Speaker 1: M This is the me Eater Podcast, coming at you shirtless, severely,
Speaker 1: bug bitten and in my case, underwear listening. Don't eat podcast.
Speaker 1: You can't predict that anything. Everyone, This is the me
Speaker 1: Eater Podcast. We're in Missoula, Montana, celebrating Lanton He's birthday. Really,
Speaker 1: we're here for the Bad Huntry Hunters and Anglers Annual Rendezvous.
Speaker 1: And this is number five. Why did why did it
Speaker 1: takes alone to have one? I just knowing every thoughts like, hey,
Speaker 1: let's have it, get together because of what it takes
Speaker 1: to put it on, you know, And I think because
Speaker 1: the organization has been around how long I've been around
Speaker 1: for this our twelfth year. But you know that was
Speaker 1: when we first had staff. I think when we had
Speaker 1: the first one, So you had to have someone to
Speaker 1: plan it out. Exactly when I showed up here yesterday.
Speaker 1: I got here and the first thing I saw his
Speaker 1: callahan uh sneaking out the door going fishing. What did
Speaker 1: you catch you in a two hour two hour float?
Speaker 1: It was a little rushed three two hour cruise, little rushed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: um got one rainbow? You know. Um, you know my
Speaker 1: sister in law lives up that river. You run the
Speaker 1: Blackfoot River. You met her. Yeah, you caught one fish.
Speaker 1: You can catch one, but he did not. Was it
Speaker 1: a big one that you caught. It was a nice fish,
Speaker 1: it wasn't huge. And you guys did a full on float. Yeah.
Speaker 1: My buddy, uh Ryan Thompson, Caitlin two wigs, uh husband
Speaker 1: he name dropping. They live up there anyway, help me
Speaker 1: out a on and basically at the boat on the water,
Speaker 1: We ran up there, jumped in, floated down to their house.
Speaker 1: He continued onto the boat ramp and took care of
Speaker 1: all the stuff. Really yeah, and I came back here
Speaker 1: in time for the fish released it just like you do.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about having you on. He's T shirt company
Speaker 1: made me a T shirt down on the back. It's
Speaker 1: gonna be like cud zoo a dandelion, spotted nap weed,
Speaker 1: leafy spurge in a rainbow. It's gonna be like UMVASI
Speaker 1: stopping vases. Now, how about bomb come on the front
Speaker 1: and bomb that good catching release into the pan of grease.
Speaker 1: So now, like, what's the goal of a of the
Speaker 1: the whole deal? When you guys have a you know,
Speaker 1: when the organization has an annual convention, it's like to
Speaker 1: rally people up. Do you guys actually do bis this?
Speaker 1: We do. We had our only face to face board meeting,
Speaker 1: and then we had chapter leaders that came in from
Speaker 1: all across the country. I think we had forty five
Speaker 1: chapter leaders, and so we did some training with them,
Speaker 1: and then, like what you talked about rallying the troops.
Speaker 1: You know, I think a lot of us only see
Speaker 1: each other one time a year, and so um, having
Speaker 1: the ability to like bring everybody together kind of coalescee
Speaker 1: swap stories just like kind of the traditional you know
Speaker 1: rendezvous where the trappers would come together, um, and then
Speaker 1: were rendezvous and his valley They never did in this valley.
Speaker 1: It's weird, such a great valley. Um. But then you
Speaker 1: have you know, like they go home fired up. And
Speaker 1: I think, you know, we accomplished that in spades. Now,
Speaker 1: when you say the board meeting, the board only gets
Speaker 1: together once a year, face to face, face to face. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how many people around the board? We have ten? Right now?
Speaker 1: Are you on the board Nope? Okay, I'm a lifetime member.
Speaker 1: You saw me try to take notes on the food
Speaker 1: judging contest yesterday? Oh yeah, I mean we got to
Speaker 1: mention that I was gonna talk about that. We judged
Speaker 1: the Wild Game cook and cook Off. Yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: five teams had five teams and five different chapters. What
Speaker 1: was the only five five different chapters. That's just who
Speaker 1: signed up and who signed up. And it's also, you know,
Speaker 1: I think logistically, you know, camp Chef was obviously a
Speaker 1: great partner in that whole thing, and so um, just
Speaker 1: logistically that's what we could do. And so five chapters
Speaker 1: stepped up and unfortunately we were I was upstairs, so
Speaker 1: I would love you to do So. Yeah, five teams
Speaker 1: did it, and they all had they we had to
Speaker 1: rate them on presentation, taste, creativity they're trying to remember,
Speaker 1: also rated them on state. Yeah, Callahan. I looked at
Speaker 1: Callahan's notes at one point and he had made another
Speaker 1: category where he wrote down where they were from, which
Speaker 1: was like just bringing some your biased and do it
Speaker 1: not even being secret. And then Kaalien took all kinds
Speaker 1: of notes, and then later when we got together with
Speaker 1: the judge, he didn't refer to his notes, and every
Speaker 1: time someone asked him or were tallying the scores, every
Speaker 1: time someone asked him, he'd kind of look off in
Speaker 1: the sky and didn't give a number without like, without
Speaker 1: referring back to his notes at all. Pure genius. Thank you.
Speaker 1: What were you? Uh, what were you like? Had you
Speaker 1: memorized your notes or were you like just kind of still,
Speaker 1: it was very hard for me, and I felt very
Speaker 1: pressured and everything was really really good and there was
Speaker 1: no crazy outlier in there. Every I mean everybody put
Speaker 1: a ton of thought into every dish, and it was
Speaker 1: weighing on me. A guy made, uh, one of one
Speaker 1: of the teams made b bimbop the cream dish and
Speaker 1: then did it with They had it garnished on top
Speaker 1: with glacier lily, which is very pretty. That was a
Speaker 1: pretty dish, vibrant colors, and then you know, the nettles
Speaker 1: don't stood out great. They had there was a dish
Speaker 1: they had fried quail in it, and then uh, some
Speaker 1: sort of hoo dani I can't remember what the hoo
Speaker 1: the animal there was and then they had oh, they
Speaker 1: had elk hirt in the greens. Oh that was good. No, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. It was like a corned elk cart with
Speaker 1: greens and fried quail and like there was like a
Speaker 1: couple like a honey because they did like a not
Speaker 1: a waffle, but it was sort of a take on
Speaker 1: fried chicken and waffles. And I gotta say, I saw
Speaker 1: the corn to Elkhart. Uh, I saw a post of
Speaker 1: it or something. I was like, No, that's not gonna
Speaker 1: work out. Yeah, but it was great. You know what
Speaker 1: I did their day? I brined Uh. You were for
Speaker 1: dinner that night, weren't you? I brined uh moose heart
Speaker 1: and just smoked it how to go? She was good?
Speaker 1: Did you like it? Joannie? Keeping? It was good? You
Speaker 1: didn't like it? It was good. Every time I tried
Speaker 1: to do anything other than fry hard or slicing, throw
Speaker 1: it on the barbecue, and I'm just not me it
Speaker 1: doesn't work out. So now, Ryan, what do you gotta
Speaker 1: save for yourself? We gotta We got another man here
Speaker 1: that was gonna say you missed another meal. Callahan was there.
Speaker 1: Thursday night we had a big what we called tack
Speaker 1: barn dinner, four of us cooking. Um had some good
Speaker 1: stuff there. What did you guys do with that? For food? Uh?
Speaker 1: We it was all wild game hunter gatherer stuff. Four
Speaker 1: different courses cooked, all camp cook so uh Dutch oven
Speaker 1: grill over we had hank Shaw did five antelopine quarters
Speaker 1: over open flame coals, hanging by a big tripod. Killer
Speaker 1: good that we're dark good killer good. Yeah. We had
Speaker 1: four dishes. I did elk loin Montana chickpeas. We had
Speaker 1: Charle McGlen did uh Dutch oven. Lasagna made his own cheeses,
Speaker 1: two different cheese. Is um, first time you've ever done
Speaker 1: a Dutch of Amazagna nailed it. Of course, he's a
Speaker 1: he's a stud of a chef. He didn't make those
Speaker 1: cheeses out of like, uh, elk and deer milk, did he? Hey? Man,
Speaker 1: check it out. We met a guy you honestly, we
Speaker 1: met a guy in Texas who one time, um, because
Speaker 1: you know the hide hunters, the Buffalo hide hunters used
Speaker 1: to cut the mamories open and suck the milk out
Speaker 1: of the mammories and they're butcher and animals. And we
Speaker 1: met a guy down Texas. Remember that guy, which one
Speaker 1: the dude that hunts cranes with the zombie cranes. Oh Mike, yeah,
Speaker 1: nasty fanacy. Yeah he he one time was skinning the
Speaker 1: dough and and uh he didn't want to admit it,
Speaker 1: like he told me the story. And then later we
Speaker 1: were recording one of these, and I said, hey, man,
Speaker 1: talk about when you were drinking that milk out of
Speaker 1: that deer you were cutting up. Didn't want to talk
Speaker 1: about it. There's a private conversation that he wanted. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're a hardcore man, but we're not there yet. So
Speaker 1: when the the whole legs, how did you how did
Speaker 1: did you get cooked into the bone or do you
Speaker 1: have to just keep catting away and letting it cook
Speaker 1: more and keep cutting away and letting the coat. It
Speaker 1: was a challenge on that one because we're cooking in
Speaker 1: colder conditions than Hank usually cooks him, so it was
Speaker 1: a little slower for him, but didn't It was rare
Speaker 1: on the bone. Um, but I'd say we got the
Speaker 1: we got it. Oh two thirds was cooked just right
Speaker 1: with rare right at the bone. So we had variations
Speaker 1: have done us through it. So it was like something
Speaker 1: for everybody. Yeah. Yeah, and he made his own had
Speaker 1: his own vinegar. He had over the top of it.
Speaker 1: Brought sage, wild sage from California cooked in there with it.
Speaker 1: Was fantastic. That's good. Where were the animal from not
Speaker 1: from there? Montana members donated them. Yeah, they're pretty short
Speaker 1: on analope in California. Yeah, they're they're running low over there. Um,
Speaker 1: So Ryan, explain your role at b H A chairman
Speaker 1: of the Yeah, I'm chairman of the board of directors. Now,
Speaker 1: so what do you do? Uh? Well, oh, we'll try
Speaker 1: to provide some direction and try to bounce ideas off
Speaker 1: of each other and give Land as marching orders and
Speaker 1: give the staff um ideas on where we'd like to
Speaker 1: see the word go. And we've so the board is
Speaker 1: chief over Land or Land is chief over the board. Honestly,
Speaker 1: it depends on the day. And who you ask, Um,
Speaker 1: it's his birthday, so I guess we'll let him be
Speaker 1: boss today. Land, do me a favorite run through the
Speaker 1: buckets again? I know you did this four year hour
Speaker 1: with this, and we did. We spent like an hour
Speaker 1: around the buckets, but hit me, hit me with the buckets,
Speaker 1: but hit me in like real shorthand. Yeah. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: we've got three buckets. First one would be that was
Speaker 1: five buckets, and we changed it because it was too much.
Speaker 1: Too many buckets you still can only carry. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: got I got one of my mouth. I got one
Speaker 1: of my mouth, So that's good. I know, we got
Speaker 1: three buckets. First one is access and opportunity. I gotta
Speaker 1: get back to why how did you lose? Okay, tell
Speaker 1: me the buckets and explain, because I imagine you poured
Speaker 1: a bucket into another bucket. We did, yeah, and so
Speaker 1: give me a trick where that bucket came from. So
Speaker 1: we have access and opportunities. The first one that was
Speaker 1: a regular bucket. Um, that's our public lands work. That's
Speaker 1: our access to public LANs as, our access to public waters.
Speaker 1: And then on the second bucket, which got a lot bigger,
Speaker 1: is the back country kind of controvation. And so within
Speaker 1: that you've got special Places which used to be a
Speaker 1: standalone bucket. And then you have kind of larger, big
Speaker 1: scale their nesting pots. Sure, yeah, yeah, that's exactly. And
Speaker 1: and then and then after that you have like larger
Speaker 1: things like the Clean Water Act. You know that has
Speaker 1: implications for everybody. Um, that's a lot bigger than like
Speaker 1: special places. And then our final one is fair Chase.
Speaker 1: And then that fair Chase bucket, you know, that's where
Speaker 1: our drone kind of work comes in. That's where o
Speaker 1: high fence work is going to come in. Um, and
Speaker 1: kind of our illegal oh v us is under that
Speaker 1: bucket as well. Why do you think that people have
Speaker 1: been able to Well, I don't want to stay at
Speaker 1: things on top of each other. So I think you
Speaker 1: kind of explain where the buckets went. It's just like
Speaker 1: your but but this is just the way you just
Speaker 1: think in your own mind, right, I mean, this is
Speaker 1: kind of way you guys categorize. Yeah, And we want
Speaker 1: to make it simple for people to understand what we do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so when I'm into five buckets, people start going
Speaker 1: to sleep, right, and and so the three buckets and
Speaker 1: the way I just explained, I think it's pretty sustinct.
Speaker 1: And so people can understand that right away, Yeah, you can.
Speaker 1: With the comedian Mitch Hedberg, Um, he died, but to
Speaker 1: hear that probably the greatest American one of the greatest
Speaker 1: American comedians ever. But he had a joke where he
Speaker 1: was um talking about someone gave him, what's the drug
Speaker 1: you taking? You have a d h D. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: he would take riddling but he's not but he doesn't
Speaker 1: suffer from the ailment. He would just take the solution.
Speaker 1: And he said that, um, whenever tell when someone told
Speaker 1: him something, he'd be like, there's gotta be more to
Speaker 1: that story fair enough. So no way, I like the
Speaker 1: five buckets man because I like a long story. But
Speaker 1: why do you think I want to talk about the
Speaker 1: drone situation? Because you addressed that last night at the dinner.
Speaker 1: Oh also did um who wanted buying the float trip?
