Speaker 1: Welcome the More Outdoors on News Talk five sixty k LVI.
Speaker 1: This is Chester Moore and Man, the fall is here.
Speaker 1: The white tail in southeast Texas are starting to get
Speaker 1: a little bit of a running action going on. We
Speaker 1: got a little waterfowl migrating in and a lot of
Speaker 1: great stuff happening. Fall is the ultimate time, especially in
Speaker 1: our great state of Texas, to be in the great outdoors. Now,
Speaker 1: if you've listened to my program more than a few months,
Speaker 1: you've probably heard my good friend Jeff Stewart. He is
Speaker 1: an author, a cookbook author, he does TV spots, he
Speaker 1: does all kind of crazy stuff, and he is a
Speaker 1: outdoors expert, and we have him on the show tonight.
Speaker 2: Welcome the More Outdoors, Jeff.
Speaker 3: Chester. It's always my honor and pleasure to be on. Man,
Speaker 3: it's just great to enjoy the outdoors with good people
Speaker 3: and good friends and to talk about it.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, you and I were just talking on
Speaker 1: the phone as friends last night, and you said, hey, Man,
Speaker 1: you know I was hungry tonight, so I opened the
Speaker 1: freezer and got some red fish fullet and I said, well,
Speaker 1: we just date deer chili a little bit. Some of
Speaker 1: the last packet is a deer from what I killed
Speaker 1: last year. And you know, I think that that is
Speaker 1: an underrated part of the experience. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: true outdoors lovers savor the wild game and the fish
Speaker 1: and everything that we that we harvest in the great outdoors.
Speaker 1: But I think to the public, they don't understand how
Speaker 1: important that eating element is of what we do.
Speaker 3: They don't because mine stems from growing up very poor
Speaker 3: in a very rural area, and times were hard back
Speaker 3: in the early seventies, you know, I mean it was
Speaker 3: rough man and I remember, you know, we often had
Speaker 3: very meager meals until Dad and I killed a deer
Speaker 3: or caught a bunch of cat fish.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 3: And at that point in time, we got to eat
Speaker 3: our fill. You know, my sisters and I'm mom would
Speaker 3: make a big thing of a chicken fried backstraped with
Speaker 3: gravy and potatoes and the whole spread, and you got
Speaker 3: to eat as much as you wanted, or we fried
Speaker 3: up that catfish or those craffee or brim our buffalo
Speaker 3: or anything that we taught, and you just basically got
Speaker 3: to eat your fill. And all of a sudden, it's like,
Speaker 3: wait a minute, we can hunt more, we can fish more,
Speaker 3: we can fill this freezer full, plant our garden, do
Speaker 3: those things, and things started to get better as far
Speaker 3: as our family went. Because at first my dad wasn't
Speaker 3: a great big hunter. He hunted early in life and
Speaker 3: stuff like that. But you know, East Texas seven in
Speaker 3: the seventies, there weren't a lot of deer.
Speaker 2: No, not at all.
Speaker 3: As the seventies progressed, of seventy eight seventy nine, eighty
Speaker 3: deer already coming back pretty sick. Texta, parks and wildlife
Speaker 3: were doing some great things. Deer started coming back, and
Speaker 3: all of a sudden you could start putting more deer
Speaker 3: on the table. So it really became an integral part
Speaker 3: of my life that hunting meant phosphorous times. Hunting meant
Speaker 3: good times with the family. It meant being around the
Speaker 3: table laughing and eating and telling stories. It meant being
Speaker 3: down at our deer camp with friends and family, laughing
Speaker 3: and eating and telling stories. So it became a such
Speaker 3: an integral part that this game hunting was so much
Speaker 3: fun because not only did you get to go enjoy
Speaker 3: all of the aspects of hunting, from mowing and bush
Speaker 3: hogging and planting green patches and doing those things, setting
Speaker 3: up stands, which was fun time with my dad, to
Speaker 3: the cooking with my mom. I learned to cook with her,
Speaker 3: and it was just it just meant family fun time.
Speaker 3: And then then with my own children and my own family,
Speaker 3: it has always meant family time, quality time. It's meant
Speaker 3: time in the outdoors. It has meant good goss.
Speaker 1: For yeah, you know, and for me it's very similar.
Speaker 1: We're very close in age and everything. You lived in
Speaker 1: sort of central East Texas and I live in the
Speaker 1: southeast corner. And that oil industry bust in the late
Speaker 1: seventies early eighties was early impactful, and I remember us
Speaker 1: going to fish on the side of the road, throwing
Speaker 1: a cast that to catch bait, and whatever we caught
Speaker 1: was what we were probably gonna eat that week. And
Speaker 1: we were hoping that bt big old alligator garfish, because
Speaker 1: a big old alligator gar you can get five or
Speaker 1: six good meals off that sucker, or a bunch of
Speaker 1: drum or some catfish and.
Speaker 2: The freshwater bayou systems around here.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't like I was upset because we had
Speaker 1: to settle on a fi or wild game. I loved
Speaker 1: eating it and always do. And the first time I
Speaker 1: got to kill a deer was in nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 1: right after Christmas, like December twenty seventh that year, because
Speaker 1: we went on the dailies out of the Texas hill
Speaker 1: country and the deer was so low in southeast Texas
Speaker 1: at that point. I had never seen a white tail
Speaker 1: until we turned off a highway seventy ten to seventy
Speaker 1: one US like forty in a oat field by Columbus
Speaker 1: and thought I'd entered the promised land and kill the
Speaker 1: dough And I got to get eat deer chili out
Speaker 1: of my dough I shot, and of course the bax
Speaker 1: trap chicken fried, and that was just a real celebration moment,
Speaker 1: you know. And I think that the public, if the
Speaker 1: hunting and fishing community, could better communicate that some of
Speaker 1: the most important part of a hunt is what you
Speaker 1: do with the meat or the catch. If you don't
Speaker 1: catch your release, what you do with that is the
Speaker 1: most important part, and honestly, in a private level at
Speaker 1: home is the most celebrated.
