Speaker 1: This is the meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listeningcast, you can't
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Speaker 2: The meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by First Light.
Speaker 2: Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting
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Speaker 2: E dot com. Hey, everybody, listen up. I got I
Speaker 2: got mega huge news. Me Eater Live is heading back
Speaker 2: out on the road. That's right, Join me and the
Speaker 2: crew talking Clay newcom cal Yannie, Spencer's gonna be there, Phil,
Speaker 2: Phil the engineer is gonna be there. Meet it or
Speaker 2: Live headed back out now. When you get every ticket, Okay,
Speaker 2: every ticket you buy, you get a signed copy of
Speaker 2: our new me Eater Outdoor Cookbook. This tour is celebrating
Speaker 2: the release of the book. Buy a ticket, get a
Speaker 2: signed copy Memeter Outdoor Cookbook. Wild Game recipes for the
Speaker 2: grill smoker, campstoven campfire, which I'll point out is a
Speaker 2: thirty eight dollars value. Here's where we're gonna go. April
Speaker 2: twenty third, the Masa Arts Center in Mesa, Arizona, April
Speaker 2: twenty four, The Balboa Theater in San Diego April twenty five,
Speaker 2: The Grove in Anaheim, California, April twenty seven, The Crest
Speaker 2: Theater and Sacramento April twenty nine, The Union in Salt
Speaker 2: Lake City April thirty, The Egyptian in Boise May one,
Speaker 2: The Wilma Theater in Missoula May two, The Bing Crosby
Speaker 2: Theater in Spokane, Washington. May four, Revolution Hall in Portland, Oregon,
Speaker 2: and May five, the last day of the tour, Pantagious
Speaker 2: Theater in Tacoma, Washington. For ticket some more information, visit
Speaker 2: the events page at themeeater dot com. We're not coming
Speaker 2: to your neck of the woods, and you still want
Speaker 2: to get your hands on a signed copy of our
Speaker 2: new Me Eater Outdoor Cookbook, go to Signed Outdoor Cookbook
Speaker 2: dot com or check out Barnes.
Speaker 3: And Noble Online. Hope to see you at the show.
Speaker 3: Welcome everybody.
Speaker 2: We got two shows in one today because we're joined
Speaker 2: by Dan Gates to talk about what's going on the topic,
Speaker 2: as Krin wrote, it is what's going on in Colorado.
Speaker 2: We're gonna get into what's going on in Colorado, which
Speaker 2: if you're at Colorado, how do you.
Speaker 3: Like to say that, Brody Coloradin, you're a.
Speaker 2: Colorado you especially want to stay tuned. But if you're
Speaker 2: just a general American, you'll want to stay tuned as well,
Speaker 2: because what we're gonna talk about going on in Colorado
Speaker 2: has implications for what's going on in America.
Speaker 3: So stay tuned for that. But first the first part
Speaker 3: of the show.
Speaker 2: And then we're gonna we're gonna hear, We're gonna hear
Speaker 2: a little bit from Jannis about a recent adventure. Ryan
Speaker 2: Callahan's here, Brody Henderson's here. Randall, Doctor Randall's here with
Speaker 2: a brain, new hair, been cutting his own hair, yep,
Speaker 2: learned how to cut his own hair.
Speaker 4: Learning to cut my own learning.
Speaker 5: Because he's gonna take us through that process step by step.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we're actually doing a video series.
Speaker 5: I love that.
Speaker 2: And uh, the star of the show part one, Remember
Speaker 2: I said this is two shows and one. The star
Speaker 2: of show part one is Connor Smith.
Speaker 3: How old are you? Connor?
Speaker 6: Sixteen?
Speaker 2: Sixteen? Connor Smith's sixteen years old. His mother, Alyssa, is
Speaker 2: a colleague of ours, and he I've been hearing about.
Speaker 3: This killed himself a big old bull.
Speaker 7: Yeah it's uh.
Speaker 2: At a Christmas party. Your mom showed me a picture
Speaker 2: of it. And normally people are showing me pictures of
Speaker 2: big bulls. That's just in one ear and out the other.
Speaker 2: But I took note because one because you're her kid
Speaker 2: and not like the neighbor's cousin's friend, which is a
Speaker 2: lot of the big bulls you see, And two because
Speaker 2: you kind of you did it real scrap you, like, yeah,
Speaker 2: thirty ninth biggest bull ever killed in Montana?
Speaker 7: About Yeah, what do you mean about might get kicked out?
Speaker 3: Oh, you're gonna get kicked out.
Speaker 7: My dad wants to shoot one bigger than me.
Speaker 3: Oh, I thought you meant there was a like a
Speaker 3: legal problem you were faced with or something like it
Speaker 3: wasn't seasoned or something.
Speaker 2: No, oh, so you're legit. Okay, tell me now. You
Speaker 2: were telling me the story earlier, and I cut you
Speaker 2: off because you got to the part about your guns
Speaker 2: stopping working, and that's not a thing I usually hear
Speaker 2: about firearms. So how did your tell me your gun
Speaker 2: lay out?
Speaker 8: Here?
Speaker 7: Well, I had a three hundred that where we have
Speaker 7: two three hundreds, one that my grand we were both
Speaker 7: my grandfather gave me and so.
Speaker 2: Your parents are tight. Yeah, you got two old grandpa guns.
Speaker 2: M hm okay, I'm picturing.
Speaker 7: And uh the first one I've been using for a
Speaker 7: couple of years now. It's like I don't know how
Speaker 7: old it is, but we brought it to the shooting
Speaker 7: range and it just kept shooting like inconsistently. Got it like,
Speaker 7: I think there's something wrong with the chambering. That's what
Speaker 7: my grandfather kept keeps telling me.
Speaker 3: Mm hmmm. So it's deep within the bowels of the gun.
Speaker 3: It's not like a loose scope mount or something.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and uh yeah, a week before the hunt, I
Speaker 7: had a change to my dad's that's not my granddad's.
Speaker 7: That's not my dad's, and then I used that.
Speaker 3: For the hunt. So these are three hundred wind bags. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: I got it. So then you got tuned in and I'd.
Speaker 5: Probably call it like yours now because it's not like
Speaker 5: anybody else wants to use that gun, because it's like
Speaker 5: you got the biggest ball with it.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, maybe it's got good mojo so jiju whatever that
Speaker 4: might be.
Speaker 5: It does, but it might just be connors.
Speaker 2: So gramps passes down one gun to you and one
Speaker 2: gun to his kid, your dad. Yeah okay, and then
Speaker 2: you get the one that Graham's now thinks is shoddy,
Speaker 2: so you take the old man's gun.
Speaker 3: Yeah okay. And then you got to have a spot
Speaker 3: where you're going hunting. So it taught me through that.
Speaker 3: Don't give me the spot, but like, tell me through
Speaker 3: your your process here.
Speaker 7: Well, I've going into last year. I had three points
Speaker 7: and my dad put me in for a special pull
Speaker 7: elk tag.
Speaker 3: And I got your three bonus points.
Speaker 6: Yeah, eleven chance odds.
Speaker 3: You see, Cow's getting excited now.
Speaker 2: Cal likes any story about youngsters with lots of points
Speaker 2: drawing sweet tags man.
Speaker 9: Taking opportunities away from him.
Speaker 3: That's his favorite. That's his absolute favorite genre of saying no.
Speaker 5: But you know, talking uh, talking with your mother. I
Speaker 5: know that the family puts some sweat equity in out there.
Speaker 3: So it wasn't just told, okay, continue on.
Speaker 5: His dad was dragging him out of like banned class
Speaker 5: that he'd rather be at because his dad did all
Speaker 5: the work.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, alright, so just okay, I'm sorry to me.
Speaker 3: Interre up. So you got you got into a special unit.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and uh, I like got home from school one
Speaker 7: day and.
Speaker 3: Oh, back, you didn't do any scouting or anything.
Speaker 6: Well, we've been scouting out there before.
Speaker 7: And uh, I got home and my dad showed me
Speaker 7: the draw odds and I drew the tag.
Speaker 3: Gotcha okay?
Speaker 5: And roughly what were the odds of you drawing the tag?
Speaker 7: Do you remember?
Speaker 8: Got it?
Speaker 3: Yeah? So it's the area you're you're familiar with, very
Speaker 3: familiar with. Oh, how's this? Are you very familiar?
Speaker 6: We've been hunting out there a couple of times.
Speaker 3: So family members have drawn, well.
Speaker 7: Not really, just we've been like shed hunting out there
Speaker 7: and like scouting for an out tag.
Speaker 3: Oh, just pre scout, just in case, just getting familiar
Speaker 3: with the area. Yeah, got okay, Okay, So then what happens?
Speaker 7: Uh, Well, we scouted all the summer through the summer
Speaker 7: spring and all that.
Speaker 3: And they kept going up there and checking in on it.
Speaker 7: Yeah exactly, And we found a couple of sheds and yeah,
Speaker 7: going into the season, we went a couple of days
Speaker 7: before and we saw a bowl, a really nice ball.
Speaker 7: It was a big five point actually, and uh we
Speaker 7: scouted him, put him to the bed and waited for
Speaker 7: the morning opening morning, and we woke up that morning.
Speaker 5: Did you have a goal? It's like, how big of
Speaker 5: a bull you're looking for?
Speaker 7: Basically the first solid bull I found he killed.
Speaker 6: Before before I've killed two bulls and one cow?
Speaker 3: Sweet? What ye doing?
Speaker 5: What regular?
Speaker 7: Just regular hunting?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Yeah, and did any of those come uh during the
Speaker 5: youth season when you could?
Speaker 3: There's no youth elk Oh, it's just deer, birds and turkeys, dude.
Speaker 3: If there's a youth olt, yeah, I know.
Speaker 8: I have more kids.
Speaker 5: That's why I would have.
Speaker 3: Never gotten the vast ectomy.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I have to have them on.
Speaker 5: Pot coached you up properly on on how these conversations
Speaker 5: can go and how not to give away your landmarks.
Speaker 5: And he's doing super good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I got nothing to go off. Well, no, I
Speaker 2: do three points eleven percent odd. It's a real sharp feller.
Speaker 2: I shouldn't have pointed that out.
Speaker 8: Yeah, you've done more.
Speaker 2: Someone real sharp on math with a sharp pencil. Gone
Speaker 2: and blueball ad out Phil.
Speaker 7: We Uh we watched this bowl at all?
Speaker 6: Opening?
Speaker 3: Yeah, we watched it. Why not go get it because
Speaker 3: you're just holding off.
Speaker 7: Yeah, there was some other competition in the area too,
Speaker 7: Just like there's a lot of like ravines and stuff
Speaker 7: that these both this elk herd could have gone there.
Speaker 7: So we just watched them and we're trying to watch
Speaker 7: where they were going to go.
Speaker 9: So he was with that, He wasn't solo, he was
Speaker 9: with other out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what's competition made from hunters?
Speaker 6: Hunters?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I see, okay, and uh.
Speaker 6: We watched these bulls.
Speaker 7: We like rushed this bowl and like this group of cows,
Speaker 7: and we watched them for a little bit, ran over
Speaker 7: to like where we thought they were going to come
Speaker 7: out at. And uh and you're hunting with your old man, Yeah,
Speaker 7: is gramps there?
Speaker 6: No, just my dad and my little brother.
Speaker 3: Okay and uh little brothers how old he is?
Speaker 6: Fourteen thirteen?
Speaker 3: Much help?
Speaker 6: He's a little a little bit.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, don't feel bad about not knowing ages. I
Speaker 5: just give a height on most most younger folks.
Speaker 7: So yeah, and uh, we watched these out come out
Speaker 7: of this like ravine. I think the first opportunity I
Speaker 7: had was that like five hundred and twenty three yards
Speaker 7: at this five point.
Speaker 3: You're so precise and know exactly where he was.
Speaker 6: Watched them. We watched him for a little bit.
Speaker 7: I thought I could get closer and he ended up
Speaker 7: going into the timber out of sight. So we had
Speaker 7: to wrap around and see if we could find him again.
Speaker 7: And we we didn't know where they went, and we
Speaker 7: thought they crossed the way and stuff, and we kind
Speaker 7: of just walked around and we heard a bugle. M
Speaker 7: heard a bugle like maybe fifty yards from us, and
Speaker 7: what time of day it's about.
Speaker 6: It was about like maybe seven eight.
Speaker 3: Ish fifty yards away.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and uh, they definitely spooked because we heard some
Speaker 7: running in the trees and stuff.
Speaker 2: And also maybe the kyles spooks and that made the
Speaker 2: bull bugle because he's like, where's everybody going kind of thing, okay.
Speaker 7: And uh, we kind of just followed those tracks up
Speaker 7: this little this little hillside and we topped the ridge
Speaker 7: and there was just a bowl like in the middle
Speaker 7: of like all these trees. There's like one open patch and.
Speaker 5: Just a ball or just the bull.
Speaker 3: The bull all right, not the five point not the
Speaker 3: five point whole different bawl, Yeah, a whole different didn't
Speaker 3: know you know about him, but he's the one that
Speaker 3: ripped a bugle probably presumably.
Speaker 7: Yeah, we don't know. And just like in the middle
Speaker 7: of like this all these trees. There's like one little
Speaker 7: open patch of like grass and stuff. And he was
Speaker 7: just standing there and I told my uh my dad
Speaker 7: and my little brother to get down, and.
Speaker 3: You told them to get down. Yeah they spotted it.
Speaker 6: Yeah they didn't see it.
Speaker 3: Humh okay, and uh yeah, he kept had to feel good.
Speaker 6: He tried to keep walking.
Speaker 7: He didn't.
Speaker 3: He didn't believe me on the shoulder.
Speaker 7: Yeah, get down, yeah yeah, and uh. He got out
Speaker 7: the spotting scope and I kind of sat up on
Speaker 7: this rock with my gun like looking at the bowl,
Speaker 7: and he was like, it's at six hundred and eighty
Speaker 7: nine yards.
Speaker 6: And I was like, I got a whole another week
Speaker 6: of the hunt.
Speaker 7: Might as well try to pull the trigger and uh.
Speaker 3: Hold it back up that that contradicts. Yeah, yeah, No,
Speaker 3: you have a whole nother week of the hunt, so
Speaker 3: might as well pull the trigger.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 7: If I missed, then I got I got enough. I
Speaker 7: got another week.
Speaker 2: Because I could hear you finishing that sentence by saying, uh,
Speaker 2: we got a whole nother.
Speaker 3: Week of the hunt.
Speaker 8: Let's not pull the trick.
Speaker 3: So let's not pull the truck. Let's wait. So You're like,
Speaker 3: we got a whold of the week of the hunt.
Speaker 3: So let's take a shot.
Speaker 5: Yeah, are you a holdover guy or you dialing a holdover?
Speaker 5: Uh huh.
Speaker 7: And it's it's like a little Christmas tree scope. It's
Speaker 7: got what is it, five notches on it. The farthest
Speaker 7: goes a six hundred, but there's like this little notch
Speaker 7: at the very end that I used for seven hundred.
Speaker 3: Okay, and you do a little bit long long distance shooting.
Speaker 7: No, that was the first time I've ever sat that far.
Speaker 3: Okay, go on.
Speaker 7: So I missed the first shot and the ball just
Speaker 7: stood there like nothing happened, and.
Speaker 3: You're using your little extra post. Yeah again, Then what happened?
Speaker 7: My Dad's like, shoot again, shoot again?
Speaker 3: See where you hit?
Speaker 7: Yeah, he was like, you missed high And I was like, okay,
Speaker 7: I got to readjust for wind and all that, and
Speaker 7: uh shot again, high backed him and his like back
Speaker 7: legs dropped and he just kind of stood there again.
Speaker 7: And my Dad's like, float another one and shoot and
Speaker 7: I did double lung dum bam.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 7: He kind of walked off to the trees and bedded
Speaker 7: down after that, and then what happened. We walked up
Speaker 7: to him and he was dead. Yeah, just laying there.
Speaker 3: And at what point did you go like, my goodness,
Speaker 3: that's a big old bull.
Speaker 8: Uh.
Speaker 7: When I got walked up to him, I didn't when
Speaker 7: I shot, I didn't see like how big he was.
Speaker 7: I saw like the back whale tail and just was
Speaker 7: like that's enough for me to see how.
Speaker 8: Yeah it no ground shrinkers. Yeah yeah, yeah, he's like that,
Speaker 8: that's not the five point the uncommon ground groath.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 7: And we walked up to it and we we kind
Speaker 7: of talked about it. We thought it was in the
Speaker 7: three seventy range. Huh, and we got it scored a
Speaker 7: couple of weeks ago at three eighty seven net and
Speaker 7: then three ninety three.
Speaker 3: Gross. Oh that's wild. Get out here, all right, dismissed.
Speaker 5: Yeah, gave us a lot to think about. Connor, thank you.
Speaker 4: I've killed I've killed two balls that would that would
Speaker 4: fit under that three nineties.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, there, that's pretty incredible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So now you realize here's the problem you're going
Speaker 2: to face now as you grow older, you might you
Speaker 2: probably already got the biggest helk you'll ever get.
Speaker 3: You realize that, Yeah, okay, you can't feel that.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I've been told by a lot of people that.
Speaker 3: People like to point out out. Is it as the
Speaker 3: older people to point that out?
Speaker 6: Yeah, well I think some of them are sitting around the.
Speaker 3: Table right now.
Speaker 8: I did in the hallway out there.
Speaker 3: That makes older people feel better.
Speaker 7: I've been told I'm ruined for the rest of my life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, let me give you piece of advice.
Speaker 2: We had a dude, There was a dude that named
Speaker 2: Dustin Huff that was on the show and he killed uh.
Speaker 2: I think it's what is the biggest typical typical biggest
Speaker 2: typical white tail in America meaning not in Canada. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: because there's a bigger one there.
Speaker 5: He's number two on the continent.
Speaker 3: So number two on the continent, number one in America,
Speaker 3: which is what really matters. Yeah, we're all Americans here.
Speaker 3: He uh.
