Speaker 1: This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listeningcast. You can't
Speaker 1: predict anything.
Speaker 2: The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by First Light.
Speaker 2: Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting
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Speaker 1: Oh you know what I would wish I could make
Speaker 1: you know? At the where the where Matthew plays soccer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they have these bathrooms in there. They're like the most indestructible.
Speaker 3: Like made out of some synthetic material.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like welded stainless urinals and like like just like cacking.
Speaker 4: I mean you could go near the pressure washer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is a bathroom.
Speaker 5: Man, here's a quick journal story for you.
Speaker 6: Love it.
Speaker 1: Have you ever fished anyone out of a vault?
Speaker 6: This sounds like we should be recording you are we are?
Speaker 7: We are.
Speaker 4: Can you turn the machine.
Speaker 8: On machines on so that it fails first?
Speaker 4: Can you make a point to start it with this
Speaker 4: urinal sort?
Speaker 5: We will do so. The computers we use at work.
Speaker 5: Are tough books, so they're big tanks. They're ten pounds there.
Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, this is a game Montana game warden
Speaker 1: and Adam pancrats telling you this story. We're introduce some
Speaker 1: more thoroughly in a minute.
Speaker 5: So these computers are they're tough books. You can supposedly
Speaker 5: drive a tank over them, shoot them whatever. They're there.
Speaker 5: They're laptops that are meant to be used in the field.
Speaker 5: So if you drop your laptop, more than likely the
Speaker 5: screen is going to break ours. Hopefully it won't. Well,
Speaker 5: we were doing training in a Montana city here in
Speaker 5: Region three, using a public meeting room, and one of
Speaker 5: our wardens was using the bathroom using the Jurnal, and
Speaker 5: I think he had a tough book tucked under his
Speaker 5: his arm as he was using the Jurnal standing there
Speaker 5: at some point that the computer slips from his hands,
Speaker 5: drops to the floor, bounces up so hard, hits the
Speaker 5: bottom of the journal and shatters the porcelain journal in
Speaker 5: the in the public restroom.
Speaker 4: Brought to book.
Speaker 8: That's a good twist.
Speaker 1: That's great.
Speaker 5: So then I had to go explain to the host,
Speaker 5: the person who runs the facility, thank you for letting
Speaker 5: us use your facility for our training meeting. However, we
Speaker 5: destroyed one of your journals with our computer.
Speaker 1: Laptop destroyed your Jurnal.
Speaker 5: The laptop was fine, but urinal completely. We've never used
Speaker 5: that that building since then. We I'm sure we're welcome back.
Speaker 1: But the problem you have that you might not realize
Speaker 1: is there's no way that they believe you that that's
Speaker 1: what happened.
Speaker 6: No wet some banned.
Speaker 4: Yeah, then they kind of tried tell me it was
Speaker 4: a laptop.
Speaker 5: Well, it's in the town of West Yellowstone. I think
Speaker 5: they're kind of used to it. If you've ever been
Speaker 5: down there and you see some of the signs in
Speaker 5: the public bathrooms directing people like not to stand on
Speaker 5: toilets down there and stuff because the cultural differences and
Speaker 5: how they use toilets, and so they are constantly having
Speaker 5: toilets broken down there based on just people misusing or
Speaker 5: not using toilets.
Speaker 8: Yeah, my culture is like that old sn L commercial
Speaker 8: where they're all disposable, So every time I use one,
Speaker 8: I then break it.
Speaker 1: Join today by Adam Pancrats, Montana game Warden. