Raised in the Woods 2026 Recap!

She's raised in the woods.

My name's Joel Clayfish.

This is Allie Lawton, co-host of the show, and chef extraordinaire, we...

Get to bring you the best of the outdoors, help you figure out how to use it, how to bring forage and food to the table from the woods and the cornfields of the great states of the Midwest.

This shows on civic media in five states, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois, and Iowa every Saturday at 11 o'clock.

I cannot tell you how fun doing this show is.

Shelby Christiansen is here, and Ashlyn Whitting is here, and I want to talk to them.

We've got Sarah Marinas, our homesteader, and of course, Megan, the Somalia pirate, our Somalia.

One of our guests today.

I'm really excited about talking to you because Ashlyn Whitting is brand new to hunting.

Yes.

And how old are you?

I know I'm not supposed to ask that.

That's OK.

Whoa,

whoa,

whoa.

It's OK.

You want me to

punch him for you?

No, I'm good.

I would not be the first time.

I'm

super happy to talk about it.

I'm 31.

OK.

And you

got into hunting when you were?

29.

So that's not very long ago.

What was it that

flip that switch for you and you decided I am now going to learn and become a hunter.

Well, it all started when a girl met a boy.

Oh,

she is.

He is an avid outdoorsman, hunter, fisher, you name it.

And when we met, we're like, how are we going to make this work?

I am very, very strict vegan.

We have separate cooking pots and utensils.

And this man is like, I happened to walk in the room and witnessed a buffalo just drop in the middle of a field.

And did you just go up to him and slap him?

Oh, no, no, no.

No, I started sobbing and I was like, how can you do this?

And

he's like, but

you have to consider.

This animal has lived a perfectly full life.

Free, wild, wild,

eating the most organically sourced

food.

Okay, I think that vegans and hunters actually have parallel missions that at

some

point- Yes, absolutely.

Yes, I try to say that all the time.

Both are butting heads over it when they're missing the whole point that they're on the same mission and they want the same things.

Oh my God, I love that you said that.

This is so exciting.

We could talk.

I just want to talk about this for like an hour.

I love this

topic.

First, I guess you would call it a hunt.

I mean, I had Blaze Orange on and we were in the plains of Colorado and we were determined to get an elk.

Oh, first.

Wow,

that is crazy ambitious.

It was

so cute.

I had a little baby strapped to my back.

Oh my gosh.

We took the

baby.

I cried my way through it,

but

I fired a shot.

I

don't think some people realize just how, and I don't want to use the word violent.

Jarring.

It's a jarring.

So what

happened?

No, the only thing that we got to see were massive tumbleweeds.

OK.

And no elk.

Okay.

Well, now that could have gone along with your pre-vegan days, you could have gotten tumbleweed.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm not too

sure how great that

would have been.

I don't think she was gnawing on tumbleweeds.

I don't know.

This week, Chef Lawton

and I are extremely excited to welcome back to the show for the first time since she received a promotion at work and now basically runs the entire excavating world.

Oh, it's a pretty small world.

Former co-host Danielle Fairman

is here.

Yay!

When you were doing your intro for the show, Danielle laughed at something, and it was so nice to hear that laugh come through the mic.

It

was so lovely to have you back.

Because he said a whisko wrong.

We

used to be raised in whisko.

Now we're raised in the woods because we have expanded beyond the borders of Wisconsin, which is very exciting.

We have a woman's panel today.

So Dave and I are going to... Dave's not part of it.

Dave and I are not part of it, but we're...

going to contribute if asked, but we're going to talk about the fastest growing group of new hunters today, women in the outdoors and how they are flourishing in the outdoors and some of the issues that are encountered when any influx of new hunters gets into the sport.

And we also are honored to have Joe Person.

He's going to bring us the perspective of the youngsters because he's 18 years old.

He said he likes to hunt by himself or with his father.

And I think that is just the most beautiful thing ever.

My

dad's the one that got me into it.

Yeah.

I started out hunting with my dad when I was four shooting a Pops gun at leaving that flu.

I was 10 years old.

I got a 410.

I started with that.

Good for you.

And

I...

