Speaker 1: This is the me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
Speaker 1: bug bitten and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You
Speaker 1: can't predict anything. I'm with Janice podcast horror will tell us.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Um. Randall Williams, who has been on this,
Speaker 1: who's down on the show before, an environmental historian. Um,
Speaker 1: I'd like to accidentally call him Randall Weaver, who is
Speaker 1: the Ruby Ridge standoff person. But it's in fact Randall
Speaker 1: Williams does that many Randall's everybody switches to Randy endearing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know one other Randall. He's actually a neighbor. I
Speaker 1: got a friend named Randy with an eye on the end,
Speaker 1: and I call her Randall. I wish you don't like,
Speaker 1: I can't imagine. And Matt Elliott here from who drove
Speaker 1: up from World Bench made World Headquarters down. And like
Speaker 1: in Portland property, Oregon City, Oregon City, there's an east
Speaker 1: and the west side thing in in uh Portland. If
Speaker 1: you live on the east side, you don't really consider
Speaker 1: yourself in Portland unless you're actually East Portland. But in
Speaker 1: eastern Oregon they call everything pretty much West of the
Speaker 1: Mountains Portland. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So are you like in
Speaker 1: the redneck part of Portland as a Yeah, that's the
Speaker 1: redneck parts the industrial area. You guys still drink like
Speaker 1: Sanka and Folgers and stuff. And it's not like there's
Speaker 1: still fifty five Starbucks within a mouth from from bench made. Yeah. Um, hey,
Speaker 1: how we're just talking about hunting spots and stealing people's
Speaker 1: GPS is in Uh and yan, tell tell what happened?
Speaker 1: Now you're what happened? Now you're on an airplane and
Speaker 1: which you ran a new dude who used to live
Speaker 1: where you live. And uh, I met him through I
Speaker 1: want to amy names even get in trouble, but I
Speaker 1: met him through another friend, a colleague of ours, and uh,
Speaker 1: we're skiing together, and uh it turns out that he
Speaker 1: was a fishing guy and dabbled in the hunting guiding
Speaker 1: a little bit and actually knew a friend of mine
Speaker 1: from Colorado and now lives back east. And I saw
Speaker 1: this kind of thing like, well, maybe I could get
Speaker 1: probably a little bit of information out of him, you know,
Speaker 1: So I just slipped in like a yeah, I'm new here,
Speaker 1: and you know, what do you know about hunting right
Speaker 1: here around the ski area? And I mean that just
Speaker 1: opened up the floodgates. Man, I couldn't. I should just
Speaker 1: have my iPhone out on record. But because he used
Speaker 1: to hit all that stuff and moved away to Chicago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we're no, we're just saying, how guys that don't
Speaker 1: you know you just don't protect your hunting spots as
Speaker 1: much as as you once did once you move away
Speaker 1: from an area, Dude in the guide book. In the
Speaker 1: guide book, I say, I've gotten a lot of hunting
Speaker 1: spots by talking to people who used to live somewhere
Speaker 1: that don't anymore because they don't care. And now I'm
Speaker 1: in the situation where I used to live. You know,
Speaker 1: I spent a lot of time a decade ago somewhere
Speaker 1: and I'll tell people now, I'll be like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: I haven't been in a decade, but go check it out.
Speaker 1: And I I knew this dude who was working on
Speaker 1: you know, on X on X maps. They're in Missoula.
Speaker 1: So I know a guy who moved to Missoula to
Speaker 1: work there, And I'm like, hey, man, you know what
Speaker 1: you ought to do is this is place we used
Speaker 1: to find bears in the spring. I'm like around May eleven,
Speaker 1: like between the six and the eleven drive up to
Speaker 1: this trailhead and you're gonna get out of your car
Speaker 1: and you're gonna think's ridiculous because it's gonna be a
Speaker 1: ask load of snow. Never mind the snow. Walk up
Speaker 1: two miles and there's gonna be a southeast exposure that's
Speaker 1: gonna have a bald spot on the size of a
Speaker 1: couple of football fields, and watch that for the day.
Speaker 1: Because it used to work out. He goes up there
Speaker 1: one day, comes back, calls, he says, oh, it's too snowy.
Speaker 1: I'm like, dude, just park, go back, walk up. It
Speaker 1: doesn't matter what it looks like with the snow. Never mind,
Speaker 1: the snow goes up there, says there, black bear comes out,
Speaker 1: misses it, something like that. Spot still is good. So
Speaker 1: old spots can be good, definitely. Animals don't know how
Speaker 1: much time went by. I think there's I think they're
Speaker 1: cyclical too, you know, spots. I think they get popular
Speaker 1: with guys, they start to get hit hard. Animals maybe
Speaker 1: move out a little bit, or you get a little nocturnal,
Speaker 1: and then all of sudd everybody's like, there's a lot sucks,
Speaker 1: and then you roll in, you know, to you it's
Speaker 1: like Nirvana because he's rolling. There's nobody there. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: happens even in the side of the season. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like people going hit up a spot. They might
Speaker 1: have drawn a limited entry tag and people are hunting it.
Speaker 1: That happened us last year. There was just a ton
Speaker 1: of pressure on this spot and everybody bailed because the
Speaker 1: elk was shut down. Because the human pressure definitely affects,
Speaker 1: you know, how vocal the elk are. My buddy felt
Speaker 1: like there was no elk to be found. We'd drawn
Speaker 1: the tag sort on his preference points. We said, all right, well,
Speaker 1: you know, go home. I'll hunt the coast instead, and
Speaker 1: we we bailed out of there. And then a friend
Speaker 1: of mine told me later who knew some guys from
Speaker 1: Roseberg that I'd that I'd run into there and said, oh,
Speaker 1: you guys are going back to the coast and I
Speaker 1: have fun shooting your little five point We'll be here
Speaker 1: chasing these big bulls. And and I talked to my
Speaker 1: buddy ties Stubblefield actually, and he he told me, yeah,
Speaker 1: I talked to him that. You know, they elk lit
Speaker 1: up like two days later. For the last four days
Speaker 1: of the season, everybody bailed out of there and the
Speaker 1: pressure got lighter in the elk. Just yeah, I got
Speaker 1: fired up again. Conversely, I got a friend he's passed
Speaker 1: away now, but he uh was up in the tobacco
Speaker 1: or roote mountains and just you know, stumbled onto herd
Speaker 1: helt on the hillside. And that dude could never get
Speaker 1: it out of his head. And like when he went
Speaker 1: out hunting, his elk hunt was the goal and be
Speaker 1: like nope, not there, go back to this truck. I
Speaker 1: mean for years he just had it was like you
Speaker 1: check they're either they're or not out there, and then
Speaker 1: you know later I was sin I think that just
Speaker 1: one day someone bumps the milk and they wand up
Speaker 1: on the hills. I'm taking that approach before. We just
Speaker 1: can't you can't shake it that you've seen an animal there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was just like it haunted him. Man, it was
Speaker 1: just he just like the idea of him on that slope. Um.
Speaker 1: The other day, I had to go down to Kansas
Speaker 1: to do a I was like given a talk to
Speaker 1: all the people to teach hunter's ed in Kansas. And
Speaker 1: I get off the plane and spend about an hour
Speaker 1: driving behind a dude who's got a thing. Um, I'd
Speaker 1: rather be shooting Yankees, remember that, which is particularly offensive
Speaker 1: to me having lived in four northern tier states. Um,
Speaker 1: But I went to this thing like and and I'm
Speaker 1: getting to talk to the hunting need instructors. There's Separate
Speaker 1: hundred up there, and this guy asked me a question
Speaker 1: about what's my thoughts on eating bullet lead right letting meat?
Speaker 1: And I go to and we get talking about X
Speaker 1: rays that they're kind of floating around online where they
Speaker 1: they'll shoot an animal with a you know, a jacket
Speaker 1: and lead bullet, and then looking where all the lead
Speaker 1: winds up in the carcass um because it gets into
Speaker 1: little fragments, getting the vascular system and wind up being
Speaker 1: far removed from the wound channel and it hits bone
Speaker 1: and breaks off and gets sent off in various directions.
Speaker 1: And he's actually are floating around you look like you
Speaker 1: look at something that's been hitting the shoulder, and I
Speaker 1: mean there's bits lead nine ten inches out from there.
Speaker 1: And when I started looking at those pictures and a
Speaker 1: friend who's a big anti lead advocate, Um, he's he's
Speaker 1: a biologist. I'll give him some credit, but big anti
Speaker 1: led guy he's the one that sent it to me,
Speaker 1: and he's kind of like disbelief that people are eating
Speaker 1: his stuff. Other people I know. This is all something
Speaker 1: we conversed about other people I know, UM say that
Speaker 1: that the way that is it's inert. Your body doesn't
Speaker 1: dissolve that led down. He just passed it out. A
Speaker 1: guy commented how he'd been eating the old guy. He's
Speaker 1: in his seventies. He's been eating wild game his entire life, sauce.
Speaker 1: I can't even imagine how many shotgun pellets I've eaten.
Speaker 1: He went in and asked his doctor to test his lad.
Speaker 1: He said, they don't even test lead. He may like.
Speaker 1: He insisted that someone tests has led and he had,
Speaker 1: you know, like wherever the I feel like he was
Speaker 1: telling me like high lead is point to something or whatever.
Speaker 1: And he didn't even have like detectable levels. So he's like,
Speaker 1: if you're if you're gonna happen, it gonna happen to me.
Speaker 1: We have this big conversation. So after I give the talk,
Speaker 1: this old timer comes up to me and uh establishes
Speaker 1: his credentials in the field of lead by explaining that
Speaker 1: he was a twenty five years like a munitions guy
Speaker 1: in the military, and uh, he starts telling me that
Speaker 1: it's all this whole thing about lead is bs about
Speaker 1: lead ammo. Okay, did lead ammo um and shot pellets
Speaker 1: and stuff like that doesn't affect wildlife. Um, it's not
Speaker 1: soluble in that form, just passes through your system. That
Speaker 1: it was all the larkey when the steel shot, you know,
Speaker 1: when the lead the lead shot band for Federal Migratory
Speaker 1: Waterfall went into play. And he had a point to me.
Speaker 1: He says, how many times have you opened up a
Speaker 1: gizzard in your life off a ducker goose and found
Speaker 1: a pellet in it? And I got thinking about it
Speaker 1: and it had never happened. And he said, been hunting
Speaker 1: water found my whole life and never seen a pellet
Speaker 1: in there. And he pointed out that now you can't
Speaker 1: use lead. Let me back up clarify that when what
Speaker 1: year was it the lead band eighty I remember I
Speaker 1: was already hunting when it went into effect. Um. They
Speaker 1: they phased it out over the final few years of
Speaker 1: the eighties, and I think ninety one was the first
Speaker 1: year when nobody could hunt migratory birds with lead shot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they had ducks and geese pick up um grit
Speaker 1: for their crop, you know, and uh, they pick up
Speaker 1: gravel and it goes into crop and they don't have
Speaker 1: a stomach or not like you think. So when they
Speaker 1: eat food, what am I trying to send me? Back? Up?
Speaker 1: Pick up grit for their gizzard goes in their gizzard.
Speaker 1: So when a when a bird eats, he his food
Speaker 1: going to his crop. Then from his crop, it goes
Speaker 1: down to his gizzard and the gizzards just like this
Speaker 1: muscle that squeezes, and it's full of rocks, and uh,
Speaker 1: the rocks pulverized the food. They build their digestive system
Speaker 1: basically by eating grind up whatever they eat, and then
Speaker 1: they grind up materials eventually gets so ground up that
Speaker 1: this passed through the bird. That's why I see different
Speaker 1: times a day, you know, I see grouse or doves
Speaker 1: or any number of things feeding on the side of
Speaker 1: the road, just pecking around. There's going to get gravel
Speaker 1: um waterfowl, the argument goes, and we'll get into the
Speaker 1: truth of this or not waterfall picks up shot lead
Speaker 1: shot as grit, and then they would get lead poisoning
Speaker 1: and it would cause the birds to get lethargic and die.
Speaker 1: So in the late eighties early nineties, for because waterfalls
Speaker 1: managed on the federal level, a federal ban on using
Speaker 1: lead shot went into effect. I remember that happened as
Speaker 1: a kid, and I remember guys quit, remember like guys
Speaker 1: quit hunting over the lead issue. And and to clarify,
Speaker 1: it really raised its head in the mid seventies, like
Speaker 1: in and with groups demanding an environmental impact statement four
Speaker 1: UM the federal Waterfowl regulations. And then in seventy six
Speaker 1: they issued an environmental impact statement that addressed this, and
Speaker 1: they began to impose restrictions on certain areas and lead shot,
Speaker 1: and that raised sort of the specter of, you know,
Speaker 1: it was lead eventually going to go away. And then
Speaker 1: in the late UM, I think in eight five or
Speaker 1: eighty six, there was an amended environmental Impact statement that
Speaker 1: really addressed um, sort of the secondary effects of lead.
Speaker 1: And that was basically there was a suit that claimed
Speaker 1: that the environmental impact statement UH that addressed the impact
Speaker 1: of lead on waterfowl didn't address the impact of eagles
Speaker 1: eating waterfoul poisoned by lead and so sort of the
Speaker 1: secondary effects of lead. And so that's what really led
Speaker 1: to the eventual Okay, leads eventually gonna go away, and
Speaker 1: then they began to slowly phase it out. They're led Zeppelin, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so by it was done, Yeah, guys got pissed because
Speaker 1: lead maintains its know, it's heavier, so it maintains its velocity.
Speaker 1: And when people got done with lead, every went to steal,
Speaker 1: which is much lighter. Now there's all kinds of other
Speaker 1: stuff that's really expensive, but people are pissed because crippling loss.
Speaker 1: Most people anecdotally felt that crippling loss was much higher
Speaker 1: shooting steal than the lead. Um. It was a controversial
Speaker 1: move and people felt that the science wasn't there. And
Speaker 1: this guy was pointing out that not only was the
Speaker 1: science there, but the birds aren't picking it up anyway.
Speaker 1: This is just a dude on the street, okay telling
Speaker 1: me this. So after I had this conversation, I checked
Speaker 1: in with a couple of biologist friends who were um
Speaker 1: who weren't of age at that time. Right, So they
Speaker 1: work on waterfowl want in particular, my friend Brand works
Speaker 1: on waterfowl now. But you know, he's young, he doesn't
Speaker 1: he wasn't involved with that at the time, and he
Speaker 1: just operates and and he substantiates it, but he just
Speaker 1: operates under the assumption that you know, it was a
Speaker 1: good move. What do you get. I mean, the reason
Speaker 1: it's important now or the reason I'm starting to wonder
Speaker 1: about it now, is because he has so many issues
Speaker 1: now with guys being worried about humans and justin lead
Speaker 1: and gave me, did anybody find a study on how
Speaker 1: much lead you have to ingest for it to be damaging?
Speaker 1: So I found studies on on birds, you know, how
Speaker 1: how much lead a bird would have an assystem before
Speaker 1: they really felt like it was impacting the birds psycho
Speaker 1: psychological state, and that they talked about birds how they
Speaker 1: kind of go crazy if they have too much lead.
Speaker 1: And I don't remember what the actually was, Yeah, like
Speaker 1: point one or something that it starts to impact, but
Speaker 1: it has to be like point six for it to
Speaker 1: really be fatal, you know, something something like Yeah, I
Speaker 1: remember this guy was saying he had his lead check
Speaker 1: that was that's why he had his led check to
Speaker 1: his point too. Yeah, and um, maybe like two, I
Speaker 1: can't remember what the hell he was saying. It's point
Speaker 1: six where it really starts dangerous, Like dangerous was at
Speaker 1: a certain level. Yeah, I mean I looked into some
Speaker 1: of this, especially with the the recent events in Michigan,
Speaker 1: sort of the history of of lead poisoning, right, I mean, no,
Speaker 1: it's it's an often lead it's already been like soluble. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: it's a different I mean it's a different case. But
Speaker 1: just thing about, um, the effects of lead on on
Speaker 1: the body. I guess I did some background reading and
Speaker 1: it was sort of interesting that, um, you know, the
Speaker 1: the the knowledge that lead is toxic to human beings
Speaker 1: is very old, but it's only sort of in the
Speaker 1: late twentieth century. That I mean, the idea of acute
Speaker 1: lead poisoning, um from like high levels of exposure. That
Speaker 1: that's old knowledge. Um, but the knowledge, but I guess
Speaker 1: the the recognition that small exposure was also dangerous is
Speaker 1: much more recent, like in the late twentieth century. Especially
Speaker 1: to kids. It's like subclinical levels of it. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: test like my kids, They test my kids for lead
Speaker 1: all the time. And when people get it, it it winds
Speaker 1: up being they're getting it from eating paint and they're
Speaker 1: eating dirt with this bend has a lot of lead
Speaker 1: in it from from when gasoline was leaded, right, soluble lead,
Speaker 1: you know, I just want to know, and I don't
Speaker 1: know because I've heard it from credible sources. Either way,
Speaker 1: I just want to know if there's ever been a
Speaker 1: case where fisherman, Now, I spent my whole life a
Speaker 1: split shot in my mouth, because that's where we store it.
Speaker 1: Like you're all fishing, you know, you're running three split
Speaker 1: shot and then you're in another area we should only
Speaker 1: had one to go in your mouth. Then you're in
Speaker 1: an area where you wish you had to. You pull
Speaker 1: one out of your mouth, put it on, clamp it
Speaker 1: with your teeth and your free line you got off,
Speaker 1: you know, and you're setting them on and off. It's
Speaker 1: like I grew up sucking on I've eaten. I don't
Speaker 1: know how many shotgun pellets, how many lead fragments? Right?
Speaker 1: Can anyone point to where a person got lead poisoning
Speaker 1: from any kind of hunting fishing related activities? Also, how
Speaker 1: documented is it that when birds and I'm not trying
Speaker 1: to be like, I'm not trying to be contrarying, how
Speaker 1: documented is that the ducks and geese that have high
Speaker 1: letter actually getting the lead from shot and not from
Speaker 1: industrial pollutants? Do you know I think it has to
Speaker 1: find a different set of experts to Uh, I'm not.
Speaker 1: I'm not because as far as I can tell, its
Speaker 1: almost seems like unanswerable. How would you even how would
Speaker 1: you even be able to observe them, you know, being migratory,
Speaker 1: actually ingesting, and how they were eating lead versus eating
Speaker 1: This guy was telling me, Yeah, they got lead poisoning,
Speaker 1: they got head poisoning from industrial pollutants. Yeah, soluble lead.
Speaker 1: You know, he's saying they're not getting it from picking
Speaker 1: up your number six shot. That's what he's claiming to me.
Speaker 1: He said, you're passing that stuff. The turn to steel
Speaker 1: isn't the only variable. They're like, the unleaded gas has
Speaker 1: certainly changed, you know, the switched unleaded gas has certainly
Speaker 1: changed the amount of lead, which which contemporaneous. I remember
Speaker 1: being in high school and dudes having to go by
Speaker 1: like dudes. This dude I grew up with, Brian Peterson.
Speaker 1: He had to go by lead to put as their
Speaker 1: phasing now leading gas stations. He had to go buy
Speaker 1: a lead additive to run his old ass car. Huh.
Speaker 1: So that that was his claim And I'm not posing
Speaker 1: it like you're supposed to know the answer. But the
Speaker 1: reason it's significant is I've hundred in areas in California.
Speaker 1: You can't use lead, right, you can't use lead bullets
Speaker 1: the condor zone. And it's because they are like those
Speaker 1: things are getting lead poisoning from eating, carrying from and
Speaker 1: that is proven science. Well, it's proven that they have.
Speaker 1: Here's your thing. This guy was telling me, you can't
Speaker 1: detect when you can tell something has been poisoned, you
Speaker 1: can tell it's been poisoned by heavy metals. You can't
Speaker 1: necessarily he was saying, you can't necessarily tell that it's
Speaker 1: lead has heavy metal poisoning. He blames it on industrial
Speaker 1: discharge and things like leaded gasoline, industrial discharge and all
Speaker 1: these other causes. And he's saying, rather than address these causes,
Speaker 1: people have put their focus that it somehow has to
Speaker 1: do with lead ammunition. When tuna, right, and other things
Speaker 1: have some of these those things have high heavy metals
Speaker 1: or mercury, because are they eating shot? Is someone shooting
Speaker 1: tunas with? Let you know? It's I don't understand. So
Speaker 1: I did read about a ban on lead sinkers in
Speaker 1: Great Britain. Is ridiculous to me, and uh, but but
Speaker 1: I guess, and and this is just from reading the
Speaker 1: literature and no real you know, detail knowledge of it,
Speaker 1: but I guess there was a documented um boom in
Speaker 1: in this particular Swan population that was effected that led
Speaker 1: to this band. It was yeah, it was like sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: like these these particulars, don't they know how to put
Speaker 1: the split shot on this particular It sounds like they
Speaker 1: need to have like a like a public service annalysment
Speaker 1: about crimping it on better. I don't know, um they
Speaker 1: but they they they when they switched. When they switched,
Speaker 1: it was like the number of these Swans bumped up
Speaker 1: by like thirty eight percent or something. That was the
Speaker 1: statistic that I read. And and yeah, again it was
Speaker 1: just sort of some background reading. But yeah, but I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, you could read that a thousand ways. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I like, I hate listening to myself right now because
Speaker 1: I sound like the incredulous old geezer who hates change
Speaker 1: and like acts like expertise, is sup. I sound like
Speaker 1: like Donald Trump, right, like experts. I don't need experts
Speaker 1: tell me what I know. You know, I know the
Speaker 1: sun rises. So there's a difference between not believing everything
Speaker 1: you read and and not believing things that that you
Speaker 1: don't agree with. Yeah, I told Yanni a quote one time.
Speaker 1: Tell the quote I told you, or did you forget?
Speaker 1: I forgot. Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect. I
Speaker 1: can't remember who said it. It's good though, it's yeah,
Speaker 1: So I'm trying. I've always carried around an assumption. For
Speaker 1: a while, I switched and stop shooting lead bullets, started
Speaker 1: shooting monolithic bullets, pure copper. People are going in that
Speaker 1: direction anyway. But for a while I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'll shoot these. It's a little different. You gotta you know,
Speaker 1: you generally kind of hold a little bit different and
Speaker 1: makes everything different. I always like bonded bullets, and I'm
Speaker 1: kind of shooting him again. There Day I got a
Speaker 1: email from a friend of mine who's a um a biologist,
Speaker 1: highly educated in the natural sciences, very avid hunter, and
Speaker 1: sent me a thing about uh Oregonians use of lead,
Speaker 1: sort of survey about people's relationships with lead ammunition. He
Speaker 1: was very upset. I'm been hunting with this guy to spring. UM.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think. I gotta check my amy because
Speaker 1: I don't want to show up with lead ami because
Speaker 1: but I'm hunt with him a spring, but just distraught.
Speaker 1: These like that, our fellow casadors, for you non Spanish
Speaker 1: speaking folks that Spanish for hunter are littering the landscape
Speaker 1: and littering their food with this stuff. And I just
Speaker 1: don't know if it's like true or not. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know what what sort of an effect it has.
Speaker 1: But when you think about the numbers of um, you know,
Speaker 1: lad the you know, prior to the steel shot, you
Speaker 1: think about the number of the amount of lead that
Speaker 1: was pumped over like pothole lakes and things like that,
Speaker 1: I mean thousands of tons. Mosquegon's day game area right
Speaker 1: grew up, you'd go out on an open day and
Speaker 1: shoot a cull box and shells. I mean it's like
Speaker 1: raining shot. Yeah, and just what landed in my hat?
Speaker 1: We've been enough to kill somebody. And each bang is
Speaker 1: is announcing announcing a night. You know, Uh, there's a whole,
Speaker 1: there's a whole another component of this issue that's sort
Speaker 1: of coming light. I was reading a research article about
Speaker 1: the impacts gun clubs and and studies that they've done
Speaker 1: on gun clubs. Because environmentalists are now coming after gun clubs,
Speaker 1: you know, over putting lead into the ground, and this
Speaker 1: guy right right, well, so this so this, so this
Speaker 1: study Actually, you know, I think there's things that seem
Speaker 1: like they're more legitimate and grounded in science and the
Speaker 1: arguments environmentalists make, and then there's other things that are
Speaker 1: just irrational and emotional base because they're just really going
Speaker 1: after whatever issue because of some polarization of their politics
Speaker 1: or whatever it might be. But this particular study, they
Speaker 1: were looking at the impacts around the gun club and
Speaker 1: they found at least as far as the water goes,
Speaker 1: that that lead doesn't go very far. That type of lead,
Speaker 1: it can't go very far. So they found that it
Speaker 1: did impact the top two inches of soil, but nothing
Speaker 1: nothing else. But so this study, I rn was too so.
Speaker 1: And and again I think one of the difficulties I
Speaker 1: have and really forming an opinion about this, other than
Speaker 1: talking to biologists like you've had the opportunity to do,
Speaker 1: is it's hard looking around at the internet and hearing
Speaker 1: these to really discern. And that's something that sounds like
Speaker 1: the the military person you talked to was getting out
Speaker 1: a little bit. Also, it's like it's hard to discern
Speaker 1: how much of this is somebody's like opinion or an
Speaker 1: emotional opinion, and how much of it is actually grounded
Speaker 1: in science. And even when you look at scientific articles,
Speaker 1: it's still they still sort of seem to have oftentimes
Speaker 1: a bit of an angle. So I guess about But
Speaker 1: I think that here's kind of where I'm going. Where
Speaker 1: I'm going on it is. I don't think we're done
Speaker 1: making mistakes. We all laugh now, Like I'll tell the
Speaker 1: story recently that my dad had uh got shot in
Speaker 1: the foot with a shotgun, and he would go to
Speaker 1: shoe stores to show people the pellets in his foot,
Speaker 1: and they would X ray your foot in the shoe store,
Speaker 1: see if your shoe fit right. Okay, So everybody's standing
Speaker 1: around a shoe store all day long, no protection, X
Speaker 1: raying people's feet the shoe salesman guy. Right, We now
Speaker 1: realize that that's not a good idea to be exposed
Speaker 1: to that level. Okay, So we're not done making these mistakes.
Speaker 1: We laugh now, like the way they used to. My
Speaker 1: dad said when he was again my old man was
Speaker 1: when he was in the army, they put cigarettes in
Speaker 1: your rations when he was stationed. When he was in
Speaker 1: World War two. I think he said that three cigarettes
Speaker 1: and you see you rashing each meal, so we now
Speaker 1: laugh like ha ha. Can you believe that they didn't know?
Speaker 1: We're not done making mistakes right I'm in full agreement.
Speaker 1: We're making them right now, and our kids will be like,
Speaker 1: can you believe those sons of it is used to X?
Speaker 1: And it's us right now at this table. So in
Speaker 1: some way, I'm like, Okay, if there is all the
Speaker 1: hysteria and some people are sitting around and saying like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but you can't totally don't really know. You can't totally
Speaker 1: prove you don't really know. At what point are you
Speaker 1: being like Big Tobacco, who probably is still arguing that
Speaker 1: cigarettes are fine, you know, for the NFL, and that
Speaker 1: concussions don't matter. It's like, at some point, um the
Speaker 1: tide turns, and you know, I want it. I don't
Speaker 1: want to like stop doing something because it just works
Speaker 1: so good and then be down the road like the
Speaker 1: I who is the lated doctor. But the other hand,
Speaker 1: I don't want to be like I don't want to
Speaker 1: be misled led misled. I suppose in the end, you
Speaker 1: just have to be open to reality when it comes
Speaker 1: to you. Yeah, right, Yeah, I think this is one
Speaker 1: of those issues too that um, you know, there's a
Speaker 1: tendency I think too if you don't necessarily agree with something,
Speaker 1: or you're on the other side of the issue, you
Speaker 1: begin to um misrepresent the intentions of the other side, right,
Speaker 1: And I think an example, well, I guess, like, um,
Speaker 1: in a recent podcast, you had a letter from a
Speaker 1: listener who's talking about the reintroduction of wolves as a
Speaker 1: um a ploy, right, or that the intance pushed for
Speaker 1: the wolf reintroduction as a way to disarm America because
Speaker 1: the wolves would eat all of the game and everyone
Speaker 1: would be like, well, fucket and sell their guns. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean here's someone else. I mean, or I guess
Speaker 1: in his mind that they would destroy him in a
Speaker 1: way like not they could, they sold me, they'd still
Speaker 1: be in existence. But it was just a way to
Speaker 1: get to disarm America. And I'm like, you know, the
Speaker 1: wolf reintroduction was controversial. That seems like a very roundabout
Speaker 1: way disarming. And I mean that that guy, that guy's
Speaker 1: you know, he's he's allowed, he's fully entitled to his credit.
Speaker 1: I gotta give credit. He was saying that his buddy buddy,
Speaker 1: buddy thinks that, and he was wanting to find a
Speaker 1: way to articulate to his buddy why that's probably not true. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: we won't. So yeah, we won't. We won't pay him
Speaker 1: into that box. But um, you know that that guy
Speaker 1: is fully entitled to his to his belief that wolf
Speaker 1: Ree introduction was a bad idea. But it doesn't change
Speaker 1: the fact that there were decades of um biological studies
Speaker 1: and scientific studies that led up to that decision. And
Speaker 1: there's a documented history of of what the um So
Speaker 1: you know, if the Clintons were to go back in
Speaker 1: time and and uh and and create this ploy, I mean,
Speaker 1: and and the other thing too, I guess is that, um,
Speaker 1: the initial intention behind certain policies can be subverted by
Speaker 1: other groups or can be used to further other agendas.
Speaker 1: That doesn't necessarily mean that that policy was bad from
Speaker 1: the get go, right, or that it was all part
Speaker 1: of one conspiracy. So um, yeah, that person could say, um,
Speaker 1: I don't agree with wolf reintroduction, and I don't think
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton has gun friendly right, but he's like, and
Speaker 1: he's like, but I go to tie those two things
Speaker 1: to Yeah, yeah, So I mean it's one of those.
Speaker 1: I think. I think the lead issue is UM is
Speaker 1: one that that's sort of ah lends itself to that
Speaker 1: sort of a a polarization, right because as you say, UM,
Speaker 1: there are groups out there trying to shut down shooting
Speaker 1: ranges because of this threat UM and and obviously it's
Speaker 1: there's some debate as to how much of a threat
Speaker 1: it poses to human health, but they're trying to shut
Speaker 1: down shooting ranges, and so that is construed then as
Speaker 1: an attack on larger issues. UM. But I think there
Speaker 1: are certain things that we have to agree on, and
Speaker 1: one is that lead can be toxic and it's not
Speaker 1: good for you, and uh so, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think I think at some point you have to
Speaker 1: come to an agreement on the fundamentals of a particular
Speaker 1: issue before you begin. Is I have an enormous cash
Speaker 1: Like if I was ever get in trouble, they raided
Speaker 1: in my house, they'd be like huge cashing animal. I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: you know it looks like that, but let's let's just
Speaker 1: say he had always practice with your lead animals. What
Speaker 1: are you gonna do? You still out there? It's really
Speaker 1: unfortunate in issues almost any issue that people are passionate
Speaker 1: about that. The polar opposites caused people in the middle
Speaker 1: to feel like there's no truth. You know, It's like,
Speaker 1: that's what you're talking about. It's like, you know, people
Speaker 1: trying to shut down shooting ranges, and so then people
Speaker 1: are like, oh, people are trying to shut down shooting ranges.
Speaker 1: Then you know, there's no way that bullets are killing condors,
Speaker 1: led bullets are killing condors. Like even though there's science,
Speaker 1: people just sort of throw it all out the window
Speaker 1: because they feel like, right exactly, I'll point out that
Speaker 1: the gentleman who I spoke with, uh what alerted me
Speaker 1: to buyas is he used the term eco fascists. So
Speaker 1: then I'm like, okay, that's that. That ruins the rhetoric, right.
Speaker 1: It's like when when someone says me like they're talking
Speaker 1: about like some aspect of of liberals they don't like,
Speaker 1: and they go, yeah, the libtards, it just shuts me down.
Speaker 1: I'm like, you know what, I'd probably like, honestly, I
Speaker 1: probably would want up agreeing with you on whatever it
Speaker 1: is you're talking about. But the fact that he just
Speaker 1: used that term makes it very difficult for me to
Speaker 1: carry on this conversation because I would hate for another
Speaker 1: version of you to typify my perspectives as right wing fanatic.
Speaker 1: You know, It's like I just I can't stand it
Speaker 1: coming from either direction. Yeah, I can't stand that kind
Speaker 1: of Yeah, like the eco fascists. I'm like, hey, it
Speaker 1: might not be it might be a dude who knows
Speaker 1: a lot about heavy metals, and it's I mean, that's
Speaker 1: who it is. I mean, and that's who it is, right,
Speaker 1: It's there. They're scientists out there who have spent their
Speaker 1: entire professional lives studying these issues and trying to arrive
Speaker 1: at some conclusion. I mean, they're there, uh, ostensibly performing
Speaker 1: a public service, right, and so to to sort of
Speaker 1: paint them into this corner and say they're they have
Speaker 1: this agenda and they're attempting to wipe out hunting as
Speaker 1: we know it, it's just not a very One of
Speaker 1: the things that you run into that also though, is
Speaker 1: unfortunately the biologists in the end are ultimately the ones
Speaker 1: making the laws, right, So there are people that may
Speaker 1: or may not know as much about those issues that
Speaker 1: don't spend their whole life it's just investing everything and
Speaker 1: whatever that issue is. Then you've got some Natural Resources
Speaker 1: committee that spends thirty minutes on something that says, you know,
Speaker 1: you know whatever, done pound to gather and that's it.
Speaker 1: And they vote along party lines anyways in some in
Speaker 1: some respect right now, like both my brothers are a cologists. Okay,
Speaker 1: they like did biology and went into a cology specifically,
Speaker 1: you know, and they operate under like what seems to
Speaker 1: be like a scientific version of the hippocratic oath. I
Speaker 1: don't know the hypocratic goals, Like doctors take it right
Speaker 1: and they like pledged to do no harm, to do
Speaker 1: no harm when they're research yourself, and they research a
Speaker 1: lot of things, um. Each of the one deals with
Speaker 1: aquatic invertebrates and fish more and one deals with plant
Speaker 1: ecosystems more um. But they'll be telling you about something
Speaker 1: they're looking into cause and effect, causal relationships. Whatever it
Speaker 1: could be with environmental plutants, could be with one of
Speaker 1: my brothers right now is working on why answers to
Speaker 1: why it's hard to get sage brush and other plants too.