Speaker 2: When he set out that day he set out to kill,
Speaker 2: he was like, my goal was to kill a personal best, okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: and a personal best for him I can't remember. He
Speaker 2: had killed like a one thirty white tail, so he
Speaker 2: was looking for a personal best. So then he kills
Speaker 2: this thing that you know, we'll never be seen again. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And I said, well, what is your attitude now? Because
Speaker 2: you're like a personal best hunter. And he said, I'm
Speaker 2: going to go back to where I was before I
Speaker 2: killed that bart, So he had to just you know,
Speaker 2: ignore that one and then plow ahead. Yeah, which is
Speaker 2: probably how you're gonna want to approach things.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 5: It'd be like your rifle range right where you get
Speaker 5: a nice group and then there's one that flies off
Speaker 5: to the side. Yeah, and you just kind of that's
Speaker 5: an outlier.
Speaker 10: Yeah, when you're shooting and you go home after a
Speaker 10: good shot, I go down there shoot again because I
Speaker 10: might have one of them strays, and then I have
Speaker 10: to go home feeling worse.
Speaker 3: You could also just.
Speaker 4: Get really into uh general tag hunting. You have your
Speaker 4: your draw best, then you have your general tag.
Speaker 3: That's a good way to look at it, Toude.
Speaker 9: He's got time to draw all kinds of good tags.
Speaker 9: Sheep goat moves all that.
Speaker 3: But you saw some other hunters. Yeah, you're hunting on
Speaker 3: public land? Yes or no?
Speaker 6: Yeah, hunting on public land.
Speaker 3: It's awesome other hunters.
Speaker 8: Yeah, what was the elevation? I can remember?
Speaker 7: Congratulations, man, where it's in my garage right now? You
Speaker 7: can get stuffed the hides at the taxidermist.
Speaker 3: Right now, you getting stuff.
Speaker 7: Yeah, we're gonna get a shoulder mountain where you gonna
Speaker 7: hang it? Uh, probably like the living room.
Speaker 3: You got a place big enough for that.
Speaker 7: We talked about it. We have to move a mount
Speaker 7: a full body mountain goat for.
Speaker 3: It out of the way. Whose mountain goat is it
Speaker 3: my dad's.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm sure he doesn't take that personally.
Speaker 3: If you don't, if you run out of room, you
Speaker 3: can hang it down here in the office.
Speaker 7: I might have to do that.
Speaker 3: Man, we'll put a little plaque up.
Speaker 5: Yeah, nobody's gonna walk in the house and talk about
Speaker 5: dad's goat anymore. Right, Well, what's that.
Speaker 3: Who's paying to get it stuffed?
Speaker 6: My parents?
Speaker 3: That's nice though, That is who you're gonna have stuff it?
Speaker 3: Do you know yet?
Speaker 7: Uh, that's a guy down in Belgrade.
Speaker 6: It's uh Terry.
Speaker 3: Sure he does good work.
Speaker 7: Yeah, he does a good job. Yeah, he's done my
Speaker 7: dad's mountain goat, and uh he's done in my dad's
Speaker 7: mule deer.
Speaker 3: A lot of those guys are weird. Ohs man Taxdermist,
Speaker 3: I've even I even talked about that with tax Ermis.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, he's like not me. But they're like a
Speaker 3: lot of them. Yeah.
Speaker 7: Yeah, he's a funny guy though, is Heny like good? Yeah,
Speaker 7: he's he's fun to talk humorous.
Speaker 3: Yeah, got it great. Well, thanks for coming in, man, Yeah,
Speaker 3: thanks for having me on. Congratulations. Thanks, that's pretty great.
Speaker 2: Yeah you can head out this year obviously, you turkey man. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: you like to fish, Yeah, okay, let us know next
Speaker 2: time something good happens.
Speaker 5: To you, but it's shed hunting season, like that's that's
Speaker 5: what these guys do.
Speaker 3: If you're into that.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that wasn't thing when I was a kid.
Speaker 2: Pick you picked them up, but no one had a
Speaker 2: word for it. You just found an antler. No one
Speaker 2: like went anywhere to find an antler. Just if you
Speaker 2: found one, you brought it home. Everyone was a shad lunder.
Speaker 2: They just didn't know it. Yeah, there's no term for it,
Speaker 2: you know. No, I didn't kind of like parkour.
Speaker 4: You know, people used to just jump off trash cans
Speaker 4: and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: They didn't know what it was.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, next time you get have something good
Speaker 2: or if something real bad happens, you come check us out.
Speaker 3: I want to hear it. Next year. I want you
Speaker 3: to come down and talk about getting your ass kicked
Speaker 3: at something.
Speaker 6: Oh, I probably will.
Speaker 7: I'm gonna try archery hunting this year.
Speaker 3: Come tell us about missing one or hitting one in
Speaker 3: the leg and can't find it yard shots.
Speaker 6: For that, I'll probably miss high on one.
Speaker 2: Yeah it was eighty three yards A buddy, thanks, you
Speaker 2: can stick around.
Speaker 6: I'll stick stick around you.
Speaker 3: Where are you supposed to be in school? SI? Obviously? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Well gradient jor okay, but you got excused.
Speaker 7: No, I'm just playing.
Speaker 8: What's sick the dentist?
Speaker 6: Yeah, buzzman high?
Speaker 3: Where's that at? That's what my kid's going to.
Speaker 7: It's the that's the old one it is.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it'll be done. Yes, yere. He'll like all
Speaker 3: that stuff about yardages and calibers. That's there. That's like
Speaker 3: his peer group as they're interested in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's like Johnny shot a elk at six and
Speaker 2: twenty yards with a I'm like, where were they?
Speaker 3: Was it a big bull? I don't know.
Speaker 2: Everything is calibers and distances. Uh, all right, Yanni, you're
Speaker 2: gonna tell something.
Speaker 11: Yeah, you're gonna share it. Are a cotell his story?
Speaker 11: You're there, chip In.
Speaker 5: I had a lot of people that I just just
Speaker 5: got back from pheasant Fest, a lot of people asking
Speaker 5: about how Mingus is doing.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I don't know where.
Speaker 11: We must have talked about it somewhere else or someone
Speaker 11: did because word got out.
Speaker 5: He got mentioned, It was mentioned briefly on Trivia, and
Speaker 5: we kind of danced around it on the last Meet episode.
Speaker 2: Oh hey, let me tell you something that Pat said first,
Speaker 2: Pat Diurkin. Pat Dirkin wrote in Hi, Stephen Crinn, I
Speaker 2: enjoyed the Meat Eater podcast with CJ Box, especially the
Speaker 2: shots at copy editors, probably because I am one. He
Speaker 2: goes on, I'm sure you know Samuel Clemens. That's Mark
Speaker 2: Twain to you.
Speaker 3: Uh, not ill literate, not literary folks.
Speaker 2: I'm sure you know Mark Twain didn't like editors either. Oh,
Speaker 2: I see what he's doing here. He uses Samuel Clemens
Speaker 2: and then uses Mark Twain. I keep this Mark Twain
Speaker 2: quote taped above my desk. It's from a nineteen to
Speaker 2: six letter to Henry mills Alden and was printed in
Speaker 2: the Chicago Daily Tribune. Twain and says, how often we
Speaker 2: recall with regret that Napoleon once shot at a magazine
Speaker 2: editor and missed him and killed a publisher. But we
Speaker 2: remember with clarity. No, but we remember with charity that
Speaker 2: his intentions were good and he says, also, don't bury
Speaker 2: outdoor newspaper columnists yet, please wait till I die. I'm
Speaker 2: still cranking out my weekly column for eight Wisconsin newspapers.
Speaker 2: I started the column in nineteen eighty four while at
Speaker 2: the Oshkosh Daily Northwestern and haven't missed a week since.
Speaker 2: I also posted on my website for the Freeloaders Last
Speaker 2: of a Dying Breed that we were.
Speaker 3: Talking about, like like when you you're a kid, I'd
Speaker 3: like the dude at the Skiing Chronicle. I wish I can
Speaker 3: remember his name, Bob's.
Speaker 9: Every Sunday you're excited to open the pap.
Speaker 2: He'd profile attacks at Ermist. He'd be like, they're getting
Speaker 2: big perch yep, you know, off of the late Michigan Pier.
Speaker 2: The next week it'd be here's a great venison meat
Speaker 2: low for Resbee. Just every Saturday, man. And that was
Speaker 2: like the only outdoor media we took in ye was
Speaker 2: that dude's column.
Speaker 5: Well, I wonder if even there is an outdoor section.
Speaker 11: I've gotten a newspaper and so long, but I remember,
Speaker 11: like the Gazette Kalamazoo Gazette had an outdoor section on Saturday, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Which is weird because Saturday is the day you're hunting
Speaker 3: and fishing.
Speaker 9: A lot of papers have gotten rid of them billings.
Speaker 3: I think still has one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I talked
Speaker 3: to an outdoor guy at one of the papers and
Speaker 3: he was not happy about digital media. I can tell you,
Speaker 3: all right, go.
Speaker 11: Ahead a couple Actually, I think it's three weeks ago now.
Speaker 11: Steve and I took our kids on a little snowmobiling
Speaker 11: cat hunting adventure and not long into our morning, really,
Speaker 11: probably less than an hour into our snowbiling adventure, you
Speaker 11: cut a fresh boxcat track. We had incredibly fresh snow, yeah,
Speaker 11: real fresh, real fresh snow, like it had probably only
Speaker 11: quit snowing right at daylight or maybe even after. And
Speaker 11: so any you know track that we're gonna cut was
Speaker 11: gonna be pretty fresh. And this sucker, I mean it
Speaker 11: might have been filled in a little bit crossing the road,
Speaker 11: but as soon as it went under any kind of
Speaker 11: a tree you could see it was. It was crisp
Speaker 11: and clean. And so we cut mingus loose on it.
Speaker 11: And uh, Steve and I've been trying to do this
Speaker 11: for a couple of years now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we go seven seven people and one dog.
Speaker 5: Yeah, go hu with mingus and uh it's a uh.
Speaker 3: Is that right? Seven people? Yeah, me and my three
Speaker 3: I had all three my kids.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I too. Yeah.
Speaker 11: There's a lot to think about when you're gonna put
Speaker 11: together that kind of a an adventure, because, uh, it's
Speaker 11: not just like you and me going looking for a
Speaker 11: line track. Uh, there's you know, five people that are
Speaker 11: depending on us, and you know, you bring in us
Speaker 11: in its form and extra clothes because they're gonna you know,
Speaker 11: the first thing we do when they when you stop
Speaker 11: snowbills and are looking at a fresh track, they're like, yeah,
Speaker 11: that's interesting. And then they just start like doing parkour
Speaker 11: off the edge of the Forest service road into the
Speaker 11: snow and they're.
Speaker 3: Yeah, everybody's like this. It's like no ship.
Speaker 5: All the snowmobile and goggles are just packed full of snow.
Speaker 5: Wordless at this point.
Speaker 3: Whitewashing each other whatever. Man, It's like.
Speaker 11: This comes this is part of the story because that
Speaker 11: morning I had looked at the pack. I had been
Speaker 11: using a pack that Paul had made for me. It's
Speaker 11: kind of a just a day hunting pack. It's not
Speaker 11: really meant to pack meat. And uh, I thought, you know,
Speaker 11: with all these kids and nowhere we were going, there's
Speaker 11: not a lot of roads. We might end up on
Speaker 11: a long walk and I'll be carrying all kinds of gear, water, food, whatever.
Speaker 5: So I should go to a bigger pack.
Speaker 11: And so I swapped out and just grabbed my like
Speaker 11: a exo pack that has more of a frame to it,
Speaker 11: you know. Anyways, we cut Mangus loose on the track
Speaker 11: and he's what I would call smoking it, moving it
Speaker 11: very quickly. He makes it, you know, six hundred yards
Speaker 11: is the crow flies from us? And I don't know,
Speaker 11: ten minutes maybe not that.
Speaker 3: We gotta make the noise. What's that little the noises
Speaker 3: he's making?
Speaker 5: Oh, when Mingus is on track?
Speaker 3: Well, I kept saying, what's that noise mean? What's that
Speaker 3: noise mean? And he's like he likes it, he doesn't
Speaker 3: love it.
Speaker 12: He hasn't seen it.
Speaker 3: Right, like that kind of stuff.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a steady ball it. Mingus.
Speaker 11: His bark is very hard to replicate because he kind
Speaker 11: of balls. And then at the end of it his
Speaker 11: voice almost cracks and breaks and it almost sounds like
Speaker 11: you're taking, uh, like newspaper on a window if you're
Speaker 11: watching it, and it's like that, oh right at the end,
Speaker 11: it's a funny sound.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 2: He was explaining to me the noise if it sees it,
Speaker 2: then it's a different noise. Well, once he sees it
Speaker 2: in the tree, it's different.
Speaker 11: Well, yeah, he'd go into three long like locate balls,
Speaker 11: which are very deep, very low, and then he would
Speaker 11: just go into a constant chop. So anyways, he's crossed.
Speaker 11: We're on one side of a drainage and he's crossed
Speaker 11: the drainage across the creek and he's gotten up on
Speaker 11: a I guess that's hill would be south facing right,
Speaker 11: it's way more open, there's not as many trees, and
Speaker 11: it looks steep to me.
Speaker 5: There's some cliffs over there.
Speaker 3: It's like it's a band of cliffs. It's like, no,
Speaker 3: it's like you go down.
Speaker 2: We're on a timbered slope and you go down, you
Speaker 2: got a big screen field and then like all the
Speaker 2: cliff faces that all the screen had been breaking up.
Speaker 3: Sure, but he obviously went you see, I slip a
Speaker 3: little jelagy in there.
Speaker 11: But he's the whole thing wasn't a cliff face because
Speaker 11: he was able to get a bullet cliffs bands. Yeah,
Speaker 11: he was able to pretty easily work through the trees
Speaker 11: that the bobcat had taken. And bobcats are known for
Speaker 11: evading dogs, like while the chase is actually going on, right,
Speaker 11: a lion really doesn't have that option because it doesn't
Speaker 11: have the stamina to stay out ahead of dogs. It's
Speaker 11: a very short chase, usually a couple hundred yards, and
Speaker 11: the lion gives up because it's just it's lungs are
Speaker 11: burning and it has to, you know, go up a tree.
Speaker 3: Can I tell you the thing that you told me?
Speaker 3: While we were doing this, h.
Speaker 2: He went down into a creek bottom where he could
Speaker 2: picture like a cat running. But then all of a
Speaker 2: sudden he left the creek bottom and went up and
Speaker 2: we were thought, oh me, he might already know because
Speaker 2: the track was so fresh, he might already know there's
Speaker 2: a dog after him. And Yanni was talking to a
Speaker 2: houndsman who was saying.
Speaker 3: He's seen cats eluding dogs and actually stop get out
Speaker 3: on a cliff and be sitting there licking their paws,
Speaker 3: just look looking down or they know the because they
Speaker 3: when you think about they probably deal with this all
Speaker 3: the time, like they're on a kill and some coyotes
Speaker 3: come like, oh brother, climb up a tree right around
Speaker 3: here in some areas, be like there's wolves to deal with,
Speaker 3: so just get like, oh yeah, on a climba tree
Speaker 3: and hang out.
Speaker 2: That's part of that wing leaves me alone and then
Speaker 2: I'll go about my business. It's probably like a somewhat
Speaker 2: casual occurrence to elude a can to get out of
Speaker 2: a canine's way.
Speaker 11: Sure, it's part of daily life, you know. But yeah,
Speaker 11: I've somehow it's been saying that they think that when
Speaker 11: they've glassed those cats sitting there, it almost looks like
Speaker 11: they're having fun. Which that's a little too too much anthropomorhization, I.
Speaker 5: Think, to the to the situation.
Speaker 11: But anyways, uh, yeah, we were. You had just mentioned
Speaker 11: about how it's like looking pretty cliffy, like too cliffy,
Speaker 11: and I'm like, yeah, buddy, he's hunting that kind of
Speaker 11: stuff all the time, you know. And I was just like,
Speaker 11: I wasn't worried until you said something. And if you're
Speaker 11: watching the GPS, especially when they're on these Bobcat tracks,
Speaker 11: it's just squiggly lions, squigily lined, squiggily lines, and so
Speaker 11: he's in this cops of evergreens. We can't He's only
Speaker 11: six hundred yards away, but we can't see him. There's
Speaker 11: fresh snow. Mingus is pretty much a black and white
Speaker 11: dog and he blends in very well on snow, and
Speaker 11: so we're trying to find it, but we can't. And
Speaker 11: I'm just watching the GPS and squiggily lions, squiggly lions.
Speaker 11: And then you said he went quiet, and You're like, well,
Speaker 11: what is he doing now, you know? And I'm like,
Speaker 11: he must have lost it, you know, and he's just
Speaker 11: like really having to focus, and he doesn't have that
Speaker 11: fresh scent in his nose and that's why he's not balling.
Speaker 11: And like the pause went on long enough to when
Speaker 11: I'm like, oh, I better look at the GPS again
Speaker 11: and see what is going on.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 11: Look at the GPS. And he had made a short
Speaker 11: run out of that cops of trees to the lookers
Speaker 11: left and gotten above those cliffs. And then there's a
Speaker 11: straight line from the top of those cliffs to the
Speaker 11: bottom of those cliffs. And then the GPS has shown treed.
Speaker 11: So when you have your garment set on a hat
Speaker 11: for a hound dog. When they stop moving, it'll basically
Speaker 11: give you a treed signal, so that if you're out
Speaker 11: of earshot, you know your hounds stopped moving. He's on
Speaker 11: a chase, He's probably at the tree with the cat. Well,
Speaker 11: in this case, we knew he wasn't at a tree
Speaker 11: with a cat. He was simply not moving and he
Speaker 11: wasn't barking anymore after being on a super hot track,
Speaker 11: and so we immediately knew something was up.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it was without a doubt that.
Speaker 5: He had taken a fall.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so I figured, well, you know, he's like
Speaker 2: stone dead at the bottom of a cliff.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, which, yeah, I thought that was going to
Speaker 5: be the same deal.
Speaker 2: I'm reel bad. I felt bad for you, but mainly
Speaker 2: was like, man, Yan, these daughters love that dog so much.
