The MeatEater Podcast

I did send you that book, Borderland Jaguars. Did you get that?

No, I like that book. I like that book.

Yeah, that's got a good documentation of these jaguars in this Northern end of their habitat.

But there's a book called Borderland Jaguars. You have not seen that one? No. Okay. I'll send it to you. Carlos Lopez Gonzalez and Dave Brown.

To contradict Spencer's finding, including a book by the author, the same author who wrote Light in the Forest.

It's a story of a boy who gets captured by Indians in the Eastern settlements and raised up by Indians. And then there's a treaty struck by which they need to give all their captives back. And so the boy gets separated and sent back to the settlements and then escapes and gets back to the Indians just when the Indians are fixing to go raid the settlements and him being, it's for young adults, him being torn about, you know, where he fits into this, where he fits into this.

Well, I would try something like this. I would say, um, everyone knows the joy of receiving a great gift. Well, there's no greater gift than America's public lands. This is very true.

The cliff notes on the book was that I love public lands, but didn't understand how we got these places

So I started diving into that myself, trying to understand that story, that history and what was going on presently.

So yeah. Ranging from Montana, pack rafting and fly fishing in the Bob Marshall wilderness up to the UP of Michigan, backpacking and picture rocks down into Arizona and Utah, North, South, East, West, a little bit of everything.

Well, it's typically going to be someone who is more so anti-federal government in a lot of ways, believing that there's an overreach of regulation, taking away freedoms or something like that.

Got a book coming out December 1st. It's called That Wild Country and epic journey through the past, present and future of America's public lands.

It's pretty good. Of any book in the world.

That Wild Country is a close second.

Damn Few is the first book.

And Yanni mentioned to me that part of their plan while they're driving around fishing is to read Trout Fishing in America.

Oh yeah. And I said to Yanni, well, you know, it doesn't really have anything to do with trout fishing. And he said, they know.

Yeah, it's just a great book.

One of the most requested books in the entire American library system. It's right up there with Huckleberry Finn or something.

Did you at the time, were you reading like Trout Fishing in America by Brodigan?

Well, you know, I always liked Brodigan. He might be a little thin in retrospect, but I liked him at the time.

But Brodigan's still funny though, man. He is still funny.

There's a really beautiful cookbook by Francis Malman called Malman on fire and he stuffs a halibut, probably about a 10 pound halibut with, I believe it's peppers and onions, olive oil.

There's a really beautiful cookbook by Francis Malman called Malman on fire. And he stuffs a halibut, probably about a 10 pound halibut with, I believe it's peppers and onions, olive oil.

One of the things I stumbled on a few years ago while trying to write a book was realizing that all these things that we'd learned about insects and about beetles applied to things like deer.

Now, I think I told you this before, Doug, that one of the best lines in your book isn't your line. The Einstein quote.

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

My favorite new word that I learned in your book, which is called Animal Weapons.

My favorite word that I learned in this book is supinate.

Folks who want to prepare for the animal expert being on his new book his name is Doug Emlin. His new book is called Animal Weapons. And guess what it's about.

Chris Dombrowski's exacting descriptions of the sport make me long to try it again and to wish that more fishing books were written by poets.

If only I had the genius of a cabbage or even an onion to grow myself in their laminate from the Holy core that bespeaks the final shape.

I had to listen to this book on audiobook to remind myself of a few things.

You wrote a good book...but you can only write one bad one. So, you know, get back to work.

In Body of Water, right? You're walking the line, dude.

Okay, well my last book is called Body of Water.

It's a nonfiction book from Milkweed Editions about, really that centers around a man named David Pinder who was the first Bahamian bone fishing guide.

So $150 million a year basically this little fish that we used to throw into Purina food bags has become the crux of an island, the entire island's economy really.

But it's a cool book.

So we should maybe sometime dedicate a whole conversation about the book because it tells a story about a fish that no one cares about becoming a fish that's like a billion dollar industry.

And he was talking about an old version of this called Buffalo Commons. You know, it's an idea that keeps coming up, but he, in the end of his book, he says, go to Jordan, Montana and talk about Buffalo Commons is a very good way to get your ass kicked.

American Serengeti is a book that's about the region of the United States, the American Great Plains, that once was the analog of East Africa, the Maasai Mara and the Serengeti with, I mean, it was one of the ecological wonders of the world up until about 1900 or so with this marvelous aggregate of large grazing animals, the bison that we've been talking about a lot tonight,

And I've written about some too, along with bison, wild horses that were reintroduced, having evolved on the Great Plains, reintroduced by Europeans back to America thousands of years after they had become extinct, and that just spread in an instant across this old ecological homeland of theirs.

And then the book finally ends up going to our possibilities in the 21st century, primarily through what's known as the American Prairie Reserve Project in Montana of trying to recreate and rewild an American Serengeti that will ultimately have all those animals in place again in a wildlife park that will be, we hope, something like twice the size of Yellowstone.

So, the books are American Serengeti, which is just a day or two away from officially being out. And the subtitle of that book is The Last Big Animals of the Great Plains. And the other book is called Coyote America, a Natural and Supernatural History.

The Pleistocene version doesn't get as much coverage as the historic version of the American Serengeti, but I spend a good bit of time talking about it because down to 10,000 years ago, I mean, we really, we had an African analog on the American Great Plains with all the charismatic megafauna that were here.

So that's been one of the problems more recently, last 10 or 15 years with the blitzkrieg model is that there's not, there aren't the sites out there. Maybe we just haven't found them, but except for the mammoth sites, there's not much out there.

So the truth is right now, this is one of the great mysteries of North American environmental history. I would too. I'd love to know. Even if I had to keep it secret. But we have not figured it out yet. All we know is that that version, that much African-like version of the Serengeti disappeared between 8 and 12,000 years ago.

That's how the American Serengeti book opens, in fact, is when that, with that visit that you and I made over to Blackwater Draw, and sort of giving ourselves our own personal tour because I recall we drove all the way over there from Santa Fe and the place was close. So we just hopped over the fence and gave ourselves a tour.

The Beast of Color of Winter is an incredible book. Certainly doesn't highlight hunting the way that we try to.

The Beast of Color of Winter is a very valuable book to the mountain goat.

The Beast of Color of Winter is an incredible book. Certainly doesn't highlight hunting the way that we try to.

The Beast of Color of Winter is a very valuable book to the mountain goat.

He's like an astute observer. Oh, yeah. And accidentally, he's an accidental very good writer.

He says a very true thing, then says a very true thing, then says a very true thing on down the line and winds up having these kind of like accidentally beautiful passages.

Brody Henderson declared it one of America's worst game laws in a 2019 article titled, The West's Worst Hunting Law.

For a recipe that uses it, check out Danielle Pruitt's article on TheMeatEater.com called Venison Smash Euros.