From Field to Plate; Jeremiah Doughty

On this episode of Huntavore, Nick sits down with Jeremiah Doughty, the man behind From Field to Plate.  Jeremiah and Nick have very similar views on wildgame and life even though they are on opposite sides of the country.  Jeremiah shares stories from the field, and his passions around food.  This episode is an absolute must listen as we prepare for our upcoming seasons,get ready to be fired up  on this episode of Huntavore.

Jeremiah Doughty is a return guest on the show. Jeremiah is the mind behind From FIeld to Plate, all kinds of content surrounding wildgame and how to prepare it.  Nick and Jeremiah chat about some of the foundations of why they hunt.  The pursuit of real food they feed their families.  Sometimes the simple truth gets overlooked, and this chat is a refreshing reminder as we prepare gear, weapons, and make room in the freezer.  Are you preparing for the “after the shot” work as much as the scout?  While this episode doesn't have any specific recipe focus, the idea of gleaning “just another meatball”  off your kill is important.  Full utilization takes effort, creativity, and time.  For more from Jeremiah, check out his material at fromfieldtoplate.com

Check out the Sportsmen's Empire Podcast Network for more relevant, outdoor content!

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This is episode 1 29 from Field to Plate with Jeremy Doty. On this episode of Vore, Nick sits down with Jeremiah Doty, the man behind from field to plate. Jeremiah and Nick have very similar views on wild game and life, even though they're on opposite sides of the country. Jeremiah shares stories from the field and his passions [00:01:00] around food.

This is an absolute listen of an episode as we prepare for our upcoming seasons. Get ready to be fired up on this episode of vo.

Hey folks. Beautiful afternoon here in Michigan. I tell you what it is, we're starting to get the heat. It's starting to feel a little bit like California. We got dry heat. We're in the nineties now and hasn't rained in well over. I don't wanna say quite a month, but we're at like three weeks or so.

We had a little spit of rain. Maybe it's because I was destined to talk to a Californian. Today I am on the horn here with Jeremiah Doty out of Southern California. Jeremiah, thanks for jumping on. How are things in your neck of the woods?

Jeremiah Doughty: Good, but I like how you say California weather. [00:02:00] So we've been, we haven't had sun since like march.

It's been like may gloom June gloom March gloom, April gloom. Today is the first day we actually cal Sun, but it's still sitting around like 69 degrees. So I am ready for summer to come. I'm ready for

Nick Otto: heat. We need, yeah, we need to, something has happened. Everything. I think it was, it all stems from 2020 more craziness has happened and Michigan has become California, and California is now eating the Michigan weather.

I want my below seventies back. Like I, I had enough of this heat, I'm ready to move back to some cooler temperatures.

Jeremiah Doughty: Yeah. And I'm ready for heat. I'm still wearing sandals in the 60 degree weather, but throwing on a sweatshirt, I know you guys 60 degree weather for you and in, in the middle of, after winter you're like, okay, but for us, that's like freezing cold when it's 50 and 60 degrees outside, absolutely.

Nick Otto: Absolutely. We we feel for you. We wish to have it back 'cause Yeah, now we get here and we're like, we don't know what to do. I have all these sweatshirts and I can't [00:03:00] wear 'em. I have four t-shirts, so I just gotta keep cycling through. But yeah, you got cold weather out there.

I thought. Great spot for us to touch off a little bit, Jeremiah, is how were your seasons this past year? I know in, in California, things work a little different. You do there's less over the counter opportunities and you have end up having to play the tag game, but there's still a lot of opportunities to get over the counter.

You just have to be strategic on where you go.

Jeremiah Doughty: Am I right? Yeah. So the way our state works is we've, it's broken up into a lot of the western states. We're broken up into different zones, different hunt areas, zones, some states will call it areas, some ours calls it zone. So we'll have a zone, B zone, whatever, right?

So we have an ao, which is archery only, and that's pretty much over the counter. You can go in and get it and you can hunt anywhere that's in with that AO zone. Then you have an aag, which AAG covers almost all of the state. Which you can put in for, and that's just going to public land. You can [00:04:00] go shoot your one deer on that ao.

Then there's a BS or the A Zone then there's a B zone, which kind of goes up towards the northern one. But then there's individual zones within that. That is a draw system. So you'll have the D zones the other a zones. You'll have X zones, which those are your prime, like you put in and put in and try to get an X zone because that's where your big giant mule deer are.

Up in the mountains, up near Tahoe. Mammoth. You're gonna get big mule deer coming in then. But me, I draw in the south down in the desert and I'm shooting the desert mule deer coming in off of Mexico. So we've still got big mule deer coming in outta Mexico, and that's primarily what I go for.

I know how to hunt the deserts. I'm a flatlander, I live at 30, feet above sea level. And so going up to that 10,000 foot to go track mule deer is fun, but. I just can't breathe. So I'd rather go hike around the deserts and really try to outsmart these deer rather than just, sitting behind a tree.

So

Nick Otto: you've spoken a lot about antelope and I know you've got a food [00:05:00] allergy and beef is no longer good for you. Was there some, was white tail also becoming a problem for you at that one point? But I knew that antelope was a thing that you could safely eat.

Jeremiah Doughty: It's funny you say that.

I just finished this guy and I'm just about ready to put him up oh, beautiful. Yeah, it's, he

Nick Otto: was holding a skull mount there of a pronghorn.

Jeremiah Doughty: No. All wild game is on the table for me. Antelope was just the first of the wild game that I ever went in, like large game I ever hunted been a bird hunter my whole life.

And so antelope was that first introductory, animal to me. A lot of guys like you in Michigan and stuff, right? You're used to going out and chasing those white tails as soon as the air starts to get cold and school starts to start again and you're all getting off the day to go open. Or, deer for us, deer season open to your July 14th in Southern California for archery.

So you can go chase deer, the only promise 110 degrees outside. And you try to tell me one deer, imagine, yeah, you try to tell me one deer that's out eating in the middle of the day. No, they're all, they're walking in the middle of the night when it's 80 degrees. [00:06:00] And it was never really that option.

But when the beef allergy came into play that's where the antelope did because Wyoming, it's just so cheap. At the time, I think it was like 36 bucks for no, for a tag and license. In Wyoming, it's you can't beat that. You can go get four. Back in the day you used to be able to get four dough tags and so you can go do four dough tags for the price of still cheaper than trying to get a buck.

And so that's really where that passion for pronghorn started was 10 years ago. Chasing, pulling up to the plains of Wyoming and just seeing herds and say, how do I close a three mile gap on an animal that can see three and a half miles? And that's, so antelope to me that is just, was the beginning of it.

And that's why it's one of my absolute favorites because it's just like you're, it's your first, it's your first big game, your first struggle, your first taste of big, wild game meat that's not, that's cooked properly. And yeah that's the fun for me of antelope.

Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Otto: It just, like you [00:07:00] said, the white tail is king in a lot of people's books here out east and esp you know, especially here in Michigan, it's plentiful. It's, it's right out your back door, but it's what we cut our teeth on. It's what we grew up on and we know them inside and out.

And yeah, it's as much fun as it is to go and chase other species, and I'm finally getting that chance to be able to branch out and, go different places, chase, after different critters. I still think that white tail will continue and always be my number one on my list, two, three, and four.

It's gonna ki kind of cycle through as far as how my mood is swinging. But for the most part, you're right, like your first is one. It's gonna stick at the top of that list.

Jeremiah Doughty: Yeah. But also there's something magical about hunting an animal that you understand its psyche, right? I know how antelope are gonna work now.

Like I know how their brains work. I know where they're going to, unlike Whitetail mule, mule deer, elk cattle for that fact. When the sun starts to set antelope lay down and they're there [00:08:00] all night long, just like a lot of the other big sheep that you're gonna find, the goats you're gonna find, they don't wanna walk a middle of the night, their biggest asset is their eyes. They've got huge eye sockets and they've got this almost 360 degree view where they can look on their eyes. And so taking away their natural, defense mechanism, they usually huddle down, hurt, so you're almost in a sense, hunting antelope like you're hunting Turkey where you're putting 'em to roost and then you're coming back in the morning to try to figure out did they fly off the roost early or are they still gonna be right in that one spot?

And we've taken out, I've taken out, I can't tell you how many brand new hunters to antelope. We took out this one dude from my church. He was in his late eighties. All his di had cancer. His wife passed away and he really wanted to hunt antelope. And so we got him tagged through the draw.

And I remember we took him out the night before. We put down a whole herd. It was like 40, 50 antelope. And that morning we crawled in at three o'clock in the morning and we sat up on this little rise about 150 [00:09:00] yards from them. And we just sat down, we didn't lay down. We were right where we needed to be.

We got up, a tripod tightened his gun in right where the herd was. We're like, okay, as soon as they stand up in the morning, just pick one. Like you have a dough tag, there's 40 doughs out there. Just pick any dough you want. Pull the trigger. And so in that sense it was a lot, it's like sitting in a tree stand or sitting in a blind where you know the pattern of the animals, but you knew where they were gonna be.