Speaker 2: This is just gonna this is just gonna be horrible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like a horrible day.
Speaker 11: And we should touch on that later to you know,
Speaker 11: at the end of the story, because I still go
Speaker 11: back and forth. I've been calling Monster already at my
Speaker 11: house because I've brought up this, uh, this idea of
Speaker 11: like the different ways that it could have turned out.
Speaker 5: You know, and.
Speaker 11: Some like fifty years ago, or maybe not even that long,
Speaker 11: twenty thirty years ago, this veterinary care that we have
Speaker 11: so available to us wasn't And if you had a
Speaker 11: situation like that, you'd be like, well, that's a bummer,
Speaker 11: and you would just have to like, what.
Speaker 3: Do you walk over there?
Speaker 5: Well, no, you'd walk over there, right, but to get
Speaker 5: your collar back.
Speaker 3: But girls, I'll be back with the you know what
Speaker 3: I mean.
Speaker 11: And it's like, yeah, obviously in my head, I'm thinking, like,
Speaker 11: how is this all going to go down with the kids?
Speaker 5: How are they going to deal with it?
Speaker 11: And part of me thinks that I don't want to
Speaker 11: say it'd be better, but it certainly wouldn't hurt them
Speaker 11: in life to have gone through the other the other
Speaker 11: outcome that could have been from that day, oh you know, to.
Speaker 3: Go, they wouldn't have had different lives.
Speaker 5: No, not losing, but in the moment, it sure feels
Speaker 5: like that the pressure you're feeling. So I empty out
Speaker 5: that backpack that I was just talking about earlier, take out.
Speaker 5: It's funny because I was packing, you took your pistol
Speaker 5: out a.
Speaker 11: Ten millimeter on my hip and and I had a
Speaker 11: twenty two mag in the backpack in case we found
Speaker 11: a cat that we wanted to shoot ten millimeters for
Speaker 11: in case things get western. And I purposely took them
Speaker 11: both out because I thought, if we go over there
Speaker 11: and that dog has to be put down, I can't
Speaker 11: do it with an earshot of those girls because if
Speaker 11: they hear me shoot that dog, then they'll never forgive me,
Speaker 11: you know. So I left both things there. I don't
Speaker 11: know what we're gonna do.
Speaker 2: Way down, I said, you got your pistol, right, yeah,
Speaker 2: and you're like no. I didn't want them to hear
Speaker 2: a shoot.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: We would have had to let his blood out with
Speaker 5: a knife or something.
Speaker 8: And we told the kids are making this so much worse.
Speaker 3: Well, that's the stay put.
Speaker 2: So it's all five. We're gonna stay put. We're gonna
Speaker 2: go down and cross the camp.
Speaker 5: Did you guys let that?
Speaker 9: Were the kids aware that something was he said the
Speaker 9: dog might be hurt, okay.
Speaker 11: Yeah, but they they were having fun. Like like I said,
Speaker 11: we had just we had we had moved the snowmobiles
Speaker 11: closer to where he had where he was, they were
Speaker 11: having fun. This is before we realized he got hurt.
Speaker 11: They were having fun, throwing snow, chasing each other around,
Speaker 11: and so we're like mingus, you know, is might need
Speaker 11: a little hand. We're gonna go check in on him.
Speaker 11: You guys just hang out, build a fire, eat some snacks.
Speaker 11: They weren't really aware at all of that. We we
Speaker 11: didn't certainly didn't show him the GPS track. So Steve
Speaker 11: and I bailed down off this four service road and uh,
Speaker 11: what do you think? We dropped thousand feet maybe not
Speaker 11: quite to the creek bottom.
Speaker 5: I can tell you exact deep deep snow.
Speaker 11: A lot of fallen trees, and I felt like we
Speaker 11: were just hopping a lot of trees, which on the
Speaker 11: way down wasn't wasn't too bad across the creek and uh,
Speaker 11: you know, base are able to walk right to him,
Speaker 11: and Steve actually spotted him first.
Speaker 2: And something had been wanting to ask you about. I'm
Speaker 2: trying to I'm looking the spot, I said. I was
Speaker 2: out a little bit in front of you, and I said,
Speaker 2: his head's up. And you look I couldn't tell if
Speaker 2: you were relieved or upset this head was up. You
Speaker 2: looked like you were upset that his head was up.
Speaker 11: No, I mean, honestly, I couldn't tell you if what
Speaker 11: kind of at that point, what kind of emotions I
Speaker 11: was feeling. I was just feeling really guilty for letting
Speaker 11: him get into that position.
Speaker 5: You know, understood heavy responsibility situation too, right, Like, yeah,
Speaker 5: he got a lot going on, yep, So it was
Speaker 5: good to see him with his head with his head up.
Speaker 5: We knew he's alive.
Speaker 11: But we get to him and he's kind of he
Speaker 11: likes to sit in what we call a lot of
Speaker 11: dogs sitting in that kind of sphinx position. He does
Speaker 11: it extremely well and looks very handsome when he does it.
Speaker 11: Sometimes he crosses his front paws. But he's in that
Speaker 11: position on a scree slope facing uphill, and he can
Speaker 11: obviously hear us coming, but he's not looking over his shoulder,
Speaker 11: you know, He's like just looking one way. And we
Speaker 11: get up there to him and kind of start poking
Speaker 11: and prodding, and like he's not reacting to anything we do.
Speaker 11: Like he can pull his legs out and he's they're
Speaker 11: just kind of loose and floppy and you know.
Speaker 3: Little holes all over him.
Speaker 11: He's not look yeah, lacerations just covering his body and
Speaker 11: he's not like you know, you can put your whatever
Speaker 11: you could kind of yell at him, and he wasn't
Speaker 11: reacting to the.
Speaker 3: Big old blood trail coming down the hill.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 11: Like he landed probably fifty yards above that, and it
Speaker 11: looked as though if you had shot a deer up
Speaker 11: there and then they had rolled down in the blood.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 11: It was kind of that scene. I'd hiked up there
Speaker 11: real quick just to see kind of get an idea
Speaker 11: of what he had gone through and where he landed.
Speaker 11: We probably had what four to six inches maybe afresh,
Speaker 11: but not nothing underneath it. Very poor snow conditions in
Speaker 11: general for the winter around here. But when he landed,
Speaker 11: you know, the impact had shot snow probably six feet
Speaker 11: out of the direction.
Speaker 5: It was a big bomb.
Speaker 11: You see it from way off, Yeah, and it's like
Speaker 11: between two cliff faces. There was a little bit of
Speaker 11: a shoot and I thought, well, maybe he could have
Speaker 11: come down through that, but there was no disturbed snow,
Speaker 11: so obviously he came off one of the cliff faces.
Speaker 11: I'd like to go back and actually hit it with
Speaker 11: the rangefinder to know, but I just remember looking up
Speaker 11: there and just for to have some sort of comparison
Speaker 11: or contact. I thought, I've never jumped off anything that
Speaker 11: high on skis, and like, I'd probably be too scared
Speaker 11: to jump off of that on skis, even on the
Speaker 11: you know, deepest powder day. So you ski a lot,
Speaker 11: you know, you've probably jumped off some stuff. But to
Speaker 11: right Connor, you're dead experience stuff.
Speaker 5: Your your dead animal experience there too, right of, Like
Speaker 5: seeing that tumble down in the snow means something to
Speaker 5: us that if you don't have the prior experience of
Speaker 5: recovering game, this doesn't doesn't mean as much, right So you're, yeah,
Speaker 5: you're you're adding up all your your data points right
Speaker 5: now and trying to come up with the proper conclusion.
Speaker 11: Yeah, so we'll have Yeah, we'll never know how he
Speaker 11: came off the cliff. My best guess is that where
Speaker 11: he went up, the grade of the hill was enough
Speaker 11: that he had good footing, and then I think that
Speaker 11: as he wrapped the hill going left, the grade just
Speaker 11: it just increased to the point where it got really steep,
Speaker 11: and the cat kept going and the snow got slick,
Speaker 11: and eventually he just lost footing and couldn't, you know,
Speaker 11: couldn't turn around and just went careening off a forty
Speaker 11: footer is what I guessed it at.
Speaker 2: He too, if you put your I put my ear
Speaker 2: against his chest and it was like right, And I thought,
Speaker 2: because I don't know what I'm doing, I thought it
Speaker 2: was later found out what it was, but I thought blood.
Speaker 5: In his chest because I.
Speaker 2: Don't know, you know, it's like a real gurgly noise,
Speaker 2: but it why not be in a totally He'll tell you, Rihani,
Speaker 2: He'll tell you what It was a totally different issue
Speaker 2: now which I had never heard of.
Speaker 11: Oh yeah, I've learned a lot of words through this
Speaker 11: experience that I had never heard of before. But uh yeah,
Speaker 11: so we think we just decide, well, we're gonna pack
Speaker 11: him up. Luckily, I had that frame pack that's meant
Speaker 11: to pack me, and so I stuck him in there
Speaker 11: just like an out quarter between the pack and.
Speaker 3: The frame, eighty three pounds.
Speaker 5: And uh zip zipped him up and were strapped him down.
Speaker 5: Did he tuck his legs in? Yeah he was. He
Speaker 5: was dangling. Yeah, he was sitting inside. He was sitting
Speaker 5: ninety degrees to my back.
Speaker 2: And I thought, I was like, if he's you know,
Speaker 2: I didn't think it's gonna make I don't think the
Speaker 2: dog is gonna be live, and I'm like, especially it's
Speaker 2: not gonna be live now. We even talked about what
Speaker 2: are you gonna do? Though, It's like, there's nothing you
Speaker 2: can do. No, there's no way to We're on a
Speaker 2: screen slide, like, there's no way to do anything. You know,
Speaker 2: You're not gonna call a helicopter. It's like you have
Speaker 2: to just you couldn't. A sled would have been no good.
Speaker 2: There's nothing you can do.
Speaker 5: And honestly, even having more people wouldn't really know.
Speaker 3: It was like, nothing you can do.
Speaker 2: You can't tag, you can't tag team in lead wouldn't
Speaker 2: do you any good. You can't go up, there's nothing
Speaker 2: to do. But I was like, because it was breathing bad,
Speaker 2: you know, you're like keep your ways open and slumping in.
Speaker 3: The back of a backpack and a run for it.
Speaker 5: The human response, right, would be like, you provide stability
Speaker 5: for this victim so the movement doesn't cause more trauma,
Speaker 5: exactly right, or exacerbate whatever internal injuries you can't see,
Speaker 5: which is just not an option in this scenario. Because
Speaker 5: it's a ticking clock.
Speaker 2: And that dog was cold too. Oh that's the other
Speaker 2: thing I thought about waiting. He's already all wet and shivering.
Speaker 11: Yeah, and he got a lot colder throughout the day
Speaker 11: because it took a while. So, uh, I decide to
Speaker 11: instead of going back up the way we came, which
Speaker 11: in retrospect, I s time to decide if that would
Speaker 11: have been faster or not.
Speaker 5: What do you think?
Speaker 11: It took me a long time to go out of
Speaker 11: the creek. It was like an It was like a
Speaker 11: mile and a quarter mile and a half. As the
Speaker 11: crow flew, I figured it might have been two miles
Speaker 11: the route we took to get out of the creek.
Speaker 2: It would have been better to go with me because
Speaker 2: we had all the time in the world waiting on me.
Speaker 3: The kids made a second fire and you yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but you didn't have to climb that hill with
Speaker 5: eighty five pounds on your back.
Speaker 3: No, but I still think would have been quicker.
Speaker 5: All right. Well, so, but I made this the decision
Speaker 5: which I often say, don't do if you already know
Speaker 5: one route. And it was.
Speaker 11: The thing was is all those logs. I didn't feel
Speaker 11: like climbing over all those logs on the way back
Speaker 11: up where the full pack was gonna be fun. Anyways,
Speaker 11: it takes me two hours to pack him out. We
Speaker 11: meet up with the crew. Lowed him back into the
Speaker 11: dog when he comes.
Speaker 3: When he comes finally busting out of the brush, the
Speaker 3: dog's not in the backpack anymore.
Speaker 5: That's right.
Speaker 3: He was carrying that dog like like on the front
Speaker 3: of a romance novel.
Speaker 5: Well right at the right.
Speaker 11: Like seconds before that, he had just started legs and
Speaker 11: stuff started slipping out of the pack, and he was
Speaker 11: getting a little floppy on me. And so I had
Speaker 11: him on the ground and I'm like, I can I
Speaker 11: know where you guys are, just you know, two hundred
Speaker 11: yards away. I'm like, at this point, god, oh, just
Speaker 11: you know. He man it, which was probably a bad idea.
Speaker 2: Oh dude, I couldn't believe it. When I want to
Speaker 2: take him out of your hands, I couldn't get him.
Speaker 2: I couldn't hold him.
Speaker 3: Standing there barely. So it was a hard, awkward package.
Speaker 3: That's a big, heavy dog.
Speaker 5: Was he making any noise over the course of he.
Speaker 3: Looked somehow better, like a little more with it.
Speaker 11: Maybe, I don't know, maybe the concussion was wearing off.
Speaker 11: I'm guessing that could have been. He was the whole
Speaker 11: time I could hear him breathing. It was very shallow breathing,
Speaker 11: but just this, you know, but just shallow breathing. I
Speaker 11: at least I could hear him breathing, which was good.
Speaker 2: I told my older boy, I said, I took him aside,
Speaker 2: and I said, I don't think that Mingus is gonna
Speaker 2: come out alive out of the woods. And I can
Speaker 2: hear my daughter like she's like acting like she's a
Speaker 2: vet and somehow she got and she's telling Yanni's.
Speaker 3: Daughters that if it's got a broken leg, they're gonna
Speaker 3: have to.
Speaker 8: Put it down.
Speaker 2: I was like, Jimmy tells me this, I should say
Speaker 2: I didn't hear her say it. Jimmy said, he's she's
Speaker 2: tattle tailing. That Rosemary is really upsetting Iron and Mabel
Speaker 2: with her like armchair vet talk.
Speaker 5: Which in this particular instance, you're.
Speaker 8: Like, well, how old are they?
Speaker 3: Well, Rosemary's eleven.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Iron and Maybe are ten and twelve.
Speaker 3: And my older boys thirteen and my younger boys nine.
Speaker 11: Well, there's vet shows all over the internet and uh
Speaker 11: television these days that the kids watch.
Speaker 5: And I think she's.
Speaker 2: Missing horses because I told him to fix the horses.
Speaker 2: She's mixing that it could be anyhow a lot of
Speaker 2: like coaching.
Speaker 11: Yeah, the only time he made any noises one time
Speaker 11: I had like slipped down a little bit of a
Speaker 11: bank and UH kind of caught myself, caught my own weight,
Speaker 11: and that caused him to, you know, shift pretty heavily
Speaker 11: to one side, and he made like a little moany
Speaker 11: grown kind of a sound.
Speaker 5: But other than that, he was good. So are you
Speaker 5: talking to your the whole way out?
Speaker 11: Oh yeah, yeah, just apologizing pretty much, you know, shedding
Speaker 11: some tears.
Speaker 5: It was sad.
Speaker 3: It was terrible. It's terrible.
Speaker 11: Every now and then, for whatever reason, he would like
Speaker 11: rotate ninety degrees and then get a paw on each
Speaker 11: one of my shoulders.
Speaker 5: I kind of like even put his chin on my
Speaker 5: one shoulder and like, oh my gosh, kill me.
Speaker 11: Yeah yeah, but then he'd like he'd go the other
Speaker 11: way and he'd almost like his head would like get
Speaker 11: too far back and kind of get floppy.
Speaker 5: I'd have to look to make sure he's still with.
Speaker 3: Me, you know. Oh man, I felt terrible for you
Speaker 3: guys that.
Speaker 11: Day, But yeah, we can get a loaded up in
Speaker 11: it comes with me. Steve still had to go and
Speaker 11: UH had some unfinished business on that trail. And so
Speaker 11: just Iron and I took mingus in and there's only
Speaker 11: one place to get emergency VET services uh here in
Speaker 11: the Greater Bozeman area, So we.
Speaker 5: Went there and.
Speaker 11: Trying trying to make a little bit faster here, but
Speaker 11: we spent a couple hours in there. As they're checking
Speaker 11: him out, he's obviously he was very cold. They had
Speaker 11: to bring his coretent back up. The shallow breathing. The
Speaker 11: injury was called pneumo thorax, which basically is air inside
Speaker 11: of you know, your chest that's between your chest lining
Speaker 11: and your lungs, and so when you have air in there,
Speaker 11: it prevents the lungs from actually expanding and doing what.
Speaker 5: They're supposed to do.
Speaker 3: Hence the crazy noise.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and the super shallow breathing.
Speaker 11: So they basically just stick like I don't know this
Speaker 11: is exactly right, but it's like a syringe that's meant
Speaker 11: for pulling air out. So they just, yeah, they vent
Speaker 11: them and I think after they do it three or
Speaker 11: four times, it actually just stick like a tube in
Speaker 11: there and just constantly keep pulling it. But it took him.
Speaker 11: They said on the fourth time they would go to
Speaker 11: the tube. They only did it three times they pulled
Speaker 11: like two liters air out of there and that was
Speaker 11: kind of the end of that. All those lacerations he had,
Speaker 11: I don't know, thirty forty some stitches and staples kind
Speaker 11: of all over. They shaved any part where there was
Speaker 11: any trauma on that dog when he came home. When
Speaker 11: he came home, half of him was shaved, like his
Speaker 11: rear end. Because yeah, you just start to you know,
Speaker 11: because you're fixated on different things of what's going on
Speaker 11: with the dog, and so it takes a day or
Speaker 11: two you start paying close for attention. But he was
Speaker 11: rear end was the whole thing was just purple for
Speaker 11: a week, you know from the impact.
Speaker 5: Did they give you the talk like before any of
Speaker 5: this happened where they're kind of like, here's your options
Speaker 5: and how much are you willing to spend?
Speaker 11: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah that one for sure, Like
Speaker 11: you knew very quickly what it was going to take.
