One Hell Of A Life Outdoor Podcast
The One Hell Of A Life Outdoor Podcast hosted by father-son duo Tony Vogel and Tristan Vogel, Owners of One Hell Of A Life Outdoors . Our passion lies in bringing every hunter the REALITY of what it REALLY takes to hunt their target animal while equipping them with the knowledge to be a successful hunter and promoting the lost "old school values" that laid the foundation for the sport we love so much today.
One Hell Of A Life Outdoor Podcast
How A Louisiana Creator Turns Wild Hunts Into Stories | Jared Serigne
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We catch up with Jared Serigne from Outside the Levees on what it really takes to produce weekly outdoor videos in Louisiana while staying honest about the chaos of weather, wildlife, and shifting algorithms. We also go deep on the BP oil spill aftermath, vanishing wetlands, and why “weird” wild food can taste incredible when you learn how to cook it right.
• Jared’s path from film school to outdoor storytelling and building Outside the Levees
• Why skill beats confidence when you are trying to break through on YouTube
• The weekly grind of filming, editing, and adapting to Mother Nature
• What Jared saw while documenting the BP oil spill out of Venice
• How cleanup money changed the coast and the media access battle on the water
• Why Louisiana is losing marshland and what that means for storms and habitat
• How targeting new species keeps the work fresh and the stories stronger
• Catching alligator snapping turtles and why most get released
• Turtle as a Louisiana delicacy and what makes it taste good or chewy
• Why ducks can taste amazing one day and awful the next
• What makes videos “evergreen” and how interest media affects reach
• Working with brands professionally and what a media kit should include
• Nutria vs muskrat and why nutria are so destructive in the marsh
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Welcome And Louisiana Outdoors
SPEAKER_00I've been helping, I've been helping, I've been on the mid time drink. Don't do fast now, fingers in and in the pole interest.
SPEAKER_02What's up, guys? Kristen and Tony back to another another episode of the One Hell of Life Outdoor Podcast.
SPEAKER_03Louisiana style.
SPEAKER_02Today we got Jared Serenate, also known as the alligator, uh freaking turtle, nutrient, freaking crawfish, ducks, Wrangler. My gosh. But man, I I've realized like just over the last year or so, like me and Jared have been working together on some stuff. Like the Louisiana is the sportsman's paradise for real, man. I know why they call it that now. Thank you for coming on.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Glad to be here, proud of what y'all are doing. It's good to see y'all again. And um, yeah, it's a diverse place with a diverse ecosystem, so you get a little bit of everything.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely, yeah. And if the OG listeners, we had Jared on probably like two and a half, three years ago. Yeah. Um, so this is actually the second time he's been on the podcast. But uh, Jared, for people that you know haven't heard that one, would you give everybody just a little intro to who you are and what you do and kind of how you got to the point you're doing outside the levees?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no problem. Um, so yeah, my name's Jared Saranay. I'm in Southeast Louisiana, and I have a YouTube channel called Outside the Levees. That YouTube channel expands a little bit onto Facebook and Instagram as well. And um, I have always, in my professional career, done some form of video, whether I was uh documenting a BP oil spill back in 2010 or creating a television show about hunting and fishing in Louisiana called Louisiana Sportsman, and then um worked for Gatortail for a long time, helped them build that brand up on Instagram, and then started outside the levee. Something I wanted to own that was all mine and uh that I could build for me, and and really get out from behind the camera and get my hands dirty and catching these you know crazy things, the alligators, the snapping turtles, the crawfish. So it's been a fun adventure, and thankfully it worked out. Um, content creation, you just never know, but thankfully I've I've broken through.
Jared's Path To Outside The Levees
SPEAKER_02That's awesome, man. Do you do you feel like I so I knew I remember you talking about the last time that you had done some producing and stuff like that for the TV show, but I didn't know that about like working with Gatortail and some of these other brands. Do you feel like having all of that experience kind of gave you the confidence to be like, okay, I can take this leap?
SPEAKER_01I don't know if I would say that it confidence to some degree, I think it gave me the skill set. Because the confidence it I don't know if you ever really it's like I I I had the confidence in the sense of like I could do that, you know, like if you know but at the same time, it's it's such a great challenge to try and break through on YouTube. Um so basically I arrived with a skill set that was ready to go to be able to edit video, to be able to tell a story, to be able to design the logo, um, you know, to a lesser extent, like market it on other platforms. But even today, I don't, you know, some days I just don't have the confidence because it is such a man, it you know, things change so often in the algorithms and all of that. So but I just keep chipping, I keep going, you know, keep hammering away at it for sure.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's um I feel like having the confidence to just kind of get in front of the camera too and just like speak. Like it's funny. We do this podcast and we've done like 180 something of them, but for some reason, every time I put a camera on myself outside of this, like if I just hold my iPhone up and try to talk, it's 10 times harder. I have no idea why.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so that I will say that like filming other people for 10 or 15 years, however long I did it, like I saw their mistakes, I saw where they um missed a chance to give a detail. So I would have to like prompt them, you know. Like if they missed a detail, I'd be like, no, no, no. What uh no, so so why do you think the water is moving in that way? You know, why is that important to what the fish are doing? So, like over time, I guess from like knowing how to prompt people, I just prompt myself. But also worked with some really talented people, one of them being Greg Hackney, who's a professional bass fisherman, and that dude was one of the best people I've ever seen on camera. So I got to see some of the best, but I also had to like learn how to from behind the camera direct people where you want them to go with what they're saying, you know.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's really interesting because there's been, I don't even I can't even tell you how many times we're like we've done something and we're like, God, I wish we got a b-roll shot of that, or you know, I why didn't we say that? You know what I mean? That happens all the time. It's almost like what we try to do is kind of make a checklist beforehand of like, hey, we have to get these things, you know.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Well, and and and keep in mind, I mean, you're you're your own worst critic, right? I mean, there's a reason why there's a saying for that, you know, and and which is a good thing, you know. I mean, if you're constantly if you get to the point where you just think that, hey, whatever I put out is just like gold, and you don't critique yourself, uh, that's probably when things aren't gonna go so well for you, you know. So right.
unknownYeah.
Consistency Versus Perfection In Videos
SPEAKER_01I don't know if I'd like I I'm kind of somewhere in between. It's like I'm not gonna overcritique myself because the videos gotta get out. Like, we're you know, and long I put out roughly one long form video per week for you know throughout the year. So that's about 52 long form videos. So like after doing 50 of them, 100, whatever the number is, you you really can't worry about the details too much. You have to kind of just get it out, and if it if it bombs or if you mess up, just roll on to the next one. You don't get a lot of time to like dwell on them, right?
SPEAKER_02What uh what's like uh kind of if you could set up like your perfect week on how you like to structure things in terms of like we're gonna shoot content this day, I know it's gonna take me X amount of hours to out or edit this video, and then like do you kind of structure your weeks that way, or how do you do it?