I'm envious of situations like that because I didn't have a dad who took me hunting.

I started hunting at 38 years old.

So now in most of the guys I waterfall hunt with who are younger, I've been hunting as many years as they have, but I haven't started as young as they have.

There's a lot of segregation out there, unfortunately, and I hate to say it, but it's

It's really how it goes, and you just kind of have to find your groove, find where your heart is meant to be, and go for it.

You have a choice, and the age that we live now is social media age, right?

Of

course.

And it is, you can find the good, the bad, the ugly, and everything in between.

Everything.

You're right, Danielle.

The thing that we all forget is that we are in control of all of it.

Absolutely.

So if you keep getting this negative fee, negative fee, do you see this person constantly and they just bring you down?

You have a choice to unfollow them.

You have a choice to block them.

I think everybody needs to go back and watch Bambi again.

No!

And the reason why I say that is because comfort and his mom are like, if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything

at

all.

What's up, everybody?

This is Raised in the Woods.

You guys, no joke.

I mean, we get one week, we got meat eater, we got Chad Belding, national host of The Foul Life on the show.

We have Brandi Rondo.

This week on Raised in the Woods, we're taking a look back at some of the year's best moments so far.

Starting off with a show starring Chad Belding, national host of The Foul Life, who visited the Midwest back in May.

I'm going to be honest with you folks, it had always been a dream of mine to be part of a national television show.

I started my career out in television and television news, had a local hunting and eating show called Kill It, Clean It, Cook It, which aired

13 years on several stations throughout Wisconsin and to be a part of a national television show that's got reach in the waterfall community in the greater hunting community is Extremely exciting that wouldn't have happened had it not been for what?

National host Chad Belding always says all because of a mallard duck.

Yeah, I

say it all the time just because 90% of my network is built because of a mallard duck and I say mallard because that's my number one

And that's what I would go to the end of the earth to chase or pursue.

And through the Mallard Duck and our excursions and our experiences, I've been able to meet what I, you know, just the coolest people.

Met a guy named Fred Zink from Portland, Ohio, who's one of the mentors of my career, my life, one of the best waterfowl all around hunters of all time.

I started filming with him.

And the way the fall I started was he invited the TV show called Ducks Unlimited Waterdog to Canada with us.

They said, where are you from?

I said, I'm from Nevada.

They said, we've never hunted out there.

I said, well, come out.

So they did.

And a month after we went to Idaho and Oregon and Nevada, their producer called me said, I want to start a show about you.

You're awesome on camera.

He said, are you interested?

I said, yeah.

And I was going to name the show Dr. Duck, and I was going to write a prescription for success.

Oh,

you were a

linguist back then as

well.

And I was like,

I'm an idiot.

I don't have the credibility.

If social media was around, I'd have done it.

Yeah.

Do you believe in manifesting things?

Do you believe in that?

Oh, yeah.

I think the most important thing in success, what I used in college baseball or high school baseball, then at D1 College, and I still use it hunting as the art of visualization.

Ted Williams talks about it in the science of hitting, and you can manifest, and you can paint the picture,

make your masterpiece.

You can do anything in life if you put your mind to it, right?

Yeah, it's true.

Brittany, do you believe in manifestation?

Yeah.

Yes.

She stalked me for six months.

Oh, he

was.

This

is so

great.

Oh

boy,

we're going to get

in.

I think

we should get into that.

She stalked you.

I'm going to guess it was the other way around.

No, it wasn't.

She

manifested the situation.

I think you manifested it since you're the big believer in

it.

I struggle with manifestation because I do believe, you know, you hear the easy saying, the cliche is you can do anything if you put your mind to it, right?

Which is basically manifestation.

My life, I believe very strongly in manifestation because my life has, up to this point, been a result of my manifestation.

Now, the other side of that is, manifestation is a combination of motivation, right?

Motivation, hard work, and believing in yourself because life, you can manifest

the same thing every single day.

I wanna, I will say, I wanna buy a Corvette, right?

That Corvette's not gonna fall out of the sky.

But me saying every day I wanna, I wanna Corvette, I'm gonna start doing the actions to get that Corvette.

