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Speaker 1: The Sportsman's Nation podcast network is brought to you by

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Speaker 1: on x hunt, bringing you the best GPS mapping software

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Speaker 1: the code Nation twenty at checkout. That's capital in Nation

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Speaker 1: followed by the number twenty. My name is Clay Nukeleman.

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Speaker 1: I'm the host of the Bear Honey magazine podcast. I'll

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Speaker 1: also be your host into the world of hunting the

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Speaker 1: icon of the North American wilderness prepare. We'll talk about tactics,

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Speaker 1: gear conservation. We will also bring you into some of

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Speaker 1: the wildest country off the planet. Chasing bare March Bentonville, Arkansas.

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Speaker 1: We're having the ozark Black Bear Bonanza. If you're within

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Speaker 1: twelve hours of northwest Arkansas, you need to get in

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Speaker 1: your vehicle and drive here. March. We're having a bear

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Speaker 1: fat rendering demonstration that starts at two o'clock. Bear Biologist

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Speaker 1: panel where the bar biologist from Arkansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma

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Speaker 1: will be there. Answering questions. We're having a live bear

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Speaker 1: Hunting magazine podcast complete with live music and an al

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Speaker 1: hooting contest. Did you hear what I said? I want

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Speaker 1: the nation's top al hooters at this thing, and the

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Speaker 1: winner of the al hooting contest gets a first Light

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Speaker 1: UH first Light package, a sheep Hunting at the South

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Speaker 1: first Light package. Thirdly, we're having a storytelling event. The

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Speaker 1: event lasts from two to nine pm, Bentonville, Arkansas. You

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Speaker 1: have to go to our social media to get all

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Speaker 1: the details, but you can buy tickets. Hey, check out

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Speaker 1: our buddies at W Hunting Supply. If you're getting any

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Speaker 1: kind of dog related stuff, hound stuff, garment stuff, Lesha's callers,

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Speaker 1: anything and everything, check out our buddies at W. Also

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Speaker 1: with spring coming, check out our buddies at north I

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Speaker 1: have a lot of buddies. Colby tells me not to

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Speaker 1: say buddies all the time. Check out our friends at

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Speaker 1: Northwood's bear products. They're making the best commercial bear sense

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Speaker 1: on the market. And lastly, our buddies at Ma'am they

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Speaker 1: are buddies Kolbe. Our buddies at the Western Bear Foundation

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Speaker 1: hunting conservation organization out West representing bear hunters. You're gonna

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Speaker 1: enjoy this podcast with my buddy Brandon Butler. He's a

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Speaker 1: unique guy. He's got a unique voice inside of conservation

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Speaker 1: and uh, if you listen close, I think you'll learn

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Speaker 1: some stuff. I know that I did. We are at

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Speaker 1: Driftwood Acres in Shannon County, Missouri. That's right. Yeah, we're

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Speaker 1: from where we're at right now. We're surrounded by a

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Speaker 1: couple hundred thousand acres of of public land in the

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Speaker 1: Ozarks of east. Are we in southeastern Missouri or south

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Speaker 1: central Missouri? Kind of right on the dividing line, I

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Speaker 1: would say, you know, towards the eastern side, but right

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Speaker 1: in the heart of the Missouri Ozarks. Yeah. Man, the

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Speaker 1: the creeks. I love the river systems and the watersheds

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Speaker 1: and these Ozarks. They truly are special. And when I

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Speaker 1: say in the middle of the Missouri Ozarks, you know,

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Speaker 1: people from all over the country will think of Lake

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Speaker 1: of the Ozarks or Brandson, which both of course are

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Speaker 1: in the Ozarks. But when I say that, I mean

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Speaker 1: like a real wilderness. I feel like we're in the

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Speaker 1: most remote part of the state of Missouri right now. Yeah, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: least populated county Missouri say, I don't know if that's true.

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Speaker 1: I heard you say that last night. It's the poorest county.

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Speaker 1: So what it is is it's dropped from the third

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Speaker 1: porest county in the state to the first unfortunately. And

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Speaker 1: uh it's Pores County in America. So we're in competition

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Speaker 1: with a lot of coal country in Appalachia. So dealing

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Speaker 1: with a lot of poverty issues, and really there's just

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Speaker 1: not an industry going on down here anymore. Were friends

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Speaker 1: working the lead mine, and you know, they turn eighteen

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Speaker 1: and they hope to get a job at the lead mine.

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Speaker 1: And my good buddy that works there, you know, won't

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Speaker 1: name his name because he he hates the fact that

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Speaker 1: he's got to take showers multiple times per day and

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Speaker 1: wash the poison off of himself. That's a hard way

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Speaker 1: to make a living. Yeah. So it's such a beautiful

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Speaker 1: part of the world. I mean, as you said, there's

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Speaker 1: over two thousand acres of public land in Discount. We've

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Speaker 1: got the Elk restoration going on. We've got the Ozark

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Speaker 1: National Scenic Riverways, which is Current River in Jack's Fork.

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Speaker 1: It's a five thousand acre national park that courses along

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Speaker 1: a hundred and thirty five miles a river corridor. But

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Speaker 1: in true Missouri fashion, it's an at it's a national

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Speaker 1: park that you can hunt. So it's amazing that you

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Speaker 1: can set off in a canoe or in a jetboat

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Speaker 1: or anything and get down the river and pull over

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Speaker 1: on a gravel bar and chase a turkey you here

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Speaker 1: gobbling up on the ridge where you can set up

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Speaker 1: camp and deer hunt for a few days on the

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Speaker 1: public land. It's it's really really special to have those

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Speaker 1: kind of water rights, to be able to go down

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Speaker 1: river and camp where you like. And and the other

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Speaker 1: thing that I'm really proud of is the fact that well,

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Speaker 1: Missouri has this program called Stream Teams where citizens banded

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Speaker 1: together and it's kind of like adopted highway if you

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Speaker 1: adopt a stream or a section of a river. And

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Speaker 1: we did one for Current River two years in a

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Speaker 1: row with this youth group that I lead called the

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Speaker 1: Conservation Leadership Corps. There wasn't enough trash to make it

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Speaker 1: worth our while, so we had to move to a

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Speaker 1: dirty here. What a terrible problem to have, wasn't it.

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Speaker 1: It was beautiful to think like people are actually down

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Speaker 1: here taking care of the resource and it's it's very

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Speaker 1: well protected, and it's very accessible, and it's truly a

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Speaker 1: national treasure that flies under the radar. Well, you guys

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Speaker 1: are hearing the voice of Brandon Butler, and Brandon is, uh,

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Speaker 1: we're at his cabin down here and uh, really beautiful place. Uh.

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Speaker 1: Brandon would be a hard pretty hard guy to describe

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Speaker 1: in terms of if you were just trying to say

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Speaker 1: what he does it. Uh, he does a whole lot

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Speaker 1: of stuff. Brandon. Now, I originally knew you as an

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Speaker 1: outdoor writer. So you've you've ride a lot of articles,

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Speaker 1: write some newspaper columns, written all kind of stuff, all

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Speaker 1: conservation based. Um you were the executive director of the

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Speaker 1: Conservation Federation of Missouri. Yeah, for five years. And uh

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Speaker 1: So anyway, pretty pretty interesting history that you've got. And

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Speaker 1: and currently you're working for race Line Raceline Alternative Energy,

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Speaker 1: and we're gonna we're gonna get back to that here

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Speaker 1: in just a little bit. So I don't even want

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Speaker 1: to go into that. But it's a really unique and uh,

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Speaker 1: forward thinking energy group, which I want to hear about. Um,

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Speaker 1: tell me about man, tell me about your place here.

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Speaker 1: So how did how this this is? Like? You you

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Speaker 1: can you. We we talked about Fred Bear's uh place,

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Speaker 1: Grouse Haven. I thought about when I pulled up here,

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Speaker 1: I thought about Aldo Leopold's place up and I don't

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Speaker 1: remember what he called it, but you know, he had

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Speaker 1: a he had a cabin up somewhere that they restored

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Speaker 1: and and he just called it the Shock. It's all

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Speaker 1: described in the Sand count Almanac. Yeah, but tell me

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Speaker 1: about your place here. Well, it's a dream come true. Really.

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Speaker 1: I always joked that my first cabin was under the

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Speaker 1: stairwell in my parents basement when I was a boy.

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Speaker 1: You know, I had a camouflage g I Joe sleeping bag,

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Speaker 1: and I hammered together a few pieces of would to

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Speaker 1: make my own gun case and had my pellet gun

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Speaker 1: and be begun in there, and my sling shot and

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Speaker 1: my outdoor Life magazines and Field and Stream magazines and

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Speaker 1: bow hunter magazines. And that's where this fire really started.

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Speaker 1: And did your dad hunt? No? No, My my dad

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Speaker 1: um was of that Vietnam era. He would he didn't

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Speaker 1: end up in Vietnam, but he was an MP garden

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Speaker 1: people that came back. It was a tough role for him.

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Speaker 1: And after that he had gone out west with his dad,

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Speaker 1: and um, it just didn't stick for him. He grew

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Speaker 1: up small game hunting pheasant and rabbit and things like that.

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Speaker 1: But no, he's a he's an incredible woodworker. I mean,

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Speaker 1: he's responsible for a lot of what you're seeing around

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Speaker 1: this have and and I mean I couldn't have a

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Speaker 1: better dad if I if I picked one, you know,

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Speaker 1: And but we just don't share that love of fishing

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Speaker 1: and hunting. But his brother, my uncle Tom, who I'm

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Speaker 1: getting ready to go down to Florida and uh Ossiola

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Speaker 1: turkey hunt with. You know, he's doing his snowbird thing

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Speaker 1: now he's got a place at Lake Okeechobee and Mike.

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Speaker 1: Both of my grandpa's were very instrumental, And I tell

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Speaker 1: the story like one. Grandpa was very very family oriented.

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Speaker 1: He was actually my step grandpa, but married to my

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Speaker 1: grandma before I was born. Never knew my biological grandfather

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Speaker 1: on that side. And um, I think he'd been through

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Speaker 1: a rough divorce and so had my grandma. And when

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Speaker 1: they found each other, that was it. They were holding on,

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Speaker 1: not letting go. And and all of his fishing trips

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Speaker 1: from that point forward, from about fifty years old, were

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Speaker 1: with her, not at all and then I kind of

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Speaker 1: got put in the mix, and that was beautiful because

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Speaker 1: I got to see like this love, like genuine love

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Speaker 1: between two people that really found a second chance in

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Speaker 1: life with each other. And that's the older I get,

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Speaker 1: the more I realized just how powerful that was. Then

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Speaker 1: my dad's dad, he was more like he owned the

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Speaker 1: family business before my dad did, and he owned it

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Speaker 1: after his dad did, so, you know, he had a

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Speaker 1: lot of responsibility and he needed that reprieve and him

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Speaker 1: and his buddies back in the seventies would pile into

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Speaker 1: an RV and I've got some old we we had

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Speaker 1: and some old films made into a DVD, you know,

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Speaker 1: and they just played cowboy like they would strap a

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Speaker 1: gun to their hip and drink a case of beer

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Speaker 1: day and hit the mountains Wyoming and Colorado and kill

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Speaker 1: mule deer and run jeeps off mountains and whatever they

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Speaker 1: had to do to just killed some giant. There's a

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Speaker 1: probably a probably a Boon and Crocken. Yeah, yeah, he's

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Speaker 1: a stump. He's a stompereventy two and Meeker, Colorado. I

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Speaker 1: bet he's wide at the widest point. I hope I

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Speaker 1: have a grandkid someday that'll accept all my mounts when

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Speaker 1: I die, because that's what happened, you know. He passed

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Speaker 1: on and they were nobody wanted them, so I said,

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Speaker 1: there's no way I'm not taking all of them, you know.

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Speaker 1: So so anyways, I you know, I had the exposure

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Speaker 1: in all these different ways. Like one grandpa showed me

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Speaker 1: how important it is to be with family. The other

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Speaker 1: Grandpa showed me how important it is to just get

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Speaker 1: away with your buddies, you know, even for short trips

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Speaker 1: like we've had the last two days, you know, been beautiful.

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Speaker 1: And so I've had a lot of great influences and

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Speaker 1: and now I tried to pass on kind of a

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Speaker 1: collection of that to to the youth in my life.

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Speaker 1: And so you you got this land right now, You've

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Speaker 1: got forty something micers down here. Yeah. So I built

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Speaker 1: this cabin. I moved on from my under the stairwell

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Speaker 1: hunting camp to a camper. Me and my cousin Derek

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Speaker 1: bought it. In college. It was called Delilah Jones out

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Speaker 1: a Grateful Dead song, The Mother of Twins. There's five

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Speaker 1: sixteen ft. In nineteen seventy two, Scotty Sportsmen Greatest Thing

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Speaker 1: I've ever owned, and we hooked that thing up and

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Speaker 1: drug it all over the country, took it to Memphis

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Speaker 1: and May Music Festival. But it was our deer camp

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Speaker 1: more than anything. And um, just that like freedom of

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Speaker 1: having a place to stay and sleep and we're hunting

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Speaker 1: Northwest Indiana like we were both at Purdue at the

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Speaker 1: time in West Lafayette, and just the idea of having

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Speaker 1: that camp, and then like the dream just kept building

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Speaker 1: getting bigger. And when I got to Missouri, I went

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Speaker 1: hardcore into waterfall hunting. And there's a lot that happened

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Speaker 1: between that camper and Missouri. Of course, I lived in

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Speaker 1: Montana for a while, I spent a year in Colorado,

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Speaker 1: and um finally ended up settling in Missouri. And I

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Speaker 1: eventually bought into a two acre uh duck marsh with

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Speaker 1: seven other guys and it was okay, but there's a

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Speaker 1: lot of work that goes into managing a duck marsh,

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Speaker 1: and some of these guys were retired and they were

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Speaker 1: expecting you up there on a Thursday to be working

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Speaker 1: on food and habitat, And as much as I wanted

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Speaker 1: to do it, my life just wasn't conducive. So I

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Speaker 1: kind of grew frustrated with that partnership, and and lo

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Speaker 1: and behold. Governor J. Nixon um decided at the end

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Speaker 1: of his term that he was going to build this

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Speaker 1: state park down here in Shannon County called Echo Bluff.

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Speaker 1: And it was contentious with some of the locals and

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Speaker 1: some of the county officials that didn't want any more

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Speaker 1: public lands or anymore state money dumped into, uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: a state park. So I kind of got called into

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Speaker 1: helped build some positive Yeah, just my work with the

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Speaker 1: Conservation Federation. I've got this large platform in this newspaper column.

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Speaker 1: And so I came down and was part of part

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Speaker 1: of this park early, you know, long before it opened,

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Speaker 1: and saw the construction, and I really appreciated how he

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Speaker 1: said he wasn't here to take over the market. He

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Speaker 1: was here to prime the market. And the first time

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Speaker 1: I stepped into Sinking Creek, which is what flows through

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Speaker 1: Echo Bluff. And you know, I don't talk about it

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Speaker 1: all that often, but if you if you find Echo Bluff,

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Speaker 1: you're gonna find the creek. And we're up the creek

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Speaker 1: little ways, and um, I decided I wanted to be here.

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Speaker 1: This is it, you know, after everything that I considered

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Speaker 1: dear Turkey public lands, open space rule remote affordable. I

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Speaker 1: got a platte book and a former state representative friend

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Speaker 1: of mine, and we kind of identified some properties and

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Speaker 1: I picked up the phone and called a guy and

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Speaker 1: talked to him into selling me the land. You know,

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Speaker 1: he hadn't been here in five years, and it was

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Speaker 1: just fortuitous and worked out. And over about two years time,

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Speaker 1: I cleared some land and tore down an old house,

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Speaker 1: repurposed a lot of the materials, and then and then

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Speaker 1: constructed what you're sitting in today. And it's a true

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Speaker 1: dream come true and there's nothing fancy about it. It's

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Speaker 1: just my friends called my man castle. You know, it's

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Speaker 1: pretty fancy man held on the borderline of fancy for

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Speaker 1: a man castle. Well, there's so many things that I'm

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Speaker 1: proud of. Like the ceiling is uh, the roof from

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Speaker 1: the old cabinet. I tore the rusted corrugated metal, and

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Speaker 1: then much of the interiors in in red cedar. But

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Speaker 1: those are scraps that come from a stave mill where

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Speaker 1: they're they're they're building these at large posts, so they're

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Speaker 1: shaving down to get to that, and that's very Ozarkian. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it looks great eastern red cedar. So I love it, man,

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Speaker 1: and and my kids appreciate it and and come down

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Speaker 1: with their friends now, and as they're getting a little older,

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Speaker 1: they're seeing the value of having wilderness to go wander

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Speaker 1: off in and stomping the creek and yeah, it's it's

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Speaker 1: it's wonderful. We've killed some great deer here and had

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Speaker 1: some awesome press with the turkeys pressed with the deer.

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Speaker 1: So well, we won't talk. We won't tell people about

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Speaker 1: your deer in turkeys though, It's okay. I mean, we're

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Speaker 1: not gonna tell them right where they are. But I

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Speaker 1: don't mind the spelling the rumor that there aren't any

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Speaker 1: big deer in the Ozarks, because there's some really good

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Speaker 1: deer in the Ozarks and there's a lot of public land. See,

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Speaker 1: I don't mind saying that because it's important to me

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Speaker 1: that people come here and stimulate this economy. You know,

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Speaker 1: my friends down here, they struggle to make a living.

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Speaker 1: And yeah, I'll tell you one thing though, if you're

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Speaker 1: willing to work, it's a wide open market. Like the

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Speaker 1: the opportunity to work hard and make money down here

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Speaker 1: is there. It's just that you know, it takes a

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Speaker 1: long time to get established in a culture where you're

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Speaker 1: not from. Yeah, exactly. Well, it's a beautiful part. It's

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Speaker 1: a beautiful part of the world. You know. The way

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Speaker 1: that I've heard it described Brandon and at least in Arkansas,

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Speaker 1: and I think it would be the same in the

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Speaker 1: Missouri Ozarks is that the Ozarks were culturally and geographically

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Speaker 1: isolated basically until the the the inner the roads systems

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Speaker 1: in the US improved, and uh, I mean in the fifties,

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Speaker 1: sixties and seventies, I mean the the Ozarks in Arkansas.

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Speaker 1: I mean, it really was just this pocket of rough,

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Speaker 1: mountainous regions that a lot of writers said that. I

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Speaker 1: read something of the day that said it was talking

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Speaker 1: about Ozarkers and it said isolation is their religion, and

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Speaker 1: uh ah, I can't it's it's a beautiful quote, but

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Speaker 1: it was basically just like these uh, these people intentionally

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Speaker 1: didn't want people messing with him. And that's that's kind

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Speaker 1: of a the mentality down here, which can be negative

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Speaker 1: in terms of progression of good things, but in some

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Speaker 1: ways it's it's it can be good if you're if

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Speaker 1: you're if you're keeping bad stuff out. But you know,

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Speaker 1: there's certainly both sides to it, and I see an

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Speaker 1: experience both sides all the time. Um, Like so many Midwesterners,

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Speaker 1: oh umb. When I was in college at Purdue, I

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Speaker 1: thought that Denver was some kind of holy land, you know.

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Speaker 1: I thought that I was going to move out to

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Speaker 1: Denver and and become this mountain man. And Chase Elk

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Speaker 1: and and you know, Jeremiah Johnson it up and pretty

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Speaker 1: much moved out their side unseen for a job after college.

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Speaker 1: And I got there and it was a big, smoggy

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Speaker 1: city full of people and congestion and what kind of

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Speaker 1: drove me nuts about it, you know, And I laughed now,

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Speaker 1: and I look back on myself acting the same way

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Speaker 1: I see so many young people acting today, is thinking,

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Speaker 1: you knew what you were doing. What's frustrating about that culture,

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Speaker 1: or at least that manufactured culture that's just recently kind

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Speaker 1: of existed out there, is that people act like they

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Speaker 1: want to go out there for this individualism and to

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Speaker 1: do exactly what I said, you know, this mountain lifestyle.

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Speaker 1: So they all think they're gonna be these like reformed

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Speaker 1: mountain people right from their Midwestern roots, and they buy

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Speaker 1: the same north Face as everybody else, and they drive

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Speaker 1: the same Super u as everybody else, and they start

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Speaker 1: talking like everybody else, like you're not happy, you're stoked.

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Speaker 1: You know, nothing's cool, it's ad and and it's just

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Speaker 1: to me, it all just seems not genuine. And you

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Speaker 1: come down here and people couldn't be anymore genuine. They

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Speaker 1: don't care, like they'll just tell you. There's just like

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Speaker 1: there's this like rough individualism and and kind of like

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Speaker 1: you said, the mountains are hard and it's hard living

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Speaker 1: down here, and it takes hard people to be able

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Speaker 1: to do it. And and like the guy we had

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Speaker 1: a fellow come over this morning, what do you think

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Speaker 1: maybe seventy years old? Yeah, push, I'd say he's probably

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Speaker 1: pushing seven. And he's gonna do the rock on my

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Speaker 1: on my wall. And we talked. He can't find help.

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Speaker 1: You know. It's like so these new generations and uh,

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Speaker 1: it's all over the country, from rich people to poor people.

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Speaker 1: He was an old fashioned guy socially. The fact that

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Speaker 1: he came in, he never he didn't know you, and

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Speaker 1: now you were really hospitable to him. This was old

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Speaker 1: Stone Mason that we're talking about. Came in this morning

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Speaker 1: to look at some stonework brands done. And he sat

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Speaker 1: down and tucked us for forty five minutes and had

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Speaker 1: coffee on his He was working and and he wasn't

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Speaker 1: being lazy. He was being polite. He's being I mean,

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Speaker 1: it wasn't like he was trying to I mean, he's

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Speaker 1: a boss, so he'd do whatever he wanted. But he

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Speaker 1: said and he he told, I mean, he just it

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00:20:07,720 --> 00:20:10,360
Speaker 1: was it was almost a social obligation to sit down

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Speaker 1: and have coffee with us. And he got the job.

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Speaker 1: You know, he's gonna he's gonna get a good job

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Speaker 1: out of it. And I'm gonna get good work out

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Speaker 1: of him, I feel. And who was a fair transaction

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Speaker 1: of time? You know what he really when he was

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Speaker 1: sitting there, I was thinking, how familiar I feel with

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Speaker 1: a guy like that. I mean just in terms of

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Speaker 1: he he is. He is the good of this part

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Speaker 1: of the country, hard working every you know, he's he's

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Speaker 1: he said he worked with uh, he had two guys

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Speaker 1: that worked with him. But those little Stonemasons. Man, there's

364
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Speaker 1: no cheating when you're a Stonemason. I mean, you everything

365
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Speaker 1: you get, you worked hard for it. He's gathered rock

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Speaker 1: although he sells and gathers rock. I used to actually

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Speaker 1: love to do that. There's something really fulfilling about, uh,

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Speaker 1: taking a natural resource straight off the round and and

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Speaker 1: being able to turn that into a living money. I mean,

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00:21:06,040 --> 00:21:08,359
Speaker 1: you know there, there's there's something kind of powerful about that,

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Speaker 1: especially when it's sustainable and something that works. But anyway,

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Speaker 1: I like that old guy. I like them too. I'm

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Speaker 1: excited to have them like. That's what's also so cool

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Speaker 1: about this place is when I sit here and look,

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Speaker 1: I see things that other people don't because I know

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Speaker 1: who helped me with that, or who did this and

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Speaker 1: and how that came to be, and and now I'll

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Speaker 1: always be able to associate. Really, the last thing to

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00:21:28,720 --> 00:21:32,159
Speaker 1: do interior wise is build this twenty foot wall that

380
00:21:32,240 --> 00:21:34,239
Speaker 1: goes up to the peak of the vaulted ceilings at

381
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Speaker 1: the fireplace sits on. And now I'll remember the fact

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Speaker 1: that that old man did it, and I'll feel good

383
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Speaker 1: about it as long as I have this place. Yeah, yeah, Brandon,

384
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Speaker 1: what's your what is your passion inside of outdoors and conservation?

385
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Speaker 1: I mean, like you you've got a rich history. What

386
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Speaker 1: what really makes you tick when it comes to even

387
00:21:57,760 --> 00:22:01,600
Speaker 1: even hunting yeah, I'm I'm a generalists big time when

388
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Speaker 1: it comes to hunting and fishing. And I often say

389
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Speaker 1: now that I showed up at the Conservation Federation back

390
00:22:08,119 --> 00:22:11,320
Speaker 1: in two thousand and fourteen as a hunter and an angler,

391
00:22:11,840 --> 00:22:16,000
Speaker 1: and those five years molded me into a conservationist. I

392
00:22:16,040 --> 00:22:20,480
Speaker 1: didn't know anything about native grasses or trees, or water

393
00:22:20,600 --> 00:22:24,639
Speaker 1: quality testing or the things that afford me the opportunities

394
00:22:24,680 --> 00:22:28,320
Speaker 1: to pursue my passions of hunting and fishing. And I mean,

395
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Speaker 1: at the end of the day, it's white tailed deer,

396
00:22:29,920 --> 00:22:32,919
Speaker 1: in turkeys, you know, I hunt anything. I've killed a

397
00:22:32,960 --> 00:22:38,280
Speaker 1: couple of bears, uh, pheasants, quail, ducks. I'll do it

398
00:22:38,320 --> 00:22:40,439
Speaker 1: all like there's nothing you can say, let's go do

399
00:22:40,520 --> 00:22:43,040
Speaker 1: this today, and if it's outdoors, I'll be like, yep,

400
00:22:43,280 --> 00:22:46,080
Speaker 1: let's go. You know. For fishing, I grew up on

401
00:22:46,160 --> 00:22:50,040
Speaker 1: warm water lakes. You know it's largemouth bass, croppy and bluegill.

402
00:22:50,880 --> 00:22:54,359
Speaker 1: I grew up going with my grandparents to Minnesota and

403
00:22:55,200 --> 00:22:58,600
Speaker 1: Wisconsin after wain and yellow perch, which is the best

404
00:22:58,680 --> 00:23:01,879
Speaker 1: tasting for water fish. I think you can get as

405
00:23:01,960 --> 00:23:05,240
Speaker 1: yellow perch. Yeah, it's my absolutely, It's like a it's

406
00:23:05,280 --> 00:23:10,280
Speaker 1: like a softer version of walleye. It's just incredibly flaky

407
00:23:10,280 --> 00:23:14,520
Speaker 1: white meat and you can only lightly dust it before

408
00:23:14,560 --> 00:23:19,520
Speaker 1: you fry it. It's the big fishery on Lake Michigan.

409
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Speaker 1: So I grew up about ten miles south of the

410
00:23:23,200 --> 00:23:28,000
Speaker 1: Lake Michigan shore there by Gary, Indiana. I'm from Crown Point, Indiana,

411
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Speaker 1: and uh, there was a commercial fishery that really hurt

412
00:23:31,840 --> 00:23:34,960
Speaker 1: that population, and then we had a couple of other

413
00:23:35,040 --> 00:23:39,520
Speaker 1: things happened with invasives. Zebra muscle came in and clarified

414
00:23:39,520 --> 00:23:42,080
Speaker 1: the water to the point that there were no there's

415
00:23:42,119 --> 00:23:46,000
Speaker 1: no food sources for the smaller fry and the yellow

416
00:23:46,000 --> 00:23:49,080
Speaker 1: perch heat. So it's just Lake Michigan's like a Petri

417
00:23:49,200 --> 00:23:52,919
Speaker 1: dish of natives and invasives. The salmon, none of that

418
00:23:53,000 --> 00:23:56,000
Speaker 1: belongs there, you know, And it's it's changed dramatically. So

419
00:23:56,040 --> 00:23:57,800
Speaker 1: I don't get the yellow perch nearly like I did

420
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Speaker 1: when I was a kid and we got to catch him.

421
00:23:59,640 --> 00:24:02,560
Speaker 1: But so anything fishing wise, and then you know, I

422
00:24:02,960 --> 00:24:06,760
Speaker 1: try to go down these paths. I became a full

423
00:24:06,760 --> 00:24:10,320
Speaker 1: blown traditional bow hunter for a while. I've backed off

424
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Speaker 1: that just because of time and the inability to practice

425
00:24:14,720 --> 00:24:16,840
Speaker 1: as much as I need to. Then I was never

426
00:24:16,880 --> 00:24:18,560
Speaker 1: gonna spin fish again. I was just gonna be a

427
00:24:18,560 --> 00:24:21,840
Speaker 1: hardcore fly fisherman. Now I've kind of backed off that,

428
00:24:21,920 --> 00:24:24,199
Speaker 1: and I saw you spin fishing yesterday. I do a

429
00:24:24,200 --> 00:24:26,480
Speaker 1: lot of it anymore. You know, at this point in

430
00:24:26,480 --> 00:24:29,040
Speaker 1: my life, I just want to catch fish, and sometimes

431
00:24:29,040 --> 00:24:31,640
Speaker 1: it's just more conducive to throw in the spinning rod.

432
00:24:31,680 --> 00:24:34,040
Speaker 1: But if we go up to the Upper Current River

433
00:24:34,160 --> 00:24:37,920
Speaker 1: and ripped streamers for big browns, that's that's pretty phenomenal.

434
00:24:37,960 --> 00:24:41,320
Speaker 1: But nothing turns my crank like catching smallmouth on a

435
00:24:41,359 --> 00:24:45,480
Speaker 1: fly rod, these crystal clear creeks down here. M hm.

436
00:24:46,119 --> 00:24:48,560
Speaker 1: So that's it. Man. Well, we had a good time

437
00:24:48,640 --> 00:24:51,600
Speaker 1: yesterday fishing. So we were we were fishing on the

438
00:24:51,640 --> 00:24:55,679
Speaker 1: Current River with His name is Billy Smith. He's a

439
00:24:55,720 --> 00:24:58,359
Speaker 1: phenomenal guy. You know, you need more people like Billy

440
00:24:58,640 --> 00:25:03,359
Speaker 1: in your life because he's just genuinely always happy, you know.

441
00:25:03,440 --> 00:25:08,040
Speaker 1: Like I'm a very fortunate person. You know, I've I've got,

442
00:25:08,200 --> 00:25:11,199
Speaker 1: I'm rich in so many different ways, and yet I

443
00:25:11,240 --> 00:25:13,320
Speaker 1: still find days where I just don't want to be

444
00:25:13,400 --> 00:25:17,320
Speaker 1: talked to or messed with, and I'm grumpy for whatever reason.

445
00:25:17,440 --> 00:25:19,960
Speaker 1: I've never seen billy that way, and you go get

446
00:25:19,960 --> 00:25:22,960
Speaker 1: in a boat with this guy and you just realize,

447
00:25:23,000 --> 00:25:26,480
Speaker 1: like how lucky we all are to have these resources

448
00:25:26,520 --> 00:25:30,160
Speaker 1: and to be outside. Uh. He spent thirty five years

449
00:25:30,359 --> 00:25:34,159
Speaker 1: working for the Park Service. So this those ark National

450
00:25:34,240 --> 00:25:37,880
Speaker 1: Scenic Riverways is of course without contention because it came

451
00:25:37,920 --> 00:25:42,040
Speaker 1: into existence in the late fifties and early sixties through

452
00:25:42,359 --> 00:25:45,840
Speaker 1: a lot of use of imminent domain. So that caused

453
00:25:45,880 --> 00:25:50,359
Speaker 1: some some horrible sentiment towards the park early on. And

454
00:25:50,359 --> 00:25:52,840
Speaker 1: and some of those people are still first generation people

455
00:25:52,840 --> 00:25:55,479
Speaker 1: that are alive and living around here. So there even

456
00:25:55,520 --> 00:25:57,680
Speaker 1: though they got paid, you know, no one stole their

457
00:25:57,760 --> 00:26:00,520
Speaker 1: land like you hear. They were paid a fair fair

458
00:26:00,560 --> 00:26:03,480
Speaker 1: market value for it. Uh, And some held out and

459
00:26:03,480 --> 00:26:06,639
Speaker 1: wouldn't sell. There's some holdings in there. Were able to

460
00:26:06,680 --> 00:26:10,159
Speaker 1: do that with imminent but it can't be transferred, so

461
00:26:10,240 --> 00:26:12,760
Speaker 1: it's like yours until you die, I guess, or is

462
00:26:12,800 --> 00:26:16,000
Speaker 1: that right? I believe? I believe. So there's some holdings

463
00:26:16,040 --> 00:26:20,040
Speaker 1: in there, and uh, long story short though, imagine like

464
00:26:20,920 --> 00:26:24,399
Speaker 1: how you try to impress your father or your grandfather.

465
00:26:24,840 --> 00:26:27,600
Speaker 1: So if you were raised in this culture of people saying,

466
00:26:28,119 --> 00:26:30,560
Speaker 1: you know, that park is horrible they stole our land.

467
00:26:30,720 --> 00:26:34,280
Speaker 1: You know, the next generation, you would think it would

468
00:26:34,280 --> 00:26:36,680
Speaker 1: die down, but I think it can actually be the opposite.

469
00:26:36,840 --> 00:26:41,680
Speaker 1: I think the animosity grows and like if Grandpa didn't

470
00:26:41,680 --> 00:26:44,480
Speaker 1: like something, I'm gonna not like it even more. And

471
00:26:44,640 --> 00:26:47,919
Speaker 1: that's a problem for this park down here. So these employees,

472
00:26:47,960 --> 00:26:50,640
Speaker 1: even the locals, you know, Billy is one of them,

473
00:26:50,640 --> 00:26:53,879
Speaker 1: for example, who had to balance his love and affection

474
00:26:54,080 --> 00:26:57,960
Speaker 1: for this park and his job with his life of

475
00:26:58,240 --> 00:27:01,200
Speaker 1: being a resident of this area and listening to both sides.

476
00:27:01,680 --> 00:27:04,640
Speaker 1: He was an incredible ambassador for the parks and still

477
00:27:04,800 --> 00:27:08,520
Speaker 1: is and learned the river just intimately, and now he's

478
00:27:08,560 --> 00:27:11,760
Speaker 1: applying that knowledge to his guide service called Scenic River

479
00:27:11,840 --> 00:27:15,080
Speaker 1: Guide Service, I believe, and you can find it just

480
00:27:15,080 --> 00:27:18,959
Speaker 1: Scenic River Fishing or Scenic River Guide Service Billy Smith.

481
00:27:19,000 --> 00:27:22,600
Speaker 1: And but man, like, what's interesting is that everybody wants

482
00:27:22,640 --> 00:27:26,359
Speaker 1: to small mouthfish when it's seventy five and sunny, drink

483
00:27:26,400 --> 00:27:29,480
Speaker 1: a beer, and but in the wintertime, these smallmouth all

484
00:27:29,520 --> 00:27:32,199
Speaker 1: bunch up in these deep pools, and he's just got

485
00:27:32,280 --> 00:27:34,359
Speaker 1: them figured out. He knows where they're hiding, and he

486
00:27:34,440 --> 00:27:37,120
Speaker 1: knows what to throw him. And we've hit we fished

487
00:27:37,160 --> 00:27:38,960
Speaker 1: about two and a half hours and voted I think

488
00:27:39,000 --> 00:27:43,320
Speaker 1: close to twenty fish. And yeah it wasn't for how

489
00:27:43,359 --> 00:27:47,240
Speaker 1: we'd only voted probably ten. Yeah, well he had the

490
00:27:47,280 --> 00:27:50,879
Speaker 1: how was cheating this man? He uh, he was a

491
00:27:51,160 --> 00:27:53,960
Speaker 1: good part of the boat. He was he was y'all

492
00:27:54,000 --> 00:27:56,520
Speaker 1: didn't see it, but he was elbowing me out of spots.

493
00:27:57,400 --> 00:28:00,720
Speaker 1: So I believe it. I believe we're talking about how

494
00:28:00,800 --> 00:28:07,440
Speaker 1: herring here. Um uh No, it was awesome yesterday, beautiful country. Absolutely,

495
00:28:08,160 --> 00:28:10,959
Speaker 1: I'm totally impressed with this part of the Ozarks. And

496
00:28:10,960 --> 00:28:12,879
Speaker 1: I've never been to this part of the Ozarks, just

497
00:28:13,119 --> 00:28:16,760
Speaker 1: never been here. So glad you made it up. And um,

498
00:28:16,920 --> 00:28:19,959
Speaker 1: being the bear man that you are, I'm I'm happy

499
00:28:20,000 --> 00:28:21,520
Speaker 1: to tell you that I've had a couple of bears

500
00:28:21,560 --> 00:28:24,080
Speaker 1: on this piece of dirt. Yeah, I get some pictures

501
00:28:24,080 --> 00:28:27,040
Speaker 1: and that's a massive wind for conservation to hear that.

502
00:28:27,240 --> 00:28:31,200
Speaker 1: It really people don't to me. It's it's so close

503
00:28:31,240 --> 00:28:35,639
Speaker 1: to home because the bears in southern Missouri. Absolutely, And

504
00:28:35,640 --> 00:28:37,720
Speaker 1: I'm not and we're not trying to take credit for this.

505
00:28:37,720 --> 00:28:40,400
Speaker 1: This is just the truth. They you know, they came

506
00:28:40,440 --> 00:28:45,040
Speaker 1: from Arkansas. Yeah, take credit for it. I mean I mean, yeah, yeah,

507
00:28:45,080 --> 00:28:49,280
Speaker 1: but they they they're they're moving north into the Ozarks

508
00:28:49,400 --> 00:28:53,400
Speaker 1: into suitable habitat and it's here and uh, you know,

509
00:28:53,440 --> 00:28:58,000
Speaker 1: there's a breeding population of bears here, and they're you know,

510
00:28:58,040 --> 00:29:01,360
Speaker 1: they're projecting you know, sometime in the future, potentially a

511
00:29:01,400 --> 00:29:05,880
Speaker 1: small regulated hunt in the near future. Yeah, so it's

512
00:29:05,920 --> 00:29:08,800
Speaker 1: pretty amazing. I got to go bear trapping with the

513
00:29:08,840 --> 00:29:12,320
Speaker 1: Department of Conservation and and they've really up their bear

514
00:29:12,480 --> 00:29:16,640
Speaker 1: management and study efforts, and just in the last year

515
00:29:16,720 --> 00:29:18,880
Speaker 1: they've determined that they were way off on their account.

516
00:29:19,080 --> 00:29:21,880
Speaker 1: And when they thought we had, you know, roughly two

517
00:29:21,960 --> 00:29:24,959
Speaker 1: hundred fifty three hundred bears, the new number is closer

518
00:29:25,000 --> 00:29:27,560
Speaker 1: to five hundred to six hundred bears. And they've always

519
00:29:27,600 --> 00:29:31,080
Speaker 1: said that we'll start a regulated season around five hundred bears.

520
00:29:31,080 --> 00:29:36,440
Speaker 1: So this year also is very uh miraculous, is we're

521
00:29:36,440 --> 00:29:39,960
Speaker 1: gonna have our first elk hunt. And I don't know

522
00:29:40,000 --> 00:29:41,800
Speaker 1: if we've ever had a legal elk hunt in Missouri

523
00:29:41,800 --> 00:29:43,640
Speaker 1: and have to go back and look, but I know, no,

524
00:29:43,840 --> 00:29:46,280
Speaker 1: hasn't been shot in the state. And over a hundred

525
00:29:46,360 --> 00:29:49,200
Speaker 1: years more than that hundred fifty years or something when

526
00:29:49,200 --> 00:29:52,640
Speaker 1: we extricated them, so they're back, and they're they're not

527
00:29:52,680 --> 00:29:55,680
Speaker 1: far from here, man like if they're at Pek Ranch,

528
00:29:56,000 --> 00:29:58,920
Speaker 1: which is just east of Imminence, which is the nearest

529
00:29:58,920 --> 00:30:01,800
Speaker 1: little town to where we're at. Okay, if you look

530
00:30:01,840 --> 00:30:05,880
Speaker 1: at the diagram of how the herd is developing their range,

531
00:30:06,400 --> 00:30:09,800
Speaker 1: it looks like a very distinct tear drop, with the

532
00:30:09,840 --> 00:30:12,479
Speaker 1: tip of the tear drop being north and the ball

533
00:30:12,520 --> 00:30:15,400
Speaker 1: of it being to the south. So the herd as

534
00:30:15,440 --> 00:30:19,080
Speaker 1: a whole is moving south. But there's this spike that

535
00:30:19,160 --> 00:30:22,120
Speaker 1: goes up into the forest and it's not it's not

536
00:30:22,200 --> 00:30:25,360
Speaker 1: five miles from where we're sitting. Does does the Missouri

537
00:30:25,400 --> 00:30:29,160
Speaker 1: population overlap with the Arkansas population of the Buffalo. No.