It's, you know exactly where they were gonna wake up. So that was fun.

Nick Otto: That's really cool. That's really cool. I like how you compare that even to Turkey hunting where you put 'em to rest and the fact that yeah, they're not going anywhere and you guys can come back and get the stalk on 'em early before they've gotten their full alert characteristics.

Are you still playing, you're still playing a lot of wind out there. 'cause at that point there's, I mean there are hollows and there are spots that your scent can travel down, but you're really, as much as their eyes are one of the biggest protectors, their nose is still as [00:10:00] strong as

Jeremiah Doughty: a lot of their senses.

I have not found that to be as, as truthful as a lot of people will claim to be. Really. Their eyes are their biggest asset. Their nose. Amit, we have, we've made stock where the wind is at our back howling towards them. And as long as we stay outta sight, they could care less. It's not like a white tail or a mule where they'll put their heads up and they'll start looking, they'll start sniffing.

They'll. They, I've, I, you don't see them lift their nose to stiff. You see them, usually you'll have you'll have a male or a dominant female who is always gonna every five seconds their head's up. And if they look your way, they will not break that look to smell, to turn to, they are looking where they saw that movement.

And like a military sniper, if you see that they're looking at where you were, you're able to back out, go over and come up and they're still looking at that location where you were. But I have, and I tell people when we take 'em all the time don't worry about the scent. Don't worry about scent blockers.

Don't worry about [00:11:00] your biggest thing is not being seen. This last season was rough. It was hard. It was just me and my dad out there and we were chasing bucks and we just the way the rain was working, the way, it was just, it was a rough opening morning and we're actually driving out of our, out of the property.

That we have permission to hunt, which backs up to 90,000 acres of B l m land. It's this little sliver of landlock that goes in. We've known the guy for 15 years, so it's, Hey, yeah, come on. You can have access to my property, but then use the 90,000 acres of

Nick Otto: blm, 90,000. Those are numbers that still, I just can't even fathom until you're out there to

Jeremiah Doughty: see it.

I've, and I've hunted that property for 10 years and I don't think I've hit every canyon. And so as we're driving out, just out of the tall grass, the grass is probably waist high. 'cause they've had such a wet winter there in Wyoming. And all we see is the tips of this guy's horns, the one that I was showing you earlier, prong horn.

We just see the little tips [00:12:00] of the curves up here. And I'm like stop. My dad's driving 'cause I'm hunting and I go, stop. And I glass and I just see the tips and I go, all right, we gotta figure out how to get to this guy. But it's a flat plane, like there's no stock. There's no.

There's no way to come in behind him. There's no way to come in front of him. There's no way to he's out just as far as you can see, flat grassland. And so I'm looking on Onyx, I'm going crazy. I'm like, okay, where there's gotta be a draw here, there's gotta be, and there's nothing. So tell my dad, okay, I'm gonna get out on the other side.

You just keep driving. He'll just, if he, because you can see his head looking at the, where the truck was. I get outta the truck and my dad goes over outta sight and then I belly crawl in that grass, in the rain, in the mud, wind is howling at my back.

Like I said, I'm following the curvature of the grass and I'm going, and I would just peek up a little bit enough to see his horns and I'd range 'em like no, it's not close enough. 'cause I had to get where I could lay down and see the tip of his horns so that when he stood up, I knew that his [00:13:00] body's gonna be above the grass and I could pull the trigger.

When I got into range where I could see the tip of his horns without lifting my head up, where I could just be on my bipod with my head down on my rifle. I was 43 yards from this antelope. And I had, where my dad had dropped me off was 500 yards before that. When I first glassed, it was 540 yards, 550 yards.

And so I belly crawled through this grass for, 500 yards. And then I just laid there and it was about an hour, 45 minutes to an hour of me just laying there on my rifle. I'm like, I, if I move, he's, he, he sees me, he's gone. So it's just laying here and on the highway about a mile away, we hear like a truck going by.

And that was just enough to make him stand up and oh my God, as soon as he stood up, the lower, the part of his belly was right at the grass level. I. And I remember I was, I knew what his head was. I went to where I thought his heart would be. And he stood up and as soon as he stood up, he just laid right back down.

And [00:14:00] my dad called and goes, I heard the shot. I'll be right there. And it was one of those moments where people, if I was with anybody else, if it was any, if I was with a new hunter, I don't think we would've killed that buck. Just 'cause of the patience and the perseverance and the, I wasn't worried about at all about my scent with that guy.

It was all about vision. It's all about what they see. Which is a big difference from a white tail, which you've be sitting in the woods and all of sudden you hear, you hear stomping, grunting and blowing. You're like, really? I thought I was playing this one. Great. And all of a sudden you're, you're like fricking buck.

And yeah, I don't play the wind game when it comes to antelope. It's all vision. It's all, yeah. And all the big hunters that I hunt with out there too they'll tell you the same thing. It's all about staying down low enough where you're not gonna be compromised by their incredible eyesight.

Nick Otto: What kind of, you don't have to use a real heavy rifle for that being that, that they are such a sleek animal a lighter framed animal. What rifle are you

Jeremiah Doughty: using? I have killed them with everything from a 6.5 to a two 70[00:15:00] to a 30 out six, just depending on the distance, because you're shooting at such a flat, long range.

I really like that. 6.5. I know a lot of guys will give it crap. Oh, it's the round's phenomenal. And that new 6.5 p c r or p r c round is stupid. But I took a buck at 615 yards with a 6.5 and I meant the thing took three steps and, buckled down. So that round itself, especially, and I'm shooting like the Hornet day, E L D X It's got that, it's got that EIP on the front, so as soon as it goes through the animal, it really has that good mushroom just plunk.

But yeah, you can shoot 'em and I've shot 'em, I've shot more, 30 out six than anything else, just because you're out there hunting, mule, deer, whitetail and antelope. So you wanna be able to, whatever you come across, you wanna be able to, and those white tail up in Wyoming are like your guys' white tail, which are like horses.

Yes. Not like those little Texas, puppies. So [00:16:00] little co

Nick Otto: deer. Yeah, little he said little toys. Yeah. My yeah, with the scent I have, I had a nanny dough. I actually had a chance to take her this year, which worked out wonderful. It was one of those I was glad to shoot her. She was hefty.

She made every other deer that I got this year look small. I need to put a scale. I didn't have a scale in my shop yet, but just. Ranging how much she is, she had to have been 175 reaching 200 pounds, just a massive deer. Her snout had this I think she got either got in a fight or had some sort of injury, but she had this hump on the top of her nose.

But

Jeremiah Doughty: but that's what that's actually called is a ro it, that's actually called a Roman nose. You'll find that on whitetail the older they get. So you'll be able to really, like, when they start to get super, super old, their nose gets that big kind of roundedness to it. And that's just a bunch of cartilage.

It's from fighting that's from age. [00:17:00] It's like you, you see that old drunk dude at the bar, and it's got that big old giant bulbous of a nose. The same thing's gonna happen to, to whitetail in that. So you can actually, we'll be sitting there looking at deer in Texas or Alabama, Michigan you name it.

And a lot of guys we're looking at the belly. We're looking at the neck, we're looking at the way the ears break down. But when they turn that head, you can see that Roman nose on it. And it's, and you'd be surprised if you were to look at the teeth on any deer that has that roman nose.

It's, they're almost gone. Completely gone. So it's worn down. Oh, yeah.

Nick Otto: That's what she had. She had that roman nose, she had that hump right there. Just, yeah. Just above where her actual nose is and that snout. And she just knew as much as I knew her, she knew me. There would be so many times where I'm sitting, and it would be just like you said, with the scent 80 yards away.

And I'd hear blowing, and I knew exactly who was blowing. She just knew my spots. [00:18:00] And, I have taken deer around her, but she has never given me that opportunity. I've had them walk down like as if they're coming right to my spot. I am just about ready to go and draw the bow, just to have her not feel right, make a few calls to her her girls and turn them right around.

And that was my night. And it was just like, gosh, she's just been a thorn in my side. And I took her with a firearm this year. Actually she was one of the two she's one of the first deer that I've taken with a firearm. Everything else has been with Bo. But to have her run, I think she got spooked by.

Either a piece of machinery at the farmer or at the farm, or a neighboring hunter that ended up putting a shot on. But they ran in and they were looking everywhere else but at me, and so I was able to take her. We're a shotgun zone, we're in a limited fire zone. We have too many people around us.

So as much as I would love to use a [00:19:00] six five and be able to have that reach out and touch something power I've just been with the tried and true shotgun, the 12 gauge. But anyway, put her rate down and I tell you what, you get something with that big a caliber, that big a hole it's gonna put that animal down.

So that's why I was curious on, even with something that's as frail as a pronghorn, you're still trying to use rounds that can reach out there. So you said, yeah, 30 odd six, that's an older round that, it doesn't have the sexy appeal. It's got more of the heritage and tradition behind it, but it's still an effective tool, especially when you've got multiple species

Jeremiah Doughty: around you.

