From the visceral rush of her first bite into game she had hunted herself, this episode is a window into the soul-stirring world of primitive living and the profound respect for nature it cultivates. Joined by Eva and Will of Wild Beings, exemplary guardians of ancient skills, we venture beyond the fringes of modern comfort. Their tales from cave slumbers to the artful mastery paint a vivid picture of life interwoven with the wilderness.
As dawn breaks over the bush, the symphony of wildlife and the crunch of leaves underfoot is a reminder of how disconnected many of us have become from the food on our plates. We dissect this journey, from veganism's noble ideals to the embrace of a survival diet that honors the animals and plants thriving in our ecosystem. Eva and Will illuminate the forgotten crafts that turn every sinew and bone into tools and tapestries, while they reflect on the emotional complexity of transitioning from harvesting crops to stalking prey with a bow in hand.
Closing the loop on this circle of life, we address the educational impact of teaching children the realities of slaughter and the responsibility that comes with taking a life for sustenance. The episode reaches its crescendo as we explore the hunter's evolving emotional landscape, the conservation ethics shaping modern hunting, and the timeless knowledge imparted at their primitive skills workshops. This isn't just storytelling; it's an invitation to rediscover our roots and the balance of life that nature demands. Join us in embracing the ancient connection that pulses through the veins of every creature and plant in the wild tapestry we call home.
For the latest information, news, giveaways and anything mentioned on the show head over to our Facebook, Instagram or website.
If you have a question, comment, topic, gear review suggestion or a guest that you'd like to hear on the show, shoot an email to accuratehunts@gmail.com or via our socials.
From the visceral rush of her first bite into game she had hunted herself, this episode is a window into the soul-stirring world of primitive living and the profound respect for nature it cultivates. Joined by Eva and Will of Wild Beings, exemplary guardians of ancient skills, we venture beyond the fringes of modern comfort. Their tales from cave slumbers to the artful mastery paint a vivid picture of life interwoven with the wilderness.
As dawn breaks over the bush, the symphony of wildlife and the crunch of leaves underfoot is a reminder of how disconnected many of us have become from the food on our plates. We dissect this journey, from veganism's noble ideals to the embrace of a survival diet that honors the animals and plants thriving in our ecosystem. Eva and Will illuminate the forgotten crafts that turn every sinew and bone into tools and tapestries, while they reflect on the emotional complexity of transitioning from harvesting crops to stalking prey with a bow in hand.
Closing the loop on this circle of life, we address the educational impact of teaching children the realities of slaughter and the responsibility that comes with taking a life for sustenance. The episode reaches its crescendo as we explore the hunter's evolving emotional landscape, the conservation ethics shaping modern hunting, and the timeless knowledge imparted at their primitive skills workshops. This isn't just storytelling; it's an invitation to rediscover our roots and the balance of life that nature demands. Join us in embracing the ancient connection that pulses through the veins of every creature and plant in the wild tapestry we call home.
For the latest information, news, giveaways and anything mentioned on the show head over to our Facebook, Instagram or website.
If you have a question, comment, topic, gear review suggestion or a guest that you'd like to hear on the show, shoot an email to accuratehunts@gmail.com or via our socials.
On the sixth episode of Accurate Hunts. How did it feel in your mind to consume that meat for the first time?
Speaker 2:So I can tell you exactly because it's still such a strong visceral memory. Yeah, you can never, unless you just go full memetic and say see you later to your whole family and everything and learn how to hunt and be okay with being alone, which would make you eventually crazy. We're always going to be part of the system to a degree.
Speaker 1:And he said but the feet are the highest carriers of bacteria on the external part of the animal because they're always in the mud, they're in the ground. So he said, you've just hung it upside down, or be it in a cold area, so where does bacteria go? It grows and you come down. So not something I'd considered. And now I remove the hawks. Here we are again Accurate Hunts at Life Outdoors, and tonight I have two special people that I've met along my journey and I've learned a lot from them, and they live an outdoors life and I think I live an outdoors life and they put me to shame. I've never slept in a cave overnight. So we have Eva and Will joining us tonight from the central coast. Welcome guys.
Speaker 2:Thanks, dodge, thanks Dodge, good to be here.
Speaker 1:Good to be here, thanks for having us, but I want it to tonight's a little bit different. We obviously are hunting outdoors based podcast and this falls more into the outdoors type conversation. I stumbled across you guys when I was doing a bit of a recording traveling junket in the last six months and we met at a random location on a random event and it did involve animals and some skinning. So if you want to maybe touch on how you ended up at that event and what it was, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:So. That event was a seven day using the whole animal course with Dr Teresa Camper, which is an amazing, amazing skilled primitive skills teacher from the UK. She was on season eight of alone and she has been someone that I've been really following her work for many years because, in regards to, like primitive skills and ancestral technology, there's not a lot of skilled practitioners of that in this country. It's really hasn't fully integrated into the culture here yet, but it's huge overseas. It's so big in America and in Europe, and so she is one of the many inspiring people that I follow online. And yeah, gordo.
Speaker 1:You're a fan girling.
Speaker 2:Absolutely yeah.
Speaker 1:And there was no hiding that. It was obvious.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yes, yeah, absolutely. Just because her work is so thorough, like she has spent so much of her life delving into the traditional tanning and then using the whole animal as well, and she's shown that she's capable of that by going on the alone and the Stone Age documentary thing she was on as well, where I think it was for a month they had to make all their own. Did you watch that?
Speaker 1:They had to make it yeah, surviving the Stone Age.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that was awesome and that was really incredible, because Will and I are really into, you know, the more Stone Age technology as well. And so, yeah, gordo from Bushcraft Australia brought her over here and we were like, yes, let's get onto that. And then, yeah, we meet a friendly guy that brought the Wellbeys down, and that was you.
Speaker 1:And then Kangaroos Correct, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1:Yes, that was a fun little journey. I met both Gordo and Theresa and actually spent a bit of time on both their courses and I did record some stuff with them. I had some audio issues with Gordo so you won't hear that one, but I did lay down an episode with Theresa and it was super interesting. I learned a lot in a short amount of time. I didn't do the full seven day course, I was only there for one day of each. But just an interesting lady and her ability to explain step by step the process and watching her work with an animal she hadn't worked on before was very interesting. I actually get that comment a bit with hunting. If I go into a new area or people say, well, how do you not get lost? And it's utilizing the same skill set but just applying it to a different area or her to a different animal. So it was cool to see her caught off guard with some weird functions of Kangaroos that she wasn't used to.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. That was really fascinating actually watching her analyze the anatomy as she was breaking it down, and she actually said that the anatomy of the Kangaroo is the most similar to human.
Speaker 1:With reference to a collar bone as well. Their shoulder has a collar bone attached, whereas deer and goats and things don't.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And then the skin being so different because the neck obviously it was a lot thinner and on deer that's the thick part the rump is still very, very thick. But yeah, it was just fascinating watching her kind of navigate through that animal and not ever knowing it, but really figuring it out as she goes and applying her skill set with other animals onto the Kangaroo was very cool.
Speaker 1:And you guys did some weird stupid stuff with Kangaroo parts, you know, using bladders as water containers and all sorts of things.
Speaker 2:Do you want to talk about the eye?
Speaker 1:Yeah, what did you do?
Speaker 3:There was lots of cool stuff we picked up from that course. One of them was the I believe it's called the Bittress Fluid in the eyeball. It's like made up of mostly proteins which can be used as a binder with different materials like crushed up charcoal. Or if you heat up bones so much where it's still white but it just crushes into a powder super easily, then you can mix it with that and then you got like black and white paints that you can go and paint with. So finding out that the egg whites is pretty similar and you can just use that if you don't have eyeballs on hand, but it's still cool to like. You know, put a use Absolutely. There's many different things.
Speaker 1:That's a cool use. I don't think there's any egg whites available in Kangaroos, so stick to that. And bones as well. She was using bones for things.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we did. We made a whole bunch of different bone tools. People ended up with different tools out of the animal because we all had different bones to work with, but some of them were like hide fleshing tools, basically different bits of like jewelry. Yeah, lots of awls and weaving needles and things like that.
Speaker 2:And for anyone who doesn't know what an awl is, a bone awl is something that you a piece of bone, obviously that you sharpen into a point that you then push a hole through the hide, so then you can sew.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a yeah, a pre stitching method.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Pop that through and then follow it. Yes, that was. It was an interesting course and as soon as I didn't tell you this. But I was sitting in the circle and I'd just finished interviewing Teresa when you guys all walked in and I was like, oh, I know that lady and that was you. I was had been following you online prior, just on Instagram, watching your stuff, and that was on Wild Beings. So this is your setup and where you've come from. If you want to, you know, just tell us a bit of your history and where you've come from and how you started that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I founded Wild Beings, which is the organization that Will and I run, in 2020. And at that point in my life, I was living in a bell tent on my aunt's beautiful, beautiful property which is like 200 acres in the middle of Yango National Park, which is like very, very vast and wild out there. And I was living out there for a year. And at that point in my life, I had already been living outside for a couple of years before that and that was the first time I was traveling around. A lot before that, that was the first time that I was in one place and on one piece of land for a whole year and I really just really got deep into the more, yeah, bushcraft skills and ancestral skills, because I was in one place and you need to be really grounded and have time and space to be able to go into these skills Because, as you would have seen, dodge they yeah, they're not just quick things that you can just figure out on a weekend or something. You have to really put a lot of time and energy and focus into them to be able to practice them, to figure them out as well. So, yeah, I founded Wild Beings then and since then, will and I and our other co-founder, clay, have just been running camps, basically just getting people connected to the bush and also teaching them bushcraft skills and skills that bring them into more of a relationship with the bush Like that's pretty much the basis of it.
