In this episode, Michael Walker, a gold miner, singer, songwriter, and hunter, talks about being a Califonia Neck, the hunting scene in California, and how he got into hunting in general. The state of California forced him to become a hunter. In the early ‘90s, in order to buy a handgun, they required you to take either a handgun safety course or a hunter safety course, Michael chose the hunter safety course and got hooked. He shares his thoughts on how to get people into hunting through food and how he found mining to be just like hunting.
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Gold, Music and Hunting – Michael Walker
Welcome to another episode. This is the first episode in January 2018 and we’re heading out to California with a good friend, Michael Walker. Michael is an interesting friend and one of my crew is talking about how interesting he and I are kindred spirits. He rolled his truck as everybody knows and I’m sure he’s getting tired of hearing that I rolled my truck and both of us walked away. Michael is a gold miner, a singer, a songwriter and a hunter. Do you have a TV show or what’s going on there?
I used to have a TV show on Pursuit, I did it one season. I didn’t like the format, I thought coming up with 22 minutes was something I didn’t like to do. I still record and have my online service, Livin’ Free Outdoors. I had stuff out again but with Instagram, everything is quick now. You want to get it out as soon as you can, I don’t do as much on that as I used to but it’s there, Livin’ Free Outdoors.
This guy had done a lot of things, you might pick up some tips if you’re looking at 2018, “I like to do something different or I’m interested in X, Y or Z.” Michael is going to share some insider tips. Michael, welcome to the show.
Thank you, Bruce, it’s good to be here.
I know what a redneck is, I’m not sure if I know what a California neck is. Bring us up to speed on that.
A Californeck is like any other redneck, the only difference is he is in California. There’s redneck everywhere and I think Jeff Foxworthy made it cool to be a redneck. We’re going to have to tip our hat to him, he was the original. Where I grew up it was a small town, most of the grandparents and parents that ended up in that town came from either Texas, Arkansas or Oklahoma. Where I grew up, it’s probably a lot more like growing up in Texas than it was growing up say in Southern California. It was a little bit different. It’s not what people normally think of California as, it was agriculture, we had cotton fields all around us and that was my outdoor life, for the first part of it.
Are you up around San Joaquin Valley? Where do you live?
I am smack dab in the middle of San Joaquin Valley. I’m near Fresno. I was born about an hour north of Fresno and I grew up about an hour south of Fresno, I’ve haven’t strayed far at all.
I’ve been through that country a little bit, it’s a culture and no question about it, except for the mountains and the type of foliage you have. You can be any place that they grow stuff.
Where I’m up in Fresno there is a lot of grapes out here from raisins and wine. A lot of people don’t know, but 90% of the country is tomatoes. Fresh tomatoes are the products from right here in California.
I also heard that California is one of the largest producers of milk and cheese products.
That’s true. I don’t know if we can eclipse Wisconsin, but we got a lot of berries out here. As a matter of fact, when I was a kid my dad worked at the dairy. I grew up with that smell, smells like home to me.
The same thing that makes the kids want to play hide and seek, there is something in all of us that wants to hunt. Share on XA million-dollar question, how does a guy hunt in California because they got a lot of different laws if you will?
That’s true. You go up to the mountains and get your tags. You go up there and you hunt. I don’t hunt here as much as I used to. I hunt a lot more in Oklahoma. I didn’t start hunting until I was 25. It was the state of California that forced me to become a hunter, believe it or not. They created a monster, which is what they did. What happened was back in the early ‘90s, I don’t remember the exact year. In order to buy a handgun, they required you to take either a handgun safety course or a hunter safety course. A buddy of mine said, “Let’s go take the hunter safety course.” Over a couple of nights, we took the course.
I went and got a license and long story short, somebody asked me to go deer hunting. I bought a deer tag, got up there, and had my first encounter in the woods with a gun and some deer running off. When the adrenaline up I didn’t get a shot off, but I was hooked from then on out. There is something in us, the same thing that makes kids want to play hide and seek. There is something in all of us that wants to hunt.