Oh, I have a, my very first rifle ever that I bought myself was a, back in the day, what, 15 years ago, was a Thompson Center back when they were first coming out. It's a Smith and Wesson company, but everyone's like a Thompson Center, 30 out six. And I didn't know, I was like, oh, 30 out six.

I know that's what my grandpa used, and I remember I got it. And that gun, I hunt a lot in the west. And so a lot of the friends and [00:20:00] stuff have deemed that the wicked witch of the West, because it has taken down since I started big game hunting 10 years ago. It just put down, its 600 animal total.

That's hog deer, antelope, elk, you name it, odd a axis and, or, big old sheep. It's tagging them. And it's just consistent and it's one of those deals, like I tell everyone, When you know your weapon and your weapon knows you, it's I grew up bird hunting and so you put a shotgun in my shoulder and I don't even think about it, it's just muscle memory of me shooting birds, shooting dove, quail, pheasant chuck or waterfowl, you name it.

And it's just, it's muscle memory. Like I don't look at the sight. I don't, it's just my body in my, I know where it sits on my cheek. I know where it sits in my shoulder. I know where, where my, where the eye relief is on it. I get sent in shotguns all the time from companies. And it's funny, I always turn back to the one that I got when I was like 18.

'cause it's just it's comfortable. It's not sexy, it's not sleek, but it's, it's a [00:21:00] powerhouse. And with that 30 out six is the same deal I've got, I've got a, I can't tell you how many rifles sitting in a safe and it's always I think I'm gonna take out the Wicked Witch.

And everyone's dude, but you've got, I'm like, yeah, that, that gun works nice. It is nice. But this guy, I, I put it on my shoulder and it's, no, I don't have to adjust my turrets. I don't, it's If it fits within 400 yards, it's dead. There's no if, ands, buts, there's no and we were hunting in Texas this year, and I, we took out some football players right after they got done with their N F L season.

And they all wanted to learn how to deer hunt. And so we went up to the ranch and we were hunting out in Texas, and I remember the, one of the guys was like, I've never shot anything before. And I go, just here, point and shoot. Okay. I said, don't think about it. Don't, you're, you got my body bill, put your head down point, shoot.

And he ended up shooting I think seven or eight deer in a matter of two days. Wow. And everyone I met, there's deer running. He's I got, there's, and everyone's dude, he's you said point shoot. And I'm like, I told you point and shoot. Like I'm not, and I think that's where it [00:22:00] comes down to someone like you with your bow you know your bow so well that you can. Almost do it blindfolded, by feel, by, by, by. You know where it's hitting your lip, you know where your anchor points are. Same thing applies to a rifle or a shotgun. And that's why I laugh when these guys get so caught up in oh, bows are better.

Rifles are better shock. A weapon's a weapon. And once you've mastered and that weapon, it's fun and it's gonna get groceries and it's gonna be, it's gonna be a part of it. I could care less. I have killed animals every legal way. I think there's legal way to kill an animal from pellet rifles to spears to stabbing hogs.

Like I've done it all and all of 'em to me have a place.

Nick Otto: Yes. That adage of, and I always reference this 'cause, my, my collection of firearms is quite narrow. But at the same time, like I always live on an adage that beware the man with one gun. Yeah. That just like you so eloquently put together saying that I know this rifle, as soon as I put it in or the shotgun I put it on my shoulder and I'm not thinking about where is it [00:23:00] placed.

I'm not, you're not thinking. It just is point and shoot, just like you said it's set up just where you need it to be. And I can tell if I have not drawn the bow in a couple weeks, it's one of those things, like my very first shot is already gonna be one that I shoot let down. I don't know why I release it, but it's you know what you the relationship, all of a sudden there needs to be a warming period.

I've left it down for a couple weeks. Let's pick it back up. Let's get back into this. Let's get into the flow of things and you then, you remember. Exactly what what you need to do. And then after that, man with consistent practice, especially leading up to those seasons, it is it's game on that, once you get in there, it's, I'm not thinking about my shot process, it's more or less I'm thinking about my setup.

As soon as the deer comes into that circle of my ethical range, all emotions are off. We're not using the front side of my brain. We're using the backside, the lizard brain at that

Jeremiah Doughty: point. Yeah. That's like funny too. 'cause I take out a lot of new hunters, [00:24:00] dove hunting and quail hunting, and you'll also have a lot of veterans that come out to the fields.

Like last year, I think we had 33 guys in the field that I had talked to. A farmer got this field. It was an old wheat field, he just plowed over. And so the dove were like, like Argentina, right? And have all these buddies that are coming in and their shotguns hadn't been taken out since the last dove season.

And they're sitting there and they're missing. They're like, I don't get what I'm missing. I go, 'cause you haven't touched your weapon for an entire year, I don't think you cleaned your weapon. There's still the blood on the side from the dove that hit it. Last year, and we were talking to some of these new guys, I go, listen, I tried to get, there, there's so many things.

There's a company called Mantis X, not sponsored, but you can go look 'em up if you want to. They make attachments for shotguns, handguns, bow and arrows that you use your phone. It's not like the, what's that one you pull back on the bow and see oh, the fake animals you shoot. Oh yeah.

Nick Otto: You know what I'm talking about? [00:25:00] It's got a rubber band for

Jeremiah Doughty: the yeah. It's not like that. Yeah. Like you're actually using your weapon, your firearm your handgun, and it's like a laser mint. Like when I do classes, you can lay down on someone's gun, attach it to 'em, and it'll actually pick up their movement left.

How they're. If they're jerking their trigger pole, and I'll put that on my shotgun and just do it in my garage, just to get the main, hey, as soon as it hits this point, pull the trigger just to see where my face is going. And my daughters who are hunters too, it's like, Hey, we're gonna go out to, a month before dove season's gonna start, I'm gonna go out there and start slinging clays for them, even though it's a hundred degrees.

We'll go out there and shoot a box of clays and it's just to get their muscle memory. So they go out there and they're out shooting the boys at 13 years old, and all these grown men are like, why are your girls shooting so well? 'cause they shot, they practice. And I laugh at the bow hunters to do the same thing.

Deer season's coming. So a week before deer season opens, you see 'em all at the range, right? They're like, oh, I gotta practice deer season opens next week. I'm like, you should be been practicing in July for opener in October, bud. Yeah.

Nick Otto: Practice begins at the end of [00:26:00] season. You shouldn't put it away.

And I know, reality sets in life is always there, but there are ample opportunities for leagues in the winter. And I use that as an excuse more socially I should say. But at the same time, I have found just my level of confidence to where I can be nitty gritty on paper through January and February.

Then when we get back outside, like now I can, I've still had that conditioning, but now my nitty and grittiness, I'm not worried about breaking a line. I'm not worried about trying to necessarily get it inside the X at this point. Now I just want my broadheads to fly super straight and so now it becomes an equipment tinkering issue, but the practice has already been in there.

So yeah, tons of balance everywhere else when it comes to that.

Jeremiah Doughty: It's funny, I was talking to a big bow hunter during Turkey season up in Georgia. He was laughing 'cause there were all these, we were watching all these videos of these guys out there. Oh, 50, 50 arrows in practice. He goes your first arrow is the only arrow that ever [00:27:00] counts.

He goes, why are you out there shooting 50 arrows? Your first arrow? You're not you are not gonna get a second chance at a deer with an arrow. 99.99% of the time. He goes, so a true hunter should be able to pick up their bow, sit for 30 minutes, don't move, draw back and hit their mark, and then get up, go do things, come back an hour later, sit down, hit your mark.

He goes sitting at an archery at block and shooting 50 arrows at it. And it's pointless because you're building a muscle memory that doesn't need to be there. Your muscle memory should be the first arrow and that's it, because that's the arrow that counts when you're a bow hunter. It's like a rifle hunter.

Like we, when I'm teaching people how to shoot rifle, it's like the mechanics of how to reload and cau a second one. Is not as important as breathing for your first shot. It just isn't Your first shot is your first shot, and that goes with anything, shotguns and birds a little different sometimes you're like, ah, first shot, and this with the dove, I'm [00:28:00] a little behind lead a little more, boom, pull the trigger.

But for archery, I think it's funny, I never ever really thought about it like that until you start talking about it. I go, huh. So now I literally go to the archery range, pull it all my stuff. I'll sit there, I'll be talking to people, fling one arrow, start packing everything up and people are like, what?

I go, it's the only one that counts. If it hit where it's supposed to go, that's a dead deer. And it's all these dudes laugh at me, but I'm like it, I do that every day for two weeks and I can guarantee that first shot is money in my mind. I know that when that deer walks in, my first shot is money.

There's so many times as archers where we're like, oh, I dialed it in. My fifth shot was great. Your fifth shot. That's, yeah, there's nothing there to even shoot at five shots. That's the end of the season. And so being confident and comfortable at going out, pulling at your bow, throwing one arrow down and then being able to go out and get your deer, I think is where we need to start looking at it and where we need to start really, having those different [00:29:00] competitions.