Speaker 2:It's not just bushcraft or survival we do those skills but the intention that we have and the foundations is to make people understand that we have evolved as hunter-gatherers. We've always had relationship with the land, and the only thing different now is that we're living in cities and not utilizing all of those senses and those innate knowings that are already within us. So, yeah, it's been a really amazing journey. Yeah, and it just keeps growing organically. You know, here on the Central Coast there's a lot of beautiful alternative people that want. They just want more realness and more nature connection, and to be able to offer that in a practical way as well has been, yeah, really really awesome. And then it means that we've been able to deepen into those skills that we are so passionate about, about living, yeah.
Speaker 1:So that's in a nutshell Two questions and I'll let you answer them separately. When did it start for you, the whole wanting to be more connected and living outdoors? Was it a childhood thing or more of a teenage thing, and was there something that happened? And then the second question is you say more alternative people. I actually it's interesting word, I suppose but you would say that they're alternative, but alternative to what we're doing now.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:They're not alternative to what we have done for centuries.
Speaker 2:That's right. Yeah, more normal people. Really, we should say yeah. So I grew up here on the Central Coast and I was really lucky Like we always lived really close to the beach or we had a bush reserve in the back. So I always was exploring the bushlands when I was younger.
Speaker 2:But, yeah, I had a pretty rowdy upbringing and oh, not upbringing, but teenage years and early 20s going and partying a lot. So I kind of wasn't really focusing on that aspect of what I'm into, and it wasn't until I started traveling Australia in 2017, yeah, that I just kind of remembered oh, this is amazing. I really love this lifestyle and I love the bush and I want to learn what all these people are doing. I started meeting all these people living off grid or living out with indigenous communities and they were just living life differently and I hadn't been exposed to that kind of, yeah, alternative reality for a really long time and that kind of sparked me wanting to do that with my own life. And then, yeah, when I came back to the coast in 2018, that's when I started getting into the bushcraft side of things so foraging wild greens and learning about medicines in the bush and things like that and previously to that I'd been a vego for like most of my life.
Speaker 2:My mom's a vegetarian. Never ate red meat. When I was younger I used to have a bit of chicken and fish here and there, but I was a pretty hardcore vego. And then, yeah, I did a survival food challenge with a friend, so we only ate food that he hunted and that we foraged for those two weeks and that's the first time I introduced wild meat back into my world and I haven't really looked back ever since then. It was really. It just made a lot of sense to eat the land that's around us. It just made so much sense. So, yeah, I haven't really looked back since then.
Speaker 1:I want to know about your start Will, but you got to wait because she just said something that I can't, I can't ignore for now. We'll have to come. I can't come back to it. How did it, how did it feel in your mind to consume that meat for the first time?
Speaker 2:So I can tell you exactly, because it's still such a strong visceral memory. I was out at the bush camp that we were staying at and I was literally by the fire. It was all smoky and it was. It was kangaroo jerky that we had got from Roadkill kangaroo and I remember eating it and chewing it really slowly and I was like, all of a sudden it sounds like I feel like it sounds cliche, but it was honestly like. My body was like yeah, this is, this is what is normal, this is what we need.
Speaker 1:Like it's not. It's not cliche at all. It's a common comment from people who try for the first time. It's their body, it's just. It's like an exuberant yes 100%. What I'm missing.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and it was. It was like my, it was like a genetic awakening kind of thing that my body was hungry for this wild meat and like mentally it made so much sense because I've always been so as many of us so anti the mainstream meat industry, and so all of a sudden it all just made sense Like, of course, wild meat it's right here and yeah, it was really cool.
Speaker 1:That's exciting. Right your turn Will.
Speaker 3:All right. So when I was like a kid, I spent a lot of my time like going for bush walks with my dad and that. And then when I was a bit older, like you know, me and the kids in the neighborhood would go spend a lot of time in the bush building tree houses and having glove gun wars and jumping into, yeah, and jumping off like creek banks, into Lantana for fun and like it was just a very yeah, I had a lot of freedom in that sense to just go and explore the nature around with my friends and that, and I guess that really like planted a seed for me, because then when I got older and you know I was in high school then you got your HSC coming up, you got a lot of distractions that pull you away from the natural world and, yeah, of course, like partying and drinking and all that stuff. When I was a young fella and just kind of, yeah, veered away from that side of things for like a little while. It was always still there I'd enjoy like going for surfs and, you know, trail runs every now and then, but it wasn't, like you know, the main pillar that my life is based off, like it is now and, yeah, I've always been kind of like, you know, thinking about environmental things and being, you know, a bit conscious about things that way, and like back in the day when a lot of those like vegan documentaries came out and they were saying, oh, you know, like we're doing all this damage from factory farming so it's better to just eat plants for the environment. So I was like, oh yeah, I'll just, I'll just do that then and anyway, that eventually led me down a path where I became like obsessed with, like the idea of fruits, because it's like this it's basically a gift from the tree or an exchange where you know you receive the nutrients and the sugars from the fruit and you just your role then is to disperse the seeds so it can reproduce somewhere else. So I thought that was just like the most amazing like concept. I just wanted to do more of that.
Speaker 3:So I ended up in the tropics, traveling around Borneo, chasing like rare species of durians and stuff, and learning all the different, the different kinds of trees and what they looked like and what flowers they had and what the fruits tasted like, and basically started building this like deep connection in a sense to all these trees, because I'm like really learning about all their details and flavors and smells and all these sort of things. And basically, when I came home to Australia, I felt like a sense of emptiness almost, because I didn't have, you know, that nature I was connecting to over there, I wasn't connecting to it here. So I felt like this, like something was missing out of my life, basically. And, yeah, I was just going for a run in the bush one day and it just sort of like hit me, you know, like this place has all these amazing plants they're just not, like you know, exotic fruiting trees that they have like cool other uses and edible in other ways. So, yeah, the way I like to explain it is the bush kind of gave me a slap across the head and said you know, we're all here waiting for you to learn about, mate, like whenever you are. And yeah, that just sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole, learning about like all of, yeah, all of the native plants and their uses.
Speaker 3:And I was still eating a vegan diet at that point in time, with like that environmental thing going on. And then, anyway, when I met Eva and some other friends and that, and you know, heard the concept of like eating things, like roadkill or conservation, hunted meat and all those sort of things. It was like, oh, you know, that does kind of make sense. Before I wanted to, like you know, not have, like not be taking life because you know you want to conserve the environment. But that's not as simple as it is. It's more complex and deep than that. And yeah, and basically the plants were my introduction into the world of all of nature, basically. And then that just started like a train of learning, all these different skills from you know learning about the plants to, oh, you can use plants to make fire, oh, that's pretty cool. Oh, you can use plants to make cordage. You can use cordage to make string bags or fishing line or, yeah, to lash things together or make shelter.
Speaker 3:And then just suddenly realizing that you know nature is really all that we do need, Like if you include us as all of nature as well, like everything else that we have in modern life is just extras, like, yeah, we all love it, or some of us really like you know, like to live in a house all the time and work from home on a laptop, like we are now, but they're not necessarily like you don't actually need it.
Speaker 3:Once you have the knowledge, or some of the knowledge, from the land and how it can provide for you, and I feel like coming into wild beings and that kind of thing that was like a really strong thing I wanted to share with people is, like, you know, nature has all this value for us and we have all this value we can give back to nature.
Speaker 3:Let's, let's do that, let's try and make like people enthusiastic about caring about the land, because you can see like it's intrinsic value from all of that knowledge, if that makes sense. So like if you go for a bush walk, you're not going for a walk gun. Oh, yeah, there's some trees. You cut them down, it wouldn't make a difference. You're saying, oh, that's medicine, that's food, you can make shelter, that's how you make fire. That tree helped me out when I was bleeding everywhere and I was able to, like you know, stop the blood flow and stop infection, like just starting to build like ropes of relationships with all the plants and all the animals and like everything that's around you and it's just really, yeah, it's a beautiful feeling to have that and it makes things like bush walks much more engaging rather than, you know, just seeing trees, your brains recognizing the patterns of all the plants and all the movements and everything. No-transcript, it's just feeding you information about the landscape constantly.
Speaker 1:I think the ropes of relationships is a really good comment, and I hadn't thought about it like that. I think that hunters get mistaken for people who don't notice things. But we are similar but in a different direction. So we might start with the animal. We're hunting an animal, but whilst doing that we're noticing the wind, the weather, the trees. They're eating, the brush that they're living in, the way the undergrowth is different, seasonal fruits and things they're picking, and we do notice. Okay, well, the deer are here at this time of year because that plant is flowering and they're eating it. So I think we forget that we're doing those things. They nearly become subconscious, A bit like you going for a walk. You are just walking, but in your mind you're subconsciously picking up on all those things you just mentioned. I want to ask what the worst fruit you tried was. So you had some stinky ones.