Speaker 1: Come back after when you're doing coal mine remediation, so
Speaker 1: you do a coal a surface coal mine, and then
Speaker 1: if you're obligated then to bring the land back to
Speaker 1: some usable form. They find that it's very difficult to
Speaker 1: re establish plant communities, certain plant communities, more difficult than
Speaker 1: if the coal mine would or wouldn't have been there.
Speaker 1: That's what they like to get it back to the
Speaker 1: way you left it, right. What if there wasn't What
Speaker 1: if there wasn't a coal mine and they just went
Speaker 1: and it was just some other parcel of land that
Speaker 1: they did something with and now they have to, you know,
Speaker 1: bring that back. I don't know he's probably able to
Speaker 1: answer that, but that's what he's working because when they
Speaker 1: do a coal mine, they you're you're bonding it, right,
Speaker 1: So you're putting down a chunk of money that's held
Speaker 1: by a governing agency and it gets given back to
Speaker 1: you once your remediation is done. So you've done the
Speaker 1: mind you bring top soil back in re established playing community,
Speaker 1: and it's supposed to be you know, as good or better.
Speaker 1: And the regulations used to be less strict. Let's they
Speaker 1: used to be able to do grass. Okay, it was
Speaker 1: easy to do that. Um Now in certain areas are
Speaker 1: like you know, sage brush is something we're losing, Like
Speaker 1: we're losing acreage of sage brush at an alarming rate. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: when people do coal mine remediation where you've tore up
Speaker 1: a community of a shrub community that contains like sage brush,
Speaker 1: your other things, rab buck brush, and part of your
Speaker 1: task is like, Okay, after the mining is done, it's
Speaker 1: gonna go back to a stage brush community. Very difficult
Speaker 1: to get that to happen. Okay, So he works on that.
Speaker 1: Another builder of mind works on a lot of issues
Speaker 1: haven do with a Nadramus fish, so water quality things,
Speaker 1: climate change issues, and they'll be working on something. I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: what do you hope happens? Like, what do you hope
Speaker 1: you find out? They don't think of it that way.
Speaker 1: The guy that's not my job is going to have
Speaker 1: a hope about what happens, or I don't hope that
Speaker 1: it's caused by this, or hope that's caused by that.
Speaker 1: My job is just to try to answer, like what
Speaker 1: is the issue? Right? Completely ruined the scientists. Yeah, It's
Speaker 1: like I think there are a lot of people out
Speaker 1: there working on things who aren't like I know how
Speaker 1: to get them hunters. Yeah, but they don't. They're like
Speaker 1: I'm trying to in the best way possible deliver you
Speaker 1: factual information that policymakers can then you is to twist
Speaker 1: and turn however they want to get their policy. I
Speaker 1: don't think that's their whole. Their hope is that I
Speaker 1: I can tell you this. Yeah, my brother dated a
Speaker 1: bunch of my He did a bunch of work out
Speaker 1: at Bristol Bay, stuff having to do with pebble mind.
Speaker 1: No one asked him like, hey, dude, what do you
Speaker 1: think about pebble mind? Do you like it or not?
Speaker 1: He he wouldn't even go near that topic. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: the persons what lives in what lives in this river?
Speaker 1: I can tell you what lives in that river. I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna tell you what I think about pebble minya
Speaker 1: about damn? Sure tell you that this, this, and this
Speaker 1: and this is in that river. Do these things, you know,
Speaker 1: how do they respond to certain impacts. I'll try to
Speaker 1: spell that out and tell it to you, But I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna tell you what I think about the mind.
Speaker 1: It's not my job. My job is to give you
Speaker 1: information and hope that it gets, you know, use it
Speaker 1: a sensible way. Yeah, and I think, um, you know,
Speaker 1: recognizing that it's not to say that, Um, people don't
Speaker 1: bring their own. But I mean science certainly is shaped
Speaker 1: by a certain by Like it's a certain type of
Speaker 1: person that's gonna follow that path and become a biologist,
Speaker 1: so they probably do. You know. It's it's it's less
Speaker 1: likely that someone who hates the natural world is going
Speaker 1: to become an ecologist, right, And so there are certain
Speaker 1: there are certain larger biases, but um, to recognize those
Speaker 1: maybe biases or the predisposition of of you know, people
Speaker 1: like your brother, Um isn't to just throw it all
Speaker 1: out the window, right, I mean there's a middle ground,
Speaker 1: and I think that's um. Yeah, it's too too often
Speaker 1: people say either the science is purely objective or it's
Speaker 1: purely biased, and I think, like you can recognize that
Speaker 1: it's it's more complicated than that. Yeah, I would think that,
Speaker 1: Like you said, like they both got into what they
Speaker 1: do because they like they grew up hunting fishing, and
Speaker 1: it introduced them to the natural world. But they always
Speaker 1: have that perspective and they still hunting fish. You know,
Speaker 1: you could have they could be sitting next to someone
Speaker 1: at a desk who grew up because their parents like
Speaker 1: to hang out at national parks and we're big Sierra
Speaker 1: Club folks, and they might have a purely antagonistic feeling
Speaker 1: towards hunting and fishing right that they're like they believe
Speaker 1: in like passive involvement with the natural world, like we're
Speaker 1: not out there as players on it um. Fundamentally, they're
Speaker 1: gonna look at stuff different differently. Doesn't mean when you
Speaker 1: put your if your biologists, when you put your biologists
Speaker 1: had on that you don't have to set those things
Speaker 1: aside and focus on what's factual. But it's probably very
Speaker 1: difficult to that. I'm sure it is. It is, but
Speaker 1: I think right along with that, oh if most of
Speaker 1: the scientists you know, my wife included, like they're they're
Speaker 1: always open to being proven wrong, like it's okay you know,
Speaker 1: for their research and stuff that to be done. And
Speaker 1: even though you said those things, yeah, these things are
Speaker 1: like you said with the river, like yes, this stuff
Speaker 1: in this river is doing this, this and this and this.
Speaker 1: If someone else redid the research and put it in
Speaker 1: a different way, and you know, had a different control
Speaker 1: group and disproved it, your brother would be like, oh, yes,
Speaker 1: you opened my mind and let's move forward, you know.
Speaker 1: So that's why that's why I has to be given
Speaker 1: there to that, the fact that they're open to that change.
Speaker 1: You know, human knowledge is an ongoing process. That's what
Speaker 1: my old man would get so frustrated with ideas of
Speaker 1: human evolution or the African diaspora because people be like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, they found a new thing to sort of rewrite. See. See,
Speaker 1: that's why none of this matters because they used to
Speaker 1: say this. They say that. I'm like, yes, no one
Speaker 1: ever said, no one ever wrote down the definitive answer
Speaker 1: that will last all time. Right, It's just you just
Speaker 1: adding bits of knowledge as you go along, and it's
Speaker 1: a dynamic changing picture. In my own lifetime, like I
Speaker 1: just have a personal curiosity about the peopling of the
Speaker 1: New World. Right, So, who were the first people to
Speaker 1: show up in New World in North America? When do
Speaker 1: they get here? How they get here? Right? My understanding
Speaker 1: of that in my own lifetime has changed dramatically. Still
Speaker 1: kind of the basic story. But I never fell in
Speaker 1: love with one explanation. I just kind of follow what
Speaker 1: people are thinking. Rather than feeling frustrated by the fact
Speaker 1: that it changes all the time. It just like makes
Speaker 1: it feel like an engaging process. Yeah, you know, but
Speaker 1: some people do really fall in love with a version,
Speaker 1: and they're antagonistic toward a new version, which could be
Speaker 1: my body the lead guy. Yeah, Well, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you know, read up on this subject. It just really
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like there's a lot out there. So I
Speaker 1: think that's kind of nice. This the Oregon stuff that
Speaker 1: that you are biologist friends share with us. At at
Speaker 1: least that's current, you know, that's in. They're doing some
Speaker 1: work on that, you know, so hopefully we'll know more soon.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm shooting non toxic water. Following the meantime,
Speaker 1: I'm shooting uh toxic no jacket bullets. Man shoot jacket
Speaker 1: his bullets. Do you guys make any lead knives that bench, No,
Speaker 1: we don't. We don't make any. I can't say that
Speaker 1: we don't that there's not leading in our products. I
Speaker 1: I don't know, you know, I can speak to that
Speaker 1: we don't have We don't make toxic We don't intentionally
Speaker 1: make toxic lead knives. No, you know what you were
Speaker 1: telling me, this changed subject a little bit. I was
Speaker 1: asking why Bench may never make why you guys don't
Speaker 1: do file at knives? Explain that so like, what's up
Speaker 1: with the knife? So we we have looked at it,
Speaker 1: and we actually used to have this line called Red
Speaker 1: Class that everybody hated because it was an import line
Speaker 1: and they're like, what the you know after you guys
Speaker 1: doing this, Like, you guys are American, an American made
Speaker 1: knife company, and that's what makes you great. Right, So
Speaker 1: we we started did away with that, but those file
Speaker 1: At knives were always they're kind of coveted people like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, Nail's old Red Class file At Knives laying
Speaker 1: around And we were able to make file At knives
Speaker 1: then because they were forty five dollars and there seems
Speaker 1: to be I mean, when we make products the way
Speaker 1: bench Baid makes products, we make products and we shoot
Speaker 1: for like maximum performance. Right, So so we're using laser
Speaker 1: cutters to cut steels because we're using steels are too
Speaker 1: hard to stamp and and everything that we're shooting for
Speaker 1: is all to maximize value, like at a high level
Speaker 1: to the end users. So then we try to figure
Speaker 1: out how to manufacture it. And because we look at
Speaker 1: things from a from a value and a performance standpoint,
Speaker 1: and then figure out the manufacturing the costco way up
Speaker 1: and with filet knives. They seem to be more of
Speaker 1: a disposable item, you know, they're like people don't want
Speaker 1: to pay generally more than seven is a lot. I
Speaker 1: don't well, I was. I spent a few years in
Speaker 1: Bristol Bay as a fishing guide and we had lots
Speaker 1: of filet knives on the flight table, and you know,
Speaker 1: you're cutting fish and then you just rip them through,
Speaker 1: not even like with reckless abandoned, pretty much just rip
Speaker 1: them through a sharpener. And then you get back to
Speaker 1: file at issh and you're you know, there's guts and
Speaker 1: parts flying everywhere, and and it's just not a fleet knife.
Speaker 1: Isn't something that has this like you have an affinity for.
Speaker 1: It's just like this, Yeah, you feel the same way
Speaker 1: most people do. And so we have to also be conscientious.
Speaker 1: So like this is the reason we make them, is
Speaker 1: for maximum performance, and if people don't want that, they're
Speaker 1: not willing to pay that price for it, then there's
Speaker 1: no reason for us to make it because if we do,
Speaker 1: it's just gonna flop. So no one's gonna buy a
Speaker 1: two knife. I'm not saying nobody's gonna buy a two
Speaker 1: but there are a lot more people that would buy
Speaker 1: other knives that we could make that like some of
Speaker 1: our other hunting products that they would be interested in. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so we have we also have you know, like
Speaker 1: you know, limited capacity in our factory, so we have
Speaker 1: to focus on the things that we know people are
Speaker 1: going to really widely adopt or accept. Not that we
Speaker 1: don't make specialized products. But as a kid and still today, um,
Speaker 1: you know, as a kid, I played thousands I mean
Speaker 1: I'm not exactly mean literally thousands of perch and blue
Speaker 1: gills with those rappola yeah, with a little soft pine
Speaker 1: handle with like some kind of lacquer on it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I still only one five volume rapaula like Filet knives,
Speaker 1: one of the biggest selling knife still to this day.