Yeah. Go walk up a mountain and shoot a three D target. It's great. It gets your heart rate up, but 90% of bow hunters are sitting in tree stands. So literally go sit in the lawn chair in front of a three D target for 45 minutes to an hour. Slowly grab your bow, pull the trigger. Like that's real world scenario situations.

That's what if you look at frogman seals, all that, they're not gonna go in there and go, okay, we need, it's repetition. It's. Hey, we're gonna go breach this house. If we don't breach this house correctly, then we're all dead. Then you're all gonna go drown and have to, we're gonna bring it back to life.

So I think it's that mechanics we need to look at and it's, I dunno, I think it makes you a better hunter overall

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Jeremiah Doty, everybody. Spitting truth right here. It's the first arrow. It's the first shot that counts when it comes to hunters, because that second one is just gonna be a hope and a prayer at that point. Critters moving. You have, your heart rate's going. It's [00:32:00] not gonna be the greatest shot in the world.

The greatest shot needs to be the first arrow. Jeremiah, that was awesome.

Jeremiah Doughty: Hey, you know what? I can't take all credit for it, Jason. He's the one that kind of spit that truth when we were Turkey hunting. And it, like I said, it made complete sense. 'cause I was like, oh crap, I never really thought about the first arrow.

I remember going there going, I gotta go get more arrow arrows. I shot 25. I want to have 50 so I don't have to go walk to the, the box every single time. Which is fun, and for me this year, I've got a deer in my sights that I shot last season, the end of last season in my zone.

It's an archery only area down by the river. And the deer come out at sunset. Like you literally have 10 minutes to make a shot legally. And then they come and then they walk back in from the big alfalfa fields with you have five minutes to shoot legally. And I got in on this target buck that I've been eyeing for a couple years.

Big old, four by five mule deer. And he, everyone calls him the ghost 'cause he's just an old buck. [00:33:00] And this year he came out, there was about 45 dough that were coming out into the field. And I was sitting in this like just this little bush that was in as big as my head, sitting right up against it brushed myself in.

We're in the desert so it's not like big forest behind us. We can hide behind. It's you don't move because, and all those dough came out and they're feeding real slow. And I'm like, man, he's not gonna come. And all of a sudden I just see this big rack, come out through this, these mesquite bushes.

And I was like, oh my gosh. And as as bow hunters, we've already. We've already ranged everything within our kill zone, right? So if he hits, what else he got, if he hits that tree, it's 45 yards. If he hits that bush, it's 26 yards. If he hits, right? So I'm watching him walk and he hits the tree, and I'm like, oh, okay.

45 yards, right? But all these dough eyes are looking at me, 'cause I'm the only bush in this whole, I'm like, this is not gonna, and then he walks, he's walking to the, he's still walking. He walks to that neck and I'm like, oh, okay. He's at 35 yards, I'm like, okay, adjust my, adjust my pin real quietly down to my, and then he stops and he looks up [00:34:00] towards the field and there's like a truck driving way out in the field.

I'm like, okay, this is my shot. Pull back in my lap, pull up, take aim. Let the arrow fly. I'm at he bucks. I'm like, like all the adrenaline in the world. But he turns and runs back into this planted tree line that the fish and game had planted. It's like you stick your hand in there and you, and it disappears along with the 45 dough.

So there's I'm not gonna. Try to find a broken branch or, and I go over my arrows covered in blood and I'm like, perfect. So I call my dad, call my other hunting buddy. I'm like, Hey, I'm gonna give this about a half an hour. And then by this time it's pitch black mosquitoes are out. And I'm like, all right, we're gonna, we're gonna go find this buck.

So we follow the blood right to the tree line. We get in this tree line and we can't, it's, we're breaking branches. I go, let's, it's 39 degrees, let's back out. We'll come in first thing in the morning and we'll find this deer. Good man. I call my buddy who's a fish and wildlife officer out in that area.

He's dude, I'm not working tomorrow. I'll grab a couple guys. We'll all come out, we'll all come do like a grid pattern search. We'll find this buck. [00:35:00] Because he was stoked. 'cause he's seen this deer on trail cameras and everyone else's pictures could not find that deer could iit. We searched all day IIT with eight, nine guys grid patterned from where I shot him to the river.

So we're like, okay. He jumped in the river, tried to swim away, drowned, floated down river. That's the first animal I've ever lost. And I, 'cause I shoot rifle primarily, so usually when a 30 out six sits 'em on the side, they don't run off very far. And it just was killing me. And then I went from there to go teach one of my deer classes and the whole deer class, man, I'm just like, gosh, aside myself just this is, and so there was like two weeks left in season and I was like, I'm gonna try to go back out.

And, but I was like, I'm signing my tag. 'cause for me, if I find blood, it's a dead animal like that's my tag. And so I signed my tag, let fish and game sign it. And he's trying to convince me not to. He's no, we didn't find it. And I'm like, I know where I shot him and I know it well, he sends me a video of a [00:36:00] bow hunter on the very last day of season and that butt comes walking out.

And right where I'd shot him is a, the mark. And I'm like, you've got to be kidding me. There's no way with the amount of blood it, right behind the shoulder. This bow hunter puts it in. He's videoing it, puts it in the same exact hole I put it, right? You watch his luminox go right through it, and I'm like, whatever.

He's got my buck. Then the next text the next day was like, we can't find him. We had blood trail going to the trees. We can't find this buck. Oh my gosh, the ghost lives. And I was like, you gotta be kidding me. He's taken two arrows, like money shots. Any bow hunter would be like, that's a dead deer, right?

Yeah. And so they don't find him. A month ago, a buddy of mine who lives in that area sent me a picture of that buck in velvet with a scar on his side, the size of, the size of my pinky. And he is got on the opposite side. It's got some funky growth because he got shot twice, [00:37:00] right?

Oh yeah. And I'm like, you all right? So I put in for a tag for that area and my dad. And me are like, okay, for the month before we're gonna go take weekends, we're gonna go scout. We're gonna I wanna know at, opening day October 1st, or actually, I think it's whatever that first Saturday in October is.

I wanna know where he's walking out. I wanna be sitting there and I want to, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get like the biggest rage I can find. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna go for a small bro. I'm gonna, oh, is that a 17 inch rage Broadhead?

Nick Otto: Yeah. I'm gonna take that one. That's a Turkey guillotine on this thing.

Jeremiah Doughty: Dude I'm telling you, I'm gonna get a 400 grain arrow. I'm gonna dial up to 70 pounds. It's like this sucker's gonna, I've talked to Newcomb Blinds. I'm gonna put a newcomb blind out like this. Sucker's gonna get freaking, and it's one of those deals where my buddy was laughing. He goes, dude, you are.

I go, 'cause here's the deal. At this point it's become like you in that dough, right? This is personal. This is, we know each other. I have tried hunting him many times. He finally made a mistake. He made a mistake twice. But he made a mistake for me and my shot hit. I [00:38:00] Amit, like I said, it was. By far.

It was one of those shots that you're like, and even the guy that shot it goes, how'd that deer not die? So I don't know, just nick, the bottom of it, that one long or whatever. But yeah, he's coming that first Saturday in October, that is where I'm gonna be, is sitting, sweating my butt off with a bow in my hand waiting for him to make a mistake.

And I'm gonna, and I told my dad, I said, I'm hunting him until I come home. So my trailer is at the river. If it takes me two weeks, it takes me two weeks. But I'm not coming home till I'm guaranteed that he's not there. Or until I have his backstrap French out on my Traeger at my barbecue, with my feet up with all my buddies who helped me look for 'em eating dinner.

That's, those are the two options. It's so

Nick Otto: funny how I was never a big, I'm not a big reader. Especially after taking my, getting my master's degree. I never wanted to touch a book again. Never wanted to read. Amen. I think I'm finally kinda warming up to the idea of getting back [00:39:00] into either stories or, fiction but I do resonate a little bit with the story of Moby Dick and I forget the name of the captain. Ahab. Ahab. But like you between Ahab and Moby Dick and the drama and how that man pushed the boat and pushed the crew to the point of where they're like, listen, captain, you are crazy. And he didn't care.

It was all sites on finding that whale, how easily you can interchange these characters where it was me and that Nanny Dough, or it's you and the ghost. It, it's just, it's the same story, but man, we're switching in different characters at this point. It's an absolute novel that you're writing at

Jeremiah Doughty: this point.

Oh, and I can't, like for me it isn't about the head on the wall. I know I have a ton of skulls on the wall, but for me it's all the stories around the meal. And at this point it's, it goes back to that old adage of Hey, it's the story surrounding that meal is gonna be one of the most epic [00:40:00] stories, and I'm gonna create one of the most epic meals I can to honor that story.

And if it's to the point where I never shoot that buck, that's even gonna be a better story. And it's gonna be a greater story and it's gonna, but I don't wanna go out there and be lazy and then have someone else take that pursuit. Does that make sense? And I think that's where a lot of people get so caught up in today's society.