538
00:30:29,320 --> 00:30:32,760
Speaker 1: We had one cow takeoff for Arkansas and they shot her.

539
00:30:33,040 --> 00:30:35,960
Speaker 1: They don't want to, you know, with c w D

540
00:30:36,720 --> 00:30:39,280
Speaker 1: and everything that's happening, like the herd is trying to

541
00:30:39,360 --> 00:30:44,200
Speaker 1: be contained, and with your guys horrible c w D

542
00:30:44,320 --> 00:30:46,800
Speaker 1: problem that you've got going on in the Ponca Valley,

543
00:30:46,840 --> 00:30:49,680
Speaker 1: and we don't want any of that. And we already

544
00:30:49,760 --> 00:30:52,760
Speaker 1: know that it's gonna move up across the you know,

545
00:30:52,800 --> 00:30:56,000
Speaker 1: down in like Stone and Taney Counties in the southwest

546
00:30:56,040 --> 00:30:58,160
Speaker 1: corner of Missouri, Like, that's one of our new c

547
00:30:58,440 --> 00:31:02,440
Speaker 1: w D and endemics owns. And it's unfortunate, you know,

548
00:31:02,480 --> 00:31:04,760
Speaker 1: that's we could do a whole podcast on chronic wasting

549
00:31:04,840 --> 00:31:08,080
Speaker 1: disease and and you know how dangerous it truly is.

550
00:31:08,160 --> 00:31:11,880
Speaker 1: But it's unfortunate that things happened long before we were

551
00:31:11,920 --> 00:31:14,800
Speaker 1: aware of what was going on, because you know, that's

552
00:31:14,840 --> 00:31:18,560
Speaker 1: conservation too. We were doing things right now, Clay that

553
00:31:18,600 --> 00:31:22,080
Speaker 1: we are probably out there promoting and thinking we're like helping,

554
00:31:22,320 --> 00:31:24,920
Speaker 1: and fifty years from now, we're gonna look back on

555
00:31:24,960 --> 00:31:28,160
Speaker 1: that and say, oh, man, like, how did we how

556
00:31:28,200 --> 00:31:29,800
Speaker 1: do we think that was the right thing to do?

557
00:31:30,160 --> 00:31:33,000
Speaker 1: And that's the trend of history, isn't It absolutely is,

558
00:31:33,320 --> 00:31:37,280
Speaker 1: And you're trying to do better, but occasionally you're actually

559
00:31:37,280 --> 00:31:41,720
Speaker 1: doing harm and and by trailering around serviants, those being

560
00:31:41,840 --> 00:31:45,640
Speaker 1: dear elk moose any any ungle it in the servant family.

561
00:31:46,400 --> 00:31:49,120
Speaker 1: You know, c w D was spread and I blame

562
00:31:49,160 --> 00:31:51,840
Speaker 1: a lot of it on the captive industry, and there's

563
00:31:51,840 --> 00:31:54,600
Speaker 1: no secret that I've had my battles with those people.

564
00:31:55,160 --> 00:31:57,120
Speaker 1: But there's also a lot of blame to be placed

565
00:31:57,160 --> 00:32:00,440
Speaker 1: on the transportation of carcasses by hunters come back from

566
00:32:00,440 --> 00:32:04,520
Speaker 1: out west. There is of course natural movement from predators moving,

567
00:32:04,560 --> 00:32:07,760
Speaker 1: and I mean it's it's not a disease and sense

568
00:32:07,840 --> 00:32:11,080
Speaker 1: like a virus or bacteria. It's this misfolded treon that

569
00:32:11,360 --> 00:32:13,800
Speaker 1: is almost impossible to kill and living the soil for

570
00:32:14,680 --> 00:32:17,720
Speaker 1: ever and all kinds of problems, crazy stuff. Let's focus

571
00:32:17,720 --> 00:32:21,160
Speaker 1: on positive stuff. What do you what do you think

572
00:32:21,200 --> 00:32:25,120
Speaker 1: the key issues of what? What are the key issues

573
00:32:25,160 --> 00:32:29,320
Speaker 1: inside of conservation that people should be focused on in

574
00:32:29,320 --> 00:32:31,480
Speaker 1: this part of the world. I think the key issue

575
00:32:31,480 --> 00:32:35,959
Speaker 1: in conservation universally is making people understand the importance of caring.

576
00:32:36,560 --> 00:32:39,320
Speaker 1: I mean, right now, we're so fortunate and lucky to

577
00:32:39,320 --> 00:32:42,160
Speaker 1: be living in an era of good times. You know,

578
00:32:42,160 --> 00:32:45,040
Speaker 1: we look back on on times and and think those

579
00:32:45,040 --> 00:32:47,800
Speaker 1: were the good old days of this or that. But really,

580
00:32:47,800 --> 00:32:50,760
Speaker 1: if you look back to the early nineteen hundreds, those

581
00:32:50,760 --> 00:32:54,360
Speaker 1: were not the good old days. Here in Missouri, there

582
00:32:54,400 --> 00:32:57,840
Speaker 1: was an estimated four hundred deer and two thousand turkeys

583
00:32:58,080 --> 00:33:03,600
Speaker 1: in and that's when the Conservation Federation was formed. Citizens

584
00:33:04,600 --> 00:33:07,880
Speaker 1: rallied together and said this, this system that we have

585
00:33:08,040 --> 00:33:11,040
Speaker 1: is not working. So it's a really phenomenal story in

586
00:33:11,080 --> 00:33:14,200
Speaker 1: the sense that seventy five citizens gathered. You know, that's

587
00:33:14,200 --> 00:33:17,200
Speaker 1: a rough number. No, there's no roster. That's one of

588
00:33:17,240 --> 00:33:21,240
Speaker 1: the like real disappointing pieces of this history is that

589
00:33:21,280 --> 00:33:23,040
Speaker 1: there's no roster of who was there. But there was

590
00:33:23,080 --> 00:33:25,920
Speaker 1: a gentleman named Bill Crawford who lived to be ninety

591
00:33:26,000 --> 00:33:27,680
Speaker 1: nine and a half and passed away a couple of

592
00:33:27,720 --> 00:33:30,360
Speaker 1: years ago, and he was seventeen at that meeting, so

593
00:33:30,400 --> 00:33:32,840
Speaker 1: he can tell you about it. And uh, you know

594
00:33:32,880 --> 00:33:36,600
Speaker 1: Starker Leopold was there ding Darling, who went on to

595
00:33:36,800 --> 00:33:40,360
Speaker 1: basically create the duck stamp and founded the National Wildlife

596
00:33:40,360 --> 00:33:45,360
Speaker 1: Federation All kinds. He was FDR's personal friends. No, he

597
00:33:45,400 --> 00:33:49,120
Speaker 1: was from Iowa. He's from Iowa. But he was involved

598
00:33:49,120 --> 00:33:50,920
Speaker 1: with the stuff of Missouri. He was a leader of it.

599
00:33:51,000 --> 00:33:54,360
Speaker 1: And while he was at this meeting on September five,

600
00:33:55,080 --> 00:33:58,120
Speaker 1: he doodled a sketch of a basque coming out of

601
00:33:58,120 --> 00:34:00,440
Speaker 1: the water and eating a mayfly and a duck coming

602
00:34:00,480 --> 00:34:03,160
Speaker 1: into land on this pond and it's it's amazing he

603
00:34:03,240 --> 00:34:07,320
Speaker 1: just drew. And the original hangs in the executive Director's

604
00:34:07,360 --> 00:34:11,040
Speaker 1: office at CFM. At some point it deserves to be

605
00:34:11,120 --> 00:34:15,640
Speaker 1: in the Ding Darling National Wildlife Museum, which is down

606
00:34:15,719 --> 00:34:19,280
Speaker 1: on Santa bell Island in Florida. It's the Ding Darling

607
00:34:19,360 --> 00:34:22,200
Speaker 1: National Wildlife Refuge. But there's like, of course, a little

608
00:34:22,480 --> 00:34:26,200
Speaker 1: museum there her I don't know if you'd call a museum,

609
00:34:26,239 --> 00:34:28,600
Speaker 1: but some kind of. It's a building with stuff in it.

610
00:34:28,719 --> 00:34:32,040
Speaker 1: It's related to him stuff and it should be there,

611
00:34:32,080 --> 00:34:35,400
Speaker 1: I think it eventually. And so there's these like legends

612
00:34:35,400 --> 00:34:38,959
Speaker 1: of conservation. Eldo Leopold was involved. Starker actually came down

613
00:34:39,000 --> 00:34:42,040
Speaker 1: here and uh and and lived for a while and

614
00:34:42,120 --> 00:34:45,360
Speaker 1: started in on the Turkey Counts in the nineteen thirties.

615
00:34:45,400 --> 00:34:48,440
Speaker 1: And they called the Leopold Cabin. It's on a natural area,

616
00:34:49,440 --> 00:34:52,840
Speaker 1: Caney Mountain, it's called and Uh. I had an opportunity

617
00:34:52,840 --> 00:34:56,160
Speaker 1: to sleep in there, but chickened out. It hadn't cleaned

618
00:34:56,160 --> 00:34:59,279
Speaker 1: in fifty years. And we got there like after dark.

619
00:34:59,320 --> 00:35:01,279
Speaker 1: We were me and my buddy Tyler, who's the new

620
00:35:01,320 --> 00:35:05,480
Speaker 1: director of Conservation Federation, and um, we got in there. Man,

621
00:35:05,719 --> 00:35:07,400
Speaker 1: we didn't have time to shoot the rats out, and

622
00:35:07,480 --> 00:35:12,160
Speaker 1: so we decided to get a hotel. But there's this rich,

623
00:35:12,320 --> 00:35:15,520
Speaker 1: crazy cool history and and and things were so bad

624
00:35:15,920 --> 00:35:19,480
Speaker 1: in the nineteen thirties and for the last eighty five years,

625
00:35:19,520 --> 00:35:22,160
Speaker 1: not only in Missouri but beyond, we've put so much

626
00:35:22,239 --> 00:35:25,799
Speaker 1: into restoration efforts that this modern generation like you and

627
00:35:25,840 --> 00:35:29,080
Speaker 1: I were about six months apart in age, so we've

628
00:35:29,080 --> 00:35:31,799
Speaker 1: been fortunate to never know hardship when it comes to

629
00:35:31,880 --> 00:35:35,640
Speaker 1: deer and turkey populations. And well, for me, that's not

630
00:35:35,680 --> 00:35:38,200
Speaker 1: actually true. Turkey, Like where I grew up in northern Indiana,

631
00:35:38,239 --> 00:35:40,560
Speaker 1: there were no turkeys when I was a kid, and

632
00:35:40,640 --> 00:35:44,799
Speaker 1: now they're everywhere. So to actually see a species that

633
00:35:44,920 --> 00:35:47,840
Speaker 1: I care a lot about brought back and and to

634
00:35:47,960 --> 00:35:51,040
Speaker 1: understand the value of that restoration and what it does,

635
00:35:51,120 --> 00:35:53,919
Speaker 1: not only you know, economically for these areas where people

636
00:35:53,960 --> 00:35:56,640
Speaker 1: are coming to turkey hunt like the Ozarks and like

637
00:35:56,719 --> 00:35:59,320
Speaker 1: the Washing Toss. You know, people travel to spend money

638
00:35:59,320 --> 00:36:02,719
Speaker 1: in these in pop starius, but it's also just the

639
00:36:02,800 --> 00:36:06,880
Speaker 1: like intrinsic value of having a spring season. That's what

640
00:36:07,000 --> 00:36:09,120
Speaker 1: Turkey is so great. You know, we hunt off fall,

641
00:36:09,600 --> 00:36:11,800
Speaker 1: and for the first twenty five years of my hunting

642
00:36:11,880 --> 00:36:14,200
Speaker 1: life it was like a half a year thing. And

643
00:36:14,280 --> 00:36:16,520
Speaker 1: now like I put the deer rifle away and I

644
00:36:16,560 --> 00:36:19,560
Speaker 1: get the turkey shotgun out, you know, and yeah, I

645
00:36:19,640 --> 00:36:24,319
Speaker 1: love it. Yeah, I like what you said that the

646
00:36:24,320 --> 00:36:26,320
Speaker 1: biggest thing we can do is care. You know, the

647
00:36:27,000 --> 00:36:31,759
Speaker 1: problem with prosperity is that people become ungrateful and can

648
00:36:32,239 --> 00:36:35,920
Speaker 1: quickly forget the hardship from which they came. You know,

649
00:36:36,040 --> 00:36:38,719
Speaker 1: really that's the I mean, a trend inside of society

650
00:36:38,800 --> 00:36:41,480
Speaker 1: is that, you know, we're the most prosperous nation in

651
00:36:41,520 --> 00:36:45,280
Speaker 1: the world, and yet we are our culture is riddled

652
00:36:45,320 --> 00:36:49,440
Speaker 1: with crisis and ungrateful, unhappy people that don't you know.

653
00:36:50,200 --> 00:36:53,319
Speaker 1: It's kind of the same way can be in conservation.

654
00:36:53,400 --> 00:36:58,080
Speaker 1: I mean, what describe to me what you mean by

655
00:36:58,120 --> 00:37:01,319
Speaker 1: people caring? I mean, just just to me what I

656
00:37:01,360 --> 00:37:04,600
Speaker 1: hear you're saying. It's just people understanding and having a

657
00:37:05,719 --> 00:37:09,000
Speaker 1: and that understanding gives just a whole new perspective on

658
00:37:09,040 --> 00:37:11,839
Speaker 1: what's happening. Yeah. So a lot of people will talk

659
00:37:11,880 --> 00:37:16,280
Speaker 1: about that the greatest concern for conservation should be apathy.

660
00:37:16,520 --> 00:37:21,200
Speaker 1: The people sit back and they don't engage because there's

661
00:37:21,200 --> 00:37:25,040
Speaker 1: so many deer, there's fishing the river. You know, it's good,

662
00:37:25,160 --> 00:37:28,319
Speaker 1: it's fixed. It can be apathetic about it. I'm gonna

663
00:37:28,320 --> 00:37:30,960
Speaker 1: add ignorance to that as well. And I mean that

664
00:37:31,000 --> 00:37:32,880
Speaker 1: in a true definition of ignorance and the fact that

665
00:37:32,880 --> 00:37:36,400
Speaker 1: people are just not educated about what's happening. So there

666
00:37:36,440 --> 00:37:39,560
Speaker 1: are a tax on conservation going on right now in

667
00:37:39,560 --> 00:37:42,760
Speaker 1: the state House in Missouri that would upset the entire

668
00:37:42,920 --> 00:37:45,439
Speaker 1: system that we have. I mean, this system is so

669
00:37:45,520 --> 00:37:48,600
Speaker 1: well renowned that it has its own name, the Missouri

670
00:37:48,719 --> 00:37:52,120
Speaker 1: Model of Conservation, which is really rooted in the fact

671
00:37:52,160 --> 00:37:55,359
Speaker 1: that our department operates outside of the purview of legislature,

672
00:37:55,800 --> 00:37:59,920
Speaker 1: meaning that we have authority vested in a commission that's

673
00:38:00,120 --> 00:38:02,960
Speaker 1: pointed by the governor and approved by the Senate. And

674
00:38:03,040 --> 00:38:07,080
Speaker 1: really the commission is not without its flaws, but they

675
00:38:07,080 --> 00:38:10,680
Speaker 1: allow the science to make the decisions. You know, we

676
00:38:10,760 --> 00:38:16,040
Speaker 1: have trained biologists making decisions and the commission ultimately approves.

677
00:38:16,480 --> 00:38:20,080
Speaker 1: We also have the conservation sales tax, which Arkansas and

678
00:38:20,120 --> 00:38:22,960
Speaker 1: Minnesota are really the only two states that have kind

679
00:38:23,000 --> 00:38:26,520
Speaker 1: of replicated, So you guys are reaping the benefits of

680
00:38:26,520 --> 00:38:29,360
Speaker 1: that as well. So there's dedicated funding. What you were

681
00:38:29,400 --> 00:38:32,319
Speaker 1: talking about your sportsmen's card and how many species and

682
00:38:32,480 --> 00:38:35,360
Speaker 1: privileges you get from that, that's because you have that

683
00:38:35,440 --> 00:38:40,120
Speaker 1: dedicated funding. If you didn't, those prices would go up significantly.

684
00:38:40,640 --> 00:38:43,320
Speaker 1: What what would be the alternative to that type of

685
00:38:44,000 --> 00:38:49,600
Speaker 1: um wildlife management government control, like because because in Arkansas

686
00:38:49,680 --> 00:38:51,279
Speaker 1: we we do the same thing, and we may have

687
00:38:51,280 --> 00:38:54,239
Speaker 1: got it from Missouri, but it's run ran by commission.

688
00:38:54,360 --> 00:38:57,360
Speaker 1: So what tell me what that your commission, Your commission

689
00:38:57,400 --> 00:39:00,920
Speaker 1: can still be overruled by the legislature. So I was

690
00:39:01,120 --> 00:39:05,960
Speaker 1: Governor Mitch Daniels constituent services guy in the Indiana Department

691
00:39:05,960 --> 00:39:09,040
Speaker 1: and Natural Resources in two thousand and eight and two

692
00:39:09,080 --> 00:39:12,400
Speaker 1: thousand and nine. So I worked in the executive office

693
00:39:12,560 --> 00:39:16,239
Speaker 1: of a state game agency. I answered a lot of

694
00:39:16,280 --> 00:39:19,920
Speaker 1: hate mail, you know, and concerns about conservation. So it

695
00:39:20,040 --> 00:39:22,640
Speaker 1: was it was interesting to see that no matter how

696
00:39:22,640 --> 00:39:26,839
Speaker 1: many letters came in, there's only like maybe twenty topics.