Speaker 3: Part, right And you know, here's a good thing that
Speaker 3: people don't think about catching release. Catching relief is a
Speaker 3: good thing for certain species, but not all species fish absolutely. Now,
Speaker 3: I do regulated catching relief.
Speaker 4: I if I catch catfish, I keep catfish that are
Speaker 4: generally between that eight to ten inch mark and the
Speaker 4: five pounds mark.
Speaker 3: Once they get over about five pounds or so, I
Speaker 3: let them go. They're not as good eating fish, even
Speaker 3: though they're still delicious, they're not as good as the
Speaker 3: smaller one. And they put those are your egg producers, man,
Speaker 3: those are the ones that have a million eggs in
Speaker 3: their belly, you know. I see people holding up these
Speaker 3: fifty sixty pound blue cat one hundred pound blue cats even,
Speaker 3: and they're they're, oh, we taught this blue cat. I'm like,
Speaker 3: what are you gonna do with it? Oh, we're gonna
Speaker 3: eat it. And I'm like, why.
Speaker 2: Exactly?
Speaker 3: Because that you should have turned that, you know, catch
Speaker 3: those smaller fish and eat them. But I turned those
Speaker 3: bigger ones back. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And with redfish, you know, like, yeah, I haven't kept
Speaker 1: and over the slot red fish in twenty years.
Speaker 2: Until about two weeks ago.
Speaker 1: I was out trying to catch big gar and I
Speaker 1: have because a gar will mess with your line for
Speaker 1: like twenty minutes sometimes before he decided to take it.
Speaker 1: I thought it was a guar just pecking on end
Speaker 1: up being a redfish that had swallowed it, and it
Speaker 1: had bled out pretty much by the time I got
Speaker 1: it in and was just kind of still. So I
Speaker 1: went ahead and tagged in oversized red legally, but I
Speaker 1: always just keep the slot reds, never use my trophy tag.
Speaker 1: And same thing with catfish. I don't do as much
Speaker 1: catfish as I used to, but those like you know,
Speaker 1: three to six pound catfish or primo man and let
Speaker 1: those big ones bring it.
Speaker 3: That's my big thing. My biggest blue cat that I
Speaker 3: caught was around the seventy four pound seventy five pound mark.
Speaker 3: And my largest largest uh what we call them op,
Speaker 3: which is a flathead, but we call them ops. The
Speaker 3: largest ops that I caught weighed up close to eighty
Speaker 3: five eighty six pounds somewhere in that area. And I
Speaker 3: was a young man whenever I caughtee fish, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm talking back in the mid eighties when I caught them,
Speaker 3: and I kept them, and we cleaned them and trimmed
Speaker 3: all your double file at them, trimmed all the fat
Speaker 3: we put off of them, and then tried to eat them.
Speaker 3: And they weren't very tasty. They're not not as compared
Speaker 3: to what I was used to eating, and those those
Speaker 3: you know, foundries and stuff. And from that point on,
Speaker 3: my dad and I said, you know, even though the
Speaker 3: ops are better eating as a bigger fish.
Speaker 1: There, but they're definitely better eating as a bigger fish
Speaker 1: in a blue.
Speaker 3: So we decided we're going to turn those back. You know,
Speaker 3: we're for fixing to turn those a loop back into
Speaker 3: the river, but we're going Now. Texas has changed its
Speaker 3: regulation and we're those size limits on those fish, and
Speaker 3: you can keep the smaller fish, more of the smaller
Speaker 3: fish and less of the bigger fish. And I really
Speaker 3: support that change. I'm not big on being too strict
Speaker 3: on sportsmen with their stuff, but I think that was
Speaker 3: a good move because I think those bigger catfish need
Speaker 3: to breathe, they need to be our brood stock, and
Speaker 3: that's gonna work out better for all of us. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I agree with that totally, Jeff. And it's a great
Speaker 1: conservation move. And allowing the smaller side allows that family
Speaker 1: fishing from the bank on some pier or in some
Speaker 1: gully somewhere to have a chance to bring some fish
Speaker 1: home and enjoy the harvest and things like that. And
Speaker 1: we come back on More out There're gonna talk more
Speaker 1: about celebrating the harvest with Jeff Stewart. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: More Outdoors on News Talk five sixty KLV, where we
Speaker 1: think you're weird if you don't like the outdoors, and
Speaker 1: I really mean that. I mean you don't have to
Speaker 1: like dig, fishing and hunting. But if you don't like
Speaker 1: watching a beautiful sunrise over the mountains, or you know,
Speaker 1: going to a beach and seeing the beauty of the
Speaker 1: Gulf of Mexico, you might want to get checked out.
Speaker 1: Something very well could be wrong. And if you want
Speaker 1: to celebrate the outdoors more, you can also check out
Speaker 1: More Outdoors podcast KALVI dot com. Go the podcasting the
Speaker 1: top of the page, go back and listen to the archives.
Speaker 1: Also check it out via the iHeartRadio app and follow
Speaker 1: my blog at Higher Calling dot net, my instagram at
Speaker 1: the Chester More and Higher Calling Wildlife on Facebook. Jeff
Speaker 1: and I are talking about celebrating the harvest, kind of
Speaker 1: rounded up, talking about catfish regulations, catch and release for
Speaker 1: the bigger breeder size fish and things like that. And
Speaker 1: you mentioned the interesting fish a lot of people don't
Speaker 1: know is very edible, and that's the buffalo. Tell us
Speaker 1: about your experience eating buffalo.