Speaker 1: The float trip with you was your mom? Uh No,
Speaker 1: I won't make my mom pay to go hang out
Speaker 1: with me. Um, I supposed to get you a loan
Speaker 1: on the boat and criticize you know. It was Actually
Speaker 1: it was a friend of mine who after he bought it,
Speaker 1: as I'm hugging him until he whispered to me, he said,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna work that shift out of you. And so
Speaker 1: then I told him where I wanted to go and
Speaker 1: there's a portage and he said he's not going to
Speaker 1: do the portage, and so that means that I'll be
Speaker 1: working and I think we'll be going by holes and
Speaker 1: then just he will say, like make me get out
Speaker 1: of the boat and like drag it back up the
Speaker 1: river or row it back up the river. So now
Speaker 1: he told me last night he's gonna put like forty
Speaker 1: flies in the willows. It might be an expensive trips. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: you talked about the drone issue thirteen states of banned drones.
Speaker 1: Now why are people why do you think people are
Speaker 1: able to coalesce around drones when they'd be reluctant to
Speaker 1: coalesce around other uh technologies being eliminated from the hunting
Speaker 1: tool kit? Is it because it's totally new? It's definitely
Speaker 1: part of it, I think, you know, I mean there's
Speaker 1: no traditional use once you get something established, you know,
Speaker 1: like when you've got a lot of money at stake,
Speaker 1: but then you have a lot of people that have
Speaker 1: already you know, like that that's the way they do business, right,
Speaker 1: and so on the drone thing, we got out in
Speaker 1: front of that, and um, you know, there isn't like
Speaker 1: a a drone hunting association, right like you know, I
Speaker 1: mean they're a drone owners of the drone lobby. There's
Speaker 1: a drone lobby, but that's more for dot com Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: and so and so. But you know, we want to
Speaker 1: get in front of it, you know. So there's things
Speaker 1: like live action cameras on trees, right, and we have
Speaker 1: their band here in Montana, but in a lot of
Speaker 1: states that's okay, and like to me, that's kind of
Speaker 1: the same thing. And you know that's already been established,
Speaker 1: and so that's a lot harder to put that back
Speaker 1: in the box, right, And so um with the drone stuff,
Speaker 1: you have people I mean, I think people when they
Speaker 1: hear about that, they just can't believe that people were
Speaker 1: starting to do that, right, So we were in a
Speaker 1: good place when we did them. They give I don't
Speaker 1: know how many years you'd have to go back, but
Speaker 1: if you went back to the advent of trail cameras,
Speaker 1: like right now, if you said, like in a national sense,
Speaker 1: no trail cameras, people would have a ship fit. Oh
Speaker 1: yeah there Arizona from Arizona, Wisconsin. I mean just just
Speaker 1: places where you know here is weird when they did
Speaker 1: it that you could he had to pull them one
Speaker 1: season started, right, which I mean that's probably really hard
Speaker 1: to regulate. But I don't know, if you see one,
Speaker 1: you see one, true. But I think that's the thing
Speaker 1: with it with drones too, right, like were you know,
Speaker 1: there's all these laws about flying airplanes, you know, and
Speaker 1: and and what you can hunt within like scouting on
Speaker 1: an airplane. So I think it's twenty four hours, and
Speaker 1: so we we thought about doing that with drones. But
Speaker 1: drones are so much less invasive than an airplane. I mean,
Speaker 1: you can hear an airplane and you know when you're
Speaker 1: in the woods from a long ways away. For a drone,
Speaker 1: you gotta be pretty close to it. And so um,
Speaker 1: that's why we didn't do the twenty four hour rule there.
Speaker 1: We banned him for the entire season. So some guys,
Speaker 1: you know, if a law enforcement officer sees a guy
Speaker 1: with a drone during hunting season, that's a pretty easy
Speaker 1: way to do it rather than the twenty four Yeah,
Speaker 1: like in Alaska, you got you know, there's there's a
Speaker 1: lot of hunts you can people don't. A lot of
Speaker 1: people don't realize it's there's a lot of hunts you
Speaker 1: can fly and hunt on the same day, you know,
Speaker 1: for black tail deer and cariboo and stuff. There's some
Speaker 1: hunts you can some huns you cannot, But now you can't.
Speaker 1: Like if you fly a drone, you don't hunt that season, right,
Speaker 1: that's it. That's it, which is a little bit surprising.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm glad I'd like to see it. I
Speaker 1: think everybody likes to see it. But again I think
Speaker 1: it's because it hadn't been in my mind. It just
Speaker 1: hadn't become entrenched, like it hadn't become like a traditional
Speaker 1: use issue. And traditions happen real quick if they do,
Speaker 1: you know they do. And I think a lot of
Speaker 1: those traditions that they come with money too, right, I
Speaker 1: mean you think you just talked about trail cameras. I
Speaker 1: mean think about the amount. Know what the dollar figure is,
Speaker 1: but it's got to be in the high millions, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's an industry now that would be taken away,
Speaker 1: and so it would be people that would fight it.
Speaker 1: But even more I think the people that are making
Speaker 1: those things. Yeah. Another thing that's been funny to watch
Speaker 1: is two way communications. Um, I don't know. Was some
Speaker 1: friends of mine Wisconsin, they they spend seventy of their
Speaker 1: time texting the time looking for deer. How's that work
Speaker 1: out for him? Well if they just text, you know.
Speaker 1: And then here in Montana, that first two way communications
Speaker 1: I remember years ago, for one year you couldn't use them,
Speaker 1: and people were pissed because people like, hey, man, I'm
Speaker 1: out with my kids. I want to know what's going on.
Speaker 1: I hunt with my dad. He's an elderly I need
Speaker 1: to know what's happening with him, and so then they
Speaker 1: clarified the language. You can't use it to assist the
Speaker 1: same thing in Alaska. You can't use it so you
Speaker 1: can have it, you can't use it to assist into
Speaker 1: taking a game, which I thought I wanted being a
Speaker 1: pretty reasonable Um. I thought it wanted to being a
Speaker 1: pretty reasonable compromise. But I know, guys, you know, guys
Speaker 1: especially it seems like down in the Southwest, if they
Speaker 1: can't have two way radios, ain't going hunting. You know,
Speaker 1: you get a guy at every point find an animal,
Speaker 1: nine guys watching it, one guy going after and they're
Speaker 1: all on radios. A goddamn seal team. What do you
Speaker 1: think of that? I don't know. I don't I mean personally,
Speaker 1: you know, you get into this thing all the time.
Speaker 1: I've had this conversation. I did a like a talk
Speaker 1: two nights ago in Michigan, and the guy asked me, like,
Speaker 1: what do you think of baiting? I'm like, I think
Speaker 1: if baiting is okay where you're at, great, is it legal?
Speaker 1: You know, if it's illegal, I think you should probably
Speaker 1: stop doing it. UM. I grew up first, second, third, fourth, fifth,
Speaker 1: dear I killed to kill over a pile of carrots. Uh.
Speaker 1: Later I got real curious about what deer doing when
Speaker 1: they're not eating my carrots. Um. What I learned about
Speaker 1: deer from hunting over bait is a dea bowl like carrots.
Speaker 1: As you get more experience, I think you start wondering
Speaker 1: what they're doing when they're not eating them, and where
Speaker 1: are they going? And how would you find them if
Speaker 1: they're going about their natural rhythms, you know, And that's
Speaker 1: just where I'm what I wound up being more interested in. Um.
Speaker 1: If I'm out hunting and I'm going after an animal, Uh,
Speaker 1: it's very tempting to have information like hey, man, it left,
Speaker 1: or a dude that got up and beded back down
Speaker 1: again twenty yards over by that rock. It's like tempting
Speaker 1: to have the information. But in the end, after the fact, um,
Speaker 1: I think that it would I think that it would
Speaker 1: diminish your memory of the animal. I think you diminish
Speaker 1: your memory of the hunt when not growing up in Montana, Right,
Speaker 1: no communicator. I don't know how the loss says it,
Speaker 1: but you can't use communication to target animals. Or yeah,
Speaker 1: they were an assist in the taking game. The first
Speaker 1: time ever hunting out of the state. I'm guiding in Idaho,
Speaker 1: and you just make some assumptions on some rules and
Speaker 1: typically if you assume on the side of the animal,
Speaker 1: you're gonna be correct. And we're riding up the trail,
Speaker 1: got the I'm just learning. The guy ahead of me
Speaker 1: radio cracks and it's like, hey, you guys just rode
Speaker 1: past the ball. Oh jump off. These guys are just
Speaker 1: writing into camp, you know, the clients, and you know
Speaker 1: ten minutes later, dead bull. And I was, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I was just part of something highly illegal. What am
Speaker 1: I gonna do? Like, what are you talking about? That's
Speaker 1: how you kill hell cup here? It's totally illegal and
Speaker 1: I don't and I just couldn't totally takes away from it.
Speaker 1: And doesn't that prove that legality is only part of
Speaker 1: your ethics. Well, it's that's tricky as hell, man. Because
Speaker 1: I brought this point. A lot of guys in the
Speaker 1: Southeast run deer with dogs that traditional use. They've done
Speaker 1: it for a long time. If you decided you're gonna
Speaker 1: you know, people in Michigan, when they see a deer
Speaker 1: chasing dog, they shoot it. I'm saying, when they see
Speaker 1: a dog chasing the deer, you shoot at it. So
Speaker 1: they would act like if I said, oh, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: going up to Michigan, I'm gonna be running deer with
Speaker 1: my dogs, that'd be illegal, unethical, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: In the Southeast, it's it's a traditional use practice, you know.
Speaker 1: I think, like I think that that's why the conversation
Speaker 1: about ethics gets so sticky, because everyone's brought up in
Speaker 1: their own area, and they're brought up to think that
Speaker 1: that what they do is the right way of going
Speaker 1: about things. You know, So it is. It is tricky.
Speaker 1: It's hard to draw definites. I do have some definites,
Speaker 1: I think, But I think that some stuff that I
Speaker 1: used to think is definite is tricky. Like your carrot deer,
Speaker 1: though your ethics you thought more of that deer after
Speaker 1: you got strictly from past the legality. It's legal for
Speaker 1: you shoot overcarets, but your ethics led you to something else.
Speaker 1: Your deer was worth more. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it did it.
Speaker 1: It means more. And in the end, oddly, they really
Speaker 1: started to curtail bait use in Michigan shortly after I left,
Speaker 1: because the disease transmission, because you're bringing animals in rubbing
Speaker 1: noses and eat and dirt that's infected with their own saliva,
Speaker 1: and you know, and you wind up having a much
Speaker 1: higher chance of disease transmission. So they started regulating when
Speaker 1: you put it out, how much you put it out. Now,
Speaker 1: that was kind of on the tail in. So then
Speaker 1: I think in that case you do wind up in
Speaker 1: a in a thing where someone's like, it's not healthy
Speaker 1: for the animal, you know. And another thing with technologies,
Speaker 1: man uh, Eldo Leopold had deadline about well, first, who's
Speaker 1: the guy? Not long ago rold A Peace like, let's
Speaker 1: stop talking about ethics and fair chase and let's talk
Speaker 1: about fair use or fair um fair portions. What was that?
Speaker 1: You know what I'm talking about? Nope, he was just
Speaker 1: saying that we're using the wrong language. His point being,
Speaker 1: you have a well, right well. This is how Aldo
Speaker 1: Leopold put it. You got a well full of water.
Speaker 1: If you improve the pump and never improved the well, right,
Speaker 1: the well is not gonna hold up as well as
Speaker 1: it did. So we're constantly improving the pump with technology,
Speaker 1: but are we improving the well. So I think an
Speaker 1: issue like that is if you go like, yes, baiting
Speaker 1: is in fact hazardous to our heard depletes the well,
Speaker 1: improves the pump, and then through disease transmission, depletes the well.
Speaker 1: I think that then you get very firmly and do
Speaker 1: an ethical issue. But if you've got a state, it's
Speaker 1: got a lot of deer, and they found it over
Speaker 1: the course of many decades, they've been able to manage
Speaker 1: deer at a level they're comfortable with. And people are baiting,
Speaker 1: and and it's how people do it. I have a
Speaker 1: hard time condemning it. The first two bears I ever
Speaker 1: eight were shot off bait from carp and invasive species
Speaker 1: carved to be shot with our bows and frozen and
Speaker 1: uses them bait deer to bait bears with my brothers
Speaker 1: drew bear tags in Michigan. Um, I have no like,
Speaker 1: It's just not that exciting to me to think I've
Speaker 1: never shot a bear over bait. I've been invited to it.
Speaker 1: I have no desire to do it. Just because it's
Speaker 1: just bears eating bait isn't interesting. But I have a
Speaker 1: hard time like acting like all I'm gonna translate that
Speaker 1: into an ethical conundrum. You know, it's hard for people.
Speaker 1: We think about all that land you can't you gotta
Speaker 1: walk a fine line, dude, because you're like I always
Speaker 1: like to clarify whent On talking to Land that I'm not,
Speaker 1: um speaking for us. I don't speak for Land, which
Speaker 1: I'm glad though you are much more eloquent than I am. Well, No,
Speaker 1: but I don't want people to confuse what I think
Speaker 1: with somehow because we're sitting here talking. I don't want
Speaker 1: people to confuse my personal opinions with your official policy. No,
Speaker 1: I mean we don't have an official policy on baiting. Uh.
Speaker 1: I'm with you personally, I have no interest in doing it.
Speaker 1: And you know, and I think sometimes when I hear
Speaker 1: about baiting, it's especially around bears. It's like we have
Speaker 1: better jelly donuts and they did and that's why that
Speaker 1: bear came in. And that, to me is not a
Speaker 1: skill that I want to acquire. Is knowing which like
Speaker 1: doughnuts bring in the bears. That's just me, you know.
Speaker 1: And um, but when you hear you know like that.
Speaker 1: I think it was in Maine, right, I think they
Speaker 1: were talking about the banning of baiting in Maine and
Speaker 1: they talk I mean, they have a large population with
Speaker 1: black bears there and they need to manage them. And
Speaker 1: when you talk to the fishing game, that was a
Speaker 1: tool that they were using. There's no other way to
Speaker 1: hunt them, as there's no other way to them. But effectively,
Speaker 1: it's like when you banned dogs for lions, you're kind
Speaker 1: of banning lion hunting. Yes, right in the East, like
Speaker 1: for instance, where I grew up, or where we first
Speaker 1: familiarized ourselves, like any kind of hunting bears. I talked
Speaker 1: about my brother's journal's bear tags. It's flat swamp, it's hemlock,
Speaker 1: and just like older swamp, you can't see your hand
Speaker 1: in front of your face. There are bears around. I
Speaker 1: think in all my time running around there, I saw
Speaker 1: one bear across the road. I mean, while it's got
Speaker 1: extremely high densities of bears, you just don't see them.