Speaker 3:Nony is definitely the strongest tasting fruit I've ever had in my life and I've had durian and jack fruits and chimpadaks and all that stuff, but Nony is like, yeah, I don't hate it either, so it's hard to answer that question. If anyone listening to this podcast wanted to taste a fruit that I think that they would find the absolute worst, it would be Nony. It's kind of like spicy blue vein cheese that had been left out in the sun for a couple of weeks.
Speaker 2:Dodge, I'll send you a personal video of me trying Nony for the first time up in the tropics last year. That's basically what it was.
Speaker 3:In saying that the whole plant itself and the tree and the fruit is extremely medicinal and if you look up some of the pollination cultures and stuff, how they use it, it's like one of their most important plants.
Speaker 1:No, you lost me at spicy. I don't do spicy, I don't even like chili and pepper. But what an introduction, both of you to come from a vegan, vegetarian style life and then moving into still, I'm assuming, predominantly plant based, but with the introduction of wild game and wild meats. Do you remember the first time you tried meat in that capacity? We were like as vibrantly as Eva does.
Speaker 3:Yeah, except I don't have feelings as vibrantly as Eva does. So for Eva it was like this super intense experience, but for me I wanted it to be really casual, because we're talking about eating meat here for the first time, or is this just yeah?
Speaker 1:It feels like you're planning something else for the first time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but anyway, because I knew how Eva would react to me wanting to try meat as well. So basically, so she couldn't go. Oh, what do you feel? What's going on? I planned to do it when we had friends coming over for dinner, so she was just sitting there trying to be super casual.
Speaker 2:I was trying to keep it so casual and for the context, we had been living in a bush camp at this stage for half a year and I was bringing back. We were still vegan at this point and I was bringing back Roque all the time. We were always skinning things, butchering things. I was munging on that meat, so it was really cool. Will was exposed to the bodies of dead animals well before he actually started to eat them, which was really cool.
Speaker 3:And yeah, before I was eating meat, I was skinning the animals and butchering them so I could bring the meat back for my friends.
Speaker 2:Bring it back for us, yeah.
Speaker 1:And you never felt the urge just to cook some up.
Speaker 3:No, not at that time. Yeah, I guess it was a little bit of a process for me to like sort of fully, you know, take it through my brain.
Speaker 1:What was the first? What was the meat?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was kangaroo.
Speaker 1:It was an Eastern Grey kangaroo, yeah right, there must have been a lot of clean roads near you guys.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Always. That's a living requirement of where we are.
Speaker 1:Right, so we've done the vegetarian video. Moving into the meat side of things, how do you guys, how do you survive without what we would call the mod cons and things Like? How do you find? I don't know what the question is, I suppose, but how do you switch off from the things that we think we need, that we don't actually need?
Speaker 3:Well, luckily for us it comes pretty natural because we don't really like a lot of those things, like we try and base our life as much as we can in the outdoors yeah, whenever I'm talking for both of us here but yeah, I feel the most calm, the most relaxed, the most productive when I don't have Like, when I'm not checking my phone, if I'm on the land where we live and we've got a lot of jobs and stuff we need to constantly do and it's all based around nature. So it can be like you know, hide, tanning or foraging or redding fibres or collecting fibres to weave, like there's a lot of like just small jobs like that and just keeps you engaged.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and by the end of the day you feel really great. You've done a whole bunch of stuff. You've been outside all day.
Speaker 1:And this is. It's nearly full time for you guys, while beings.
Speaker 2:Well, pretty much like it's interesting, you can never really fully leave the system. That's what. After many years of having fantasies about that and living pretty far away from society at times, I've realized that, yeah, you can never, unless you just go full memetic and say see you later to your whole family and everything and learn how to hunt and be okay with being alone, which would make you eventually crazy. We're always going to be part of the system to a degree and so what we've been trying to achieve lately is like finding that balance. So we're living out in a beautiful bush area where we can do all of those ancestral skills and processing animals and tanning that we couldn't just do in a suburban backyard.
Speaker 2:But yet, then again, we still have that connection when we come down to the coast to do our programs and our camps and we're still coming in getting fruit and veg from the farmers markets and things like that, and recently just started actually eating poultry from a local regenerative agriculture farm, because we realized well, I've only been eating red meat for the last five years because all I've eaten is kangaroo and deer and goat and eel and fish here and there, but not much there, and there's been a couple of roadkill birds that we've eaten, but I realized that that's not actually from a long term health perspective. We need to diversify our protein intake and so, yeah, it's hard for me to swallow because my values are really strong about wild living, but the reality you have to kind of swallow it and be like. Well, right now we're not living on land where we'll be able to hunt all the time and raise our own chickens and things like that. So, yeah, we're buying meat from local regenerative agriculture and for us that's the closest thing we can get Exactly, that's right.
Speaker 2:We would never, ever buy any meat anywhere near a shopping center or anything like that, but that's the closest that we can get to creating that right now.
Speaker 3:And it's well. For me, it's like you know, if you look at hunter gatherer cultures that have lived throughout the past and still exist today, you find that the cultures that had the most diversity in their diets are the ones that were the healthiest and, you know, had the best physiques and the best teeth and all that sort of stuff. I think it's a disservice to your own personal health to exclude certain things out of your diet. This day and age, we're not living in like the same conditions that allow us to be full blown hunter gatherers. So you've got to, you know, do the best with what's around you and regenerative agriculture products. Yeah, I think it's a good, a good step.
Speaker 2:It's better than buying it from the shopping center, but still, while game is still at the top, I think.
Speaker 3:Just talking quickly on while game. Go kill duck. Oh my God, that's just the best thing.
Speaker 1:Pretenderized.
Speaker 2:Oh no, we just put it straight in the camp oven on the fire but it was like the most amazing flavor that it like was like butter, like so oily and tasty.
Speaker 3:Yeah, do you know if you can hunt ducks? Is that something that?
Speaker 1:you just want to put a caveat on this conversation that the picking up of native animal roadkillers, the technicality of illegal legality, Absolutely.
Speaker 1:You guys can do what you do. We can do. Yes, so you can do. Well, the duck hunting thing is a major topic in the hunting world at the moment. But so in Victoria there is a duck season and in New South Wales there is a duck season for shotgun harvest to ducks over rice fields. In New South Wales Mostly there is some private dams, but so they're decimating rice fields. They just they fly in by the tens of thousands and demolish like 25 or 30 acres a night of freshly planted. They flood the fields and then plant the seeds and then as soon as the seed sprouts, the ducks just fly in and eat it. So they have an interesting.
Speaker 1:I'm not super well versed on my duck hunting but from what I understand and some of the boys listening we shaking their heads because they just come back from a duck hunt and I didn't go with them. But the way it works, the farmers really want you to come. They. It's not like deer hunting where it's all tied up. This is a hey, who's coming. We need help like and and it's yeah, it's good fun. Apparently I haven't done it, but what are they shooting them with?
Speaker 1:shotguns.
Speaker 2:Wow, that would have to be a really good aim.
Speaker 1:Well, yes, yeah, the boys learned pretty quickly that it's not as easy as it might look and I think four of them went down for sort of three days and come back with half a dozen ducks like seven or eight ducks and that was it for their first trip. Just because there's, you know, new for them, for skills and things. But there's different ways to do it. Down in Victoria they do a lot of calling, so they'll squawk and call the birds in to a set of decoys that they've set up in front of them. So again, not not my area of expertise, but definitely it's a thing.
Speaker 1:It is highly regulated and licensed and bag limits and things are very highly enforced. Yeah, not a. It used to be legal in New South Wales on public waters but they've dropped that a few years ago. Now it's only on private land in New South Wales, a little bit less regulated than it is in Victoria, but it's really off for that one. Now I was going to say when we met Will the first time you mentioned you had a bow and you were looking to. You know, do some more bow hunting and how's your bow hunting journey going?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's been really fun. I actually started heading out during the right last year with a good friend and yeah, we spent a lot of time just observing and watching deer and you know, getting up half an hour before first light comes through and just trying to get into a good spot where we can observe them and hopefully come across them. And then after that we had we got like fully busy with traveling and running events and all that and I basically hadn't got back around to getting into it till, you know, a couple of weeks ago now. So yeah, basically it's been super fun. The thing I love about it is it's just another layer of what I was talking about before, like going out into the bush and seeing all the plants that you know. It's just like the next layer on top of it and all those things seem to complement them like each other really well.
Speaker 1:Have you had any really close encounters or harvested anything yet?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I've had a couple of close encounters. No, I haven't harvested anything yet, but yeah, like going out when it's still dark to the point where you can't see like 30, 40 meters away from you. I was basically, yeah, walking to where I needed to go, to get to where I was thinking that the deer were going to go, but instead they're actually right in front of me and it was so dark I couldn't see anything. And yeah, the first time I had shoes on, the first time I started going out recently, I had shoes on and I was walking down the track thinking, man, like I am just making so much noise, this is ridiculous. And I bumped the deer when I was like 40 meters away and that was me trying to sneak. So second time I went out no shoes and I think I must have been, you know, 10, 20 meters from a deer before bumping them. So that's just like, yeah, it's close, yeah, that's close. That's within shooting range on the bow for me personally.