Speaker 11: And so I had to have that conversation with my gallant,
Speaker 11: and yeah, I feel like I owe a lot of
Speaker 11: people and apology because I for sure have sort of
Speaker 11: poked fun in anybody that spent I always said, crist
Speaker 11: five K is my limit, and I was like, you
Speaker 11: did what your dog got acy l surgery, you dumbass.
Speaker 2: You know that's that was one of the first things
Speaker 2: I mentioned you after we knew the dog would be
Speaker 2: all right. I was like, if someone had taken you
Speaker 2: aside a month ago and said, how much would you
Speaker 2: put into that dog and vet care before you pull
Speaker 2: the plug and got a new one, and you'd be
Speaker 2: you know, you'd think about it four or five grand
Speaker 2: I suppose, you know whatever. I don't know what the
Speaker 2: number would be, but you'd have some number. But then
Speaker 2: you get in the actual situation and there's like this
Speaker 2: leads to that, and you got to bring it down
Speaker 2: and then find out what's going on, and then there's
Speaker 2: all this emotional stuff and you're the daughters are involved,
Speaker 2: and you can just see how it runs away with
Speaker 2: itself totally. You know. It's not like, you know, it's
Speaker 2: not like you get up there and someone says, okay,
Speaker 2: now's your decision moment. You know, is this worth ten
Speaker 2: k or not worth ten k?
Speaker 3: You know, but it's I don't know, may'll be dead.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's three hundred dollars, but I just you know,
Speaker 2: you can't you just go and then it's snowballs and
Speaker 2: then there you are the massive vethist.
Speaker 5: Dude.
Speaker 11: They were pretty spot on with once they kind of
Speaker 11: had him stabilized and had and they knew what was
Speaker 11: going on. So basically the only he had a mild concussion.
Speaker 11: They gave him some drugs and he popped right out
Speaker 11: of that. He had the newmo thorax. They pumped that out.
Speaker 11: They gave him whatever, thirty forty stitches and staples all over.
Speaker 5: Not a big deal.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 11: The one broken bone from falling forty feet basically straight
Speaker 11: to rock.
Speaker 3: Was it the leg I thought was broken at the
Speaker 3: lego though was.
Speaker 11: One of his left rear legs has a fractured botella,
Speaker 11: so he broke his kneecap and uh but anyways, Yeah,
Speaker 11: so once they had him stabilized, they were able to
Speaker 11: call us and be like, this is what it's going
Speaker 11: to cost.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, by that point you already carried him all
Speaker 3: that way and all that is different.
Speaker 11: Oh yeah, and then you're like, okay, well, what's it
Speaker 11: going to cause? You canna just put him to sleep?
Speaker 11: And then I'm gonna either lie to my daughter so
Speaker 11: that he didn't make it through the night.
Speaker 3: I told the vet money is no objects.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 9: Yeah, but it's not like he would have like the
Speaker 9: putt in the sleep thing. If they had just stopped care,
Speaker 9: he wouldn't have just like died on his own, you
Speaker 9: know what I mean?
Speaker 8: No, Like, how could you.
Speaker 3: It's like they'd actively have to put him down. Yeah,
Speaker 3: isn't free you have a dog run around with broken
Speaker 3: I don't know, maybe no.
Speaker 11: I asked about that and they said, basically, the leg
Speaker 11: would just atrophyed and nothing, and then you end up
Speaker 11: having to amputat it and it wouldn't be a good deal.
Speaker 3: And I told you my theory about three le dogs.
Speaker 11: Oh listen, I was ready to go there. I need
Speaker 11: to check up on this because they told me that
Speaker 11: was pretty much gonna be the same price to go
Speaker 11: to a three legged dog to what we we we
Speaker 11: paid for.
Speaker 2: And I was like, that's a bargain because people like
Speaker 2: them three legged dogs.
Speaker 8: Man.
Speaker 5: Look, I would have had no problem running a three
Speaker 5: legged hound. I know a couple of the film.
Speaker 2: About you if you started, if you started catching lines
Speaker 2: with a three legged dog, they had made a hole
Speaker 2: of the Eddy movie. It'd be like the sad part
Speaker 2: with the sad music and yeah, like if.
Speaker 5: You took them both off and we got one of
Speaker 5: those wheelie cards. How much that that off road mountain
Speaker 5: bike tires on the back before we get take before
Speaker 5: we leave that the first night.
Speaker 11: That everything's kind of set, these stabilized, we're like, all right,
Speaker 11: we'll get a phone call from you later. And they're like, yeah,
Speaker 11: surgery probably tomorrow, or go home and discuss with your
Speaker 11: family on you know, if you guys want to pay,
Speaker 11: et cetera. But they're like, oh, you want to come
Speaker 11: back real quick and just say, you know, give him
Speaker 11: a kiss and say bye and check him out. I'm like, yeah, sure,
Speaker 11: that sounds like a great idea, you know what. I
Speaker 11: wasn't thinking like goodbye as in forever, but just like go,
Speaker 11: you know, give a pat on the back. And we
Speaker 11: walk in there and it's just him laying on this table.
Speaker 11: I mean, there's people kind of milling out and about girls.
Speaker 11: Just just sign him and we walk over there, and
Speaker 11: when we're like maybe five feet from the table, you
Speaker 11: kind of you're like, oh, you see the big blanket
Speaker 11: and he's got the little mask on, you know, helping him.
Speaker 11: So he's like not looking great, shaved everywhere and you're
Speaker 11: kind of like, you know, your heart sinks a little
Speaker 11: bit to see your buddy in such a bad steak
Speaker 11: because he's not really like you don't even look up
Speaker 11: at you when you walk in there, and right is
Speaker 11: we're like getting to be a little bit closer where
Speaker 11: we're gonna like put our hands on him. The machine
Speaker 11: next to him goes.
Speaker 13: And all of a sudden, there's a dude running over
Speaker 13: and he's like, don so, I need seven milligrams of this. No,
Speaker 13: make a tent and prepare a backup, And all of
Speaker 13: a sudden, it's like there's five people around him and
Speaker 13: we're like pushed out, and I mean it's like an
Speaker 13: er scene, you know, like.
Speaker 3: You had little paddles.
Speaker 5: Clear, Yeah it was.
Speaker 13: It was gonna be that suit. And it looks at
Speaker 13: me like, what the F They just told us he
Speaker 13: was stable.
Speaker 8: You know, I'm like, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 11: Well his uh he had had just like a little
Speaker 11: heart arrhythmia and uh and he got the same problem.
Speaker 5: It was all yeah, his is gone away, I think.
Speaker 11: But it was just cause from that impact and the
Speaker 11: trauma to the heart, you know, that's what caused that
Speaker 11: pneumo thorax. Too, was just such impact that some part
Speaker 11: of the lung, whether it's like a burst of sack
Speaker 11: or an alveoli, but some end part of the lobe
Speaker 11: just goes and like pops open and literally releases air
Speaker 11: into your chest. You can have internal which is neumo thorax,
Speaker 11: which is what he had, or you can have external pneumothorax,
Speaker 11: which is if your you know, rib cage actually got
Speaker 11: punctured and air got in that way.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm learning about myself right now.
Speaker 2: If you were telling me that about a person, I'd
Speaker 2: be having all these problems because it's a dog.
Speaker 3: I'm not having all these problems. Like if someone tells
Speaker 3: me testicular cancer, my nuts start aching.
Speaker 8: But I hear.
Speaker 3: You can hear all this without having the pain.
Speaker 5: You feel like a pain or just like a strange sensation.
Speaker 3: I feel like, man, I got that problem.
Speaker 9: It's like a sympathetic pregnancy.
Speaker 3: Steve Gatz, Yeah, yeah, I'm just noticing that for some reason,
Speaker 3: if you were explaining that in that kind of grand detail,
Speaker 3: my lungs like, there's.
Speaker 11: So yeah, he's he They put a what's called the
Speaker 11: external fixater around his rear leg, which is basically this
Speaker 11: bracket that has pins that all go into different bones
Speaker 11: that are holding things together. And now the external fixer
Speaker 11: actually has a piston looks just like the piston on
Speaker 11: the hatch on your topper that holds your your window open.
Speaker 11: And then they adjust it and and give him more
Speaker 11: range of motions.
Speaker 3: When he's done with that.
Speaker 4: Can I have the piston because I've been using a
Speaker 4: broom that my windshield for months now.
Speaker 5: You know, I think luckily they don't they take it
Speaker 5: back and so that saves you a little bit of money.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, so I won't own that piece of hardware.
Speaker 3: When when we're all done, you take a bid from them,
Speaker 3: and yeah, just compare with my the the shop down there.
Speaker 8: You know, how did how did you? How did you
Speaker 8: carry him out on the snowmobile.
Speaker 11: We have a sled like a dog box that sits
Speaker 11: on a sled that's like a trailer behind the snowmobile.
Speaker 5: So we just loaded him right into his box and.
Speaker 3: He wrapped him up in his down jacket.
Speaker 5: Yeah, try to make try to warm him up a
Speaker 5: little bit.
Speaker 3: So if anyone wants to send you on you a
Speaker 3: bunch of money, that's what he'll do. It is he'll
Speaker 3: turn around and give it to his VET.
Speaker 11: Yeah, so it's a it's a it's a big it's
Speaker 11: a big number.
Speaker 8: Uh.
Speaker 3: Did you do you get a payment plan like he's
Speaker 3: supposed to come up with that kind of money.
Speaker 11: Yeah, they actually have a uh there's like an emergency
Speaker 11: VET credit that you can get for with super low uh,
Speaker 11: with pretty low interest from.
Speaker 5: Who it's it's that's what through the VET. Well, I
Speaker 5: mean they advertised like a.
Speaker 4: Third party financing option.
Speaker 3: For that.
Speaker 8: Yeah, he's right. It writes it up while you're there.
Speaker 8: Let me go ask my manager.
Speaker 4: It's a great it's a great business plan because you're
Speaker 4: just sitting around, like who should I lend money to?
Speaker 4: Who's gonna spend the money?
Speaker 3: No matter what. So the VET offers like financing or
Speaker 3: it's a third party. It's a third party.
Speaker 4: It's like crit over, you know, like on Yeah, I
Speaker 4: was looking at it the other day when I paid
Speaker 4: a big VET bill.
Speaker 3: I just wonder if I.
Speaker 11: Could do it, Like now you got to make payments,
Speaker 11: you know, I don't know, if we haven't figured out
Speaker 11: exactly how we're gonna do it, we'll probably just take
Speaker 11: a you know, big chunk out of savings and just
Speaker 11: knock it out.
Speaker 2: You know, man, better than that you dog every time
Speaker 2: you see him.
Speaker 11: Well, you know, it's funny because that dog is a
Speaker 11: you know, pound puppy, sheltered dog, whatever you want to
Speaker 11: call him.
Speaker 3: Now you can just you bought him for a lot
Speaker 3: of money.
Speaker 11: Yeah, yeah, he was like a hunt because pound dogs
Speaker 11: aren't free.
Speaker 5: They still make you pay for Yeah, it's like seventy five.
Speaker 3: You just really boosted his pedigree there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, totally. I better get his papers.
Speaker 2: Now people ask Yannie how much he paid for that dog.
Speaker 2: He had to start the story by going.
Speaker 8: Well is it genuine racehorse?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 11: Just like so, yeah, he's fine. Now he's uh, he's
Speaker 11: he's going. He's not going stir crazy you think he
Speaker 11: would be. I mean he wants to go out, he can't.
Speaker 11: You can't just let him roam. He's basically got to
Speaker 11: be on a leash.
Speaker 3: It was a season ender.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, there's no no more cat hunting here.
Speaker 2: And Yanni lost his appetite for cat hunting. He doesn't
Speaker 2: like doing it without his own dog, he said.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, I mean he went, he went.
Speaker 3: With someone else's dog. He said, it wasn't the same. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it was still fun just not the same.
Speaker 8: Right, But he did jump off a cliff that's.
Speaker 5: In the game. So what I was amazed at this.
Speaker 5: When we were chatting on on text, they said it
Speaker 5: was like ninety recovery, like to full phone recovery for
Speaker 5: that back leg. Yeah yeah, right, yeah, yeah, great. So
Speaker 5: it won't be like new but I think, I mean,
Speaker 5: he'll be able to hunt, no problem.
Speaker 8: How old does he take?
Speaker 5: Four him? He's got another at least, you know, four
Speaker 5: to six.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't think, I say, I'd get him right back
Speaker 3: to that same spot. See if you learned anything.
Speaker 5: Shock the ship out of him.
Speaker 4: No, no, no, cliff, yeah, there's nothing. Not a bad
Speaker 4: idea to put him up on top of the cliff
Speaker 4: and then shock him.
Speaker 3: Now, you know, he'll find that he never goes left
Speaker 3: ever again. Yeah, your dog that only goes right.
Speaker 11: It'll be interesting to see if he does have any
Speaker 11: uh you know post you know trauma, you know from it?
Speaker 3: Did he learn from it?
Speaker 5: I remember, as hard headed as that dog is, I
Speaker 5: don't think so. I doubt it.
Speaker 3: Thanks for sharing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, thanks for being there and helping out. It would
Speaker 5: have been uh even tougher it had just been me
Speaker 5: and my girls Yeah.
Speaker 2: I don't want to say it was fun, but I'm
Speaker 2: glad it worked out the way it did because, like
Speaker 2: I said, I felt terrible for you guys.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was uh, mostly felt terrible.
Speaker 3: For your girls because that would have been a hard
Speaker 3: little trip. Yeah.
Speaker 8: Yeah. Oh.
Speaker 11: The one other sort of silver lining out of this
Speaker 11: is I wasn't even really bringing it up, but uh,
Speaker 11: because I don't know if it was Jennifer that was
Speaker 11: like seeing like how bumna I was about how the
Speaker 11: season ended for us, and how like it was, you know,
Speaker 11: no more line hunting for me and mingus. You know,
Speaker 11: it's we're done for till next year. But uh, she
Speaker 11: pretty much is given the go ahead for number two,
Speaker 11: So another one.
Speaker 2: It wouldn't be so bad. If I had a second dog,
Speaker 2: I'd still be in the race.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, so yeah, get August.
Speaker 11: I think we'll have a puppy.
Speaker 3: That's awesome, man. Yeah, all right, Dan, you're ready to
Speaker 3: dive in.
Speaker 8: I've been doing this for the last five months.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's all you've been doing is diving. You you
Speaker 3: already dove?
Speaker 8: Yeah, I dove. I fell off a cliff that they
Speaker 8: found me.
Speaker 2: I was gurgling, Uh, layout who you lay out your
Speaker 2: organization first, and then lay out uh, and then just
Speaker 2: kind of give the give the rundown of what When I.
Speaker 3: Said, what's going on in Colorado? What tell us what's
Speaker 3: up with Colorado? Well, first give a thorough in introduction
Speaker 3: of yourself.
Speaker 8: So I'm Dan Gage. I'm the executive director for the
Speaker 8: Colorado's for Responsible Wildlife Management. And it's a five O
Speaker 8: one C four organization.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 8: Our mission is to enhance, promote, and defend the North
Speaker 8: American model of wildlife conservation and responsible wildlife management. And
Speaker 8: so we're not a we're not a membership organization, UH,
Speaker 8: but we do advocacy work and education work on a
Speaker 8: Friday at different levels, and we have three full time
Speaker 8: lobbyists at the Colorida Capitol. We fight through the legislative
Speaker 8: side of things and the regulatory side through the Parks
Speaker 8: and Wallife Commission. And now we've been dealt a citizen's
Speaker 8: initiative to bring it to a ballot for November fifth
Speaker 8: of this year to ban the harvest of mountain lions, bobcats,
Speaker 8: and the red herring on that as links. I heard
Speaker 8: you talk about that before, but I mean links aren't
Speaker 8: harvested full in the lower forty eight. But they want
Speaker 8: to make sure that they never are if they're ever delisted,
Speaker 8: they say, no, we don't want you to ever do
Speaker 8: it if they ever become delisted.
Speaker 9: Dan, when you say a citizen's initiative, can you say where?
Speaker 9: Like that's like, where did it come from?
Speaker 5: I want to clarify it as real quick though you
Speaker 5: said you've been dealt this right. This is an issue
Speaker 5: that Color Addams for Responsible Wildlife Management is fighting against.
Speaker 8: Fighting against. Yeah, we beat similar type issues through the
Speaker 8: Parks and Wallife Commission, and they also the antis the
Speaker 8: extreme went to the General Assembly through the legislature in
Speaker 8: twenty twenty two, and we beat him there. And this
Speaker 8: was their other option to turn around and file an initiative,
Speaker 8: which twenty six states had that available to them, but
Speaker 8: filing the initiative to where they get enough signatures through
Speaker 8: the legal process and then they can put it on
Speaker 8: the ballot for people to vote on in an attempt
Speaker 8: to ban I mean, they call it trophy hunting, even
Speaker 8: though we went through the proper steps that were allowed
Speaker 8: to us or the Secretary of State and the title
Speaker 8: Board and the Supreme Court that we got trophy hunting
Speaker 8: out of the title, but it still remains in the
Speaker 8: measure itself. But it's not trophy hunting. It's a hunting ban.
Speaker 8: It's a mountain lion and bobcat hunting ban is what
Speaker 8: it is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you don't fill out of question.
Speaker 2: They're asking what you're interested in retaining from the animal,
Speaker 2: and then you get to get a permit if you
Speaker 2: write the right thing down.
Speaker 8: No, No, it's the intent, is their Definitiontive trophy hunting,
Speaker 8: Steve is intentionally killing, wounding, stalking, and trapping a bobcat
Speaker 8: or mountain lion and intentionally killing. It's not trophy hunting.
Speaker 8: That's it's hunting. And the scary part about this is
Speaker 8: that we appreciate the opportunity to continually talk about it.
Speaker 8: But it's an education process because it'll become statutory. I mean,
Speaker 8: it will set a precedent.
Speaker 3: Well, I want you back up a little bit because
Speaker 3: I want to get this the language part of this
Speaker 3: a minute. But how many signatures like tell her about
Speaker 3: initiative works.