697
00:39:26,880 --> 00:39:29,400
Speaker 1: So once I had written my response letters, you know,

698
00:39:29,480 --> 00:39:33,400
Speaker 1: you knew how to address these issues and concerns and

699
00:39:33,400 --> 00:39:37,360
Speaker 1: and the ridiculousness of them. Now, for example, the Indiana

700
00:39:37,400 --> 00:39:41,640
Speaker 1: Department of Natural Resources did a study, a social survey,

701
00:39:41,800 --> 00:39:45,520
Speaker 1: if you will, on whether or not rifles should be

702
00:39:45,560 --> 00:39:48,839
Speaker 1: allowed in Indiana for deer hunting. When I was growing up,

703
00:39:49,200 --> 00:39:52,360
Speaker 1: they were not. It was shotguns and muzzleloaders only. So

704
00:39:52,400 --> 00:39:54,680
Speaker 1: we grew up hunting with side handon this is before

705
00:39:54,719 --> 00:39:57,839
Speaker 1: in lines too, so we're hunting with side hammer muzzleloaders

706
00:39:58,040 --> 00:40:01,640
Speaker 1: or smooth bore shotguns. Like the ad event of the

707
00:40:01,640 --> 00:40:04,799
Speaker 1: fully rifled shot gun barrel, it had happened, but not

708
00:40:05,120 --> 00:40:07,040
Speaker 1: to the point that it had been mass produced. You

709
00:40:07,040 --> 00:40:10,080
Speaker 1: had to get like a remember like saving my money

710
00:40:10,120 --> 00:40:13,360
Speaker 1: to get a Hastings barrel, because that would take my

711
00:40:13,440 --> 00:40:16,880
Speaker 1: knuckleballs and turn them into fastballs that I've been thrown

712
00:40:16,920 --> 00:40:21,360
Speaker 1: at deer and so forever. That was just the way

713
00:40:21,440 --> 00:40:24,120
Speaker 1: you you deer hunted. Right Well, the n r A

714
00:40:25,080 --> 00:40:30,279
Speaker 1: made a big push financially to allow rifles in the

715
00:40:30,320 --> 00:40:33,560
Speaker 1: deer season. Now there was all the typical stories started

716
00:40:33,600 --> 00:40:36,440
Speaker 1: flying around, if you people are gonna get killed. Indiana

717
00:40:36,480 --> 00:40:39,240
Speaker 1: is so flat, it's so populated, and that's the argument

718
00:40:39,239 --> 00:40:43,399
Speaker 1: in Illinois, southern Wisconsin, southern Minnesota, parts of Ohio, these

719
00:40:43,440 --> 00:40:47,520
Speaker 1: other states where they don't allow rifles. But this money

720
00:40:47,560 --> 00:40:52,160
Speaker 1: got injected. And if you get involved in politics and

721
00:40:52,239 --> 00:40:54,880
Speaker 1: you're around it long enough, you learn the fact that

722
00:40:54,920 --> 00:40:57,880
Speaker 1: the answer to your question is money, no matter what

723
00:40:57,960 --> 00:41:00,239
Speaker 1: that question is. Just peel a few layers back of

724
00:41:00,280 --> 00:41:02,120
Speaker 1: that onion. You're going to get to the root cause,

725
00:41:02,160 --> 00:41:05,719
Speaker 1: and it's money. So money is injected into this, and

726
00:41:05,800 --> 00:41:09,120
Speaker 1: the Department of Natural Resources surveys citizens. They say they

727
00:41:09,160 --> 00:41:12,880
Speaker 1: do not want rifles overwhelmingly. Let's just keep things the

728
00:41:12,880 --> 00:41:15,239
Speaker 1: way they are because people are adverse to change. To

729
00:41:15,280 --> 00:41:22,480
Speaker 1: begin with, the legislature overrode that. The legislature had a uh,

730
00:41:22,560 --> 00:41:25,239
Speaker 1: they had you know, they had a obligation to the

731
00:41:25,280 --> 00:41:27,920
Speaker 1: people that were patting their pockets. Let's just call it

732
00:41:27,960 --> 00:41:30,960
Speaker 1: what it is. They're getting paid to write legislation in

733
00:41:31,000 --> 00:41:34,120
Speaker 1: favor of people that are making campaign contributions. I'm not

734
00:41:34,160 --> 00:41:35,719
Speaker 1: gonna do it to you. I'm not gonna go all

735
00:41:35,719 --> 00:41:38,000
Speaker 1: political on you because you know how deep in the

736
00:41:38,080 --> 00:41:41,080
Speaker 1: rabbit hole I'll go. But that's just the truth. With

737
00:41:41,360 --> 00:41:46,320
Speaker 1: enough money, you can influence legislation to override science, whether

738
00:41:46,360 --> 00:41:49,600
Speaker 1: that be natural science or social science. And that's just

739
00:41:49,680 --> 00:41:52,800
Speaker 1: one example of how enough money can make the legislature

740
00:41:52,840 --> 00:41:55,160
Speaker 1: make a decision that's averse to what the citizens said

741
00:41:55,200 --> 00:41:58,760
Speaker 1: they wanted. Now, nothing happened, and I'm glad it happened.

742
00:41:58,760 --> 00:42:01,120
Speaker 1: It ended up being all right. So it's a bad example.

743
00:42:01,160 --> 00:42:02,640
Speaker 1: If I want to make a case for the fact

744
00:42:02,640 --> 00:42:05,000
Speaker 1: that they should never be in control, there hasn't been

745
00:42:05,000 --> 00:42:07,640
Speaker 1: any increase in accidents. I don't know how it's impacted

746
00:42:07,640 --> 00:42:10,080
Speaker 1: the harvest. That was the other argument. Now you can

747
00:42:10,080 --> 00:42:12,040
Speaker 1: shoot your everything up there, you know, you're hunting like

748
00:42:13,080 --> 00:42:15,680
Speaker 1: fence rows and little wood lots and deer coming out

749
00:42:15,719 --> 00:42:17,520
Speaker 1: at three yard and they used to have to get

750
00:42:17,520 --> 00:42:19,160
Speaker 1: the hundred yards. Now you can pick them off with

751
00:42:19,200 --> 00:42:23,400
Speaker 1: the thirty six yards. So so that's what's so beautiful

752
00:42:23,400 --> 00:42:26,640
Speaker 1: about this Missouri model is that those decisions lie in

753
00:42:26,680 --> 00:42:31,320
Speaker 1: the hands of scientists, and so we've got it so good,

754
00:42:31,360 --> 00:42:33,080
Speaker 1: you know, but people are ignorant to the fact that

755
00:42:33,160 --> 00:42:35,840
Speaker 1: how good they have it. They don't know. Listen, in Arkansas,

756
00:42:36,440 --> 00:42:40,360
Speaker 1: that's all we know, and most people, most hunters, probably

757
00:42:40,400 --> 00:42:43,480
Speaker 1: wouldn't even understand how the Arkansas Gaming Fish Commission operates.

758
00:42:43,920 --> 00:42:48,800
Speaker 1: And so they hear government appointed commission, which has its

759
00:42:49,560 --> 00:42:54,320
Speaker 1: issues too. Sometimes you you know, wish there was different

760
00:42:54,360 --> 00:42:57,439
Speaker 1: things going on in the commission. But it's better. It's

761
00:42:57,520 --> 00:43:01,240
Speaker 1: way better than a whole bunch of people that probably

762
00:43:01,280 --> 00:43:03,880
Speaker 1: don't know or don't care about conservation making a decision.

763
00:43:04,000 --> 00:43:06,960
Speaker 1: I feel like my argument against the commission, and I'm

764
00:43:07,000 --> 00:43:10,080
Speaker 1: not shy to say this, and uh, and I'm talking

765
00:43:10,120 --> 00:43:12,759
Speaker 1: about friends of mine I know all these commissioners, and

766
00:43:13,480 --> 00:43:17,080
Speaker 1: but they're all they're all rich, white millionaires, every one

767
00:43:17,080 --> 00:43:19,640
Speaker 1: of them. Yeah. Well, and and that's what you hear.

768
00:43:19,800 --> 00:43:22,839
Speaker 1: And I hear that too, truth like their government appointees

769
00:43:23,080 --> 00:43:26,520
Speaker 1: who made serious campaign contributions and got these sweet jobs.

770
00:43:27,080 --> 00:43:29,920
Speaker 1: They're not paid. It's a volunteer position. But how long

771
00:43:29,960 --> 00:43:32,799
Speaker 1: is their term in Missouri? I think it's six years.

772
00:43:32,800 --> 00:43:35,640
Speaker 1: It's six years. I have a seven year and if you,

773
00:43:35,840 --> 00:43:38,040
Speaker 1: if you really and there's a guy on the commission

774
00:43:38,120 --> 00:43:40,760
Speaker 1: right now that's in his second term, you know, twelve

775
00:43:40,840 --> 00:43:45,000
Speaker 1: years in charge, and and that's of the decision making

776
00:43:45,360 --> 00:43:48,800
Speaker 1: of a two hundred million dollar budget. They're not putting

777
00:43:48,800 --> 00:43:51,600
Speaker 1: a guy like me or you on that commission, you know,

778
00:43:51,640 --> 00:43:56,080
Speaker 1: because we're not we're not capable of providing the the

779
00:43:56,160 --> 00:43:59,719
Speaker 1: benefit to get it, you know, And that's unfortunate. I

780
00:43:59,800 --> 00:44:03,239
Speaker 1: think if I was governor, But is that better than

781
00:44:04,160 --> 00:44:09,040
Speaker 1: seventy five guys who maybe don't know conservation making decision.

782
00:44:09,840 --> 00:44:13,360
Speaker 1: It wouldn't be seventy five guys in your hundred and

783
00:44:13,400 --> 00:44:17,080
Speaker 1: sixty three state reps and thirty four state senators and

784
00:44:17,200 --> 00:44:19,880
Speaker 1: almost none of them hunt fish, you know, like the

785
00:44:19,880 --> 00:44:22,839
Speaker 1: way assuming that your governor is appointing people that at

786
00:44:22,920 --> 00:44:26,600
Speaker 1: least have some they like. They like the outdoors, you know,

787
00:44:27,239 --> 00:44:30,640
Speaker 1: but more than anything, it's a prestigious position. And thankfully

788
00:44:30,680 --> 00:44:33,640
Speaker 1: they kind of let the department do what the department does.

789
00:44:33,719 --> 00:44:36,400
Speaker 1: And you know, so you look at ninety five, there

790
00:44:36,480 --> 00:44:38,879
Speaker 1: was four hundred deer. This year we killed just over

791
00:44:38,880 --> 00:44:42,520
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty thousand. That's incredible, right, eighty five

792
00:44:42,600 --> 00:44:45,840
Speaker 1: years of restoration efforts and now we have an estimated

793
00:44:45,880 --> 00:44:48,879
Speaker 1: population at one point three million. In Missouri, we got

794
00:44:48,880 --> 00:44:51,040
Speaker 1: six million residents and two million of them hold a

795
00:44:51,040 --> 00:44:54,160
Speaker 1: fishing license. That is the state I want to live in.

796
00:44:54,280 --> 00:44:57,880
Speaker 1: You know, we've got elk restoration happening. Our bear population

797
00:44:57,960 --> 00:45:01,239
Speaker 1: is surging. I like the fact that we've restored all

798
00:45:01,239 --> 00:45:03,279
Speaker 1: the species that belong on our land not all, but

799
00:45:03,480 --> 00:45:05,560
Speaker 1: many of the species that belong on our landscape, whether

800
00:45:05,640 --> 00:45:08,880
Speaker 1: or not they bring controversy or not. Otters tell somebody

801
00:45:08,960 --> 00:45:11,320
Speaker 1: down here you like an otter, and it's like cussing

802
00:45:11,320 --> 00:45:14,080
Speaker 1: their mother, you know, It's like, how could you like

803
00:45:14,160 --> 00:45:16,719
Speaker 1: an otter? Well, have you ever seen one swim? Have

804
00:45:16,800 --> 00:45:18,920
Speaker 1: you ever heard him chatter with each other? Why wouldn't

805
00:45:19,760 --> 00:45:23,240
Speaker 1: they eat fish? So it's a selfish thing, like instead

806
00:45:23,239 --> 00:45:26,120
Speaker 1: of looking at ourselves as like part of this continuous

807
00:45:27,239 --> 00:45:31,040
Speaker 1: evolution of all landscapes and the circle of life that

808
00:45:31,120 --> 00:45:33,960
Speaker 1: we're in, it's just like a you know, we're an

809
00:45:34,000 --> 00:45:36,680
Speaker 1: animal that somehow glitched in the matrix and became what

810
00:45:36,760 --> 00:45:41,760
Speaker 1: we are and so much more control of everything else.

811
00:45:41,840 --> 00:45:46,839
Speaker 1: But you know, otters belong here, have a role, right,

812
00:45:46,960 --> 00:45:51,120
Speaker 1: and everything has its place. And that's I think where

813
00:45:51,160 --> 00:45:53,360
Speaker 1: you know, you look at these hunters and anglers that

814
00:45:53,400 --> 00:45:55,200
Speaker 1: I grew up with that I said, I was a

815
00:45:55,239 --> 00:45:58,440
Speaker 1: hunter angler before I became a conservationist, and I probably

816
00:45:58,480 --> 00:46:00,319
Speaker 1: could have been sold on that idea to to like

817
00:46:00,880 --> 00:46:03,279
Speaker 1: kill the otters so there's more small mouth for me

818
00:46:03,360 --> 00:46:06,400
Speaker 1: to fish. But now I look at it like that

819
00:46:06,520 --> 00:46:09,120
Speaker 1: otter has just as much right to that small mouth

820
00:46:09,160 --> 00:46:12,719
Speaker 1: as I do. And I want that circle to be complete.

821
00:46:12,840 --> 00:46:15,680
Speaker 1: I want the If the otter wasn't there, there'd be

822
00:46:15,719 --> 00:46:20,200
Speaker 1: a hole in the puzzle. Yeah, the picture wouldn't be complete. Yeah,

823
00:46:20,320 --> 00:46:22,680
Speaker 1: So that's how I look at things now. And then

824
00:46:22,719 --> 00:46:25,120
Speaker 1: I hope people go out and trap otters, you know,

825
00:46:25,440 --> 00:46:28,640
Speaker 1: and harvest them legally and ethnically. You know, that's just

826
00:46:28,760 --> 00:46:32,720
Speaker 1: the whole cyclical thing. Okay, here's the question, without getting political,

827
00:46:33,920 --> 00:46:40,840
Speaker 1: why why are hunters generally not the first ones banging

828
00:46:40,840 --> 00:46:48,040
Speaker 1: on the door about environmental issues? And I am as well?

829
00:46:48,080 --> 00:46:50,720
Speaker 1: Without getting political, I was about to say something political.

830
00:46:51,000 --> 00:46:53,520
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm as conservative as they come in a

831
00:46:53,920 --> 00:46:57,280
Speaker 1: whole lot of ways, and it just doesn't even make sense.

832
00:46:57,400 --> 00:47:00,759
Speaker 1: And typically, you know, the conservative people would be the

833
00:47:01,320 --> 00:47:06,560
Speaker 1: would be the the rural people hunters, But we're the

834
00:47:06,560 --> 00:47:08,799
Speaker 1: ones that are in the environment, yet we're the ones

835
00:47:08,880 --> 00:47:12,200
Speaker 1: that are usually Can you answer that question without being

836
00:47:12,200 --> 00:47:16,120
Speaker 1: too political? I can answer that question very easily. What

837
00:47:16,160 --> 00:47:18,320
Speaker 1: did I tell you just a few minutes ago, ignorance?

838
00:47:19,280 --> 00:47:24,400
Speaker 1: The answer to your question is where I've already forgotten engagement,

839
00:47:24,880 --> 00:47:30,320
Speaker 1: being aware, I've already forgotten rewind the type money money money.

840
00:47:30,320 --> 00:47:37,839
Speaker 1: So environmental activism brings regulation that stifles economic growth historically,

841
00:47:38,400 --> 00:47:41,200
Speaker 1: which is when we transition this conversation to race line,

842
00:47:41,680 --> 00:47:43,400
Speaker 1: I'll be able to explain to you why I'm so

843
00:47:43,440 --> 00:47:45,919
Speaker 1: excited about what we're doing because it's a market based

844
00:47:45,920 --> 00:47:49,879
Speaker 1: solution to dealing with environmental challenges. So when you talk

845
00:47:49,960 --> 00:47:53,280
Speaker 1: to a farmer or a landowner about the Clean Water

846
00:47:53,360 --> 00:47:57,239
Speaker 1: Act and what that means for their operations and the

847
00:47:57,239 --> 00:48:01,040
Speaker 1: potential finds and and and recourse they can have for

848
00:48:01,760 --> 00:48:05,040
Speaker 1: you know, something happening off of their land or waterways.

849
00:48:05,400 --> 00:48:07,759
Speaker 1: They're scared to death, you know. And it's the same

850
00:48:07,760 --> 00:48:11,200
Speaker 1: thing with a guy that's in construction. You know, he

851
00:48:11,320 --> 00:48:15,400
Speaker 1: runs into a small wetland and now construction is halted.

852
00:48:15,880 --> 00:48:18,000
Speaker 1: Now you and I and many of the people listening

853
00:48:18,120 --> 00:48:21,719
Speaker 1: probably want that wetland to be can conserved. But at

854
00:48:21,760 --> 00:48:24,640
Speaker 1: the same time, now you're stopping a project from moving forward.

855
00:48:25,280 --> 00:48:28,440
Speaker 1: So air pollution, you know, with the fact that we

856
00:48:28,520 --> 00:48:31,640
Speaker 1: run on fossil fuel in this country and people are

857
00:48:31,640 --> 00:48:35,160
Speaker 1: adverse to change. So Cole has worked for a long time,

858
00:48:35,760 --> 00:48:38,520
Speaker 1: but it doesn't really work anymore. You know, both candidates

859
00:48:38,520 --> 00:48:41,480
Speaker 1: in the last election we're trying to go around coal

860
00:48:41,520 --> 00:48:43,760
Speaker 1: country talking about how they were going to bring it back,

861
00:48:43,800 --> 00:48:45,960
Speaker 1: you know, and the President made a big point of

862
00:48:45,960 --> 00:48:49,120
Speaker 1: that coal is not coming back. It's just not you know,

863
00:48:49,800 --> 00:48:53,200
Speaker 1: new coal plants aren't being built. My friends at all

864
00:48:53,239 --> 00:48:56,800
Speaker 1: working utility divisions are looking for renewable sources of energy.

865
00:48:57,280 --> 00:48:59,640
Speaker 1: It's just the direction that we're going. And and people

866
00:48:59,719 --> 00:49:03,239
Speaker 1: drag their feet on change, and because it's what we know,

867
00:49:03,360 --> 00:49:06,319
Speaker 1: it's what pays the bills at home, so it all

868
00:49:06,360 --> 00:49:10,399
Speaker 1: comes back to your economic security. And I got one

869
00:49:10,400 --> 00:49:13,560
Speaker 1: of my best friends, you know, guy named Charlie. Uh.

870
00:49:13,840 --> 00:49:17,000
Speaker 1: We had this conversation about climate change, which I'm seriously

871
00:49:17,040 --> 00:49:21,200
Speaker 1: concerned about, and there's no denying it's not happening. People

872
00:49:21,200 --> 00:49:24,160
Speaker 1: in America believe it's happening now. I was just a

873
00:49:24,200 --> 00:49:29,840
Speaker 1: guest of Congressman Billy Long, who is the congressman from Springfield, Missouri.

874
00:49:30,440 --> 00:49:34,000
Speaker 1: Uh staunch Republican, former auctioneer friend of Johnny Morris at

875
00:49:34,000 --> 00:49:37,160
Speaker 1: Bass Pro Shop and he's on the House Energy Committee,

876
00:49:37,600 --> 00:49:39,839
Speaker 1: and uh, he asked me to come up and make

877
00:49:39,880 --> 00:49:43,120
Speaker 1: a presentation two members of Congress on this committee at

878
00:49:43,160 --> 00:49:45,719
Speaker 1: kind of a showcase that they were having in the

879
00:49:45,800 --> 00:49:49,399
Speaker 1: Rayburn Building of the United States Capital, and it was great.

880
00:49:49,400 --> 00:49:51,399
Speaker 1: I took my daughter and it was like a couple

881
00:49:51,400 --> 00:49:53,879
Speaker 1: of days in Washington with her. But it was all

882
00:49:54,000 --> 00:49:58,760
Speaker 1: Republicans talking about how they want to address climate change

883
00:49:58,800 --> 00:50:03,040
Speaker 1: now in a market based approach, meaning that there's ways

884
00:50:03,040 --> 00:50:06,560
Speaker 1: that we can do this without stifling economic growth. So

885
00:50:08,280 --> 00:50:10,879
Speaker 1: I'm not being political, I'm just being factual and saying

886
00:50:10,920 --> 00:50:14,280
Speaker 1: that the Republican Party is the party that has really

887
00:50:14,600 --> 00:50:17,759
Speaker 1: held up, you know, the changes, and that's because they're

888
00:50:17,840 --> 00:50:21,000
Speaker 1: people typically are the rule people that are mostly afraid

889
00:50:21,040 --> 00:50:23,560
Speaker 1: of those economic hardships that come with that shift, or

890
00:50:23,560 --> 00:50:27,560
Speaker 1: at least that time of shifting. And uh, and now

891
00:50:27,760 --> 00:50:31,040
Speaker 1: they can't deny climate change anymore, just from just from

892
00:50:31,040 --> 00:50:34,719
Speaker 1: a pure political stance of like, Okay, our constituents are

893
00:50:34,840 --> 00:50:38,840
Speaker 1: voting block believes in climate change of Americans now have

894
00:50:38,920 --> 00:50:41,880
Speaker 1: been proven to believe in it. What's our new narrative

895
00:50:41,880 --> 00:50:44,360
Speaker 1: going to be? And the new narrative of the Republican

896
00:50:44,400 --> 00:50:47,760
Speaker 1: Party is the narrative that I've been running with all along,

897
00:50:47,800 --> 00:50:49,840
Speaker 1: you know, which I feel like I'm a man without

898
00:50:49,840 --> 00:50:52,919
Speaker 1: a party. You know, often, I just like I vote

899
00:50:52,920 --> 00:50:56,000
Speaker 1: a split ticket. I'm researching my candidates. I'm trying to

900
00:50:56,040 --> 00:50:58,680
Speaker 1: figure out who's best for my interests. And I think

901
00:50:58,719 --> 00:51:01,040
Speaker 1: that's what everybody should do. What's best for your interests.