Speaker 1:I saw you shooting a target the other day. It was pretty consistent.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I'm happy with my groupings at 20 meters. It's a bit of like. There's an ethical thing that comes in there as well. You want to be able to shoot consistently within a range that you're going to hunt at and then you know if you want to hunt at a further range. Then you got to practice to get it basically sort of in this range because you don't want to. You basically don't want to miss the mark, because it's just going to be a really long, hard slog to try and find the animal and you're just hoping it's going to be injured enough to even be able to track down, as I've seen photos of animals with arrows hanging out of them that are still like living, like you know.
Speaker 1:Interesting experience on the weekend just gone.
Speaker 1:We were filming for a TV show on it on my property and friend of my wife's was the cook, the chef for the week or for the weekend, and she was a bow hunter or she is, and I'll let her tell the story at some point.
Speaker 1:But we would go so she would do breakfast and lunch for us and then, while we were out hunting, she'd go the other way and go bow hunting. She actually killed more animals than we did on the TV show. She had a really misfortunate is that the word unfortunate situation where she actually, without giving too much of the story away, shot the animal she wanted to shoot but as the arrow exited it came out at a 45 degree angle, deflecting off a rib, and then hit a second animal that was not behind the animal she was shooting at and then ensued a probably an hour and a half of trying to stalk that animal in not ideal situation. Anyway, she got it done and yeah, it was. It was very emotional for her and very real for us. We were sitting on the hill watching an all through binoculars with two way radio, telling her what was happening because she couldn't see the animal initially. We could.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:It was. It was pretty raw to watch that from a distance, but her ability to follow it through and push through the emotions to get it done, to end that animal's life that she didn't really need or mean to wound yeah and she's, like you know, 18 meters is her sweet spot. She says, yeah, just just sub 20. So, yeah, I get that. And I mean we don't. From a rifle hunting point of view, I feel there's probably less of a connection with the animal because we're not so much in their zone of influence. You guys are really pushing that, that boundary, and I do respect that. I've done a bit of both shooting, you know. So that's a bow hunting. I'm not. I don't want to put myself as a bow hunting it. I'll do that when I'm I don't know when, when I'm bored from rifle hunting.
Speaker 3:Yeah but I couldn't agree more with that, like when you're saying, yeah, with bow hunting and needing to get you know within 20 meters, like I've developed like so much more respect for those animals because you know I still haven't like harvested an animal from the land yet because you have to keep going out there. You got to keep getting up and observing them and you know, so far, every single time the deers outsmarted me or being more skillful than I am. So like, yeah, I just keep building like this respect for those animals and how incredible their survival instincts are and they're hearing and their ability to detect movement and smell. And oh man, it's incredible and and it's such a rush, even if you don't like go and get an animal to be sort of sneaking through the bushes quietly as you can, and then suddenly, 10 meters away, you hear a deer like make an alarm call and then like run away a little bit and try and figure out what the hell is going on. Like man, it's just like such a rush.
Speaker 3:And and even like even just sitting in a hide, like if you sneak out to somewhere where you want to just go and sit and wait for a deer to walk past, where you've been seeing them move through, like with all the other aspects of nature connection going on.
Speaker 3:It's still like a really beautiful interactive experience. You're still up for seeing the sunrise. You're going from complete silence out in the bush, surrounded by nature, to suddenly one small bird starts chirping away probably the eastern yellow robin and then followed by other birds coming in and slowly building up and then you hear the cookaburras go and then they sort of wake everyone else up and you know it's just a beautiful time of day to be out in nature and connecting with the land and still having like a like an objective like hunting to do. It's more of a reason to go and do it because I feel like you know humans are creatures of comfort a little bit and if you go oh yeah, wake up at you know five o'clock and get down into the bush to listen to birds, like although I enjoy it every single time and love it like it's just just doesn't quite do it for me, like especially if I have a late night or something like. But you know just yeah.
Speaker 3:And it's like it's that feeling that we've been doing this. It's in our DNA, like we've been doing this for so long and it's only just the recent history, now that we've started farming and moved away from hunting, but it's still, I believe, like really, really beneficial and innate to everyone, to you know, get out there and spend that time in nature.
Speaker 1:As you just said, you haven't had that hands on killing experience yet. We connected recently. You guys put in an order for some venison and I said yeah, I can feel that. So I went and I think you had an event or something and you needed some things for.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I went and shot three fellow does just at a local block close to here. I was only after two and then there was two standing side by side and I thought, well, I'll make them busy, they won't waste it. And you guys turned up the next day, I think. Anyway, just the smiles on your faces, I think they're still. Your cheek muscles are still recovering and to us, or to us spending my family and myself, it's quite, it's very common to have, you know, deer and things hanging around at home in the cool room or on the table, and you guys sort of experienced that with my kids hanging around and they're just very matter of fact.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know we try to introduce them to all that, so it was nice for them to you know, meet you guys and then see what you guys can create from those. So what? What did you need them for and what have you done with them?
Speaker 3:Do you want to start, and I'll fill in any gaps, it's probably a long journey.
Speaker 2:Oh, it was incredible, like I just want to say, it's actually one of my most favorite things to do to be like skinning and butchering animal, because it brings my mind so hyper, focused into the present and I have a very busy mind. Not many other things do that, and so it was actually really awesome. We did two of them the next morning, I think, and then two of them in one day and then one the next day, but yeah, so we got them obviously for because for ourselves, for eating and also for the ancestral skills gatherings that we run. We always cater dinner and we always cater wild game, whether it's kangaroo or goat or deer. So we took a whole shoulder or a leg there and we're cutting it up for making wild jerky with.
Speaker 2:Some of the kids there were like helping me cut that up and put it on the skewers to put on the drying rack, and so, to start, we wanted to try out some stone tools that will had made at Teresa's course. So we actually skinned the first year with just stone tools and we butchered the whole thing with just stone tools. And when I say stone tools, I'm talking about like a little flake, like. So that's a tiny little chip, like from a little flake from one of the flints and how long?
Speaker 2:it would have taken.
Speaker 3:So when we say when we say butcher as well, we're talking about just until, like the main cuts. So taking the legs off like separating the backstraps.
Speaker 2:Yeah, not down into stakes and cuts and things, but not completely, no, but it took us, I think, to skin it alone probably an hour, which is a lot longer than usual, and then, because the flint blade was getting dull by the end of butchering, it was. So it was a tedious process, but we were committed our stubbornness for like no, we're doing this whole thing with just the, just the stone.
Speaker 1:Do you remember having fatigue in your hand from holding such a small blade?
Speaker 2:I didn't have fatigue, but I just had like cuts all on all over my finger, like from holding it like that.
Speaker 1:But yeah, skinning the deer, even not yourself.
Speaker 2:Well, exactly, but it did require a lot of concentration because the angle on where, how you have to hold that, because it, when it's sharp, it will slice straight through the meat, slice straight through that skin. So it's so amazing. But you had to be really precise about the angle, how you're cutting it and everything. But towards the end we were kind of just like hacksawing with a tiny little stone, stone blade to get the the meat off.
Speaker 1:But something I learned from Teresa. Just to interrupt and it was to do with. You guys went on to use the skin, or you still are, and things. But every people listening might understand this. I close my eyes while I describe it, but when you're skinning for to use the skin later on in making clothing, every tiny, tiny little line that you put in it with the knife, oh when you're fleshing it actually opens up and can tear and makes a weak point Absolutely.
Speaker 1:She taught me a whole different way to skin, and that was, she said leave as much meat on the skin as you can, which? Goes against everything we do as skinning for taxidermy style skinning. But yeah, that was a real eye opener for me, even the little cut through the white layer, what it's called, but the tiny little cut through that, as you're fleshing it just opens up the little membrane.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and that's been something. That's why we're really keen to start getting our own deer, because obviously the last few years we've been getting deer off other hunters and things like that, and of course that's not part of that culture. Yet you know, like you say, you guys want to get it done quickly and efficiently, and so the priorities are different. But it makes such a difference when we're working with the hides and fleshing them and degrading them. When there's not heaps of damage, like it just makes a completely different material at the end of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, living room, wasn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, some of it was at the front. We hung it up on the meat hooks at the front and then we had them all curing in the living room while we were breaking it down. It was great, it was awesome.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I must say, out of all the hides that we've gotten from hunters, the ones that you gave to us with those deer, oh wait, no, we did that. Yeah, you were about to give me a couple of it. Yeah, I was going to say, man, you skinned them so well.
Speaker 1:You did that yourself. Pat on the back to yourself Will.
Speaker 2:The kangaroos were pretty good. You know why.
Speaker 1:So the first course they weren't, because I did them the 100th way and you guys were on the second course, so you got the better batch.
Speaker 2:Oh, did Theresa give you a little talk? Yeah?
Speaker 1:she did. She gave me a little smack on the wrist. That's awesome, but also it was the size of kangaroo that she requested was smaller than what I provide. I was like, oh, big ones.