Speaker 1: Period knives. Yeah there, they were next enough, and we'd
Speaker 1: buy the one that had like a little short, like
Speaker 1: a six inch blade on it, and it was just
Speaker 1: like the go to perch knife. I later, when I
Speaker 1: got married, someone gave me a woost Off I think
Speaker 1: flay knife, which I didn't like because it's too whippy.
Speaker 1: You like a little more backbone. And yeah, I've generally
Speaker 1: flat fish with a eight inch boning knife. You're like
Speaker 1: those victor knocks. It's almost like a like scoops and
Speaker 1: it's almost like a disposable kind of knife, you know. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, flayfish at those but I don't know why. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But then with hunting knives it is true. Like with
Speaker 1: hunting knives, I'm real particular. But with flame eyes, I
Speaker 1: don't know, but I always thought maybe because there's no
Speaker 1: one made a souped up flame knife. Well, all, so
Speaker 1: you're leaving like your flay knife out on the cleaning
Speaker 1: table and you know, hosing it off and this and that.
Speaker 1: I feel like it's a way more utilitarian, you know,
Speaker 1: when you're done cleaning, fish, spray off the table, push
Speaker 1: all the knives to the side. People sharpener walk away. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't fetishize like you don't fetishize flame knife. No
Speaker 1: one ever gives you flynn ie and be like see
Speaker 1: that that was my grandpa's flat knife, but like that
Speaker 1: was my grandpa's hunting knife, like damn. And there's there's
Speaker 1: knife companies that are good at doing that, right, I
Speaker 1: mean you have to be you have to understand like
Speaker 1: what are we good at? You know, like like Dexter
Speaker 1: Russell they make the white handled ones dexter Russell's kind
Speaker 1: of what I figured so so, but those those are
Speaker 1: like combined, right, what do you mean combined? Like isn't
Speaker 1: dexter is dexter Russell and Force? Are they the same
Speaker 1: company to make the food services? I don't, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't have an answer that they make a very
Speaker 1: similar problems. Do you make similar products? But the enforceners
Speaker 1: are black hand. All the dexter Russells are white handed.
Speaker 1: And food service and guides and guides talk about, oh
Speaker 1: my boat knife. You know, most most guys in their boat,
Speaker 1: they'll have like a boat knife. But where's their boat
Speaker 1: knife go. It's like in the gunnal of their sled,
Speaker 1: the things sliding back and forth. It's just getting hammered.
Speaker 1: It's they take terrible care of it. And they will
Speaker 1: tell you, like, you guys got any Like I just
Speaker 1: had one of my buddies the other day, Like I
Speaker 1: need a boat knife. Like I don't really have a
Speaker 1: boat knife. I've got like d two steals and we've
Speaker 1: got steels are like I need a knife, I can
Speaker 1: just throw in my gunnale and you know, when I'm
Speaker 1: out in Booie Tan and the saltwater. It is just
Speaker 1: like you know, I do whatever I cut herring and
Speaker 1: it's like, dude, that that knife, the blade is gonna
Speaker 1: rust off and like, you know three seconds if you
Speaker 1: do that. And so they want a knife that cost
Speaker 1: forty five dollars. It has really high chromium, you know,
Speaker 1: and and not the and or chrome and doesn't have
Speaker 1: all the like high carbon in it, because that type
Speaker 1: of knife just turns to rust when you get it
Speaker 1: in a corrosive environment. So that's part of it too, right,
Speaker 1: It's like when they're beating the junk out of the
Speaker 1: knives to the steels that are generally more hostily that
Speaker 1: are going to perform better typically have high level levels
Speaker 1: of carbon in them, and so they don't do well
Speaker 1: in corrosive environments. Anyways, Why do why is it so
Speaker 1: hard to make knives that loves salt water? Well, if
Speaker 1: you're talking about a fixed blade knife, it's it's all
Speaker 1: to do. And I'm not a metallurgist, but it has
Speaker 1: everything to do with the chemistry of the of the
Speaker 1: steel itself, like the chemical makeup. We do actually have
Speaker 1: a steel that we get uh from an Austrian manufacturer
Speaker 1: called N six eight that, which is I guess sort
Speaker 1: of irrelevant what the number is. But N six eight
Speaker 1: has a has a really high content of the types
Speaker 1: of materials in the chemical makeup that allow for non
Speaker 1: corrosive non corrosive properties in the steel. Now, the tradeoff
Speaker 1: is typically if you drive up the anti corrosive properties
Speaker 1: in a blade, you will lose edge edge performance. Right,
Speaker 1: So it stills like yeah, because like stainless like no
Speaker 1: one ever makes a knife. It's just like is that
Speaker 1: behaves like stainless steel, right, So our hardest steels are
Speaker 1: not stainless at all, like we have. You have to
Speaker 1: code them or you have to put certain finishes on them,
Speaker 1: and people, I mean, you know, the people have to
Speaker 1: take care of the blades. Now, we also have semi
Speaker 1: stainless steels, and we do have like S THIRTV that's
Speaker 1: in all of these um hunting knives to hunt knives.
Speaker 1: That particular steel actually has a really great balance between
Speaker 1: corrosion resistance and edge retension and durability. But it will
Speaker 1: still I mean, like you can't just like gout an elk,
Speaker 1: you know, carve up a deer with it, you know,
Speaker 1: a quarter or something mount and throw it in your
Speaker 1: pack and not think about it for the next hunting
Speaker 1: until the next hunting season to pull it out and
Speaker 1: expect that the blade is not gonna have corroded when
Speaker 1: you left blood all over it, right, you gotta you
Speaker 1: still have to take care of it. There are some
Speaker 1: super steels, like another bowler steel called M three ninety
Speaker 1: that it's very expensive, but it actually has a really
Speaker 1: interesting uh there's a really interesting ability in that steel
Speaker 1: because of the makeup of it to offer both corrosioners
Speaker 1: instance at a high level and edge performance. So there
Speaker 1: are some I mean they make custom steels just for
Speaker 1: cutlery and and even metal manufacturing companies like s thirt
Speaker 1: V and these hunt knives that is a steel that
Speaker 1: was specifically designed for cutlery, like color, like home color,
Speaker 1: any kind of like sports. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's that.
Speaker 1: There's a difference between those two. Right. We think about
Speaker 1: our products in specialty night and the specialty knife market
Speaker 1: that typically does not include the culinary market. Most culinary
Speaker 1: products are going to be relatively low carbon stainless unless
Speaker 1: you get into the Japanese like sushi knives. Those are
Speaker 1: I got it. I got a souped up one of
Speaker 1: those those are awesome. Then my wife always threatened to
Speaker 1: throw away because an old girlfriend gave it to me,
Speaker 1: but from Japan. But if you caught a line with
Speaker 1: that thing, lets you cut a lime or tomato and
Speaker 1: don't wipe the blade. Yeah, let the blades sit there
Speaker 1: for ten minutes. It's gonna rusty, it turns the colors,
Speaker 1: you know. But you can sharpen a thing like nut
Speaker 1: shaving sharp, I mean easily, you know, And that's like
Speaker 1: I saw. I think that just having a knife that
Speaker 1: uh would sharp and easy is the best because I
Speaker 1: like the sharpen knives, but the met guys like I've
Speaker 1: caught up five elk with my knife and it never
Speaker 1: got dull. There's something sept for that. But I'm always
Speaker 1: worried that guy will never get it sharp again. What happened?
Speaker 1: What happens to that guy when he doesn't get it sharp?
Speaker 1: You know enough for it doesn't because there's also something
Speaker 1: that keeping your edge sharp, It helps your edge stage,
Speaker 1: so right, so you know that. So what happens to
Speaker 1: that guy when he's on his sixth elk and he's
Speaker 1: halfway through it and all of a sudden, the nie
Speaker 1: not sharp anymore? So there's a I like to keep.
Speaker 1: You know, STV again offers a really great balance between everything,
Speaker 1: and you can put an edge on it in the
Speaker 1: field with a carbide you know, one of those carbide
Speaker 1: sharpers with a little v V notch jaws and enough
Speaker 1: to get you through. Uh. But it's it's good to
Speaker 1: carry like a knife that will do both. You have
Speaker 1: a really hard most people carry multiple knives. Good to
Speaker 1: have one with a really strong edge performing edge retention
Speaker 1: type steel and then maybe one that's a little easier
Speaker 1: to sharpen in case for some reason lose that or
Speaker 1: That's what I do is I carry around, like when
Speaker 1: I'm on a hunt, like a big game hunt, I
Speaker 1: carry my pack my knife that only touches hide and meat,
Speaker 1: right Like I don't cut cheese with it, whittle sticks
Speaker 1: with it, and like that's not your pocket knife. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like it's just that. It's like it's for that.
Speaker 1: If I don't kill something, it never comes out of
Speaker 1: my pack. And then I got like a knife in
Speaker 1: my pocket or knife somewhere, which is my just like
Speaker 1: you know, my messing around thing. And it's and it's
Speaker 1: worth mentioning also for our steels because we have such
Speaker 1: hard steals that can be I mean you can do
Speaker 1: to elk two deer or whatever with one blade. We
Speaker 1: also have this really cool program called life Sharp where
Speaker 1: if somebody, even if they really am honestly that's you
Speaker 1: can just send it in and and our team that
Speaker 1: we have this product services team, super expert technicians. It
Speaker 1: doesn't matter if it's a thirty year old bench made
Speaker 1: or a brand new one. They'll disassemble the whole thing,
Speaker 1: make sure they fix everything to the talk more performance,
Speaker 1: put an edge back on it, and send it back
Speaker 1: to its free service shipping bench made paces of shipping
Speaker 1: not I mean not to get it to us, but
Speaker 1: we'll ship it back and pay the shipping. Yeah. Right now,
Speaker 1: last I checked the turnaround times running three days. Really yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean three days in our facility, right, so they're
Speaker 1: shipping and then shipping. Yeah, you guys just see some
Speaker 1: messed up stuff rolling through crazy stuff, especially a lot
Speaker 1: of military knives. I was looking at one yesterday that
Speaker 1: a guy had. He was it was a navy diver,
Speaker 1: and he was down cutting rope out of a propeller
Speaker 1: and somebody turned the engine on and it sucked the
Speaker 1: knife into the prop and the knife is just I
Speaker 1: don't know how his hand it wasn't ripped off. I
Speaker 1: have no idea what the knife is like. It's just
Speaker 1: been in half. The scales are all blown off of it.
Speaker 1: And typically what our product services team will do when
Speaker 1: they get a knife like that, yeah, they'll you'll say,
Speaker 1: you know, if you can keep the knife, you know,
Speaker 1: so we have the cool story or whatever, They're just
Speaker 1: send a new one out, you know. You know the
Speaker 1: company o R Outdoor Research. Yeah, I was down there
Speaker 1: one day. I used to have a friend of a
Speaker 1: friend I was working there, and we were down there
Speaker 1: monkey around and they got this wall of shame, which
Speaker 1: is like returns they've had. And one of the things
Speaker 1: like a guy had a pair of gloves you could
Speaker 1: tell he had for a million years because they're just
Speaker 1: like full of holes and worn out. And then he
Speaker 1: burned them in the fire. So it's like you tell
Speaker 1: like that they were really messed up. Then he burned
Speaker 1: him in the fire, and he made a return on him,
Speaker 1: you know, and these things, Yeah, I just threw in
Speaker 1: the fire for a while, he said, he said him
Speaker 1: a new pair. We're just like insane stuff that people
Speaker 1: try to return you know, they have a wall of
Speaker 1: shame at at loophole that I was looking at that.
Speaker 1: They're all swim Portland, so go there sometimes to take
Speaker 1: returns in or you know, look look around at new products.