Speaker 1: So to talk about, oh, you're gonna ban baiting for
Speaker 1: bears in Michigan, it's like, okay, but let's just be
Speaker 1: honest what you're doing. You're banning, you're banning bear hunting effectively. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I I advocated against the mains. I mean not
Speaker 1: that I had any real saying it, but I advocated
Speaker 1: against the thing in Man. So I thought that that's
Speaker 1: what it was doing. I always think about what are
Speaker 1: the private conversations that people have? Right, some guy reached
Speaker 1: the cane to me and he's like, oh, yeah, we
Speaker 1: got up. We're doing a thing where we want to
Speaker 1: ban trapping on public land in Montana. I'm like, that
Speaker 1: doesn't interest me. And they're like, oh yeah, we got
Speaker 1: a lot the hunters were with us, and were theyking Like,
Speaker 1: what is the private conversation of the person. What what
Speaker 1: are they when they're sitting around drinking in their house
Speaker 1: with their buddies, what are they talking about? They're talking
Speaker 1: about how they want to like cut away. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: and I mean I think on the band on public lands,
Speaker 1: I mean, we do not want to do things like
Speaker 1: that on a referendum, Like it's up to in my opinion,
Speaker 1: it's up to the people who have the knowledge our
Speaker 1: fishing game agencies on how like we regulate, you know,
Speaker 1: in our fishing game commissions. We start doing that through
Speaker 1: about initiative, and that's where we lose at some point, right,
Speaker 1: And I think what you're talking about this chipping away.
Speaker 1: The woman that runs Trap Free Montana, um, I think
Speaker 1: she came actually to that thing that we had at
Speaker 1: the roxy and I don't remember that, um, when you
Speaker 1: were talking about I think you're doing a book signing
Speaker 1: or something there. And she came and she stood up,
Speaker 1: and then she was talking about it, and she was
Speaker 1: starting with uh, with trapping, but really it was about hunting,
Speaker 1: and she was nerves us about being in the woods
Speaker 1: during the fall, right, And and to me, um, so
Speaker 1: it's just it's like for her, it's it's just the
Speaker 1: tip of the iceberg. When you talk about trapping. There's
Speaker 1: there's more that she's going after. Yeah, I believe in
Speaker 1: incrementalism many I think that everything moves in incrementalism. Death
Speaker 1: of a thousand cuts, right, I mean in a positive
Speaker 1: and in a negative way. I think that the gay
Speaker 1: rights move has been like an increment, very incremental victory.
Speaker 1: That's very incremental civil rights victory, you know. I think that,
Speaker 1: like the civil rights movement, very incremental thing. I think
Speaker 1: the hunting is going the can go in the opposite
Speaker 1: direction of being just a very incremental death. Sure, I
Speaker 1: would say that on like the trapping side in particular,
Speaker 1: I think sometimes trappers their own worst enemy. And so
Speaker 1: like here in Montana, we've been trying to do, you know,
Speaker 1: get some mandatory trapper education, like you'd setting too close
Speaker 1: to trails and just having the knowledge about it, right,
Speaker 1: Like if anybody can go out, you know it's a
Speaker 1: bob boards tomorrow and buy a trap and you know,
Speaker 1: and has no knowledge besides, you know, they just bought
Speaker 1: a trap. And so you know, if bow hunting has
Speaker 1: mandatory education, why shouldn't trapping have that, you know. And
Speaker 1: and so they've they've you know, they've fought that every
Speaker 1: single time the state legislature. And I think that means
Speaker 1: that their own their own worst enemy, right, and so
Speaker 1: that gives people more credence to talk about this banning
Speaker 1: trapping on public land, which I totally disagree with. We
Speaker 1: can see how that path gets there. I had a
Speaker 1: good friend here, you know, I think he said it well.
Speaker 1: He was at the bh A and he said, will
Speaker 1: continue to be able to do this as long as
Speaker 1: we behave in a way that's defensible to the public.
Speaker 1: And so part of this, it's on our shoulders to
Speaker 1: do it, whether it's take bow hunter safety or hunter
Speaker 1: safety or maybe a trapping safety class. Definitely don't want
Speaker 1: to see it go away, but we have to behave
Speaker 1: in a way that's defensible to the public when they
Speaker 1: came out with hunter's safety to people bitch about it.
Speaker 1: Uh you're forty one. Yeah, I don't. I don't think.
Speaker 1: I don't know that because it's always been contentious. Maybe
Speaker 1: probably because it was like at that point, probably it was.
Speaker 1: I think it was contentious when they came out with
Speaker 1: drivers in. Yeah, someone's probably what you know, Kelly and
Speaker 1: talked about. You know what we're talking about, someone saying
Speaker 1: that they were afraid to be out in the woods
Speaker 1: during hunting season top a boat. If you're comfortable what
Speaker 1: you're telling me about. Remember we had a big email
Speaker 1: chain debating with you and me and Doug Dring and
Speaker 1: my brother arguing about uh, hunter recruitment. And you bring
Speaker 1: up a point about the way skiing is perceived in
Speaker 1: your town and the way hunting is perceived in your
Speaker 1: town relative to hazardous risk. Do you remember this, talk
Speaker 1: about that speak to that. Um, well, yeah, catch your
Speaker 1: Idaho skiing is the end all be all. It is
Speaker 1: why you're there. Everybody's a skier. That's how people love
Speaker 1: to identify themselves, even if it's not true. Um, it
Speaker 1: is the only it is like the only like truly
Speaker 1: acceptable form of recreation. I've I've found out there, and
Speaker 1: and uh, hunting hunters get a bad rap. We're in
Speaker 1: the paper there all the time, not ever hunters speaking
Speaker 1: out because for some reason it doesn't make paper, but
Speaker 1: people speaking out against hunters. And I just started thinking
Speaker 1: of how interesting it was that, um, skiing, you have
Speaker 1: you know, multiple just I mean just between Montana and
Speaker 1: Idaho and Wyoming, you have multiple deaths a year and
Speaker 1: people are, oh, that's just skiing. Yea. Also one dudes
Speaker 1: kicked down an avalanche on other dudes. It's not you're
Speaker 1: not even killing yourself exactly. Now, imagine that happening in
Speaker 1: the hunting community. It would be would be in a major,
Speaker 1: major fight. Well yea, every year you had two or
Speaker 1: three gunshot death during hunting season. Yeah, and and some
Speaker 1: of these you know avalanche fatalities there people doing just
Speaker 1: mining their own business and uh an avalanche comes down
Speaker 1: and wipes them out. I'd be like a hunter, you know,
Speaker 1: picking off a hiker. Yeah, let's not perceived that way.
Speaker 1: Not perceived that way. And I just why is that
Speaker 1: it's all a recreation for you to be out in
Speaker 1: the woods. Yeah, come on, um, thanksky, no problem. Let's
Speaker 1: go back to bucket number one. Access. Yeah, yeah, give
Speaker 1: me the lowdown on that. So, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: the biggest thing under access and opportunity is this, uh,
Speaker 1: this whole public lands kind of divest your movement that
Speaker 1: seems to be um very prevalent right now. And you
Speaker 1: know those folks that want to steal our heritage and
Speaker 1: take it for their own. I think that is like that,
Speaker 1: it's the issue. We can't talk about any other things
Speaker 1: if we get that one wrong. Well, tell me this
Speaker 1: because this is this fine is helpful. Put yourself in
Speaker 1: the place of a very smart person. That's gonna be
Speaker 1: I don't know, hear me out try land. Put yourself
Speaker 1: in the place of a very smart person who's explaining
Speaker 1: to me why we should divest federal lands. What would
Speaker 1: they tell me? Don't spin it. I think they would
Speaker 1: tell you that, uh that local control is better because why,
Speaker 1: I say. I would then say, why because it's their
Speaker 1: backyard and they know it's best for that land. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's what I think. That's what they would say. I
Speaker 1: think definitely you would get though, Um, I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know anything in this movement that's not based on
Speaker 1: extractive resources, And I think the core of it would
Speaker 1: be in the argument would be our communities exist because
Speaker 1: we can extract resources from these federal properties. The federal
Speaker 1: them is inefficient at allowing us to restract to extract
Speaker 1: resources from these properties in the way that we think
Speaker 1: we should extract resources and we want to be able
Speaker 1: to more efficiently take the resources out to make more
Speaker 1: money on them because by proximity, by proximity, we have
Speaker 1: more of a right to that than other owners who
Speaker 1: are not living in close There's. I think there's two issues.
Speaker 1: They believe that proximity uh allows them more rights to
Speaker 1: those resources, and they also believe that distance meaning federal
Speaker 1: federal lands managers who are distanced geographically from their lands
Speaker 1: don't know best how to take which tree, or which mine,
Speaker 1: or which gas well or whatever it is. And so um, yes,
Speaker 1: it's more there's because they're closer to it. But also
Speaker 1: just generally speaking, federal government, you know, isn't perceived as
Speaker 1: the most efficient uh extractor of those resources, and and
Speaker 1: the laws that are adhered to by the Feds, that
Speaker 1: have to be adhered to by the Feds tend to
Speaker 1: slow down, um those sorts of decisions with good reason.
Speaker 1: And you know, um is that sixty character Twitter thing
Speaker 1: where it's like, well, who can manage it best? Somebody
Speaker 1: in d C or somebody locally. It's not do not
Speaker 1: have to know more? Yeah, it's not like the office
Speaker 1: there in d C flies somebody out for one day,
Speaker 1: he says, hey, can we cut down this timber? Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Better fly back to d C and
Speaker 1: talk it over with the boys. Yeah, there's regional offices everywhere,
Speaker 1: district offices, the close one. I mean, it's it's crazy.
Speaker 1: There are the people taking under a mandate to do
Speaker 1: a lot more than make there they're opera under a
Speaker 1: mandate to do a lot more than make a temporary
Speaker 1: amount of money for a said individual. Well that I
Speaker 1: think you hit on it. And the one sixty characters
Speaker 1: that we live in a bumper sticker world. You know,
Speaker 1: if you can't boil it down to something that can
Speaker 1: fit on a bumper sticker and piss somebody off, that's
Speaker 1: just not cool. And so these these things that are complex, um,
Speaker 1: like federal lance management, it's a complex thing. You have
Speaker 1: to satisfy all these constituencies. Um, nobody's gonna get their way. Well,
Speaker 1: there are people now who want their way a hundred
Speaker 1: percent and don't understand the complexities of it. My brother
Speaker 1: just made a bumper sticker that says, I heart gluten.
Speaker 1: He just feels bad for gluten. I I can totally
Speaker 1: see Matt doing that. But yeah, I think, yeah, there is.
Speaker 1: I don't know why where did it come from? The
Speaker 1: reluctance to grapple with complex issues we used I mean,
Speaker 1: I really believe the internet and frankly, you know, the
Speaker 1: twenty four hour news cycle plays into this. We used
Speaker 1: to sit around. Frankly, people used to sit around with
Speaker 1: beers and coffee and do what we're doing. Now you
Speaker 1: get on your computer and send a flamer to somebody,
Speaker 1: You get on Facebook and piss somebody off you. You know,
Speaker 1: there's no appreciation, or there's insignificant appreciation for the complexities
Speaker 1: and different and other people's outlooks and working together. So
Speaker 1: now go back into yourselves. Now you don't have to
Speaker 1: play the role the really smart guy who wants who
Speaker 1: wants to privatize federal lands or privatize public lands or
Speaker 1: whatever or have uh what's the word unfettered? Who wants
Speaker 1: unfettered access with no what I would oftentimes see as
Speaker 1: unfettered access with no real eye towards long term future.
Speaker 1: And you can kind of see that at play when
Speaker 1: you watch energy prices. When when like mineral or energy
Speaker 1: prices go up, people get really interested in something, they
Speaker 1: go down, their interest seems to fade, and so you're like,
Speaker 1: so you were kind of looking at this as a
Speaker 1: very temporary thing. You know, it couldn't even hold up
Speaker 1: through a market cycle. But go back to your regular self.
Speaker 1: That's that's me, not land talking, and tell me sell
Speaker 1: me against divester of public lands. M I think the
Speaker 1: I meant, I mean this is like a divester. I
Speaker 1: always add a syllable for some reason. This is what
Speaker 1: is uniquely American, right, I mean, it's what separates up
Speaker 1: from the entire world, that these lands belong to the
Speaker 1: people instead of the short term use. We have this
Speaker 1: conservation ethic which is for future generations. And so it
Speaker 1: doesn't mean no use, doesn't mean no extractiveness, but it
Speaker 1: means it has to balance that for future generations and
Speaker 1: also other uses. And so you know, you you divest
Speaker 1: those either to the states or to individuals, and we
Speaker 1: lose that intrinsic value that I think is uh the
Speaker 1: main piece of fabric that we weaves all across this
Speaker 1: country that is truly American. And and you know, the
Speaker 1: the idea that the States can you know, manage this better,
Speaker 1: there's been no study that's been done that says that's
Speaker 1: the truth. And you know, Utah came close and that's
Speaker 1: when oil you know, it was at a real, real high,
Speaker 1: high level and it was like a hundred over hundred
Speaker 1: dollars of barrel and then it dropped out just like
Speaker 1: you just talked about, right, And so now all those
Speaker 1: plans that they had, even though they were short term
Speaker 1: extraction like go crazy and do it, those an't even
Speaker 1: pencil out now. And so they cannot manage those lands.
Speaker 1: And so they'd have a couple of different options. You know.
Speaker 1: You you you either extract that very quickly and get a
Speaker 1: little short time money U or um you raise taxes.
Speaker 1: When was the last time you heard a politician get
Speaker 1: away with raising taxes like that's going to be their platform.