Speaker 2:Surely yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:No, it made life terrible. Yeah, absolutely, anyway, so you, got the skin off one with some traditional tools, and then you manned up and used real tools.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we used our knives for the second one and the third one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so basically, essentially from those animals, we kept the trickier from one of them, which is like the wind pipe for using for things like holding your bow needles. It's like it's a good shape for a case, you know. So that would have been another item used back in the Stone Age times because of its shape and it's nice and hard. Obviously, we took all the brains out to use for brain tanning.
Speaker 1:That's not obvious at all. Oh yeah, Well, that'll be as for you guys.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, yeah, we found a really good. Yeah, teresa actually taught us a really good way to get the brain out, because prior to that, oh my goodness, will and I had really massacred some skulls.
Speaker 3:All kind of rocks and hammers involved.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Does it matter if you scramble?
Speaker 1:it.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:Okay, so I would normally go up through the spinal cord, scramble it and then pour it out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we haven't done that yet. Teresa just soars out with a little saw a rectangle in the back of the skull and then just reaches in and grabs it out. But I'm yet to come in from the other side, which we're keen to do, so we took that out. And then obviously we got the heart, kidneys, liver tongue. Tongue. We didn't get that. We left the eyeballs for this one.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we're a little bit busy with stuff.
Speaker 1:What's that? Didn't need to paint your nails, no no, not this time.
Speaker 2:Not that time. I love using the tails as my feather duster at home. I use the details to get all the cobwebs and dust the place. So just drying them out, preserving them. We got all of the hawks skin off, so from the shin down, after we've already butchered it all, broken it down. Is that the cannon bone? Yeah, so we peel the skin off that and that's still in the freezer because we're gonna make little. It's called like do-claw, little pouches, and it's such a thing for a lot of the primitive skills people over in the States and you just see them make these beautiful little bags that are full of the tanned little do-claws, like all sewn together, and it's just really cool. It's just amazing. We kept all of the bones and we've made, we've made some holes, you made some hooks. What else? Some needles, jewelry. I've got one of the bones in my ear as a spacer, and this is not from the dev. This is a. Is it a fibula or a fibula? No, I can't remember. This is what it's either a tibia or fibula.
Speaker 2:Of One of those two yeah.
Speaker 1:Of what's the process.
Speaker 2:Of a gray kangaroo. Okay, yeah.
Speaker 1:Have you processed skins yet? We're in the process.
Speaker 2:So we have removed the hair, we've removed the green, and now we just need to neutralize them before we then start applying the fat solution, before we soften them into buckskins.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's pretty exciting. You threw out terms there that again no one else knows what you're talking about de-graining and things like that. And, theresa, from memory there was no grain on the kangaroo skins or there was a step that you had to change from deer skins to kangaroo skins.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so with the kangaroo skins the grain layer is really like securely attached to the mid-dermal layer, so it's incredibly difficult to grain them. So when we did our course with her, she had changed the process and so we de-haired them, but we left the grain on and fat-tanned them.
Speaker 2:So and usually you don't like when you're making like buckskin. And don't get confused, listeners, by the name buckskin, it's just a generic term now for a material. You can make it with any animal, it's just. The end product is hair and grain removed, which are the two like. The grain is essentially the hair follicle layer that you have to scrape off. It's a really tedious process. It requires a lot of strength and manpower to get it done right. But you really wanna get that done right because the better you do that, the more softer the end product is gonna be. But with the kangaroo that was a trip out leaving the grain on, because usually that's just a. You don't do that if you want nice soft, supple buckskin material. But that was a really cool thing that Teresa learned. They're totally different. The makeup of their skin is just so different to deer and goat and reindeer and all the things that she's tan. So that was really cool.
Speaker 1:Did it still end up being soft? Absolutely like so soft, like goat skin, supple soft.
Speaker 2:Yeah, more like, yeah, real softer than goat skin, Like, absolutely like, yeah, really velvety soft, which was so surprising considering it has the grain layer on, but they're a lot thinner. There's the skin. Well, the ones that we had, anyway for the second course, the bigger males are probably a bit thicker, but the smaller females were a lot thinner and that was really nice to work with.
Speaker 1:Now, what have you done with the meat? While you're here, I picture some fresh fennel from just around the corner as well. Oh my God.
Speaker 2:And we went home and we cooked up that, because you sent me through as well like a recipe for and you know, will and I we're not like gourmet eaters, we're just like great, give us some deer and a couple of boiled potatoes, baked potatoes, whatever, like we're happy and some wild greens. We're not super fancy eaters, but you gave us that recipe and then the wild fennel and we were like, okay, let's make a real fancy dinner. It did not look anything alike the one in the photo, but How's it tasty?
Speaker 2:It was absolutely tasty. Yeah, I think it was the one of the back straps that we roasted with the fennel, just so good.
Speaker 1:And what other things have you created with the meat You've?
Speaker 2:done, jerky some things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we've done jerky.
Speaker 3:We've made some burger patties with the meat mixed with liver. It's a really great way to consume it.
Speaker 2:Your favorite dodge.
Speaker 3:Yeah, especially if people don't really particularly like the texture or taste of liver, it's a really easy way to incorporate it into.
Speaker 1:Does it bind the mince like fatwood?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, a little bit, yeah. But another thing that, another reason that I put them in the burger patties cause I'm more than happy to just eat the liver as it is Weirdo. But yeah, it's actually more beneficial for your health to have small amounts of it more regularly, because it's so high in particular, nutrients like vitamin A and copper and things like that, and you can actually get too much of those nutrients. So why?
Speaker 1:Is your body just rejected, then and pass it out because you've got too much, or is it an overload?
Speaker 3:I think it's an overload, so it's much better to. Yeah, if you've got like a liver and you expand it out across a whole bunch of burger patties, then you just have them a little bit each time and I really do notice a lot more of a boost of energy in that when I do get to have it in that way, Flavor profile too.
Speaker 1:it's probably easier to hide in.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 3:I can't taste it.
Speaker 2:Absolutely completely. We could give you.
Speaker 1:I'll give it a try next time.
Speaker 2:And you, yeah, you wouldn't really taste the flavor, especially when you add herbs and everything as well.
Speaker 1:In your bush camp style living. Storing 3D area is not practical, like you, obviously, using refrigeration and things as well, but if you were, you know, trying to live off the land completely, killing three animals is not. Unless you're in a tribe, it's not a practical thing to do. So have you done the jerkeys and the smoked meats and things?
Speaker 3:Absolutely yeah, we tend to like not. So when we do it like in nature and we dehydrate meat, we tend to like not use lots of smoke, like we don't create smokers and try and smoke at all because the smoke is actually carcinogenic. But we do use fire and the fire basically dries the air. So you have a small fire underneath the meat, not trying to create lots of smoke, but just the heat from the fire drives out the air and helps to drive the meat.
Speaker 2:And also I've done plenty over the years, plenty of batches of just sun dried jerky. It's obviously not as tender because it's not temperature controlled and all things like that, but it still does the job and it preserves it. And one really amazing, amazing, very old traditional food that we've been making lately is Pemmikin. Have you heard of Pemmikin?
Speaker 1:I have, and I saw you put up that, so tell us what it is. Oh, so it's just normal. Looks like dusty dirt balls.
Speaker 2:Yes, it does look like that and it doesn't taste absolutely amazing, but you can make it taste better. Like we. That was pretty good we had. We just added some extra salt because it's so. It's rendered fat, which we rendered from your dear that you gave us, and jerky that you blend up and put them into a little ball, like so you're putting, you're mixing the jerky in with that tallow.
Speaker 3:It's like a Stone Age Bliss ball, yeah, and it's so incredible.
Speaker 2:If you want to go deep in the rabbit hole. I love researching like anthropological essays on Pemmikin because it was like the main staple, like ongoing on long journeys and long ventures where there's not an abundance if they're in like really cold climates and things like that. This food lasts for decades. Like Pemmikin, it's self-preserving, so it will last you for so long and you can add I think they added like cranberries and other wild berries and then you've got a full whole fats, carbs and proteins all right there. So you're pretty much set. It will keep you alive.
Speaker 2:It's obviously you're probably gonna get sick of it if you're just surviving on that, but we took some out on our hike that we went on a few weeks ago and it was just amazing like how much it sustained us, like the energy that just there wasn't a drop in energy. It just kind of keeps going. Yeah, I am, so I have so much awe for that food just because you can make a whole bunch of it. You don't need a fridge, you can go for as long as you want and you're set.
Speaker 1:I was just looking up the history of the word, but is it saying here, north American?
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Do you know what the word means? I didn't quite find an answer.
Speaker 3:Probably means dried meat ball with rendered fat.
Speaker 1:It's right in that new past you reckon with the meatballs, tomato sauce, right? So we've got. You've used all the meat. You've used the fat. I'm interested to know if you've got any other uses for that. Was there much fat on them?
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, we've got a couple of jars at least. We cook all of our stuff with the tello. We cook all of our like. Anything we're frying, we use tello. Yep. And also making tello bombs because it's so good, I'm so good for your skin.
Speaker 1:I was going to say have you gone down the path of soap?