Speaker 8: So they file, they file, and it has to go
Speaker 8: through the proper legal processes as in any state. There's
Speaker 8: twenty six states that allow it. But they file and
Speaker 8: then there's an opportunity for arguments from the they're the
Speaker 8: proponents worth the opposers. I was the only objector on
Speaker 8: the entire legal documents through the state.
Speaker 5: When you say they like, who is they?
Speaker 8: So the organization that is doing it is a group
Speaker 8: called Cats Aren't Trophies. It's it's called cats.
Speaker 3: Was it built for this purpose?
Speaker 8: It was built specifically for this person purpose. Yes, But
Speaker 8: but they have deep connections with the Animal Welfare Action,
Speaker 8: Institute for a Humane Economy, which is run by Wayne Piselli,
Speaker 8: the former hs US executive director, and Wild Earth Guardians
Speaker 8: and a variety And if you look at their website,
Speaker 8: there's fifty or sixty different organizations that are all on board.
Speaker 8: But it's Cats Aren't Trophies is the organization.
Speaker 3: Is Center for Biological Diversity on it.
Speaker 8: They're they're on it as far as a supporter, but
Speaker 8: to the best of our knowledge, they haven't put any
Speaker 8: money in that's been trackable.
Speaker 3: Serious club. Everybody is they're on it.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean you you look at the you look
Speaker 8: at the Lord as a supporter, yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 8: it's it's gotten to a point to where I think
Speaker 8: they see it as a shiny object, and they're willing
Speaker 8: to turn around and throw their name into the hat
Speaker 8: on every single thing. And the individual people that are
Speaker 8: running the Colorado side of those organizations have been those
Speaker 8: are the ones that we've been fighting for the last
Speaker 8: twenty years anyway. I mean that's a but they just
Speaker 8: keep resurfacing. I mean it's like mushrooms. You get rid
Speaker 8: of them out of your yard, but they're pretty sure
Speaker 8: they show up somewhere else.
Speaker 2: So weird too, because bobcats are an IUCN species of
Speaker 2: Least Concern.
Speaker 8: Yeah. Yeah, there's just so.
Speaker 3: Surprising that Center for Biological Diversity in Sierra Club and
Speaker 3: organizations like that would even be in it when you're
Speaker 3: talking about a species of least concern.
Speaker 5: And that's a great point too, when we talk about
Speaker 5: like they International Union for the Conservation of Nature is
Speaker 5: like the they when people are like, well, they say
Speaker 5: it's okay, or they say they're doing good. It's the
Speaker 5: the convention that people go to to see how everything's doing.
Speaker 5: It's like the science at the back end of all
Speaker 5: biological diversity basically, and.
Speaker 2: What I'm saying, species of least concern they rank out.
Speaker 2: If you're curious about any animal. You can go look
Speaker 2: up the IUCN status any species and its in foreseeable issues, right,
Speaker 2: So you could have stable populations of an animal, but
Speaker 2: they'll look and they'll be like, well, foreseeable issues coming
Speaker 2: up and that will impact the level if you go
Speaker 2: look up a bobcats, bobcats species of Least concerned meaning stable, widespread,
Speaker 2: no foreseeable issues exactly.
Speaker 8: And same with mountain lions. Yeah, I mean, you know,
Speaker 8: mountain lions, mountain lions, and bobcats are so highly regulated
Speaker 8: in the United States that people, you know, it's the fallacies,
Speaker 8: the lies, and the falsehoods of our enemies. As you
Speaker 8: say it enough, people start to believe it, and the
Speaker 8: facts and the data will argue those those points that
Speaker 8: the opposition brings. But bobcats and mountain lions, there's no
Speaker 8: We all know this sitting around the table, but the
Speaker 8: general public for the most part doesn't.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: And the links thing is funny because links are enjoy
Speaker 2: the highest level of protection that any animal can get
Speaker 2: in America because they're esa.
Speaker 8: Protected exactly exactly. They're harvestable in Canada and the last
Speaker 8: but not down a little entire tired lower lower forty eight.
Speaker 2: They're in dangered species yea, you're protected. Yeah, but there
Speaker 2: state can't. State can't do anything anyway.
Speaker 8: No, it's just like half the wolves that you turn
Speaker 8: around to deal with what we what we have to
Speaker 8: deal with in Colorado. Wolves are not on the endangered
Speaker 8: species list in the Northern Rockies, but they're going to
Speaker 8: be in Colorado just because we brought them there. But
Speaker 8: it's the same wolves that came from Oregon, that probably
Speaker 8: came from somewhere else that it's it's the lies that
Speaker 8: that our opposition wants to be able to bring to
Speaker 8: the table, and they, like I say, if they say
Speaker 8: it enough, it just becomes the truth as far as
Speaker 8: they're concerned. And what we're trying to do is make
Speaker 8: sure that the general public, not just in Colorado, I
Speaker 8: mean we have to worry about the voter, but throughout
Speaker 8: the United States sportsmen and women need to pay attention
Speaker 8: because of the way it's written. And you could turn
Speaker 8: on and put it in Arkansas or Wisconsin or anything,
Speaker 8: just change change their statutes because of the statutory component
Speaker 8: of this. You know, with people voting on it.
Speaker 2: Did uh how many votes does it take or how
Speaker 2: many signatures? And then what's the population of Colorado and
Speaker 2: how many.
Speaker 8: Signatures, So it's roughly two percent of the population that
Speaker 8: they need for signatures. But I think it's one hundred
Speaker 8: and twenty four two hundred and thirty eight signatures that
Speaker 8: they have to get that are certified. So they're out
Speaker 8: gathering signatures now, but we're assuming that they'll probably have
Speaker 8: to get one hundred and eighty thousand because there will
Speaker 8: be some ineligible ones and someones that aren't.
Speaker 5: You know, readable or whatever.
Speaker 8: Exactly, people won't fill it out right, so that one
Speaker 8: won't They might fill out the wrong county, or they
Speaker 8: might fill out that it's a country, not a county.
Speaker 3: Hanging chads, yeah, exactly. You know our young friends, he
Speaker 3: doesn't get the hanging chads, Joe.
Speaker 5: And you're lucky Gorvy Bush.
Speaker 3: When they get to gor v Bush in history, listen,
Speaker 3: you'll hear about hanging chads.
Speaker 5: Yeah. But in Colorado, in the state constitution, they have
Speaker 5: to pass these citizens initiatives. If the populace votes yay, right.
Speaker 8: Well, this will not be constitutional. This will be statutory.
Speaker 8: So a constitutional one would you would have to get
Speaker 8: two percent of those required signatures from each one of
Speaker 8: the thirty five Senate districts, so this one here, they
Speaker 8: can all stand out in front of one Whole Foods
Speaker 8: in downtown Denver. Essentially, That's what I'll say.
Speaker 2: I always think of that because there's like, you can't
Speaker 2: go to a Whole Foods now someone having a picnic table.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, a folding table off the front left and signatures.
Speaker 8: Yeah, they they there's We had some guys downtown Denver
Speaker 8: that were doing some other functions and they said there
Speaker 8: was at one location, there was five individuals that were
Speaker 8: out gathering signatures four five different ballot initiatives at one spot.
Speaker 8: I mean, I don't know what you do, but if
Speaker 8: I don't go to the grocery store, my wife does.
Speaker 8: But if I went there and there was five people
Speaker 8: trying to hit me up on the way end of
Speaker 8: the way out, I mean, I'll buy girl Scout cookies
Speaker 8: if I go. But I'm not going to turn around
Speaker 8: and stop and sign five petitions.
Speaker 2: No, I'm always I'm always thinking my head. Just the
Speaker 2: fact that you're here makes me suspicious of what you're
Speaker 2: getting signatures.
Speaker 8: Exactly exactly what do you want to change in my life?
Speaker 3: I mean that the produce But yeah, I don't know
Speaker 3: what's going on in.
Speaker 8: This park well, And there's so many things going on
Speaker 8: in Colorado because of the landscape that we've got. I mean,
Speaker 8: the gubernatorial administration has not been favorable to us, to
Speaker 8: say the least when it comes to hunting and fishing
Speaker 8: and agriculture type issues. And there's some other stuff going
Speaker 8: on in Denver that the state won't be able to
Speaker 8: vote on, but the Denver City and County residence will
Speaker 8: And one is a fur ban, which is not a
Speaker 8: fur ban's it's much broader than that. And it's a
Speaker 8: slaughterhouse ban as well. Both of those are citizen ballot
Speaker 8: initiatives for Denver City County residents. But those are the
Speaker 8: same people that will be able to vote on the
Speaker 8: state wide Mountain Lion and Bobcat issue as well. So
Speaker 8: they get to vote on three things to try to
Speaker 8: take away. And the state residents themselves get to vote
Speaker 8: on the mountain line and Bobcat, but they can't engage
Speaker 8: in the other ones because they don't live in the city.
Speaker 8: You're just looking at me like let's go talk.
Speaker 3: No no, no, no, no, I'm not looking at you that way.
Speaker 3: I just remember back in I remember back in the
Speaker 3: early nineties, must have been the nineties when Colorado had
Speaker 3: the ye had.
Speaker 2: A bar nation, know, the one they had the trapping Well,
Speaker 2: that was in ninety six, and I'm looking at it
Speaker 2: that way only because of this. I remember that trapping band.
Speaker 2: Someone said at the time the minute Denver and Fort
Speaker 2: Collins had a population that equaled the broader population of Colorado,
Speaker 2: meaning fifty point one percent of Colorado's lived in Denver,
Speaker 2: Fort Collins, the trapping.
Speaker 3: Band, YEP. And they were like, man, it was like
Speaker 3: it was like urban people, the yep, rural people.
Speaker 8: And I saw a statistic that this is pretty much
Speaker 8: across the board, especially in the West. In nineteen hundred
Speaker 8: and eighty percent of the population lived on the landscape
Speaker 8: and twenty percent lived in the city or the municipalities.
Speaker 8: In nineteen fifty it was a fifty to fifty mix,
Speaker 8: and then two thousand, twenty percent lived on the landscape
Speaker 8: and eighty percent lived in the cities. I mean just
Speaker 8: in one hundred years. In the next fifty years, they're
Speaker 8: saying it'll probably be somewhere around ninety percent live in
Speaker 8: the cities and ten percent will live on the landscape.
Speaker 8: That's the problem that we get into because everybody benefits
Speaker 8: off of hunting and fishing, even if they don't participate
Speaker 8: in it. They've benefit off of agriculture production. We all
Speaker 8: had to eat. It's not like we're all growing chickens
Speaker 8: and gardens in everybody's backyard. But all of that stuff
Speaker 8: plays into people's psyche because it doesn't affect them until
Speaker 8: they go to the grocery store orun till they want
Speaker 8: to feed their kids or go to McDonald's or something.
Speaker 8: And I think that we're getting to a point where
Speaker 8: there's going to be some break even where people are
Speaker 8: just going to get fed up and say, wait a minute,
Speaker 8: let's just leave it up to the experts on a
Speaker 8: variety of different things. We haven't gotten there yet, but
Speaker 8: we're going to this November, I think, just because of
Speaker 8: the outreach that we've got and the momentum that we're
Speaker 8: actually building on this issue. Because people are sick and
Speaker 8: tired of extremism. They're sick and tired of somebody telling
Speaker 8: them what to do. Whether they do it or not,
Speaker 8: it's the fact that they might want to do it,
Speaker 8: or they know that their uncle does it, or their
Speaker 8: brother does it, or the guy that works at Whole
Speaker 8: Foods does it while somebody's trying to gather signatures outside that.
Speaker 3: That was the point I wanted to get into with this.
Speaker 2: Which makes it tricky is you look at you look
Speaker 2: at certain environmental battles, that environmental fights that sportsmen.
Speaker 3: Get involved in.
Speaker 8: Ok.
Speaker 2: And the most notable example would be like the huge
Speaker 2: outpouring of that came from the hunting and fishing community
Speaker 2: all around the country in opposition to developing the Pebble
Speaker 2: Mind site. And a lot of like people wanted to
Speaker 2: draw a line in the sand on the Pebble Mind development,
Speaker 2: even if they weren't planning to go to Bristol Bay, right,
Speaker 2: they looked and they're like that, you know, just it
Speaker 2: was easy for people to picture like that's the wrong
Speaker 2: mind and the wrong place. I'll never go there, but
Speaker 2: I recognize that this is something I want to lean
Speaker 2: in on. The problem it comes to method of take
Speaker 2: fights or fights like this. I think it's hard for
Speaker 2: people to picture why it matters to them, Like, you know,
Speaker 2: I don't hunt bobcats, I don't hunt mountain lions. I
Speaker 2: don't have any friends that run lines.
Speaker 3: Why would I care? Right? Because it's it just winds
Speaker 3: up being harder to imagine why it why you can.
Speaker 5: By strapolate pebble is just a total clean water issue, right, sure?
Speaker 5: And clean water the overlap for the general population, the
Speaker 5: bell curve of the population, it strikes a bigger tone.
Speaker 5: And so like, what what's our messaging right when we say, well,
Speaker 5: this method of take this particular species, what's the overlap
Speaker 5: for the bell curve of the biggest pot possible chunk
Speaker 5: of the population. Right, That's that's the messaging that that
Speaker 5: we have to be able to get to with with
Speaker 5: a lot of non hunters.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think that what if I look at
Speaker 3: I'd worry about I got a handful of balls in
Speaker 3: your hair, and I'm gonna.
Speaker 2: Turn back already meant, but I just wanna to clarify
Speaker 2: a point, like even just if it just if this,
Speaker 2: if a vote like this breaks on hunters non hunters,
Speaker 2: you're gonna lose because most people aren't hunters, right, I
Speaker 2: don't know what what's participation rate in Colorado fourteen high
Speaker 2: at the high end, at the high end, I'm sure, Okay,
Speaker 2: so you're gonna lose anyways, So it's like hunters and
Speaker 2: then some supporters. Now, if we were talking about a
Speaker 2: deer in elk hunting band, which I don't think is
Speaker 2: out of the realm of possibility in my kid's lifetime. No, so,
Speaker 2: if you're talking about a deer elk hunting band, you're
Speaker 2: gonna bucket up. You're pretty much bucketing up most hunters. Okay,
Speaker 2: most hunters are gonna be like that impacts me. If
Speaker 2: you talk about an obscure game animal, you're not even
Speaker 2: bucketing up most hunters. But even if you had all hunters,
Speaker 2: you still need extra support from elsewhere, exactly right. So
Speaker 2: I wonder about how to gather it up, and I
Speaker 2: would say, like for starters, and I'll leave it to
Speaker 2: you on the public end of things, the none hunter
Speaker 2: end of things, I would argue with hunters, why you
Speaker 2: need to pay attention to this is again, you're talking
Speaker 2: about taking a stable, expanding population of wildlife. If we
Speaker 2: say and I don't, I don't. I'm not terribly familiar
Speaker 2: with the IUCN, but an International Board of Biologists determines
Speaker 2: these things to be stable with no foreseeable threat.
Speaker 5: The experts that the experts lean on.
Speaker 2: And you're saying, no, we're pulling that species out of
Speaker 2: the pool of available resources, not because they're imperiled, not
Speaker 2: because they're endangered, not because there's any reason to think
Speaker 2: that these species have a chance of extirpation, but just
Speaker 2: be because we don't think you should go and get
Speaker 2: those exactly. So what's next?
Speaker 3: Sorry guys, Jeremy Romero was making one of his recipes,
Speaker 3: uh beria tacos, so so hap is it?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 8: We learned that in trivia weeks ago.
Speaker 2: Point being, That's what I would say to hunters, why
Speaker 2: this matters to you? Because like stuff you like to.
Speaker 3: Do is in line bears that's definitely coming, right, Someone
Speaker 3: could go make the case on big horn sheep that
Speaker 3: they're trying. Yeah, whatever, you know, other stuff is coming.
Speaker 3: This is just like a stuff. Yeah, archree, that's mean
Speaker 3: right now. How do you think the like?
Speaker 2: How should the the non hunting public, why do they care?
Speaker 8: Well, the hardest thing to get people to understand is
Speaker 8: why something affects, benefits or adversely affects them. And for
Speaker 8: somebody that doesn't hunt, they have to recognize. We have
Speaker 8: to get them to recognize the importance of hunting and
Speaker 8: conservation and the problem I think that we get into
Speaker 8: with that messaging is you've got ten percent that are
Speaker 8: going to be strong, you know, right hunters, and you've
Speaker 8: got ten percent they're going to be strong, right. Extremist.
Speaker 8: I don't like the word animal activists because they're not.
Speaker 8: They're terrorists. They're extremists. You know, they might be activist
Speaker 8: as well, but I mean their mentality is to disrupt
Speaker 8: the entire process of every game agency in the country
Speaker 8: and on the continent. As extremist, I mean they want
Speaker 8: to do it at the extremist level that they possibly can't.
Speaker 8: You mentioned big horn sheep Trist's Orneo, and I've mentioned this,
Speaker 8: I think even on the live show that we did
Speaker 8: Tris's Orneo with the Denver the Color of the Sun
Speaker 8: mentioned why are we why are we harvesting bighorn sheep
Speaker 8: are state animal biggorn cheap and no different than mountain lions.
Speaker 8: They're already set in the tone in the narrative of
Speaker 8: why we shouldn't do something and why they should be
Speaker 8: able to go after the low hanging fruit like on
Speaker 8: bobcats and mountain lions. There's less bobcat and mountain lion
Speaker 8: harvesters out there than there is many other things. But
Speaker 8: there's less big horned sheep, less mountain goat, and less
Speaker 8: moose harvesters than there is the mountain lion and bobcat combined.
Speaker 8: You can't, I mean, so you stop and think of that,
Speaker 8: you know, I mean, we sold twenty five hundred dollars.
Speaker 3: That's pretty interest that we sold.
Speaker 8: Twenty five hundred mountain lions last year licenses. Last year
Speaker 8: we had a success rate of nineteen percent on bobcats.
Speaker 8: We can only cage trap in the state of Colorado,
Speaker 8: or we can use hounds, or we can hunt them
Speaker 8: with predator calls. But roughly about about eight thousand guys
Speaker 8: participate in some capacity to pursue mountain lions, excuse me, bobcats.