It's oh for me it's, I'm working on two cookbooks right now and I'm exhausted 'cause I'm trying to do it all myself. And everyone's oh, just take a break. I'm like, yeah, but if I take a break, someone else is gonna come in behind me. And they're going to, they're gonna take what I wanna do and they're gonna do, it's especially with like my from field to play classes and everything else, there's so many companies and groups that are coming out doing the same thing that I started seven, eight years ago.

And I can either, I had a talk with an Outdoor Life magazine article lady the other day and I told her flat out, 'cause she was like, oh, do you feel jealous or anything when you see all these other wild game type chefs come out? These, and I'm like, no. [00:41:00] For me it's not a competition in the outdoor industry.

It is a huge competition with everybody in the cooking world. It's even a bigger competition. You look at some of these chefs and every TV show out there right now is a competition. It is a cooking competition. It is. I am better than you. I cook better than you. I make better plates than you.

And my biggest thing in this whole industry was to not be that person. Is and there's a lot of people that you've had on your podcast that I'm really good friends with, and we all have that same thing. Hey, we're here to scratch each other's back and we're here to encourage each other.

We're here to help. And in my mind, the more people that are doing it and creating food that people can get out there, the more excited people are to go out and hunt. The more passion driven we're gonna be out to get out there and do stuff. And so when I look at the pursuit of an animal, I look at the food at, I look at it from a food perspective.

I look at it from how can I take this animal and glorify it so much so that people are like, I wanna go shoot a deer now that burger looked so good that I want to go shoot a deer to eat a burger [00:42:00] and taking away this whole head on a wall thing. And so for me, shooting that buck his head is just part of the story, right?

Part of the, Hey, this is what happened. And to be able to tell that story as people are sitting around a campfire eating jerky sticks. And lemme tell you the story about this jerky stick. Because this od dad behind me. I can tell you the story about that odd dad, how we were in Texas for my 30th birthday.

And a bunch of Texans told me that AAD was the worst meat they've ever eaten. And no one eats od dad. We shoot 'em, we skin them, we take the head and hide, and we leave the body for the coyotes. And so we shot a big old OD dad, I took the meat and they're like you're nuts. We came home, I cooked dinner for all these Texans and there was not a clean plate left.

They're like what kinda meat was that? And I go, Aw, dad. They're like, no, it wasn't. But for me, I said, okay what regions of the world are eating dirty, nasty, stinky goats and sheep. The Middle East. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm not saying that in negative way to anyone that's Middle Eastern, but you're gonna raise that goat, and then when it's done serving its purpose, it's gonna become dinner.

I've been to India, I've been to [00:43:00] Pakistan, I've been to, Iraq, I've been to all these other places. And the older nastier sheep and goats are the ones that are getting eaten. They're not eating the young one that's still producing milk. They're not using eating the young one that's still, giving birth to two or three kids.

They're eating the old nasty, the ones that are past at point. Yeah. And so looking at their flavors and their cultures, understanding the dynamics of their plate is how I prepare this. So doing a red wine and red curry on one of 'em, making homemade non breaded. So we're sitting there just eating it out of the cast iron, then taking the other one and grinding it up and making, like different Greek and Middle Eastern style foods.

And they're all excited. But I think where a lot of people get mistaken is they're like, oh, I gotta cook this like a cow or I gotta cook it like a white tail. Yeah. That does not. That odd dad is not gonna taste like a white tail and some white tails suck depending on what they're eating.

Like I can't, elk, elk is [00:44:00] phenomenal, but if you get a low valley elk that's eaten nothing but sagebrush, it's gonna suck. Unless you understand how to compliment those flavors versus hinder those flavors, the milder that we shoot, they're eating nothing but cactus and sagebrush.

They're very strong in flavor. But once you understand how to compliment that flavor, instead of trying to mask it, the problem is a lot of people try to mask it, right? It's like I always give, 'cause someone told me it's like I, what can I do to hide that flavor? I said, have you ever taken a dump in a bathroom and sprayed Rose potpourri spray?

Yeah, I said, it still smells like flowery shit. Pardon my French. But you still know someone went in there and took a dump right now. How can you then take that meat and compliment the smell? The taste versus trying to hide the, because once you try to hide it, someone's ah, there's something, there's trying hide something about it.

Yep. Like when your mom used to hide lima beans and stuff, you're like, mom, I know there's lima beans in here now. I love lima beans. But back then it was one of those deals. So [00:45:00] I think once you understand that, then once game really takes on a whole new level of fun.

Nick Otto: Yes. I had just had a conversation with Jesse Griffith's author of the hog book, and he explained it very well to me.

In that when he does get a batch of hogs either for his restaurant or just a group of hunters that he's at helping helping out. There's a bit of uniqueness to every single animal that comes in, just as you described, that elk that's eating sage in the bottom lands or just like that aud dad that you know what it's gonna have.

A funky flavor that's not gonna taste like corn, not gonna taste like soybean. That if someone is new to wild game, they are going to notice every aspect of that. And the challenge, the fun in that point, the excitement, the reason why we get up in the morning and we want to chase Moby Dick is because we're going for that uniqueness.

We're going for the not [00:46:00] easy part of, I want to make this animal the one that I got, whatever its uniqueness. I want to compliment that because we're trying to elevate this animal, not whitetail as general, not wild hogs, as general, not this aud dad as general, that everybody's cast off. But look what I did with this particular animal and I think right there is you hit the nail on the head that it's a challenge.

It's the full circle, I think, of being an outdoorsman. As we chase these animals, as we pursue them, we then want to carry that same level of thought, that same level of care, that same level of motivation and drive into presenting it to our family and to our friends. If it is just for a whitetail burger, let's make that the best Day Gone Burger that we can.

If it's gonna be UD dad, let's blow the socks off a bunch of Texans because they've never truly had what UD dad is supposed to be like. So yeah, I love how [00:47:00] you put that all together.

Jeremiah Doughty: Yeah, and it's, and it goes too, like being, going back to Antelope, everyone gives Antelope such a bad rap. I think it's one of the top wild game meats that there is.

It is beautiful. The texture, the flavor, the aroma. And the difference is that it's, you can't treat it like a white tail. You can't sit there and throw it in the back of your truck and drive it to a processor. Without getting it cool. The moment an antelope dies, it starts to decay. I know that everyone says that, but you gotta, you got a while with a white tail, like before they start to, before they start to get funky.

As soon as you shoot an antelope and you go to drag it, you'll be pulling clumps of hair out of its hide. You can pretty much skin or pluck like you do a duck or a Turkey, an antelope with that much hair that you can go all the way down to the hide just by grabbing hair like this, really gentle, not even pulling a lot.

And so we, we drive into town and you'll see a [00:48:00] dude with a buck in the back of the truck, ungutted, 75 degree weather, who's taking it to a processor, but decided to stop at McDonald's first and get a Big Mac on his way into the processor. And you're like, dude, your antelope. He's ah, antelope meat sucks.

Anyway. It sucks because of the way that you're treating it. It sucks because of the way that you are allowing the meat to spoil, and try to, instead of being a dick about it, trying to educate and really elevate this idea that by taking the time you can make that meat so much better.

Like understanding how to process a hog is going to flavor the hog completely different. You cannot get pea anywhere. So for me, I go from the back to the front versus the front to the back. Because that way I can pull that hide down, I can get through those plates and same thing with doing like halina hale's phenomenal meat, but you've got this stink sack on the back if you puncture that or get that anywhere.

So again, coming and pulling that away and getting, there's so many ways that you can treat an animal to make it taste [00:49:00] beautiful and to make it taste elegant and to make it taste spaghetti and meatballs for your family. Like one of the things I'm putting in my book is treat meat as meat, right? And don't treat it as something that is less of.

'cause I think a lot of times as hunters we're like, oh it's just deer meat. Or it's the opposite. We're like, we can't eat that. We gotta have a big party and invite people over 'cause I gotta make a spread. Treat it as your everyday, like for me, I can't eat domestic meats. And so for me, wild game is an everyday, I've got three freezers full of wild game.

That's an everyday, breakfast sausage to hot links to all the stuff that I'm processing myself because I have to know what goes in it. 'cause my allergies aren't just beef, it goes into a lot of oils and processed stuff, so seasonings and oils and fats that come derivative of other things I can't have.

And so really taking this time to understand the animal has, I think made me a better hunter, made me a better father, made me a better 'cause now I don't wanna waste meat, right? I don't just wanna [00:50:00] sling a, a bullet through both shoulders. It's okay, where is the precise spot that I'm gonna get the least amount of damage on that meat?

Even for an arrow, you're still cutting away damage from an arrow going in. It's not gonna have the ballistic explosion that goes on, but you're still gonna have, you're still gonna have die off from, you're gonna have blood meat. Yes. Yeah. From sticking an animal. So it's where can we do to minimize the loss of meat, and how much, and how well can we get all that meat off the bone?

People call me crazy to sit there and scrape the ribs and the joints until there's no meat left and there are white bones. I just made 17 more meatballs from my spaghetti. Yep. That's how I look at it. They mock you for the

Nick Otto: time that you spend on taking the most out of the hunt that you've already had.