I'm gonna work harder.

I'm gonna get maybe a better job.

But while those things are happening, life is still gonna throw things at you, right?

So life is naturally gonna knock us off the course.

But manifesting and keeping our eye on the prize, I guess, is the best way to say it.

I mean, it's...

Every single time you guys, Joel, I know in this hunt, this was really important to you guys.

You had a fantastic gentleman who came here and he wanted to check it off his basically bucket list to get this turkey.

And you, you guys had a rough start to your turkey hunt, but you continually said to yourself, we're going to, this is going to work out.

We're going to make this work.

And you did the things to make it work.

So whether it's motivation.

Yeah, that's why I'm question manifesting.

That's what he's saying.

That's what I'm saying.

That's where those things didn't come.

But he did.

So why are we talking about it?

But so

many times he didn't.

That's true.

But that wouldn't have stopped Joel or you from going back out in the woods.

next season and trying

again for the next day.

No, there's no such

thing as luck.

Sure there is.

There is no such thing as luck.

The harder you

work, the luckier you get.

Yeah, which proves

there's no such thing as luck.

What amazes

me very much about our guest tonight is that he's kind of like in the realm of Madonna.

Like you don't

know her first name or last name.

Wando is here with us on the show.

I've been hearing for weeks.

Oh, we're going to we're going to go to Wando's and I'm like is are we

to Wando is Wando a person are we going to his house is this a restaurant what are we what are we doing here so it was

all those questions is yes Wando's was literally the first place that inaugurated the jump around now what

they had a list of 20 songs they went through and

They knew I liked Motley Crew, so that was a top five song.

Oh, I love Motley Crew.

I

think, but they came up with Jump Around as their number one.

And because it happened at Wando's that night, the football guy is picking the song that I am the birthplace of Jump Around.

That is so cool.

That

you have something special going on there.

There's no doubt about it.

And you know, the Fall Life's got a relationship with Travel Wisconsin and the Tourism Bureau.

I mean, there is no better way or reason

to come to Wisconsin than if you're going to celebrate kind of the culinary and there's really no better place to do it.

There is nothing better to me in the world than getting out into the waters and woods in the fields and turning that into food to put on my dinner table.

Hosting this show is fun as heck for me, along with my co-host, Ellie Lawton, who is the real deal when it comes to culinary.

She's got a culinary degree, a French culinary.

turning wild game into food is about as good as it gets.

But you're

the real deal when it comes to hunting too.

I love to hunt.

Yeah, you actually really do love to

hunt.

I hunt all the time as much as I can.

Do you think that

is

there?

I have to ask this question very carefully, because women are the fastest growing group of new hunters.

Women aged

18 to 35.

So young women are the fastest group.

And what I'm seeing in that group now, what I'm seeing is there are sometimes divisions as to

among women in those hunting groups.

Certainly.

I don't want to speak for everybody, but I've been involved with, you know, several women's hunting groups.

I've mentored women's hunts here in Wisconsin and in some of our states out west.

And I think it's just like anything else, Joel.

I think there are people that have common interests.

And when you bring them together, sometimes they decide, you know,

I think emotions take over sometimes.

I think that competition takes over.

I think sometimes...

This is a hard one to explain.

Let's just not share it go to the social media is completely ruined

I'm

with you Chad Belding is here national host of the foul

I don't even get to keep talking about that

Well the listeners got to know who's talking

check there's a lot of levels We got to get there

like my daughter's in high school right now, and it just seems like girls are mean

Girls are mean.

Brittany, back me up on this.

Girls are mean and... Way

meaner than boys.

And boys

are fighters, but girls are mean.

And girls don't fucking... Yeah, but girls fight, or boys fight and it's over.

Yeah, like you guys punch each other in the face or go have a beer together.

So it's a cat fight, they hold on and they want to go.

Yeah, so it's...

It's really a shame, but I don't want to make that a blanket statement for everything and everyone and all the women involved in the outdoors, because there are some women out there grinding every

single day to

represent the outdoor community, to expose new hunters, whether male or female, to the community, to teach, and not only about just going out and harvesting these animals.