SPEAKER_01Uh it it man, it just depends on like how stockpiled I am. So right now I'm not stockpiled at all. I'm living week to week. So like this week's video just got filmed today. I've got to film the cooking segment like over the next couple days, hopefully have it out by Friday. Um, so when you're living like that, you're just like it's all in God's hands at that point, you know. Yeah, you just good luck trying to, you know, pick a structure in a day and this and that. Like when you're fighting with Mother Nature on animal patterns, wildlife patterns, wind, rain, drought, whatever it might be, good luck trying to have a system that works. Because I I don't have one. Mine is like, what do I think is gonna get the most views? What's the most practical thing that I can like go and do by myself, or if I do have a partner for that particular day, what can it be? And you combine the two of like sometimes what you think would get the most views isn't you're not able to do it in a day or two, whatever you have. So then you have to kind of like bring that down a little bit of like, okay, this might not get as much views, but I think I can get it done in a day or two, and then you just run with that. So, in an ideal world, yes, I would like to wake up on Monday, film. If I don't get what I need on Monday, finish it on Tuesday, start the edit process on Wednesday, have it done by Friday, but that just doesn't happen. Mother Nature doesn't, you know, and then life, if a kid gets sick, you gotta stay home with the kid. So now you're behind a day. So um I just think that like as long as I had that mentality of like I want to get one long form video done per week, some miracle we find a way to do it.
SPEAKER_02Well, dude, major respect to keep up that um keep up that consistency because I mean, just doing a podcast weekly, like I mean, this isn't near the time suck of a video, like it's like an hour for the podcast, and maybe it takes me an hour to edit it and then create clips, and so maybe it's two two, three hours, but then it's 30 minutes driving there and back. It might take me three or four hours total for everything a week, but just the consistency of doing it every week is is hard. So, let alone like a video that can take two days to edit. You gotta, like you said, you know, you go out there and the fish aren't biting, or you know, you could not catch anything in your traps, the gator breaks off your dang turtle line or whatever, you know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, right. And I've been doing a lot of multi-day shoots lately. Like I used to just do one-day shoots, like go out in the morning, wherever we catch what we catch, then you know, and that's like that's the that's the in the field part, do the cooking part the next day or whatever. So, but now I'm doing a lot of multi-day shoots where like if I'm pig trapping, I have to establish the site, like wherever the you know, like go, let's say we'll go bait up four different sites, they come into one. That's the one that like now put all the focus on, get them consistently coming, move the trap in. The trap is only partially set for like the first night. After this first night, you can partially set it for the second night, and then by about the third night, you got it closed in. So at this point, you've already got four to five days into that one video, you know. But it makes for I don't know, I think it just makes for a cooler story when it's like all this work went into that, you know?
SPEAKER_02Right, right.
Inside The BP Oil Spill Coverage
SPEAKER_03Yeah, no. Um uh I'm gonna I'm gonna shift gears because there's something that I mean I didn't I I didn't remember this, at least from our first uh our podcast, and it just it's crazy to me how fast time has gone by. I mean, just like that. It seems like it was a couple months ago we had you on, but but let's go back to this to you filming the oil spill. I'd like to know, like, like talk to us about like how you got that project or how you got put on that project, and talk a little bit about that, like what year it was, and just educate some people on that subject because that's interesting to me.
SPEAKER_01So the way I did my video career was probably different than the way a lot of people would do it. So I did go to film school. I graduated with a bachelor's in film and communications, and um, there were opportunities to work on movie sets, which I considered, but I didn't really like the hours, I didn't really like the hierarchy. So I said, all right, I'm gonna start a production company. And we got like a few you know, me and the guy who I started with, we got a few jobs out the gate. We'd be like, uh, this guy's a real estate agent, he wants us to go film one of the houses he's selling, and we did that, and then we'd get like, oh, this business association is trying to get you know some some traffic work, so we went and done, you know, but ultimately that wasn't really it was cool doing the videos, but like the subject matter wasn't really anything to get excited about. So I was like, well, what subject matter do I like? You know, and um that was still down here, you got 2008, 2009, that was still very much post-Katrina. Katrina happened in 05, we were still putting the city back together and the housing market. Seven or eight or almost happened. So there was like this, there was this energy in South Louisiana at the time of like we're still we're in a rebirth. And for me, instead of that rebirth just meaning the city of New Orleans, which it did, it was also the time that I woke up to how important the wetlands were.
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SPEAKER_01So Hurricane Katrina was a monumental flood, but it was a monumental flood because we didn't have any wetlands to protect us from that storm surge or enough wetlands. Whereas if you had like rewound 200 years before Katrina, you had a big, much bigger buffer of protection of wetlands. So that's what I started learning. I'm like, damn, okay, the wetlands.
SPEAKER_03I'm sorry, I'm gonna interrupt you real quick. Didn't you do a piece about this whole history of that that on YouTube? I'm sure I did at some point, maybe. I thought I saw something about you educating people on that.
SPEAKER_01Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt, but no, it's cool. I talk about it a lot, so I'm sure I did it uh multiple times. But um, so yeah, so part of my rebirth and coming back from Katrina was getting passionate about the wetlands. Well, by the time I'm getting my foot on the, you know, my feet on the ground with that, the freaking oil spill heads is about to ruin our wetlands. So that's when I was like, okay, I'm gonna take the skill set, the video, and combine it with this thing that's important. And that's kind of what drove me into the oil spill.
SPEAKER_03No kidding, no kidding. So, what was that? So, what was the day in that like? I mean, what were you seeing out there? And like, what's kind of like the boots on the ground witness of was there anything that came out of that to where you were just like, oh my god, like I mean, I'm just I'm just trying to understand the scope of it and like yeah, yeah, that's it.
SPEAKER_01You know what's funny, man. I think that spill wasn't that I think it was that spill was on April 18th, so we're almost at like the I don't know, 16 year anniversary or something like that. Wow. Um, so yeah, that's kind of funny we're talking about it. So uh the the explosion happens. And how many miles where was this at? Like exactly. It was like I I believe it was Central Gulf.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_01And um, I guess in my mind, I don't remember exactly what location was. But I believe it was I believe it was, I mean, I I I think it was at least 60, 70 miles from the Louisiana coast. Okay. Don't quote me on that, but for you know, this is all kind of blurry in my head, but I know it was out there a good ways. I want to say close to, you know, or upper central gulf. So you had the explosion, which the you know, killed I think 11 people. They died in that explosion. So that was like on the news, but then like the days after they realized, oh wow, that also like erupted what we were doing at the bottom of the Gulf, and that's just spilling everywhere, it's like pouring everywhere. And that to me was like I remember the anxiety of people, like because like the only thing you had to compare that to was Valdez in Alaska, and like we're like, oh, that's gonna be us, you know. Um, so we thought we were done for, we really did for for a period of time. So that's when shortly after, huh?