Speaker 1: Nobody does that, right and or at the very end
Speaker 1: of that as they sell it. And I think you
Speaker 1: know Ryan is right that there's there's there's the industry
Speaker 1: that is behind this. The extract of industry. I think
Speaker 1: that's very real. But there's also folks. I mean, look
Speaker 1: at the Wilkes brothers and what they've done in Montana
Speaker 1: here in the last ten years. They're now the number
Speaker 1: one landowner here in Montana. They're trying to, um, you know,
Speaker 1: take a public elk herd in the dirty hills for
Speaker 1: their own. They're salivating watching this all happen and ready
Speaker 1: to buy all their bits and pieces of a Marya.
Speaker 1: And you know, they're billionaires and they got the money.
Speaker 1: And it's not just them that I'm worrying about. It's
Speaker 1: the you know, foreign entities like the Chinese. I mean,
Speaker 1: the Chinese are buying places all over the world right now.
Speaker 1: And if they owned our public lands and our clean water,
Speaker 1: I think about how crazy that would be. Oh, they
Speaker 1: do a great job environmentally in their own country, right,
Speaker 1: you know, I would say it's beautiful clouds, those beautiful
Speaker 1: clouds they made over all their cities. It's nice, you know. Uh.
Speaker 1: Some folks on the side of this argument, the pro
Speaker 1: side of the best. Sure, sorry, that's like uh adding
Speaker 1: a syllable there, But um, you know, they believe in
Speaker 1: American exceptionalism. They often tout American exceptionalism and all sorts
Speaker 1: of foreign policy issues and governmental issues and constitutional issues.
Speaker 1: And as far as I'm concerned, you know, one of
Speaker 1: the top two, after our form of government, examples of
Speaker 1: American exceptionalism is what we have in our public lands.
Speaker 1: I don't think you can be a fan of American
Speaker 1: exceptionalism and then want to ruin And the number two
Speaker 1: example in my opinion of what American exceptionalism is, we
Speaker 1: have this thing that every citizen in the United States
Speaker 1: has deed, as you said last night, has deed to
Speaker 1: these millions of acres. There isn't no other group of
Speaker 1: people on the planets ever tried this. Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: one of the frustrating things with me about the wildlife
Speaker 1: refuge takeover in Oregon is the way it draped itself
Speaker 1: in the American flag. In in a very literal way,
Speaker 1: I mean literally like draping itself in the American flag.
Speaker 1: And we're looking at it thinking, but what aspect of
Speaker 1: America are you talking about? It is not the rule
Speaker 1: of law, not the part of America where we don't
Speaker 1: tolerate pointing weapons at peace officers and civil servants. Not
Speaker 1: the part of America we don't terrorize the populace, Like
Speaker 1: what aspect of America do you mean? You know, it
Speaker 1: was just very puzzling to me to see, like what
Speaker 1: part of America were you promoting? You know, yeah, what
Speaker 1: do you think would have happened? Like an ices flag
Speaker 1: would bab be more? Well, but what with those guys?
Speaker 1: What do you think would have happened if they were
Speaker 1: of a different religion and they occupied a federal facility
Speaker 1: in some city with uh, you know, armed and threatening
Speaker 1: federal officers, You think we'd let that go on days?
Speaker 1: They would have got dusted up pretty quick. It was, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was pasive. Like I just don't understand that interpretation
Speaker 1: of America that America is that doesn't admire rule of law.
Speaker 1: I think one of the things that makes as great
Speaker 1: is like we don't in most cases, we don't need
Speaker 1: vigilantism because we have a way to address the government.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm actually doing it right now. I'm in
Speaker 1: the appeals process fighting the federal government on something I'm
Speaker 1: not in trouble. Your rebel rouser, Yeah, me and Yanni,
Speaker 1: Well that's what you know. You look at those guys,
Speaker 1: don't get me invitance, They say, they're you know, they're
Speaker 1: they say they're they want to adhere to the Constitution,
Speaker 1: But I mean to your points, Steve, for them to
Speaker 1: believe in what they do, they have to first twist
Speaker 1: the hell out of the Constitution so that they can
Speaker 1: read it upside down her sideways in a way that
Speaker 1: nobody else reads it, including every constitutional attorney that's ever
Speaker 1: looked at it. So once you twist it, then you
Speaker 1: can find this odd way to defend it and wrap
Speaker 1: yourself in a flag that we don't recognize. Did you
Speaker 1: guys see the German gale that came by the food
Speaker 1: contest yesterday? It was amazing. She'd exchange student or something. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't want to talk to me out here. Think
Speaker 1: it just pressed me off too much. The She's like,
Speaker 1: what are you guys doing? Is this a festival? Said, well,
Speaker 1: it's a public lands thing. What are public lands? The
Speaker 1: stuff you don't have? Yeah, it was amazing. All of
Speaker 1: a sudden, I was like, oh, I'm representing the United
Speaker 1: States first of Germany was like I better get this right.
Speaker 1: All all I could think about was article I recently
Speaker 1: read about you know, going out and meeting your gamekeeper
Speaker 1: and paying your trespass fee because everything's private, and like,
Speaker 1: so you want to take those private lands, like, no,
Speaker 1: they're they're public. You can use them. Do you pay taxes?
Speaker 1: Here's like no, I pay taxes in Germany said oh
Speaker 1: well you can still use these lands and it was
Speaker 1: very cool. Yeah, yeah, I didn't know you were engaged
Speaker 1: in diplomacy last night. That's a big day, the ambassador. Um.
Speaker 1: I hear a lot of times people when you're having
Speaker 1: this discussion, Like someone mentioneds recently how the tracing back
Speaker 1: public lands use back to pioneer days? Um? How? And
Speaker 1: I've done it too to say, like, oh, you think
Speaker 1: of a guy like Daniel Boone. You know he came
Speaker 1: from British or you know, English to sin and in England,
Speaker 1: if you get caught on someone's private land, you know
Speaker 1: they would set traps for you and poison you and
Speaker 1: shoot you and you could be hung for it. To
Speaker 1: be hunting on someone else's property. Um, but when those
Speaker 1: guys came here, they were trespassing in many respects, Like
Speaker 1: Daniel Boone was often hunting on ground claimed by the
Speaker 1: British in an enormous amount of friction there claimed by
Speaker 1: indigenous groups. You know there was a muddy picture back then.
Speaker 1: I think the only the idea of like sort of
Speaker 1: what we're talking about when we talk about wildlife in
Speaker 1: the public trust and public trust lands is something that
Speaker 1: is not new, but very much you know, a nineteenth
Speaker 1: and twentieth century creation. It's an experiment, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's such a new thing, um that that we
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't think we totally know the value
Speaker 1: of it yet, right, I mean, I think when you
Speaker 1: were talking last night, um, you know, it's just having
Speaker 1: it there has this in intrinsic value and I don't
Speaker 1: think we fully realized what that is yet because it's
Speaker 1: such a I mean, the history in this country is
Speaker 1: so young, and particularly the public land history is so
Speaker 1: young that I don't think we understand the breadth of
Speaker 1: what that means to us yet. No, it comes gradually
Speaker 1: because now we've all settled in I mean, both sides
Speaker 1: of the aisle have settled in that. Roosevelt was a
Speaker 1: was a you know, had incredible foresight and was a
Speaker 1: great hero. He had to do. He had a twist
Speaker 1: lot of arms and do a lot of shady dealings
Speaker 1: to create the national force that he created. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: Midnight Force. Yea, so he was really pissing people off.
Speaker 1: Now we're like, man, what a visionary. I mean William Clark,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the Copper Kings, was senator at
Speaker 1: that time in Montana when he set it aside. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is a guy that was hanging out a hundred
Speaker 1: dollar bills on the Senate floor to get votes. He
Speaker 1: became a senator in Montana and he fought this because
Speaker 1: they wanted to do nothing but rape and pillage. And
Speaker 1: so it's not like, you know, everybody with this idea,
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, that's awesome, good idea. No, people, now
Speaker 1: it's like what you know, what a tremendous you look
Speaker 1: at like, yo, Samity. It's now hit where we widely
Speaker 1: regarded as being a great move Yellowstone. At the time,
Speaker 1: someone could have made a pretty good argument you could
Speaker 1: draw a lot of money, and you still could draw
Speaker 1: a lot of money out of yell Stone. But it's
Speaker 1: becoming our minds now it's like, wow, we're visionaries. There
Speaker 1: was the argument. Yeah, it was contentious at the time.
Speaker 1: I just don't think we're done having that conversation, and
Speaker 1: I think things are gonna keep moving into the realm
Speaker 1: of of Wow. I can't believe those guys had the
Speaker 1: foresight to have this stuff. No one else has it.
Speaker 1: I mean, these these these places that are still like
Speaker 1: they were thousands of years ago. I could become much
Speaker 1: more valuable as this country it develops. Yeah, as the world,
Speaker 1: as the world goes to ship we're going to be
Speaker 1: more and more like I can't believe those dudes have that.
Speaker 1: Think about how it's similar to our government. I mean, uh,
Speaker 1: lots of mistakes were made, we learned, We learned from
Speaker 1: European mistakes, We learned from all sorts of mistakes and
Speaker 1: what mistakes we made as a as a populist, and
Speaker 1: we formed our government a constitution, a government owned by
Speaker 1: the people. Same thing happened with with land. I mean,
Speaker 1: we made all sorts of mistakes we've had, We've done
Speaker 1: horrible things to indigenous people's we've but we learned through
Speaker 1: trial and error, and we came up with a lamb
Speaker 1: system very similar to governments owned by the people. These
Speaker 1: are two very similar things, our constitutional system of government
Speaker 1: and our public property, same same sort of thing. Most
Speaker 1: egalitarian thing on the planet as far as I'm concerned.
Speaker 1: I think one of the best arguments for public lands
Speaker 1: in wild places is that we don't want to have
Speaker 1: people like like, um, British people who do nature shows
Speaker 1: because they don't have any trees in any woods left
Speaker 1: and then you look like like bear grills. He's I
Speaker 1: was like, holy shout, I'm in the woods. I gotta
Speaker 1: get out of here quick for something bad happens, you know.
Speaker 1: And um, yeah, I think that it's like part of
Speaker 1: the American tradition to find comfort in wild places instead
Speaker 1: of having to be like this adversarial relationship. You know.
Speaker 1: That's why I think about it, just to limit Yeah,
Speaker 1: just because I hate those kind of nature shows. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, it's an animal run. Speaking of big wild
Speaker 1: places we talked with the other day. When we talked
Speaker 1: to Dan, he was talking about the is it the
Speaker 1: American Prairie Project. Yeah, Are you guys in as h
Speaker 1: involved in that at all or can you speak to that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: You're gonna keep twisting their arms make sure it stays
Speaker 1: open for for yeah, I mean so, I mean what
Speaker 1: they're doing there is quite amazing, right And for those
Speaker 1: that don't know about this, it's a Central Montana they're
Speaker 1: trying to tie into the Charles m National Wildlife Refuge
Speaker 1: and the Missouri Breaks National Monument uh CMRS about one
Speaker 1: point one million acres. I think they're looking at trying
Speaker 1: to pull together um property at about three million acres.
Speaker 1: And you know it's it's native Willing seller William exactly,
Speaker 1: private market for sale and nobody's forcing anybody to do anything.
Speaker 1: And so I think the American Prairie Foundation has a
Speaker 1: really long term look at this. And and so I
Speaker 1: think they're into almost a half a million acres that
Speaker 1: they have that is dated plus like least Land on
Speaker 1: on on blm Land, and so their ideas to try
Speaker 1: to be able to bring all this together again they're
Speaker 1: able to buy. They do grazy they like get grazing leases,
Speaker 1: They get grazing leases, and they're turning those over so
Speaker 1: that they can have those used for bison. And you know,
Speaker 1: when they get they're getting past the whole brucellosis issue,
Speaker 1: which I think is pretty hilarious because you know, elk
Speaker 1: in this state carry more brucellosis the bison. But they're
Speaker 1: such an established species that we hunt and that everybody
Speaker 1: loves that nobody's going to touch him. But with a bison,
Speaker 1: old man he might have brucellosis, and so we can't
Speaker 1: have any bison from you know, Yellowstone that are up
Speaker 1: here in a p R or in this this regions.
Speaker 1: What they're doing is they're taking those bisons from Elk
Speaker 1: Island that have never ever you know, up in Alaska,
Speaker 1: that have never been exposed to brucellosis. And so that
Speaker 1: takes that argument away really quickly. And so now they
Speaker 1: don't have that argument. Um, it's it's more about competition
Speaker 1: for grass, which I think it's always been about. And
Speaker 1: so think that's even a debatable point. People will debate
Speaker 1: it all day long. But I don't think the argument.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's about brucelloisis and as soon as
Speaker 1: that bison eats an elk placenta, they could get brucell
Speaker 1: Bison do love elk placena, don't they. I don't think
Speaker 1: so calories are in No. I mean, I think that
Speaker 1: argument it doesn't hold water. It's just one of those
Speaker 1: like red herrings, right, that's easily easily to talk to
Speaker 1: people about, and it's scary. Um. But again, I mean
Speaker 1: the vector there that I think they should be more
Speaker 1: worried about as Elk and you know that's never gonna like,
Speaker 1: nobody's ever gonna take that on. I don't think anyone
Speaker 1: should be worried about. I mean that they should be
Speaker 1: maybe using as their argument, not that they should be
Speaker 1: worried about. Yeah, I love and I've written about that group,
Speaker 1: and I really talked to anyone with that organization. But
Speaker 1: am I clear that they do that that that they
Speaker 1: enroll lands and block management public acts? I shot um um,
Speaker 1: I shot sharp tails on their on their property this year,
Speaker 1: and uh yeah, they're I mean, they were being very
Speaker 1: good stewards. And I would love for them, instead of
Speaker 1: doing block management to kind of get into like a
Speaker 1: long term kind of easement, like an access easeman, because
Speaker 1: I think everybody's fear is is okay, right now, you're
Speaker 1: doing that, so every all these hunters are happy, but
Speaker 1: then they're gonna pull the you know, the rug out
Speaker 1: at some point. And so you know, if they truly
Speaker 1: are committed to access, which I think that they are,
Speaker 1: they should think about doing these long term kind of
Speaker 1: like access easements and so that that gives a lot
Speaker 1: more certainty to this whole situation. And you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, I'd get behind I'd get behind their mission
Speaker 1: a lot more if I didn't have, if I didn't
Speaker 1: have similar suspicions about it. Yeah, and it's I mean,
Speaker 1: and and hunters, I think in general are suspicious kind
Speaker 1: of have a suspicious nature, right because every guy that
Speaker 1: grew up in the out of doors has to look
Speaker 1: at a lot of places he used to be able
Speaker 1: to hang out or they used to be pretty good
Speaker 1: and now they're not so good that they can't hang
Speaker 1: out anymore. They're locked up or their least or whatever
Speaker 1: that said. Though, I mean there's phenomenal upland bird hunting
Speaker 1: down there. The waterfowl hunting is very short, but you know,
Speaker 1: they not much water down there, and so before it freezes,
Speaker 1: it's phenomenal. Yeah, it just gets good then it gets over.