Speaker 2:Not yet, but that's next. We've got a mate who just made some with lard, but we want to make it with tello, so that's next on the.
Speaker 3:I've got to make sunscreen with it as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah right, I've got a recipe I can send you. I got it from a mutual friend of ours, but Wild Food Master.
Speaker 2:Oh nice, that's so cool. He sent it and.
Speaker 1:I looked at him like, oh, probably don't have time for that.
Speaker 2:But yeah, wow.
Speaker 1:I do have the recipe. So we've got skins, meats, fats, used organs, track, use bone tendons. What do we use tendons for?
Speaker 3:So yeah, so with the deer I catch the back straps in you.
Speaker 1:Silver skin.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and the tendons out of that cannon bone as well, and then a lot of the other tendons we end up like pressure cooking and breaking it down, so it's actually really great medicine for you as well. It's really healthy. People are selling gelatin and stuff as like food supplements these days and you can just slow cook. You make it with some tendons in it and consume it that way as well.
Speaker 1:What are we doing with the back skin, the silver skin?
Speaker 3:Yes, so basically I just scraped all any sort of meat that was left on it off completely and then dried it out, and then you can pull it apart into strands and with those strands you can make things like braided fishing leader lines, or you can use it as thread for sewing leather Probably lots of other uses too.
Speaker 2:Binding your arrow tips.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so yeah, putting stone points on wood for arrows or spears, you can use that to tie it on, and it's really great for those kind of things because it self-tightens. You don't need to do any particular knot, you just kind of throw it underneath itself and it will tighten and clamp down on it as it dries out.
Speaker 1:From what I understand, it's similar to raw hide being really constrictive once it's dried.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right. So what have you got left? Is there much left? You've got meat left.
Speaker 2:We have got meat left.
Speaker 3:We have some bone shards left, like some little splinters, from crushing them up, and I've been using those to make some toggle and composite hooks basically. So that basically means a hook that is essentially like a small stick with a bone spike tied to it with natural cordage Yep.
Speaker 1:And also.
Speaker 3:No, I've been working on that kit, though, for a while, and I just need to figure out what species of fish to target. I had to go. I had some gorge hooks made up with some senior leader lines and I had to go trying to catch some potty mullet on them, but they were so small that their mouth couldn't actually fit around the gorge hook, so that's going to be a bit of a problem if you're trying to catch them.
Speaker 2:And that's the thing with a lot of these skills If we're not getting shown and taught these things, you kind of reverse engineering it and it takes a lot of time to actually succeed. But that's part of it for us.
Speaker 1:I was going to say does that make it feel more real you?
Speaker 2:feel like you're back, absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 1:How long ago, working this out for the first time.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And because from that experience with the gorge hooks, because when I heard about them originally I was like oh easy, it's so much more simple than what's a gorge hook. It's a flat piece of bone Like that's quite small, with a groove in the middle of it so you can tie your string or fishing line around or whatever you have, and you basically rig it up so it's parallel to the fishing line and so you put your bait on it, like that. So when the fish swallows it it's swallowing, it Like if that's the gorge hook, it's swallowing on that way, and then when you go to pull it out, it rotates sideways and gets clogged in its throat or in its guts.
Speaker 1:That's very size specific, because a small one would just pull out of a large fish and a large one can't get consumed Exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So from that little experience I was like, okay, well, for some fish you do actually need to make hooks. So that's why I've gone and made some of those composite and toggle hooks and so now when the fish goes to bite it, you can sort of give it a pull and try and hook it on, rather than just waiting for it to hopefully swallow the entire thing whole.
Speaker 1:So I think the gorge hooks would work a lot better for more aggressive species of fish and you mentioned that you cooked some of the shoulder for an event you had, and you've mentioned previously that you are hosting regular events. What are some of the topics you're covering or some of the events you're hosting? I know you do stuff with school kids and juniors.
Speaker 2:So I'll start with the weekend camps that we do. We do them at our mates awesome like rainforest property here on the Central Coast. We've been doing them there for almost four years now and they're pretty much weekend family camps and we focus on shelter, building fire by friction, wild foods and medicines, foraging. They're the main workshops that we do there, but we also we've done like eel trapping there and random spontaneous things like making jerky, making cottage. So it's it's based around those. You know, shelter, fire by friction and foraging, but it's not limited to that. So the point of that is to get people out camping of all ages, from all different backgrounds and levels of experience. We get people that have never been camping ever before and then we get people that are like really into their bushcraft and deep into that world and that's so awesome for us because then it creates this kind of environment where we're also learning and also creating that space for people that aren't super comfortable in that environment to come and learn about it. And the practical skills is something that we really love because it brings brings people into their own body then then they get to make these things with their own hands and then leave without confidence. It's just there's something really, really satisfying about making, crafting something or with your own body and using your own knowledge and the land around you to then craft something or make something and then go home with that knowledge and a physical thing as well.
Speaker 2:So we try and try and base it off that it's great for the kids. Like the hands on stuff is just amazing. We've got people that bring their kids that they might say, oh, like my kids on the spectrum or blah, blah, whatever. But then you see the kids out in the natural environment and they're totally sweet, like it's like we're all designed to be outdoors, kids especially. So yeah, we do. We do seasonal camps there. We have an Earth Skills one coming up in May which we just cover the topics like what we said, and also it's a fun culture. We do like shed cooking on the fire and it's a fun communal vibe, which is really awesome as well, just to be outside with a group of people that you're getting to know, yeah, learning new things on the communal vibe.
Speaker 1:Comment at Dan, who I met on the same course. You guys did, dan Pro.
Speaker 2:Shackle, oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, so the communal house situation that is built and creating, yeah, follow open living or something it's called. I've been following that on Instagram, facebook. That's a crazy concept in it. Interestingly, good way.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Yeah, I haven't. I haven't been up to date with what's been happening with it lately.
Speaker 1:The house is finished. They're living in it. They've got two other people that have joined them in the community, because it's not that type of thing, but it's yeah it's incredible, interesting way to do things in this current, current lifestyle that we normally live in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sort of a trend and going differently.
Speaker 1:you said you mentioned about creating a safe space for people to feel, touch and have emotions, and I know off air we spoke about killing a live animal and how that impacts people and I know that forms part of one of your courses. How have you found that to been received in front of these? People aren't used to that.
Speaker 2:So it's actually. It's actually been so beautiful to bring that element in. We've done it three or four times now over the years with a couple of roosters and a goat as well that I dispatched at our last family camp. So that's about. Oh, there's about 50 people there, like all together, and half of them are children and some of them have been exposed to like Live growing up on farms and things like that. But a lot of these kids come from the city.
Speaker 2:So we always like check in, obviously with the family and say, look, this opportunity has come up and we would really like to do this in a, in a group setting, and everyone's usually always okay with it and the people that aren't comfortable with it we go somewhere private, so it's not in the main area. We go somewhere private to make sure that everyone feels comfortable and Really create like this space. It's a space of like reverence that we're about to take this life and if you want to come and witness that something as real and raw as that, then please come and hold your respect whilst that's happening. And you know we've had young boys in the past be like, yeah, let's kill it, let's kill the rooster, and that's also so part of kind of guiding them into that's, that's not the kind of vibe that we're going for. And then when we're actually making the cut because that's how I do it, I cut their throats those boys change and there's like the potency of that moment when you're witnessing something die. It's actually. It's something that, yeah, I did not take lightly at all and we we welcome and invite like all kinds of emotions.
Speaker 2:Some kids get upset, some, some kids are like you, like gross blood, and Our job is to kind of hold that and allow them to feel safe to express all of those things.
Speaker 2:And then we talk about it and it's something that we're disgusting, discussing for the rest of the camp and talking about how everyone felt. But, honestly, the feedback that we've got from some of the parents and how much they were like to see the death of an animal in a beautiful, loving way. And I think that some people when they think about killing animals, they don't think about it as a beautiful, loving way, because it's not always beautiful loving, but it so can be. And I think that's that's a big part of my Passion in that world is creating that space to show people that we have been doing this forever and it is. It is a difficult thing, but it's also just a part of the cycle of life and if you do that with respect and educate people, it's really quite incredible, like I think we would agree at all the camps that we've done that it's just been this beautiful communal thing and then we're all eating this, restore the goach like, and yeah, it's, it's just so beautiful.
Speaker 3:Because, like as well I think you know pretty much, everyone who comes to the camps already eats me anyway most of them and, yeah, most of them do and I think it's the same with like everyone else in the world. Most people Eat meat, but they're not necessarily exposed to these sort of experiences, but nonetheless, these things are happening without us being involved in it.
Speaker 1:Letting someone else do the killing for them?
Speaker 3:Yes, yeah, and sort of shying away from it. And I think it's a really important part of it because you know you have a certain, like you know, gratitude for your food. If you've seen an animal that's been alive and and then to know that that animal has been killed so that you can eat and that's what is involved with like a lot of the meals that you eat it just changes your perspective on life a little bit, like I reckon it's like, yeah, you just have a lot more gratitude for the fact that things need to die for you to be alive in one day, that you're gonna die as well and go back to the land and, you know, be broken down by all the different bugs and insects, and then going to the mycelium and the trees and the plants, and yeah, it's just, it's just incredible.