SPEAKER_02Just like because what you say everything was. Right, you're fishing it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you thought it was done, like you really thought Louisiana was about to just literally be covered in oil. And um, so I got hired on by an environmental group called National Wildlife Federation. I was like, hey, look, I got a camera, we could go, we could document this. They're like, yeah, come on, let's do it. And um, so we everybody was stationed out of Venice, Louisiana, which is like kind of an offshore fishing town. Sure. And uh all the all the news media was there, CNN, you name it, like all over the world, news media was there. And the environmental group I work for was using their resources to charter offshore boats. And then journalists would like, they'd get like seven offshore boats, fill it with journalists, go out in the Gulf, locate the oil where it was that day, take your pictures, video what you needed, come back, get it on the news that night, and do the same process the next morning. So we'd go down there for three, four, five days at a time doing this, come home for a couple days back in New Orleans and then head right back down to Venice. And I did that for about, I don't know, two or three months. But what happened was at some point there started being less and less offshore boats to hire because BP started hiring them.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_01They could make more money going work for BP doing, I think it was called Vessels of Opportunity. So like they would do the same job for BP to go riding around and look for oil. But really, what it was, it was hush money. It was to get them to get the journalists off their boats so BK, you know, BP could kind of hide some of what was going on. And um, and it was it was bad. Don't get me wrong, they had like times where we would find these islands covered in oil. Um, or like you would, you know, if you got into like a because it would like be in patches, you know, it wasn't like just everywhere, but you would find it in patches, and then it's found its way into like the interior bays. We saw pelicans covered in it, all the bad stuff, but it's it never wound up being as wide as we thought it was gonna be. We thought it was gonna be the entire Louisiana coast, and what it wound up being was like this area was bad, this area was okay, this area was bad. And um, I think the crazier thing was like the windfall of like money, like money was just like everywhere. BP was spending, spending, you know, they had to spend on the the people doing the cleanup and the big contracts, and it just it was it was a crazy period of time for money. Do you I'm I was I was just gonna say but it kicked my career off. It's what kicked my career in the gear, you know?
SPEAKER_02Right, right. Do you do you think that like, and I don't mean like to because obviously it's not ideal, but like coming off of like Katrina, like you said, and still kind of being in that rebuild time. Do you think like in one way it was kind of like for the economy a good thing because all these people are having extra spending money?
SPEAKER_01Or is that it's funny say that because I remember that like some fisherman guys saying, Man, we need to have another BP. That's gonna be it. Yeah, so it it definitely like a people made we call them spillionaires, so yeah, it it brought a lot of money in. Um, it did damage, and then for a while there it did damage that we had no idea how long it would last. Like if the shrimp got killed, we don't know how that was gonna affect the fish, and you know, so like there was impacts that people really didn't know. Whole islands got washed away. So, I mean, yeah, it was it was an economic thing, but at the same time, I think it just depends on how you what your philosophy is in life, if you rather have a clean environment or money, you know.
SPEAKER_02Right, true.
SPEAKER_03Um, I just wanted to give give just our listeners a little bit, and I'm sure this will resonate with you, um, um, Jared. But so it happened on April 20th. So if you've seen the movie Deep Water Horizon, that's what this is about. And I didn't know that, honestly. I didn't I didn't I didn't know that. So uh they estimate they said the the number that they estimate is that the oil flowed for 87 days.
SPEAKER_02Holy cow.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and a hundred and thirty-four million gallons, and some some say it could have been in excess of two hundred million that that the government was covering up a lot. Um and it contaminated thousands of miles of coastline, not only in Louisiana, but Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, and Texas. And BP paid over 20 billion settlements and restoration. Holy cow. 20 billion. Yeah, uh, just some cool facts. I was just sitting there looking at man chat GPT is so cool.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it was a crazy time, man. But yeah, that kind of kicked off my video career. And like I said, so when you would go down there, there'd be journalists from all over, but eventually outdoor journalists started showing up, and that's where I started to make my connections in the industry. And um just kind of from there, you know, there was only so many guys doing outdoor video in the state of Louisiana, you know, so I just was able to meet enough people and and kind of keep the career going from that.
SPEAKER_03Um, since we're talking about like um areas of Louisiana and and habitat and all that kind of stuff right now, um, I've seen sometimes like on shows, and maybe you know more about this. I don't I might not refer to it right, but there's like I saw people talking about pe places in Louisiana that just like they get sucked down into nothing. Like they just disappear. Is that just is that a bunch of baloney? Or I like that because I have the phrase sucked down. I mean, that's the way it looked. It looked like it was just getting like toileted into something, like it disappears.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there are there are places in Louisiana, coastal places in Louisiana that simply don't exist anymore. Um not many of them were like civilizations, but uh there are you know certainly like coastal islands and acres upon acres of marsh that'll never come back. Um and there are towns that are in danger of washing into the Gulf. There are. Uh so yeah, it's you know, so basically Louisiana's some of your newest land in the continental United States. Um you know, I mean, our land, the land that like I'm sitting on right now is like only, I don't know, 15,000 years old, something like that. Like it's not there's no bedroom. Rock, it's a sponge. Like I live on a sponge, you know? Wow. Um, so it's delta. So deltas always change. They kind of grow here and then the river turns and then they grow there. So, like, we were in that process, we just sped it up by levying the Mississippi River and cutting oil field canals through it and adding some rising sea levels and things like that. And then uh, yeah, we're washing away.
SPEAKER_03Well, I was watching these guys redfish on on Outdoor Channel or something, and they were in Louise, the coastal areas of Louisiana, and this one old timer that was the guide or whatever, he was talking about he goes, see that over there? And he was pointing out like an island, and he goes, That's just the tip of it. When I first started fishing here, that mo that island was over two miles long. Wow. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01That all like those stories are pretty common.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, isn't that wild? And it was just like literally like maybe a hundred yards.
SPEAKER_02Well, didn't you say in a very uh video, Jared, it's like a hundred feet or a hundred yards a day or something, they estimate?
SPEAKER_01It's a football field every Louisiana loses a football field of of marshland every 100 to 120 minutes. I don't remember if it's a hundred or a hundred and twenty, but it's a football field, you know, a hundred yards every yeah.
SPEAKER_03What a nightmare for like the oceanic, you know, like the the folks that gotta do all the dredging and everything. Oh my gosh. I mean, that's gotta be a freaking uh a billion dollars.
SPEAKER_01The government doesn't make it bad, you know how government is, they only make it worse. Yeah.