Speaker 8: This year we harvested around nine hundred bobcats. On some
Speaker 8: years it's been as highs nineteen hundred that you had
Speaker 8: guys out there. But in the historical side of things,
Speaker 8: we did thirty six thirty eight hundred bobcats back in
Speaker 8: the seventies and crazy when prices were crazy and you
Speaker 8: had more people out there doing it. You know, trucks
Speaker 8: cost twelve grand and and bobcats worth four hundred dollars,
Speaker 8: And now trucks are eighty grand and guy's got fourteen kids,
Speaker 8: and you know he's got vet bills with his dogs
Speaker 8: and all the other stuff. I mean, he's not out
Speaker 8: pursuing like what they used to. But that doesn't mean
Speaker 8: that it's not a viable option or an advocation for management.
Speaker 3: But it's interesting that harvest is down historically down. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it just has a market factor.
Speaker 8: Well on the bobcats anyway. But back in nineteen sixty five,
Speaker 8: when when mountain lions became a big game animal. Before that,
Speaker 8: they were a nuisance in Colorado, we roughly had two
Speaker 8: hundred mountain lions on a landscape, and now we boast
Speaker 8: five thousand with regulated hunting, with regulated harvest, with objectives
Speaker 8: that are met throughout the entire state. We've got more
Speaker 8: lions now than what we've ever had. And they still
Speaker 8: want us not to be able to harvest them because
Speaker 8: it's wrong, that's what they say. They don't care that
Speaker 8: it has anything to do with management. I think that's
Speaker 8: where the general public says, why is it wrong? How
Speaker 8: should it be worked? Why should you just take it out?
Speaker 8: They're starting to ask those questions. I mean, as many
Speaker 8: opportunities we've had to talk to the general public at
Speaker 8: a variety of different levels. And I'm not speaking for
Speaker 8: all five point nine million people in Colorado, but people
Speaker 8: are questioning, why, why isn't our game agency. Are scientists
Speaker 8: and our biologists good enough to make the decisions on
Speaker 8: our game management practices? And they're starting to realize and
Speaker 8: I think, honestly, guys, I think the wolf issue brought
Speaker 8: that to the forefront because there was a fifty one
Speaker 8: to forty nine percent vote, very very split decision. We
Speaker 8: were told that we would lose by something like sixty
Speaker 8: sixty eight to thirty two percent, and it was fifty
Speaker 8: one to forty nine. I think it's surprised the hell
Speaker 8: out of everybody on both sides, because even the people
Speaker 8: that thought, well, maybe this would kind of be cool,
Speaker 8: but I'm not really sure, and then the other ones
Speaker 8: that thought, yeah, I'd like to hear a wolf. How
Speaker 8: now that it's been in the news for the last
Speaker 8: four years, they're like, well, there's been a lot of negativity.
Speaker 8: Do we really want to go to the route the
Speaker 8: Bobkads and mountain lions. The general public is starting to
Speaker 8: question why we can't rely on our experts. Are scientists
Speaker 8: We've heard the science, heard the science all the way
Speaker 8: through COVID, through that whole process. Why can't we follow
Speaker 8: the science here? And I think that that's starting to
Speaker 8: play a significant role in people's psyche. Is about well,
Speaker 8: I like to know that bobcats and mountain lions are
Speaker 8: appropriately managed because they've been talking about wolvesbying appropriately managed
Speaker 8: now for the last four years. Why do we need
Speaker 8: to turn around and put it on the ballot.
Speaker 3: What was the lion harvest in Colorado last year?
Speaker 8: Roughly like just less than fived, like four hundred and
Speaker 8: eighty six. It was actually by hunters.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know if this line up. I don't
Speaker 3: know how this impactful, this will be the voters.
Speaker 2: But you see an interested thing happen where the states
Speaker 2: do depredation work.
Speaker 8: Yep.
Speaker 2: I've never checked into this exhaustively, but my understandings before
Speaker 2: California had their lion hunting, band hunters in cal And
Speaker 2: you were killing about three hundred lines a year. Since then,
Speaker 2: the state is killing about three hundred lines a.
Speaker 8: Year somewhere in that neck of the woods. I've seen
Speaker 8: high end loads of that. But the but the the
Speaker 8: kicker trying to explain it to our public is that
Speaker 8: hunters aren't paying to do that. Taxpayers are paying government officials,
Speaker 8: whether federal or otherwise.
Speaker 2: You used to have people pay, used to have people
Speaker 2: pay for the opportunity, and now you're taking tax parimony
Speaker 2: to pay someone to do it.
Speaker 3: As though, And it's so as though the lion that's.
Speaker 2: Getting shot, it's like, well, thank god it's a government employee.
Speaker 8: They're happy about it now because they got a.
Speaker 2: Government employee, got me, not a guy who is paying
Speaker 2: too well.
Speaker 11: And that's where like a major like fallacy or lie
Speaker 11: about the whole story is is that they're telling people that, hey,
Speaker 11: if we stop this, the end result is that there's
Speaker 11: less lions killed. Right, I mean, if you're getting pitched
Speaker 11: this that whole Foods and getting there trying to get
Speaker 11: your signature, they're gonna tell you we're gonna stop the
Speaker 11: killing of mountain lions, you.
Speaker 3: Probably, I mean you'll you'll dent it for sure.
Speaker 5: Well, this part though, like I don't think that's what's effective. Right,
Speaker 5: Like we can look at there's a big ass billboard
Speaker 5: on on the Bozeman Hill here, uh, driving west out
Speaker 5: of Yellowstone.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 5: Sal Grizzly Bear has a couple of cubs, big old
Speaker 5: bull's eye drawn on on mom's back and it says uh, right,
Speaker 5: and like hunters look at it and you're like, well, that's
Speaker 5: a bunch of bullshit, right, But it's like, uh, delisting
Speaker 5: state management means trophy hunting. And it's the crosshair on
Speaker 5: the salas back, which everybody knows is.
Speaker 3: Illegal to shoot a solid cubs, right.
Speaker 5: But it's like that means something to hunters, right. But
Speaker 5: I think all those argue months should be combined and
Speaker 5: targeted at outdoor groups and say, Okay, here's here's an
Speaker 5: argument I'm going to make against rock climbing and all
Speaker 5: rock climbers, and I'm going to bring this as a
Speaker 5: citizens initiative in the state of Colorado to save raptors. Right,
Speaker 5: rock climbers, rock face.
Speaker 8: Sounds like we had this discussion because that's that's the
Speaker 8: exact same argument that we that we get on multiple things.
Speaker 3: I want to hear about the rock climbers and raptors.
Speaker 5: Okay, well, raptors nest. Okay, we know that rock climbers
Speaker 5: are killing raptors because they're abandoning their nests because of
Speaker 5: all these popular routes. Sons of bitches, Yep, they're picking
Speaker 5: up trash, microplastics. There's no reason that rock climbers should
Speaker 5: be allowed to do this. They're leaving scars on the rocks,
Speaker 5: big chalk all over the place, and and it's killing
Speaker 5: these poor birds. And you have the picture of the
Speaker 5: nest and the little abandoned chicks in there screaming for mom.
Speaker 5: You know who's choking on the six pack ring at
Speaker 5: the bottom of the cliff face. All rock climbers are
Speaker 5: doing this, right, None of that shit's true.
Speaker 8: Well, to some degree it might be. But the fact
Speaker 8: of the matter is, if you tell it enough, I mean,
Speaker 8: you could get people to turn around and buy into
Speaker 8: absolute especially then that's not big of a group of people. No, right, no,
Speaker 8: But you think they're going to come out in force
Speaker 8: and go, wait a minute, well I want a rock climb. Well,
Speaker 8: I think that the general public would would probably side
Speaker 8: with the environmental side of it if there wasn't a
Speaker 8: good argument from the rock climbing community.
Speaker 5: And there's just not enough rock climbers to get out
Speaker 5: there and be.
Speaker 8: Like, well, and that's why we're at that's why we're
Speaker 8: at such a deal. You know, I've heard statements from
Speaker 8: from the specific proponents of these measures that their goal
Speaker 8: to take the low hanging fruit is, you know, take it,
Speaker 8: then cut the branch, then cut the tree, and then
Speaker 8: go into the forest. Well, if we're the lowest hanging fruit,
Speaker 8: the trappers in the mountain lion hunters, where do you
Speaker 8: go next? I mean your point bear hunting. Would it
Speaker 8: be a archerie, would it be state animal? Would it
Speaker 8: be you know, the iconic moose that we introduced there
Speaker 8: that now they need to be saved so we can
Speaker 8: feed those to the wolves. I mean, I don't I
Speaker 8: don't know, but it's easily it's easily distinguishable to see
Speaker 8: how those lies carry on to the next level because
Speaker 8: they don't have to pick on these guys anymore, because
Speaker 8: these guys are gone. These guys are out of the picture.
Speaker 5: Are you gonna make a great case against mountain biking?
Speaker 8: You're just gonna go on the recreation side, now.
Speaker 5: Oh, exactly, hit every recreation group and be like, here's
Speaker 5: here's my bulletproof pr plan to eliminate your special interest group, right,
Speaker 5: and we're going to we can do it all through
Speaker 5: citizens Initiative because we know there's enough other groups that
Speaker 5: do not participate and don't necessarily give a shit about
Speaker 5: your thing that you love. And it can all be
Speaker 5: part of a campaign that says this is why this
Speaker 5: whole citizen's initiation of stuff needs to be greatly reworked,
Speaker 5: because it can be manipulated to take away things that
Speaker 5: don't need to be taken away.
Speaker 8: And multiple states that I said, you know, twenty six
Speaker 8: have this available to them. There needs to be a
Speaker 8: revision in some capacity, whether it's on the wildlife side
Speaker 8: or just on the citizens petition side itself, because it
Speaker 8: is being manipulated, it's being abused, and it's bastardizing so
Speaker 8: many different things that we're dealing with at so many
Speaker 8: different levels. I mean, you know, you can talk about
Speaker 8: oil and gas or wind in there's ear, solar sighting
Speaker 8: or whatever. Everybody thinks it's good until you say that
Speaker 8: it's going to kill a bunch of wildlife, and it
Speaker 8: is good. I mean, I'm not saying we should get
Speaker 8: rid of any of it. It just needs to be
Speaker 8: appropriately managed. But I don't think that you should get
Speaker 8: you know, some crazy old women standing out front of
Speaker 8: Whole Foods trying to ban everything. Pretty soon we'll be
Speaker 8: running around naked and you know, not being able to
Speaker 8: get what we want.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: One of the ways I think that I hesitate to
Speaker 2: even say this because I'm giving up. I'm like, uh,
Speaker 2: showing the inside thinking. But a rhetoric I would use
Speaker 2: in this is one that when I hear it oftentimes
Speaker 2: causes me to roll my eyes.
Speaker 3: But it would be.
Speaker 2: Maybe you're not a hunter, You're probably certainly not a
Speaker 2: Bobcat hunter, but do you really want these city slickers
Speaker 2: telling you how to live your life?
Speaker 3: Mhm?
Speaker 2: That would wind up be that's very effective to people.
Speaker 2: And I always go like, oh really really, But that's
Speaker 2: what I would be pitching big time.
Speaker 8: Well, if you look at hot tip for you look
Speaker 8: at look at the where the money comes from. And
Speaker 8: while we while I say that we've gotten money from
Speaker 8: fifty states to unless with this fight, the seed money
Speaker 8: for these efforts from the opposition has come from out
Speaker 8: of state. It's out of state big money. Oh and
Speaker 8: and and because it's coming from the national organizations and
Speaker 8: the and the lunatic one that are out there that
Speaker 8: you know, I mean, you know what? You know what
Speaker 8: polled number one when we did our first poll was
Speaker 8: Carole Baskins off the Tiger King. I mean that that
Speaker 8: was like, well, we don't want her doing our wildlife. Well,
Speaker 8: I mean that's where that's what people think about wild life.
Speaker 3: I don't understand what you're saying.
Speaker 8: So we did our polling. You asked the questions and
Speaker 8: trying to get people's attention to figure out where their
Speaker 8: psyche was, where their impressions were, perspectives on mountain land
Speaker 8: and Bobcats. Because you asked the question about Carole Baskins
Speaker 8: that polled number one, where all the other stuff about
Speaker 8: conservation and economy and wildlife science and the North American.
Speaker 3: Media disapproval generally a disapproval of her. Yeah, I see,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 8: But but but she's she polls number one, not all
Speaker 8: the good stuff that we should be talking about. She
Speaker 8: polls number one, and we're thinking, well, how they happened.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, I still don't understand that Steve famously didn't
Speaker 3: engage with Tiger King. No, no, no, let's say I did.
Speaker 8: Let's say I did.
Speaker 3: I don't understand. What is the poll like?
Speaker 8: So when you ask you you're trying to get a
Speaker 8: feel or a pulse from the general public about how
Speaker 8: you would be able to message to that general public,
Speaker 8: and what would resonate with them.
Speaker 3: I understand that, okay, and they're saying, sorry, I didn't.
Speaker 3: If you were saying, like.
Speaker 2: Do you have a favorable impression of Baskins as a
Speaker 2: wildlife manager, yes, they would say resoundingly, I do not
Speaker 2: have a favorable impression exactly.
Speaker 8: But if you said what is the most important to
Speaker 8: you when it comes to wildlife management and you ranked
Speaker 8: it ABC and you said the economy, wildlife, science, sustainable resources,
Speaker 8: Carol Baskins. I mean Carole Baskins comes in at the
Speaker 8: top of like, well, we don't want her, we don't
Speaker 8: want her management our wildlife. But they're willing to turn
Speaker 8: around and take some eighty five year old ex uber driver,
Speaker 8: you know, because that person doesn't want anything other than
Speaker 8: what Carole Baskins does. And so we are so disconnected
Speaker 8: from wildlife as you all know. For the general public,
Speaker 8: I mean, they don't know where they're where the wildlife
Speaker 8: management comes from. They don't know the science behind it.
Speaker 8: You talk to people all the time that, well I
Speaker 8: pay my taxes, well good, I'm glad, but very little
Speaker 8: of that goes to wildlife conservation and management. It's from
Speaker 8: licenses the sportsmen and women have historically paid that, and
Speaker 8: it goes from the North American model practices and the
Speaker 8: excise taxes. You can't argue that to somebody that doesn't
Speaker 8: even understand the circle the process. So you have to
Speaker 8: figure out a way to talk to them about how
Speaker 8: hunting and fishing benefits them and wildlife as a whole.
Speaker 8: Seventy eight game species of wildlife that's managed in Colorado,
Speaker 8: is it really? Yeah? You got nine hundred and sixty
Speaker 8: one species of wildlife and seventy eight of his game species.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I'm sorry, yeah fish.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, but they but they would they don't want
Speaker 8: any of it, you know, it's they don't want you
Speaker 8: to harvest any of it for any reason.
Speaker 2: So where where does where does the governor of Colorado,
Speaker 2: Governor Polls fit into this?
Speaker 3: Is it like would this all be happening without him?
Speaker 8: In not to this level?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 8: This, no, this this uh, this particular individual, his his spouse,
Speaker 8: the first gentleman of Colorado is a animal rights extremist
Speaker 8: and he's got well I would like to say he's
Speaker 8: got deep pockets. I think they combined and have deep pockets.
Speaker 8: But you look at the support that they get and
Speaker 8: the connections that they have. I mean, it's like a
Speaker 8: giant spider web that what they have. As far as
Speaker 8: the animal rights extremism, and it's not and it's not
Speaker 8: just about wildlife, it's about everything that has to do
Speaker 8: with animals.
Speaker 3: His old man is an animal rights activist.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, extremists terrorist.
Speaker 9: He's inserted some people onto the Colorado Wildlife Commission that
Speaker 9: aren't necessarily pro correct.
Speaker 8: Not necessarily pro that's an understatement, but yeah.
Speaker 9: Which is one way he like he can further his influence, right.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and even through the Department of Agriculture. I mean
Speaker 8: you just look at appointments straight across the board, the
Speaker 8: oversight that's been created with our Game Management Agency because
Speaker 8: of the extremist mentality what we consider to be an
Speaker 8: agenda that should be paid attention to by people from
Speaker 8: all around the country as well. Because that model works.
Speaker 8: You know, you might not be able to get what
Speaker 8: you want, but if you put the right people in place,
Speaker 8: you can get a lot of what you want, and
Speaker 8: you could do it in a short period of time,
Speaker 8: just because you're able to turn around and change the
Speaker 8: mindset of management and regulatory components and how structures, you know,
Speaker 8: then legislative you know, issues come up to where, well,
Speaker 8: this is more favorable to that administration, so there may
Speaker 8: be more likely to support it. I'm you know, I'm considered.
Speaker 8: We're sitting around here and granted, and it seems like
Speaker 8: the more and more I do this, I become the
Speaker 8: oldest guy in the room everywhere I go. But you know,
Speaker 8: guys like Connor sitting here. I mean, I want him
Speaker 8: to be able to do what he did not kill
Speaker 8: the three hundred day six point before. I don't want
Speaker 8: you to be able to do that. You should be
Speaker 8: able to kill spikes after this, but I want him
Speaker 8: to be able to do it. And while we talk
Speaker 8: about professing to do something for the immediate future, which
Speaker 8: is now coming this November, I want him to be
Speaker 8: able to do it when he's my age, I want
Speaker 8: his kids to be able to do it. And I
Speaker 8: think that that question resonates really really well with our
Speaker 8: stakeholder audience that we've got the hunters and anglers, but
Speaker 8: it resonates well with the non hunter, not the anti
Speaker 8: but the non hunter as well, because they're like, well,
Speaker 8: maybe my kid would want to go hunting because my
Speaker 8: neighbor's kid goes hunting and he talked about taking him.
Speaker 8: Or you know, they're doing it in scout camp, or
Speaker 8: they're doing it in some sort of outward bound deal.
Speaker 8: And it's all preparation for wilderness survival and conservation. And
Speaker 8: there's the American Wilderness Leadership School. We do stuff for
Speaker 8: the National Rifle Association Association, the Youth Outdoor Adventure Camp
Speaker 8: at the Winnington Center, and we sit in kids on scholarships.