You have women that are going out there and guiding

big game hunts out west and then on the off season they're teaching foraging and they're teaching how to utilize these harvests or how to turn hides or bones or antlers into jewelry or clothing.

Shelby Christensen is here and Ashlyn Whitting is here.

What an exciting show this is gonna be because these two women are somewhat new to the outdoors, new to hunting.

One of them, I'm not gonna tell you which one yet, is not a vegan anymore.

I think

that

that is fascinating to me.

I want to talk about that transition and

what it

means

to harvest

something in the outdoors and put it on your table and the responsibility and ethics of that.

That's also extremely exciting to me.

And the other one is an at home.

Do it yourself.

Learn from scratch.

Taxidermist.

How cool is that?

I'll be honest, it's one step away from Jeffrey Dahmer a little bit.

We're in

Wisconsin.

I

think it's a little bit further than a step.

Well, it's a couple steps away from Jeffrey Dahmer.

Careful,

you might be her next mount.

Shelby Christensen is here.

She's newish to hunting, and she's got some odd hobbies that I'm fascinated by.

And she was telling us how she got interested in hunting by literally being interested in animals.

And I know you said you have a background.

You have a minor degree in entomology.

My daughter loves entomology.

She's studying museum studies and anthropology at Baylor now in the graduate program.

So I'm fascinated by bugs.

We've got bugs up in these rooms.

And I think that there's kind of a close connection to taxidermy.

But how on earth and why on earth did friends say, what an odd hobby you like to pick apart animals and use them, which I think relates perfectly ethically to hunting?

Yeah.

And it will surprise a lot of people.

But especially at the time when I was young, through middle school to high school, there was a very

very being a kind of strong word, but there was a significant internet community of it used to be called vulture culture.

So

that

was people.

It was a lot of young women, too.

And it was unlike different websites and blogs, you'd still find them on Instagram.

So it's more of the animal preservation, so it can include taxidermy.

It can include like wet specimens, jarred specimens, bone cleaning.

So it was this smaller little internet community.

of, again, mostly young women who were interested in this kind of stuff.

Here's a tip too for people.

You don't need to be dragged by someone else.

I never had any family or friends into it.

This was all I made the decision that I wanted to try it.

But for years before that, I had a lot of interest in just

animals themselves and taxidermy.

So I

started picking up roadkill.

That was my first step of actually getting into hunting.

And then I'd bury it in the yard and pick up the bones after.

That's where I

and begin to say, you know, maybe I can get these specimens myself and I can also provide food for myself for this as well.

I think one of the

fascinating things about you is that you never let any of the taboos or preconceptions, let's say, stop you from doing this really cool stuff.

And now on the other end of it, you're completely experienced in it and you have this really cool stuff.

You got some trinkets in your pocket too that are just awesome.

What

is going on with that?

Yeah, tell us

about those.

Yeah, so I brought a few things along.

I brought a key chain that was made out of the foot of the skunk.

So this is not actually that difficult to do.

A

skunk foot key chain.

Is that like a lucky skunk foot, like a lucky rabbit's foot?

Well, the skunk wasn't lucky, but maybe.

You know, maybe it'll bring a little luck there.

Painting something with conductive paint, putting it in an acid bath, dissolving copper, which then sticks to the conductive paint.

How thick that layer is, how shiny whatever that's all done by.

time and the different concentrations of chemicals that

you've got.

You're

basically a scientist.

Shelby, what I love is that you just get into all of it and you just try all of it.

And I wish more people would do that, especially when it comes to hunting and eating wild game.

I

love getting mud on my clothes.

And when I'm hunting, I consider it successful to find up with blood on my clothes too.

Oh.

Wow.

Now who's Jeffrey Dahmer?

Oh,

sorry.

Hey, I got your back.

Listen.

Yes, you have the back.

I am very, very much outman today.

We've got an entire panel of one, two, three, four, five women and me.

And I do find that from time to time as the ratio increases on me, that's the more I get made fun of.

So I'm ready for it.

You're listening to Raised in the Woods.

What's up everybody?

This is Raised in the Woods.

My name's Joel Clayfish.