The Trophy Is The Video Now
SPEAKER_02Right, right. So, you know, doing I mean, every year you come on this content calendar, you know, with obviously hunting season and then kind of turns into fishing, crabbing. Like a lot of times when like you talk to folks in the outdoor industry and like it's it's kind of a double-edged sword, and I know you and I have kind of talked about this, but like people that I think of in particular are like you know, fishing guides or hunting guides, you know, or you know, duck hunting 60 days in a row, you're getting up at 4 a.m. and then all of a sudden you get into it because you love it, but then it's like you're getting your butt kicked, you know. Is there a species? I know you were having fun with these hogs and the nutria too. Is there a species that kind of is like fresh and really fun for you to target, or is it all kind of like ever changing?
SPEAKER_01It's ever changing for sure. Um, and like it's you know, I tried to explain this to someone recently. I know my successful trip is no longer the successful trip, it's the successful video that the trip led to. So, like that's the trophy now is like, oh damn, that video did pretty good, you know. Um so it changes the the mindset for sure. But right now I'm really in flathead catfish. Like, so here in like the coastal marsh, we don't have the flathead. We have channel cats, we have blue cats that are pretty readily available, but like the the the flatheads tend to tend to prefer more of like a riverine environment. Okay, they're moving into like some of our you know brackish lakes and stuff, but they're still to me there they're still a challenge to find. So yeah, I've you know, about every six months I'll get excited about a species. Six if you'd asked me that a year ago, it's for sure the alligator snapping turtle. I was like, you know, want to learn everything I could about that species, how to catch it, how to cook it, what to do, you know, like, and um, and thankfully I've had like a good run with that. And so now I'm like super focused on flathead catfish, and in a year it'll be something else, you know.
SPEAKER_02Well, uh, if you guys haven't seen it and you're not following Jared, you gotta check out the uh new merch he just dropped. He's wearing one of the t-shirts now, but yes, alligator snapping merch is uh yeah, that's great. I love it. Oh man. So what's uh you know, what's kind of on the horizon as far as like, is there anything that you're looking forward to here in the next few months? And like, do you plan that far out as far as like your your trips and videos?
SPEAKER_01So I think so. One of the things I'm looking forward to is just the kids being out of school. That kind of is gonna open up my schedule a lot as far as like being able to get out early in the morning, because I bring my kids to school every morning. I get them up, pack their lunch, get them out the door, bring them to school. So my mornings right now are like they start with that. So I'm kind of you know, it's just always kind of fun when I can think about like, okay, what's gonna happen when like I can get up and drink my coffee and literally walk out the door and start filming. Sure. Um, so that's a little bit exciting. I think that like um as far as what I'm gonna be doing, I think I see the flathead catfish, you know. I'm kind of still holding, I'm trying to wrap up my spring stuff, my crawfish, my you know, uh turtle stuff, wrap some of that up so that I can start the flathead stuff. Um I do a little Florida, a little Florida trip, try to get a few videos over there in Florida. So nice.
SPEAKER_02You're just gonna be doing doing some fishing over there, or what are you going over there to do?
SPEAKER_01Uh so I think that um I'm gonna start somewhere around the you know northern part of the panhandle and hopefully do some flatheads and maybe some hog hunting and then kind of work my way to the to the uh eastern coast and maybe some flounder stuff. I think I'm gonna meet up with Tug Trash, good buddy of mine who's got a YouTube channel, and maybe try to meet up with a couple other YouTubers and really just do whatever, you know.
Catching And Releasing Snapping Turtles
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Dude, um, you know, I've always been intrigued. You said something about the alligator snapping turtles. I've always been intrigued by them for all my life, just because um, and it and if anybody's listening to this in Illinois, you'll remember this, but um along the Mississippi River, up around um like when you go through St. Louis and start going up like the Illinois side, um, there's a place called the Great River Road. And it's a really historic place that you can drive down the river road, and literally the river's right there, and straight to your right, it's just all bluffs. And it's just known for a lot of Indian habitat, and um there's a real historic piece of uh a giant uh what they call the pie saw bird that was painted on the bluffs by the Indians, and I mean it's just it's giant. I don't even know how many feet, 50 feet by hundreds of feet. And uh they put a replica up there, and anyway, it's got a lot of history, that kind of thing. But I remember as a kid that and there was a there was a newspaper article, and it was on the you know, I remember seeing the article, and there was two giant alligator snapping turtles that came out of the Mississippi River, and when they came out, it blocked two lanes of traffic. They were so big, dude. Like they weren't as big as like a whole lane each one. I said, like, don't imagine that. Right. But they were like took up 79% of it. I mean, two, they were so gigantic that as a kid I was just like, oh my god, dude. And then you know, they they were just a cool, um, they're just a cool turtle. They are, they're very cool, yeah. Man, and uh, but but man, those things get so gosh darn big, dude. Yeah, they do.
SPEAKER_02I've seen some monsters in your videos, Jared. What's like the biggest one you've seen?
SPEAKER_01So, um, so last year I I started kind of messing with it, and I got in touch with a guy here in Louisiana named Josh Petit. And Josh lives and breathes catching alligator snapper turtles. That's the only thing he does. He really doesn't fish, he hunts just a small, like that's his main thing. He catches over 100 a year. And thankfully, he you know agreed to do a video with me, and I learned so much from him. So on one of our trips together, we caught a 90-pounder, was the biggest that like I've ever actually like Yeah. Wow, dude. Yeah, dude.
SPEAKER_03Do you guys like go catch them like uh you remember the guy Turtleman? You remember that crazy dude that would just go underwater and just grab these things? Like, how did you did you guys catch them like so?
SPEAKER_01We're mostly catching them on a line, on a on a hook, a line, a hook and line. Um, there are guys who do nets, which I'm kind of looking into and need to learn more about. Um, because a net is like it's the the best thing for catch and release. Uh so yeah, most people are doing one of those two things. I do know of a guy, Jacob, who he finds these creeks that are real clear and he'll dive down and grab them that way.
SPEAKER_02Wow. That's that's crazy, man. Uh dude, yeah. I'm not I'm not trying to mess with it with something and take my finger off.
SPEAKER_03Listen to this. That's the adrenaline rush, though, you know. A 90-pound alligator snapping turtle is roughly 50 to 60 years old.
SPEAKER_02I would have thought it would have been older. Or older. I mean, they you know, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Some people say a pound per year. I don't necessarily think that's the I don't know. It's just too many variables, you know. It depends on what they're eating. That kind of thing, you know. The warmer the weather, the quicker they're gonna grow. So um, but yeah, 90 pounder, like the 90 pounder we call it, he looked old, like at least 70.
SPEAKER_03Wow. Yeah, it does say it goes, they can be up to 90 years old. It says uh but it just goes through a bunch of stuff. But no, dude, the fact of the matter is that is an old freaking dinosaur reptile thing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and we're just catching them, taking our pictures, putting them back. You know, I don't know, we don't eat a turtle that old. Um, I try, you know, like so. In the year, I've been focusing on them for about a year now, and in that year span, I think I've you know, either filming with Josh or on my own, I've caught close to 30, and I think we've kept in like out of those 30, maybe kept three, two or three. Right on. So most of them just get released.