That’s a good point, I can remember growing up I was fortunate in New England. I trout fish all the time with a worm and a piece of string. We played cowboys and Indians all the time. We would pretend hunting because life at eight years old and you have a gun. I remember that and nobody told us how to do it or why to do it, you just did it.
I’ll give you a story. I had a friend of mine, I worked with him for a long time. He grew up in a small town near Acapulco, Mexico. He is up here working and I said, “Let’s go to the mountains.” We weren’t hunting or anything because he had never been to the mountains. Two things I did for him, I introduced him to the mountains and he had never had Spam before, I did those both on the second trip. He is not the first person I’ve introduced to Spam either. I served him Spam on white bread folded in half, he loved it.
As we were coming back down from the mountains, we slowed down. I saw a doe off to the left there on the driver’s side and I said, “Look at it.” I sat in the truck and I watched him. We weren’t hunting but he was walking up, he was sneaking on that deer like a hunter. He never hunted before, but there was something in it. When he saw that deer and was sneaking on, he got back to the truck like the most exciting thing he had ever done. There is something in everybody that is a natural thing that makes you want to hunt.
You think about all the antis that say, “Hunting is terrible.” You put them in the right situation they would have that same feeling. If somebody heard an elk bugling in the forest, not in Yellowstone Park, you want to get as close as you can to that animal.
If there is not a chance to take that animal, it’s never quite as exciting. The most exciting thing that happened to me was taking a doe. The two bucks I killed were anticlimactic. If you take that away, if you are just nature watching, it’s not nearly as exciting as having to make that shot. There is something about it and it goes back to probably the main reason I hunt. The main reason anybody hunted over the past 10,000 years is that its food, people get excited when they are eating food. There’s a correlation.
Especially your own food, I know in the past, I’m trying to remember the gals name, but single mom, friend, girlfriends, parents, whatever is it, you go start hunting. She shot a doe and she got to help to butcher it. All of a sudden, she had food in her table that she didn’t have to go to the store for. She was completely entwined with the whole experience. Rather than going to store and buying a package of hamburger and putting in a pot and eat tacos. She did it and she said, “Once I did that, it was liberating. Probably I could do whatever I wanted to do.” That’s the truth.
There are different categories of people who are non-hunters. There are your people who are indifferent about it. There are people who are against it but eat meat. There’s that small group of people who don’t eat any meat products which are against it. I don’t believe you can ever get to those people. The people who eat meat, they don’t even want to start talking to me about shooting deer. If they eat ribs or chicken, I’ll get on my phone and start bringing up pictures. I’ll get online, I got cute little baby chicks and piglets and cubs and I can shut them down pretty quick. People who are indifferent, open-minded, there are people out there like that. They don’t hunt, but they are not against hunting, they are not for it. The best way to get somebody who is indifferent to hunting is to feed them something good. Remember this, chili is the gateway of the innocent, always has been. It’s where you start them at, start them off with some chili or chili beans and then work them up from there.
That’s good wisdom, you want to invite your neighbor over that never had venison and make it easy for them to like it. That’s my thought. Make it easy for them to like and they go, “What the heck is this?” With a good wine or a beer or sweet tea, if we make it easy for folks to enjoy the meal then all of a sudden they go, “That wasn’t bad. What’s the big deal?” There is no big deal, its food.
One of the things is if you’re feeding somebody wild game that either hasn’t had it before or they’ll say it had that taste to it. The thing is I took my first deer into the butcher and after that, I started doing it all on my own. I put all my stuff away, wrapped in cellophane as quarters and then I bring it out and age it at a later date. I age at my fridge for a week or two before I start cutting it up. There are three key things, don’t get any freezer burn on your meat. Make sure that you age it. Three, this is important for people who don’t eat wild game, get everything off but the actual red meat. The flavor that is offloading to most people is not in the meat itself, it’s in the connective tissues and tendons. The silver and white layers on there, if you can clean that off, you’ve got them. It tastes like the best cleanest beef you’ve ever had.
When you age, what temperature do you like to age your beef or venison at?