But at the same time I feel it's almost in reverse. Like how quickly are you to give up on the carcass you have hanging where. If I've gotten pretty good at cleaning a bone, but there's [00:51:00] sometimes where I do let myself go on a knuckle. I'll cut a wide around the knuckle, but that's not because I'm trying to be lazy at this point.

It's, that's gonna go right into the stock pot. Any long bone that I can go to get to the stock pot, it's gonna go to work, it's gonna go into that flavor enhancing. I'm gonna get the gelatin, I'm gonna get the fat that's in there. We're gonna get all those flavors to work in there, but it's extra steps that I'm having to take.

That yes, does take time. Yes, does take effort, but I feel like I shouldn't be, I feel like it shouldn't be a mocking point because you want to go to bed early, because you're not gonna sit here and scrape the rest of your deer. You'd rather pitch it off to the side. My, I guess my grandparents were always on the waste, not want not train.

They grew up through the depression. And so I, not to say that it's genetics, but at the same time when I have an animal hanging there, I want to glean every little bit of it because I don't want to waste any of it.

Jeremiah Doughty: Yeah. I meant we have that saying in my classes, it's [00:52:00] just another meatball. And I'll tell people all that, like, why are we doing this?

'cause it's just another meatball. And I tell people like, if you don't wanna take the time to, to get an extra two pounds, don't take the time. It's your animal. You do it. This is why I do it. And in my classes I say, there's no right or wrong way to do anything. There are better ways and more effective ways to do things, but there's no right or wrong way.

There's no right or wrong way how to skin a deer. There are better ways to skin a deer. My way is probably completely different than the way you do it, which is completely fine. I have found that this is what works best for me. And so for me to fill my freezer, this. Is the steps that I've found that work best for me.

And there's, people are like I just don't, I don't want to. I'm like, but that again, that's you. Just another meatball.

Nick Otto: It's another meatball you're gonna get from it.

Jeremiah Doughty: We had, I had one guy one time and he's I just don't, I don't think there's enough in it. I don't think there's enough for the extra 45 minutes.

It's gonna take me to really get through [00:53:00] all this sin you and to get through. I don't think the effort's there. I said, that's fine. Leave your whole pile of scraps. And he's okay. So he had a five gallon bucket full of scraps, right? That he was like, ah, it's too much work, too much. Just throwing it in the bucket.

That dude goes in, grabs a whiskey sitting there watching a football game. And I sat there and I turned on music and I sat there and I scraped and I got through sinu and I got through this and took me about a half an hour. I took that five gallon bucket, which when I weighed it, 'cause I decided, I'm just gonna weigh this.

It weighed 14 pounds of just junk that he had thrown in this five gallon bucket. When I was done, it weighed a pound and a half. So I got 12 and a half, 13 pounds of usable, delicious meat from what he said was scrap. So then I had the whole class come back in. I said, okay, here's what, let's just call him Bill, just in case he's listening on and be like, that's me.

Here's Bill. Here's, you know what Bill's, who is you? Yeah, it is you Bill, you know exactly who you is. And I said, this is [00:54:00] the five gallon bucket Bill gave me. We all weighed, we all know that it weighed about 14.2 pounds. Here's the meat I got out of his bucket and here is the little handful.

And they're like, you really? You've only been in here half an hour. I said, this is what I'm trying to teach you. I'm trying to teach you that if you have the extra time, do it. You can take this into your kitchen, throw on your tv, talk to your wife, hang out with your kids. As you're sitting there scraping this, it isn't sitting in your garage by yourself.

Lonely. Like you can also take all of that scrap that you had, vacuum seal it, and then guess what? You can take all that scrap and throw it into a crockpot or a pressure cooker and all that meat is now gonna fall apart and shred and all that send you is gonna turn hard. Rock is, rock hard.

It's gonna float to the top. You can scoop it all and now you've got meat. But instead, we're so easy to just chuck it, right? Ah, this this is too much work. It's too much work. And if we actually look at hunting in a general, let's look at TV shows. Let's look at [00:55:00] articles in magazines. Let's look at whatever, right?

The top toss or whatever. It's all about the instant gratification. It's all about fast food. It's all about what's popular now. It's all about the success of a grip and grin. It's all about the pursuit, right? Which is great. But people will take six weeks to prepare to go shoot one white tail.

By patterning the deer sitting in tree stands cutting limbs away from their shooting zones, planting crops, watering those crops, tending those crops, checking trail cameras, doing all the things they need to do, tuning their bow, siding their rifle, tuning their shotgun, patterning their shotgun, and then they pull the trigger and they have no more time in the world to do anything else.

I don't have the time for that. Are you kidding me? You just gave up six weeks of your life to pattern that deer and you can't spend an extra half an hour to treat it the way it's supposed to be treated. That thing that, that's the only [00:56:00] time that it really upsets me is the excuse of, I don't have time when truly you know that, but then they're sitting there drinking a whiskey.

BSing watching football

Nick Otto: absolutely. I was just quick looking up. I've been on this kick. I read an article and I know my listeners are all gonna be, they're like, oh, here we go again. Nick and his his proverb. But I got hit hard with Proverbs 1227, the lazy do not roast any game, but the diligent feed on the riches of the hunt.

That's coming right from right from Proverbs, right from the good word.

Jeremiah Doughty: And yeah, that's a sticker on my gun case and on the side of the Wicked Witch of the West. Yes. When I get lazy, I look at that on the side of my gun and I go, don't be lazy. One more, one more step. Like that deer might be over that rise.

One more step.

Nick Otto: But even how like the sluggard, the lazy is gonna get up and do all the stuff because there's gonna be some sort of recognition for it. The [00:57:00] recognition for that person then stops. Once they've put the deer in the back of the truck, that's when they hunt is over for individuals like you and I.

The hunt isn't over until it is. Packaged until it is put into the freezer, until the dish has then been manifested and put before us. When I present the flesh of that animal to be consumed by people, that's when the hunt is over for me, these hunts are sometimes half a year because the, I haven't made the sausage yet, or I haven't made the grind yet, but at the same time, when my kids enjoy the burger or I bring the sausage to camp and then share that with a bunch of people, it's that is the culmination.

That's the end of the hunt. That is when we can give praise to the hunt. But to come in and just be like, yeah, I want these antlers on the wall. It is one of those dead ends that I feel like, if that's where the movie ends, you know what? I don't know if [00:58:00] I'm gonna give it a two thumbs up.

I don't know if I'm gonna get there because it's not fully manifested at that point.

Jeremiah Doughty: No, I, and that's, it's funny too 'cause I think we're at that, that turning point. You see a lot of people when I first started this 10, 15 years ago, who were making fun of me, mocking me, whatever, for saving certain parts of the animal or for eating this or for doing this or for, oh, why are you frenching out?

I remember when I first started frenching out the back loins, you can trace it back. I was one of the first people to start frenching out those back loins, to do the king's crown, to do the rack roast to do this of, and it was an idea I had. We, and I remember I posted it and a lot of big name people like, called me like, dude, you're such an idiot.

You're wasting so much time. Just cut the backstrap out. Why are you leaving the rib bones on like you get, that's such a waste of time. Now you cannot turn on social media without seeing somebody eating a French out or a lollipop, or [00:59:00] you just can't, or pictures of me holding a heart and cooking heart and they're like, dude, you're eating heart.

That's disgusting. And now these same people are like, oh, we made heart tacos tonight and we made, and for me, that's where I get excited. I'm like, okay, so I may not be the best, I may not be the coolest. I know I'm not the most attractive or the most fit, but if I can encourage one person to try something different and to give it a go, like plucking doves, how many people make fun of me for plucking dove?

And now how many people are out there plucking their dove and their quail just to, for that so much more meat that you're missing out on. Or turkeys that whole save the legs. I've been an advocate of that my entire life. Absolutely. And got made fun of. And now you can't go anywhere without people and it's all over all these top out, influencers who are like, oh look, I made, I.

All right. And it's like they're sharing my recipes like crazy. 'cause it's oh, this is the guy I got it from Turkey leg barbacoa. Been doing it for year. Look, now you can make pizzas out of it. You can make tamales, you can make, and all of a sudden they're like, oh, I've been throwing away how much meat.

Yeah. And I think that's [01:00:00] the best part about what we do is we show people that there is, again, there's no right or wrong way, but there is a better way. There's more an effective way. There's a tastier way to do things. And once people get away from that fact, another thing you probably hear all the time too is my, my granddad did it this way.

My dad did it this way. We evolve in all of our hunting gear, from our optics to our weapons, to our clothing that our grandpas and dads wouldn't even have imagined that they could have. Why are we so stuck on the way that they cooked and the way that they clean their game when we evolve in every other aspect of hunting and fishing.

Until it comes to the knife we use to skin. This is the knife my grandpa used. Yeah. Guess what? There's really cool knives that are way better and way sharper, and it's gonna give a way better cut for not that expensive. Oh, my grandpa didn't eat organs because organs are, yeah, they're full of iron.