Making Weird Wild Food Delicious
SPEAKER_02There's um, which this is maybe a good kind of topic to go into just because I know cooking is just such a big part of your channel and what you're passionate about. Got that new seasoning coming out, and um, you know, there's so many people drop. Alright, guys, if you've been listening to us for a while, you know we love Frog Talks waterfowl gear. But did you know they don't just make waterfowl gear, they make some incredible fishing organization like the Frog Talks Tackle Vault 3600. That's one of our personal favorites. Also, the FTX Elite series is great if you fish hard and need something to hold up to the elements. And what about footwear? Yeah, guys, Frog Talks has you covered there, everything from hunting boots to deck boots to fishing shoes to casual stuff like the Java 2.0 and flip flops. I can go on and on, but honestly, you just need to head over to FrogTalks.com and use code 1HLIFE Outdoors for 15% off your order. How quick they write it off. Yeah, those are gross, you know. And like turtle probably being another one, I don't know. But like how I guess first question is like when it comes to turtle, you know, how does that taste? But also like uh what are some of the stuff in Louisiana that people are kind of like, you know, have have these like stigmas about eating that taste good?
SPEAKER_01So turtle um in Louisiana actually has a reputation of being a delicacy.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_01So a lot of the old-time restaurants in New Orleans served the turtle soup. Yeah. Um, which is kind of more of the like the French style of cooking. It was a little bit more bougie. And then the Cajuns have a dish of their own called uh turtle sauce picon, which is cooked down in a in a red gravy sauce and served over rice. And they, you know, like the Cajuns swear that like the turtle is the only meat that adds this like really rich and sweet flavor profile to that dish. Like no other meat has and it is. I mean, I've had turtle where I'm like, I I you know, I don't know if I was convincing myself, but I honestly felt like I was tasting that sweet, there's something sweet about the meat.
SPEAKER_03Um is it turtle specific, like to a specific turtle?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, to the alligator snapping turtle. Okay. Um so then once they outlawed commercial fishing of the alligator snap and turtle, I think in 1990, most restaurants had to switch over to some other type of turtle or a farm-raised um turtle. But yeah, so so so snap and turtle, alligator snap and turtle has a reputation of being a delicacy. My personal opinion is that it really just depends on who cooked it. I've had it so that like it was so good that like you're like licking the bowl to finish, you know, and then I've had it to where like it maybe was a little bit overcooked and kind of chewy, which any reptile can, you know, that happens with frogs, alligator, what have you. So um, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I guess uh Louisiana is one of those places compared to like maybe the Midwest or something like that, where I the culture is kind of eaten off the like you there's so many dishes that are connected to the land, like you said, those probably Yeah, for sure. You guys are probably like the one of the examples of like you said, with the turtle where you it's not as weird to eat some of these things.
SPEAKER_03Well, and let me just kind of chime in on the overall on that, you know, and that is like you can go back and and you can go back to like say the slave days, right? And they had very limited access to prime foods, right? Right? So with just anything, I think, you figure out how to make it like how to make it good, right? Like you're like, oh, that doesn't taste good. We do the same thing with every dish that we make. I do, at least I taste along the way when I'm making something, and sometimes I'm just like, all right, that tastes like crap, you know, and then and then I add a little bit of smoked paprika or whatever it might be to whatever I'm doing, and next thing you know, it it tastes good, you know what I mean? But but uh no, I think um there's something to be said about that, you know, that that I watch a lot of like dead meat, um, a lot of these other shows, like the dude was cooking a bobcat today, you know, and I was like, What, you know, I saw meat eater, they were eating uh javelina and coyote, you know. I think him and him and uh uh Remy Warren were eating that together, and I was just like, well, okay, you know, but at the end of the day, I think that you can just take a I just did a little quick reel not too long ago about it was a snow goose versus a pintail, you know, and I was I gotta be honest, I was a little skeptical about snow geese for a long time just because of most people say, Oh yeah, snow geese, you know, they taste like crap or whatever, or I saw a lot of people discarding snow geese during conservation season, and which felt odd to me because everything I've ever got, I I eat. Right, right. And and I won't forget, we had these, uh I was in between jobs and I got the guide, and there's these folks that were from Louisiana, and we went out and shot like I don't know, 50 or 60 that day, and they're like, Oh yeah, we're cleaning every single one of these things, you know. And more they looked, I mean, like Eber scissor hands. I mean, they were just and Cade's like, look at them go, man. I'm like, I know. And they said, come on over to they were staying at a separate lodge at Cade's got a Delta Water or Delta Um uh Thunder, and we went over there and they made us these things called, they called them Goosebombs. Goosebombs is what they call them. And what they would just simply do is they would take a goosebust and slice it like long ways in half, and then they'd open it up and they'd put a piece of cream cheese and a jalapeno in that, and then put that and then tie it together with that uh I forgot whatcher's twine, yeah, butcher's twine, and cook that thing, and you know, they were building it all up, and me and Cade were just sitting there going, I don't know, I don't know. And next thing you know, everybody was like, dude, like you were talking about licking the bowl. They were I was licking the pan. I mean, I was just like, oh my god, I had no idea, you know. So I've been doing this whole thing, Jared, and where I'm going with this all is you know, uh red meat, we all know that like when you heart like cow, it doesn't matter. You gotta take it swiftly because the adrenaline gets in the blood and that tastes bad, right? Well, I've had this whole kick on when it comes to waterfowl that you know, if you, for example, got shot a deer and you blood trail that deer and you go get it the next day, all that stuff, that meat more than likely is not gonna be as good as a quick clean kill. All right? Now think about us going out and shooting, just me and Tristan, we go out and shoot a limit of ducks each, right? And let's say half of those were cripples. Well, we don't keep track of those cripples, they're little ducks, right? We don't keep track of, and we don't keep track of what their age is. Like we all know that red meat, an older red meat animal, tastes stronger, it's deeper taste, it's rough, it's all those things compared to a younger one. So I'm on all this whole philosophy that jubies of any bird taste better. They just do. Just like if you're gonna eat a fawn red meat animal, you know what I mean? But if you if you like if we actually kept track of the cripples, I would bet my life that if everybody did that, they would be like, oh, those taste not as good. You know what I mean? That kind of thing. But I've also had where you're eating uh say a ringneck that's a uh a marsh ringneck versus a ringneck that's a rice field ringneck, and uh that's gonna taste different, of course, you know. So big difference, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yep. Yeah, yeah, dude. I um when it comes to duck, like I and I know uh Jared, you've kind of pivoted on some of the duck duck hunting videos because I remember at one point you're like, man, they just the numbers are hard compared to some of the other stuff on YouTube. But um, you know, I I've always wondered why one time I cook duck and it's the best thing I ever had, and the next time it sucks.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I I would pay attention to cooked time, you know. It seems like duck is like quicker the better. Yeah. The more rare, the better. Right. Yeah, or just like how quickly can you get to like cooked, you know?