My refrigerator is set at 44. If I could, I’d do it at 38 or 39, but 44 I can leave it there a couple of weeks. Keep dumping off the blood and it never smells. Once you cut it up, if you got good meat and the way I do it, I age it long enough to when I take a piece of meat, you can squeeze it between your fingers and it’s like squeezing a piece of salmon. It’s aged nice but it doesn’t have any flavor or smell to it yet and its ready go. A little bit of butter in the pan and some seasoning, flip it over, there is nothing like it. I look up to heaven and I go, “Um.” Every time I cook it for myself. I probably have it four or five times a week, it’s how I eat it.
There’s some culinary delight. Let’s go to what you’re doing with the gold and panning or sluicing. California found it up on the gold rush in all those areas. How did you get into that?
I used to watch PBS and the Gold Prospectors Association of America had a show on. It was an infomercial. They had a show on and they’d sell you a package, I never brought the package or joined, I had a buddy who did. I worked with the guy who is interested in it so we started going up. We’d start panning in different areas and we would pan be like, “Is that gold?” We keep looking. Finally, we panned something up. We saw a little sliver or something and it didn’t look like anything else that has been in the pan before. You knew that it was gold by the way it acted, the way it looked. It’s like hunting, I was hooked from then. You get that gold fever and you can’t get it out of your system.
There are a lot of shows now, the guys up in Alaska, they’ve become TV stars. There are huge rigs and I don’t know what they call it, the big separator and stuff like that. It’s a huge business. There are people that are in Colorado, a lot of gold in Colorado. They will go up and they’ll make $20,000 to $30,000 a year when they know where the gold is.
California shut down dredging or shut down illegal dredging. You can’t shut down what is not seen. They shut down illegal dredging, it ceased. I had a friend of mine from Arizona who used to come up here during the summer with his family. They’d go in and they gold mine on the Feather River. They had a big dredge. For people who don’t know what a dredge is if you’ve seen Bering Sea Gold, that’s what we use, but we use smaller ones that float on pontoons. This guy, he had a pretty good-sized one, about the size of the houseboat and they would dredge all summer. He told me the best day he ever had, the best single day, 30 ounces. It’s still out there.
Thirty ounces times an average cost, that’s $1,000, $1,500? I don’t know what it is.
It’s at about $1,300. When you watch those shows, they’ll pick it up. If you want to know the truth, I’ll tell you the truth about it. Generally, when you go to sell your gold, it’s probably going to be about 85% pure on average. They take it down from that and then the buyer will pay you about 85% of that. You’re only going to get about 70% of the spot price. The thing about gold is a standard ounce like you would weigh your food with is 28 grams, gold is 31. You still need to get more gold to make that. They got you all the way around. Generally, you’ll get paid right around 70% of the actual spot price. It’s about $800 an ounce.
Thirty ounces, that’s a huge thing I’m sure, times $1,000 that’s $30,000 times 70%, that’s still $21,000.
That was one day for them and they’ve got all summer. I never mine like that, I mined a little smaller scale. The best I’ve done is probably half an ounce in a day. Still, if I can make a $100 a day, I feel like I’m doing something, if not we move on.
Let’s talk about that. I’m interested in kicking it to when you go hunting, you have to scout. Once you scout, see some game, and then you got to figure out how to get on them. I look at gold when you’re doing what you are doing, you have to find the right place. There are a gazillion miles of stream. Here in Colorado, I’ve seen a couple of miles of high country streams. When I was sheep hunting, I was in color all the time, let’s start right there. What is the color?
That’s any gold you can find in your pan after panning out a handful. We typically look for probably eight to ten colors. If we can get that, we can find a pastry. Color is a term they use for gold in the pan. Whether it’s specs or little pickers or nuggets or whatever you have. Color is the indication that something is going on there and you need to investigate a little further.
The best way to get somebody who is indifferent to hunting is to feed them something good. Share on XSome of the high country gold mines and we’re talking 12,000 feet where they are doing their gold thing. I was with the guy who knew what he was doing and he said, “There is some color.” I said, “That’s not gold.” I thought exactly what you said. He said, “No.” The color is in the rocks and if they find the right composition in the rock, they know there is gold there.
That sounds more like hard rock mining as opposed to mining it free. I don’t do much hard rock mining. I’ve dabbled in it but I stick pretty much with what they call plaster mining which is mining in or next to the water. Nowadays, we use a sluice box. We have our own. My mining partner and I hooked up with a guy who gave us an apparatus to put on top of our sluice. I’m working on the website and the store. We manufacture our own sluice. Hands down the best one on the market, we’ve been using it for several years. The first summer we’ve used it, it was amazing. We could move more with than in a small dredge. I wouldn’t trade you a dredge for it, but that’s how we do most of ours. We’ll get in the water and we use what we call them Micron Sluice. That’s the name of our company. It’s one of the best on the market as far as I’m concerned. We didn’t set up to go in business, but we were using it for our personal use and everybody wanted one, we said, “We can’t keep giving this away, we got to start selling them.”
When you are looking for gold, a lot of times we go to places where historically they’ve had gold before. What you want to find a lot of times are places where they put work. What these old-timers would do, they didn’t mess around, they were using picks and shovels in their hands. What they would do, they would dig ditches outside of the creek. They would divert the creek, throw off all the stuff on top that was worthless and then they pile up the good stuff and reprocess. They called it turning over a creek. They would get right down to bedrock in the dry creek by diverting the creek around where they were working and that’s how they get it. A lot of these places have been mined pretty heavy, but if you can find a place where they put and divert the creek, you might be in for something good.
A sluice box takes dirt, gravel, whatever you put on the top and the water sips it out, is that how it works?
If you’re talking pure gold, it’s nineteen times heavier than water. You’re talking native gold, it’s probably about sixteen times denser and heavier than its specific weight. Lead is only eleven times heavier than water. You can imagine gold is much denser, it drops out quick. That’s how you separate it, it’s called liquefaction. When you’re shaking it in the pan and everything separates by its own weight. The light stuff sits at the top and the heavy stuff goes to the bottom. A sluice is the same thing, it runs across riffles.
We happen to use drop riffles which are little channels down at the bottom, it runs across and anything heavy drops down into these channels and stays there. What happens is as you run it through, all the lighter stuff goes across the top and the heavy stuff drops down and it stays there. Hopefully, that heavy stuff is gold. A lot of it is black iron, like the stuff you would find in the sandbox with a magnet. That’s how it does, it’s the gravity thing. Everything runs across there, the heavy stuff drops out and goes to the bottom, the light stuff moves up. That’s how quick and dirty sluice box works. We use the same thing that they use on these gold shows, it’s the box with riffles in it. Run your material in water across and all the heavy has dropped out. They’ve been doing that since probably day one mining for gold.
How many tons of dirt do you move a day?
I don’t know how many tons, we go by yards, 3x3x3. We don’t move that many, we’ll probably move anywhere from two to ten yards a day depending on how hard it is to get the material. These guys on these TV shows probably moving twenty yards of bucket load. They are moving twice as much as we are in one bucket load. Our material is probably a lot richer that we’re looking at. We don’t have to move as much, but we’re moving anywhere from two to ten yards depending on some of that stuff packed in. If it’s loose or its easier to move, but we go by yards.
You work using waders and picks. How do you get the dirt out or the rocks out?
We get right in the creek and we use a shovel. Normally my partner will shovel while I’ll funnel all the material down. It’s only about three feet from dropping the material down to the bedrock and you can’t go any deeper than the bedrock. We’ll do that and we manually do it. If we’re down at lower elevations, we’ll get it short and I’ll put booties on and we’ll go in there in shorts and knee pads. We were up at 7,000 feet and it was all snowmelt, the water was probably in the high 30s. We had to wear wet suits, but we did it exactly the same as we did down at the lower elevations. We manually collected the material in the water, shoveled it in by hand. That’s generally how we work being that we’re not able to dredge.
A million-dollar question, how do you find the bull elk? How do you find a paystreak?
We had one paystreak that we worked and it was about ten to twelve feet wide. You can follow it right up through there. It gets stuffed down to less than a foot, and after that, it wasn’t worth us to work up. That paystreak was easy to follow because there was a rusty color with it because the black iron had rusted. That was an easy one to follow once we’ve found where the gold was at. Other parts of the creek we found and it goes contrary to what you’re going to read in books. We found that the gold was in the top, it wasn’t down on the bedrock. Some events had occurred to get that all turned around and the gold was in the top foot, not down on the bedrock. Each situation is different. You have to take notes and keep track of what has worked in the past. In some areas, you want to take everything, some areas you want to take a specific level. Paystreak and pay layer are two different things. Paystreak is the width and length of it and the pay layer is how far down the good pay material is. It may only be three or four inches thick. There’s no reason to waste time on what’s below that even though there might be a little bit of gold in that. We leave that for the amateurs. We like to make money at what we do.
A million-dollar question, there probably isn’t a creek in California coming out of the mountains that don’t have some gold there because it’s geological and all those other factors that when those mountains were made. Having said that, how do you pick? We’re going to do this quarter-mile of this creek or 100 yards of this creek, how do you decide that?
We do it the old fashion way. We start off by taking a pan and testing it. The pan eats everything even when you see these gold shows on TV that got this big fancy equipment. At the end or the beginning, it all comes down to testing with the pan or finishing up with your pan. We’ll go down and we’ll test it with a pan, we will test the layers. We’ll test different sides of the creek to set, sometimes it’s on one side and not the other. If it looks promising, we’ll set our sluice up and we will run a test for a half-hour. If it’s paying, we set up camp there and go to count on it. It’s always started with the pan, you got to test the pan and see if it’s worth exploring further.
You find a paystreak and then you camp on it and you don’t take all the gold because you need to get back to town, you got to go work. How do you protect that from somebody else coming along and say, “Somebody is working this?”
We do it a couple of ways. One, we’re prospecting if the area looks good, we will claim it. We have claims we work on. If it’s going to be a quick, going to be some there and we will move up and use it. We’ll go through there and blow through it and won’t bother claiming it because we’re on to the next spot. If you don’t have a claim on it, anybody can get on it and pan or do whatever but if it’s claimed, no claim jumpers allowed here.
You then take your GPS and mark it? How do you get that claim?
There is an online service provided by the BLM. You end up having to send paperwork in an old fashion way, either snail mail or go on in person. You have to fill up the paperwork, you have to get on a map and go township, range, section, all that stuff which are part of that. It’s all in the description there that you use. In your description of it, you’ve got to put a corner state in California. The rules are one corner state in the northwest portion of the claim. You’ve got to stake it, put a post in there and then take your paperwork to the BLM then it’s yours. You got to redo some paperwork every year, different things that you have to do, but you don’t have to re-file it every year.
You don’t need a special permit from the BLM, or National Forest Service?
No. Not unless you’re using heavy equipment to move in lots of material.
As I hear you, anybody that wants to do this can go out there, they got to get some smarts. They got to get all those stuff, if they find something and then they take it and do the wherewithal. It’s public land, they get away with it. What about people that are mining on private land?
If you know them that’s great, if not you are out of luck. People on private land, they got a little more leeway on what they can do. If they let you on there you could go on there. Generally, people that have private land, they don’t let you on there. It’s a sad thing.
Now I can appreciate it, I won’t let on you on either.
I wouldn’t let you on either. I might let you on, Bruce, but I don’t know if that explains it.
Being in a band is a better way to get girls. Share on XThat’s funny. Claim jumpers you see on the movies and stuff, does it get rough and tumble every once in a while?
It could. I’ve never been in a situation like that. You can call the Sheriff out, but he won’t do anything. Claim jumping is a civil matter, not a criminal matter. You have to take him to court and do all kinds of stuff. Most people don’t claim jump if they do it’s by accident. We are pretty amiable about that. If we have a claim and we find somebody panning on it or running a little sluice, we usually don’t get up in arms over it. Don’t go through it as you own it but go ahead and pan on it. We’re not hard like that, we don’t mind. We want more people to do it. If there’s a little panning going on, we usually don’t say anything, just let them know, “It’s our claim.” Don’t do anything more than panning.