Speaker 1: And I mean, can you imagine, I mean you've you've
Speaker 1: I've never hunted bison, um, but like to be able
Speaker 1: to hunt bison in that place, and you know the
Speaker 1: bisons they had, I went out and watched them and um,
Speaker 1: and I was ready to kind of you know them
Speaker 1: to be cows, you know, and like when they saw us,
Speaker 1: they come up and you know, like you stick your
Speaker 1: hand out and they eat out of your hand or something,
Speaker 1: take a selfie with them. Yeah, yeah, that's very dangerous Yellowstone. Um.
Speaker 1: But when we saw them, I mean they were wild animals.
Speaker 1: As soon as we got out of the truck, they
Speaker 1: were running. And by the way, that was gorgeous to watch,
Speaker 1: you know, on the prairie, you know, heard of about
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty bison running. Was just gorgeous. But
Speaker 1: I mean there is an opportunity for a true hunt
Speaker 1: there and you know down in Yellowstone coming out of there,
Speaker 1: and again I haven't hunted them, and I think that's
Speaker 1: that that as all as all changed, but it's it's
Speaker 1: not quite as much of a hunt as this would be. No,
Speaker 1: I've been down watching that happened, um, and it's not
Speaker 1: I mean, it's you know, yeah, I would categorize more
Speaker 1: like in the harvest category. And I don't think anyone
Speaker 1: who draws that tag thinks of it much beyond that.
Speaker 1: And I've gone down there and observe people doing it. Um.
Speaker 1: When I drew a tag in two thousand four on
Speaker 1: the Copper River area in Alaska, it's a very difficult hunt.
Speaker 1: My brother drew that tag last year and they were
Speaker 1: they blew a number of stocks. I mean, those animals
Speaker 1: just but you know that they have been there a
Speaker 1: long time, and they've been hunting a long time, and
Speaker 1: they've adapted the human pressure, and um, yeah, it becomes
Speaker 1: it becomes a very legitimate hunt, which I think is awesome.
Speaker 1: But I think the ones, yeah, I think the ones
Speaker 1: leaving the park have a hard time adjuscent to it.
Speaker 1: Elk have over you know, Elk have been pursued for
Speaker 1: so long that they have a tendency to know sort
Speaker 1: of what the rules are where they happen to be
Speaker 1: hanging out, you know, and Elk can being in the
Speaker 1: park and be cool, and he leaves the park and
Speaker 1: he knows that it's a whole different game going on.
Speaker 1: I think it's gonna take more time for those animals
Speaker 1: to figure it out. But yeah, I mean personally, you know,
Speaker 1: I've been admirer of that animal since of of Buffalo,
Speaker 1: since I found a skull in the Madison Mountains and
Speaker 1: um and studied up by them a lot, and I
Speaker 1: think that helping that species become you know, we never
Speaker 1: we almost have biological extinction. Um now the term people
Speaker 1: uses ecological extinction, where we got a half million of
Speaker 1: the animals in North America, I think or privately owned
Speaker 1: are basically manages as a livestock, you know. And um,
Speaker 1: I think that would be one of those things hundred
Speaker 1: years from now, if we were to able to have
Speaker 1: some large, publicly owned herds that Americans could interact with. UM,
Speaker 1: I think be one of those things where it became
Speaker 1: like people would be surprised to hear that there were
Speaker 1: adversaries to that plan. It become the future, It become
Speaker 1: the future. El so people like really people didn't want
Speaker 1: this to happen, like yeah, you know, as they didn't,
Speaker 1: But think about this. I mean, as hunters, we've played
Speaker 1: a vital role in establishing just about every game species
Speaker 1: back to wild Honnable populations in North America were only
Speaker 1: one short. The only one we haven't accomplished yet, as
Speaker 1: Pozzis would say, it was bison. And I know there
Speaker 1: can be opposition to these things sometime, but imagine a
Speaker 1: small town in eastern Montana near the only free roaming
Speaker 1: bison herd, Honnable Bison herd in the lower forty eight
Speaker 1: re established. Do you know how many hunters and sightseers
Speaker 1: and wildlife watchers and everything would flood to that town
Speaker 1: every year, it would be like a tourist trap on
Speaker 1: the edge of Grand Canyon. You get familiar with the writer,
Speaker 1: um uh, Bill Kittridge from a long time Missoula resident
Speaker 1: brop in Oregon. But he has a book called Hole
Speaker 1: in the Sky and and it's it's all about issues,
Speaker 1: land management issues and environmental issues. And you know he
Speaker 1: was talking about an old version of this called Buffalo commons.
Speaker 1: It's an idea that keeps coming up. But he in
Speaker 1: the end of his book he says, um, go to Jordan,
Speaker 1: Montana and talk about Buffalo comms is a very good
Speaker 1: way to get your ass kicked. It's it's a contentious issue.
Speaker 1: I totally understand it. Man. I could put on like
Speaker 1: a different costume and go argue and probably somewhat effectively
Speaker 1: argue against it. It's not that I don't see where
Speaker 1: people are coming from. I understand both sides of it
Speaker 1: very well. If you go like, oh, yeah, you're you're
Speaker 1: great grandparents and your grandparents fought very hard and suffered
Speaker 1: all kinds of economic calamities and gave their hearts and
Speaker 1: souls to this idea of settling the land, tilling the land,
Speaker 1: making the desert bloom. And now we want to go
Speaker 1: and say, oh yeah, yep, but we're going in a
Speaker 1: different direction now as a society is a hurtful thing
Speaker 1: to hear. Yeah, I man, I mean, it's one of
Speaker 1: the toughest places in the world to make a living,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, as a rancher, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's one of the toughest places in the entire world.
Speaker 1: And so you know, as that population was established, um
Speaker 1: and and folks came out to a prospect and you know,
Speaker 1: and and set up there kind of own flag on
Speaker 1: a piece of ground like that population has been dwindling
Speaker 1: since those people came out there, right and and and
Speaker 1: but they're tough. I mean, they're tough, and they're some
Speaker 1: of the greatest people in the world. And you can
Speaker 1: see how they've been watching kind of their populations shrink.
Speaker 1: You know. I'm in Missoula, where it's all prosperous, you know,
Speaker 1: and everything is on the up. There's their whole generations
Speaker 1: where it's been on the down. But they're so tough
Speaker 1: and they're hanging onto and and it's and I mean
Speaker 1: I respect that in a lot of ways. And and
Speaker 1: so I and I definitely see where they're coming from
Speaker 1: and it's a different, you know, way for them to think.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think it you can almost have
Speaker 1: both in a lot of ways to write. I mean,
Speaker 1: this big scary thing about the American Prairie Foundation, it's
Speaker 1: all willing sellers and willing buyers, right, so you can
Speaker 1: still have cattle next to license and it's whole Brucelison's
Speaker 1: issues out the door, right, And so I mean, I
Speaker 1: mean you could definitely do it, um, but you know
Speaker 1: that that population has been doing for a long time,
Speaker 1: and it's because it's a hard place to make a
Speaker 1: living in order, because because these issues are so complicated,
Speaker 1: it's it's helpful, I think to try to find some
Speaker 1: kind of shorthand things. And the thing I often come
Speaker 1: back to where I'm when I'm trying to find clarity
Speaker 1: on the issue, often think like like what are the lines?
Speaker 1: What are my personal lines? I tend to always look
Speaker 1: at an issue, and I tend to come from the
Speaker 1: angle of what's best for habitat and wildlife because everything
Speaker 1: is so complicated, right, and every issue has so many things.
Speaker 1: But that's sort of what I've decided are like my
Speaker 1: primary interest. Well, I think it is best for the country,
Speaker 1: the best or future generations is to advocate on the
Speaker 1: behalf of the thing that is is most likely to suffer.
Speaker 1: And I think that wildlife and habitat as we go
Speaker 1: forward UM are going to be the things that have
Speaker 1: the greatest potential for loss. I don't worry about running
Speaker 1: out of roads. I think if we had a group,
Speaker 1: if we had a meeting this weekend and it was
Speaker 1: a group advocating on not running out of roads, I
Speaker 1: don't know how many people would show up for it
Speaker 1: and donate money. It's just I don't think we're going
Speaker 1: to run out of roads. I don't think we're gonna
Speaker 1: run out of concrete, you know, like to save the
Speaker 1: pavement foundation. UM, it's not going to inspire I think. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just like there's some stuff that if you look
Speaker 1: at what's happening around the world, it's just there's things
Speaker 1: that are getting lost at a rapid rate. And we're
Speaker 1: in a good position to find a way to coexist
Speaker 1: in an economic you know, in an economically feasible way
Speaker 1: to have prosperity and coexist with wildlife in a way
Speaker 1: that hasn't been done. I think, you know, using your
Speaker 1: UM Pavement Association of America or whatever you know it
Speaker 1: would be the advocacy group. Is that on the flip
Speaker 1: side of that is that you can you can continue
Speaker 1: to make roads. Like you said, we're not worried about
Speaker 1: running out of roads because we can continue to make
Speaker 1: and make and make more roads. We're not making any
Speaker 1: more of this bad country, right, We're not making any
Speaker 1: more of this pristine wild that fishing wild, that habitat.
Speaker 1: And so that's why I think it's it's and that's
Speaker 1: like that second bucket, right is this is it protecting
Speaker 1: special places? And there's Since we're not making any more
Speaker 1: of it, let's make sure that we keep that stuff
Speaker 1: the way it is right now. Yeah, you never go
Speaker 1: to your friends. He just bought some property and he's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna put some wilderness in over here, and my
Speaker 1: hotels going over here, right like you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think another good examples, you know, is wetlands. You know,
Speaker 1: all these wetlands that are drained um and then people
Speaker 1: try to make them again. We can't even come close
Speaker 1: to making them again, you know. I mean, you can
Speaker 1: kind of have a semblance of a little bit of
Speaker 1: water in there, but the complexity of those wetlands and
Speaker 1: all the insects and the plant community is in there.
Speaker 1: You cannot replicate it, you know, I mean, as smart
Speaker 1: as we are, as much as I you know, love
Speaker 1: our ingenuity, we haven't figured that out and we never
Speaker 1: will because that happened over you know, Eon and how
Speaker 1: that was developed. Funny is that funny case? Studying Phoenix?
Speaker 1: They made artificial wetlands, but it got destroyed by beavers?
Speaker 1: For real? Alright, is probably be good to take some questions? Oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna do questions. Yeah, Land lead the question thing? Ryan,
Speaker 1: all right, is there any questions from the crowd? And
Speaker 1: I think we'll have to use this other microphone. Is
Speaker 1: there any questions from the crowd, Just restate the question. Oh,
Speaker 1: we can do that. It's good. Any questions? Didn't that
Speaker 1: I didn't invent that. He's done this before, Josh Kins.
Speaker 1: You we're at a campaign here. The candidates out there,
Speaker 1: they probs, can they not look at Mount rush for?
Speaker 1: Where Pedo Rosel's on? The four presidents selected do on
Speaker 1: Mount Rush for? And then they're up there for Racus
Speaker 1: saying I want to do something completely opposed to him,
Speaker 1: his most powerful latencies talk to the mapulating Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: so and so I'm sure he's probably could be on
Speaker 1: alt Rushmo left Field had a good face because he's
Speaker 1: in direct opposition like Theodore Rosemo. No, I think they'll
Speaker 1: have to chisel down Roosevelt and put up because you're
Speaker 1: not gonna put him next to the guy. You have
Speaker 1: to chisel him down and put up a new phase
Speaker 1: on Well. I mean, I'll hit this without tangentially, I'll
Speaker 1: hit it. So the question is basically, I think, um,
Speaker 1: how can politicians now claim to be claimed to carry
Speaker 1: the mantle of Roosevelt and be anti everything Roosevelt ever did? Um,
Speaker 1: I would say, it's kind of what Josh is asking.
Speaker 1: I think our problem with Sportsman and as advocates for
Speaker 1: habitat is that, through whatever political um nefariousness has gone on,
Speaker 1: we've allowed our issue to become one of these partisan
Speaker 1: footballs where it can only be kicked around on one
Speaker 1: side of the island, not the other. And um, you know,
Speaker 1: if you go back fifteen years, twenty years, conservation, lands management,
Speaker 1: environmental policy, these are debated, but they weren't partisan issues.
Speaker 1: Nobody was against clean water fifteen years ago. Nobody was
Speaker 1: against public land. You couldn't speak. I mean, could you
Speaker 1: imagine fifteen years ago presidential candidates loudly advocating in the
Speaker 1: Western United States to divest ourselves of federal land. They'd
Speaker 1: have been run out on a rail tardan feathered and
Speaker 1: it was e p as a Nixon policy. Um So
Speaker 1: I think what we have to do, and what I
Speaker 1: think groups like v h A do. We're pulling this
Speaker 1: back to the center where it's no longer a partisan thing.
Speaker 1: Democrats are for it, Republicans are for it, and it's
Speaker 1: because it's a good idea. And I believe that most
Speaker 1: of these people in their heart, they know it's a
Speaker 1: good idea, but they're in the business of playing political advantage.
Speaker 1: It's not about doing the right thing. It's about playing
Speaker 1: political advantage and getting reelected and getting big pack contributions.
Speaker 1: We got to get it back to where it's doing
Speaker 1: the right thing, and that's that's what we're trying to do.
Speaker 1: We're not one side or the other. We're pulling it
Speaker 1: back to the middle. So everybody's for it right up front?