SPEAKER_02Right, right. What um what's your so obviously you eat a lot of different wild game. I mean, what's kind of your your favorite?
SPEAKER_01Shrimp for sure. Shrimp and crawfish are like two favorites, I think. Um I like a young wild pig, like it's so versatile, you know? A young wild pig, there's so much you can do with. An older one, they're a little bit tougher, just like you were saying. But a young wild pig is very hard to beat. Um course a crappie or sakole, whatever you you know, we say soccole, but having been on YouTube for so long, I say crappie too, just so people know what I'm talking about. But to me, that's the best eaten fish out there. Amen. No kidding.
SPEAKER_02Um versus like some of the uh good like saltwater species. You like crappie more?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think crappie's better than any of the, you know, the the the speckled trouts are close second, but I think crappie's better. Um I love crappie. Yeah, it's definitely I like oysters. I've been really into oysters lately. Fired up about that.
SPEAKER_02Is that um do you guys I mean, I'm surely in a coastal environment, um, there's opportunity for oysters. Is that something you could see yourself making a video about? Can you go out and get them?
SPEAKER_01Or is it I've done one where I go out and pick them, hand pick them. Okay. I filmed one recently where I went out um with a uh commercial operation and farm where we went out and harvested theirs. Okay. I've done a couple. The first one did pretty well, it took it time. It was funny because like it it did all right in the beginning, but like it was like, dang, okay. Uh, but then like over time it did really well.
SPEAKER_02So how often does that happen? Because I've I've noticed like, and that's part of like why we started. We used to just release duck hunting videos, which is obviously the most of what we do, but uh just whenever. And then I would realize, like, okay, I we dropped this in let's say June, and then all of a sudden in October it's getting all the views, and then after January it dies off, and then the next October it does the same. We'll just go or like one time we'll drop it like late, like January 30th, and it doesn't start getting views till the pre the next August. Like, how often how often does that happen where your videos like get a second life like way later?
SPEAKER_01Can we take a pause point real quick? Yeah, absolutely. I think this dog needs to use the bathroom. Oh, you're good, man. All right. Uh I'll be right back.
SPEAKER_02All right, we're back. So anyway, I was asking Jared about um, you know, a video getting a second life like way later.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I like so of the 52 I do a year, I would say that happens with about 10 of them.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
Algorithms And Evergreen Views
SPEAKER_01And um, it's like, I think what happens in that situation is like the algorithm does not know who who to recommend it to. Or you release it on a day where everyone else released and it just kind of got lost. And most of the time they never come back from that. But somehow, somehow, you know, maybe on Day 23, it just like starts to get a little momentum and then it just like kind of finds its own little way, or it uh it's evergreen and they're finding it through search. That's the more likely situation for that to happen. Where whatever the topic was and the title was, it's something that adds up over time. Whereas a video that is um kind of like timely based on like you know, a specific period of time, it'll usually die, you know, the average video will die after about 50 days. I got wrong. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Well, and I guess it just varies also, you know, just like there's trends in search words, right? You know, and and I mean if you get lucky and something just tends to trend up, you know, you could sure it and it could be just that you the background music that you know that you had that could be the assimilation, you know. I mean, yeah, we all see it all the time where when you're sitting there scrolling through your stuff. I swear that there's times where I'll look at something no longer, like I look at it less long than I do like stuff that I'm interested in, and somehow it knows that I it kind of piqued my interest, and it keeps throwing that crap back in my feed, and I'm like, that's son of the case.
SPEAKER_01Well, that's that's now where where everything has gone to, and and that's um, you know, we can thank TikTok for that. So, you know, I heard Gary V say we're no longer in social media, we're in interest media. And so the algorithms want to keep you there as long as possible. So now if they know what your interest is, they're gonna hit it, hit it, hit it until they kind of get a sense you're not interested anymore. And as soon as you search and look at something else, they're gonna hit it, hit it, hit it. And um, that makes it definitely difficult for what we do is like, well, what are they interested in this week, you know? Wait, that's like they don't even show your stuff to your subscribers anymore or your followers. Like it's they're more likely to see whatever else they just watch than your video, even if they subscribe or or follow you.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's that's I mean, frustrating to nav navigate that. And then I mean, hearing you say that, it makes so much sense just because from my own consumer standpoint of what I you know get into or whatever, but also like observing different things that I try posting like on our pages, like just the most random stuff. Like the today I posted a video and it was like 17 seconds long, it's horizontal, not vertical, and it's just offshore clipping or fishing uh clips from this last weekend with simple words like um yeah, bro, you need to go fishing, like you're fine, or whatever. I said, but it's like, and I've never posted anything offshore related, um nothing like this. And then it's I mean it's not going crazy, but it's got like 260 likes, which is a lot for my page.
SPEAKER_01So, like, yeah, and you really when you break your niche, it never goes well.
SPEAKER_02It's it's so weird, you know. And then yeah, like I'll post, yeah, I'll post a freaking duck picture, I'll get like 13 likes.
SPEAKER_01I I would be willing to bet the first five seconds of that video do something to the human brain to get on, you know.
SPEAKER_02And it's like what, you know?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, most of the time you don't know.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you well, and and keep in mind that there's there's people that are way smarter, at least than me, that are way smarter than me. That these AI, like, like for I guess the best example I could use, like if you ever interviewed for a job and they're like, Here, we're gonna have you take this this test. Yeah, and you're like an assessment, yeah, and and you're like, Oh man. I know you're right. You know, like dude, like because it uh immediately, no matter who you are, you start thinking, like, should I answer it like as I'm like running through the park and I just answer, answer, answer, answer, answer. Or do you like think about your answers and do they know that you're thinking about your answers? And and after you think about it, then they know that you were thinking about it. You know what I'm saying? That kind of crap. That's what it makes me think about, like, when it comes to these algorithms and stuff like that, is just like I mean, obviously, there's some stuff in there, and it's always gonna mass, it's always going to cater to the masses, right? I mean, it's just always going to. There's no getting getting away from it.
SPEAKER_02Um, one thing I want to ask you about, Jared, because obviously your background with um, you know, just everything you've done up, you know, going back to what you were saying with your producing company, but um one thing I know you're you do a good intentional job about is like the companies that you work with, like plugging them in a not like a tacky way. It's always like very like tastefully done in your videos, or like you do a cool content shoot or whatever it might be. And when we were um just talking a couple weeks ago uh to our our boy Donnie, who's the uh director of marketing at Frog Talks, he was like, half the time when I like set something up with people, they don't even ever post anything or send anything back. And I I just think uh I would love to hear just kind of like your take on um so many people in the outdoor space, whether if they have a YouTube, have a podcast, whatever, are trying to work with brands. I guess like your um take on working with brands and how what you found successful, how you approach it.