We got the hunter in you and we got the gold in you. The music, you got your guitar? I didn’t set this up.
I don’t have my guitar; my guitar is packed away. I haven’t even been playing guitar much lately. I’ve been working on Photoshop and on the website a little bit. There’s that back end stuff we have to do that has nothing to do with getting out there humming and strumming. That’s what I’ve been working on lately. I’ve been working with my co-producer, his company Lore Entertainment. I signed a management agreement with them, we’re working together. We got this new album coming out and single. We’re doing stuff that is not even music related to it.
The song, Ain’t Takin These Guns, did you write that also?
I did. I write everything I record generally. I write a lot of songs and I do a lot of coverage. That particular song, it started like most songs. I was sitting there and banging away on the guitar. I was playing the riff and started singing with it and that was the start of the song. I ended up writing that song. I released it about less than a year ago, but I recorded it before that. It took a little while to get it released. My friend, Rudy Parris, was on season three of The Voice. He’s a heck of a guitar player, as good as guitar players I’ve seen. I got together with him, he helped produce it and play guitar on it for me. When we released that song, that was the first real release that I collaborated with other people without doing a demo at home.
I’m trying to bring this up, I don’t exactly know how it’s going to work but here we go. Ain’t Takin These Guns from me, that’s mine and in-charge, we have the father of that little song in Michael here. I haven’t said that. You’re a Renaissance man and you beat to your own drum. That’s one thing when I met you at POMA, Professional Outdoor Media Association. You rolled to yourself in nowadays’ society, that’s way cool.
I pretty much do what I want, when I want. You may call it a Renaissance man, the new term for that is ADD, can’t concentrate on one thing. They used to call it Renaissance man, now they call it ADD.
Think about the music and where the heck did that start?
When I was twelve years old, I heard a couple of songs on the radio and I was hooked. I didn’t know who they were, I didn’t know the name of the songs, the name of the band. Come to find out later because there were some key lines on that song, there was a line about driving a Maserati. There were some guys talking about having these big parties, these balls and it ended up being Ted Nugent in ACDC. That’s what hooked me at first and it got me into the hard rock side of things, the classic rock. The fourteen-year-old boy, you got one thing on your mind and that’s girls. What better way to get girls? It’s either sports or being in a band. That was pretty much my inspiration for wanting to be in a band at that time. I wanted to be rich. I wanted a Ferrari, I wanted women. I wanted a big mansion and the funny thing is you couldn’t pay me to take any of those things now.
My wife would not approve of the women anyways. I’m going to keep driving the truck, living in a small house and I’ll stick with one woman for now. I look at the music, I wanted to be rich earlier. Now I look at it a little bit different. I look at it more like a business, what’s the weekly income, average stat over a year. It’s more like a job than it used to be. That’s probably how it should have been in the first place, but I just got in to get girls.
Why wouldn’t you?
I saw these guys again with beautiful women. At fourteen, that’s the only thing I had on my mind, the school was secondary. I ended up getting a guitar when I was fourteen. I had an acoustic guitar and learned a few songs. I’m not a great guitar player, but good enough to sing in a company myself with the guitar. My first band I was in and the band I played in for a long time as a guitar player. I started playing bass guitar in the band because they needed a bass player. I ended up moving down to LA, hanging out in Hollywood, playing all the clubs.
I was straight out of high school; it was a lot of fun. After a few years, I moved back. I look at my past and I’m thinking, “That was a good learning experience for street smarts.” I wouldn’t go back and do it again. It was a good time at that time, but I’ve come to the realization that I’m a small-town guy, always have been, and always will be. That’s where I’m at now. When I started writing music, I played for a long time in cover bands playing classic rock songs. The thing is, I get up and go to work at 4:00 AM on a Friday. I get up at 2:00, go to work at 4:00, come home. We go load in our equipment at 5:00 or 6:00 and I’d play until before 2:00 in the morning, closing time. Get home at 3:00 and I was putting in these 24-hour days to play on a Friday and then turning around and going back and doing it on a Saturday. I wouldn’t get enough sleep. I was getting a little burnout on that.