Speaker 3: Buffalo happens to be one of my favorite fish to
Speaker 3: eat in the entire fresh or salt water. And people say, man,
Speaker 3: you're crazy with coffee and brim and everything else floating around.
Speaker 3: I'm like, look, I grew up on try eating trash
Speaker 3: fish because you could go down while I lived right
Speaker 3: across the border from Louisiana, and the netting was legal
Speaker 3: in the Louisiana and all you had to do was
Speaker 3: buy your Louisiana license and we could set out hook
Speaker 3: net in the river. Will you know buffalo? We would
Speaker 3: catch buffalo and bring them in and we would cut
Speaker 3: those ribs out of those buffalo and that's what you
Speaker 3: eat on a buffalo.
Speaker 2: Ribs, ribs, Yeah, and eating it would.
Speaker 3: We oh my gosh. Then we would fry those buffalo
Speaker 3: ribs up and eat them. And it became quickly one
Speaker 3: of my favorite fish. And people don't notice. But at
Speaker 3: one time I had the number three black buffalo in
Speaker 3: the state of text Cool. I shot at bowfish and
Speaker 3: weigh sixty eight Paul.
Speaker 1: That's people, get monster. I've been on a raven bass
Speaker 1: fishing before. And seen buffalo moving in the shallows and
Speaker 1: I was like, is that a carp Nope, that's a
Speaker 1: monster buffalo. And my memory is a buffalo. Where as
Speaker 1: a kid, there was a fish market here in Orange
Speaker 1: and you know, I love you know, my version of
Speaker 1: that is the garfish. I mean, we grew up garfish
Speaker 1: because garfish is freeing excellent and not just as a garball.
Speaker 1: Just fried garfish is great, and grill garfish is great.
Speaker 3: But if you like redfish yep, or an our good
Speaker 3: saltwater fish like black drum red fish, something like that,
Speaker 3: the garfish of our fresh water fish has the closest
Speaker 3: texture and taste of meat to a good quality salt
Speaker 3: water fish.
Speaker 1: Yep, you're right about that, man, I love it. And
Speaker 1: I saw this sign it said gar do and buffalo
Speaker 1: for sale. Well, my like seven year old self knew
Speaker 1: what a gar was and goo was spelled goo on the.
Speaker 2: Side, and I was a little fish to that, you know,
Speaker 2: I was like, what are they selling?
Speaker 1: And then buffalo and in my mind I thought it
Speaker 1: was at first, you know, bison me. Then I went
Speaker 1: hunt on second, it's a fish market. Oh there's a
Speaker 1: buffalo fish. And then I made my mom pull over
Speaker 1: and I went in there and like interrogated him as
Speaker 1: a seven year old, like what do you got here?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: And it was buffalo. And I looked at the fish.
Speaker 1: They had some fish there that they brought in. And
Speaker 1: then the gas. It was gasper goof freshwater drum, which
Speaker 1: is also good to eat, by the way. So I
Speaker 1: think it's interesting to open people's minds to these different
Speaker 1: kinds of different kinds of stuff to eat, you know,
Speaker 1: because the harvest is very very important to look. Man,
Speaker 1: Look if anybody sees the world we're living in now
Speaker 1: and thinks we're going to go back to the glory
Speaker 1: days of the fifties and leave it to beaver, you're
Speaker 1: out of your mind. There is hard times coming, and
Speaker 1: hard times are here for a lot of people.
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 1: We don't like to say that, you know, but it's true.
Speaker 1: And being able to harvest and understand that there's some
Speaker 1: good quality meats out there and fish are very abundant
Speaker 1: in many many locations. I think it's an important thing.
Speaker 1: Plus it you know, who just wants to eat beef,
Speaker 1: pork and chicken, You know there's other stuff out there,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: So and we're gonna he and you.
Speaker 3: Don't only go ahead, I was just gonna say, you
Speaker 3: don't have and you don't have to be rich to fish. No,
Speaker 3: you literally can go down to your local department store
Speaker 3: and buy a rod and real combination that comes with
Speaker 3: a little tackle box with some brim, hooks and different
Speaker 3: things in there. You can literally buy one of those
Speaker 3: for ten twelve bucks, yep. And you can buy a
Speaker 3: box of worms for four dollars or dig them out
Speaker 3: of your own yard or whatever. And you can go
Speaker 3: to almost any city park that has a pond, city lake,
Speaker 3: bigger lakes, if you live near creeks. Even I grew
Speaker 3: up fishing creeks, I could go down to a creek
Speaker 3: with a just a roll of string in my pocket,
Speaker 3: some hooks, and a couple of bobbers and could catch
Speaker 3: twenty five or thirty brim Most of them were, you know,
Speaker 3: probably two or three fingers long. But I would scale them,
Speaker 3: build a fire, put them on a stick, and roast
Speaker 3: them right there and eat them right there as a kid.
Speaker 3: And there's you know, there's nothing better than doing something
Speaker 3: like that. But you don't have to buy a you know,
Speaker 3: twenty thousand dollars boat you don't have to have a
Speaker 3: fancy full wheel drive truck. You don't have to have
Speaker 3: a seven or eight hundred dollars rifle. You don't have
Speaker 3: to have a thousand acres of property that's private, or
Speaker 3: you don't have to do all of these things in
Speaker 3: order to fish.