SPEAKER_01So the good and the bad thing about content creation is that it has a low barrier to entry. Anyone can start posting. If you look a certain way, you can probably get a following. You know, um, if you make your content look a certain way, you can get a following. And I think people are figuring that out quickly. What they're not figuring out is the professional side of the business management side of it. Sure. And um, so that's what's leading to a lot of what you're talking about is yeah, they they grew their following, they got their content out, they get, but they have no idea how to maintain a business relationship, no idea how to follow through on things that they you know said they would do. Or um, so you have a lot of, I guess you could, I mean, let's just call it what it is, semi-professional content creators who like some of them may even have bigger followings than me, but they they don't, they they just didn't come into it with a business mindset. So these brands are kind of having to like feel out and see who's real and who's not, you know, and I mean I feel for them, but at the same time, it's like there's still lots of people who who are an active part of the outdoor industry that like um could give advice, you know, or could consult on some of that stuff. So uh so for me, you know, I I kind of saw like way back when when we had like the TV show, well, who were the sponsors, right? That's like the people who pay to advertise, and you take really good care of those people, and you really, really try to stay loyal, and um, you only get one at a time in television. But I also saw the magazine side where it's like, well, no, we've got you know 67 pages in this magazine, and we need to fit an ad from this gun company and that gun company, and so they're taking it from all, but then those gun companies would, you know, kind of be competitive with each other and who's gonna buy the biggest page in the best spot. And um, so when I came into it create my own content, I still had that mindset of like you get one sponsor at a time and you know you make the relationship the best that you can, and uh certainly follow through with what you said you were gonna do. And um, so that's kind of that. But then so I've one of the things YouTubers do once you get to a certain level, uh you you get an agent who handles most of your sales, but a lot of those sales are not necessarily related to the industry that you cover. So, like my agent isn't like he doesn't know every marketing director of every gun company, he just is dialed into who's buying ads on YouTube. So he handles all of that. The good thing is What's up, guys?
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SPEAKER_01As they come in for one, two, three videos at a time, and it kind of I think it keeps the relationship really clean. So I'm moving more to that model where like instead of like you know, uh so and so is my you know boot sponsor, yeah. I just per video, you know, like put it per video, and and that's that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, no, I could definitely see that being a cleaner way to do things, and it it is it's hard because like we've always been, and maybe that's just because me and my dad have both been in business, like we both do he's had a career in sales and now management, and I'm in sales, and you know, I think maybe that's why we have handled things that way. But one of the things I've always been like really conscious about now, granted, we don't have a massive following, but like I've never wanted to like take on more than like we can buy it or take on more than we can chew in terms of like companies to work with, yeah. Right, exactly.
SPEAKER_03And that happens, that definitely happens that we can't authentically support do them justice, you know what I mean.
SPEAKER_02I don't want to just be like, hey, cool, like let me get a pair of sunglasses, let me get a knife, and let me get this and let me get that, yeah, and then not be able to do and then suck, you know what I mean? I'd rather be good with like two or three things than like 20.
SPEAKER_03And well, and really, I mean, just to back up on that, because we just talked about that with somebody. I think Donnie, you were saying it, it was just that just every single thing that we've ever um supported, we've put cash out of our own pockets into, right?
SPEAKER_02You know, and that's the best relationships we got. Yeah, because we believe in it, right?
SPEAKER_03I mean, you it it's it's it we're consumer, and so when you have that, it's like it makes it really easy to be authentic about you know, it's not like you're watching a NASCAR race and you got Kurt Bush going, Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola. You know, I mean, he has to say it so many times during interview to get his check, you know, that kind of thing, you know.
SPEAKER_02So I thought that was a great way you said that, though, professional professionalism. You know, I think you're right. It's easy to just kind of put a camera in front of your face and start filming stuff. But yeah, there's obviously a lot. I mean, you virtually you are running a business whether you realize it or not, when you get to that point, because I mean, you're gonna get a tax form that you're gonna have to be responsible for, you know.
SPEAKER_03Well, let's build let's build on that just for a second from a business standpoint, Jared, and just kind of let our listeners know and viewers. So, like, for example, you reach out to a professional company, right? You've got a good following, you're authentic, all things are working right, right? And they say to you, and all you are is just a YouTuber, right? You're just doing your thing, but then somebody says to you, uh, let me know your target demographics and send us your media kit. That's gonna put a lot of people that are just that don't know nothing about business, like a deer in the headlights, talk about, and I mean, I know I know what it is, but there's a lot of people that have no idea what that is. So talk about like what that entails.
SPEAKER_01Can we take a quick pause? Yeah, absolutely. All right, I just gotta take my wife back real quick. Yeah, no problem, no problem. All right, we're good. So, like what you have to realize is that like if you're talking to someone who's like a social media manager for a brand, or if you do happen to get to to you know, higher up than that to like a marketing director or some you know, assistant marketing, whatever it is, they're constantly hearing from someone like you, especially if you're a content creator, like probably every day, multiple times a day, they hear from someone who uh has some sort of platform. It could be 2,000 followers, it could be 200,000, but either way, they're hearing from someone like that every day. Sure. So the more you can streamline the process, like of like, here's exactly who I am, here's exactly what I do, here's exactly what my numbers are, um, putting that into one page or two, no more than two pages, like just getting that information there. So they can when they have when it comes time, you know, for the year or the month, whatever, to look at what they want to spend, here's so-and-so's channel, or here's so-and-so's Instagram, here's what they do, um, and here's who they've worked with before, too. So, like, even if you have a very small brand that you worked with before, put something on there. Um, it's basically a resume. It's it's like a resume of like, here's what my content um creation platform is, and and here's what I can do for you. And and and then normally you you wouldn't right away say, like, all right, here's what it would cost, or here's what I'm asking for. Um, but you can also. You can you know just get it out of the way of like here's what it would cost to work with me for a year, you know.
SPEAKER_03Right, right, and wouldn't you agree? I mean, at least I do, um, and you can go different on this if you want, but like some of the best ways to do that is to get out there to go to local shows and shake hands with people. That's like I mean, I I think that there's something to be said about being unintentional, intentionally, if that makes sense, you know what I mean? Like, for example, when we went to Ducks, Tristan, there were people in manufacturers that we met and shook hands with and stuff like that that maybe we didn't have any like um inclinations on doing business with them or whatever, but it's important that you go out and you shake these hands and talk to these people from a networking perspective because I think that that goes a little bit further than messaging somebody on Instagram. Well, and does that make sense?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean it could be five years down the line, you know what I mean? Like you maybe we don't fit that profile now, but like in five years our stuff grows.