Speaker 1: And uh I was looking at this wall of shame
Speaker 1: and there's a scope on the wall and it's all
Speaker 1: blasted and it's got a note with it. They frame
Speaker 1: that says, let brother in law borrow scope. Brother in
Speaker 1: law dropped scope and broke it. Never letting brother in
Speaker 1: law borrowscope again. Going back to school too, Yes, um,
Speaker 1: who like, who do you guys mainly what's the what's
Speaker 1: your main clientele? Uh so our main clientele as far
Speaker 1: are you talking about, like as far as occupation or
Speaker 1: just as far as people like what are the main dude, Like,
Speaker 1: do you guys sell more to law enforcement, military, more
Speaker 1: to just dudes who want a knife to carry around
Speaker 1: for just general cutting stuff up. I think that people
Speaker 1: arrive at a certain level of performance expectation and their
Speaker 1: products that regardless sort of of what walk of life
Speaker 1: they're in, because we serve as people at all fiery MSS, military, hunters,
Speaker 1: law enforcement, people that are just general sports cutlery enthusiast collectors.
Speaker 1: That's the term sports color enthusist collectors, right, magazine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well there's a whole industry. There's a whole industry magazine,
Speaker 1: magazine yep, yep, and Knives Illustrated, and it's a whole industry.
Speaker 1: We have a whole trade show dedicated to it. It's
Speaker 1: all custom knife makers. But I guess to answer your
Speaker 1: question in sort of a roundabout ways, that we make
Speaker 1: knives for people that want to buy knives that are
Speaker 1: at the at the peak performance and maximum value that
Speaker 1: they can get from a manufactured knife, you know, and
Speaker 1: and we sort of bridge the gap between custom and manufactured.
Speaker 1: There's a whole like world of garage shop type custom
Speaker 1: knife makers that make really exquisite products like you know,
Speaker 1: like those even those uh like you're the the knife
Speaker 1: that you have, the sushi knife, right, Some of those
Speaker 1: knives can be thousands and thousands, tens of thousands at
Speaker 1: dollars that you know, there's a whole world of people
Speaker 1: who just collect these, but not everybody can afford those,
Speaker 1: and even the garage custom guys, it takes them. They
Speaker 1: have three year weight list for some of their products. Well,
Speaker 1: we're able because our owner originated in the custom knife
Speaker 1: little bit then found this affinity and knack for manufacturing.
Speaker 1: He started working with custom knife designers to bring custom
Speaker 1: knives to a manufactured level at the at the same formans,
Speaker 1: but then to make it accessible to more of the masses.
Speaker 1: Yeah you guys. You guys still own about like a family, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: the diass family. Yeah, who started it out? Started it out? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And when did they do? When did they start? Uh?
Speaker 1: The Benchmate was founded in nineteen eighties seven, so the
Speaker 1: next year is our thirtieth anniversary seven. Yeah, well there
Speaker 1: was a company before that, so like in around nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy three, there was another company that made mostly Bally
Speaker 1: songs or butterfly knife. That's where the butterfly and our
Speaker 1: logo comes right because our our owner, the less Diasas
Speaker 1: and and the family ownership less is Filipino and butterfly
Speaker 1: knives are Filipino knives. And he's like calls himself unemployable,
Speaker 1: and he's just like he's like he's just an entrepreneur
Speaker 1: at heart, and he was like, you know, went to
Speaker 1: a gun and knife show because he loved that stuff.
Speaker 1: And he's kicking around, he's talking to these custom knife
Speaker 1: guys and he's like, you guys, can you know, like
Speaker 1: work out of your garage. You can live anywhere you want. Like,
Speaker 1: this is the best thing I've ever heard of. It.
Speaker 1: It's like it's perfect for me. So he started getting
Speaker 1: into custom knives mostly through that experience and wanting to
Speaker 1: find something he could do for himself, and he just
Speaker 1: saw the tremendous value that could be provided by a
Speaker 1: well made butterfly knife. Nobody made good ones. They were all,
Speaker 1: you know, like basically cobbled together, and so we always
Speaker 1: used to buy can we'd make our own nun chucks.
Speaker 1: What is that word it was? We called them. We
Speaker 1: always saw their numb nunchucker, right, Yeah, we'd like buy
Speaker 1: shitty butterfly knives and make nun chucks. That's all. Like.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we'd spend weeks doing nothing but that. So he
Speaker 1: worked with custom knife designers to make beautiful, well executed
Speaker 1: butterfly knives, which actually is a really great design because
Speaker 1: the two handles prevent the blade from going either direction,
Speaker 1: and so if you make it with tight tolerances, is
Speaker 1: a folding knife that basically is as rigid as a
Speaker 1: fixed blade knife when it's so it's like a stiletto.
Speaker 1: It's meant for like knife fight. Uh yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: originally I think originally Butterfly knives had martial arts sort
Speaker 1: of a martial arts history, like like nunchucks behind him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so yes, they'll make you guess we'll make a butterfly
Speaker 1: We do, really, we do. We have this itselves like crazy,
Speaker 1: and we used to make yeah, and we used and
Speaker 1: there are four hundred dollars we used to make. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I might know a guy the uh we made our
Speaker 1: Uh it just has a number, so we make it's
Speaker 1: we make the sixty to the sixty seven and uh.
Speaker 1: And they're just different blade variants. But who's buying them?
Speaker 1: Mostly when you get into the Butterfly knives, those are
Speaker 1: collectors people that are into like like real sort of
Speaker 1: key niche or niche I should say type culory products.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna started carrying one man when someone asked
Speaker 1: me to cut some topic but ripping thing all around.
Speaker 1: Some people are just butterfly and I love her too.
Speaker 1: I mean they just appreciate the design. You can flip
Speaker 1: around Butterfly Knight. I have never got it a deer
Speaker 1: with a Butterfly knife but I was just looking at one.
Speaker 1: I was trying to show it to my wife last
Speaker 1: night and how I thought it could have been a
Speaker 1: good hunting knife. And she's like, I don't care what
Speaker 1: you're talking about right now. Does the classic design have
Speaker 1: an edge on both sides? Uh? You know what, that's
Speaker 1: a good question. The one the most classic design I've
Speaker 1: seen from US is the blades called the Weehawk, And no,
Speaker 1: it's a single edge. But we also have these crazy
Speaker 1: blades called cris blades that look wavy and they're sharpen
Speaker 1: on both sides. What I will tell you is that
Speaker 1: if you're like the master of the butterfly knife, then
Speaker 1: it's kind of like faux Paul almost to use a
Speaker 1: single side that you use a double side. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And there's dudes they are throwing them up and catching
Speaker 1: them behind their back, and that's like, Yeah, next time
Speaker 1: I come to see you, I'm expecting this from you.
Speaker 1: When I send you a butterfly. They got a pocket clip? Uh? Some,
Speaker 1: some do usually not. Usually they do not have a
Speaker 1: pocket clip. They'll come with it with like a sheath.
Speaker 1: You gotta be quicker on the draw than you know
Speaker 1: out of your pocket. I had no idea, So in
Speaker 1: the bench made catalog. Yeah, it's in the bench made catalog.
Speaker 1: We've got to we actually have to two sort of
Speaker 1: separate families of butterfly or ballet song knives. One that
Speaker 1: is more technologically advanced materials wise, it has like some
Speaker 1: stacked handles and some other things, and then one that's
Speaker 1: more classic with with like a machine stainless handles. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So how long have you guys had the how many
Speaker 1: years has been you've had the like an actual hunting
Speaker 1: focus line and knives. Though since we've had an actual,
Speaker 1: like core hunting line, it's only been three years. We
Speaker 1: we've spent a lot of time, I should I should
Speaker 1: also say there's a caveat with that. We've almost always
Speaker 1: had hunting knives in the line, and we spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time trying different approaches to that great that
Speaker 1: were perfectly applicable to hunting or yeah, or even like
Speaker 1: knives called the Burden Trout knife for I mean like
Speaker 1: like actual hunting knives. But the Hunt series is our
Speaker 1: first ever like fully vested knife series, like a full
Speaker 1: line of knives specifically applied to hunting. So when you
Speaker 1: have like the steep country I'm actually holding you one
Speaker 1: of these right now. How did it come to be that? Uh?
Speaker 1: How did like? Why? I know how to ask this?
Speaker 1: It's all over magazines, best this, best that? Is that?
Speaker 1: Like honest that? Or do you submit to those kind
Speaker 1: of things? You mean like great New Year? Best in
Speaker 1: the bastard tore it up so field. I feel like
Speaker 1: every magazine you opened up had that knife. And we
Speaker 1: do very little paid print advertising. And I love saying
Speaker 1: this because hopefully it's will mean a lot of the
Speaker 1: print advertisers won't call me and solicit my business. But
Speaker 1: I somehow doubt that that's true. We do. We do
Speaker 1: a very little print advertising. Most of what we invest
Speaker 1: our money in is back into product technology. So typically
Speaker 1: it's kind of like a biologist. I this is not
Speaker 1: always true, but like with a biologist, you have to
Speaker 1: like come from a place of factual science or you're
Speaker 1: not able anymore. For for people they're doing gear reviews.
Speaker 1: If you're letting advertising bias your gear reviews, people eventually
Speaker 1: will see that and you will no longer be credible
Speaker 1: at reviewing equipment right, and and then you'll lose everything.
Speaker 1: So usually with a magazine, there is no connection at
Speaker 1: least as what they tell you. If I would like
Speaker 1: tried to call an advertiser and say, hey, you're advertising
Speaker 1: a gerber knife, your your you gave a good review
Speaker 1: to a gerber knife, and I just placed a full
Speaker 1: page ad and that month's issue. That's bs you know,
Speaker 1: they would say, you know, we don't even talk to
Speaker 1: those people. The editorial people are totally different from the
Speaker 1: advertising department, and they do that because otherwise the publication
Speaker 1: loses credibility. And do you think that's true? Because I
Speaker 1: feel like I can just point in every single magazine,
Speaker 1: not always, not always, but like like Field and Stream
Speaker 1: Best of the Best, we don't advertise in Field and Stream,
Speaker 1: never have or and we won Best of the Best
Speaker 1: three three times, and I think three times in the
Speaker 1: last five years. And that's not because it's not because
Speaker 1: we're paying for advertising. That's not what they call advertorial.
Speaker 1: So there's also advertorial right where you're paying for the editorial.
Speaker 1: That's cool knife. I think it says a lot about
Speaker 1: you two and the product that the sheath seems well
Speaker 1: fought out and it seems solid. We've spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time on that in the last few years. We
Speaker 1: the sheath has been an afterthought for us because we
Speaker 1: mostly were a folding knife company, ballet songs and things,
Speaker 1: so there was a learning curve. Over the last ten
Speaker 1: years we started to get more into fixed blades to understand,
Speaker 1: like in a fixed blade, the sheath is as it's
Speaker 1: as important as the as the knife itself. Kind of
Speaker 1: knife you got, Randall, Well, I got a bench made.