I'm alongside co-host Ellie Lawton, the chef extraordinaire adventurer.

Megan Salazar is here, our sommelier pirate.

Dan Tim is a guest this week.

Very excited to have him along.

He's your local archery expert and

Adventure some guy who travels these United States, including the two separate states of Alaska and eventually Hawaii.

Listen, we're going to get to your luxurious flowing beard later in a minute.

Fair enough.

We have a lot of adventurers

on the panel.

ventures.

Good Lord.

You don't even know the beginning of it.

You don't even know the beginning of it.

I'm telling you today's guest I am so excited about and he is sandwiched between Dan Tim's lover and homesteader Sarah Marinas.

Lacey, great to have you here as well.

But our guest this week I has driven a long way

And I'm so excited because he is one of the most accredited, iconic symbols of Wisconsin and the Midwest for the outdoors.

Patrick Durkin is here.

First of all, what an honor to have you.

Appreciate it.

Appreciate your service to this country

as a

sailor.

I hope we have time to get into that.

You are a writer.

You have been on television.

You've been on radio.

You have made the outdoors your life, and that is incredibly exciting to us.

You work on the biggest outdoor show in the world, Meat Eater.

You know, Steven Ronella, you, I can't wait.

This is quite the resume, Patrick.

I can't wait to get into what you have accomplished.

Patrick,

I need to know

something, though.

Do you like to eat?

Yeah.

Oh, thank God.

I'm much more about eating than

cooking.

Oh, yes.

Amen.

I can relate.

The cool thing to have happen was when I was in the Navy, I met Penny in a night class I was taking.

And when she heard that I was always, I'm a cheapskate.

And

you married a woman named Penny.

True.

And she heard me talking about, though, how

I would typically eat in the ship all the time because Navy feeds you three meals a day.

And she invited me over on our third or fourth date and cooked a meal for me.

And it was a really nice meal.

The first year I brought home after we got married, she came out in the garage and helped me cut it up.

And I always thought for a person who did not grow up in New Wisconsin, did not grow up in the hunting community, did not grow up in the fishing community, she really adapted.

I just admire that.

Patrick Durkin is a part of MeatEater.

Yes,

I'm excited

to talk about this.

The

largest outdoor show, which is literally about eating what you kill, one of the things we talk about on this show.

I

think I've written over 150 articles now for MeatEater over the past nine years.

This is a weird story a few years ago of a fawn that was about 30 feet up a tree dead.

Hanging in a crotch for tree.

I mean, the most red downloaded article I ever wrote for them.

Wow.

And it was just a very, just went crazy on the internet.

Another one that just fell in my lap was a very similar story where a woman was sitting on her porch in summer up in northeastern Wisconsin, here's summer home, watching the lake, and Moses fawn peddling along in the shoreline.

And down comes this bald eagle, drowns.

the fawn, it's just, it's almost painful to watch because if fawns are so cute, you can't help but feel sorry for it.

How many people called me that from all over the country?

different content creators, really, hello, you want to call them?

And wanting to get the right to that video.

And I said, I kept referring to this lady and she called me back and asked, well, what kind of money should she be asking for to rent at least this video out?

And I have no background on that.

I just told her, I don't know.

Just don't know.

But people wanted to buy that video.

And if you Google it, if you Google my name in Bald Eagle Fawn, you'll probably find that story.

But I never wrote that one up for Meat Eater because that was kind of before I was really writing for them.

But I'm writing that column and that fun thing about a newspaper column in that era.

after the first 35 years of my career, was that's how people got their news.

And

it's only in recent years where the newspapers really, really

tumbled.

And this man fashioned a truck cap that is absolutely gorgeous.

Dan's been eyeing it up

the

whole

time.

I can't stop looking at it.

The whole idea of why I built it.

I hated having a cap that you couldn't put tall stuff in.

You had to take the whole cap

off.

It's fascinating looking.

You must get looks coming down the

road.

When I'm pulling my

My Cedar Strip roll boat I built, it attracts women.

I

believe it.

I believe it.

This guy's craftsmanship, I believe it.

It attracts women the way Dan Tim's beard does.