902
00:51:01,480 --> 00:51:05,520
Speaker 1: And my interests are my economic security, the health and

903
00:51:05,520 --> 00:51:08,200
Speaker 1: wellness of my family and those close to me, and

904
00:51:08,200 --> 00:51:12,160
Speaker 1: really all citizens of the state and country, and then uh,

905
00:51:12,520 --> 00:51:17,440
Speaker 1: conservation in the outdoors, like who's good on those those issues? Um,

906
00:51:17,480 --> 00:51:20,359
Speaker 1: But it's great to see that we're aligned now, right,

907
00:51:20,400 --> 00:51:24,000
Speaker 1: We're aligned on the fact that the problem exists both

908
00:51:24,040 --> 00:51:28,440
Speaker 1: parties and and you know, that's that's the course you

909
00:51:28,440 --> 00:51:30,920
Speaker 1: want to take to solving any major problem is first

910
00:51:31,200 --> 00:51:33,719
Speaker 1: accepting the fact that there is a problem. So it's

911
00:51:33,719 --> 00:51:35,520
Speaker 1: taken us a long time to get over that hurdle,

912
00:51:36,000 --> 00:51:39,040
Speaker 1: but we're there and now as a as a country,

913
00:51:39,040 --> 00:51:41,960
Speaker 1: in a society, and ultimately as a globe as a

914
00:51:42,040 --> 00:51:46,239
Speaker 1: global economic society, like we gotta work together to come

915
00:51:46,320 --> 00:51:48,560
Speaker 1: up with solutions, but we got to put people to

916
00:51:48,600 --> 00:51:51,319
Speaker 1: work while we're doing that. And we can't just go

917
00:51:51,400 --> 00:51:53,640
Speaker 1: shut down a coal mine or go shut down a

918
00:51:53,640 --> 00:51:56,560
Speaker 1: coal plant today. You know, it's it's got to be

919
00:51:56,640 --> 00:51:59,200
Speaker 1: a process. And that's why you're seeing all these regulations

920
00:51:59,239 --> 00:52:01,920
Speaker 1: come in that greenhouse gases are going to be reduced

921
00:52:04,360 --> 00:52:08,680
Speaker 1: or you know, and it seems like a long time

922
00:52:08,719 --> 00:52:10,920
Speaker 1: to those of us that we're sitting here thinking in

923
00:52:11,800 --> 00:52:15,560
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be seventy, But babies are gonna people and

924
00:52:15,680 --> 00:52:17,399
Speaker 1: that are gonna live for a hundred years too. So

925
00:52:18,600 --> 00:52:21,960
Speaker 1: you know, it's a shame that the political process and

926
00:52:22,000 --> 00:52:25,120
Speaker 1: the temperature of this country is so polarized because to

927
00:52:25,120 --> 00:52:28,800
Speaker 1: to talk about environmental issues people. I mean there's people

928
00:52:28,880 --> 00:52:31,160
Speaker 1: right now they're probably thinking, oh that you know, this

929
00:52:31,239 --> 00:52:35,360
Speaker 1: is left wing stuff if it's really pretty bizarre, or

930
00:52:35,480 --> 00:52:38,279
Speaker 1: to think that because you care about environmental issues you

931
00:52:38,360 --> 00:52:41,040
Speaker 1: want to get rid of guns. I mean it's almost

932
00:52:41,080 --> 00:52:46,120
Speaker 1: like the two. You know, the polarization comes with like

933
00:52:46,239 --> 00:52:49,759
Speaker 1: all this different stuff, and that's what's bizarre, and that's

934
00:52:49,800 --> 00:52:55,439
Speaker 1: what that's what's uh uh you know, I mean, that's

935
00:52:55,480 --> 00:52:58,160
Speaker 1: what's a shame is that you know, to to to

936
00:52:58,280 --> 00:53:01,880
Speaker 1: talk about caring about the environment meant means that you know,

937
00:53:02,000 --> 00:53:06,000
Speaker 1: you're you're one direction real far or the other. And

938
00:53:06,040 --> 00:53:09,400
Speaker 1: it's just kind of bizarre because as hunters man, I

939
00:53:09,560 --> 00:53:12,600
Speaker 1: want that stream to be clean. I also am not

940
00:53:12,760 --> 00:53:18,319
Speaker 1: a tree hugging hippie. That's crazy, that doesn't understand reality

941
00:53:18,719 --> 00:53:21,680
Speaker 1: and I'm not enticing. What I want to do is

942
00:53:21,680 --> 00:53:23,880
Speaker 1: set you up to talk about what you do, Brandon,

943
00:53:24,400 --> 00:53:26,200
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, that's all I'll say about that.

944
00:53:26,280 --> 00:53:30,759
Speaker 1: I mean, just we we really do have to not

945
00:53:30,880 --> 00:53:33,960
Speaker 1: be too polarized. I mean that's the that's the temperature

946
00:53:33,960 --> 00:53:38,960
Speaker 1: of the country as polarization either side, and we've especially

947
00:53:38,960 --> 00:53:43,839
Speaker 1: as conservationists and hunters, I mean, yeah, the our rights

948
00:53:43,880 --> 00:53:46,759
Speaker 1: to keep and barre arms are so critical and powerful,

949
00:53:46,840 --> 00:53:49,080
Speaker 1: and we've got to do anything to say that. Also,

950
00:53:49,320 --> 00:53:52,920
Speaker 1: our right to have brownie bast on this stream because

951
00:53:52,920 --> 00:53:58,440
Speaker 1: it's not being you know, polluted, is equally is important.

952
00:53:59,640 --> 00:54:03,160
Speaker 1: So I love confusing people. I do it all the time.

953
00:54:04,080 --> 00:54:06,880
Speaker 1: So as the executive director of CFM, I was essentially

954
00:54:06,920 --> 00:54:09,640
Speaker 1: the chief lobbyists for conservation and state of Missouri. So

955
00:54:10,200 --> 00:54:12,480
Speaker 1: I was in the capital working with legislators, but I

956
00:54:12,520 --> 00:54:15,719
Speaker 1: was also very much out front and public interface going

957
00:54:15,760 --> 00:54:19,759
Speaker 1: around the state given conservation talks. The first thing that

958
00:54:20,080 --> 00:54:23,200
Speaker 1: I think people aren't aware of is that conservation and

959
00:54:23,360 --> 00:54:27,600
Speaker 1: environmentalism are not symbiotic. It's not the exact same thing.

960
00:54:28,360 --> 00:54:31,279
Speaker 1: A lot of the environmentalists, those in say like the

961
00:54:31,320 --> 00:54:35,239
Speaker 1: Sierra Club or or some of these very well established

962
00:54:35,520 --> 00:54:43,239
Speaker 1: left wing UH type of environmental organizations, they're important, they're

963
00:54:43,280 --> 00:54:46,400
Speaker 1: doing good work, they're they're pushing us in one direction.

964
00:54:46,880 --> 00:54:49,960
Speaker 1: And then you've got you've got you know, the complete

965
00:54:50,000 --> 00:54:53,600
Speaker 1: opposite of them, the anarchists that want no regulation and

966
00:54:53,600 --> 00:54:57,040
Speaker 1: they're pulling us in a different direction. But conservation, the

967
00:54:57,280 --> 00:55:02,200
Speaker 1: very simple definition of conservation is the wise use of

968
00:55:02,200 --> 00:55:06,600
Speaker 1: our resources. Right, So like when I bought this property.

969
00:55:06,760 --> 00:55:10,240
Speaker 1: I hired a forester to come in here and mark

970
00:55:10,320 --> 00:55:13,200
Speaker 1: the trees for me to do a select cut. Some

971
00:55:13,200 --> 00:55:16,160
Speaker 1: people think you're gonna buy this beautiful forested property and

972
00:55:16,160 --> 00:55:18,839
Speaker 1: cut the trees down. Well, some of those trees are

973
00:55:18,880 --> 00:55:23,279
Speaker 1: ready to be harvested. Those trees are renewable resource that

974
00:55:23,400 --> 00:55:28,200
Speaker 1: have value economically that allows me to have this property.

975
00:55:28,320 --> 00:55:31,400
Speaker 1: So I did. I did a timber harvest, and you know,

976
00:55:31,440 --> 00:55:34,520
Speaker 1: I took about of what I spent on this property

977
00:55:34,560 --> 00:55:36,520
Speaker 1: back in and that allowed me to down payment to

978
00:55:36,560 --> 00:55:41,800
Speaker 1: build the cabin. Right. So, so it's utility. It's the

979
00:55:41,800 --> 00:55:45,239
Speaker 1: the wise use of our resources, using our natural resources

980
00:55:45,239 --> 00:55:48,640
Speaker 1: in a sustainable way to make sure that we perpetuate

981
00:55:48,680 --> 00:55:51,560
Speaker 1: them into the future but also reap the rewards of

982
00:55:51,600 --> 00:55:54,239
Speaker 1: them today. So I'll go in and talk and and

983
00:55:54,320 --> 00:55:57,000
Speaker 1: it could be like I'll do a talk to any

984
00:55:57,040 --> 00:56:00,120
Speaker 1: size of group from five people to ten and and

985
00:56:00,200 --> 00:56:03,560
Speaker 1: it could be you know, seventy five year old cat ladies,

986
00:56:04,040 --> 00:56:06,160
Speaker 1: or it could be you know, a group of bulldoz

987
00:56:06,320 --> 00:56:11,160
Speaker 1: driving beer drinking deer hunting men. And uh, it'll surprise

988
00:56:11,239 --> 00:56:14,680
Speaker 1: the cat ladies that I own probably fifty firearms. You know,

989
00:56:14,719 --> 00:56:17,399
Speaker 1: they think I'm great until they find out that I hunt,

990
00:56:17,760 --> 00:56:21,120
Speaker 1: and I'm a staunch supporter of the Second Amendment and

991
00:56:21,120 --> 00:56:25,480
Speaker 1: and a big time firearm enthusiasts, right, And then I'll

992
00:56:25,520 --> 00:56:28,959
Speaker 1: go talk to the bulldoze driving beer drinking guys. We'll

993
00:56:29,000 --> 00:56:31,839
Speaker 1: just start talking about all these different calibers and and

994
00:56:31,880 --> 00:56:33,879
Speaker 1: they're like, this guy is not bad. And then I'll

995
00:56:33,920 --> 00:56:35,839
Speaker 1: bring up the Clean Water Act and the fact that

996
00:56:35,880 --> 00:56:39,480
Speaker 1: I want I want there to be regulations on on water.

997
00:56:39,640 --> 00:56:42,560
Speaker 1: And then it's like, damnit, he tricked us. You know,

998
00:56:42,920 --> 00:56:46,200
Speaker 1: It's like people can't understand that you can have both.

999
00:56:46,800 --> 00:56:49,600
Speaker 1: And I'll tie the creek even closer to home, like

1000
00:56:49,719 --> 00:56:52,040
Speaker 1: not just the fact that we got small mouth in

1001
00:56:52,040 --> 00:56:54,399
Speaker 1: there to go down and catch, but like I run

1002
00:56:54,440 --> 00:56:58,000
Speaker 1: that water through my my cabin for the shower and

1003
00:56:58,000 --> 00:57:00,600
Speaker 1: the toilet, and and like you asked me this morning,

1004
00:57:00,640 --> 00:57:03,319
Speaker 1: like can I brush my teeth with that? Like what

1005
00:57:03,400 --> 00:57:06,239
Speaker 1: a shame that we have to have that concern that

1006
00:57:06,280 --> 00:57:08,759
Speaker 1: our water is too polluted to brush your teeth with.

1007
00:57:08,920 --> 00:57:11,239
Speaker 1: But you asked me if I've ever gotten the beaver

1008
00:57:11,360 --> 00:57:14,359
Speaker 1: fever so far? No, you know, like it's coming out

1009
00:57:14,360 --> 00:57:17,040
Speaker 1: of a spring creek that bubbles up in the holler

1010
00:57:17,280 --> 00:57:20,600
Speaker 1: back about a mile and a half. There's no livestock

1011
00:57:20,680 --> 00:57:24,680
Speaker 1: between me and and and and the spring, so I

1012
00:57:24,720 --> 00:57:27,000
Speaker 1: take my chance. We don't drink it like we drink

1013
00:57:27,240 --> 00:57:31,120
Speaker 1: col again water bottles of water, but we certainly use

1014
00:57:31,160 --> 00:57:33,200
Speaker 1: it for the shower and the toilet and the sinks

1015
00:57:33,240 --> 00:57:35,960
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, wash the dishes with it. And

1016
00:57:36,680 --> 00:57:39,480
Speaker 1: I just love the fact that I feel confident and

1017
00:57:39,520 --> 00:57:41,520
Speaker 1: that that water is clean enough to do that with.

1018
00:57:42,160 --> 00:57:44,880
Speaker 1: But I also hate the fact that most water is

1019
00:57:44,920 --> 00:57:51,160
Speaker 1: not well go into tell me, so you know this

1020
00:57:51,200 --> 00:57:58,440
Speaker 1: whole idea that money and uh, economic stability is often

1021
00:57:58,520 --> 00:58:02,680
Speaker 1: the thing that keeps my people afraid of environmental stuff,

1022
00:58:02,720 --> 00:58:07,320
Speaker 1: which makes total sense. Tell me what you guys are doing. Yeah, So,

1023
00:58:08,120 --> 00:58:11,000
Speaker 1: I'm just beyond thrilled with the new role that I

1024
00:58:11,080 --> 00:58:14,800
Speaker 1: have and and the man that I'm working for. UM.

1025
00:58:14,840 --> 00:58:17,800
Speaker 1: I'm the director of communications for a company called race

1026
00:58:17,840 --> 00:58:22,400
Speaker 1: Line Alternative Energy, and Rudy race Line is our founder.

1027
00:58:23,040 --> 00:58:27,560
Speaker 1: I met Rudy through the Conservation Federation. UH A good story.

1028
00:58:27,600 --> 00:58:30,680
Speaker 1: In fact, there's a man named Frank Oberly and and

1029
00:58:30,680 --> 00:58:33,520
Speaker 1: Frank is just one of the He's just a unicorn,

1030
00:58:33,680 --> 00:58:36,280
Speaker 1: you know, And so is Rudy and when those two

1031
00:58:36,320 --> 00:58:39,040
Speaker 1: types of people meet, you know, magic can happen. And

1032
00:58:39,600 --> 00:58:43,080
Speaker 1: Frank Um he was a machine gunner on the side

1033
00:58:43,080 --> 00:58:46,880
Speaker 1: of a helicopter in Vietnam, which was the most deadly

1034
00:58:47,000 --> 00:58:49,840
Speaker 1: job you could have over there, the highest casualty rate.

1035
00:58:50,680 --> 00:58:55,080
Speaker 1: And we of course did not treat our soldiers well

1036
00:58:55,080 --> 00:58:57,600
Speaker 1: when they came back from Vietnam. It wasn't you know.

1037
00:58:57,720 --> 00:59:00,360
Speaker 1: We still need to do so much more today for

1038
00:59:00,400 --> 00:59:04,240
Speaker 1: our for our military veterans. But uh, I do believe,

1039
00:59:04,240 --> 00:59:06,200
Speaker 1: and I think most would concur that there they have

1040
00:59:06,280 --> 00:59:08,800
Speaker 1: it better than the guys coming back from Vietnam did.

1041
00:59:09,120 --> 00:59:13,120
Speaker 1: And Frank obviously had PTSD and issues that he dealt with,

1042
00:59:13,600 --> 00:59:16,560
Speaker 1: and he found his soulace in nature. He became a

1043
00:59:16,720 --> 00:59:20,160
Speaker 1: world renowned photographer. He was on staff at Life Magazine.

1044
00:59:20,200 --> 00:59:23,600
Speaker 1: At the peak of Life Magazine, he was selling images

1045
00:59:23,720 --> 00:59:26,920
Speaker 1: to ad agencies in New York like he was a

1046
00:59:26,920 --> 00:59:31,520
Speaker 1: photographer for the Madmen era and and eventually he burned

1047
00:59:31,520 --> 00:59:34,200
Speaker 1: out on the photography and took some of his money

1048
00:59:34,200 --> 00:59:37,840
Speaker 1: and bought a little over five hundred acres of basically

1049
00:59:37,880 --> 00:59:42,240
Speaker 1: destroyed land in north central Missouri outside of Kirksville, and

1050
00:59:42,280 --> 00:59:44,960
Speaker 1: he restored it all the native prairie. And then he

1051
00:59:45,000 --> 00:59:49,360
Speaker 1: started a seed collection company called Pure Natives, and he

1052
00:59:49,400 --> 00:59:54,040
Speaker 1: became kind of this like godfather of of Native prairie, tallgrass,

1053
00:59:54,040 --> 00:59:58,400
Speaker 1: prairie restoration. Well, somehow his path intercrossed with Rudy race Line.

1054
00:59:58,400 --> 01:00:01,960
Speaker 1: I believe it was at the Missouri per Foundation. And

1055
01:00:01,960 --> 01:00:06,000
Speaker 1: and Rudy was already a very successful businessman. He he

1056
01:00:06,040 --> 01:00:08,680
Speaker 1: was an immigrant to America when he was seven years old.

1057
01:00:08,840 --> 01:00:12,160
Speaker 1: His family was displaced after World War Two and and

1058
01:00:12,280 --> 01:00:14,640
Speaker 1: was sponsored by a family to come to St. Louis.

1059
01:00:15,280 --> 01:00:18,400
Speaker 1: And Rudy is just one of those mentally and physically

1060
01:00:18,440 --> 01:00:21,680
Speaker 1: tough human beings that refuses to fail. And he worked

1061
01:00:21,680 --> 01:00:25,160
Speaker 1: his way up through high school and athletics, and he

1062
01:00:25,280 --> 01:00:27,960
Speaker 1: was the captain of the nineteen sixty seven St. Louis

1063
01:00:28,040 --> 01:00:30,800
Speaker 1: University National Championship soccer team. He's just one of those

1064
01:00:30,800 --> 01:00:33,840
Speaker 1: guys that's successful his whole life because he works harder

1065
01:00:33,840 --> 01:00:37,400
Speaker 1: than anybody else and he outthinks everybody else. And he

1066
01:00:37,520 --> 01:00:40,560
Speaker 1: created a company eventually called race Line and Associates, which

1067
01:00:40,600 --> 01:00:45,520
Speaker 1: today is the world's leader in the manufacturing or in

1068
01:00:45,560 --> 01:00:50,600
Speaker 1: the construction of manufacturing plants that make aluminum beverage cans.

1069
01:00:51,120 --> 01:00:53,920
Speaker 1: So he says, wherever you are in the world on

1070
01:00:54,000 --> 01:00:56,440
Speaker 1: planet Earth, if you drink out of an aluminum beverage,

1071
01:00:56,480 --> 01:01:01,160
Speaker 1: can that there's a chance came off of an assembly

1072
01:01:01,200 --> 01:01:03,880
Speaker 1: line that race Line and associates built. So they've done

1073
01:01:03,880 --> 01:01:06,440
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty of these and over fifty countries.