Speaker 1: Yep, that's I call fishing the equalizer in sport, in
Speaker 1: the sporting realm, because you know, you may be a
Speaker 1: star football player in high school. Maybe you get to
Speaker 1: college and a few get to the pros, but you're
Speaker 1: done by thirty five, unless you're Tom Brady or whatever.
Speaker 1: You know, but you know, and you can fish to
Speaker 1: your one hundred your whole life, you know, And that's
Speaker 1: that's a wonderful, beautiful thing and celebrating that harvest. Now
Speaker 1: you mentioned you like buffalo. What is the favorite fish?
Speaker 1: Let's say, I know you have your local favorites, but
Speaker 1: maybe you've eaten something more exotic or something special. What's
Speaker 1: your very favorite fish you've ever eaten?
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, man, my very favorite fish that I
Speaker 3: ever ate is halibate caliban.
Speaker 2: Okay, cool, cold.
Speaker 3: Cold water. Gentleman that I worked with in the coal
Speaker 3: mines many years ago. Every year he and his son
Speaker 3: would go fishing for halibate up in like a last
Speaker 3: or somewhere, I'm not sure where they went, and every
Speaker 3: year he would bring me back vacuum sealed packages of
Speaker 3: this fish. And the first time I ever cooked it,
Speaker 3: I would afford to you that I put a chicken
Speaker 3: breast on the grill because the texture of the meat
Speaker 3: was more like like meat. It was more like chicken
Speaker 3: or pork or beef or something. It had that real
Speaker 3: meaty texture. It wasn't fishy. And we ended up after
Speaker 3: I cooked the first batch of it, fried it like fish,
Speaker 3: you know, corn meal and stuff, and I didn't really
Speaker 3: like it as much that way. Then the next batch
Speaker 3: I cut up, marinated it like I would chicken breast
Speaker 3: in a little bit of lime, juice and different things,
Speaker 3: different seasons. And then I battered it just like chicken,
Speaker 3: egg buttermilk, then flour, and then back in the egg
Speaker 3: and buttermilk, and then flour again, put a big thick coating,
Speaker 3: put it in the oil, brought it to that golden brown,
Speaker 3: and then I was like, oh my goodness, I have
Speaker 3: found my favorite tea. Man.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 1: I've eaten halibut at a restaurant and really really liked
Speaker 1: it a lot, but I know it wasn't as good
Speaker 1: as like that vacuum sealed personally caught stuff, you know,
Speaker 1: And and one of my dreams is to go. I
Speaker 1: have a buddy of mine, Lee Leshper. He's was an
Speaker 1: out there writer here in Texas. Moved to Alaska one
Speaker 1: a few menu. I'm jealous of on the planet because
Speaker 1: his fishing photos blow my mind. He was fly fishing
Speaker 1: for halibate. They were chumming up, and I'm like, that's
Speaker 1: not even fair. But the favorite fish I've ever eaten,
Speaker 1: like you know, that I've caught. It was kind of
Speaker 1: a special thing or whatever is peacock bass, believe it
Speaker 1: or not. When I was in Venezuela back in ninety
Speaker 1: nine on Lake Goury fishing for peacock bass, we were
Speaker 1: releasing most of the fish. But every night they would
Speaker 1: tell we had like six boats out fishing. Everybody keep
Speaker 1: one or two peacocks between like three and five pounds,
Speaker 1: So everybody keep one. They cook them different ways, and
Speaker 1: I didn't find a way that the peacock bass was
Speaker 1: it epic, my favorite. They grilled it and put some
Speaker 1: like lime juice and stuff kind of like you described
Speaker 1: on it best fish I ever ate. And I was
Speaker 1: talking to my buddy, Gerald Swindle, a bass Master Elite
Speaker 1: Series pro, two time Angler of the Year. Loved that
Speaker 1: guy one day and we're talking about favorite fish. He
Speaker 1: said mine was peacock bass. He goes, man, I forgot
Speaker 1: how good that was. I ate peacock bass too. So
Speaker 1: just now in terms of locally, like something you're gonna
Speaker 1: catch in Texas Louisiana, what's your favorite fresh water and
Speaker 1: favorite saltwater that I'll give you mine.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna blow somebody's mind here with this one, because
Speaker 3: there's gonna be people out there that say, with all
Speaker 3: the things you can choose, why would you choose that.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what, Jeff Grinnel, We're gonna stop right there,
Speaker 1: and when we come back on More Outdoors, we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk why in the green heck Jeff Stewart chose a
Speaker 1: grinnel over a crappie and a bunch of other stuff.
Speaker 1: You're all gonna hear this stuff here on More Outdoors.
Speaker 1: We'll talk more Jeff when we come back. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to More Outdoors on News Talk five sixty KLV. I
Speaker 1: got my good friend Jeff Stewart. We're talking about celebrating
Speaker 1: the harvest. We've been kind of camping on fish. We're
Speaker 1: gonna talk fish a little bit more and shift over
Speaker 1: to some game. I ask you your favorite fish and
Speaker 1: fresh and salt water.
Speaker 2: You gave me a grinnel.
Speaker 1: Give me a quick explanation of why, because most people
Speaker 1: don't think of a grinnel. Also caught a shoe pick,
Speaker 1: a dog fish, a mud. I've heard them called a
Speaker 1: mud marlin. Why they're such a good eating fish?
Speaker 3: Growing up, we never ate them because if you try
Speaker 3: to fry them, they turned a mush at first, and
Speaker 3: then as the meat cools, it turns to cotton. Yep,
Speaker 3: that texture. They just never were good until I learned
Speaker 3: how to fix them. And the way I was caught.
