have enough of these encounters, and you’ll learn to avoid them before you set up. Sometimes you’re limited on where you can post up, but you should still try to anticipate any potential roadblocks between a turkey’s path of travel and you. If you can, make sure you’re on the same side of the fence (legally) or creek as the gobbler. Avoid putting any super-thick vegetation between you and a turkey. A clump of brush is one thing, but I wouldn’t bet on a turkey wading through an old fence row or privet thicket.

Turkey hunting rewards the patient. Whether you’re waiting for the silent tom to pop into shotgun range or you’re grinding out tough hunts in the late season, things tend to break favorably for those who slow down in the turkey woods.

Spencer Neuharth hosts Round 2 of Championship MeatEater Trivia with Steven Rinella, Janis Putelis, Brody Henderson, Randall Williams, Seth Morris, and Cory Calkins.

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On this episode of the Bear Grease podcast, host Clay Newcomb along with Bear Newcomb and Josh “Landbridge” Spielmaker are joined by Bear Grease featured cousins Caylon and Cody Villines, as well as Waylon Villines. The Villines family has been logging Newton County, Arkansas, for generations, and they’ve got the stories to prove it. Join us as we talk about Ozark heritage, the transition from old-school timbering to the modern era, and the grit it takes to remain a woodsman in the 21st century.

Thank you to our sponsor, Tecovas.

If you have comments on the show, send us a note to [email protected]

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Almost every outdoor activity has its own upper tier. A black belt level test that outdoorsfolk take up to challenge themselves in hopes of finding out how far they can push their passion. For hikers, it can be a particularly rough or long trail. For hunters, it can be pursuing a difficult species like Dall sheep or harvesting a trophy-sized specimen of their favorite species.

Anglers try to master challenging fishing methods like Spey casting or pursue rare or difficult-to-catch species like permit. In fact, it seems like almost every outdoor pursuit has its own boss level, but there’s probably none harder than in the world of ice fishing.

When it comes down to it, just going ice fishing is challenging enough for most of us. Having to get all the equipment together, find the right spot, and then drill holes through what can be more than a foot of ice, all in brutally cold conditions, can push the average angler to their very limit.

If you’re a true fur hat-wearing, transducer-marking, diehard ice warrior looking for the pinnacle of frosty frustration, there’s no better way to test yourself than by catching one of these five fish species through the ice.

Ice angling for muskie is a whole new level of madness. Known as “the fish of 10,000” casts by gear and fly anglers, trying to get one of these finicky, toothy predators to grab a jig or eat a bait beneath a tip-up without the benefit of being able to cover water is borderline masochistic. But, it can be done.

While it’s extremely limited as muskie are considered a prize game fish with only a few states and Canadian provinces even allowing the pursuit during winter, there are a few dedicated Esox anglers out there that enjoy the challenge of catching muskie through the ice. Relying heavily on electronics that allow them to both find the right structure along the bottom as well as the fish themselves, ice angling for muskie is all about being in the right place at the right time.

Typically, muskie spend the bulk of the winter roving in and out of shallow water as they hunt for prey like suckers and panfish. The fish will hold and rest in the mornings and evenings in deeper, slightly warmer water that’s usually between 10 and 15 feet deep. However, when air temperatures rise in the afternoon, muskie will gradually move into shallower water, between eight and 12 feet deep, especially where there’s growing vegetation and/or other structure like brush piles and sunken logs to attract baitfish.

To catch muskie through the ice, you have to set up in these shallower areas using tip-ups baited with extremely large dead baits or by jigging with heavy-action rods and extremely large lures like Bull Dawgs and Magnum Spoons to tempt the fish. However, with muskie feeding only once or twice a day and roaming over large areas of water as they hunt, success often comes only after hours, and even days, of concentrated, dedicated fishing. This makes those who land muskie through the ice consistently true masters of the art.

Believe it or not, you can catch steelhead through the ice. Though the practice is mostly done on the Great Lakes and not on the West Coast, meaning that many anglers don’t consider the large migratory rainbow trout that ice anglers pursue to be true steelhead. But that doesn’t make catching them any less challenging.