1074
01:01:06,520 --> 01:01:10,520
Speaker 1: And he's world traveled, I mean for thirty years. He

1075
01:01:10,600 --> 01:01:14,280
Speaker 1: was all over the world doing this. But again, his

1076
01:01:14,320 --> 01:01:17,600
Speaker 1: soulace is found in nature. And he acquired this large

1077
01:01:17,640 --> 01:01:20,920
Speaker 1: farm up in the northern northern Missouri right by the

1078
01:01:20,920 --> 01:01:24,760
Speaker 1: Iowa border and went to work on restoring it. And

1079
01:01:24,840 --> 01:01:28,040
Speaker 1: he does everything in this like engineered process in his mind,

1080
01:01:28,080 --> 01:01:30,680
Speaker 1: like that's where he's made his money is being able

1081
01:01:30,720 --> 01:01:36,040
Speaker 1: to see how like a system can bring things together mechanically,

1082
01:01:36,640 --> 01:01:41,000
Speaker 1: but he also understands it naturally. For example, he developed

1083
01:01:41,000 --> 01:01:45,120
Speaker 1: an assembly line that like if you remember the beginning

1084
01:01:45,160 --> 01:01:47,400
Speaker 1: of for all those our age and older, if you

1085
01:01:47,400 --> 01:01:50,000
Speaker 1: can remember when Laverne and Shirley was a show and

1086
01:01:50,000 --> 01:01:51,920
Speaker 1: it would open and there's like a bottle line and

1087
01:01:51,960 --> 01:01:54,800
Speaker 1: it's going like single file. Rudy figured out how to

1088
01:01:54,840 --> 01:01:58,480
Speaker 1: spread that out wider. And he said, one day, I

1089
01:01:58,520 --> 01:02:03,040
Speaker 1: was just thinking about when a river flows downstream and

1090
01:02:03,120 --> 01:02:07,080
Speaker 1: it comes to a boulder. The river doesn't shut down.

1091
01:02:07,680 --> 01:02:11,120
Speaker 1: The river finds a way to work around that obstacle

1092
01:02:11,520 --> 01:02:14,760
Speaker 1: and then merge back behind it. And he took that

1093
01:02:14,920 --> 01:02:20,360
Speaker 1: natural system and converted to a mechanical process and created

1094
01:02:20,400 --> 01:02:23,480
Speaker 1: a new way of of running an assembly line for

1095
01:02:23,600 --> 01:02:25,880
Speaker 1: when one line goes down, the rest of them will

1096
01:02:25,920 --> 01:02:29,200
Speaker 1: flow around it. So genius stuff that's rooted in his

1097
01:02:29,640 --> 01:02:34,560
Speaker 1: appreciation and understanding of nature. So then moving forward, he

1098
01:02:34,120 --> 01:02:37,760
Speaker 1: he wants to do something to address the issues that

1099
01:02:37,800 --> 01:02:40,400
Speaker 1: we have environmentally in this country and in this world.

1100
01:02:40,880 --> 01:02:44,440
Speaker 1: An anaerobic digestion, which is a natural process that happens

1101
01:02:44,440 --> 01:02:47,920
Speaker 1: when oxygen is removed from the equation, is big in Europe,

1102
01:02:47,960 --> 01:02:51,160
Speaker 1: and Rudy so well traveled in Europe. He knows that

1103
01:02:51,200 --> 01:02:53,360
Speaker 1: this is something going on over there that should be

1104
01:02:53,360 --> 01:02:58,320
Speaker 1: being applied here. So he creates raceline alternative energy between

1105
01:02:58,400 --> 01:03:02,680
Speaker 1: two visions. One is a Horizon one, which is the

1106
01:03:02,920 --> 01:03:07,920
Speaker 1: anaerobic digestion of livestock manure to create renewable natural gas,

1107
01:03:08,400 --> 01:03:12,440
Speaker 1: and Horizon two is the anaerobic digestion of native prairie

1108
01:03:12,520 --> 01:03:18,080
Speaker 1: plants to create renewable natural gas. Horizon one is operating now,

1109
01:03:18,160 --> 01:03:21,720
Speaker 1: and that's what we're in the middle of finishing off

1110
01:03:22,120 --> 01:03:26,240
Speaker 1: these large scale farms CAFOs. So anybody familiar in your

1111
01:03:26,240 --> 01:03:28,360
Speaker 1: neck of the woods with what's gone on in the

1112
01:03:28,400 --> 01:03:35,160
Speaker 1: Buffalo and these are very environmentally it's a confined animal

1113
01:03:35,200 --> 01:03:38,840
Speaker 1: feeding operation. So any any of these confined animal feeding

1114
01:03:38,880 --> 01:03:42,920
Speaker 1: operations with more than thousand animal units and there's environmental

1115
01:03:42,960 --> 01:03:45,520
Speaker 1: bands coming in on kneath. So it's it's like, Okay,

1116
01:03:45,520 --> 01:03:47,960
Speaker 1: we have a horrible problem that we have to solve.

1117
01:03:48,000 --> 01:03:51,080
Speaker 1: We have an exploding population in this world that we've

1118
01:03:51,120 --> 01:03:53,520
Speaker 1: got to feed. That we've got to feed, but we've

1119
01:03:53,560 --> 01:03:56,400
Speaker 1: also got to take care of our planet sustainably. How

1120
01:03:56,440 --> 01:03:59,120
Speaker 1: do we do that? So these CAFOs aren't going away,

1121
01:03:59,240 --> 01:04:01,880
Speaker 1: no matter what health artnance you put in. Not everybody's

1122
01:04:01,880 --> 01:04:04,560
Speaker 1: gonna grow chickens in their backyard and garden. Like, we

1123
01:04:04,560 --> 01:04:06,680
Speaker 1: we got a lot of people defeed nine point five

1124
01:04:06,680 --> 01:04:09,200
Speaker 1: billion on this planet, So how do we do it

1125
01:04:09,200 --> 01:04:13,400
Speaker 1: in a sustainable, environmentally friendly way. So what we've done

1126
01:04:13,560 --> 01:04:16,920
Speaker 1: is we've gone in, We've tarped over these lagoons and

1127
01:04:16,960 --> 01:04:21,600
Speaker 1: about eight thousand hogs are defecating and urinating into a

1128
01:04:21,640 --> 01:04:24,600
Speaker 1: single lagoon. So these hogs like, if you're picturing the

1129
01:04:24,680 --> 01:04:26,720
Speaker 1: kind of hog farm that I would have pictured growing up,

1130
01:04:26,760 --> 01:04:29,880
Speaker 1: you're thinking of pigs rolling around the sloping mud. Not

1131
01:04:29,920 --> 01:04:33,360
Speaker 1: the case at all. They're living on grated floors in

1132
01:04:33,760 --> 01:04:38,080
Speaker 1: air conditioned and heated barns, and they're defecating and urinating

1133
01:04:38,120 --> 01:04:40,680
Speaker 1: through these slots. That then goes into a trough and

1134
01:04:40,800 --> 01:04:44,600
Speaker 1: is flushed with water out into this lagoon. Historically or

1135
01:04:44,880 --> 01:04:48,080
Speaker 1: or still what's going on now in many instances is

1136
01:04:48,120 --> 01:04:53,400
Speaker 1: that that breaks down and the gases are emitted into

1137
01:04:53,440 --> 01:04:59,920
Speaker 1: the atmosphere. So a significant portion like estimated of men

1138
01:05:00,120 --> 01:05:03,520
Speaker 1: thane entering into our climate, which is significantly worse than

1139
01:05:03,600 --> 01:05:08,840
Speaker 1: CEO two's coming from livestock waste. We tarp over these

1140
01:05:08,880 --> 01:05:11,960
Speaker 1: giant lagoons, and methane is what we can burn as

1141
01:05:12,080 --> 01:05:14,720
Speaker 1: clean energy exactly. So what we do is we go

1142
01:05:14,760 --> 01:05:18,680
Speaker 1: in and we tarp over these lagoons and anaerobic digestion

1143
01:05:18,800 --> 01:05:22,200
Speaker 1: again as a natural process of bacteria breaking down these solids,

1144
01:05:22,200 --> 01:05:24,800
Speaker 1: and it only happens when the water temperature sixty degrees

1145
01:05:24,800 --> 01:05:28,000
Speaker 1: are higher. So our our our windows really like April

1146
01:05:28,040 --> 01:05:32,200
Speaker 1: through October for the natural process without heating it at

1147
01:05:32,200 --> 01:05:35,160
Speaker 1: which we don't at this point, but those tarps will

1148
01:05:35,160 --> 01:05:37,680
Speaker 1: blow up like giant blimps, and then we suck that

1149
01:05:37,760 --> 01:05:41,760
Speaker 1: gas off and so like on let's for example, one

1150
01:05:41,800 --> 01:05:44,400
Speaker 1: farm might have ten lagoons, and each one of those

1151
01:05:44,400 --> 01:05:46,480
Speaker 1: blows up, and each one of those has a compressor

1152
01:05:46,560 --> 01:05:49,640
Speaker 1: system that sucks that gas out from underneath that tarp

1153
01:05:49,720 --> 01:05:54,040
Speaker 1: to a centralized gas purification skid. We clean that gas

1154
01:05:54,160 --> 01:05:57,600
Speaker 1: right there, We flare off the undesirables the CEO two,

1155
01:05:58,200 --> 01:06:01,560
Speaker 1: and then we capture that methane in a pure renewable

1156
01:06:01,640 --> 01:06:05,800
Speaker 1: natural gas form and it's directly injected into the natural

1157
01:06:05,800 --> 01:06:09,040
Speaker 1: gas grid in North Missouri. So we've built where does

1158
01:06:09,080 --> 01:06:11,200
Speaker 1: that natural gas have to be processed more before it

1159
01:06:11,200 --> 01:06:13,240
Speaker 1: can be used? And they're still over at your house. No,

1160
01:06:13,640 --> 01:06:16,520
Speaker 1: it's going in and mixing right now with it's the

1161
01:06:16,600 --> 01:06:20,920
Speaker 1: same chemical compos It's incredible and it's very it's very

1162
01:06:20,960 --> 01:06:24,560
Speaker 1: lucrative at the moment because of some carbon credit opportunities

1163
01:06:24,600 --> 01:06:28,840
Speaker 1: in California in their low carbon fuel standard. So California

1164
01:06:28,880 --> 01:06:34,160
Speaker 1: has really led the way Minnesota, New York, Colorado, UH,

1165
01:06:34,360 --> 01:06:38,240
Speaker 1: some of the more progressive states or following suit. The man,

1166
01:06:38,320 --> 01:06:41,440
Speaker 1: what's so beautiful about this is it's very agriculture and

1167
01:06:41,680 --> 01:06:45,040
Speaker 1: very rural community oriented, you know, and that's where the

1168
01:06:45,080 --> 01:06:48,560
Speaker 1: Republican Party is is seeing an opportunity to really advance this.

1169
01:06:49,400 --> 01:06:51,680
Speaker 1: So Horizon one is happening, you know, where we can't

1170
01:06:51,720 --> 01:06:56,320
Speaker 1: talk about California being progressive unless we dog them and

1171
01:06:56,480 --> 01:07:01,400
Speaker 1: slap them for their unprogressive stance on hunt large carnivores.

1172
01:07:01,440 --> 01:07:05,160
Speaker 1: But go ahead, Yeah, they're they're surely not without their problems, right,

1173
01:07:05,640 --> 01:07:07,400
Speaker 1: but they got some incredible duck hunting up in the

1174
01:07:07,400 --> 01:07:09,840
Speaker 1: Sacramento Valley that I'm going to get into. The long

1175
01:07:09,840 --> 01:07:11,800
Speaker 1: story short, they have what they call the Low Carbon

1176
01:07:11,840 --> 01:07:14,960
Speaker 1: Fuel Standard, which values your gas based on your carbon

1177
01:07:15,000 --> 01:07:19,320
Speaker 1: intensity score. So that is factored by how much carbon

1178
01:07:19,400 --> 01:07:24,520
Speaker 1: you're producing in the in the production, transportation, and usage

1179
01:07:24,520 --> 01:07:28,600
Speaker 1: of your renewable fuel that's used in transportation. See out there,

1180
01:07:28,600 --> 01:07:31,800
Speaker 1: they're running trucks on CNNG. You can compress natural gas.

1181
01:07:31,880 --> 01:07:34,360
Speaker 1: You can go to a gas station and fill up

1182
01:07:34,480 --> 01:07:38,600
Speaker 1: on compressed natural gas UPS is converted like almost two

1183
01:07:38,640 --> 01:07:41,640
Speaker 1: hundred thousand of their fleet vehicles in California to run

1184
01:07:41,680 --> 01:07:45,200
Speaker 1: on c and so they value your gas on this

1185
01:07:45,240 --> 01:07:50,120
Speaker 1: carbon intensity score. For example, ethanol which is another biogas

1186
01:07:50,160 --> 01:07:54,640
Speaker 1: another form of renewable energy. It values that about plus eight.

1187
01:07:55,840 --> 01:07:59,560
Speaker 1: We shattered the ceiling and the market coming in a

1188
01:07:59,640 --> 01:08:02,560
Speaker 1: negative three D and seventy two we have produced. So

1189
01:08:02,600 --> 01:08:07,120
Speaker 1: it's really high quality clean natural gas. Yeah, coming from this,

1190
01:08:08,000 --> 01:08:10,680
Speaker 1: we don't use hardly any fossil fuels in the production

1191
01:08:10,760 --> 01:08:13,200
Speaker 1: or transportation of it. I see what you're saying. So

1192
01:08:13,440 --> 01:08:16,919
Speaker 1: we don't we have a negative carbon impact on the environment,

1193
01:08:17,439 --> 01:08:20,280
Speaker 1: and it it's direct injected into the grid, and and

1194
01:08:20,400 --> 01:08:25,360
Speaker 1: California values that based on an offset of fossil fuel usage.

1195
01:08:25,439 --> 01:08:28,240
Speaker 1: So that's horizon one and it's happening like we're profitable

1196
01:08:28,280 --> 01:08:31,000
Speaker 1: on that. We produced a hundred and sixty thousand decatherms

1197
01:08:31,040 --> 01:08:35,400
Speaker 1: of renewable fuel last year. Horizon too, is what the

1198
01:08:35,479 --> 01:08:39,479
Speaker 1: whole vision is about. So in North Missouri and a

1199
01:08:39,479 --> 01:08:45,200
Speaker 1: lot of the heartland, agriculture has has pushed into marginal lands.

1200
01:08:45,240 --> 01:08:47,640
Speaker 1: When people talk about like why don't we have quails,

1201
01:08:47,680 --> 01:08:50,800
Speaker 1: because farms have gotten to the point of farming as

1202
01:08:50,880 --> 01:08:55,120
Speaker 1: many acres and as many square inches of their landscape

1203
01:08:55,200 --> 01:08:57,680
Speaker 1: as they can. And who can blame them, right, Like

1204
01:08:57,800 --> 01:09:00,439
Speaker 1: that's their livelihood. These are farmers just trying to make

1205
01:09:00,439 --> 01:09:03,640
Speaker 1: a living. And we we look at like the economic

1206
01:09:03,680 --> 01:09:06,360
Speaker 1: reports on agriculture in this country, and it's not easy

1207
01:09:06,400 --> 01:09:08,880
Speaker 1: to be a small farmer these days at all. Right,

1208
01:09:09,720 --> 01:09:12,960
Speaker 1: So so what we found is that instead of looking

1209
01:09:13,000 --> 01:09:17,439
Speaker 1: for alternative solutions, they just keep putting input costs like

1210
01:09:18,080 --> 01:09:21,439
Speaker 1: seed and tractors into these marginal lands. And then there's

1211
01:09:21,520 --> 01:09:23,200
Speaker 1: multiple reasons. One day, I don't know what else to

1212
01:09:23,240 --> 01:09:27,800
Speaker 1: do to crop insurance will let a marginal crop get

1213
01:09:27,840 --> 01:09:30,880
Speaker 1: failed and you can still get a return on it.

1214
01:09:31,000 --> 01:09:33,479
Speaker 1: So that's not a good thing for anybody. It's you know,

1215
01:09:33,560 --> 01:09:38,080
Speaker 1: taxpayer funded and uh and and we come in now

1216
01:09:38,160 --> 01:09:41,920
Speaker 1: with an alternative solution that is similar to the Conservation

1217
01:09:42,000 --> 01:09:47,120
Speaker 1: Reserve Program CRP. CRP at its peak had forty million

1218
01:09:47,120 --> 01:09:51,680
Speaker 1: acres enrolled, and now it's it's CRP. I want to

1219
01:09:51,760 --> 01:09:53,559
Speaker 1: let you talk, and then I want to say it

1220
01:09:53,600 --> 01:09:56,240
Speaker 1: real simply because you did it yesterday and I think

1221
01:09:56,280 --> 01:09:59,599
Speaker 1: I understand a real simplistic way. But let me stop

1222
01:09:59,600 --> 01:10:03,040
Speaker 1: you right there. CRP is when when the government is

1223
01:10:03,080 --> 01:10:08,440
Speaker 1: paying farmers not to farm sections of agricultural land exactly,

1224
01:10:08,520 --> 01:10:11,880
Speaker 1: so it's a you're putting land that has previously been

1225
01:10:11,920 --> 01:10:16,040
Speaker 1: farmed into a reserve program and letting you know, habitat

1226
01:10:16,160 --> 01:10:20,880
Speaker 1: friendly grasses and plants and shrubs come back. And it's

1227
01:10:20,920 --> 01:10:25,360
Speaker 1: supposed to be for creating a conservation reserve for wildlife

1228
01:10:25,360 --> 01:10:27,920
Speaker 1: and animals. What it really exists for is to set

1229
01:10:27,920 --> 01:10:32,280
Speaker 1: commodity prices on agricultural products, like we can't overproduce otherwise

1230
01:10:32,360 --> 01:10:34,400
Speaker 1: the prices dropped, you know, to supply and to me,

1231
01:10:34,479 --> 01:10:38,280
Speaker 1: it's very simplest supplying demand. It's designed to help farmers

1232
01:10:38,320 --> 01:10:42,720
Speaker 1: be financially stable because if is that right my managing

1233
01:10:42,760 --> 01:10:46,320
Speaker 1: the cost and value of their crops, Like if me

1234
01:10:46,400 --> 01:10:49,240
Speaker 1: and you just overproduced corn to the point where we

1235
01:10:49,280 --> 01:10:52,559
Speaker 1: had more to sell than there were buyers for, then

1236
01:10:52,680 --> 01:10:55,360
Speaker 1: our value of our corn would be dramatically reduced, so

1237
01:10:55,400 --> 01:10:57,160
Speaker 1: all the work we did for the whole year would

1238
01:10:57,200 --> 01:11:00,280
Speaker 1: be worth nothing and we'd go bankrupt after the course

1239
01:11:00,360 --> 01:11:03,320
Speaker 1: a few years. So the problems with agriculture doing this

1240
01:11:03,400 --> 01:11:05,920
Speaker 1: is the fact that they're farming hillsides like imagine like

1241
01:11:05,960 --> 01:11:08,720
Speaker 1: some inca village in South America that you've seen old

1242
01:11:08,800 --> 01:11:11,559
Speaker 1: drawings of where they like they stare step a hill,

1243
01:11:12,120 --> 01:11:14,879
Speaker 1: And in Missouri we're doing it's called it's called terracing,

1244
01:11:15,479 --> 01:11:20,240
Speaker 1: and what that causes is horrible runoff so everything runs downstream.

1245
01:11:20,280 --> 01:11:22,439
Speaker 1: We're back to water quality and the fact that like

1246
01:11:22,520 --> 01:11:26,000
Speaker 1: the Gulf of Mexico is dying again, science right that

1247
01:11:26,280 --> 01:11:30,120
Speaker 1: this isn't a debate square mile dead space exactly, and

1248
01:11:30,120 --> 01:11:33,639
Speaker 1: that's because of that. That's because of all the nitrogen

1249
01:11:33,680 --> 01:11:37,280
Speaker 1: and phosphorus that's coming off agricultural lands from every river

1250
01:11:37,400 --> 01:11:40,160
Speaker 1: and drainage in the Midwest, and it's all ending up

1251
01:11:40,240 --> 01:11:43,280
Speaker 1: at the mouth of the Mississippi River, and it's eliminating

1252
01:11:43,360 --> 01:11:48,680
Speaker 1: a multibillion dollar economy down there around commercial fishing and recreation.