Speaker 3: You take that fish and you filey it, and then
Speaker 3: you take a spoon because their meat is very very soft, yeah,
Speaker 3: and you scrape all the meat off of the bone,
Speaker 3: off of everything, and you put it into a bowl.
Speaker 3: You season that up. You mix green onion, you mix
Speaker 3: a little bell pepper in there with it. You mix
Speaker 3: a little bit of your favorite seasoning in there, whether
Speaker 3: it be just salt pepper or a Cajun type seasoning
Speaker 3: or something I like, something a little spicy in mind.
Speaker 3: And then you take and you mix a few breadcrumbs
Speaker 3: with that, you make a ball out of it. You
Speaker 3: take that ball and you flower it on the outside.
Speaker 3: You drop it down in your oil and you brown
Speaker 3: it just a little bit. You pull that out, then
Speaker 3: you take it make a root. You add your onion, bell,
Speaker 3: pepper and celery, your trinity to it. Then you make
Speaker 3: take that root and you add chicken broth to that root,
Speaker 3: and you make a nice thick root with that. Put
Speaker 3: all of those balls that you made of the grinnel
Speaker 3: back in that. Then you put them on a simmer,
Speaker 3: put it on low. You let it cook for about
Speaker 3: thirty minutes, and then you serve that over a better rice.
Speaker 3: And it is some of the most delicious fish you
Speaker 3: ever ate in your life.
Speaker 1: Dude, I love That's why I have Jeff on the air,
Speaker 1: only me and him come up with a peacock bass
Speaker 1: is my favorite, or a grinnel. I mean, I love this, this,
Speaker 1: This is expanding people's information now in freshwater. My favorite
Speaker 1: is a very cliche one, but you can't hardly.
Speaker 2: Beat a crappy.
Speaker 3: Crappies, you can't.
Speaker 1: Crappy is my favorite, and saltwater people are going to
Speaker 1: get offended. It's not flounder because I'm the flounder guy,
Speaker 1: but I honestly I love flounder.
Speaker 2: It's way up there.
Speaker 1: But my number one in salt water that we catch
Speaker 1: regionally is going to be a red snapper. It is
Speaker 1: almost impossible to take and beat a red snapper grilled
Speaker 1: or broiled, covered in butter and garlic, salt and all that.
Speaker 2: It's just unbelievable.
Speaker 3: You take a red snapper. A red snapper is the
Speaker 3: saltwater crappie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's it. That's it.
Speaker 1: That is salt I just wish crappy got If krappie
Speaker 1: got twenty pounds, I would only fish for crappie.
Speaker 2: My whole life be dedicated to crappie. You know what
Speaker 2: I mean?
Speaker 3: Seems like me. I say that grennel is my favorite,
Speaker 3: not because it is the most delectable piece of meat,
Speaker 3: but it's the most surprising. It's my favorite because I
Speaker 3: can I can serve this dish, I can make this dish.
Speaker 3: When I got a bunch of friends coming over them,
Speaker 3: we're gonna do something. We go out and fish. I
Speaker 3: love to put out the noodles or jug line. You
Speaker 3: catch a lot of grennel on those. You come back
Speaker 3: and I cook it up and I'm like, man, this
Speaker 3: is the best. What about eating? And you tell them
Speaker 3: grennel and they're like, no, yeah, yeah, you know you're eating.
Speaker 3: And they're like, I can't believe that we're eating this,
Speaker 3: because you know, everybody gets mad when they catch an
Speaker 3: old grennel. You know you.
Speaker 2: I like catching them for the fighting personally.
Speaker 3: You know, well, you think you got a twenty pound
Speaker 3: catfish on there, you pull it in and you got
Speaker 3: about a six pound grintel. Yeah. They six pound grintel
Speaker 3: fight like a dang twenty pound cat.
Speaker 2: Yeah. They're awesome.
Speaker 3: So oh and they'll hit anything from a worm to
Speaker 3: like a like a night crawler all the way up
Speaker 3: to an artificial worm or crawlfish or a lizard or
Speaker 3: spinner bait fish anything.
Speaker 1: Me and my cousin Frank Moore, like twenty seven years ago,
Speaker 1: were out fishing the Burnout Bridge Old ninety across some
Speaker 1: Orange Texas here bass fishing from the bank, and they
Speaker 1: were hitting every worm and crawlworm combo.
Speaker 2: We could throw.
Speaker 1: And I like catching. We're trying to catch bass. I said,
Speaker 1: you know what, I've never caught one on the top water.
Speaker 1: I threw a top water out and made one jerk
Speaker 1: and caught a ten pound grinel.
Speaker 2: But uh, a lot of fun, cool stuff.
Speaker 1: I want to switch because only got like a segment
Speaker 1: and a half left to a game. You know, wild games.
Speaker 1: There's a lot to cover in the wild game realm.
Speaker 1: And I'm just going to say that straight up. Out
Speaker 1: of all the more exotic other words, not white tail
Speaker 1: cottontail squirrel meat that I that I've eaten, my favorite
Speaker 1: wild gamemate is nil Guy. Antelope and nil Guy are
Speaker 1: free ranging along the southern Texas coast, mainly on the
Speaker 1: King and Kennedy ranches. I've had a privileged eating in
Speaker 1: a few times. It is unbelievable light. It like fried backstrap,
Speaker 1: and it was just the best meat I'd ever eaten
Speaker 1: like that. Also, bison is really good. What in your
Speaker 1: game experience is kind of your favorite more exotic type
Speaker 1: game meat.
Speaker 3: I like access. Yeah, I really like the texture and
Speaker 3: the taste of the axis. Yep, I've had access now.