Speaker 1: What for you? A little bit of devil's advocacy here
Speaker 1: and means not necessarily might assas. But some of the
Speaker 1: folks who are less interested in the back country and
Speaker 1: more interested in the extraction might take the argument back
Speaker 1: and say, well, you know what, America was never populated.
Speaker 1: Would you want to protect the whole thing? Would you
Speaker 1: never want to let anybody live here? And do you
Speaker 1: miss the animals who were extincted? Yes? Yeah. If I
Speaker 1: could get a mammoth tag tomorrow, I'm all over it. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: so no doubt when you restrict the march of industrialization somewhere,
Speaker 1: does that not full fact people who are not as
Speaker 1: wealthy as we are. And I say, every funny in
Speaker 1: this room, is it very wealthy to even be here?
Speaker 1: Anybody who goes to the background of the hunt, regardless
Speaker 1: of what you can see your reconolicets, is very wealthy.
Speaker 1: And the argument give it many times is that when
Speaker 1: you want to spress carbon the nations where you want
Speaker 1: to preserve too much background doing so, And it's a
Speaker 1: bunch of rich guys. Whether you feel like you're the
Speaker 1: rich guys hold the land for everyone, it's a bunch
Speaker 1: of rich guys trying to hold back other people in industrialization.
Speaker 1: And so that's one of the arguments here. And I
Speaker 1: have fred progress that us not my advocation, but what
Speaker 1: do you say land restated? So I think the question,
Speaker 1: like the restated for me is is that there's this uh,
Speaker 1: this rich elite. They're trying to protect us from ourselves.
Speaker 1: Is that fair? And and and and trying to and
Speaker 1: say that these these these lands are only they're only
Speaker 1: do they want to be set aside for the rich
Speaker 1: early and not used by anybody else? Is that fair?
Speaker 1: Very few number of people? You look at, how many
Speaker 1: people really going to the backup? You about our owners,
Speaker 1: the stuff on our back. We want the government to
Speaker 1: preserve this for us, not that other people maybe have
Speaker 1: their rayed standard of living, better medical cares on. But
Speaker 1: that's majority of people do not necessarily made direct life,
Speaker 1: so that direct benefits. So you're so, I think, because
Speaker 1: because I'm what's probably gonna happen is no one's gonna
Speaker 1: hear that, and we're gonna accid like so I'm trying
Speaker 1: to find a way. Yeah, that that's great, but everyone
Speaker 1: else ask a question has to be like a tight
Speaker 1: clean question, but not that that's not tight and clean,
Speaker 1: but it's gonna be hard to follow. So a gentleman,
Speaker 1: that's a two pronged questions just Devil's advocate. He's stating
Speaker 1: people who are into uh, saving animals, preserving wild places,
Speaker 1: if they went back in time, would they have said,
Speaker 1: no one can come into America because it's all wilderness
Speaker 1: and we don't want to lose any wilderness. And if
Speaker 1: you want to save buffalo, does that mean we should
Speaker 1: save the short faced bear in the Willia mammoth? Um,
Speaker 1: let's talk about that part first. It's like, I don't
Speaker 1: know if people from outer space came and lived here,
Speaker 1: would they be covered under civil rights protections? I just
Speaker 1: don't know. It's so um. It's just something that it's
Speaker 1: a fun thing to juggle mentally. I don't know how
Speaker 1: it really um. I don't know how it really helps
Speaker 1: us to ask that question, because it's the kind of
Speaker 1: thing where you go to someone and they say, I
Speaker 1: believe in clean water, and then they go, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: but you use dish detergent. You're a hypocrite, so nothing
Speaker 1: you say matters. UM. I can't speak to it on
Speaker 1: a very personal level. I wish Wily mammoth hadn't gone extinct.
Speaker 1: I have a wily mammoth tooth. I wish the whole
Speaker 1: thing was still there with its tooth in it. Um. Uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's just like it's too revised, it's
Speaker 1: too revisionists for me to even grapple with. And I
Speaker 1: just sort of tend to look at it like, where
Speaker 1: are we now? What's going on in the world. I
Speaker 1: think that whatever definition we were to arrive at and
Speaker 1: how we define and wilderness, how we define wild places.
Speaker 1: In my mind, um, if we got a giant panel
Speaker 1: of interested stakeholders together and came up with a working
Speaker 1: version of what is a wild place and we agreed
Speaker 1: on that nationally, and then we just said, do we
Speaker 1: want more of this stuff or less of it? However
Speaker 1: we define it, I would say I'd like to have
Speaker 1: a little more. The second part of the question is,
Speaker 1: isn't this all just a bunch of rich recreationalists trying
Speaker 1: to get the government to curtail people's ability to make
Speaker 1: a living so that we have a fun playground. It's
Speaker 1: a great question, Um, that one I think is worth
Speaker 1: wrestling with. I think that one of the big things
Speaker 1: about wild lands advocacy and wildlife advocacy is we don't
Speaker 1: really know what we have yet, and that there are
Speaker 1: a lot of activities that can occur on it that
Speaker 1: will not diminish it, including some extraction extractive industries, including
Speaker 1: very light footprint things. Um, I don't look at wilderness
Speaker 1: is being defined by people can't go there. Hell's You know,
Speaker 1: you have the Hell's Canyon wilderness. It has a wonderful
Speaker 1: avenue through it in the form of the Snake River.
Speaker 1: It's very accessible. People can go and experience that level
Speaker 1: of wilderness. I think there are many cases where people can.
Speaker 1: I just don't think that it has minute to minute
Speaker 1: be able to justify its existence based on what's happening
Speaker 1: there right now. I'll say this too, I think a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of the beauty of the public
Speaker 1: lands is an aspirational American kind of thing. I don't
Speaker 1: get to Alaska there as much as I'd like. I
Speaker 1: wish I was up there, you know, every other week.
Speaker 1: Even if I got there only one time in my life. Hell,
Speaker 1: even if I never got there, the aspirational nature of
Speaker 1: being there me dreaming about it is worth something to me.
Speaker 1: A single mom in Chicago. She may never get to
Speaker 1: Glacier Park, she may never get to the Badger Tombad
Speaker 1: or the Flathead National forest, but it's an aspirational thing.
Speaker 1: She can go, you can dream about it. That aspiration,
Speaker 1: that and that sort of aspirational stuff is driven Americans
Speaker 1: for you know, over two centuries. And if you remove that,
Speaker 1: even the ability to do it, the aspiration goes with
Speaker 1: it is gone. So just because I would say to
Speaker 1: to a single mom who might say that it's not
Speaker 1: just for Yeah, we're using it a lot, maybe we
Speaker 1: use it more than everybody else, but it's there for
Speaker 1: everybody to use if you want to. You can aspire
Speaker 1: to do it because it's there. There's some inspirational, soulful
Speaker 1: thing of it just existing, so you can do it.
Speaker 1: You can dream about it. But if someone came to
Speaker 1: me and said I'm gonna make it, if someone came
Speaker 1: to me, like like God came down and said to me,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make a deal with you. I'm either gonna
Speaker 1: destroy the boundary waters or you and any child you
Speaker 1: ever have and any children that ever come from any
Speaker 1: children you will ever have, can't go there. I would say,
Speaker 1: we'll step back. So I don't think that it's always
Speaker 1: a highly personal thing. Do I like to go there? Yeah?
Speaker 1: It does me going into these places affect them in
Speaker 1: a long term negative weight. No, if I had to
Speaker 1: decide between my access and its existence, what would I
Speaker 1: go with? I would go with its its existence. There
Speaker 1: are many places I will never go. I just probably
Speaker 1: won't get to all of them. Does that mean I
Speaker 1: have antipathy towards their well being? I think it goes
Speaker 1: beyond the personal well I want to I'm gonna address
Speaker 1: like give been an answer of some might you know
Speaker 1: might ask him this, um, it's now being presented as this.
Speaker 1: I think the genesis of the question is that, well,
Speaker 1: you are an assumption based on it is you're sacrificing
Speaker 1: a bunch of other jobs and economic opportunity because you
Speaker 1: guys want to hunt there. You're making the rest of
Speaker 1: the company country suffer economically because you guys want to
Speaker 1: protect your elk hunting spot. I say, no, what about
Speaker 1: the elk hunting jobs, the guides, the outfitters, the restaurants,
Speaker 1: the towns. What about these What about these vibrant communities Missoula, Montana, Bozeman.
Speaker 1: They're based largely on outdoor recreation. There are jobs associated
Speaker 1: with the wilderness. It's not just all or nothing. There's
Speaker 1: other kinds of clean jobs. I mean, I work in
Speaker 1: an industry. We were all here because of it. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not tied to a volatile market. We wouldn't be
Speaker 1: in the fight that we're in. If these uh single
Speaker 1: moms in Chicago, to stick with that example, they may
Speaker 1: see these places as aspirational, and I hope they do,
Speaker 1: but they will not fight UH fraction as hard as
Speaker 1: we do without being there for themselves and and seeing
Speaker 1: what it really is. And and I think those are
Speaker 1: the people they're going, Oh, National Forest, I don't even
Speaker 1: know what that is. That's on the other side of
Speaker 1: the country. You know, they're yeah, understanding, appreciate. I recently
Speaker 1: had a conversation. We've been working on a documentary project
Speaker 1: and as part of it, I interviewed at length UH
Speaker 1: animal ethicist. He's a he's a professor, he teaches animal ethics.
Speaker 1: He's animal rights advocate UM activists. And we're in a
Speaker 1: conversation about how you saying he was. I was asking
Speaker 1: him like, let's say you're a really smart hunter. Tell
Speaker 1: me what you think a really smart hunter would tell
Speaker 1: me to justify his existence the same way I did
Speaker 1: the land earlier. And he talked about, oh, you would
Speaker 1: tell me about all the money you guys spend on
Speaker 1: wildlife habitat and wetlands. We kind of holding on the
Speaker 1: duck idea and talking about ducks on limited. He's like that,
Speaker 1: you tell me that you spend all that, But I
Speaker 1: would just say, you're just doing that because you want
Speaker 1: to shoot it, right, And I was describing to him
Speaker 1: after this. I was describing him, you know what happens
Speaker 1: when you go to ducks on limited banquet and people
Speaker 1: who hunt maybe a day a year go and spend
Speaker 1: hundreds or thousands of dollars and give money to an
Speaker 1: organization that is just going to turn around and buy
Speaker 1: wet lands and open it up to the public. And
Speaker 1: he's going, oh, yeah, but yeah, but they only are
Speaker 1: They only do that because they want to kill ducks.
Speaker 1: I'm like, man, you know what, I don't care what
Speaker 1: they're doing it for. If it takes some level of
Speaker 1: exposure to wild places to turn you into an advocate
Speaker 1: of wild places, does that then make it a negative
Speaker 1: because you have this ulterior motive. I'm like, oh, I
Speaker 1: know about advocating for it because I've experienced it. How
Speaker 1: can you expect that? How can you expect it to
Speaker 1: How can you be suspicious of a person who advocates
Speaker 1: on something, but you're suspicious of them because they like
Speaker 1: it too. Who doesn't do that? I mean, who advocates
Speaker 1: on ship they don't like So it's just it's like
Speaker 1: the weirdest roundabout argument to be like, oh, yeah, you
Speaker 1: just like you just want to save it because you
Speaker 1: like it, or you caught me red hand. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: do love it a whole bunch, you know. I mean
Speaker 1: the way I would answer that question when somebody says
Speaker 1: that you're just setting it aside um for this elite
Speaker 1: kind of hunting preserve or whatever, I would ask them
Speaker 1: a question before I answer that, And I said, do
Speaker 1: you like clean water? Our clean water starts on public lands,
Speaker 1: and so do you want to make sure that you
Speaker 1: have clean water? That's the that's that's the question. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now I would get into that too. Just like you
Speaker 1: don't understand ecologically, we don't understand as a people ecologic
Speaker 1: what these places mean entirely. I mean, you have this
Speaker 1: like interwoven connectivity. I recently heard this theory that was
Speaker 1: really interesting where a guy was taking He was saying
Speaker 1: he was looking at the ocean as an organism that
Speaker 1: you would take an entire ocean and say it's an
Speaker 1: organ is the same way we have like our body, ourselves,
Speaker 1: and we're comprised of organs and fluids, right, and electrical
Speaker 1: impulses that allow us to move that. He's like, imagine
Speaker 1: that we have the ocean and we treat the ocean
Speaker 1: as an organism, and the fish, all the fisher, organs,
Speaker 1: everything that happened there. It's like this living being and
Speaker 1: think of it that way. I think you can think
Speaker 1: of our cology in that way, and we don't really
Speaker 1: know what we're gonna lose in other places by messing
Speaker 1: with these things. Look at one, when agricultural practices in
Speaker 1: Louisiana and Texas changed and they started doing a lot
Speaker 1: more rice production, you created such an explosion of snow
Speaker 1: geese that it's denuding portions of the Arctic and damaging
Speaker 1: wildlife habitat in the Arctic. It's a long ways from
Speaker 1: Texas to the Arctic, but you create a wave that
Speaker 1: travels with activity. I don't think we're really understand in
Speaker 1: a wildlife sense and in a clean air and clean
Speaker 1: water sense, what would happen if we don't draw the
Speaker 1: line on wildlands protection. I don't think it's just gonna
Speaker 1: be like you can just pluck it away and act
Speaker 1: like that's gone, but everything else stays the same. We're
Speaker 1: not done making mistakes. I mean, we've done ridiculous stuff
Speaker 1: and made ridiculous mistakes, and now we laugh about what
Speaker 1: our grandparents did. Our kids and our grandkids are gonna
Speaker 1: be laughing about ship we're doing right now that we
Speaker 1: think is perfectly normal. Hope they're laughing in the back.
Speaker 1: Much briefly on badrics you mad and Glacier, and then
Speaker 1: also of water because you talk maybe a little bit
Speaker 1: about what's still going on on the tribe. It's Bessie,
Speaker 1: what's going on the tribe up there? And what was
Speaker 1: trying me down? And where we're at with that? Yeah, so, um,
Speaker 1: I don't remember the exact number of leases, and I
Speaker 1: don't remember. Won't restate that question, Okay, So the question
Speaker 1: is what's going on with the Badger two medicine? And
Speaker 1: I'll orient everybody about what that is. That's a area
Speaker 1: of the Rocky Mountain Front, essentially south of Glacier Park
Speaker 1: in Montana, all the way down to Chodo. Um. It's
Speaker 1: about a thirty five mile by thirty five mile area UM,
Speaker 1: sacred to the Blackfeet Indians, sacred to me personally. UM.