The fact is that the “steelhead” of the Great Lakes are every bit as difficult to catch as their Pacific cousins. The fish are finicky eaters that rarely feed during the winter, relying on fat reserves stored from the summer to get them through the cold season. This means that ice anglers who want to catch them must get creative to be successful.

Ice anglers fishing for steelhead target them on the thicker ice around river mouths where the fish are migrating. Setting up in back harbors and bays, they try to catch the fish both before and after their upstream spawning runs. Most set up in shallower water, between three and 15 feet deep, specifically on sandy flats and rocky shorelines immediately adjacent to the mouth of the river, where steelhead will move into to rest as they prepare or recover from spawning.

Being so close to the moving water of the river can make ice fishing tricky and downright dangerous, as thin spots can be prevalent, so be sure to thoroughly check and test the thickness of the ice anytime you have steelhead in mind.

As the fish rarely, if ever, feed during the winter, ice anglers after steelhead generally won’t have much luck on live bait like minnows. Instead, you’ve got to use lures that incite aggression in the fish, such as flashy jigging spoons like the Swedish Pimple or gaudily colored lures that create a lot of action like the Jigging Rap. Lures like these will both attract the attention of and trigger steelhead to grab. As steelhead and all other salmonids will eat fish eggs out of both hunger and instinctual response, egg sacs and lures that imitate eggs can also be incredibly effective, especially under tip-ups.

Getting a steelhead to strike is often only half the battle, as they are among the hardest-fighting fish in freshwater. Known for their powerful, drag-burning runs, you want to ice fish for steelhead with heavy-duty equipment. Your jigging rods should be at least medium action and equipped with a reel that has a reliable and adjustable drag.

Lines for steelhead should be between 12- and 25-pound test and made of fluorocarbon, which is both low-stretch and nearly invisible beneath the water, doubling your chances at fooling the finicky fish. When you hook a steelhead beneath the ice, every ounce of your fish-fighting skill is sure to be tested, and when it comes down to it, it's all part of both the challenge and the fun.

When you think of going catfishing, most of us think of sitting on the bank on warm summer days or muggy, star-filled nights as we soak baits on the bottom of muddy rivers and warm, weedy lakes. What many anglers don’t know is that these same good times can also be had during the winter by going ice fishing for catfish. However, landing these notoriously warm water-loving fish through the ice can be extremely difficult.

During the winter, catfish metabolisms slow down to a complete crawl. In cold water, even normally aggressive species like flatheads become sluggish and uncooperative, locking themselves to the bottom and feeding on only the easiest and most tempting targets. To catch them, you often have to dedicate yourself to a long day on the hardwater without a lot of action, but when you do get a strike from hungry winter catfish, it will usually be a fish large enough to make your patience worth it.

Winter catfish usually congregate in only one or two areas of a lake, pond, or reservoir, making finding them on the ice the first and often hardest part. Electronics can be extremely helpful in finding the bottom-hugging fish. However, if you don’t have any electronic help, you can find fish by fishing in the deepest areas of the shallowest water you can find.

Generally, winter cats won’t hold in water deeper than 40 feet, with the bulk gathering in 15 to 30 feet of water. Using a bathymetric map or a bottom mapping app, try to locate the deepest spot of water in this depth range, paying particular attention to any underwater structure or shelves, and you’re sure to find some cold-water kitties.

While baits for catfish in summer can vary, from cut baits and stink baits to live minnows, the best baits for winter catfish are the oiliest, smelliest things you can find. A winter catfish’s sluggish feeding habits mean that the more scent you can put in the water, the better. So chunks of cut bait from oily fish like roach and suckers, and even store-bought herring or anchovies are at the top of the menu.

Strikes from winter cats can be extremely subtle, so you’ll want to use light-action jigging rods and tip-ups set on a hair trigger to catch the fish. For nothing is worse than spending all that time freezing your butt off trying to find a catfish and then missing your chance when it comes.