I took a break from music for a while. My guitar player started doing his blues thing. About a year later, I took some of my lyrics and songs, started writing new ones. I’d looked at him, I went, “It’s not a 100%, but these songs are pretty well leaning towards the country.” The lyrics and the style of music, I call it California country. It’s got a little bit of rock and roll with a little fling and a little thing thrown in. We call that California country out here. I realize what it was, I run with it and the Californeck thing was born and all that. That’s where I’m at music now. I’m doing my thing, doing what I want to do, and I’ve hooked up with some good people out there.
You got t-shirts and you got beanies. I don’t know what all you got, swag. Are you trying to sell some stuff? What’s up with that?
I’ve been working on the designs. We had the original Californeck design which is the definition of Californeck. I’ve got some things that I’m coming up with the management company I’m working with. One of the guys there, he is working on some of his designs. We’re going to throw it up against the wall and see what sticks. There are a lot more people out here in California if you were to exclude Southern California and the Bay area, it would be redneck central, the whole state. It’s different where I live than in those big cities.
I would agree to that living in the OC which I did and when I hang out there. I used to go up to San Jose and work there. I never worked up in the San Francisco area, not enough time there. When you think about what we’re here talking about producing I think most of the almonds in the world come from California. We’re talking about milk, talking about grapes. We’re talking about cheese. What are some of the other major crops?
You got your tomatoes. What’s been coming on strong lately, they got a variety that grows well here and they get bumper crops. A lot of people are taking out different things that they have been growing and they are growing the heck out of pistachios here, growing them like crazy.
I wonder why that is? My wife eats them all the time, I don’t care.
You don’t like it. You’re indifferent.
I guess I’m indifferent.
I like them, but I don’t eat them because they’re expensive. People go through these spaces where they have to have this one type of fruit. The farmers go where the money is at, it makes sense to pullout walnuts and put in pistachios because they are paying more. They will take that year or two in between the time they plant and production and they will sell them. Pistachios are hot and the reason is that our summer, we probably average 98 degrees to 100 degrees, it’s very dry.
The truth is a lot of the Mediterranean-type stuff grows well here in the summertime because it’s similar climate, it’s dry here. Not as dry as Arizona, but it’s dry. We got a lot of flatlands. In this valley it’s all flat. It’s probably 300 feet about sea level the whole way across. We got a lot of flat land here. Originally, we’ve got a number of rivers that come out of the mountains that run through here for irrigation. The soil is rich and it’s a great place because of the flatness of it. The water availability and the climate, it’s a great place to grow vegetables and fruits.
It has been an interesting and eclectic show. Michael, thank you for joining me and thousands of readers on Whitetail Rendezvous. It’s a little different show, but that’s what I wanted. Michael is a heck of a guy. I enjoyed getting to know him and he brings a lot to the table. If you ever sit down with him you go, “This guy is pretty a smart guy.” He knows what he wants and he goes out and gets it. Thank you so much for being the guest on Whitetail Rendezvous.
Thanks for having me Bruce, I appreciate it.
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We’re heading down to North Carolina. We are going to connect with Kent Wilkinson. Kent is the CEO and Founder of Muzzle Force One. What the heck is Muzzle Force One? It’s a shooting stabilizer that’s the easiest way to say. It creates torque in your hand right into your shoulder, so you’re stable when you shoot. It’s not another sling, it’s a torque stabilizer so you can shoot offhand a lot more confident than in the past. MuzzleForce.com is where you need to go and check it, but Kent is going to bring inexpensive stories about hunting in the Piedmont area of Carolina.
Important links:
- Michael Walker – LinkedIn
- Livin’ Free Outdoors
- Micron Sluice
- Professional Outdoor Media Association
- Kent Wilkinson – next episode
- MuzzleForce.com
About Michael Walker
Michael Walker was born and raised in California. Grew up in a small town and still live in a small town.
When I’m not playing, writing, or recording music, you’ll find me in the outdoors, filming my show “Livin Free Outdoors”.
Singer, songwriter, gold miner, outdoorsman and host of Livin’ Free Outdoors.