SPEAKER_03Or these people all stay in the industry and they have jobs, you know.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. No, I don't know. I mean, I I feel like it's it's beneficial, but you know, I think some of the stuff we've had success with success with too has been just from like kind of cold treating it kind of like a cold call, but being like, hey, I always like showing like if you have a stack full of pictures using somebody's product, I feel like that carries some weight when you reach out with that cold email, you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, my I mean I would say first and foremost, go build the thing, like build whatever the thing is that you're trying to get them to be a part of, build that first so that if you do happen to catch their attention, it looks impressive. And it doesn't always have to be numbers, you know. Yeah, sometimes it could be the visual appeal. Like if you're just really good at making things look really nice and you have a small following, maybe that particular marketing person's like, wow, that looks really awesome. I do want to be a part of what you do, you know. That that is sometimes it is numbers, sometimes it's just numbers. Like, get the most numbers you can, you know, do the stuff that gets the most views or whatever. And some marketing people are gonna look at that and be like, wow, he gets a lot of numbers. Yeah, we want to work with him.
SPEAKER_03Now, I think you just hit hit hit uh an important point there, and that is that you know, be unique, right? Like, like no different than an artist, right? You know, you can have this one person that steps on the stage at American Idol, right? And then all of a sudden their uniqueness sets them sail, you know what I mean? And it could be just that that you know, I re I remember going back, Tristan, all the way back to one of our first partners was Mojo, you know, and we weren't well like we were so baby at that at that point, but but they knew that we made investments in equipment, they knew that we were dedicated to the product and showing it off the best we could, and uh that was a big deal, you know what I mean? Um, so I you know, I think it it just comes down to at the end of the day that you know like you said, Jared, you know, if you if you build it, they will come, right? Is is the that's what I believe. Yeah, that's what I believe.
SPEAKER_01It may not be who you initially thought it would be, but yeah.
SPEAKER_02So, you know, one thing I wanted to do a little bit of like a segment on before we get out of here. Um I don't want to take a look at it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I got about maybe let's try to wrap it up in about five minutes. Okay, now we're good.
SPEAKER_02Let's do a little deep dive on the on the nutria that we've posted a lot in the last last bit. But let's dude, I had no idea that.
SPEAKER_03First of all, tell the difference between between a nutria and a muskrat.
SPEAKER_02Well, yeah, yeah. But just the whole deep dive on that, man. They're cra it's crazy what they the damage they cause.
SPEAKER_03Oh, it's stupid.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so the uh a muskrat is native to the to the you know to the United States. Um smaller, right? They're smaller, very similar. I don't know the like biological differences other than size. Right. Um so the muskrat thrives in our marshes or used to thrive in our marshes. And once a fur industry was established based on the muskrat, it really boomed into an industry. And fur trapping became a big thing. And you know, I mean, I I can tell you, as someone who harvests stuff from the wild every week, that like it's a lot easier to farm it, you know. You get you can control a lot more. So uh some people made a decision to bring in a bigger animal with a similar fur structure called a nutria from South America. They were bigger, they put out a bigger pelt, probably more receptive to farming. So that became the thing. And as the fur industry died off, people didn't need fur anymore. Um, they didn't need nutrients anymore, so they were let go or got out of their enclosures and kind of just populated the the marshlands across the state. But what they also did was displace the muskrat. So muskrat is almost non-existent in Louisiana's marshes. They were destructive. The muskrat were not entirely like you know, they they would, you know, eat out an area of marshland. The new tri is even more destructive. They burrow, they're bigger, they breed more. So they did a lot of destruction on the marshlands. At some point, the biologists started realizing this, and that's when they started a bounty program in Louisiana to pay hunters to go out and get them. Um for me, it's just been kind of a crazy thing to cover on my channel because like we call it a rat, you know, and it is a rodent, and to me, it looks like a big rat. So we call it a rat and we hunt it as a rat. And people across the world flip out when they see those videos. So I just, you know, I mean, I'm gonna milk it. Let's be honest. Like if it's like if it's this big spectacle and people from all over the world watch it and it becomes a gets a bunch of views, I'm gonna milk it. I'm gonna, you know, it's like I'm in business here. Like, let's run with this as long as we can. So we do a lot of videos on it, and we test different uh, you know, firearms on it and try to figure out what's the best way to do it, and from an airboat, from a you know, from a boat, from walking on land, and we just try to make it as entertaining as possible because it kind of is, you know, any invasive species is it's entertaining the people, and I think they they don't feel so like attached to the animal itself because you're kind of doing a service by by taking it out, you know.
SPEAKER_03Important. How much does a like I've I've caught a muskrat before, but like how much is uh an average size nutrient weigh? Roughly 15 15 pounds? Golly, man, that's like double the size of your cat, right? I mean pretty heavy. Well, I'll know about your cat.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I was gonna say, my I got a fat cat.
SPEAKER_01They're not quite the size of a beaver, they're not quite the size of a beaver, but they're they're they can get pretty thick.
SPEAKER_03And for people that don't know what they look like, they basically look like a beaver, kind of beaver with a rat tail. With a rat tail, yeah.
Where To Find Jared Online
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, Jared, man, we uh appreciate you having or coming on. We want to be respectful of your time. But man, tell everybody, you know, you got some exciting stuff going on over there at the channel with the merch drop, the seasoning coming out. Outside the levees. Yeah, plug all that.
SPEAKER_01Yep. So uh again, kind of the backbone of everything is the YouTube channel outside the levees. Just go on YouTube in that search bar and type in outside the levees, that'll bring you right to me. Um, we do a little bit of everything, whether it be reptiles, whether it be invasive species, even some seafood like crawfish, shrimp, crabs. Um, try to kind of run the gamut there. I have a website, outside the levees.com, that we're slowly populating with new content. It's even things of like if you're coming to Louisiana, here's my recommendation. Of charter guides. Here's a free guide you can download where you should go crabbing in Louisiana. We have merchandise, a shirt like this, hats, and a special edition drop that we just put out, which is like a cool graphic we had made of an alligator snapping turtle. And then I have a seasoning coming out called Marshfire, Cajun Seasoning. I don't I didn't know what flavor I was gonna do. I kind of ran a survey amongst the audience. I guess me being from Louisiana, people still wanted a Cajun seasoning, so I put one together. Happy with the way it tastes, and um, so that'll be out real soon here. Heck yeah, man.
SPEAKER_02Awesome, man. Well, thank you so much, Jared.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, Jared, thank you.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we'll have to do do the next one sooner than like two and a half, three years.
SPEAKER_03Good deal. Well, good luck, bro. We look forward to you. All right, guys, y'all have a good one.
SPEAKER_00I've been hellbound, riding on a bit my train. Going too fast now. Thing off so down, standing in the poor in rain.