Speaker 1: In the eighties, there were oil leases let in the
Speaker 1: Badger too med and it has long been argued by
Speaker 1: the Blackfeet tribe the improper UH environmental review was followed
Speaker 1: before those oil leases were let because the tribe was
Speaker 1: not giving was not given UM proper overs at a
Speaker 1: proper comment period on it. That's been fought in the
Speaker 1: courts for quite some time. Company in Louisiana called solan
Speaker 1: X has one of these leases, and solon X stepped
Speaker 1: up a few years ago and decided, well, out of
Speaker 1: the several companies that own several of these tens of
Speaker 1: thousands acres leases, we're gonna push it. We're gonna drill there.
Speaker 1: We're gonna call the bluff, we're gonna see what happens.
Speaker 1: And so they started pushing to drill, exploring, sending, you know,
Speaker 1: applying for permits. They're saying, we're gonna drill. And so
Speaker 1: these leases had just been set there kind of simmering
Speaker 1: for some time in a place that's you know, really
Speaker 1: really is a sacred, beautiful place. UM. My kid's name
Speaker 1: badge after the badge of two medicine. Um, well, just
Speaker 1: recently the federal government decided with the Blackfeet tribe, we
Speaker 1: have one of those leases. The federal government said, you
Speaker 1: gotta do whatever you gotta do or get off the pot.
Speaker 1: And you either got to cancel the leases or you
Speaker 1: gotta let them drill one or the other. You gotta
Speaker 1: go and find the federal government Sally Jewel Environmental secretary
Speaker 1: or the Interior secretary canceled the lease. So we have
Speaker 1: one gone, but there's still a whole bunch of leases.
Speaker 1: There's we think probably that the president is is that
Speaker 1: that's going to be too difficult to drill there, and
Speaker 1: we'll hope for some kind of system to retire or
Speaker 1: buy out or whatever the rest of the leases. We
Speaker 1: have a good precedent, it's on a good path, but
Speaker 1: the fight's not over yet. Up front. Yeah, So you know,
Speaker 1: the n r A does their candidacy indoors from the
Speaker 1: rate candidates political candidates in like Yo, we are free
Speaker 1: national delegates all get a radis. But they're also the
Speaker 1: ones we the char for the transfer of public land.
Speaker 1: So I'm curious if he's been talks of maybe like
Speaker 1: doing some sort of rating system for candidates that are
Speaker 1: positive for public plants. Yeah, so the question is is
Speaker 1: uh is b h A ready to kind of start
Speaker 1: rating candidates right and letting people know where they stand
Speaker 1: on issues. Uh so this last year or in this
Speaker 1: cycle right now? Um, you know there's with the presidential candidates,
Speaker 1: they all went down to Nevada and um, and then
Speaker 1: I think it was the Renal Journal that asked them questions.
Speaker 1: There was five questions. One of those was about public lands,
Speaker 1: and so it was a great way for us to
Speaker 1: without doing like a candidate scorecard, to like just just
Speaker 1: provide information to people. Now, I will tell you that
Speaker 1: the legalities of a scorecard are very complicated because right
Speaker 1: away they're looking like endorsements and you know, and and
Speaker 1: so you have to be very careful as a five
Speaker 1: oh one c three, which we are where we cannot
Speaker 1: engage in political politics at all. So it's be very
Speaker 1: careful of that. And you know, the I've been involved
Speaker 1: in the scorecards, and what the way that you kind
Speaker 1: of get around that is have instead of having like
Speaker 1: two questions about public lands that are very leading, you
Speaker 1: have to have a big array of things that you
Speaker 1: ask them, right and and that threshold is I mean,
Speaker 1: that's it's very complicated, but that threshold you can do it. Um.
Speaker 1: Is that something that we want to do? I say, yes,
Speaker 1: do we have Do we have the resources you know
Speaker 1: to be able to do that? Uh? This last cycle? No? Um,
Speaker 1: But I think it's something that's uh, you know, providing
Speaker 1: information to people is something that we're supposed to be
Speaker 1: doing right and giving them letting them make their own decisions.
Speaker 1: And so without us endorsing candidates, which we cannot do,
Speaker 1: we can provide that information. I think that's something we'll
Speaker 1: probably do in the future. You know, I totally agree
Speaker 1: with landing without getting in the exact politics of it.
Speaker 1: Are endorsing anybody or anything? And back to Josh's question
Speaker 1: a bit. I firmly believe that until some people lose
Speaker 1: their races because of their public land stances, it won't change.
Speaker 1: And you know, I'm not saying who it is or
Speaker 1: who is endorsed or not, but until a sportsman rise
Speaker 1: up and penalize people at the ballot box, this is
Speaker 1: not going to go away. Because there's political advantage in it,
Speaker 1: and we have a lot of power. By the way,
Speaker 1: it's unharnessed yeah, it's I'm not gonna get too deep
Speaker 1: into presidential politics, but it's been. It's frustrating to me
Speaker 1: that of all front runners either party, there's not a
Speaker 1: person who has even an idea of a background in
Speaker 1: the out of doors, an idea of a background and
Speaker 1: and and hunting fishing. Um. I don't think it's over,
Speaker 1: but you know, we've had such a strong tradition of
Speaker 1: of outdoors people in politics in this country, and there
Speaker 1: are some phenomenal senators and congressmen who have, you know,
Speaker 1: a strong land ethic both sides of the aisle. We're
Speaker 1: just we're lacking at right now. I know a lot
Speaker 1: of hunters get frustrated because either have you got one
Speaker 1: party who tends to advocate on behalf of wilderness and
Speaker 1: clean air and clean water, you got another party that
Speaker 1: tends to advocate on behalf of firearm ownership and hunting
Speaker 1: heritage and UM. I always feel like a political eunuch
Speaker 1: because you're just you're torn between these two things. I
Speaker 1: lament the days um of having both. I think that
Speaker 1: I don't want to say a name. There's a guy,
Speaker 1: there's a senator out of New Mexico that I think
Speaker 1: hits a very like a wonderful balance. Yeah, super to
Speaker 1: start for us. Yeah, strikes of wonderful balance between hunting, heritage,
Speaker 1: firearm ownership, clean air, clean water, wild their habits at
Speaker 1: But right now it's just absolutely missing from the political realm.
Speaker 1: John Tester, same thing. So you heard it here first,
Speaker 1: Steve Ronello for President. Nope, I talked about a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of stuff that most Americans could care to less about.
Speaker 1: Man couldn't care less about, you know. To Steve's point, though,
Speaker 1: that's why organizations like b H are so important. Because
Speaker 1: we don't have Teddy Roosevelt's uh in office. It's gonna
Speaker 1: take advocacy from very sharply minded organs like us to
Speaker 1: influence policy, you know, in the smoke filled rooms, and
Speaker 1: without you know, orders like us doing it, we don't
Speaker 1: just have the innate knowledge of it in the corner
Speaker 1: office anymore. I was laughing at this internal, very brief,
Speaker 1: internal debate I was having when you mentioned the Badger
Speaker 1: two Edicine, because it is a very very special place
Speaker 1: and I love it, and I was listening to you
Speaker 1: talk and thinking, I don't say that, don't say it's beautiful,
Speaker 1: And I'm like telling there's a lot of grizzly bears.
Speaker 1: Don't go up there, you know. But in every hunter,
Speaker 1: every fisherman, any birdwatcher, you know you have your special
Speaker 1: spots and you don't want to show up and see
Speaker 1: other people there. But you've got to be open about
Speaker 1: this stuff now, and you know it's time you got
Speaker 1: to take the gloves off and be willing to say, Hey,
Speaker 1: these places are incredible. You should go there. Just so
Speaker 1: you know, I've been known to fly across the room
Speaker 1: grab the phone out of my wife's hand as she
Speaker 1: starts to mention utter the first letter of the name
Speaker 1: of a creek. I might have been in her So
Speaker 1: for me to even mention this place, I will tell
Speaker 1: you I killed the bowl in the batch of tomad
Speaker 1: Uh two or three years ago. I saw six different
Speaker 1: Glusay bears the day I killed that bowl, six different bears.
Speaker 1: So I'm not lying when I say there's a bunch
Speaker 1: of bears there. But I like those places. We allys
Speaker 1: uh well when we're our cold is steing Cole Creek
Speaker 1: for every creek, every creek? All right, you got in
Speaker 1: the concluding thoughts were done with questions, Oh no, we
Speaker 1: need more questions. I just I don't know how long
Speaker 1: has been been, just over an hour really, two or
Speaker 1: three things that um, folks that are listening to this
Speaker 1: podcast going to do after or lands, whether the lawn
Speaker 1: Chicago or whether it's sportsman or just aspirational, what would
Speaker 1: they they you to talk? So the question is is
Speaker 1: what can the listeners of this podcast do to advocate
Speaker 1: on behalf of these wild places? It's up fair? Can
Speaker 1: I give one and you give to sure number one?
Speaker 1: You gotta start voting your sport. You gotta strip your
Speaker 1: sport from the rest of the partisan politics. Make ballot
Speaker 1: box decisions based upon this stuff. If it's important to you,
Speaker 1: So I totally agree. Um, I would say join an organization.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm I'm I'm selfish, and so I said,
Speaker 1: join back Country Hunters and Anglers because I think we are,
Speaker 1: um you know, we're tapping into something and we are
Speaker 1: the advocates for public lands. So join b h A.
Speaker 1: But if you know you want to join the Elk
Speaker 1: Foundation that helps protect Elk habitat, ducks On Limited that
Speaker 1: helps protect duck habitat, mean the list, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: National Wild Turkey Federation. There's many many groups out there, um,
Speaker 1: and often times people like one of the UM. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna let you get back to your list. But one
Speaker 1: of the things that an organization like this provides is
Speaker 1: a sense of camaraderie, brotherhood and sisterhood. Right. You can
Speaker 1: meet like minded people and share information. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: a tremendous um reservoir of experience to draw for um.
Speaker 1: If you have a passion for particular type of hunting,
Speaker 1: particular type of fishing. Let's say your thing is trolling
Speaker 1: salmon on Lake Michigan, you can find an organization that
Speaker 1: is fighting for clean water in the Great Lakes, you know, um,
Speaker 1: and then you will find like minded people and and
Speaker 1: get a lot out of that engagement. I would you know,
Speaker 1: and truly if if, if, if you want to, if
Speaker 1: you care about public lands, there's not another organization besides
Speaker 1: the BHA that's advocating for you. These other organizations that
Speaker 1: do great work. A lot of that's on private land,
Speaker 1: which is vitally important. But if you like public lands,
Speaker 1: BHA is gonna defend that such very species specific. We're
Speaker 1: not we're ecosystem why so I think that's one and
Speaker 1: that's another big plug for b h A. But I
Speaker 1: think too is make a phone call. You know, I
Speaker 1: mean a lot of people think that their voices don't count.
Speaker 1: And you know, we had we had Centator Tester here
Speaker 1: earlier this week, and we're asking them how can we
Speaker 1: be better advocates? Like what can we do? Your voice
Speaker 1: counts is what he told us. He said, when somebody
Speaker 1: calls them on the phone, that represents a hundred other
Speaker 1: like minded individuals. So then that's one call. Let's have
Speaker 1: ten calls in a day. That's a thousand people back home.
Speaker 1: That's starting to get somebody's attention. So that was the
Speaker 1: first one, make a phone called. Second one is as newspapers,
Speaker 1: you think they're going away, but they're still read very widely.
Speaker 1: And you know, senators and congressmen have staff that every
Speaker 1: single day they go to those editorial pieces of the
Speaker 1: paper and if that senator or congressman's name is mentioned,
Speaker 1: that thing is flagged for them right away. And so
Speaker 1: while we that's kind of a venue that's going away
Speaker 1: in a lot of people's minds, it's not the chip
Speaker 1: shots on social media exactly exactly, and so it's something
Speaker 1: that has staying power. And so I like getting involved,
Speaker 1: and I think, you know, we can help you do that,
Speaker 1: but you can do that as an individual as well.
Speaker 1: So those are the like the two things that I
Speaker 1: would say. I think too, it's important for people to
Speaker 1: to learn how to parse out the planks and the
Speaker 1: politician's platform. You know, it's easy to fall into. I
Speaker 1: guess so sick of hearing people tell me, like, you know,
Speaker 1: oh I'm a liberal, I'm a conservative. I mean, boy,
Speaker 1: good luck applying that to me, because I go by,
Speaker 1: give me an issue, man, give me an issue. And
Speaker 1: I think that if you admire a certain politician and
Speaker 1: they have, you know, a platform made up of many,
Speaker 1: many different things, you don't need to go piece me.