1253
01:11:49,360 --> 01:11:52,719
Speaker 1: So it's our fault for sending it downstream. But again,

1254
01:11:52,760 --> 01:11:55,280
Speaker 1: we gotta have agriculture. So what do we do. Well,

1255
01:11:55,320 --> 01:11:59,439
Speaker 1: We institute nature's native sponge, which is prairie. So we

1256
01:11:59,520 --> 01:12:03,400
Speaker 1: bring back tall grass prairie, and we plant along waterways

1257
01:12:03,439 --> 01:12:07,120
Speaker 1: and in marginal lands. The roots systems of native grasses

1258
01:12:07,160 --> 01:12:09,680
Speaker 1: and plants will go ten to fifteen feet deep in

1259
01:12:09,680 --> 01:12:13,320
Speaker 1: the soil. They absorb a lot of water and then

1260
01:12:13,360 --> 01:12:16,880
Speaker 1: they'll they'll block. Imagine, it's like a defense for our

1261
01:12:16,920 --> 01:12:20,719
Speaker 1: water systems. So these hillsides are farmed, but we're trying

1262
01:12:20,760 --> 01:12:23,040
Speaker 1: to take those farmed hillsides and put them back into

1263
01:12:23,120 --> 01:12:27,559
Speaker 1: prairie and then farm your prime acres, those profitable acres

1264
01:12:27,560 --> 01:12:30,639
Speaker 1: that are actually generating money for you above and beyond

1265
01:12:30,640 --> 01:12:34,080
Speaker 1: your input costs. And then we will enter into a

1266
01:12:34,080 --> 01:12:38,760
Speaker 1: long term contract like CRP, like a ten year contract

1267
01:12:38,760 --> 01:12:42,280
Speaker 1: with you to restore the prairie and then harvest it

1268
01:12:42,760 --> 01:12:46,599
Speaker 1: and feed it into above ground anaerobic digesters and make

1269
01:12:46,640 --> 01:12:49,320
Speaker 1: renewable natural gas out of that as well. So we're

1270
01:12:49,320 --> 01:12:51,800
Speaker 1: gonna be able to take farmers and landowners from just

1271
01:12:51,920 --> 01:12:57,280
Speaker 1: being into agriculture to also being into renewable energy production

1272
01:12:57,840 --> 01:13:00,599
Speaker 1: and then getting them into the carbon crew it and

1273
01:13:00,680 --> 01:13:03,600
Speaker 1: water quality credit markets as well. So you can you

1274
01:13:03,640 --> 01:13:06,680
Speaker 1: can go from being a corn and soybean farmer to

1275
01:13:06,760 --> 01:13:12,679
Speaker 1: being a corn swybean farmer, renewable energy producer and accredited. Basically,

1276
01:13:14,760 --> 01:13:17,320
Speaker 1: let me let me describe to you what I'm hearing

1277
01:13:17,360 --> 01:13:18,920
Speaker 1: you say, and then you tell me if it's right.

1278
01:13:19,400 --> 01:13:22,479
Speaker 1: So I'm a farmer in Missouri or wherever. This is

1279
01:13:22,520 --> 01:13:25,400
Speaker 1: a national company, so conbeating where but I'm a farmer

1280
01:13:25,439 --> 01:13:31,679
Speaker 1: in north North Missouri. I'm farming dred acres, nine hundred

1281
01:13:31,760 --> 01:13:38,599
Speaker 1: acres of that hundred it's prime farmland, it's flat, it's

1282
01:13:38,720 --> 01:13:44,639
Speaker 1: everything is right about it being profitable for growing agricultural crops.

1283
01:13:45,840 --> 01:13:51,479
Speaker 1: Six hundred acres of that is marginal farmland that I

1284
01:13:51,680 --> 01:13:58,040
Speaker 1: plant every year or put in c RP at different times. Um.

1285
01:13:58,120 --> 01:14:03,479
Speaker 1: And like you said, the insurance type stuff, like some

1286
01:14:03,560 --> 01:14:06,160
Speaker 1: farmers would plant stuff almost knowing that it was going

1287
01:14:06,200 --> 01:14:11,120
Speaker 1: to fail to collect insurance. That can happen, I mean,

1288
01:14:11,200 --> 01:14:12,640
Speaker 1: and maybe that's not the right way to say that.

1289
01:14:12,640 --> 01:14:16,320
Speaker 1: That's a bad way to say that. Um, it can happen. Yeah,

1290
01:14:16,560 --> 01:14:18,720
Speaker 1: And I'm okay, So you just told me I was

1291
01:14:18,760 --> 01:14:22,439
Speaker 1: wrong there, Brandon, That's okay. But what you guys are

1292
01:14:22,479 --> 01:14:27,759
Speaker 1: saying is that you'll take the marginal lands and pay

1293
01:14:27,840 --> 01:14:31,040
Speaker 1: the farmer to restore it back to native prairie. You know,

1294
01:14:31,120 --> 01:14:33,120
Speaker 1: we're not at the point yet to where I can

1295
01:14:33,160 --> 01:14:36,040
Speaker 1: say how much we can pay per acre. We're working

1296
01:14:36,040 --> 01:14:38,800
Speaker 1: with Iowa State to come up with the right mix

1297
01:14:38,880 --> 01:14:42,720
Speaker 1: that provides the most fuel for energy production along with

1298
01:14:42,720 --> 01:14:46,240
Speaker 1: the most wildlife and equalode. So we are then at

1299
01:14:46,320 --> 01:14:51,120
Speaker 1: race line is three tiered energy production, ecological services, and

1300
01:14:51,160 --> 01:14:54,560
Speaker 1: wildlife benefits. So what's the best mix of these natives

1301
01:14:54,600 --> 01:14:59,040
Speaker 1: that will give us energy production, protect our landscape, and

1302
01:14:59,040 --> 01:15:02,840
Speaker 1: protect our water and provide critical habitat for wildlife. It's

1303
01:15:02,840 --> 01:15:06,160
Speaker 1: a symbiotic relationship with all these things working together. And

1304
01:15:06,200 --> 01:15:10,320
Speaker 1: then then you're gonna harvest the native progress cut it. Hey,

1305
01:15:10,439 --> 01:15:13,960
Speaker 1: it put it into and and and you guys have

1306
01:15:14,040 --> 01:15:16,120
Speaker 1: the have the science and the ways to do this.

1307
01:15:16,200 --> 01:15:22,200
Speaker 1: But anaerobic digestion like basically letting this grass rot in

1308
01:15:22,280 --> 01:15:25,479
Speaker 1: the and the and the gases methane gas from that

1309
01:15:26,160 --> 01:15:33,439
Speaker 1: is being captured. That's exactly right. I mean, that's pretty

1310
01:15:33,439 --> 01:15:35,720
Speaker 1: it's pretty simple, and it makes sense. It's much more

1311
01:15:35,840 --> 01:15:39,679
Speaker 1: complex than than that in terms of how that's gonna

1312
01:15:40,120 --> 01:15:42,200
Speaker 1: make money, how it's good for the farmer, how it's

1313
01:15:42,200 --> 01:15:44,400
Speaker 1: good for the land. But the but the idea is simple.

1314
01:15:44,640 --> 01:15:48,520
Speaker 1: You know, my degrees in environmental, soil and water science. Uh,

1315
01:15:48,600 --> 01:15:54,640
Speaker 1: and man, what is so powerful that really not a

1316
01:15:54,680 --> 01:15:59,880
Speaker 1: lot of people understand. Uh? Is this the value of soil,

1317
01:16:00,600 --> 01:16:03,720
Speaker 1: value of water quality and soil? And uh? You know

1318
01:16:03,760 --> 01:16:06,400
Speaker 1: when I was in college in the early two thousands,

1319
01:16:06,479 --> 01:16:09,920
Speaker 1: University of Arkansas, when I learned about the two hundred

1320
01:16:10,080 --> 01:16:12,599
Speaker 1: and twenty years ago, it was a two hundred square

1321
01:16:12,680 --> 01:16:16,640
Speaker 1: mile dead space where nothing lives, where the Mississippi River

1322
01:16:16,720 --> 01:16:19,599
Speaker 1: runs into Gulf of Mexico. That blew my mind, blew

1323
01:16:19,680 --> 01:16:22,640
Speaker 1: my mind. And it's all coming from you know, the

1324
01:16:22,640 --> 01:16:26,000
Speaker 1: Mississippi River drains this huge section of the US where

1325
01:16:26,040 --> 01:16:27,760
Speaker 1: the bread basket of the world. We have all this

1326
01:16:27,960 --> 01:16:32,720
Speaker 1: tillable acres and basically inputs of nitrogen, phosphorus and fertilizer

1327
01:16:33,120 --> 01:16:35,960
Speaker 1: goes on to all this land, excess nutrients gets into

1328
01:16:35,960 --> 01:16:39,559
Speaker 1: the river um and then that flows down and excess

1329
01:16:39,680 --> 01:16:44,400
Speaker 1: nutrients and water basically causes algal blooms and sucks up

1330
01:16:44,400 --> 01:16:46,880
Speaker 1: all the oxygen. And long story short, this is a

1331
01:16:48,240 --> 01:16:51,040
Speaker 1: you know, it's a it's a very dynamic process when

1332
01:16:51,040 --> 01:16:54,320
Speaker 1: we're talking about water quality, but the idea of putting

1333
01:16:54,320 --> 01:16:58,599
Speaker 1: it back in native prairie is powerful and it's uh

1334
01:16:58,680 --> 01:17:03,080
Speaker 1: and you know, sounds good to me. Man, Well, if

1335
01:17:03,120 --> 01:17:06,400
Speaker 1: you look at the recent trends of flooding, we have

1336
01:17:06,439 --> 01:17:10,320
Speaker 1: had hundred year floods every year. So things have changed,

1337
01:17:10,479 --> 01:17:13,559
Speaker 1: and there's multiple reasons why. Climate change is part of it.

1338
01:17:13,600 --> 01:17:16,960
Speaker 1: But we've also degraded our soil and compacted our landscape,

1339
01:17:17,000 --> 01:17:21,559
Speaker 1: meaning that the traditional means of farming is you know,

1340
01:17:21,680 --> 01:17:25,000
Speaker 1: plow and tillage, and and then that compacts the soil

1341
01:17:25,040 --> 01:17:28,920
Speaker 1: down so we've we've drained our soil of the resources

1342
01:17:28,960 --> 01:17:32,000
Speaker 1: it needs, the minerals and the nutrients, by just taking

1343
01:17:32,040 --> 01:17:34,200
Speaker 1: and taking and taking. I don't know how many people

1344
01:17:34,240 --> 01:17:36,280
Speaker 1: have ever read that book when we were kids, called

1345
01:17:36,280 --> 01:17:38,679
Speaker 1: The Giving Tree. But it's like you can only take

1346
01:17:38,720 --> 01:17:41,440
Speaker 1: for so long until there's nothing left to take from.

1347
01:17:41,479 --> 01:17:44,360
Speaker 1: So we have to regenerate soil. We have to put

1348
01:17:44,439 --> 01:17:47,439
Speaker 1: nutrients back into it. Cover crops are a big part

1349
01:17:47,439 --> 01:17:49,920
Speaker 1: of that. But then cover crops could be viewed as

1350
01:17:49,960 --> 01:17:53,479
Speaker 1: simply an input cost by farmers trying to stimulate the

1351
01:17:53,560 --> 01:17:56,280
Speaker 1: quality of their soil. Cover crops are a big part

1352
01:17:56,280 --> 01:17:59,960
Speaker 1: of our component too, So really we'll be collecting renewal

1353
01:18:00,160 --> 01:18:04,920
Speaker 1: natural gas from livestock maneuver from digesting native prairie plants,

1354
01:18:05,200 --> 01:18:09,240
Speaker 1: and then also digesting cover crops. So instead of leaving

1355
01:18:09,240 --> 01:18:13,040
Speaker 1: that field barren throughout the winter, and you've walked out

1356
01:18:13,040 --> 01:18:17,600
Speaker 1: on a hard, hard row crop field, it's like concrete.

1357
01:18:17,880 --> 01:18:20,120
Speaker 1: And then we get these torrential rains and it just

1358
01:18:20,200 --> 01:18:22,760
Speaker 1: it's like raining on a parking lot, and then that

1359
01:18:22,960 --> 01:18:26,600
Speaker 1: rushes off into the river and then it all comes downstream.

1360
01:18:26,760 --> 01:18:29,759
Speaker 1: And here in Missouri where the Mississippi and Missouri come together.

1361
01:18:29,800 --> 01:18:33,040
Speaker 1: We're at the end of that you know, Missouri River drainage,

1362
01:18:33,080 --> 01:18:36,719
Speaker 1: and we're getting flooded out every year because there's nothing

1363
01:18:36,800 --> 01:18:40,600
Speaker 1: left on the landscape to absorb this large amount of

1364
01:18:40,600 --> 01:18:43,599
Speaker 1: water that's coming down. And when that water rushes all

1365
01:18:43,640 --> 01:18:48,360
Speaker 1: the way down from North Dakota, South Dakota, through nebrad wherever,

1366
01:18:48,439 --> 01:18:50,800
Speaker 1: you know, it's coming all the way, it's bringing with

1367
01:18:50,840 --> 01:18:54,080
Speaker 1: it all the bad stuff that's rushing off of those fields,

1368
01:18:54,120 --> 01:18:56,520
Speaker 1: like you said, the nitrogen, the phosphor, and the pesticides,

1369
01:18:56,520 --> 01:19:01,000
Speaker 1: the insecticides. So by instituting this ingw moable natural gas,

1370
01:19:02,000 --> 01:19:06,120
Speaker 1: by instituting this native prairie buffer zone, uh, we'll be

1371
01:19:06,200 --> 01:19:09,240
Speaker 1: able to stop a lot of that from happening. And

1372
01:19:09,280 --> 01:19:11,720
Speaker 1: but we'll also make it a market based approach by

1373
01:19:11,840 --> 01:19:14,800
Speaker 1: generating a profit off of turning it into moable natural gas.

1374
01:19:14,800 --> 01:19:16,599
Speaker 1: And that's what's pretty cool about this is I mean,

1375
01:19:16,640 --> 01:19:20,320
Speaker 1: this is all private sector stuff. It's all market based.

1376
01:19:20,400 --> 01:19:23,280
Speaker 1: We are a market basis. It's got to make money.

1377
01:19:23,400 --> 01:19:27,160
Speaker 1: It's gotta make money. It doesn't happen. Yeah, that's good.

1378
01:19:27,200 --> 01:19:30,679
Speaker 1: It's capitalism. Yeah, you know, I'm a capitalist. I believe

1379
01:19:30,720 --> 01:19:34,120
Speaker 1: in that system, you know. And uh, and I'm proud

1380
01:19:34,120 --> 01:19:36,280
Speaker 1: to be part of a system that I know is

1381
01:19:36,360 --> 01:19:40,120
Speaker 1: bringing great value to our landscape and to the people

1382
01:19:40,200 --> 01:19:44,000
Speaker 1: that live there um as well as as making money.

1383
01:19:44,360 --> 01:19:46,479
Speaker 1: And that's another thing that we're super proud of is

1384
01:19:46,800 --> 01:19:49,360
Speaker 1: we've got about twenty young men right now, and I'd

1385
01:19:49,360 --> 01:19:51,160
Speaker 1: like to say young men and women, but none of

1386
01:19:51,160 --> 01:19:53,040
Speaker 1: the young women in the area have signed up to

1387
01:19:53,040 --> 01:19:56,320
Speaker 1: slash around and pig ship yet. So not that the

1388
01:19:56,320 --> 01:19:58,400
Speaker 1: guys do either, but they're on top of the tarps

1389
01:19:58,439 --> 01:20:00,280
Speaker 1: and stuff. But we've got a crew of young men

1390
01:20:00,320 --> 01:20:04,360
Speaker 1: that are educated and good workers that are now able

1391
01:20:04,400 --> 01:20:07,519
Speaker 1: to live on their family farm or in these very

1392
01:20:07,640 --> 01:20:10,439
Speaker 1: rural North Missouri communities because we're down here in the

1393
01:20:10,479 --> 01:20:12,760
Speaker 1: ozarks and we talk about the economic depression you know,

1394
01:20:12,800 --> 01:20:15,719
Speaker 1: you and I've talked at length about it that's going

1395
01:20:15,760 --> 01:20:18,760
Speaker 1: on in agg lands all across this country too. You

1396
01:20:18,800 --> 01:20:20,960
Speaker 1: get it ain't like people are rolling in it up

1397
01:20:20,960 --> 01:20:23,840
Speaker 1: in North Missouri. You get up to Unionville, Green City,

1398
01:20:23,920 --> 01:20:27,240
Speaker 1: green Castle, these little these little dots on the map,

1399
01:20:27,840 --> 01:20:31,040
Speaker 1: they're struggling, just like we are down here, and and

1400
01:20:31,080 --> 01:20:36,800
Speaker 1: we're bringing jobs to that region. Yeah, how let me

1401
01:20:36,840 --> 01:20:41,840
Speaker 1: ask you a question, how so this is a This

1402
01:20:41,920 --> 01:20:46,559
Speaker 1: is an endeavor that's really never been done here at least, like,

1403
01:20:46,680 --> 01:20:48,600
Speaker 1: how far along are you guys in the process to

1404
01:20:48,600 --> 01:20:50,960
Speaker 1: where we you could know that this was gonna work

1405
01:20:51,040 --> 01:20:53,439
Speaker 1: or not. We're past the point of whether or not

1406
01:20:53,479 --> 01:20:57,280
Speaker 1: at a work. Yeah. The Renewable Natural Gast Coalition, of

1407
01:20:57,320 --> 01:21:06,799
Speaker 1: which we're a leadership member, Yeah, sure, I'm writing down one.

1408
01:21:10,400 --> 01:21:13,240
Speaker 1: The Renewable Natural Gas Coalition, of which were a leadership

1409
01:21:13,320 --> 01:21:16,880
Speaker 1: member five years ago, had a meeting with sixty people there.

1410
01:21:17,520 --> 01:21:20,000
Speaker 1: The meeting we just had in December two thousand nineteen

1411
01:21:20,040 --> 01:21:23,400
Speaker 1: had over five and fifty. Every major oil and gas

1412
01:21:23,400 --> 01:21:26,840
Speaker 1: corporation was represented. I now have friends and colleagues at

1413
01:21:27,000 --> 01:21:31,880
Speaker 1: BP Marathon. They're all looking for the sources that they

1414
01:21:31,960 --> 01:21:35,080
Speaker 1: need to meet their their goals of ten to fiftent

1415
01:21:35,200 --> 01:21:38,760
Speaker 1: renewable by or whatever that goal made. But there's a

1416
01:21:38,840 --> 01:21:41,720
Speaker 1: demand for what's happened. There's demand for what's happening. We

1417
01:21:41,800 --> 01:21:44,280
Speaker 1: are at the tip of the spear. What about the

1418
01:21:44,320 --> 01:21:46,160
Speaker 1: financial side of it? I mean, like, I know the

1419
01:21:46,240 --> 01:21:49,800
Speaker 1: science would work. I mean everything that I mean, and

1420
01:21:49,840 --> 01:21:54,559
Speaker 1: obviously I'm just here in the the surface of it.

1421
01:21:55,000 --> 01:21:57,559
Speaker 1: But I mean, you know, replanning prayers in a native

1422
01:21:57,600 --> 01:22:01,200
Speaker 1: grass paying farmers for that. They're long term contracts. I

1423
01:22:01,240 --> 01:22:03,000
Speaker 1: mean that all sounds like good stuff. What about the

1424
01:22:03,040 --> 01:22:05,040
Speaker 1: financial side of the brandon is that? Is that what

1425
01:22:05,160 --> 01:22:07,240
Speaker 1: has yet to be known if it's gonna work. Well.