Speaker 1:It comes back to you spreading the seeds of the fruit you're eating and then goes around in a cycle. I think I spoke when I spoke earlier about being removed from the animals zone of influence. From a rifle hunting point of view, I feel that the hands on cutting throat is the equivalent of the bow hunting verse rifle situation like I've harvested, shot, killed hundreds of animals, but and I've forgotten some of them or most of them specifically, but the ones that I've put down, and I'll clarify that, as you know, whether it be a pet or a farm animal or something, but a point blank dealing with whether it be cut throat, bullet to the head, and whether that be for food consumption or for old age or for sickness, they're different and they carry a whole nother level of emotion and I think that I also think that people don't understand it and, because we don't articulate it, that they think we love killing and and that they put the two in the same category.
Speaker 1:But you know, harvesting an animal hands on for meat consumption or to put it out of pain, is very different to hunting something that has no idea. You're there and to do it yet to the animal doesn't make a difference. They're still dying. But you know, they know they're in the something's about to happen because you're holding them. They're in the paddock eating grass. So we can't deny that they have different reactions to it.
Speaker 2:When you first started hunting dodge was was the kill like more emotional for you than than it is now? Or?
Speaker 1:I'd say it's more emotional now than it was then. Okay why I'm a little more mature now and I've spoken about this before the sort of you know stages to becoming a hunter and the first one that I started, if it was just being a shooter and you go through the stage through there.
Speaker 1:If it's brown, it's down like once. You sort of start shooting things like this is cool and from a Success point of view, oh, you know, you successfully shot 20 rabbits tonight or two foxes or whatever you're chasing, but not from a. I wasn't in the food side of things early on, I was, you know. That came later on. I definitely shot things and left them and wasted them and and you know, along the way I'm like, oh, hold on, this is actually a resource here that I'm wasting and learning and it's developing and still going. And now that's about all we buy from the shop. The wife buys chicken when it's on sale because everything else we supply we, you know, yeah, I swap meat for fish normally with friends, but other than that, you know, we supply only am in venison and beef if someone's doing a home kill.
Speaker 1:So I now have a more honest connection to what I'm harvesting if that makes sense and I think it changed my wife when we had kids and I think it's silly for me to say that it didn't, because it definitely did. But once you have offspring and children, you appreciate what it takes to create something. I don't think you guys don't have kids yet and things like that and you've definitely got a different appreciation and level of things than I do. But for my personal journey, once I had children, it's weird to put that onto animals, but you understand what happened to create something to then be able to take something away and that meant something to someone or to something. Yeah, so I'm at that stage. It's not, as I'm still quite numb to some aspects of it. The blood and the guts and gore doesn't know no impact. Yeah. However, the impact and understanding of what we're doing and the conservation side of killing as far as okay, well, we need to kill some, but we don't need to kill everything is growing and I'm developing that a little bit more.
Speaker 1:Good question, thank you.
Speaker 2:Do you think there's more people in like the hunting community that you're involved in that? Do you have that approach or I'm just trying to cause? I'm so not in that world. Is the mentality what is the mentality is like? Is there more? Is there hunters that are really, yeah, wanting to hunt ethically and use everything, or is it mostly like, okay, let's just kill for fun, or food.
Speaker 1:I think there's been a large push in the last five or six years for consumption and nearly to a, I want to say, annoying or negative point and I was only talking about this to someone the other day. Normally, normally years ago, you would put a photo up on Facebook of an animal you'd shot and everyone say nice, buck, nice. And the comments are shifting now and the first comment I screenshot of this and sent it to the other day was nice, eater, or that looks yum, or so people are shifting towards that as the okay, you've shot it now, but you're gonna eat it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yes.
Speaker 1:So I've definitely seen that as a public shift and I think with the push of and we see it with trophy photos I mean trophy hunter of some. I've got a lot of dead animals that I like to shoot for antlers and things, but your trophy photo is normally you standing behind the animal, proudly showing off with a smile, and that's in a photo situation that's misread by people who don't understand the situation. But there's been a real push lately for the photo. Well, not even a push, it's probably more of a subconscious thing, but the photos are changing and what we see online of a and I actually take this now and I'll put this photo up. I just took it the other day, but it's the opposite. So the hunter's actually looking down at the animal and you're behind them over their shoulder and the hunter's in focus, but the animal's blurry. It's just the photo I prefer and it's like, hey, I've shot something, but it's a respectful photo.
Speaker 2:it's not about the trophy, and I think the emotions are flipping.
Speaker 1:And or maybe they're not flipping. They've always been there, but they're definitely becoming more mainstream.
Speaker 2:That's really great because I feel like it's such an amazing resource, especially here, like in Australia, with, even with conservation, hunting like it's. If you didn't have the skills, yeah, why would you not go and get your own food, like if you knew how to like? It just makes so much sense.
Speaker 1:It's made trickier by the fact we can't sell it Like you know I've shot those to you guys and I gave them to you. I can't do anything. So on my local property here I've got more deer than I can consume.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but what do I do? My freezes are full right now. I could have shot one the other week, but I got nowhere to put it, so I didn't. But technically I need to because there's too many on that place. So it's like and I don't always have people that want to turn up the next day and grab it- so I'll let you know next time, but.
Speaker 2:It's absolutely.
Speaker 1:It's yeah I think you know finding guys like you that maybe don't have the hunting access or skills but then want to use it more than we can. And you mentioned to hunters want to use the whole animal. I would say I use the whole animal but to me that's four legs and the back straps. You know you guys using the whole animal is, you know trackies to make pencil cups, but yeah. You know it's a different. I can just imagine your kid at school sitting in there with the little cup and their pens or the quills.
Speaker 1:My kids don't use pens, they use quills.
Speaker 2:With charcoal and I liquid.
Speaker 3:That's right. I think it's really interesting talking about like hunting animals for consumption as well, because when my first sort of was getting into the idea of it, I didn't even consider that you'd hunt them for anything else. Like I didn't understand that at all. So and then, like I was thinking, oh yeah, like if you're hunting, you'd prefer, like you know, animals that aren't super old, like maybe like one or two years old would be ideal. So you go and like sparkles and stuff like that. And then when I started sort of being more exposed to the hunting world and you know, following some of the bow hunters and that on Instagram and social medias and they got all these photos of all these like deer with crazy antlers and all that stuff, and I was thinking, like man, like I mean it's going to be a lot of food and that, but like wouldn't you prefer the smaller one with the more tender meat and just the sparkles? But then realizing, like you know, that's not, that's not like the goal for some people which is fine as well.
Speaker 1:And I say that with what I do. That meat is a byproduct. It's not my goal with the trophy side of it, and this current like from Christmas to now is the peak period to harvest deer, cause they've got the most fat on them. Beyond that and I think a lot of people, when they say they don't like eating venison, is because they've been given some meat or cooked some meat that was a buck or like someone shot it and then during the hunting season or the breeding season which is just about to happen, I suppose and it's been poorly handled and it's an older animal so it's innately tougher, chewier, and if it's poorly handled then it will have scents and things attached to it that aren't amazing. But I challenge everyone to eat buck meat that's been handled properly because I can. I can handle it and cook it in a way you wouldn't even notice. You just think it was a mid year dough.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Just slow cook it right Like.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well no, but even the handling you know if it's a buck that I mean they piss on themselves. Yeah, yum no, so no.
Speaker 3:So yeah, tell me about how you handle.
Speaker 1:Some people are into that. They're a bloody buck. So I use two knives. So I use one for you know, cutting skin, and then, once I've cut through the skin, that knife goes away and stays away so you're not cross contaminating that flavor and scent through unto the meat side.
Speaker 1:So once I've done my main skin cuts, that knife's gone. Or you wash it, rinse it, whatever if you've got access, but it just goes away. And then I pull out a different one and then you do all the skinning with a separate knife and then I have a butchery knife. So I sort of remove those chances of cross contamination. Something I learned not that long ago, if someone corrected me, was I used to hang things and, just because I was lazy, still had the feet on it and so I would skin it, but I didn't. You never skin out the cannon bone part and leave the hoof on. And they said why'd you do that? I said, well, it was just convenient at the time. And he said but the feet are the highest carriers of bacteria on the external part of the animal because they're always in the mud, they're in the ground. So he said you've just hung it upside down, albeit in a cold area, so where does bacteria go? It grows and it's going to come down. So not something I'd considered.
Speaker 1:And now I remove the hocks all the time. But I think poor handling of meat will lead to a poor experience on the eating side and, like I said, I'll challenge you to a cook off of a young goat person, old goat.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I can pretty much say I can remove that smell and flavor from the meat Because I don't think the meat itself carries the scent and a mixture of it is also. It's on your hands. So you've got to be careful about gloves and things or just washing hands, but it's also in your mind. If you've just killed a fox and I've had this experience and then ate it, it tasted like what we smelled when we shot it. Or when we skin it, because it's in our mind, we have that memory.
Speaker 2:That's a really great point to make, like it's more about the psychology that you go into it with and also education, like just knowing how to make it taste good.
Speaker 1:Like you're saying, you have to come and do one of the education courses we run.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we definitely.