Speaker 3: I killed a black buck back in the early nineties
Speaker 3: out around seven all Texas, and it was. It was
Speaker 3: decent eating. It really was, just wasn't a whole lot
Speaker 3: of it, because you know, this thing full grown from
Speaker 3: sixty pounds on the hoop. But I would have to
Speaker 3: say those are really good. But the most I guess
Speaker 3: exotic animal I've ever killed and eaten was a water buffalo.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 3: And yeah, there was a ranch here close to my house.
Speaker 3: They had exotic animals all over it and they had
Speaker 3: a huge bull water buffalo that was hooking and hurting
Speaker 3: all the other animals. And the guy that was running
Speaker 3: it was a good friend of mine, and he came
Speaker 3: and asked to borrow a gun because he wanted to
Speaker 3: go shoot this water buffalo. And I said, well wait
Speaker 3: a minute, let me shoot it. Yeah, and he said okay,
Speaker 3: he said, what are you doing. I'm going to have
Speaker 3: to get my bow. And he said, you can't kill
Speaker 3: this thing with a bow. I'm going to yep. So
Speaker 3: I grabbed my bow and I grabbed my forty five
Speaker 3: seventy and I give him the forty five seventy and
Speaker 3: I said, look, please go south shoot it. Yeah, but
Speaker 3: I'm taking to shoot this thing with my bow. And
Speaker 3: we went out to the ranch, and I mean these
Speaker 3: things are not were not tame. I mean they weren't
Speaker 3: just the wildness of animals, but they weren't tame either.
Speaker 3: I mean you couldn't you couldn't just walk up and
Speaker 3: put this thing. And so we stopped within a water
Speaker 3: hole that he was at, within about forty five yards,
Speaker 3: and I was shooting at the time. I was shooting
Speaker 3: about eighty pounds on my compound bow. And that's back whenever,
Speaker 3: you know, shooting those big heavy aluminum shafts of twenty
Speaker 3: two nineteens, you know. So I had a good heavy
Speaker 3: shaft and one hundred and twenty five grain those old
Speaker 3: good three bladed nap broadheads that we used to all
Speaker 3: shoot the thunderheads. Yep. I don't even think they'd make
Speaker 3: them anymore. And man, I sunk one right right behind
Speaker 3: the shoulder, kind of low in the chest, and just
Speaker 3: watch those sletches disappear, and this thing kind of jumped
Speaker 3: and ran about forty or fifty yards. You just there,
Speaker 3: you can just see that it was it was bleeding
Speaker 3: out and it never acted like it was it was
Speaker 3: even new. It was it, yep, And it stood there
Speaker 3: and then just slowly walked off about another twenty feet,
Speaker 3: laid down, never stood up again. It took less than
Speaker 3: a minute yep for this. I don't know how much
Speaker 3: this thing weighed fifteen hundred, two thousand pounds, but man, yeah,
Speaker 3: I had the.
Speaker 1: Sad experience with a bison one time I shot at
Speaker 1: the bison. I shot, which was unbelievable to buy meat
Speaker 1: for a year. At the house call, my good friend
Speaker 1: Ted Nuda said, where do I shoot a bison with
Speaker 1: a bow?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 1: He said, Neverthelengs, So go forever, shoot it right behind
Speaker 1: the when it walks, get an angling shot right in
Speaker 1: the crease of the of the you know, right in
Speaker 1: the crease right there. It went about thirty yards and
Speaker 1: it took about a minute and it was bye bye.
Speaker 2: And the meat was incredible.
Speaker 1: So how was the was the was the was the
Speaker 1: meat tough? Was it an older one? Did you make
Speaker 1: it ground meat? Did it kind of like beef or what?
Speaker 3: Well? The guys that owned the place he decided, he said,
Speaker 3: you go, hey, we're gonna we're gonna process this thing.
Speaker 3: We're gonna we're gonna have it process. And he said,
Speaker 3: when we get it done, you know, I'm gonna bring
Speaker 3: you you know, a bunch of meat. I'm great. So
Speaker 3: several weeks later, I'm home and uh see this truck
Speaker 3: coming up the driveway and it's my buddy, and he
Speaker 3: just pulls back a tarf on the back of the
Speaker 3: truck and the whole back of the truck just full
Speaker 3: of white packages for a freezer, paper from the bricker
Speaker 3: and he's like, where you want this? And I'm like,
Speaker 3: I don't know anywhere to put this this much. So
Speaker 3: we we filled everything we had. Okay, I'm gonna cook it.
Speaker 3: I decided to cook a steak like a stake, and
Speaker 3: you couldn't hardly eat it because I mean, this bull
Speaker 3: was probably as old as a bull.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, hold that, hold that thought. We're gonna come
Speaker 1: back on Laura out the words we're gonna talk about.
Speaker 1: We've got great cliffhangers tonight, cooking a water buffalo, take
Speaker 1: in and East Texas I dare you to find on
Speaker 1: other programs. We'll talk more with Jeff Stewart and wrap
Speaker 1: up our conversation about celebrating the harvest here on More Outdoors.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to More Outdoors on News Talk five sixty klv.
Speaker 1: I Follow my blog at Higher Calling dot net. Find
Speaker 1: me on Facebook, at Higher Calling Wildlife and at the Chester,
Speaker 1: more on Instagram, and of course the program every week
Speaker 1: here at six to seven pm CST. Say that for
Speaker 1: our listeners all around the nation, and also streaming at
Speaker 1: KLVI dot com and via the iHeartRadio app. I'm almost
Speaker 1: omnipresent in the great outdoors media. Continuing our conversation with
Speaker 1: good buddy Jeff Stewart. Now we had a cle another cliffhanger.