Speaker 8: The reason you do that is because you're hoping that
Speaker 8: you educate them to be able to participate in this
Speaker 8: and and escalate their and enhance their knowledge of the landscape.
Speaker 8: Well did you see what they're doing with the kids
Speaker 8: in Colorado about naming the wolves? So they had a contest.
Speaker 8: The governor implemented the contest to name the wolves that
Speaker 8: we introduced, jumped them on the ground, named them.
Speaker 3: Had a big contest because that way, when one of
Speaker 3: them dies from something, it.
Speaker 8: Will be like, I mean, how do you like to
Speaker 8: be the first rancher that has a sheep beating and
Speaker 8: you actually kill it under the tenj rule And somebody says, well,
Speaker 8: that guy killed Maverick, you know, I mean, yeah, I
Speaker 8: mean they're going to be protesting him. They're not going
Speaker 8: to want to eat his beef. It's this indoctrination, this
Speaker 8: psycho analysis that they've done, and even.
Speaker 3: When they got a name like M six, yeah, just you.
Speaker 8: Know, B fifty two. But I want to I want
Speaker 8: to see our society recognize the need for content as
Speaker 8: opposed to just talk about it. And I really I
Speaker 8: think that there's.
Speaker 3: A lot I mean as opposed to a preservation mentality.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean my grandma used to preserve jam and
Speaker 8: put it on the shelf, and my grandfather always used
Speaker 8: to say, no, that's conservation because I'm going to eat it.
Speaker 8: We're not put in there just to preserve it. But
Speaker 8: I want to I want to see. I think with
Speaker 8: what we're trying to accomplish, we have a moment in
Speaker 8: time that we can actually prop up a flag. And
Speaker 8: I don't want to be all sappy about it, but
Speaker 8: it's our chances sportsmen and women in the United States
Speaker 8: to prop up a flag and stop something that could
Speaker 8: dramatically affect about any other state, or any other species,
Speaker 8: or any other method of take or season or anything.
Speaker 8: Because once you start doing statutory regulations instead of precedent.
Speaker 8: I mean, it's easy for everybody else to go, well,
Speaker 8: they did it over here. Sure, all we have to
Speaker 8: do is change this species or take this out. And
Speaker 8: I wanted to bring up because.
Speaker 3: There's two things I want to do though, Yeah, so
Speaker 3: hold that thought, because the two things I want to
Speaker 3: do is, uh.
Speaker 2: One, I want to explore how certain the outcome is.
Speaker 2: You might look at this and look at some of
Speaker 2: the demographics we're talking about and look and be like that,
Speaker 2: you know, the governors behind it, certain certain environmental groups
Speaker 2: that a lot of name recognition are behind it. It
Speaker 2: must be that like, like, hunters are automatically going to lose,
Speaker 2: but they don't always lose. No, Maine beat a bear
Speaker 2: hunting band yep, some years back. Montana beat a public
Speaker 2: land trapping band overwhelmingly recently, very different politics.
Speaker 9: Arizona is similar to Colorado, and they beat a cat
Speaker 9: hunting band.
Speaker 8: So they didn't they didn't even get signatures down there
Speaker 8: because they did such a formidable campaign to make sure
Speaker 8: they didn't get the signatures.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's not that's the bright side. The not
Speaker 2: bright side is you lose.
Speaker 3: A lot too. And and I could name a bunch
Speaker 3: of states that have lost a bunch of stuff. But
Speaker 3: point being, the fact that it's on the ballot doesn't
Speaker 3: mean it's one.
Speaker 2: No, like this is going to be decided. It might
Speaker 2: be tight, but this is going to be something that's
Speaker 2: decided down the future. Like it's not This isn't news
Speaker 2: of something that happened. This is news of something that's
Speaker 2: coming and will be addressed in the future.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: So that's the first point I want to make, and
Speaker 2: I want to make as you continue your thought, what
Speaker 2: is the most productive thing, the most helpful thing that
Speaker 2: people can do.
Speaker 8: Give me a bunch of money?
Speaker 3: Okay? And yeah.
Speaker 4: Something the other day that was and I don't know
Speaker 4: if this is true or not, but it was something like,
Speaker 4: if every person who applies for non resident ELK in Colorado,
Speaker 4: We're to send you twenty dollars.
Speaker 3: Yep, you'd have the what anticipated are you serious? The
Speaker 3: war chest? Yeah, the war chest.
Speaker 4: Sort of amounting yeah, yeah, And so like you have
Speaker 4: a number's apply.
Speaker 2: Brody's applying is a cowsking like this, Brody just found
Speaker 2: he's gonna play. He's applying his kids, Oh to wear Colorado.
Speaker 5: That's fine.
Speaker 3: So Brody's got to send you sixty bucks.
Speaker 8: Ye, well, you're you're exactly right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you have a war you have a number that
Speaker 4: you need for a war chest to fight this, you
Speaker 4: know effectively. Yeah, And it's a number that people who
Speaker 4: are spending money on their hunting dreams down the line
Speaker 4: can can pull together without too much heartache on anyone.
Speaker 8: We've been working with Howl for Wildlife on a bunch
Speaker 8: of different things, trying to get a message out and
Speaker 8: they they've got a really unique system to be able
Speaker 8: to deal with the legislative side of things throughout the
Speaker 8: country and they've been really effective over the last two years.
Speaker 8: But they're helping us dramatically on this, which is kind
Speaker 8: of the first ballot in issue that they've actually engaged
Speaker 8: in to this degree. And one of the arguments that
Speaker 8: we've actually given is to your point, it's almost two
Speaker 8: hundred thousand non resident applications that come in and they're
Speaker 8: coming in now. It goes all the way. The deadline
Speaker 8: is April second, but you have to buy a qualifying license.
Speaker 8: I think it's thirty nine to fifty four bucks, depending
Speaker 8: on which one you get. You got to buy preference points,
Speaker 8: you have to pay pay application fees. If every person
Speaker 8: that put in for the state of Colorado would just
Speaker 8: take some of what they're already given Colorado that they
Speaker 8: don't get anything out of unless they draw a license.
Speaker 8: I mean, just you don't even you're putting money in
Speaker 8: for a lottery ticket. But we know that we're not
Speaker 8: all gonna I mean, you got eleven percent success out
Speaker 8: of your deal, but you know you're an anomaly. So
Speaker 8: I mean your twenty bucks. Yeah, he doesn't need to
Speaker 8: hunt Colorado.
Speaker 5: So we know the folks are paying the taxi duringy bill. Okay,
Speaker 5: so coff it out.
Speaker 8: Yeah, you don't get to get out of here unless
Speaker 8: you pay ahead of time. But we we have a
Speaker 8: funded mechanism in the United States with people that apply
Speaker 8: all around the country just for the opportunity to apply.
Speaker 8: We're just asking people to help support our cause so
Speaker 8: we can fight for the opportunity for them to continue
Speaker 8: to apply. I mean mountain lions, you know they don't
Speaker 8: eat celery and kale. I mean they eat deer in
Speaker 8: elk and wolves are going to do the same thing.
Speaker 8: Our bear population has expanded significantly. They're going to eat
Speaker 8: you know, a lot of deer and elk. You have
Speaker 8: that many apex predators on the landscape with five point
Speaker 8: nine million people and habitat loss and you know the
Speaker 8: amount of recreation that we have. Our elk populations and
Speaker 8: deer populations are not in peril. What are they going
Speaker 8: to be in ten years? I mean, we have to
Speaker 8: do some sort of preparation for down the road, for
Speaker 8: sustainable management opportunities.
Speaker 3: As other as irritates people. This is the thing that
Speaker 3: troubles me.
Speaker 2: Uh if you say, like if a hunter, if a
Speaker 2: big game hunter says, oh no, no, no, you know, I
Speaker 2: welcome predators being on the ground.
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, but.
Speaker 2: I like predator control because I like there to be
Speaker 2: a lot of deer and elk. A lot of people
Speaker 2: view that.
Speaker 3: It as like a like a non defendable position, right,
Speaker 3: But it's so funny because you see it reflected.
Speaker 2: So widely in the animal kingdom. You know, kyotes ketch
Speaker 2: a wolf, or wolves ketch a kyote, they kill it.
Speaker 2: Kyote's ketch a fox, they kill it. It's sort of
Speaker 2: this general tendency to want to be like, no, I'm
Speaker 2: defending my hunk of the piece of the pie. But
Speaker 2: I don't think it's that problematic, you know, I feel
Speaker 2: that that hunters should be like morally emboldened to go
Speaker 2: and say no, I want to defend high numbers of
Speaker 2: dar and elk to support the hunting that I want
Speaker 2: to do. Like I'm after, I'm chasing that number, like
Speaker 2: high harvestable surpluses of dearon elk, and I will take
Speaker 2: that fight to people that want to degrade habitat right,
Speaker 2: which is gonna chip into my surplus. I'll take that
Speaker 2: fight to people that want to degrade any kind of
Speaker 2: predator control because that's fighting into my thing and that's
Speaker 2: what I'm chasing, and that's what I'm interested in.
Speaker 3: Like that, to me is a totally defendable position.
Speaker 8: I think to like, I'm pro deer and elk, you're
Speaker 8: pro dearing elk, but your pro wildlife period You know
Speaker 8: I went through this.
Speaker 2: I do know.
Speaker 3: I advocate for listen man, never have, never will.
Speaker 2: I do not advocate for the removal of any native wildlife.
Speaker 8: No ever, no, and and so nor do I. I
Speaker 8: didn't vote for the wolf deal because I don't think
Speaker 8: it should be done by ballot box. Biology understand citizens initiatives.
Speaker 8: I mean if they walk or they walk in well
Speaker 8: they did like they did that we had to turn
Speaker 8: around and kind of influence, you know, an ongoing program
Speaker 8: for that. I don't I don't believe in ballot box
Speaker 8: biology for any wildlife make a decision. If that's the case,
Speaker 8: why do we have three hundred and fifty scientists in
Speaker 8: our agency. I don't think that the Gallant Whole Foods
Speaker 8: are the lift driver or the guy that drives for
Speaker 8: ups or the rock Rockies left fielder. I don't think
Speaker 8: they should be able to turn around and you know, yeah,
Speaker 8: I don't think they should be able to turn around
Speaker 8: and decide what our wildlife management agencies are stuck with,
Speaker 8: you know, I mean it puts them into such a
Speaker 8: significant position of trying to do what's right when they're
Speaker 8: forced to do something that they know doesn't balance with
Speaker 8: what their management plans on seventy other game species are.
Speaker 9: Have you seen any backlash, Like in the COVID era,
Speaker 9: it became like this thing, like like we always say
Speaker 9: trust the science, trust the biologists, but it's also become
Speaker 9: this thing in the last few years to be like, well,
Speaker 9: the scientists are full of shit, like people. It's a
Speaker 9: thing now where people don't trust the science, and like
Speaker 9: I see that as kind of a challenge when you're
Speaker 9: like trust these wildlife management agencies, because a lot of
Speaker 9: people are have a tendency to.
Speaker 3: Not do that.
Speaker 2: Trust the science is law. I can't say it anymore,
Speaker 2: I know, but because you know, yeah, but that trust
Speaker 2: the science thing after COVID it needs a break because
Speaker 2: it got so abused by everybody on all sides where
Speaker 2: you like the science is whatever.
Speaker 3: You right, So in this argument from your body at
Speaker 3: the maybe.
Speaker 9: It's a tough position to put you know, these agencies
Speaker 9: and to be like trust trust as well.
Speaker 7: Well.
Speaker 8: But in my argument to that has been followed the science, right,
Speaker 8: you got you got fifty eighty one hundred years of
Speaker 8: data and science and studies and population densities and models
Speaker 8: and objectives. To me, that's that's worthy. When somebody comes
Speaker 8: out from March seventeenth of twenty twenty to March thirtieth
Speaker 8: and says, follow the science, wear a mask at all
Speaker 8: these shots. Okay, well two weeks of science really isn't
Speaker 8: what I want to follow. That's that's that's more of
Speaker 8: what I want you to do. Forty fifty sixty years.
Speaker 8: I think that that's a track record that you can use.
Speaker 8: You can sustainably support and because because there's so many
Speaker 8: other components of that.
Speaker 9: Well, yeah, I think a lot of people would have
Speaker 9: no clue that since mountain lions like across the board
Speaker 9: where they became managed as game animals, Yep, there's way
Speaker 9: more of them now than there was, say eighty or
Speaker 9: one hundred years ago.
Speaker 2: Instead of trust the science, sorry, anam, Instead of trust
Speaker 2: the science, I'm like, trust the process when you've had
Speaker 2: similar things happen. We're trying to with federal the federal
Speaker 2: government trying to influence Alaska's wildlife manager practices, for instance,
Speaker 2: like helmet by, what right do you have to go
Speaker 2: after them? They have a completely intact menagerie of wildlife.
Speaker 2: They have wolves and grizzlies occupying like I don't know
Speaker 2: what ninety six percent of historic range. They don't have
Speaker 2: extra patients. They're still trying to go in catalog wildlife.
Speaker 2: They're not in recovery mode. Where is the criticism with
Speaker 2: Colorado fishing gimmick? Where is the evidence that they're messing up?
Speaker 9: Yeah, but even in Alaska they've tried to with a
Speaker 9: whole like crawling into dens.
Speaker 2: Well, no, that's what I'm saying, Like I'm talking about
Speaker 2: that attack on them. It is like where like show
Speaker 2: me where Alaska fishing game, Like show me where they're
Speaker 2: screwing up, or with with fishing with Colorado, Like show
Speaker 2: me where the state is messing up.
Speaker 3: Can you go and point to.
Speaker 2: Me that that is it? What was the FW What
Speaker 2: is it there? FWP is not f WP.
Speaker 3: It's CW change prks in Colorado, Okay, whatever the hell.
Speaker 2: Colorado's Fishing Game Agency and it's in its current form
Speaker 2: over decades. Show me where they have been letting game
Speaker 2: animals uh slip through their grasp and slip into extinction
Speaker 2: or slip into extirpation.
Speaker 3: It's like there's no evidence. Maybe they might make little mistakes.
Speaker 2: Everyone does. There's no evidence that they're shitting the bed.
Speaker 2: So it's like trust the science, going like I don't know,
Speaker 2: trust the last seventy five.
Speaker 3: Years or whatever the hell it is that they're not
Speaker 3: like losing.
Speaker 2: It's not like, oh, yeah, we were supposed to be
Speaker 2: managing those but they all they're gone now.
Speaker 8: We didn't even know they were here.
Speaker 3: It's just not happening, Like they're not messing up.
Speaker 4: I think I think one challenge is like the average
Speaker 4: person on the street probably thinks of mountain lions as
Speaker 4: like this rare, inherently threatened thing because they don't see them, right,
Speaker 4: It's not standing in some agfield as they blow by
Speaker 4: on the interstate.
Speaker 3: And so I think like that is probably a big.
Speaker 4: Challenge in the educational components, Like these animals are thriving
Speaker 4: over the past, however many decades, and it's especially you know,
Speaker 4: impactful when you consider all the habitat that's been lost
Speaker 4: as the front range is grown and all this stuff.
Speaker 4: Like the average person on the street, I wonder did
Speaker 4: they even know like the story of mountain lions in Colorado,
Speaker 4: I'd wager or not.
Speaker 8: No. And to that point, I mean before the wolf
Speaker 8: issue came up, when when the wolf proponents went out
Speaker 8: and asked and they've got a video on their website,
Speaker 8: they went out and asked people about do we have
Speaker 8: wolves in Colorado? And overwhelming like people like yeah, I
Speaker 8: think so, don't we not sure? Yeah? Well i'd like to.
Speaker 8: I mean, so they were priming the pump for that ignorance.
Speaker 8: It's not stupidy, it's just ignorance. And I think it's
Speaker 8: on the mountain lion.
Speaker 3: I became a trick question because some had just shown
Speaker 3: up exactly.
Speaker 8: Yeah, you know, it's like, but I think, I think
Speaker 8: that trying to convince people of your of your perspectives
Speaker 8: from the misinformation is the way that most of our
Speaker 8: losses have happened around the country when it comes to wildlife.
Speaker 8: I mean, you just like you said, you just you
Speaker 8: create this this fake story out there, and you say
Speaker 8: it enough and pretty much people start to believe it.
Speaker 8: But but and I want to cover this because our
Speaker 8: organizations that were all members of that we support that
Speaker 8: were that, you know, we get the magazines on a
Speaker 8: regular basis, all the academ groups, they do the yeoman's work.
Speaker 8: I've said this over and over. I'm partners with them,
Speaker 8: but they haven't done a very damn good job for
Speaker 8: the last forty years of talking to the general public.
Speaker 8: They talk to the sportsman community, they talk to the
Speaker 8: to the agriculture community. Because they work close close, hand
Speaker 8: in hand with them. We need to start advertising. We
Speaker 8: need to start talking regularly to the general public to
Speaker 8: tell the conservation story and making sure that you know,
Speaker 8: I mean, every Christmas time everybody sees the ASPCA and
Speaker 8: the Humane Society commercials and stuff that are out there.
Speaker 8: Not all that money goes to, you know, helping the
Speaker 8: little puppies and the kittens. I mean, that's an advertising employee.
Speaker 3: HSUS and local humane societies are two different things.
Speaker 9: For a while, there were those hug a Hunter campaigns.
Speaker 9: It seems like those things kind of died out.
Speaker 8: We're doing the campaign that you talk about. I'm the
Speaker 8: chair of the Wildlife Council and I've been on that
Speaker 8: for seven years. It started in nineteen ninety eight, and
Speaker 8: that changes and morphs into something regularly to differ with
Speaker 8: public perception. Because your demographics that you were talking to
Speaker 8: between eighteen and thirty four, if you did that twenty
Speaker 8: years ago, they were you know, now they're fifty five
Speaker 8: or whatever the hell it is. So they have different
Speaker 8: perspectives and perceptions, so they need to be educated differently.