Lake Trout are notoriously difficult to catch through the ice for two reasons. First and foremost is because of their size. Lakers can weigh upwards of 50 pounds, making them quite a tussle on average ice fishing gear. The second is the depth that lakers live in for most of the winter. Though they will occasionally come as shallow as 10 feet, for the most part, lake trout are only found in depths between 25 and 85 feet of water. This makes the fish extremely challenging to both find and catch through the ice, as there can be a lot of fishless water between the ice angler and their bait.

Lake trout are constantly hunting during the winter, moving from shallower to deeper water and vice versa as they look for baitfish. Generally, smaller lake trout will hunt in packs, herding and devouring minnows and even small panfish like perch and bluegill as they cruise to and from shallow water. However, larger lake trout tend to be loners and travel alone or in pairs as they target larger prey, such as burbot and even other trout.

This constant movement in and out of deep water means that you have to target lakers in transition areas within their depth range. Using electronics or a bathymetric map, look for spots with sharp drop-offs where the water rapidly goes from 20 feet to 60 feet or more within 20 to 40 yards. These transition zones are where lakers are most likely to travel as they move from deeper to shallower water and back again, creating ideal pinch points for both jigging and tip-up fishing. Ideally, you’ll want to drill several holes at different depths along these areas in a sort of zig-zag pattern, which will help to ensure that you cover the lakers’ entire transition area.

As lakers are considered to be the apex predator in most waterways they inhabit, your best bet for catching them is by using large, gaudy baits that create a lot of movement and draw a lot of attention. For jig fishing, large spoons can be effective, but often heavy jig hooks tipped with large soft plastic lures like a Hogy or a Octogambo Grub are a better bet.

If you’re fishing with bait, choose something meaty enough to get their attention, such as a large three- to five-inch gold shiner, a six- to seven-inch sucker, or even (where legal) a large eight-inch plus gamefish like a bluegill, trout, or whitefish. Lakers are definitely disciples of the big baits catch big fish rule, so you want to make sure the lake trout you hook into is big enough to make it worth all the effort.

While they may be an odd choice as many anglers consider them to be a trash fish, whitefish are actually one of the finest eating, hardest fighting, and most difficult to catch ice fishing targets out there. Like lake trout, whitefish prefer to hunt and live in extremely deep water between 50 and 80 feet. Unlike lakers, finding whitefish in these depths can be a complete crapshoot, as roving schools of whiteys can be found at any depth. Sometimes they hug the bottom, and other times they suspend themselves 20 to 40 feet above it. This makes them easily one of the most difficult fish to find and catch consistently through the ice.

Electronics like forward-facing sonar and flashers are almost a requirement when you’re ice fishing for whitefish. With no consistent holding pattern and their habit of living and feeding at unpredictable depths, without the aid of electronics to help you see what’s swimming below you, you’re fishing completely blind. Target areas of extremely deep water with flat, featureless bottoms and then drill several prospect holes between 10 and 20 yards apart. Then, using your electronics, start searching the water at five- to 10-foot intervals, working all the way down to the bottom until you start marking fish.

Once you manage to find some whiteys, the next challenge is figuring out how to get them to bite. Living on a diet of tiny invertebrates such as insect nymphs and zooplankton, it’s almost impossible to “match the hatch” for whitefish as there are very few ice fishing baits and lures small enough to tickle their fancy. However, you can get whitefish to strike lures out of curiosity and even aggression, so long as you fish the right lures with the right methods at the right depths.

Using light action to medium action to heavy action jigging rods with heavy braided lines that will sink fast, tipped with long, five- to eight-pound test fluorocarbon leaders that will fool the fish, you have to jig for whitefish according to how they’re behaving. If the fish are suspended off the bottom and not moving around much, you have to jig right in front of their noses and tempt them into striking.

Start by lowering a small but brightly colored lure, such as a Jigging Rap or a Williams Whitefish Spoon, down to the fish’s level. Then, point your rod tip into the hole and lift it vertically, letting it fall back down with controlled slack. This slow, methodical finesse technique will often trigger even inactive whitefish to strike, especially when the fish are suspended off the bottom.

If you find whitefish hugging the bottom, then your best bet to catch them is by “mud pounding.” This involves lowering a small but heavy lure, like a War Eagle Spoon or Clam Drop Jig, down to the bottom. Once it hits the dirt, start rapidly jigging the lure against the bottom, stirring up the mud and simulating a school of feeding whitefish. If they’re holding near the bottom, they’re likely to move in to see what all the commotion is before striking at the lure, hoping to steal a meal.

While both methods of jigging can be hit or miss, and finding the fish can be a major problem, it’s all part of the puzzle of catching whitefish through the ice—one that some ice anglers are determined to solve.

As previously mentioned, ice fishing can be tough enough on its own, even when it’s as simple as going out and drilling a couple of holes to see what you can find. At the same time, there are a lot of master ice anglers out there who find that going out to fill a bucket with panfish, perch, and walleye isn’t worth their time.

These are the ice anglers who want to push themselves to the limit and find out what they’re really made of, and the ones who know that bragging rights and a certain amount of glory can only be found by catching challenging species through a hole in the ice.

Feature image via Andrew Walker.

This week, Tony breaks down some of the biggest e-scouting mistakes hunters make, and how that can hurt their chances whether they hunt private or public land.

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Can you knock down a moose with a .22? The answer is “yes”—but it takes about 15 bullets. Just ask Shawn Tuffnell, of Stoughton, Saskatchewan.

On January 22, Shawn was going about his morning after having spent the night at his mother’s house when he heard her screams coming from outside. Angie had ventured out to warm up her vehicle and encountered a moose tucked against the house’s dryer vent for reprieve from the numbing -40 wind chill.

Shawn sprinted outside and found the moose standing overtop his screaming mother. From a picture on Facebook (warning: it’s graphic), the animal appears to be a medium-sized bull whose antlers had already shed. He began yelling at the moose, but the animal turned and faced him, pinning its ears back in warning. Still, the moose didn’t back down, so Shawn opted to engage it in hand-to-hoof combat. “My first instinct —that I didn’t think too well on—I walked out and punched it right in the face,” he told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

The punch split the animal’s lip, according to Shawn, but it then turned and lunged at him. Shawn grabbed a shovel and swung, landing three good blows. He then retreated through the open door back into the house. The moose followed, shoving its way through the doorframe.

The animal was stuck for a moment, and Shawn took advantage by putting it in a headlock. “He ripped out of my hands, and he turned, he pinned his ears back, and he went to go back at my mom again, so I had to run two or three steps outside and grab him by the face,” Tuffnell told a reporter with local radio station 620 CKRM. “I had him by the nostrils and the lips, and pulled him back in the house.” Shawn used his bodyweight to pin the animal against the door.

Meanwhile, his mother’s boyfriend, Dave, had been tracking down a .22 rifle in the house, and brought it to Shawn at that exact moment.

In a Facebook post, Shawn recalls what happened next: “The first shot was in the doorway. I got the right eye then I had to go outside with him to get the other eye. First clip he was blind and I was starting to try and break the thick skull and get a bullet in the brain. Dave reloaded that clip faster than I have ever seen anyone load before! I shot the next 8-10 shots through the eye trying to get the right angle. Then I reloaded about 6 bullets (third clip of .22 bullets) and he turned his head to the left and I got a few bullets in the right spot and dropped him! He almost landed on mom. Thankfully he did not!”

In all, Shawn estimates he unloaded 15 rounds into the moose.

Later, a necropsy by the Canadian Wildlife Health Cooperative confirmed that at least one bullet had penetrated the animal’s skull, into the brain. It also found that the animal had already depleted its winter fat reserves.

Considering all the facts, Shawn doesn’t think the moose attacked out of anger. Rather, he believes the ungulate was starving, weak, and acting in self-defense. “He was in survival mode,” Shawn said.

In terms of injuries, Shawn walked away with a cracked rib and a bruised lump on his head, while his mother sustained a leg wound from being stepped on by the moose. Not a bad result, all said and done, for going fisticuffs with an 800-pound animal. With any luck, it was a one-and-done fight for the Tuffnell family.

Steven Rinella tests the edibility of the common merganser. Presented by Kingsford