Speaker 1: You were cooking water buffalo meat and the steak was
Speaker 1: a little bit too tough. So tell me how you
Speaker 1: tackled the water buffalo.
Speaker 3: Put the Dutch oven, the biggest one I had put it,
Speaker 3: built a fire in the yard. But just like you're
Speaker 3: gonna homestead cook something, put my Dutch oven over it.
Speaker 3: Added you know, some some oil to the bill. Round
Speaker 3: off one of these ROAs, real good, flowered it, rounded off,
Speaker 3: left it in there at my onions, my potatoes, carrot,
Speaker 3: a little bit of celery to it. Put some beef
Speaker 3: stock over in there that I had saved in the freezer,
Speaker 3: and put the lid on the top of it and
Speaker 3: just let it cook on top of that for probably
Speaker 3: four hours five hours, just every once in all, stoaking
Speaker 3: the fire head and a little more wood, whatever I
Speaker 3: could do, making sure the liquid didn't boil out of it.
Speaker 3: And when we ate that thing, it was the best
Speaker 3: thing you would have thought it was. You wouldn't have
Speaker 3: known that it wasn't a premium chuck roast from the store.
Speaker 1: Gotta love it, man, that's I love that. When I
Speaker 1: shot that bison, we got most of it made into
Speaker 1: you know, like hamburger meat, because you can cook that.
Speaker 1: We made bison meat balls and bison lasagna and bison tacos.
Speaker 1: The steaks were great. Another surprise, awesome. I killed a
Speaker 1: scimitar horned rix. It's kind of antelope out to my
Speaker 1: friend Thompson Tipples Place back in the late nineties, and
Speaker 1: to this date, it was the best faheta meat I've
Speaker 1: ever had in my entire life. We were like we
Speaker 1: were taking that state meat cut in strips, made the
Speaker 1: heat to meat out of it.
Speaker 2: Incredible stuff.
Speaker 1: It just shows, Jeff, there's a lot more than beef,
Speaker 1: pork and chicken out there.
Speaker 3: Right, yep, lots lots more stuff. You know. We're even
Speaker 3: the worst animal I ever killed and cooked. I enjoyed,
Speaker 3: which was a Corsican.
Speaker 2: Ram like I do good on those.
Speaker 3: Oh man. It was. It was an old billy and
Speaker 3: it was probably as gamey as every bike. Tasted like
Speaker 3: a barnyard. Like if you went out in the barnyard
Speaker 3: and got in, like right in the middle of the
Speaker 3: manure pile and started eating ham sandwich. You're breathing in
Speaker 3: that manure smell as you take a bite. That's kind
Speaker 3: of what it reminded. But at the same time, everybody,
Speaker 3: I remembered the hunt. I remember taking the longest shot
Speaker 3: I've ever taken on an animal. I took a sixty
Speaker 3: yard shot with a bow. That was the longest bow
Speaker 3: shot I've ever taken on anything. I don't like to
Speaker 3: take over forty yard shot, and I took this Corsican
Speaker 3: on a ranch and it was a perfect shot. Forty
Speaker 3: fifty steps. Maybe after I shot it, it went and
Speaker 3: just piled up on some rocks and was gone. I
Speaker 3: mean maybe five seconds, six seconds, you know, this thing
Speaker 3: was out dead, gone, and it was wonderful. I've still
Speaker 3: got a rug made from its hide that we had made,
Speaker 3: and I look at it and I remember it, and
Speaker 3: I loved the story, and I just remember eating the
Speaker 3: meat and going it's not the best, but wow, what
Speaker 3: a hunt.
Speaker 1: I've killed a lot of those exotic sheep over the year,
Speaker 1: and you know, the old, the old trophy size ones
Speaker 1: are tough, so we always get them ground up and
Speaker 1: we mix them about thirty percent beef and make ramburgers.
Speaker 1: They're great, love them. We got got a lot of it.
Speaker 1: They're really good that way. And uh a trick, Yeah, well.
Speaker 3: I thought, yeah, yeah, it was a mistake on my part.
Speaker 1: Bob material, but it's definitely good when you ground it
Speaker 1: up a little bit of beef in it, it gives
Speaker 1: it a little kick.
Speaker 2: Like it that way. But that's the fun. It's laughing.
Speaker 1: We're having good time talking about the celebration of the
Speaker 1: harvest out there. And uh, you have a cookbook out,
Speaker 1: tell me a little bit about your cookbok before we
Speaker 1: got to go.
Speaker 3: Texas Jack's Wild Game and Venison Cookbook. I'm Texas Jack. Actually, Uh,
Speaker 3: Texas Jack is just a name that a lot of
Speaker 3: different people have written under. And a good friend of
Speaker 3: mine hit me up and said, man, I need a
Speaker 3: Wild Game in Venison cookbook and would you team up
Speaker 3: with Texas Jack and give us some of your tried
Speaker 3: and through recipes, and I'm like, yeah, and we sat
Speaker 3: down and wrote this book. And the first half of
Speaker 3: the book is a dedication to my dad who had
Speaker 3: who had passed away right before I wrote the book.
Speaker 3: And so the first half is about my dad, and
Speaker 3: it tells kind of a story because my dad was
Speaker 3: a legend around here. He was an outdoor legend. If
Speaker 3: it came to fishing. Uh, everybody my dad nickname was Skeeter.
Speaker 3: So if it came to fishing, everybody said, go ask Skier.
Speaker 3: If there was a hole that you can catch a
Speaker 3: big old catfish in, they asked Skier. So I made
Speaker 3: a first half of the book about my dad.
Speaker 2: Cool.