Speaker 8: But hopefully you did a good enough job on that
Speaker 8: target audience. But then you've got so many of the
Speaker 8: other ones that are coming in underneath of that that
Speaker 8: they're being able to name wolves, you know, and and
Speaker 8: hopefully somebody didn't kill you know, Margaret the wolf because
Speaker 8: they're going to be bastardized for it. Well, then those
Speaker 8: kids get a bad perception on wolf management because it
Speaker 8: didn't work, and it's the wolf that they named. Well,
Speaker 8: if they start doing that with mountain wins and deer
Speaker 8: and elk and everything else. I mean, why do you
Speaker 8: think Bambi is such a bad deal? You know, it's
Speaker 8: because we all grew up and you know, Bambi's dad
Speaker 8: got killed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, man, you get in the name and bus people
Speaker 3: name them because they want to get.
Speaker 8: Them exactly, you know, exactly.
Speaker 3: You know, if a buck's got a name, you watch that.
Speaker 3: I like hug of Houndsman, that'd be a good little
Speaker 3: campaign for Yannie. I'll go give Yanni.
Speaker 5: Was that campaign successful?
Speaker 8: That campaign was extremely successful. And the reason being is
Speaker 8: because they didn't talk to us in this room. They
Speaker 8: talked to the general public. That's why it was so successful.
Speaker 8: I mean, I joked about it. The reason I got
Speaker 8: on is as the counsel and I applied because they
Speaker 8: came up with a talking deer campaign and I thought, Okay,
Speaker 8: it's just not the way that we needed. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 8: just like the talking bass on the wall or something.
Speaker 8: But the reason I got involved because I thought that
Speaker 8: that wasn't the right way to go, and they the
Speaker 8: council had that that one campaign that one year, but
Speaker 8: the hug a hunter deal that resonated with the people
Speaker 8: that were out in the field that didn't hunt because
Speaker 8: they understood where some of that money was coming from,
Speaker 8: so they could actually know that wildlife was taking care
Speaker 8: of appropriately and that it was on the landscape. Now
Speaker 8: that we've got a different demographic, our audience has changed.
Speaker 8: We have a Science in the Wild campaign that's going
Speaker 8: on right now. It started November fifteenth and it's going
Speaker 8: all the way through this next June. But it is
Speaker 8: I mean, you put you put thirty different people in line,
Speaker 8: and you put a game boarden or somebody with a
Speaker 8: badge and an emblem and a gun in the truck
Speaker 8: with a badge on it, and you say, who do
Speaker 8: you trust to manage your wildlife? People point to the
Speaker 8: game boarding. They don't point to the pink haired nosering extremist.
Speaker 8: You know, they don't point to me or you because
Speaker 8: we're standing there doing They want the expert taking care
Speaker 8: of it. And I think pushing that narrative in that
Speaker 8: tone resonates with the target audience enough to where they go,
Speaker 8: I want experts to do my work, and I'm confident
Speaker 8: that when November fifth comes along with our campaign that
Speaker 8: we're going to have to do in August, September, and October,
Speaker 8: I'm confident that the people will enough of the people
Speaker 8: will make it the right decision because they care about
Speaker 8: Colorado's wildlife. But you know, people all around the country
Speaker 8: better pay attention as well, because you've got to figure
Speaker 8: out a way to build up your armament, build up
Speaker 8: your war chest, and make sure that you prepare for
Speaker 8: the inevitable, because, like you mentioned, Steve, I mean, we're
Speaker 8: not singular. It goes to every state in some capacity,
Speaker 8: you know. I mean it might be crayfish, might be muskrats,
Speaker 8: might be whatever. But it's going wherever they want to
Speaker 8: take it that they feel the path of least resistance
Speaker 8: and they feel a chink in the armor.
Speaker 3: So at a point, how many months is November away,
Speaker 3: I don't know, eight in eight months, they'll come down
Speaker 3: to voting. Right now, you made it. I said, what
Speaker 3: can people do? And you said, you know, jokingly but truthfully,
Speaker 3: any money? Yeah, and where does the money need to go?
Speaker 8: So the money needs to go? You can go on
Speaker 8: to the website and Save the Hunt Colorado dot com
Speaker 8: and there's a couple different options there that you can
Speaker 8: participate in. The reason that we need the funding is
Speaker 8: because the extremist have an endless amount of funding to
Speaker 8: do a variety of different things. They're fighting, you know,
Speaker 8: twenty things in twenty different states at different levels. We
Speaker 8: need to be able to go punch for punch, tit
Speaker 8: for tat with them on advertising because we're both talking
Speaker 8: to the same audience. They're trying to get that middle
Speaker 8: of the road eighty percent. We're trying to get the
Speaker 8: middle of the road eighty percent. We're going to sway
Speaker 8: some and they're going to sway some. But look how
Speaker 8: close to wolf deal was at fifty one to forty nine.
Speaker 8: If we're anywhere in that ballpark, we're gonna win. But
Speaker 8: we have to be able to advertise to that audience
Speaker 8: and get them to understand first about the science, second
Speaker 8: about the experts that actually provide the science, and third
Speaker 8: how it actually affects those individuals, just for they so
Speaker 8: they know that they have sustainable wildlife populations on the landscape.
Speaker 8: Everybody likes to see deer and elk, Everybody likes to
Speaker 8: see bighorn sheep. You know that's you know I did
Speaker 8: to deal with Shane Mahoney, and Shane says one of
Speaker 8: the biggest things that all recreationists do is when they
Speaker 8: go out to recreate rock climb without messing up the
Speaker 8: raptor's nest and everything, killing everyone, killing every one of them.
Speaker 8: But he said, everybody that goes out and they see wildlife,
Speaker 8: the first thing they do is they come home and
Speaker 8: tell people about the wildlife they saw. They didn't automatically
Speaker 8: start telling them about their rock climbing incident or their
Speaker 8: mountain bike rack or whatever, unless they were you know,
Speaker 8: bunnged up or something. But they tell them about the wildlife.
Speaker 8: They tell them about I saw a mountainlon or I
Speaker 8: heard a wolf, or I saw a moose, or I
Speaker 8: saw a coyote eat rabbit. Because because we connect with nature,
Speaker 8: once people understand how that connection affects them and where
Speaker 8: it comes from, they're more likely to support the science
Speaker 8: and follow the science and follow the component that has
Speaker 8: been able to fuel and fund that whole program for
Speaker 8: the last you know, one hundred and twenty five years.
Speaker 8: So if they go to save the hunt coloradder dot com,
Speaker 8: they can contribute. There's also the initiatives that are on
Speaker 8: the website that they can look at. Initiative ninety one
Speaker 8: is the one that we're dealing with, even though that's
Speaker 8: not going to be the final initiative. They'll change the
Speaker 8: number when they get through the process to put it
Speaker 8: on the ballot. But we want people to educate themselves
Speaker 8: and educate their peers and congregation and coworkers and everybody,
Speaker 8: because without education, we're no better as far as the
Speaker 8: ignorance on the landscape as well. You know, Yannie talked
Speaker 8: about the hound part of it. Read the initiatively specifically
Speaker 8: wants to take hound hunting out along with mountain lion hunting.
Speaker 8: But they talk about electronic ecollers, training callers. They testified
Speaker 8: during their Supreme Court or their title Board hearings. Their
Speaker 8: attorney did that, we don't think you should hunt with
Speaker 8: any dog period. Read the language in there. If they
Speaker 8: set that as statutory language, what about upland bird dogs,
Speaker 8: what about waterfowl dogs, what about coon dogs? I mean,
Speaker 8: guys are starting to pay attention because they read what
Speaker 8: it says, not what somebody interprets it. And it's like, well,
Speaker 8: it doesn't say mountain lion dogs.
Speaker 3: Because a view into their mindset.
Speaker 8: Exactly and you can understand where people should really pay
Speaker 8: close attention. I did a presentation on Saturday to the
Speaker 8: Fremont Cattleman's Association in Colorado, and I said that, and
Speaker 8: one guy said, well, wait a minute, wait a minute,
Speaker 8: does that include stock dogs? That's one right now, it's
Speaker 8: not mentioned in here. But why couldn't you turn around
Speaker 8: and go to an animal cruelty deal because you want
Speaker 8: to use electronic training devices or collars on your dogs.
Speaker 8: So it's people need to read into the intent of
Speaker 8: what they're trying to accomplish with this. They need to
Speaker 8: understand that it's not singular. They need to understand you
Speaker 8: could the way it's written, you could take bobcats and
Speaker 8: mountain lions out and put any other species in. But
Speaker 8: then look at the other components of that. Educate yourself.
Speaker 8: Because these guys are so well structured and their plans
Speaker 8: are so well formulated that you know they're looking at
Speaker 8: New Mexico, they're looking at Arizona, they're looking at Nevada,
Speaker 8: because if they're successful in Colorado, they don't have to
Speaker 8: go to Colorado again unless it's on another species. So
Speaker 8: they go to the next state and they start to
Speaker 8: build that momentum with the legislators, then the message starts
Speaker 8: to resonate well with the general public, and pretty soon
Speaker 8: the lies just take over, like locus on the cornfield.
Speaker 5: Well, I think you know one thing is we kind
Speaker 5: of start to wrap up here. Broad and diverse coalitions
Speaker 5: are what really win these fights, right, So as we
Speaker 5: narrow way down right, we already discussed like if you're
Speaker 5: the hound hunter representing the hound hunters groups and you're
Speaker 5: trying to fight a major political campaign like this, you're
Speaker 5: you're just you're outnumbered, you don't have as much of
Speaker 5: a voice. So a broad, diverse coalition gains your your
Speaker 5: your voice, right yeah, and your public awareness of the issue.
Speaker 5: So I will tell you, like, if you have pink
Speaker 5: hair and a nos ran, if you're an old lady
Speaker 5: at Whole Foods, we want you damn straight. We want you.
Speaker 5: Like if you like going outside and you're talking like
Speaker 5: Shae Mahoney says, you went out and did your thing,
Speaker 5: and you like talking about that wildlife that's out there,
Speaker 5: you got to understand that this boring story that CPW
Speaker 5: tells of like no major like oh my god, we
Speaker 5: had to bring something back from the brink right, that's
Speaker 5: because they're out there doing their jobs right, And like
Speaker 5: good conservation stories come from catastrophic failures like crash of
Speaker 5: duck numbers. Right, we talk about ducks all the time.
Speaker 5: Is this huge win, But it's because we damn near
Speaker 5: kill them all Right, We're talking these stories about grizzly bears,
Speaker 5: but all that stuff in between, it's like it's been
Speaker 5: a boring story because we've been winning, we've been made maintaining,
Speaker 5: we're keeping that diversity of habitat. So you need to
Speaker 5: understand that and appreciate it. We need to get more
Speaker 5: diverse and more broad and talk to these groups that
Speaker 5: you know, at first blush don't align with us. So
Speaker 5: like hab if you're a mountain biker, rock climber, backcountry skier,
Speaker 5: all of these things can be regulated to death, and
Speaker 5: little fights like this have broad implications. Right, So broad.
Speaker 8: Government oversight is one thing. Extreme oversight from the general
Speaker 8: public to some degree, and I'm talking a very minute
Speaker 8: section of the general public. That extremism is what's going
Speaker 8: to alter so many different things that people look at
Speaker 8: when it comes to outdoor recreation and conservation and wildlife management.
Speaker 8: Because there's a small group that has the squeaky wheel
Speaker 8: and they they're well funded, and the majority of our
Speaker 8: community just wants to go hunt. We just want to
Speaker 8: turn around and go scout and check our gain cameras
Speaker 8: and get ready for season and do well. I mean,
Speaker 8: what we're talking about right now is the least entertaining
Speaker 8: component of your of your deal, your your dog deal,
Speaker 8: the story you're l hunt. Nobody wants to listen to
Speaker 8: this crap, but they have to listen to it if
Speaker 8: they expect to be able to turn around and have
Speaker 8: the story that you had and have the story that
Speaker 8: you have, and to be able to do that what
Speaker 8: you did, not what you did. But when I'm not
Speaker 8: that big, yeah, not that big, they go back to
Speaker 8: the spike. We're eating forty years of spike hunting. And
Speaker 8: then but if we want to actually engage in that conversation,
Speaker 8: there has to be a component of buy in from
Speaker 8: the general public. And I think that the public is
Speaker 8: there and wants to be educated. We were seeing that
Speaker 8: on this level, the people that are reaching out at
Speaker 8: so many different levels. I mean, I can't tell you
Speaker 8: how many people just walk up to you and go,
Speaker 8: hey I heard or hey I saw you or Hey,
Speaker 8: I was told and they want to be They want
Speaker 8: to be part of the solution. They want to be
Speaker 8: part of the victory, not part of the problem. Hit
Speaker 8: them again with where to go? Okay, save the hunt
Speaker 8: Colorado dot com. There's a couple of different upper who
Speaker 8: need is there. You can actually you can actually get
Speaker 8: into a couple of different raffles that SCI is running
Speaker 8: to help fund this measure.
Speaker 3: Giving any guns out. He can get a better working gun.
Speaker 8: Yeah, there is actually a gunworks. Gun is on there
Speaker 8: to talk about shoes. So you can give me your
Speaker 8: fifty dollars. Now, you can go on there, you can donate.
Speaker 8: You can look at everything that we're doing as far
Speaker 8: as videos and stuff. You can go on Instagram and
Speaker 8: Facebook and find us cowm is on Instagram and call
Speaker 8: Ruddings for Responsible Wilach Management on Facebook. I do want
Speaker 8: to mention something. If you got time because of the
Speaker 8: lies and deceit, I'm going to read you this and
Speaker 8: I want you guys to get me your impression. This
Speaker 8: is the ballot title for Denver this year, just for
Speaker 8: the city and county voters of Dinner. It says, shall
Speaker 8: the voters of the City and County of Denver adopted
Speaker 8: an Ordinance concerning the Prohibition of fur Products and in
Speaker 8: conjunction beginning of July first to twenty twenty five, prohibiting
Speaker 8: the manufacturer, distribution, display, sale, or trade of certain animal
Speaker 8: fur products in the city and providing limited exceptions to
Speaker 8: the prohibition. They're talking about leather, two, No, but they're
Speaker 8: talking about beaver felt cowboy hats. They're talking about fly
Speaker 8: fishing material and yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: So when I asked about leather, I was just being
Speaker 2: cute because somehow, once take the fur off, everybody's cool
Speaker 2: with it.
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, but you start. When you start, it doesn't
Speaker 8: say that until you read it in the measure. This
Speaker 8: is what they'll vote on for the title. You read
Speaker 8: it in the measure and you go, what do you
Speaker 8: mean in Denver? You can't buy a cowboy?
Speaker 3: It's the death of the el caricatus.
Speaker 8: Yeah, you know, I mean, look at all the mank
Speaker 8: and the beaver stuff that's put on the on the
Speaker 8: fly fishing lures and on the fishing lures and stuff.
Speaker 8: You start, you start putting in. There's a there's a
Speaker 8: component into that deal that they they made exceptions or
Speaker 8: exemptions because they did they wanted to be uh hit
Speaker 8: politically correct. So Native Americans can sell their artwork and
Speaker 8: their crafts in the city of Denver, but you have
Speaker 8: to be white or non to be able to buy it. Well,
Speaker 8: how many times did the Denver March Powell or the
Speaker 8: Indian market. Do you see that Native Americans are selling
Speaker 8: to Native Americans? Maybe a little bit, But if you
Speaker 8: if you're white and you want to go there, you
Speaker 8: can't buy it because it says you have to be
Speaker 8: Indigenous to be able to do it. They are feeding
Speaker 8: off of the lies and deceit of the general public
Speaker 8: on that the Slaughterhouse Band, the Mountain Lion and bobcat Ban.
Speaker 8: And I hope that the general public wakes up, not
Speaker 8: just in Colorado, but these things go on all around
Speaker 8: the country and people go, well, oh, that happened in Cleveland,
Speaker 8: or that happened in Dallas or that because it didn't
Speaker 8: affect them. It's happening everywhere. And we have to figure
Speaker 8: out a way to plant our flag draw line in
Speaker 8: the sand and say, if the science says that we shouldn't,
Speaker 8: then maybe that's what we should look at, especially from
Speaker 8: a conservation standpoint. But I mean, you guys have the
Speaker 8: ability to give a synopsis, a synthesize things that are
Speaker 8: going on in the landscape. I'd encourage people to reach
Speaker 8: out at every level to say, hey, there's something going
Speaker 8: on in Washington, DC, or something going on in Sacramento,
Speaker 8: because the average person doesn't know, and I'm not trying to,
Speaker 8: you know, jump your inbox up. You're probably already have
Speaker 8: that enough as it is. But you know, sorry, you're in.
Speaker 8: But no, we we appreciate the opportunity to kind of
Speaker 8: bring a little bit of a message to light because
Speaker 8: it's something serious enough in Colorado that if we fall
Speaker 8: in Colorado this year, you're going to see a lot
Speaker 8: of other things happen behind this because it's easy to
Speaker 8: turn around and take their momentum momentum and move it
Speaker 8: to the next level.
Speaker 3: Well, man, I appreciate you coming on, Appreciate the time,
Speaker 3: Tell the site, tell where to go one more time.
Speaker 8: Save the hunt Colorado dot com. It's the Colorado's for
Speaker 8: Responsible Wildlife Management and you can get a lot of
Speaker 8: information on there. But if they got if they have wishes,
Speaker 8: once and desires, they could reach out and contact us
Speaker 8: through the email chain on there as well.
Speaker 11: Do it at the same time that you're applying for
Speaker 11: your Colorado ELP tag. Just then pop over to CWRM
Speaker 11: and CRWVRWNC give you twenty.
Speaker 3: Bucks, Dan Gates, thanks for coming on.
Speaker 8: Thanks you're doing. Thank you very much.
Speaker 14: It's the Meter Podcast. It's the Meter Podcast, start to
Speaker 14: day on ride with Ranilla and the crew.
Speaker 12: With the Conservation Mind come the same. It's the Meat Podcast.
Speaker 14: It's the Meter Podcast.
Speaker 12: It's the Meat Podcast. It's the Me Farther Mooting the
Speaker 14: Lot in nothing le