I tell young guys all the time, if you want to meet women, build a Cedar Strip roll boat or a Cedar Strip canoe.

This is killing me right now because I tell all my lady friends, if you want to meet a nice man, go to a Home Depot or a Monard's on like a Saturday morning and look for the guys buying the wood to build the boats.

It works their way too.

When I go back to the parking lot to get my truck and trailer and leave my wife with the boat, the old guys come over.

Oh, sure.

So she's taking advantage of it, too.

The boat attracts old guys, carpenter guys, but then women of all ages and

interests.

Oh, my goodness.

And the difference, too, is that women touch it.

They come over.

Like a nice caress,

or?

Yeah, well, you know, this almost like...

Adoring type

touch

single guys dress up as a cedar strip canoe for Halloween Did you get outside this week?

Oh, we had a wild week Joel, but I'm gonna I'm gonna leave one of the biggest highlights

for my bride here.

She's quite

an interesting character, too.

I wonder why you've been hiding her from us, Dan.

No

kidding, gosh.

Lacey, did you get out this last week?

He

finally let me out.

I can see why, because you come along and then people like you more than him.

So I

did.

We just took a road trip and we went camping in the.

Great Smoky Mountains.

And I got really excited because we saw a bear.

And I was like, oh my gosh, there's

a

bear.

That's cool.

That is cool.

That's got to get your juices flowing.

And

we finally get to meet Macy.

Lacy.

Dang it!

You can call me Ali once.

Wow, I love that.

Well, we are very honored to have a very special guest with us today, a man who has spent his life seven decades of it, covering the outdoors, experiencing the outdoors, living the outdoors, and living what many people would consider a dream, and that is making your lifestyle, your career, your income, the outdoors.

Kirk Durkin, how did you get started in the outdoor media before outdoor media became what it is today?

I started at the Oshkosh newspaper, Oshkosh Northwestern, back in 1982, 83 in college.

I just never thought I'd be a writer when I was younger, but to my god, the Navy, I knew that's what I wanted to do.

When I started writing letters home, my dad, my mom, my grandmother, various friends,

would say stuff to me like, your letters are so interesting.

You should really look in the journalism when you get out.

And when my dad told me that, my dad told me that before I went in the Navy, but I wanted to be a firefighter back then.

So I got all this damage control training in the Navy and lots of trade skills in the Navy.

They taught me a lot of good stuff like welding, I was a locksmith, did all sorts of cool stuff as far as trade work.

And by the time I got out of the Navy, I realized I wasn't very good at any of them.

But you

are good at writing.

But

I was good at writing.

Patrick, your life is literally a storied life of how to live the outdoor lifestyle and have it become your life, which is so many people's dreams and so few people ever get to pursue it.

This is Raised in the Woods.

We've got really awesome guests tonight because and I don't know how we pull it off But we pull off like some pretty important people on this show.

I'm pretty excited get some celebrities and Tonight it's pretty cool because we're gonna talk a little bit about travel, Wisconsin in our seafaring ways this evening But we have Todd Scheller who was the state

of Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources chief warden for years, which is always fascinating to talk to him about cops and those who use the waters and woods of the great states of the Midwest.

And we have Eric.

Loebner, who is the administrator for Fish, Wildlife and Parks for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

He's the current guy.

He's like the man.

He's the guy.

He's like the bro in charge.

I mean, the word wildlife, that covers like everything.

Okay.

Let's hold it.

Let's not go overboard.

I do have fish, but I'll tell you anytime that you want to get outside and enjoy nature, maybe do a little hiking, a little biking, cross.

country, skiing, hunting, fishing, trapping, you name it.

We're somehow involved with that.

I always struggle to wonder, like, that drives me bonkers.

There is a mental thing that all hunters go through when their buddies are hunters.

And they get that picture of the geese on the ground or the ducks

on the ground

or the deer on the ground before you have gotten your.

animal on the ground when you both have a tag.

And it is so tough.

It is so tough.

You just think, drat.

And you have to literally bite a hole through your cheek and be happy for them.

Because you are very

happy for them.

You want to know what's really fun?

You're retired.