Vitamin E, vitamin Z vi. Oh, my, my grandpa [01:01:00] said use Montreal steak seasoning. Your grandpa should have tried these three other ingredients to elevate and I think that's once we get past that fact that we can evolve with food that hunting isn't just wrapped in bacon with jalapeno and cream cheese or thrown into a chili then we can really start to look at that deer as a protein source rather than just a once in a lifetime shot.

It, let's eat it. Throw the head on the wall. Like my girls the other day, forgot what I made my daughter's was that elk? I go, I don't know what it was. I just grabbed a packet out of the freezer. Yeah, she goes, I think it was elk. My and my other one's no, I think it was Antelope. I was like, girls, I don't know.

Go read the bag. It's written on there. I just literally was like, oh, roast, I've got a whole shelf of roasts. And they go, then they and my young, my old son's oh, I told you it was antelope. And it was like, my daughters are tasting the differences between these meat and they're not even blinking an eye.

When I make sausage or I make jerky, or I make, snack sticks. I live in Orange County,[01:02:00] 10 minutes from Disneyland, they say, I'm not living in the sticks. And my daughter takes it to her school full of rich blonde kids and starts passing out venison jerky. And all of them are now like, dad, I wanna go shoot a deer 'cause it tastes this to me.

That's encouragement. And that's the next step of evolution in getting our kids excited to go out and out of those kids. I've taken out a bunch of their parents like this dove season. Three or four of their, my daughter's friends have gotten their hunting license with their dads to come out and dove hunt.

Now, these are families that, during the pandemic, were anti-guns, anti what I was doing. Who are now saying, Hey, I don't know any, I said, don't worry about shotguns. I got 33 of them. You get your license, you get a box of ammo. I got a field, I got a gun. Let's go have some fun. And it's really cool to see my daughters evolve in that area and get excited about it and want to take their friends out to do this in a society that I live in, which is very anti, like where I live, is very anti what we do as a culture, absolutely.

Nick Otto: And that's one thing that, yeah. [01:03:00] Shoot, I just keep coming back to talk to you on, and I just follow your social media and the things that you put out. I'm really excited about these cookbooks that you've alluded that you're putting together. And it's because of that idea that.

You're facing truth head on to where a lot of people are saying like, this is not the way when, I'm living in a society. I'm living in a community that embraces it and loves that aspect of it. But at the same time, even in my aspect where I'm saying we need to step up our game in how we're treating this animal, we need to step up our game.

Just like you said, from Backstraps with jalapeno and cream cheese. We need to make this an everyday thing that's a battle that, that we're having to do. But at the same time, your battle's completely different over there where people are opposed to even the idea of shooting a critter. You're hurting this critter.

But at the same time, once, once they realize the critters that we're eating [01:04:00] from a farm the style of life that they are getting versus the style of life that they're getting in the wild. You're getting the best of what creation can even offer out in those fields. And so to be even have an impact on that, I feel is just a testament to your passion and your drive in that.

I can't imagine living in Southern California where both sides of my neighbors on every corner are already upset the fact that I have a firearm. But the fact that you've been able to use that as a tool to say no, I'm not a gun nut. This is the avenue that I've chosen to take in order to get to the amazing food.

I'm a food nut and this is what I'm able to glean by using these tools. I feel like that's a true testament to your testimony as you've been able to go through what

Jeremiah Doughty: field plate is all about. No, a hundred percent. And I think that's the whole goal from the very beginning was. To take the food from the field to the plate in a respectful way in a way that I was grew up and taught.[01:05:00]

And, even so much like we had some deck work done on our back deck, and the termite guy comes and he opens up the garage to look to where you can get over to the deck and he sees, the whole wall of Euro mounts by my gun bench and my bow set up and my podcast area. And he goes, do you shoot all those animals?

I go, yeah, I shot 'em all. He's oh, okay. His eyes oh this guy's weird. I go, Hey, but try this. And I pull out from the refrigerator in the garage. I go try this real quick. He's what is this? I said, just try it. He takes a big bite and he's oh, this is phenomenal.

What is this? I go, oh, it's a, I go, I call it my my, my antelope cigars, but I make it with a honey barbecue snack stick with the size of a cigar. I put it in actual, hog casings. And he's I said, oh yeah, it's this animal right here. This is the one we ate. This is, and I start, Next thing you know, his workers' comp, it was four Mexican dudes.

And they come in, the guy's Hey ez. Yeah. You hunt the deer? Yeah, I hunt the deer. Why? What's up? We tried some of those sticks. His boss went to work and [01:06:00] told him, Hey, you're gonna go do this. You gotta ask this dude to try these sticks. I said I'll do one better when you guys are doing that.

I'm gonna I'll make tacos. They're like, you make those tacos? I was like, yeah, I'll make some tacos. So I pull out, a couple pounds of whitetail and get out my tortilla press, I'm make, they're like, you're making tortillas. And I go, let's freaking do this. And we have dinner.

This is last week and we're having lunch out on this new deck that they're building for us. And these guys are just laughing. They're asking stories. Okay, how did you, what kind of guy? And I think food is the great equalizer, w if we don't eat, we die. That's a proven fact. If you're a vegan, a vegetarian, a carnivore, whatever, you don't eat, you die.

That goes down to the smallest organism that's living on your skin that you can't see without a microscope to the biggest of the blue whales in, in the ocean. In, we do not eat. We die. Everything needs to eat to survive, right? We choose to eat what we choose to eat and for me, I can sit there and say, okay, let me introduce you to my story [01:07:00] through a plate of food, through a fork and a knife.

I'm not gonna bring on a gun. I'm not gonna tell you about this deer. I'm gonna, I'm gonna present it to a way that is comfortable, which is flavorful, which is gonna have you then ask questions about the meat that you're eating, which is gonna allow me to respectfully tell you about what I do. I have taken out ex vegans on their first hunts who used to give me death threats.

Proven fact. I will introduce you to seven of them. I came at their death threats with respect and honor and food, right? I had the, I was talking to the gun owners of America, guys on a Turkey hunt, and they were arguing back and forth about the politics, about right, left up, down, blue, green, red, you name it, right?

And we were sitting there middle of the night and I go, you know what you guys need to do? You guys need to have a meal with those that you guys hate. You and I, Nick are spiritual men. We're Christians. We have our bibles, we read we understand the word of God. Amen.

Everything [01:08:00] Jesus did was around food. He brought people together. You talk about banqueting tables, right? That's the greatest thing. The least of you will be the greatest. And you look at all these different parables that are resolved around food. You read Proverbs, it's food. You read Song of Psalms, it's food.

Even the love making that he's doing is surrounded around food, right? Then you get to Jesus and he's doing the. He's doing all of his feeding, the 5,000, he's doing parables about wine, he's doing parables about food, he's doing parables about money to buy food. Food is that, and so I said, if you guys can sit down with people that you disagree with and have a meal with it, I have never heard anybody upset while they're eating before the meal and after the meal.

Tempers are flaring. But if you have a really good meal, you talk to a lot of us who are chefs, and we tell you the greatest moment in a chef's life is silence. Because if they're, if the room is quiet, that means mouths are full. If mouths are [01:09:00] full, it means people are enjoying their food. If people are enjoying their food, then it's gonna have amazing conversation afterward about the food that they're eating.

I can ask you what your favorite bite of food is and you'll probably, oh, automatically know what this is. Or a smell comes over, you're like, oh, that smells like grandma's biscuits. And then this whole euphoria of that single bite of food floods your whole entire body. And so if we as wild game chefs, all of us that are out there, if we can tell our hunting story through a picture, through a story, through a video, through a fork and a knife, I think we're gonna expand.

We're gonna grow. We're gonna explode this industry beyond, Cameron Haynes love the guy to death, but I guarantee you I'm gonna win over a lot more people to hunting than he is by preparing them be a beautiful meal than having them run up a mountain with a bow in their hands, gasping for air, and it's just the way it is.

Food is beautiful. I've gone to 27 different countries and everywhere I [01:10:00] go, the first thing they do is bring out food everywhere. Oh, try this. Oh. And as hunters, we should be doing the same thing. The first thing we do with meet people. Oh my gosh. Try this. Oh, I don't want to, oh, just try it. I have a saying.

You've probably heard me say it before. If you don't like it, spit it out in my hand. Take a bite. I have said that to the biggest people in our industry. I remember I brought Bobcat Jerky to Shot Show and was sitting there with a bunch of, with a bunch of the big name people and Will Primos comes over and talks Haze is like, dude, you gotta try this beef, this jerky Jeremiah made.

He's oh, what is it? And I said, it's Bobcat. He's I don't eat Bobcat. I don't eat Bobcat. And I'm like just eat it. If you don't like it, you can spit it in my hand. So he takes a big old bite and I put my hand up to his mouth and he's chewing it and he goes, gimme another stick. And I go, you got it.

And we started talking, right? Food is beautiful and I'll say it till the day I die is, I think food is what's gonna, is gonna change this world. It's gonna make people wanna sit down and talk. It's gonna make people wanna open their eyes to realize that fast food is killing us.[01:11:00] That what we're putting into our body and our kids' body is ultimately affecting who we are as a human society and a race and getting back to the pureness.