Speaker 3: And the rest are our recipes, everything from my dear
Speaker 3: Chili all the way to my dear Fahidas And uh,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of fish recipes, different things in there.
Speaker 3: It's just a great little cookbook.
Speaker 2: Dig it man. And that's Uh. You know, where can
Speaker 2: people get ahold of the book?
Speaker 3: The easiest place for them to get a hold of
Speaker 3: the book is on Amazon. That's the easiest place to
Speaker 3: look it up and get it. But if they would
Speaker 3: like a signed copy of the book, they can reach
Speaker 3: out to me through social media. Uh, anything on my
Speaker 3: Instagram page, Uh, Jeff, Jeff, grip the hold Stewart my
Speaker 3: Facebook page. You know, just stript the hold Stewart. They
Speaker 3: can just type that in and find me. Other than that,
Speaker 3: catch me at one of the events that I attend
Speaker 3: around the country and I usually post that on Facebook
Speaker 3: and different social media. Is where I'm going to be
Speaker 3: at and they can get a signed copy.
Speaker 1: Very very cool man, and uh, it's just it's just
Speaker 1: fun talking about this stuff, and you know how to
Speaker 1: how to enjoy every minute, even post harvest, post expedition
Speaker 1: out into the wild, and you know, the whole idea
Speaker 1: of going out into the wild. I just had an
Speaker 1: incredible opportunity to go to Colorado and grant a higher
Speaker 1: calling Wildlife Expedition Wild Wishes encounter.
Speaker 2: For a young man, sixteen year old boy named.
Speaker 1: Elijah who had lost his father and took him into
Speaker 1: Rocky Mountain National Park and other areas around Esta's Park,
Speaker 1: Colorado to photograph wildlife and teach him to use cameras
Speaker 1: to capture wildlife images. And me and my buddy Amos.
Speaker 1: Now the cool part is Amos came through our program
Speaker 1: six years ago. He graduated high school and once to
Speaker 1: get involved in ministry using the outdoors.
Speaker 2: So we got him to go be my assistant.
Speaker 1: We went and scouted the day before, found a bunch
Speaker 1: of mule's, found some elk. Thought okay, we can do
Speaker 1: mule's and elk, but the ultimate we want to find
Speaker 1: as a big horn, and found no big horn in
Speaker 1: that area that day. Fifteen minutes into the expedition. The
Speaker 1: next day, the kid Olajias photographing a may your huge
Speaker 1: ram and you can go see that a higher calling
Speaker 1: wildlife on Facebook. Seeing a smile of a kid who
Speaker 1: had lived in Colorado, had never been in the mountains
Speaker 1: and photographing a big horn ram shows that anyone can
Speaker 1: be impacted by that glorious encounter in God's creation in
Speaker 1: the great outdoors and seeing amos come along and being
Speaker 1: part of that. It reminds me of our conversations we're
Speaker 1: having the night about just that joy. And look, man,
Speaker 1: the world sucks right now. There's a lot of crazy
Speaker 1: stuff going on, but it almost never sucks in the
Speaker 1: great outdoors. And whether you're get Texas Jack's cookbook and
Speaker 1: learn some good dear chili recipes, or you go fly
Speaker 1: fishing or whatever you do, going into the great outdoors
Speaker 1: is one of the best things you can do.
Speaker 2: I know you agree with that, Jeff.
Speaker 3: Old artedly, because I tell people all the time in
Speaker 3: the outdoor there's no there's no ulterior motive. If you
Speaker 3: go out to the outdoors and sit under a tree
Speaker 3: and just soak it in, nobody's nobody's out to get you,
Speaker 3: nobody's telling you what to do, one to do, how
Speaker 3: to do. You just sit there and if it's ten minutes,
Speaker 3: two hours, whatever it is, for that length of time,
Speaker 3: and it's you and nature, it's you and God. You know,
Speaker 3: it's like the best time I ever had in nature.
Speaker 3: Is a young man that wanted to spend a day
Speaker 3: hunting with me, who had leukemia, and I took him
Speaker 3: hunting and we watched the sun come up over the
Speaker 3: trees and we had the best conversation. We didn't even
Speaker 3: see a deer that day. The next day he could
Speaker 3: not go hunting with me again. We were going to
Speaker 3: go the next day, and the next day he died.
Speaker 3: And the greatest honor I had was spending that young
Speaker 3: man's last days on this earth in the woods with him,
Speaker 3: and that's all he wanted. To do was spend that
Speaker 3: those last hours that he had alive with me in
Speaker 3: the woods.
Speaker 2: Can't beat that. Nothing better, No, can't beat nothing, no,
Speaker 2: not even a cond I'll.
Speaker 3: Never forget that. I'll never forget that. Never forget that,
Speaker 3: young man. Never forget the feeling of that sun coming
Speaker 3: up over those pine trees. There was frost on the
Speaker 3: ground when that sun hit it, the steam coming off
Speaker 3: the frost, the steam coming off the pine needles, and
Speaker 3: that smell that you get whenever that sun breaks over
Speaker 3: the horizon. And it's just something you'll never forget. If
Speaker 3: you ever experience it, you'll never forget it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you don't want to forget it. I'll tell you
Speaker 2: what been a great show.
Speaker 1: Thanks for coming on the program tonight, Jeff, and thanks
Speaker 1: for sharing. That's awesome man. That's right where my heart
Speaker 1: is with the young people in the great outdoors. And
Speaker 1: God bless you all for listening to more outdoors tonight.
Speaker 1: Don't forget you can connect it Higher Calling not net
Speaker 1: at Dee Chester Moore on Instagram, Higher Calling while on Facebook.
Speaker 1: Have a great and glorious outdoors weekend.