1426
01:22:07,240 --> 01:22:11,280
Speaker 1: Currently it works because there is credit coming from government programs.

1427
01:22:11,520 --> 01:22:14,280
Speaker 1: That's the scary thing, right we are reliant on these

1428
01:22:14,320 --> 01:22:19,520
Speaker 1: these credits. Um. For example, when Volkswagen had that debacle

1429
01:22:19,640 --> 01:22:23,439
Speaker 1: with emissions and they weren't exactly truthful and they paid

1430
01:22:23,439 --> 01:22:25,439
Speaker 1: a big, big fine, a lot of that money went

1431
01:22:25,479 --> 01:22:28,360
Speaker 1: into an endowment and now pays for this renewable fuel.

1432
01:22:28,840 --> 01:22:32,880
Speaker 1: So like, our gas is significantly more valuable than an

1433
01:22:32,880 --> 01:22:36,719
Speaker 1: equal amount of fract natural gas. But at what point

1434
01:22:36,720 --> 01:22:39,160
Speaker 1: do we invest in the future of our planet? Like,

1435
01:22:39,240 --> 01:22:41,479
Speaker 1: at what point do we say we can produce this

1436
01:22:41,600 --> 01:22:44,280
Speaker 1: renewable energy, but at the same time, we can do

1437
01:22:44,360 --> 01:22:47,840
Speaker 1: good things ecologically. So it's an investment at this point

1438
01:22:48,000 --> 01:22:51,800
Speaker 1: through through funds that will hopefully move it into a

1439
01:22:51,800 --> 01:22:59,600
Speaker 1: more mainstream, more um universally done process. So that that

1440
01:22:59,720 --> 01:23:02,040
Speaker 1: is the concern. Like that, and then we're open about that.

1441
01:23:02,080 --> 01:23:04,559
Speaker 1: You know, we're not hiding the fact that we're right

1442
01:23:04,600 --> 01:23:09,639
Speaker 1: now reliant on this California market. But Minnesota's coming soon,

1443
01:23:09,880 --> 01:23:13,200
Speaker 1: we expect. And I was just on the floor of

1444
01:23:13,240 --> 01:23:17,600
Speaker 1: the New York State Assembly meeting only with Republicans, you know,

1445
01:23:17,640 --> 01:23:19,360
Speaker 1: and they're excited about this. They want me to come

1446
01:23:19,360 --> 01:23:22,200
Speaker 1: back to their district and and talk to farmers about it.

1447
01:23:22,560 --> 01:23:25,960
Speaker 1: But I think I think big, you know, I struggle

1448
01:23:26,000 --> 01:23:28,080
Speaker 1: with details, which is why I'm here telling you about

1449
01:23:28,120 --> 01:23:29,760
Speaker 1: it while the really smart people are back at the

1450
01:23:29,800 --> 01:23:33,040
Speaker 1: office figuring out how to make it happen. But I

1451
01:23:33,080 --> 01:23:37,920
Speaker 1: can see this scaling down to the individual household. You know,

1452
01:23:38,040 --> 01:23:42,519
Speaker 1: we're right now digesting livestock manure into renewable natural gases

1453
01:23:42,560 --> 01:23:45,280
Speaker 1: going into the grid. That's coming back to homes. Why

1454
01:23:45,280 --> 01:23:48,840
Speaker 1: don't we install digesters on the home to where when

1455
01:23:48,840 --> 01:23:52,120
Speaker 1: you use the restroom, it goes into that. When you

1456
01:23:52,200 --> 01:23:55,599
Speaker 1: dump your food scraps down, it goes into that. Any

1457
01:23:55,720 --> 01:23:59,160
Speaker 1: organic material that you have, like cardboard or paper plates

1458
01:24:00,000 --> 01:24:04,000
Speaker 1: goes into that, and it digests and creates power to

1459
01:24:04,120 --> 01:24:08,840
Speaker 1: heat your own home. Like, we're not close yet to

1460
01:24:09,479 --> 01:24:13,080
Speaker 1: using all of our opportunities and resources, but I expect

1461
01:24:13,120 --> 01:24:16,519
Speaker 1: that we're going to get there. We have we have to. Yeah, well,

1462
01:24:16,560 --> 01:24:19,360
Speaker 1: you know, when we look at the challenges that conservation

1463
01:24:19,520 --> 01:24:24,320
Speaker 1: is faced in in I just read a book by

1464
01:24:24,640 --> 01:24:28,519
Speaker 1: Valarious Guyst and Shamahoney North American Wild Wildlife Conservation, and

1465
01:24:28,560 --> 01:24:32,320
Speaker 1: a big theme inside the book is that what has

1466
01:24:32,360 --> 01:24:34,680
Speaker 1: worked for the last hundred years and conservation is going

1467
01:24:34,720 --> 01:24:37,479
Speaker 1: to have to morphin change for it to work now.

1468
01:24:37,880 --> 01:24:39,840
Speaker 1: And it was kind of a surprise to me to

1469
01:24:39,880 --> 01:24:41,840
Speaker 1: hear that because we've we've had so much success for

1470
01:24:41,920 --> 01:24:44,920
Speaker 1: storing big game and saving wildlife and saving wild places

1471
01:24:44,960 --> 01:24:48,280
Speaker 1: over the last hundred years. We feel pretty good about ourselves.

1472
01:24:48,880 --> 01:24:53,439
Speaker 1: The new narrative inside of conservation is going to have

1473
01:24:53,600 --> 01:24:58,920
Speaker 1: to be environmental issues closer to home, and that historically

1474
01:24:58,960 --> 01:25:02,360
Speaker 1: has not been our narrative. And in any way, I

1475
01:25:02,640 --> 01:25:05,559
Speaker 1: just see kind of like, why are we talking about

1476
01:25:05,600 --> 01:25:10,200
Speaker 1: this on the Barony Magazine podcast? Um, because really bears

1477
01:25:10,240 --> 01:25:12,320
Speaker 1: to propagate into the future and for that to happen,

1478
01:25:12,360 --> 01:25:15,280
Speaker 1: they have to have healthy habitat. That's absolutely right. And

1479
01:25:15,400 --> 01:25:19,919
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, man, I'm a Southerner and and

1480
01:25:19,920 --> 01:25:24,240
Speaker 1: and come from a just to be frank and nobody

1481
01:25:24,240 --> 01:25:26,480
Speaker 1: would be surprised with this. I mean, a very conservative

1482
01:25:26,640 --> 01:25:32,639
Speaker 1: political background, and and I know that people like hear

1483
01:25:32,720 --> 01:25:36,360
Speaker 1: anything about environmentalism and they think, oh jeez, left wing

1484
01:25:36,880 --> 01:25:41,360
Speaker 1: crazy liberals come to take my guns, and that mentality

1485
01:25:41,680 --> 01:25:44,479
Speaker 1: we just we just can't have if if I mean

1486
01:25:44,600 --> 01:25:48,280
Speaker 1: to me, that's one of the challenges that we're going

1487
01:25:48,320 --> 01:25:53,080
Speaker 1: to have to adapt into our repertoire, thinking inside of,

1488
01:25:53,920 --> 01:25:59,639
Speaker 1: inside of um. This new era of conservation is that

1489
01:26:00,280 --> 01:26:02,439
Speaker 1: we gotta be the ones that are saying, yeah, we

1490
01:26:02,479 --> 01:26:05,280
Speaker 1: want to what we want to waters claim, we want

1491
01:26:05,280 --> 01:26:09,000
Speaker 1: our soils and agriculture, Uh, we want it sustainable. We

1492
01:26:09,040 --> 01:26:10,880
Speaker 1: want farmers to make it live, and we want families

1493
01:26:10,880 --> 01:26:13,639
Speaker 1: to be able to keep their farms. Uh. We want

1494
01:26:13,760 --> 01:26:16,200
Speaker 1: find ways like what I'm here and you guys talk

1495
01:26:16,280 --> 01:26:22,519
Speaker 1: about of of making agriculture better, and I mean you're

1496
01:26:22,520 --> 01:26:24,720
Speaker 1: doing it on both sides. You're doing it on the

1497
01:26:24,920 --> 01:26:28,840
Speaker 1: crop agriculture side and on the meat production side, which

1498
01:26:29,200 --> 01:26:33,360
Speaker 1: is pretty amazing. Well, politics are so hard to come

1499
01:26:33,400 --> 01:26:36,240
Speaker 1: to understand. I grew up in Northwest Indiana, which is

1500
01:26:36,360 --> 01:26:40,360
Speaker 1: essentially a suburb of South Chicago, and everybody knows about

1501
01:26:40,400 --> 01:26:44,360
Speaker 1: the Chicago Democratic machine. And my great grandfather started a

1502
01:26:44,400 --> 01:26:47,040
Speaker 1: floor covering company that my grandfather owned and my dad

1503
01:26:47,040 --> 01:26:49,920
Speaker 1: and his brother owned. It turned into a very large

1504
01:26:49,960 --> 01:26:54,120
Speaker 1: scale commercial floor covering company, but it was union, and

1505
01:26:54,240 --> 01:26:56,840
Speaker 1: unions typically vote democratic. So I grew up in this

1506
01:26:56,960 --> 01:27:00,719
Speaker 1: like democratic environment where everybody around me but to Democrats.

1507
01:27:00,760 --> 01:27:03,960
Speaker 1: And these aren't like what you would think in today,

1508
01:27:04,040 --> 01:27:07,280
Speaker 1: the way Democrats are painted as these liberal you know,

1509
01:27:07,760 --> 01:27:11,320
Speaker 1: blue haired people driving subar us like these are construction

1510
01:27:11,360 --> 01:27:14,599
Speaker 1: workers crawling around on their knees, kicking and carpet working

1511
01:27:14,600 --> 01:27:18,599
Speaker 1: their asses off. And I mean that's how I was raised.

1512
01:27:18,680 --> 01:27:21,120
Speaker 1: And then I get out to Montana and you know,

1513
01:27:21,120 --> 01:27:25,400
Speaker 1: it's hunting and fishing and conservative values and living rule,

1514
01:27:25,640 --> 01:27:28,439
Speaker 1: and I became part of the young Republicans. My family

1515
01:27:28,520 --> 01:27:31,120
Speaker 1: is like what happened to you? And then I started seeing,

1516
01:27:31,400 --> 01:27:33,479
Speaker 1: you know, things from both sides of the fence, and

1517
01:27:33,479 --> 01:27:35,599
Speaker 1: and like a pendulum, I feel like I've kind of

1518
01:27:35,720 --> 01:27:38,920
Speaker 1: swung both ways and settled right in the middle. But

1519
01:27:38,960 --> 01:27:41,040
Speaker 1: I pay attention a lot more than the average person.

1520
01:27:41,080 --> 01:27:44,120
Speaker 1: And most people just seem to assimilate to a party

1521
01:27:44,240 --> 01:27:47,840
Speaker 1: because there's one or two very important issues to them personally,

1522
01:27:48,240 --> 01:27:51,679
Speaker 1: and one or one party is better for that one

1523
01:27:51,800 --> 01:27:55,040
Speaker 1: specific issue than the other party. I don't know what

1524
01:27:55,120 --> 01:27:59,479
Speaker 1: the answers, Clay. I know that the polarization is worse

1525
01:27:59,560 --> 01:28:02,280
Speaker 1: now than ever been in my life. We're not that old,

1526
01:28:02,600 --> 01:28:06,599
Speaker 1: you know, but there's obviously been times like the eighteen

1527
01:28:06,640 --> 01:28:11,120
Speaker 1: sixties where it was pretty bad. So hopefully before it

1528
01:28:11,160 --> 01:28:13,880
Speaker 1: continues to get worse, we can start finding solutions to

1529
01:28:13,920 --> 01:28:16,479
Speaker 1: make it better. And that's what I love so much

1530
01:28:16,520 --> 01:28:18,439
Speaker 1: about what I'm doing at Race Line. It is because

1531
01:28:18,479 --> 01:28:21,400
Speaker 1: if I'm talking to a conservative, you know, we are

1532
01:28:21,520 --> 01:28:26,240
Speaker 1: working on agriculture and agriculture economies, which are typically rule

1533
01:28:26,520 --> 01:28:29,160
Speaker 1: and we're trying to find jobs or we're trying to

1534
01:28:29,200 --> 01:28:33,320
Speaker 1: find people to fill jobs in rule communities, and we

1535
01:28:33,439 --> 01:28:37,120
Speaker 1: care about all that stuff deeply. We also care very

1536
01:28:37,160 --> 01:28:40,320
Speaker 1: much about our environment and the landscape and our water

1537
01:28:40,439 --> 01:28:44,240
Speaker 1: quality and the wildlife and fish that call those places home.

1538
01:28:44,760 --> 01:28:47,240
Speaker 1: And the Democrats are eating that up. So we can

1539
01:28:47,280 --> 01:28:49,519
Speaker 1: bring these people to the table and we can say

1540
01:28:49,560 --> 01:28:53,840
Speaker 1: we're serving your constituent needs and desires, and we're serving

1541
01:28:53,880 --> 01:28:57,160
Speaker 1: your constituent needs and desires, and we're doing it through

1542
01:28:57,160 --> 01:29:01,240
Speaker 1: a market based solution that people profit from. And now

1543
01:29:01,479 --> 01:29:03,880
Speaker 1: every industry needs to start looking for those kind of

1544
01:29:03,880 --> 01:29:08,120
Speaker 1: opportunities because they're out there and and we at race

1545
01:29:08,160 --> 01:29:10,040
Speaker 1: Line are very fortunate that we work for a man

1546
01:29:10,120 --> 01:29:13,240
Speaker 1: that had the not only the vision, but also the

1547
01:29:13,280 --> 01:29:19,360
Speaker 1: economic ability the money in Lehman's terms, to pursue this.

1548
01:29:20,120 --> 01:29:22,840
Speaker 1: And thankfully, you know, I knew I wanted to go

1549
01:29:22,880 --> 01:29:25,880
Speaker 1: to work for Rudy race Line when we were talking

1550
01:29:25,960 --> 01:29:28,880
Speaker 1: one day and he said, I have enough money to

1551
01:29:29,000 --> 01:29:32,559
Speaker 1: buy any ranch in America. I could go be Ted

1552
01:29:32,640 --> 01:29:36,360
Speaker 1: Turner's neighbor and rock the rest of my years away

1553
01:29:36,439 --> 01:29:39,120
Speaker 1: staring at a herd out grazing out in my meadow.

1554
01:29:39,800 --> 01:29:43,759
Speaker 1: But what good would that do the world. What good

1555
01:29:43,800 --> 01:29:46,080
Speaker 1: would it do for me to take all this knowledge

1556
01:29:46,080 --> 01:29:50,360
Speaker 1: I've accumulated and bottle it up and not put it

1557
01:29:50,400 --> 01:29:53,400
Speaker 1: to use to make this planet better for my grandchildren

1558
01:29:53,400 --> 01:29:56,920
Speaker 1: and their grandchildren. And that's when I said, sign me up, coach,

1559
01:29:57,320 --> 01:30:04,879
Speaker 1: I'm in m hm. Yeah. Well interesting stuff, man, interesting

1560
01:30:04,960 --> 01:30:08,719
Speaker 1: stuff really is. But it's all rooted in hunting, fishing

1561
01:30:08,760 --> 01:30:12,360
Speaker 1: for me, you know, that's where this little snowball started

1562
01:30:12,439 --> 01:30:15,720
Speaker 1: rolling down the mountain. And I've had jobs that I

1563
01:30:15,840 --> 01:30:18,800
Speaker 1: had no passion for. I had jobs that were just

1564
01:30:18,840 --> 01:30:21,439
Speaker 1: paying the bills. I had to make a real hard

1565
01:30:21,479 --> 01:30:24,200
Speaker 1: decision with a one year old and a two year

1566
01:30:24,200 --> 01:30:26,800
Speaker 1: old at home, and my wife was staying home with

1567
01:30:26,840 --> 01:30:29,720
Speaker 1: him at the time I walked away from a six

1568
01:30:29,800 --> 01:30:33,760
Speaker 1: figure job to take a forty dollar job. It wasn't

1569
01:30:33,800 --> 01:30:37,200
Speaker 1: a good conversation with my dad, you know, my irresponsibility,

1570
01:30:37,320 --> 01:30:40,000
Speaker 1: and but I had this vision for what I could

1571
01:30:40,000 --> 01:30:43,240
Speaker 1: do in the space that I care about, and I

1572
01:30:43,600 --> 01:30:46,719
Speaker 1: just want to make sure that anybody out there listening,

1573
01:30:47,120 --> 01:30:50,320
Speaker 1: you know, Clay and I are doing this outdoor media

1574
01:30:50,360 --> 01:30:54,040
Speaker 1: stuff that I grew up watching. Never dreamed I could

1575
01:30:54,040 --> 01:30:57,439
Speaker 1: do it. Nobody ever told me, nobody ever encouraged me.

1576
01:30:57,880 --> 01:30:59,839
Speaker 1: No one said you could be one of these writers

1577
01:30:59,840 --> 01:31:02,880
Speaker 1: they you read, or you could be on TV, or

1578
01:31:03,000 --> 01:31:06,200
Speaker 1: like Clay, make a video that three million people have watched.

1579
01:31:06,840 --> 01:31:09,880
Speaker 1: So whatever it is that you're passionate about, you can

1580
01:31:09,880 --> 01:31:13,880
Speaker 1: do it. You really can. And if that's outdoor communication

1581
01:31:14,040 --> 01:31:17,040
Speaker 1: or building a rocket ship, you know, I just want

1582
01:31:17,080 --> 01:31:20,040
Speaker 1: you to hear in a broad sense that you can

1583
01:31:20,080 --> 01:31:23,400
Speaker 1: do it. I'm encouraging you to chase that passion and

1584
01:31:23,479 --> 01:31:29,240
Speaker 1: make the world a better place. Yep. Awesome, Brandon, Well,

1585
01:31:29,920 --> 01:31:31,960
Speaker 1: thanks for having me up here. Thanks for showing me

1586
01:31:32,120 --> 01:31:34,960
Speaker 1: as part of the Ozarks. I'm so glad you made it.

1587
01:31:35,000 --> 01:31:37,519
Speaker 1: I've wanted to have you up here for a long time.

1588
01:31:38,080 --> 01:31:40,240
Speaker 1: I was a fan of yours before I was fortunate

1589
01:31:40,320 --> 01:31:44,720
Speaker 1: enough to become a friend open door policy. Man, you

1590
01:31:44,760 --> 01:31:46,640
Speaker 1: are welcome here. I really hope you'll come back in

1591
01:31:46,640 --> 01:31:50,639
Speaker 1: the summer and bring your family. Um, do some swimming

1592
01:31:50,680 --> 01:31:53,200
Speaker 1: in the creek and some floating on the river, and

1593
01:31:53,200 --> 01:31:55,120
Speaker 1: and I'll come down to see in Fayetteville too. That's

1594
01:31:55,120 --> 01:31:58,160
Speaker 1: a beautiful part of the country that you know. Yep, yep,

1595
01:31:58,240 --> 01:32:04,800
Speaker 1: you gotta see the Global Headquarters Bear Hunting Magazine. Well, hey,

1596
01:32:04,880 --> 01:32:08,400
Speaker 1: all this stuff, all this stuff we're doing, I think

1597
01:32:08,439 --> 01:32:10,280
Speaker 1: it's for this reason, because we want to keep the

1598
01:32:10,320 --> 01:32:13,160
Speaker 1: wild places wild, because that's where the bears live. Thanks

1599
01:32:13,240 --> 01:32:15,600
Speaker 1: and other critics, and thank you so much for the

1600
01:32:15,600 --> 01:32:20,400
Speaker 1: bear grease. Fried Fried crappy in bear grease. That's all right,

1601
01:32:20,680 --> 01:32:25,040
Speaker 1: my new favorite. Yeah, man, right on, Thanks Brandon, Thank you,

1602
01:32:25,120 --> 01:32:25,360
Speaker 1: Clay