That is wild. The pureness that is not McDonald's in Taco Bell. And having our kids grow up with real flavors versus artificial flavors, I think is the key to where we're gonna go next. And it's the key to who you and I want to be. I know it was a long rant, but food is just my passion. Telling stories about hunting is great, but I can, I'd rather tell you about the meals, and how they've changed people's perspectives over those, that bite of food.

Nick Otto: Absolutely. I have, I'm literally sitting here tingling. I'm speechless. Just the way that you presented that this is what it's all about as we come forward I just, I agree with every word that you presented there at that point, and I'm pretty sure that. Listeners right now, you have pulled over your vehicles.[01:12:00]

You're literally sitting in your driveway finishing out on that rant, because that shouldn't be, that shouldn't be a soapbox that you just stood on, Jeremiah. That should be a base marble that we look upon to say, Hey, this is one of the giants that is coming up in the industry. That as we hear voices, as we hear messages, we're hearing people talk about food, we're hearing people talk about how we need to be more in tune with what we're putting into our bodies and what we're putting into our minds.

And that's exactly what you are pointing to. That's a home run right there. That is truth boiling over. Thank you.

Jeremiah Doughty: Thank you for, yeah. No, it's just, I don't know. I get passionate about food. I don't know if it shows, but it's just it's one of those deals, man. I'll it's food is so just part of who we are.

And I think we forget about that. When you ask somebody where I was doing a, an article with, I know we're past our time, but I was doing an article [01:13:00] with with Time Magazine, and we were talking about food. And one of the things I told 'em, I said, I don't think people actually understand where food comes from.

Because they were talking about as hunters, you guys kill so many animals to eat. I was like, not really. I shot 11 deer last year, probably about a hundred dove, a handful of ducks and geese co a handful of hogs, a couple antelope. That's really not that in the grand scheme of it, maybe, 150 animals total have died to feed my family for the entire year.

And so I started getting thinking. So what I did is I went to my church for 30 days. I had three hunting families, three non-hunting families, all families of four to five. And I said, what I want you guys to do for 30 days, I want you guys to keep track of every piece of meat you guys consume. You order a pizza, tell me we ordered a pepperoni pizza count.

How many pepperonis are on it? They're like, really? I said, just for 30 days, I everything from your bologna and your lunch meat to whatever. [01:14:00] And they're like, okay, great. I said, and if you are the hunting family, say if you use wild game, I used wild game, this deer, blah, blah, blah. Blew people's minds.

When I came out with the results, think about this, a family of four, they decide to have chicken breasts one night, right? Mom buys six chicken breasts 'cause dad's gonna eat two and she wants to have one for, I go, okay, how many chicken breasts do, does a chicken have? Two. You just killed three chickens for one dinner.

Okay, you've done that three nights in a row, so 3, 6, 9, you've now killed nine chickens. That month or just in this week. Yep. Okay. You guys also then ordered out and you guys had hamburgers. We can't really say ham. One cow at least had to die for those hamburgers. Let's just say one cow. We don't know how many cows went into it.

One cow had to die for you to get hamburgers at McDonald's. One cow. You go home, you then go get five ribeye steaks at the grocery [01:15:00] store. How many ribeyes does a cow have? Okay, so let's start breaking this down. Per cut, per animal, per in one month, a hunting family who eats primarily wild game ate about 10 to 15 animals total.

You're thinking about all the, okay yeah. My deer's gonna get me. Okay. I think about okay. We subsidized, maybe we had some chickens come in, or maybe we had this or that. Non-hunting family was killing like 300 animals a month based on the amount of meat that they're coming in. And just so a non-hunting family is killing 300 animals.

'cause, they had a, a pork loin. They had three racks of ribs, three racks of ribs, as two whole pigs have to die. Yeah, but I need the other meat. It doesn't matter what you ate off that animal. For you to get three baby back racks of rib. I know for a fact that there's only one side of a rib.

There's another side of a rib. They don't have four sets of ribs on there. They have different sizes. You get your St. Louis, you have your, but, and these non-hunting families were like shock and odd [01:16:00] that they had no idea. I'm like, and also think about this. An average stake in a grocery store touches 50 to a hundred things before it gets to your family's plate.

That's factory trucks, that's farming trucks, that's feed gates, that's farmer's hands. That's factory workers' hands. That's machines to package cuts. The truck, when it goes from there to your local grocery store the pallet jack that it takes it into the freezer. The freezer that it sits on, the, think about all those things that meat went through.

You and I can tell you exactly what happened to our deer. We shot it. We gutted it, we skinned it, we cut it, we threw it in our vacuum sealer, we threw it in the freezer. Like our hands are it that it touched, if we include all of our things, maybe five or six things also touched it compared to a hundred things.

Touching it for your family to eat. Talk about real food. Real food is getting real dirty for your dinner. Not going to the grocery store and just picking up, 17 ribeyes for your party. You just killed what? Four? [01:17:00] There's two ribeyes on each cow on each side, so 4, 4, 8, 8 16, 4 cows died for that.

That party crazy to think about. It's just intense

Nick Otto: stuff. It's just reality that when you're put Yeah, put in front of it, we've got, not to say that we have the answer, but like you said, like it's not the way things have always been done, but we can find a way that's better. Jeremiah, where can my listeners, I.

Find more about you. Where can they join in the conversation with you?

Jeremiah Doughty: Not the foot finder one. 'cause that was weird. Not foot finder. That's, how do you think I gotta make money for this? This rose plastic make money board that I have all the way back to this. Look at that circle back. Let's circle back.

Let's really easy from field to plate on everything. So from field to plate.com, from field to plate on Instagram, Facebook. I've got two group. I've got a group and a page on Facebook. The group on Facebook, I think you're maybe a part of it. It's geared just to food and stories. If [01:18:00] it's not a food, it's not a story.

I delete it. I don't care. I don't want grip and grins. If it's a grip and grin that goes along with a story, that's a plate at the end, share it. But if it's just, look at this big deer shot I'll take it off because, and it's crazy. It's got in this, since February when we started, it's got 15,000 members of the group and it is very active.

There are food plates that go up there that I'm like, what? Where did you even think of that? It's encouraging to you

Nick Otto: love question too. I love the questions. Yeah. Then shoot, every time that I see a question pop up Hey I'm looking at Burger, like what should I mix in with Burger? Should I mix anything with Burger?

What do you guys do? And I go to put my 2 cents in, but I already see there's 50 comments, which is it Phenomenal.

Jeremiah Doughty: You know what, and it's all encouraging. Yeah. Yeah. And it's all encouraging, which I think is awesome. So you can go join that group if you want to. It's also a Facebook page from field to plate and yeah.

And then I'm on Twitter and stuff, but that's like an a, d like group text. I actually, I hate it. So go on there. I'm very active on all those platforms. [01:19:00] So question, comic concern, and then working on these cookbooks should be done beginning of the, or the end of this year when a hunting season starts.

September is the goal. One of it is geared towards, it's a multi-species cookbook. Interactive, tells you the basics of. All of that. And then I'm, I've got one that's in the works that's a, I can't really give too much 'cause I haven't seen one like that out there and I don't want someone stealing it yet.

Gotcha. Literally it'll gear the water. I'm on it. Blood in the water. I'm gonna try and steal it. Yeah. It'll be geared towards animal specifics and it's one that I've been working on for about two years and it pretty intensely. And it's to the point where it's, now that I have everything a piled, it's just laying it all out and typing it all out, which is, even when it's self writing a book, it is a pain in the butt.

But again, there's no, roasting game for the lazy, so then when that's up, I'm gonna do a whole kind of crowdsourcing type aspect to it so that way you can get in on the ground floor and help self-publish this thing and get it going. And through that there'll be different levels where [01:20:00] you can get some cool hunts and gear through sponsors and come out and hunt with me through that aspect of it.

So it'll be fun, it'll be exciting, but, I'm ready for a nap already. Just talking about it.

Nick Otto: Hey, don't take a break. You said the lazy needs to roast their game. You got, you can't fall in that category. Hey, Jeremiah, hold on for just a second. I'm gonna let listeners on out. Folks, we have been presented food for thought like you would n never imagined.

This is full on truth coming to us face value. If you're already listening to my podcast that you have a love and a passion for food. And so I have a feeling that you were already pumping your fist. You were already saying amen to the things that Jeremiah was saying. So folks, as we continue on from this point, when you get that animal, we want to give it the utmost respect.

A, because the animal deserves that. But then B, we want to be able to present the best to our families. We're gonna [01:21:00] clean those bones, we're gonna take those bones to the stock pot. We're not going to let anything go to waste just because we feel tired, just because we feel like our time is being taken from us at that point.

Each of these has value. Just another meatball. It comes with so much weight because it is another meatball. So it doesn't matter if you're scraping off a rib from a whitetailed deer or if you're going to a wild hog and making sure that you're going from the inside out and not the outside in. Make sure the knife that you're using is always sharp.

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