And you ascend that.

to your friends who are still working.

Those people.

Oh, that's mean.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Todd,

you're

right.

You're

awesome.

I'm awful,

Todd.

I'm sharing my experience.

I think it's a good to share.

You're sharing your tips.

How was work today?

And you got a bucket full of perch.

Or how was, yeah.

How was your meeting?

Yep.

I just want to preface this a little bit by saying that Eric Loebner, who is here, who's literally one of the highest ranking people in the Wisconsin Department of Natural

resources.

He's like the czar of fish, wildlife.

He's the

czar lobe.

Actually, he's more like the emperor.

The emperor might be a better term than czar.

I like emperors.

Czar sounds kind of negative.

I like emperor

better.

He is the emperor.

He's the emperor of Wisconsin's wildlife.

When you step out of your home and into the great outdoors, you are under the jurisdiction of Emperor Loebner.

Don't

forget it.

Very first.

Turkey Learn to Hunt was something that I worked very closely on to put all the material together.

What

year did

that happen?

Must have been about 1996, I think.

Look where we've come.

Oh my.

It's unbelievable.

That's so recent.

We

didn't have turkeys and now everybody's hunting turkeys.

Yeah, the DNR at that point, and one of the main things that I did was help put on these Learn to Turkey Hunt programs because nobody knew how to do it here in Wisconsin.

Yeah.

It was a new activity.

We were

deeply concerned about safety, right?

How cool

is that of this?

I just I remember

being in high school and so like two years ago

dog

years.

It

would be crazy if I saw Turkey like you'd be driving down the road.

And if you saw Turkey, you would stop and be like, that is not supposed to be here.

That is so weird to see.

And now it's strange if you drive around and you don't see

a whole bunch of turkeys, especially right now in the spring.

Yeah, we're talking about turkeys.

It's incredible.

And those species then, ultimately the goal of that wildlife action plan is to try to keep those species from ending up on the endangered threatened species list, because nobody wants that.

Right.

So

what are we talking about?

What are the animals on that list that we're working with right now?

Yeah, so there's a number of them.

We have martins.

Oh, yeah, sure.

That makes sense.

Are there

salamanders on there too?

There's a number of different salamanders, and there's turtles, and frogs.

Megan, you know the weird stuff.

But I love it.

Hey, she's got it going on.

Yeah, she's got it going on.

Well, it's Salazar, Salamander.

Yeah, that makes sense.

It all goes together right at Rusty Patch Bumblebee, right?

Rusty Patch Bumblebee has been with us.

Well, of course, the Rusty Patch Bumblebee.

I

don't even know what that

is.

It's a

Bumblebee at the Rusty

Patch.

Thank you.

We're underrated, Tawson.

What's up, everybody?

This is Raised in the Woods.

My name's Joel Clayfish.

This show is about everything in the great outdoors, the great state of Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois, and Iowa.

We have really jumped out of the box today, and we are doing... I think we jumped out of the boat.

We jumped out of the boat right here, the Hideaway Bar in Grill, a famous little joint on Okachi.

There are stories that there are old slot machines buried in this lake, old...

bodies buried in this lake.

Supposedly the mafia had its control of this lake back in the 20s and 30s and we for the first time have taken this show on the road into the field.

What a bonus getting a little sun out here while we record the show.

Yeah, I mean, I just came for the tan.

So, and the food too.

The food here is phenomenal.

Thanks.

You guys know me.

Anything I can do outside that involves the sunshine, I'm in.

We have water about 10 feet from us.

It is beautiful out here.

They're running the bass tournament at the hideaway.

They've got a wing night going tonight.

They're debuting one of the sauces here, the right wing sauce and the left wing sauce.

It's a buffalo sauce.

Alexis Cron.

You're here, your dad's here, he doesn't, I see, we've got you with the mic too, are

we

afraid?

I know, I'm excited.

I'm excited to have you here because I wanna talk about the culture of Wisconsin and the culture of the Midwest and what bars mean to the people in Wisconsin.

If you want good food in Wisconsin, you don't necessarily go to, in quotes, in air quotes, a restaurant.

bars are restaurants, restaurants are bars.