Speaker 1: Now what do you have before that? Uh? You know,
Speaker 1: I I have like a just a sorry to say,
Speaker 1: I have like a little gerber pocket folder that I'll carry,
Speaker 1: um and you don't kill anything anyway. Yeah, well, then
Speaker 1: I have to have one. I have to have one
Speaker 1: tucked away in the pack and that just as the
Speaker 1: rope and cheese knife. Yeah, but no, it's I mean,
Speaker 1: I uh yeah, I adopted sort of the and and
Speaker 1: now I have one of the other like the razor's
Speaker 1: edge or whatever it is. But I like the like
Speaker 1: the outdoor edge. Yeah, I like that goes in and yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's got more of a curved more of a
Speaker 1: traditional radius than the have a lot for caping and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. I like that. But yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: i'm i'm i'm I sort of got into the replaceable
Speaker 1: blades because I never I never got good at sharpening
Speaker 1: my own. Yeah, growing up, like for t happen, I
Speaker 1: spent a lot of times sharpening. Yeah. I mean there's
Speaker 1: a lot of said for replaceable. Once one thing a
Speaker 1: guy said to me that weighed at me a little
Speaker 1: bit later on was he's like he's talking about just
Speaker 1: like disposable culture. Yeah, And at first I dismissed it,
Speaker 1: but all I'm like, god, you know there is like
Speaker 1: he's like, whatever happen is like having a thing that
Speaker 1: you just have and you learn how to take care
Speaker 1: and like the whole world is memories associated. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was kind of knife, and that's that's sort of how
Speaker 1: I felt about the the havevalon. I don't think I'm
Speaker 1: ever gonna look at the havelon and say, like a
Speaker 1: lot of good memories with this thing, you know, because
Speaker 1: my dad, my dad used to have this joke read
Speaker 1: say like he had this old hatchet, like yeah, my
Speaker 1: great grandfather's hatchet. It's had just had three new heads
Speaker 1: and uhuh, four new handles. So now explain what you're
Speaker 1: in talent for randal Um. I'm here for the like
Speaker 1: we're in Seattle, Randalls in Seattle, doesn't live here, Lisa Montana. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I'm here for the American Society for Environmental History,
Speaker 1: the sh National Conference. Do you present anything? Nope, UM,
Speaker 1: here to listen. I'm just here to listen and to
Speaker 1: meet people, shake hands, UM, and uh, listen to papers
Speaker 1: and what you wind up putting some papers in a magazine.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's the idea is hopefully I can
Speaker 1: solicit some I work as an editor, um, and so
Speaker 1: I'm I'm looking for UM scholars out there that are
Speaker 1: doing interesting research and try to solicit some manuscript submissions
Speaker 1: that hopefully we can publish paying top dollar. Uh. No,
Speaker 1: it's more of a charity thing, some good exposure. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, give me a for instance of something you're
Speaker 1: gonna go watch, like a presentation. Um. You know, there's
Speaker 1: actually one panel that I'm sort of interested in. And
Speaker 1: I don't know that it's necessarily for UM. It's it's
Speaker 1: more for personal interests and professional interests, because I don't
Speaker 1: know that would really publish any of these. But there
Speaker 1: there's a panel on uh sort of the the imposition
Speaker 1: of trapping regulations on UM Indigenous communities in in Canada.
Speaker 1: And yeah, yeah, so so there are a couple, uh,
Speaker 1: and I'm not gonna really absolutely skim to the program
Speaker 1: a couple of times and just try to get an
Speaker 1: idea of what panels I want to stay it on.
Speaker 1: But there's a couple of papers about UM yeah, sort
Speaker 1: of the changing politics and regulation of trapping UM in
Speaker 1: I think like BC and so yeah, and and there's
Speaker 1: imposition is being like the effects of those regulations on them. UM.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't really know. All I've seen is
Speaker 1: like the titles of the papers UM, but they're the
Speaker 1: sort of looking at UM how this affects I would
Speaker 1: imagine And here I'm sort of just speculating, but UM,
Speaker 1: you know this is ah, these are practices and behaviors
Speaker 1: and cultures that have existed for a very very long time.
Speaker 1: And uh, the the way that they they resisted or
Speaker 1: adapted UM. The imposition you know of of various regulations
Speaker 1: on these practices, I don't know. Yeah. So there's a
Speaker 1: lot of and and there's there's scholars working UM in
Speaker 1: all over the place. So it's you know, they're global topics.
Speaker 1: They're UM panel that are specific to North America, regions
Speaker 1: of North America. But it's it's sort of the full spectrum.
Speaker 1: And then there are also various workshops and different things
Speaker 1: like that. So um it should be a fun interesting
Speaker 1: a few days. But it's these these uh every sort
Speaker 1: of sub field of history has its own national conference
Speaker 1: every year, and so it's a chance for people that
Speaker 1: are spread out across um various universities, you know each
Speaker 1: each you know, certain departments are larger than others. But
Speaker 1: you know at a at a school like the University
Speaker 1: of Montana, say there's one Russian historian and there's one
Speaker 1: environmental historian. And so the national conferences allow these people
Speaker 1: that are working on UH topics that speak to one
Speaker 1: another to all gather in one place and and share
Speaker 1: ideas and see sort of what their colleagues out there
Speaker 1: are working on. Is there is there certain research that
Speaker 1: you look for, like specifically that you're hoping for out
Speaker 1: of this that you'll publish, not necessarily UM, just topics
Speaker 1: relevant to UH Western history, Montana history, environmental history. So UM,
Speaker 1: just sort of seeing what's out there and meeting people.
Speaker 1: And then there are a lot of people from um
Speaker 1: various presses that are there um to look for book
Speaker 1: manuscripts or to meet people so it's also sort of
Speaker 1: there's that element to it as well. You can do
Speaker 1: some hardcore hob novin. Yeah, pretty much. I got all
Speaker 1: the business cards lined up. You know, it's funny about
Speaker 1: trapping regulations. The spring and April, we're going uh to
Speaker 1: Wyoming for some spring beaver action, and um, there's a
Speaker 1: reciprocity thing between the states with trapping. For instance, Montana, Um,
Speaker 1: you can't trap any a nonresident cannot get a trapping
Speaker 1: license in Montana to trap beaver, for instance, like fur bears. Okay,
Speaker 1: you can go trap coyotes, bobcats like that, various predators,
Speaker 1: but you can't trap what they have listed as fur
Speaker 1: bears like muskrat manc river outer beaver. Um. So what
Speaker 1: a lot of states will do, Like let's say you're
Speaker 1: in a state that is open and nonresident travers, but
Speaker 1: since Montana doesn't allow nonresidents, they won't let someone from
Speaker 1: Montana buy a license in their state. Okay, So Wyoming
Speaker 1: is open to any nonresident coming from a state that's
Speaker 1: in turn open to Wyoming. Even though Washington has like
Speaker 1: some draconian trapping regularly trappings basically illegal because they've outlawed
Speaker 1: all the tools of the trade without actually outlawing the practice.
Speaker 1: So you can't use connter, berries, can't use footholds. However,
Speaker 1: it's legal, right, so you look like which made the traffic?
Speaker 1: Like the trapping regulations here are kind of ridiculous because
Speaker 1: like everything's like open for a really long time, you know,
Speaker 1: and they only like they like barely update the regulations.
Speaker 1: But regulations are basically go ahead. Bro, just can't use
Speaker 1: trapped because you're not gonna like you can use get
Speaker 1: live traps, you know what I mean. So I'm filling
Speaker 1: out this form for Whoming getting my Wyoming you know,
Speaker 1: beaver trapping license, and I'm filling out this form. It's
Speaker 1: like their eyes like, um, are you allowed to trap X?
Speaker 1: It's like yes, um are non residents allowed to trap X?
Speaker 1: And it's because all like yes, yes, yes, yes, yes
Speaker 1: says yes. And I almost wanted to put a note
Speaker 1: on there being like well, actually no, but let's just
Speaker 1: say yes theoretical. And I sent it in and I
Speaker 1: got my I was accepted and got my Wyoming, got
Speaker 1: my Wyoming for harvester. You're gonna get a letter back
Speaker 1: from Wyoming it says you can come hunt, but you
Speaker 1: can't use. Yeah, yeah, but yeah, bro, yeah welcome, come
Speaker 1: get some beaver, but just keep mind you can't use
Speaker 1: at the tools that go with trapping. I never thought
Speaker 1: of the impact on Indigenous people, and people tend to
Speaker 1: be more sensitive that than they do. Um, you know
Speaker 1: other people who have traditional use practices, And yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know. Um, I really don't have any um specific
Speaker 1: or detailed knowledge about how it works. And you haven't
Speaker 1: gone to the conference Yeteah, well, hopefully I'll be able
Speaker 1: to tell you a bit more in a couple of days.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the Canadian side of things is something of
Speaker 1: a mystery to man more knowledge of UH treaty rights
Speaker 1: and subsistence rights in the US. I'll tell you one
Speaker 1: interesting about a lot of areas in Canada's you have
Speaker 1: a registered line, like you have a line, the same
Speaker 1: way you might have a commercial fishing license, you know,
Speaker 1: and you like sell Like you have a registered line,
Speaker 1: you can sell that line, you know, when ice trap
Speaker 1: is just like it's just honor system. Like you might
Speaker 1: be like, yeah, so and Soul works that area, and
Speaker 1: nothing was actually preventing you from going out there. It
Speaker 1: would just be like an honor system that you did
Speaker 1: or did not go along with. But there yeah, man,
Speaker 1: you get like a registered line. You buy a line
Speaker 1: off someone I used to shopper, like, I used to
Speaker 1: sit there with magazines, like in the back of Trapper
Speaker 1: and Predator Caller magazine when I was a kid. You
Speaker 1: look in the classifies and be people selling trap lines,
Speaker 1: you know, and um, just one go for it back.
Speaker 1: I can't remember, but I remember like I would waste
Speaker 1: some of these guys time by like writing and asking
Speaker 1: for more information and they'd send these just maps, you know,
Speaker 1: basically a map just like never ending swamp. Yeah, hundreds
Speaker 1: of miles. You know. You buy a trapline, Yeah, always
Speaker 1: thought it's fine, go for it. So concluding thoughts, Johnnie,
Speaker 1: oh boy, can you go first? What I mean, what's
Speaker 1: up with the hunt eat? And we haven't talked about
Speaker 1: hunting eating a long time? We haven't. I meant to
Speaker 1: wear my T shirt today he's got one on all
Speaker 1: this kid wears his Hunt Teachers. I can't tell it's
Speaker 1: because he loves hunt eat or if he just has
Speaker 1: a lot of T shirts trying to get the word both.
Speaker 1: And if you have to wear your own products, um yeah,
Speaker 1: we gotta, we have we have a Turkey shirt that
Speaker 1: the thing goes live today. So but not state affiliated. No,
Speaker 1: is this your first non state affiliated shirt? No, we've
Speaker 1: got the first one was not like four or five.
Speaker 1: Now I've been told to pass along word that we
Speaker 1: need an Ohio shirt. So Oregon, do you have an
Speaker 1: Oregon shirt? No? He won't make it till you hear
Speaker 1: from ten people. I got ten people. Like Idaho is
Speaker 1: like it gonna be at the printers in the next
Speaker 1: week or so. By the time anybody hears this, it
Speaker 1: will probably be live already. But Washington, Idaho, Yeah, there,
Speaker 1: they should be live by the time this podcast here.
Speaker 1: So how many states by the time the podcast there?
Speaker 1: Oh boy, maybe ten? Close to it? A long way
Speaker 1: to go, Yeah, we do. But you know what, you're
Speaker 1: adding t shirts faster than we added states as a country.
Speaker 1: You'll catch up eventually. Yeah, we haven't had. We haven't
Speaker 1: added once in the fifties. So all right, do you
Speaker 1: do you think you wind up doing Hawaiians? We're going
Speaker 1: hunt in Hawaii this year. It would be a good one.
Speaker 1: It's like a destination hunt spot. We finally, like a
Speaker 1: lot of people buy Montana in Alaska, you know, because
Speaker 1: it's like a dream hunt dream. My brother there Day
Speaker 1: was wearing a Hunt deep Montana on where he got
Speaker 1: I didn't give it to him. I know where he
Speaker 1: got it. Oh dude, I get him to He said,
Speaker 1: sweet my two new favorite T shirts. Um, so that's
Speaker 1: your conclusion, No it's not. That's my concluding thought. What's yours?