Speaker 1:I've got a spot for you both and you'll have more opportunity bow hunting goats than you will deer, that's for sure. You talk about bumping deer and they run. If you bump a goat they run, but they just run over there. They don't run three ridges away.
Speaker 3:And with deer. What I've been told anyway is if you bump them, just leave them, Because then they'll break their patterns up. So if you sort of startle them a little bit, just wait till next time before you have another go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they'll come back that evening to the same spot. Or if it's hot, they need to come to water, so that doesn't really matter too much. But if you're on a game trail that they're using regularly and you bump them if it's a hot day your scent will dissipate quite quickly and they'll be back that afternoon.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:If you've shot one there or to be different, they might go around it. But yeah, definitely if you're. Unless you can see them, then you keep hunting them and keep pushing them.
Speaker 3:I wanted to ask you some questions about imitating like deer, doe calls and stuff like that, and how you incorporate that into your hunting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm looking around because I've got some gadgets Bear with me for a run. So this here is called a Flexmark Samba Stalker and it's a little mouthpiece reed.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:And I'll just give you a little so that specifically for Samba, but it works for Fallow and it just it gains their interest enough to usually well, sorry, my experience has been that the females turn up less so than males, but that's something you can use just to in that situation. If you're close and maybe they're feeling a bit nervous, you might be able to desensitize them with a little and imitate a young fawn that might be in distress and the others are like, oh, hold on, that's not something to be scared about. We need to investigate and they may come looking. But it also gives the opportunity. If you spook them and they run and you go, they might go. Hold on, what did I run from? Is it just enough for them to give a split second of release arrow and take that shot?
Speaker 3:Could you use that in the same way, like if you're sitting in a hide waiting for a deer to walk past, and they're walking past, but they don't stop? Can you actually stop them in their tracks easier?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and if you're bow hunting you need to think about your shot placement and you need to time the call Because if you do it at the wrong time they'll stop but they'll have their arm back, closing off their vitals, and like where you want to shoot is usually behind that shoulder. So you sort of time it when they're just about to take a step and they'll take a last step and open their rib cage up and then usually stop and look at what the noise was but be ready because they're looking. So if there's a two person set up, sometimes it works where the person over here calls and pulls them up and they look at them whilst you shoot from a separate area. So you sit like five or 10 meters apart. In that situation I'm just going to lean over here because I've got two other calls in here. I'm back. So this one is for chitl deer or access deer.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's so beautiful.
Speaker 1:Let me see if I can. It's a terrible high pitch scream, but it's a, so it imitates the males. Again, it's a reed caller.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:Easy access from the states. And then now I'm going to really stand up, because it's up the other side of the room this one talking about using whole animal was made by a friend of mine, dr Yannick, and it's a buffalo horn with a reed caller in it and it's the fellow buck caller, and I apologize for the volume, but Ha, ha, ha, ha ha ha, and I'm using my hand to sort of close down, close this down, down and also change direction of ha ha ha so that is incredible Specific time of year for that and that's coming up, and if you did that now you may gain the interest of a spiker.
Speaker 1:Being early season, but I haven't had one call back this early and you can have different responses. Some young ones will call back and some old ones will go. That sounds different. I'll go and investigate, but silently, yeah, and they'll just turn up right in front of you. Sometimes they'll battle back and call back.
Speaker 3:Another question I had was when I was going out during the rut, there was quite large numbers of deer all hanging out together, whereas now I'm only finding, like you know, groups of one to three Females, and all females with young ones.
Speaker 1:That's a good thing, because the rut's about to happen and the boys will turn up. Yeah, right. So where do the boys go? Well, they just live on a different property or a different second, usually higher up. So this time of year the boys are generally browsing on you know sticky woody type plants that are higher up, whereas the girls are down lower eating the grasses and the Lush. Yeah, correct. So at the moment the boys probably not.
Speaker 1:At the moment, as of a week ago or so, the boys were in bachelor groups, fellow specific and then they're starting to peel off and hate each other, right, and what they'll start to do is move around and start to locate the females and try to pick up which ones are in early estrus, and just locate them and then stay around them, but not too close. But as the rut or the breeding season cycle starts to happen, they'll move in, and sometimes it's a younger one. First we'll start to herd them together, and then an older one, more mature one, will kick that one out and take over the herd. But it's not uncommon in heavily pressured areas to have smaller numbers threes and fours and then sometimes during the rut, he will bring several groups of three and four together and hold them in a bit of a harem. Well, they still eat and do their thing, but he hangs around and eats and does his stuff all the other ones and breeds as they all cycle through their estrus.
Speaker 1:There's a couple of different types of properties and I've been on all of them and some of them are good and some of them suck. But the one I've got locally here it's big enough to hold all the females in this area and then the males come in during the rut. So I don't see any males there until now. I've just started seeing some turn up. And then I've been to other properties where I was there in Christmas time and there's bucks everywhere and the occasional female and come rut there was nothing. They all went next door because that's where the girls were, and then other blocks have all the males and then they evacuate. Sorry, I already said that Some blocks have nothing and then everything turns up during the rut. It just depends on where you are in the valley system and what feed you've got at what time of year. So don't be disheartened if there's any females now, because the boys will turn up soon.
Speaker 3:Yep, and then after the rut finishes, then they go back to the bachelor groups.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they'll still hang around for a while. I would say in my experience down here it's been probably June or July when they really start to peel off and go back to being solo, and then they'll hold their antlers still until September, late August, september, early October, sometimes depending on weather, and then that's yeah, they just hang out by themselves. Beyond that, I liken it to I was using the analogy the other day schoolies. So at the moment we're in HSE time, so they're all focused, they're hanging out, their mates, they're studying, they're eating, they're fattening up and they're doing something which is just preparing for what's about to happen. But then schoolies happens. They all hate each other, they'll get in a brawl at the pub, they're all chasing over one girl and they have this, you know, two or three weeks of craziness and all things happening. They just they don't eat, they don't sleep, they just want to play, and then after that they leave, the girls, go home and they're all back to being mates again. Yeah, so I can.
Speaker 2:That's so funny.
Speaker 1:It's a terrible, terrible analogy, but so.
Speaker 2:After a true degree.
Speaker 1:On your courses. You've got an exciting one at the end of this year. Who are you hosting?
Speaker 2:Teresa Camp, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:So, we're.
Speaker 2:We're so excited about that. She's coming back to Australia and she's doing three two down in Victoria and then one on the central coast up at our place.
Speaker 1:And slightly different piercings I saw in the notes. Yeah, oh yeah, they are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're doing. We have asked her if we can do dear and they're going to do kangaroo again.
Speaker 3:Yeah, for us it just makes more sense in terms of, like, you know, anyone, as long as they've got permission from private property owners, can go out and hunt deer without too much trouble and be able to go and, you know, practice these skills and integrate them into their lives pretty easily, whereas kangaroo is a little bit tougher. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Just a bit Again from a legality point of view, just for those listening that may not know if some of your listeners are listening, but harvesting kangaroo with a bow and arrow is not legal. Yeah, so it's firearms only. And I find that a lot of people in your guys skill set, when they pick up this hunting, they're picking up the primitive skills, whether it be long bow, traditional bow, compound. So, yes, it's everything else non native is fine. So you know foxes, rabbits, deer goats, things like that. But yeah, stick away from the kangaroos, from the hunt outside of things. So yeah, that's exciting, yeah, that's exciting.
Speaker 2:So it's a week of we're doing, yeah, the butchering and using the whole animal for a few days and then making buckskin for a few days and then making a leather pouch from the buckskin. So it's really cool. She's added the element of actually sewing and knowing how, because sewing sewing animal skin is very different to sewing cotton or other fabric, I think behaves very differently. So it's a whole other skill set in itself. So we're so keen.
Speaker 1:And where do people go to find out about these courses?
Speaker 2:Um, while beingsorg. That's our website. There's, yeah, all of our upcoming courses for the next few months. Are there where yet to do the full? Um end of the year courses yet, but Teresa's one is up there, um, so, yeah, they can sign up to our mailing lists, which we just send out like monthly newsletters of what's going on, or follow us on social media we're pretty active on them.
Speaker 3:The events page has like a lot of our events off at the moment. Um, we've got like a women's gathering coming up and men's gathering, uh, the skills gathering, and then the home school thing that we've been doing as well, which has been really great, that's cool.
Speaker 1:Well, congratulations on everything you achieved and look forward to continuing our friendship and relationship and seeing if we can't provide you with some more meat and hopefully I won't need to cause we'll be sniping everything away soon.
Speaker 2:Well, we'll always receive more meat. It's going, but yeah.
Speaker 1:Thanks for being here. I hope everyone's enjoyed it. I've definitely learned a lot and I appreciate the skill set you guys are bringing and hoping that a few hunters can take home some notes and maybe, you know, leave, leave a few more things at home instead of out in the bush.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure, thanks so much for having us. It's really great to, yeah, connect in with, with a hunter like yourself and kind of crossover and learn from each other. I think it's a really cool collaboration.
Speaker 1:Likewise Thanks to everyone and till next time. Good night.
Speaker 2:Cool Thanks Dutch.