And do you see a difference when we get towards summer versus winter in that culture?

Yeah, so I would say so, especially out here.

I don't know, you just meet so many people from all around.

People are coming, you know, other states coming all the way to Ocache, which is crazy.

But it's such a cool atmosphere out here.

There's always something going on, whether that's live music, just boating for the day, you know, just always a fun atmosphere.

Wintertime, I feel like it's more just like closing it like people around the area, family, like... How do you see

the eating trends of the people who come here change from winter to summer?

A lot of people in the summer just always looking for different things.

A lot of people are out boating, drinking.

They're in the sun all day.

They want something refreshing and, you know, good light.

But they also are like on the go.

So something that can, you know, be fast, easy, family food.

See a lot of families here.

And then I would say...

come wintertime, fall, we're more like comfort food, you know, those hearty foods that people love when it gets a little bit colder out here in the Midwest.

Yeah, which we don't know.

Do you see that, Chef Lawton, a change in people's palate?

All the time.

We are designed to eat based off of what is in season.

People forget about that, but that's really how we are designed to eat.

Alexis hit it on the head.

That's exactly what the trends say every single year.

When we go into those colder months, we are craving those really warm, hearty dishes.

When we get to the summer months, when it's hot, we want lighter, we want fresh, we want the fruits, we want the vegetables, we want, you know, to do the barbecue, things like that.

So, yeah, for sure.

Oh, that's fantastic.

We have an awesome show today.

Big thanks to the Hideaway for having us out for our first live in the field show.

Thanks to Mickey Fody.

Thanks to Alexis and Scott Cron.

It is beautiful out here.

They're running the Bass Tournament at the Hideaway.

They've got a wing night going tonight.

They're debuting one of the sauces here, the right wing sauce, and the left wing sauce.

It's a buffalo sauce that I, Joel Clay, for sure, is truly, literally invented in a kitchen in Mickey Fody's kitchen 20 plus

years ago.

That's crazy.

Wow.

We're actually 25 years old now.

And you're right.

I mean, it was one of those things where Joel and I used to go around all the time and we'd do the different wing nights.

We knew where every wing night was, but we knew the flavor we were looking for.

And Joel, I mean, I like to take credit for being there when Joel came up with the sauce.

He hit the nail on the head.

We tried so many different times and it turned out just perfect.

And now it's being debuted here.

And I'm telling you what, the most beautiful setting you could be at.

the high to where you just sit and you see the Ocachi Lake at its finest.

It's absolutely beautiful here at the height away and then to be able to have our sauce here and our wings and we're we're out handing them out for free tonight.

And it's amazing.

The number of people that are giving very good compliments and they're giving kudos to Joe.

This world couldn't be more tightly wound.

It's just crazy.

Chef Lawton is a corporate chef and she knows the folks here as well.

just seeing what this kind of atmosphere and what bars and restaurants mean in the Midwest, they're not just a place people go to have cocktails, you know, you go on the coasts, you go into a bar, they very often don't even serve food.

Chef, can we get a little hint as to what today's recipe is going to be?

Hmm, not right now.

I

mean, she doesn't

know.

I think she has some ideas

of possibilities.

It's

gonna

have something to do with waterfall.

A goose

or a

duck?

Yes.

Duck duck goose.

How about crane?

Well, that might upset some folks, but I'm

here for that.

You

can

legally eat crane in Wisconsin.

You just can't hunt it yet.

We're going to try to cross that bridge.

So if you hit one with your car, you can pick it up.

No, I don't

think you can, Sarah.

But I love that.

But what

do you mean

you

can't hunt it?

How would you find it dead?

Well, no, no, no, no.

You can legally hunt it in another state.

And then you can bring that meat here.

I was very confused.

Like, how would you eat it if you can't hunt it?

It'd be an accident then.

I love the fact that you constantly bring up the things that could land us in jail and we get to talk about it.

You're a little quiet tonight, Sarah.

Well, I did have a lot to say before but I was trying to text Tyler to get all my information.

Sarah, I do almost think it's because we don't get a chance to talk right now.

Whoa!

You