Speaker 1: Oh man, I'm gonna bring him back around to lead
Speaker 1: and just like I like I said, I'm I'm I
Speaker 1: feel like the reason we're having a discussion because there's
Speaker 1: just not enough research out there. So I'm hoping that
Speaker 1: now it's kind of coming back and a lot of
Speaker 1: people are talking about it again, someone's gonna get after
Speaker 1: and do some more research because come out of since
Speaker 1: you're bringing it back up, I'll bring it back up.
Speaker 1: I think we haven't brought up in just like efficacy, right,
Speaker 1: it's some things just work real well. It works real well.
Speaker 1: So it's it's like, I'm trying to weigh that out
Speaker 1: as well. What is the like when you come in
Speaker 1: with what is it? Gonna say what is it? What
Speaker 1: would it do to wound loss? You know, are you
Speaker 1: gonna have a lot more wound loss as you dictate
Speaker 1: less effective ammunitions to people. So I've I've found the
Speaker 1: statistics on this, at least for someone from US Fish
Speaker 1: and Wildlife basically had said that once they instituted the ban,
Speaker 1: there was a spike in self reported wound loss and
Speaker 1: then over time it dropped back down and now it's
Speaker 1: below what it was prior because people adapted. They weren't
Speaker 1: taking six, they weren't taking six. But I don't believe.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing that gets into a whole other issue
Speaker 1: of sciences. It's very I think that self reported very hard.
Speaker 1: Go around, do a little informal survey and ask all
Speaker 1: your bowl hunting buddies what they think wound what what's
Speaker 1: your wound loss rate? Yeah, you'll never get an honest answer.
Speaker 1: You'll never get an honest answer. Um. I think that
Speaker 1: when guys fill that out, it's like, dude, I don't
Speaker 1: believe the thing. I mean, I'm sure some people probably
Speaker 1: do it, but people don't like to self incriminate. Now
Speaker 1: that it against love. I think people are like I
Speaker 1: think most people are full of it when it comes
Speaker 1: to the wound loss rates when they report it. Right,
Speaker 1: So the reporting might not be representative of reality, but
Speaker 1: the change in reporting over time does give you some
Speaker 1: sense at least of the bigger pictures. Everybody's probably not
Speaker 1: reporting totally honestly, but the way they do report, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they I saw that. I read that saything they saw
Speaker 1: a spike and it wasn't a horrible spike. They saw
Speaker 1: from near or someth to something like whatever the numbers were.
Speaker 1: And then within a few years it dropped back down
Speaker 1: to twenty, and then shortly after that it even dipped
Speaker 1: below sort of pre band numbers. So yeah, as people
Speaker 1: adjusted well, and for waterfowl, if you want the efficacy,
Speaker 1: you can shoot the business and tongsen costs quite a
Speaker 1: bit more. And I wonder why we haven't seen a
Speaker 1: tungsten or business cord hunting bullet yet. I don't know.
Speaker 1: There's some reason for it or not. It would be good.
Speaker 1: We gotta get a metall or just out here. I'm
Speaker 1: going that way with fishing tackle, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Non lead teeth too bad, man, Like I can bite
Speaker 1: lead sinkers all day long. Man, You give me a
Speaker 1: non toxic sinker and I chew into that thing. Dude,
Speaker 1: that hurts. Yeah, I'm I'm thread through, you know, thread
Speaker 1: the thought bullet weights. Wh I'm talking to tungsten. For
Speaker 1: the most part, I don't know about trying to bite
Speaker 1: down on tungsten. Wait, that's ill advised, I think. And
Speaker 1: then steel shot shatters your teeth. We used I think
Speaker 1: it was tin. I want to say, five fish in
Speaker 1: those green egg ones and uh, I actually liked those
Speaker 1: because they were so reusable. I feel like they I
Speaker 1: just got more use out of than the lead. They're
Speaker 1: less malleable, which I think just yeah, just gave them
Speaker 1: longer life. They held their form better. Man, You're sitting
Speaker 1: about five ft from my little stash of non toxic
Speaker 1: sinkers back there, and I'll have to say, I was
Speaker 1: just fishing the other day and that's not the one
Speaker 1: I grabbed. Grabbed the old stylers a lot less expensive
Speaker 1: to the old style I'd like to keep in my mouth. Um,
Speaker 1: but you know what I find O. It's like, uh,
Speaker 1: I do catch myself Like I don't like my kid
Speaker 1: messing with them. M I don't like him. No, I
Speaker 1: don't like him pinching him down because the teeth Like
Speaker 1: I wore a groom into my teeth cutting monofilment, and
Speaker 1: I probably like cap my tooth with lead. But yeah, man,
Speaker 1: and I started. Then I switched the floral carbon and
Speaker 1: it's like, you're like, dude, that's even harder. You gotta
Speaker 1: use a canine teeth for the floral carbon teeth. Oh yeah, Matt,
Speaker 1: what are your concluding thoughts? Ah? Well, uh, it got stolen.
Speaker 1: I was gonna bring it back to the to the
Speaker 1: lead versus copper issue. I suppose if I had a
Speaker 1: concluding thought on that, I just hope that whatever whatever
Speaker 1: decisions are made come from the sound science and a
Speaker 1: good a good place, a good place of thoughtfulness and
Speaker 1: and in the best interests of conservation, and not political
Speaker 1: party line. Yeah, not like I don't like guns, right,
Speaker 1: therefore I think the lead is toxic, right, and I
Speaker 1: like conversely, I like guns, therefore lead can do no harm. Right. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think you should come from that either. Randall's
Speaker 1: your concluding thought? Oh, man, I don't know. You're excited
Speaker 1: about this. I'm excited about this conference. I'm intrigued by
Speaker 1: I want to meet someone who identifies as a self
Speaker 1: professed sport culinary enthusiast. I like that. I'm still too
Speaker 1: and on that one, but I don't know sport cutlery.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Yeah, what did I say culinary because I
Speaker 1: was saying that's me, dude, I'm a sport culinary here
Speaker 1: with you, a sport culory enthusiast. Um. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: know when it comes to lead and steel. Uh, I
Speaker 1: don't really hit enough birds for it to make a difference.
Speaker 1: So we're just talking about all my all my empty
Speaker 1: honeyholes before we got started here at them. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: talking about the fear of losing your GPS, and Randal
Speaker 1: just saying he'll switch GPS even with anybody because he
Speaker 1: said it can't be any worse than what he's got.
Speaker 1: I'd like to point out that I started shooting copper
Speaker 1: well before I ever thought about lead poisoning in my gaming,
Speaker 1: because I saw the efficacy in the field as a
Speaker 1: guide and I'd be like, what, you know what someone
Speaker 1: would recover a bullet. I'm like, I've never seen that thing?
Speaker 1: What is that? Oh, it's the you know Barnes, you
Speaker 1: know triple shot. I was like, Wow, that thing hit
Speaker 1: that elk in just Jordan And I know a lot
Speaker 1: of that has to do with shot places. More of
Speaker 1: that has to do shot placement than the bullet itself.
Speaker 1: But anyways, that's kind of what got me shooting those
Speaker 1: coppers and went until later until you know someone's like,
Speaker 1: oh you also get that out of benefit of you know,
Speaker 1: that's what I want. That's the norther thing that I
Speaker 1: talked about it that came up in this this kind
Speaker 1: this uh conversation, was I said, in some ways, I
Speaker 1: feel like it's gonna wind up being beyond the point,
Speaker 1: not with lead shot for for upland birds and stuff.
Speaker 1: I was like, in some ways, I think it's the
Speaker 1: discussion about toxicity is beside the point because if you
Speaker 1: look at reloaders, like if you look at the avant garde,
Speaker 1: the cutting edge, there's just a very I feel like
Speaker 1: there's a very definite shift going towards monolithic bullets, don't
Speaker 1: you think. I mean, it's just like more and more
Speaker 1: people who don't give a ship about the lead issue
Speaker 1: are shooting solid You don't feel that that's true. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I wouldn't say you know better than me.
Speaker 1: If I'm wrong, tell me, because I feel like you
Speaker 1: know more about that stuff than I do. And I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people, like especially I think out
Speaker 1: of all the monolithics. They like the barns because it's
Speaker 1: known to being accurate bullet. You know, a lot of
Speaker 1: people just get good loads out of it that they
Speaker 1: are accurate loads. But I feel like it's especially with
Speaker 1: the long range crowd most of them, I don't think
Speaker 1: they are shooting rats. Yeah, I think they're shooting lead core.
Speaker 1: Especially with long range, the bullet a lot of times
Speaker 1: upon the impact is moving slower, and so they need
Speaker 1: a bullet that fragments or you know, pedals more at
Speaker 1: a lower velocity, which the monolithics don't do. That's what
Speaker 1: That's what I that was when I made the switch
Speaker 1: back to Jack and his bullets was, um, I shot
Speaker 1: a deer with It was pretty far out. It was,
Speaker 1: I feel like, if I remember, it was four hundred
Speaker 1: sixty yards a long ways. I shot a deer and
Speaker 1: he still continued running around, running does and I'm like,
Speaker 1: I don't understand which this happened. And then eventually he
Speaker 1: got woozy and fell over. And when I went up
Speaker 1: to him, it looked like someone had taken a dowel
Speaker 1: and punched the dowel through his body field point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it looked like, yeah, like you took a field point
Speaker 1: arrow and just stuck it into him. No, it's definitely
Speaker 1: number one complaint. It didn't do It was like he
Speaker 1: didn't even know what happened. Yeah, definitely through the lungs
Speaker 1: and eventually faded out. And then people like and that's
Speaker 1: what I was like, and it's going back and something
Speaker 1: I know and trust. Then people just said shooting his shoulder.
Speaker 1: Then you get him in the high shoulder, so okay,
Speaker 1: So then I gotta blow the shoulders out of him
Speaker 1: and ruin all kinds of meat. What if you miss? Yeah,
Speaker 1: everybody's always preparing for the guys like I hit him
Speaker 1: right in the head. It's like, is that right? Right?
Speaker 1: What what mean you wanted? You gotta prepare for. Man,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of variables, right, and you gotta prepare
Speaker 1: for the variables. What happens if your shots not exactly
Speaker 1: high shoulder? What if it's a little far back? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I like, you know, like the trophy bonded, the bear
Speaker 1: clot like just a ya, they all they all have
Speaker 1: failure rate, so you know, yeah, I mean it's you
Speaker 1: can say that those bullets, you know, it's super close range.
Speaker 1: You know, they might fragment too much. If you do
Speaker 1: hit the bone and then they don't make it into
Speaker 1: the vitals, especially some of the long range stuff that
Speaker 1: is made to be very you know, frangible. You know,
Speaker 1: you do hit a big bone right off the bat
Speaker 1: at fifty yards, that bullet just blows up and it
Speaker 1: might not never even make it into the cavity. So
Speaker 1: all right, that's it, right, that's all I got to say.
Speaker 1: You got a concluding thought, Randall. He gave it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I don't remember. It wasn't like I wasn't blown
Speaker 1: away by it. I can't remember what it was. What
Speaker 1: was it? Pretty high standard? He was saying he would
Speaker 1: he would trade his GPS to anybody out there. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: And he's saying, and I remember, now, Um, you'd have
Speaker 1: a good cluting thought sport culinary. He wants to be
Speaker 1: a sport coulory enthusiast. But you didn't have a clearly
Speaker 1: thought where that that you reiterated your disdain for bias.
Speaker 1: I did, yeah, in a in an eloquent way. I
Speaker 1: made a point about someone hate and lead because they
Speaker 1: hate guns, and you said, but it's just love lead,
Speaker 1: it's just because you love guns can do no harm. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, thanks for tuning in