Speaker 1: You don't need to go like wholesale throw in with
Speaker 1: them on it. You can challenge them. You can still
Speaker 1: like that person and like what they stand for and
Speaker 1: challenge them on particular issues, and people can move someone
Speaker 1: in the right direction on a particular issue. It doesn't
Speaker 1: mean you're abandoning your political identity. I think it's hilarious
Speaker 1: when politicians are called flip floppers. You know, now, if
Speaker 1: if they're flip flopping back and forth within a week,
Speaker 1: that makes sense to be but what you just described
Speaker 1: to me is getting more knowledge and and having a
Speaker 1: different view on things, which I if I if I
Speaker 1: was beholden to everything I thought when I was an
Speaker 1: eighteen years old, if I was beholding everything, I'd still
Speaker 1: be shipping my pants. It's like people change over time, man,
Speaker 1: exactly right. And if you're not, if you're not using
Speaker 1: the environment around you to help educate you and help
Speaker 1: you evolve, then you're stuck in this space, right and
Speaker 1: you're just this dogmatic views. And so I think you know,
Speaker 1: when people um uh are educated and and and learn
Speaker 1: more about an issue and they change that, that's not
Speaker 1: a flip flopping. That's evolving. To me. Yeah, I always
Speaker 1: admire someone one if they've had an opinion and then
Speaker 1: later on they have to say, based on what I'm
Speaker 1: hearing from my constituency, I'm gonna have to support this
Speaker 1: because in that way it is it's like you can
Speaker 1: take that too far. But in that ways, when there's
Speaker 1: like overwhelming pressure from the majority of people, I think
Speaker 1: it's perfectly acceptable for political figure to say instinctively, I
Speaker 1: was supposed to this, but I cannot ignore what I'm
Speaker 1: hearing from my constituency. If this is overwhelming. I have
Speaker 1: to go against my what my my gut reaction on
Speaker 1: this and support wilderness or any number of things. You know,
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, we're too like, you know, we're it's
Speaker 1: too easy to be like, oh, you're a flip flopper. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but again, if someone changes there, if someone says something
Speaker 1: and then there's an immediate Twitter revolt and they go
Speaker 1: a hunter eight degrees, It's different than having then listening
Speaker 1: to your people who are just driving you insane by
Speaker 1: telling you you're wrong on this, you're wrong on this, this,
Speaker 1: and then you change your opinion about it. That kind
Speaker 1: of stuff happens all the time. Man. We should embrace it,
Speaker 1: and you can move it. You can move people in
Speaker 1: a certain direction just by being around them, articulating them
Speaker 1: and not being I'm being an a hole to them,
Speaker 1: but trying to explain where you're coming from. We did it,
Speaker 1: Badger too mad, We did it. I mean, that's a
Speaker 1: great example. We move people. We motivated b A. You
Speaker 1: help motivate our members. We sent letters, we made calls,
Speaker 1: we went to meetings, we contributed um, we swayed opinion,
Speaker 1: We got u s Senators asking Secretaries of Interior to
Speaker 1: cancel leases. I mean we can on both sides that
Speaker 1: we can make we can have impacts. Um, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of victories we've had. So you're saying the people
Speaker 1: spoke up and the government made changes on behalf of
Speaker 1: the people the shot at them, right, Yeah, I know
Speaker 1: it sounds weird, but it works. You know, instead of
Speaker 1: like like you said to your Facebook, instead of just
Speaker 1: throwing something up there with half baked facts to piss
Speaker 1: off the whole world. Um, you know, try being constructive,
Speaker 1: make a call, get involved. They listen. They listen way
Speaker 1: more than some men on Facebook. I like that. Well,
Speaker 1: last question. There on the left have talked pretty extensively
Speaker 1: about preserving the ecological integrety probably I used felt generations,
Speaker 1: and we hadn't really talked about what is pass the
Speaker 1: elephant is corner, and that is that the same science
Speaker 1: that we rely on for our management decisions, for our
Speaker 1: biological matter's decisions, for our eutological integrity assessments, and suggesting
Speaker 1: that by a lot of the lands that we rely
Speaker 1: on for the production of the animal species that we
Speaker 1: care intense and about are going to be very significantly
Speaker 1: harmed by climate change. So what do we do as
Speaker 1: sportsman and sports women and life and its associations that
Speaker 1: are interested in preserving the ecological integrity of these lands
Speaker 1: to consider climate change is an issue. So the question is, all,
Speaker 1: this is great, but what about climate change? Is that fair?
Speaker 1: I'm gonna try to answer as quickly as possible because
Speaker 1: we should just have a whole other discussion of this
Speaker 1: for an hour and a half. I think that the
Speaker 1: solution about saving wild lands and wild places I think
Speaker 1: is is the solution is personal and political. I think
Speaker 1: the climate change issues, it's uh technological that issue. I
Speaker 1: don't think that issue is going to be resolved by
Speaker 1: American restraint. I don't think you canceling your vacation is
Speaker 1: going to move the needle on climate change because you're
Speaker 1: not going to be in a jet. It's like there
Speaker 1: are some gigantic countries out there who aren't thinking about this.
Speaker 1: I think that the solution is going to come from
Speaker 1: technological advancement, is going to come through market incentive. On
Speaker 1: the on the wildlife side, it's a monster issue. Um.
Speaker 1: Anybody who thinks about this stuff, I think personally struggles
Speaker 1: with it. I say, the beautiful thing from a wildlife
Speaker 1: from a b H. A kind of standpoint is even
Speaker 1: if you even if you, even if you struggle climate
Speaker 1: change and what if and all that stuff, Um, you
Speaker 1: can't tell me that preserving wildlands is contrary to good
Speaker 1: science on climate change. Perhaps it's not enough, but I
Speaker 1: know we're gonna be on the right side of history there,
Speaker 1: even even if history is a little uglier than I
Speaker 1: it proves to be a little uglier than I wish
Speaker 1: it was. Preserving some more wildlands is not going to
Speaker 1: add to climate change. You know we're on the right
Speaker 1: side of that. The way I would answer that is
Speaker 1: that you know, we are seeing impacts already from climate change,
Speaker 1: and what we need to do to help fishing wildlife
Speaker 1: have a chance as this world changes is keep these
Speaker 1: wild places so you have connectivity of habitat, whether that's
Speaker 1: an elevation or that's north south or east west. And
Speaker 1: so if we fragment the wildlife habitat that we have,
Speaker 1: now they got no chance, right and so and and
Speaker 1: you know, whether you believe in climate change and the
Speaker 1: impacts or not, we're setting up a place for them
Speaker 1: to be for a long time, whether or not the
Speaker 1: impacts are huge or not. Right now, give things room
Speaker 1: to adjust exactly. I just there's a lot of people
Speaker 1: in other areas are just looking at as you know, again,
Speaker 1: I don't want to get into the to the housing
Speaker 1: the too details the house and wise, but whether we're
Speaker 1: seeing a natural phenomenon that will naturally reverse. So if
Speaker 1: we're seeing something that is a one way street, I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna address my opinion on it right now. But
Speaker 1: there are people looking at just if all this stuff
Speaker 1: is gonna move uphill what's up hill? Are we ready
Speaker 1: for that? Are we making it that animals and and
Speaker 1: that that that wildlife has like some room to change
Speaker 1: and adapt um and and go to new places to feed,
Speaker 1: to go to new places to bead, new places to win,
Speaker 1: or new places the summer. So I think again, like
Speaker 1: Ryan was saying, you're on either way, you're on the
Speaker 1: right hot side of history. You're not gonna, uh exacerbate
Speaker 1: the problem by removing connective corridors between wild areas. Yeah,
Speaker 1: totally great, gal Yep, what are we gonna lose? I mean,
Speaker 1: what are we gonna lose by protecting these places? What
Speaker 1: are we gonna lose if we don't protect them? You know,
Speaker 1: it's it's a very simple thing can we do concluding
Speaker 1: thoughts now? Be honest, I think we should. Okay, you're honest.
Speaker 1: I have one. Today. I had a great conversation with
Speaker 1: the gal I was from a third time in my
Speaker 1: life Floridian. She lives all over the country, but I
Speaker 1: got lucky for the third time on the left and
Speaker 1: got upgraded. So I feel like, what's not just great
Speaker 1: about the leg room up front? But I actually have
Speaker 1: great conversations with the people I get to sit next
Speaker 1: to in the front of the plane. So I was
Speaker 1: I was stoked, and all I had work to do.
Speaker 1: I engaged. But anyways, she's out on the board for
Speaker 1: the Florida Wildlife Federation. Not a hunter, like just a
Speaker 1: little bit of a fisherman, but she she basically introduces
Speaker 1: herself as a conservationist. I said, really, because really, usually
Speaker 1: if you're not like hunter fisherman person, you don't identify
Speaker 1: with that. Are you sure you don't want to call
Speaker 1: yourself an environmentalist? Like, isn't that who you are? She's like, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm a conservationist, you know, first and foremost. And so
Speaker 1: that spawned this great conversation. And I guess my closing
Speaker 1: thought is that I think we need to find adversaries
Speaker 1: outside of hunters and fishermen, you know, allies. Yeah. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I was struggling with that, but anyways, Yeah, she was
Speaker 1: telling about how in Florida she seems to think that
Speaker 1: they have no problem whatsoever getting hunters and fishermen together
Speaker 1: with the environmental types and and you know, meeting in
Speaker 1: the middle zone and moving forward. And I just feel like,
Speaker 1: too often here we're like setting ourselves apart and not
Speaker 1: you know, getting find those allies in other places. Because
Speaker 1: I really feel like in the end, if we're talking
Speaker 1: about public lands and clean water and whatever, we all
Speaker 1: have the same goal. And so yeah, well, if you're
Speaker 1: a guy in Florida and you have to open up
Speaker 1: your newspaper to see pictures of literally tens of thousands
Speaker 1: of dead fish from sugar production runoff, I think you
Speaker 1: get some fishermen fired up. Yeah. Unfortunately, sometimes it takes
Speaker 1: an image like that. Um, other things play out in slower,
Speaker 1: less dramatic ways, and they don't get as much attention.
Speaker 1: Concluding thought, please, Yeah, it's like dealing poker. Now it's
Speaker 1: Cal's turn. I think I'm all set. You know. In
Speaker 1: room fall out, folks, it's an easy crowd right, like
Speaker 1: everybody is here for the right thing. Like we're fighting
Speaker 1: the good fight and keep it up. And uh as
Speaker 1: our new chairman here, Ryan Bussy said, you know change,
Speaker 1: she'd just said, how change is possible? Don't go occupying
Speaker 1: any buildings. How's your remodel coming? Oh it's rough, man,
Speaker 1: is there just not doing it? Cal's remodel in the place,
Speaker 1: all buys lonesome. You don't need to sell me on.
Speaker 1: It's going good. I'll find a gal here. Don't worry
Speaker 1: about it. No, but no, but no, is it coming?
Speaker 1: That was going? No, I'm not going. I'm not going
Speaker 1: in that direction, honestly. Is it coming along? Yeah? Is
Speaker 1: it like done? Yeah, next time you guys come down,
Speaker 1: I'll be short. You gotta kitchen in there. He's cooking out.
Speaker 1: He's cooking at a camp stove for a long time.
Speaker 1: Congratulates only six months land. Uh, great to have you here, Steve.
Speaker 1: I was really glad that you and your team were
Speaker 1: able to come. You know, we've we've you were here
Speaker 1: five years ago at our first roundnboo and you got
Speaker 1: to witness Ah, the growth and the energy of this
Speaker 1: organization is experiencing and and I think, Um, you know,
Speaker 1: and for the listeners that weren't here, Um, you know,
Speaker 1: b h A is on the rise. We have members
Speaker 1: in all fifty states. We have chapters now in twenty
Speaker 1: four states. The stuff that we are trying to put
Speaker 1: in this bottle, this lightning that we're trying to put
Speaker 1: in the bottle, you can't experience it unless you go
Speaker 1: and meet with other people. And I think what I
Speaker 1: heard over and over this weekends as people found their
Speaker 1: tribe and so that energy that we had this weekend,
Speaker 1: I want to make sure that goes all across this country.
Speaker 1: And so the stuff that we've been talking about today, Um,
Speaker 1: we have that for future generations and and and and
Speaker 1: so for the listeners, check us out. And when there's
Speaker 1: local events, come talk to those people and see who
Speaker 1: we are and make up your mind for yourself if
Speaker 1: you want to come engage. Ryan, Yeah, I echo that.
Speaker 1: Um you know, we've we've just come from end as
Speaker 1: Lee far. Everybody wants to be a part of a winner,
Speaker 1: and I feel like b h A is really winning.
Speaker 1: And I really appreciate you, Steve. Not only have you
Speaker 1: witnessed it, you've really influenced it. You're a role model
Speaker 1: to a lot of people in this orc um, you know.
Speaker 1: And I met here over the weekend a guy came
Speaker 1: from Washington. Um, and this is just an example the
Speaker 1: sort of people that we pull in and how this
Speaker 1: energy is building on itself. You know, we got a
Speaker 1: guy like Steve Ronnella, who's the ultimate badass, doesn't have
Speaker 1: a problem killing stuff, grilling it up, eating it. We've
Speaker 1: got this guy from Washington who I ran into heard
Speaker 1: about b h A. It got him fired up. He's
Speaker 1: never punched a tag in his life. He drove from
Speaker 1: western central Washington to come here to meet other people
Speaker 1: from He didn't know a soul to meet other people
Speaker 1: from Washington to meet people in b h A. He
Speaker 1: wants to know how to do this. He wants to
Speaker 1: know how to punch his tag. He wants to know
Speaker 1: how to preserve wildland. So we've got this spectrum of
Speaker 1: people who want to be involved, from from the old
Speaker 1: you know, like I said, the ultimate badasses like Steve
Speaker 1: to the guy who's starting and it's gonna be the
Speaker 1: ultimate badass. And you know, we want people on board
Speaker 1: and um, we're thrilled to be doing this. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what I want to do. For my concluding thought, is
Speaker 1: it something I've talked about a bunch before, is we
Speaker 1: get probably the number one email. If you're gonna categorize
Speaker 1: the emails we get in, I think the top category
Speaker 1: would be people saying, UM, I want to get involved
Speaker 1: in the out of doors. I didn't grow up around this, Um,
Speaker 1: how do I do it? You can? You know, even
Speaker 1: if that's your motivation, you can find great inspiration and
Speaker 1: great business information by joining an organization like this and
Speaker 1: finding like minded folks. Um. Yeah, the way you can
Speaker 1: do a good thing, move the needle in the right direction,
Speaker 1: and also learn a lot of skills. I mean that's
Speaker 1: not something we've gotten into, but a big part of
Speaker 1: what's going on at a weekend like this is people
Speaker 1: are talking shop. You know, I hould some good information
Speaker 1: about an area I've always been interested in. Last night,
Speaker 1: eating my dinner, stay out of the badgeck too. Man.
Speaker 1: You No, it wasn't there as a different spot, but
Speaker 1: I'm real curious about going in there. So it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not all you know, it's not. You don't need
Speaker 1: to come down and just have a big weekend. A
Speaker 1: good e two shoe and I mean you can come
Speaker 1: down and uh enjoin the group and find some people
Speaker 1: who like to be out there as much as you
Speaker 1: like to be out there and m yeah, man, develop
Speaker 1: a tribe, you know, and have it be the tribe
Speaker 1: that's on the winning side and doing good work. That's it.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining h