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On this episode of In Pursuit with Rich Froning, we kick off a series on building a no-nonsense home gym, starting with a strict $1,000 budget. The goal is simple: what equipment actually matters if you want to train hard, stay consistent, and be prepared without wasting money. Next up is the $5,000 gym, followed by the $10,000 build. The crew debates sleds versus barbells, benches versus vests, dumbbells, sandbags, and pull-up bars, breaking down what gives you the most return when space and budget are limited. There’s plenty of disagreement, practical experience, and real-world perspective from years of training in stripped-down setups.

They also touch on the end of whitetail season, property management, getting kids into shooting sports, and Conquer 90, a 90-day challenge built around discipline, fitness, and consistency.

If you’re building a home gym or rethinking what you really need to train well, this episode delivers.

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This week on the show we’re speaking with Michael Easter, the author of The Comfort Crisis and Scarcity Brain, about tangible ways we can add wildness back into our lives and the real impacts that can have on our outdoor pursuits, happiness, and satisfaction.

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Javelina are one of the most underappreciated of all our big game species. Their unique history and physical features spark curiosity from hunters and other wildlife enthusiasts. What is not to like about a native pig-like critter that ekes out a living in dry, cactus-dominated Southwestern landscapes?

They are incredibly interesting native animals that can be hunted at times when other big game seasons have closed for the year. What other hooved big game animal does the taxidermist mount with its mouth open to show its huge, sharp canines in a menacing way?

Although we often affectionately call them pigs, javelina are not truly members of the pig family (Suidae); they have characteristics that are unique enough to be placed in a separate, but closely related, peccary family (Tayassuidae). The javelina is also known as the collared peccary, named for the white band, or collar, that runs across their shoulders. It shares the peccary family with two other species that live in southern Mexico and southward: the white-lipped and the Chacoan peccary. Javelina is not its official name, but is derived from the Spanish word "Jabali," thought to refer to the sharp tusks like the javelin thrown in the Olympic Games.

Their eyesight is notoriously poor. They have small eyes that are not very adept at seeing objects at a distance. Since javelina evolved in the thick thorn scrub of Central America, they never needed to see much farther than 75 yards. Their sense of smell is their main defense, supplemented by average hearing. When they sense danger, they do not delay in getting away and are surprisingly fast for the short-legged, 30 to 50-pound porkers they are. The javelina “attacks” we sometimes hear about in the wild are probably javelina trying to get away, but with their poor eyesight, they just don't know which direction "away" actually is.

Their famous self-sharpening canines look like something that might be used to deliver a killing bite to a horse, but are actually used to process vegetation. When habituated to humans (which they do, readily), they are unpredictable and will literally bite the hand that feeds them. When a javelina bites with its overlapping canine teeth, it creates a single wound channel through whatever extremity it feels like biting at the time. They seem to have no shortage of bacteria in their mouth, so infection is a real concern.

Besides the tusks, javelina differ from the real pigs in several important ways. The most obvious is the scent gland that both sexes have about six inches above the tail on the lower back. This tramp-stamp of a gland is filled with smelly (some might say nasty) clear liquid secretions that are used to mark their territory by rubbing the scent on rocks and trees. This scent gland also serves to identify individuals as members of the herd when they stand face-to-butt and rub the oily secretions on one another. This scent is easily detected when one gets close to a herd; some describe it as a skunky—or even marijuana—smell.

Javelina differ from pigs because they do not have a tail that is easily visible, they have three toes on the hind feet rather than four in feral hogs, only 38 teeth, a more complex stomach, no gallbladder, and a few other minor differences. Most of these differences are not very important to people who look at a javelina and think: "It looks like a pig, smells like a pig, and sounds like a pig."

Javelina (and all peccaries) are 100% American. In contrast, the real pig family evolved in Europe and was first imported to the Americas on a ship commanded by none other than Christopher Columbus in 1493. Peccaries, however, evolved in Central and South America and spread northward into North America. This northward spread occurred along the Pacific coast of Mexico, into Arizona and New Mexico, and also up the east side into Texas.

Although the journals of early explorers in the 1800s are sparsely sprinkled with reports of "Mexican hogs" along the rivers and lowland valleys of the Southwest, these critters were relative newcomers to the United States. Archeological remains around indigenous habitations prior to 1700 show no evidence of javelina. The first Europeans in the Southwest were probably documenting a relative newcomer that just barely beat them there. They have since continued a northward invasion even into the Ponderosa pine country in higher elevations of the American Southwest.

Their tough hides were shipped to the East Coast and on to Europe, not only for leather articles, but also for bristles used for brushes. There are historical reports of thousands and thousands of javelina hides being shipped out of the Southwest and Mexico. The hides were even used locally as barter in many trading posts along the Mexican border.

Being of a tropical origin, javelina breed year-round, with a peak in the Southwest’s mild winters and a pulse of young born during the summer. Most sows give birth to two piglets, which are called "reds" because they have reddish fur for the first few months. Reds suffer a fairly high mortality since they feed coyotes, eagles, bobcats, and anything else brave enough to attempt to outsmart or outrun a herd full of sharp tusks.

It is important to understand that these native mammals are not the exotic invasive hogs that now run feral in many states, rooting up the soil and snarfing down acorns to compete with other wildlife. Although they are physically similar to feral swine, their ecology and biology are as far apart as the continents they came from.

Javelina do use their snout to grub out roots of cacti and plants, but only enough to get at shallow roots and small plants held loosely by the hard desert soil. Feral pigs can start breeding at six months of age and have two litters of 10 piglets each year, which is more than 10 times the reproductive output of javelina. This difference means collared peccaries have to be carefully managed sustainably, not controlled as their feral cousins do.

One would think such a stinky scent gland would relegate javelina to living a life in solitude, but they find safety in numbers and live in herds of seven to fifteen. Herds occupy territories ranging in size from 200 to 1,300 acres, depending on the productivity of the habitat to provide the space, food, water, and shelter needed to sustain themselves. These territories are defended against intrusion by other javelina herds, and dangerous little gang fights reinforce these boundaries.

In good javelina habitat, each territorial boundary abuts the boundary of adjacent herds, but they sometimes call a truce and agree to share a common watering source. They reach their highest densities in areas where the prickly pear cactus is dense and there is more than 50% brush canopy cover. As herds increase in size, they may get so large that they fragment into two smaller herds or simply disperse individuals to other nearby herds.

When feeding, javelina concentrate heavily on succulents such as prickly pear, hedgehog cactus, pincushion cactus, and agaves. The fruits and fleshy parts provide not only nutritious feed, but water as well.

When javelina feed on prickly pear pads, they grasp the pad and pull, which shreds the pad and leaves the stringy interior fibers visible. When they chomp down on a pad, they seem to give zero thought to being careful of the sharp spines. Small cacti, such as hedgehogs, are knocked over with a front hoof, and the insides are eaten out so that only the tough outer skin and spines remain. Lechuguilla, shin daggers, and other agaves are pulled apart and left scattered as the javelina eats the fleshy heart out of the plant. Roots and tubers are also dug or "rooted" up by javelina in search of a meal.

Javelina meat is criticized by some as not great table fare. Some have even gone as far as to suggest this is the reason we find no evidence of javelina in pre-1700 archaeological sites. Perhaps paleontologists should call this the "Precrockpot Period." However, if properly cared for from field to table, javelina provide for good eating.

The key is to skin it and quarter it at your first opportunity. They are small big game animals, so it’s tempting to just carry it back to the truck. But, you have to butcher it somewhere, so just find the nearest mesquite or juniper and get that meat cooling off in clean game bags.

Don’t worry about that scent gland; it is embedded in the skin (not the meat). When you skin it, it will come off with the skin without you even noticing it. What you don’t want to do is carve it out and smear that oily scent all over your knife and hands. In fact, all the hairs of the javelina are covered with this scent from animals rubbing against each other, so it is important that you don't touch the meat with the hand that has been holding the hide during the skinning process.

In their native range, javelina and other peccaries are heavily consumed by inhabitants of Central and South America, and in some areas make up a large percentage of the protein brought into these villages. Indigenous peoples in the Southwest and Mexico do not seem to have such a deep cultural tradition. There are several stories of native tribes not eating them, even when they had the opportunity.

It's possible that since javelina expanded northward in the last few hundred years, they were never a strong part of their culture, or possibly even treated as taboo. Apache scouts traveling with General Crook in the late 1800s along the Mexican border pursued a group of "Jabali" with gusto that crossed their path and killed five of six, but did not eat them.

Being tropical animals, javelina do not have a fat layer, so the meat has to be cooked differently. Wet methods, like crockpots and pressure cookers, are best to keep it moist. Once you have clean, fresh cubes of javelina meat, you have almost limitless options, including any kind of sausage when mixed with pork fat. Javelina chorizo is our family favorite, especially wrapped up in a warm tortilla with scrambled eggs, cheese, and potatoes. Unfortunately, the lack of fat rules out bacon.

Javelina are a remarkable and iconic resident of the southwestern deserts and scrublands. With their recent inclusion in record books, they should enjoy a continued surge in popularity and the respect they have long deserved. With this increased attention, we will likely see more research and more conservation actions specifically designed to benefit our very own nontypical pig.

Nate Mason guest hosts MeatEater Trivia with Steven Rinella, Brody Henderson, Randall Wiliams, Seth Morris, Corinne Schneider, Cory Calkins, and Anthony Finissi.

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In this episode of the Bear Grease Render, host Clay Newcomb and Josh “Landbridge” Spielmaker are joined by their primary care physician, Dr. Adam McCall, for a wide-ranging conversation on men’s health—physical, mental, and spiritual. With so much conflicting advice circulating online and across social media, it can be difficult to know what actually matters. Together, they offer a balanced, practical perspective on staying fit, healthy, and grounded in the modern world.

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

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The victim of a New Year’s Day mountain lion attack on the Colorado Front Range has been identified as Kristen Marie Kovatch—a 46-year-old woman from Fort Collins.

Kovatch was hiking by herself on Crosier Mountain Trail in Larimer County when the attack occurred sometime in the morning. Two other unrelated hikers found her lying dead in the trail around noon the same day, according to a Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) press release, and threw rocks at a mountain lion still hanging around the victim to scare it away.

One of the attending hikers happened to be a physician, CPW public information officer Kara Van Hoose told MeatEater, but there was nothing that could be done for the victim, who reportedly had no pulse at the time. Her wounds were “pretty gruesome,” according to Van Hoose, especially in the neck and head areas.

The hikers reported the incident to 911 dispatchers, who sent CPW officers to the scene, along with a hound team. When the team arrived about two and a half hours later, an officer shot at a lion still loitering in the area—a male subadult—and it was subsequently tracked with the dogs and killed. The hound team also picked up another lion, a female, and euthanized her as well.

By the time the hounds returned to the incident site, it was between 8 and 10pm, and fully dark out. Still, the officers saw a third lion still hanging around the site. The team tried unsuccessfully to track it that night.

“We used dogs and all of that for the next several days and didn’t find any new tracks and no new scent. So we don’t know—it could be another subadult, it could be the mother; we think it’s part of the same family group, but we don’t know if it’s a parent or a sibling,” Van Hoose said. Officers suspect the lion has since fled from the area, but are still warning local hikers to be cautious and report lion sightings immediately.

CPW conducted necropsies on the two euthanized lions, both of which turned out to be around 12 months old. Human DNA was found on all four paws of the male, while none was detected on the female.

“I don’t think we’ll ever really know or be able to point to a concrete reason why it happened,” Van Hoose said. “The lion—the male subadult that the human DNA was found on—had a full stomach of deer, and was in good body condition. He didn’t test positive for rabies or any other neurological diseases, so I just don't know if we’ll ever be able to definitively say why this happened.”

Mountain lion attacks on humans are relatively rare, though they typically involve hikers or bikers when they occur. The last known* fatal* attack in Colorado was in 1999, but there have been a total of 28 attacks since 1990. A proposition to ban lion hunting in the state failed in the 2024 election, and a hunting season is currently open in most of the state through March 31.

This week, Tony takes a look back at his last season to try to pull lessons from the successes and failures, and he describes why we should all take a little time to reflect on our most recent hunts.

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On paper, shotgun patterns are deceiving. The pattern board reveals only a two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional shot string, suggesting that all the pellets from a payload arrive simultaneously. Nothing could be further from the truth. As soon as pellets exit the shotgun muzzle, they begin to string out. Depending on the shot type, a shot string can be 12 to 15 feet long and three to four feet in diameter at 40 yards.

So, you must think of your pattern as a comet, rather than a wall of shot, where the most spherical pellets arrive at the target first and create the center or core of the pattern. Deformed pellets are more susceptible to air resistance and arrive later, forming the outer ring of the pattern.

There are many misconceptions about shotgun patterns, probably because no single pattern is the same. After 20 years of studying and testing scatter guns, here’s what I know is true.

When you pattern a shotgun on paper, there are always areas of the target paper devoid of pellet strikes. This only matters if you are shooting at a stationary target, such as the head and neck of a turkey. The likelihood that a duck or clay bird will find a hole in your shot string is unlikely, unless it is flying straight at you or straight away.

Ducks, other gamebirds, and clay targets fly in an assortment of directions: up, down, crossing, etc. This dramatically reduces the chance for birds and clays to line up just right with a hole in the pattern.

Think about one of those rooms you see in movies where the red lasers shoot in all directions to protect something valuable. If you make one false step, the alarm sounds. Now consider trying to throw a Frisbee across the room without it intercepting one of the lasers. That’s about how difficult it is for a bird or a clay to find the void in your pattern.

If you go to the pattern board and shoot a load of steel No. 3s through a full choke at 40 yards, and it results in a deadly pattern, that’s great. But don’t expect lead, bismuth, or Hevi-Shot 3s to produce a similar pattern from the same distance with the same choke.

Different shot types do not respond the same to choke. And often, the same size steel shot made by a company other than the one used for your pattern test load will produce different results.

It's just like if you zero a rifle with a 140-grain bullet, then switch to a 165-grain bullet. You won’t see the same result. There may not be as much variance in a shotgun pattern as a rifle cartridge, but there will be a difference. For instance, softer metals may cause your pattern to loosen up, and harder metals may result in a tighter pattern.

Since a factory full choke produces a tight pattern, increasing the choke constriction will make the pattern even tighter. However, there comes a point when too much constriction has the opposite effect and can cause blown patterns. This is particularly true with larger steel shot—No. 2s and up.

Most of the testing I have done with steel 2s, 1s, BBs, and BBBs has shown that pattern density improves when shooting through modified or improved modified chokes. I’ve seen the same thing happen with some TSS turkey loads. Too much choke killed performance.

Also consider that a tighter pattern makes it more likely you will fringe birds and cripple them. Tight patterns are great if you’re a crack shot every time you pull the trigger, but if you’re off even a little, the pellets may not penetrate the vitals.

I once watched a YouTube hunting show where the host patterned his turkey gun by placing an empty water bottle on a stick and shooting it to determine if it was “on target.” Granted, the ol’ boy was a fine hunter of spring toms and has killed many gobblers on camera, but that’s not a proper way to teach anyone to determine gun accuracy.

The “industry standard” is to shoot the same load, choke, and gun combination 10 times from 40 yards, find the core of the pattern, draw a 30” circle around it, count the pellet strikes, and average them. You may not have the money or time for all that, so do what you can. You can learn more about patterning a shotgun for turkey hunting here.

Most shooting ranges have an area designated for patterning shotguns, and I encourage everyone to take advantage of it before shooting a round of skeet or trap, which every hunter should do before the opening day of their respective bird season. Pepper three to five shots at the pattern board or a painted steel plate, count the number of pellet strikes, and take note of the pattern distribution in relation to your aim point.

The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA) recently announced that the culprits of “extensive wildlife poaching activity” have pleaded guilty. The agency says that game wardens were initially alerted to the illegal behavior in Wilson and Rutherford counties by a concerned citizen in the fall of 2024.

During the ensuing investigation, TWRA game wardens identified Robert E. Comer and Carson Smith for illegally hunting whitetail deer—and perhaps even more shockingly, of illegally selling and bartering whitetail deer meat. At the time, Comer had already been banned from possessing a hunting license for three years following a conviction for previous wildlife infractions.

The game wardens soon executed a series of search warrants—and confiscated a truly astounding collection of evidence. In total, they seized a whopping 50 whitetail buck racks, as well as one wild turkey head and a fox squirrel. They also took possession of the weapons used in the poaching incidents, including a rifle, a muzzleloader, and a crossbow.

Ultimately, the poachers pleaded guilty to multiple infractions. Comer pleaded guilty to two felony counts of the possession/traffic of protected wildlife, one count of the illegal take, possession, or destruction of wildlife, and two counts of hunting on revocation. He received a rare lifetime hunting, fishing, and trapping ban, and was also banned from setting foot on any TWRA-controlled or managed lands for the rest of his life. He must pay $15,000 in restitution and serve a 60-day prison sentence.

Meanwhile, Smith pleaded guilty to three counts of the illegal take, possession, or destruction of wildlife, as well as bag limit and tagging violations. His hunting privileges were revoked for three years.

Following the shocking poaching case, TWRA is encouraging folks to report suspicious behavior or hunting violations. As MeatEater previously reported, a high percentage of poaching cases go undetected.

“When you see people grossly violating wildlife laws, like shooting way over the limit, typically the best policy is to turn them in because what they are doing is taking from the rest of us by doing that," Mike Butler, CEO of the Tennessee Wildlife Federation, told NewsChannel5 Nashville.

Feature image via TWRA.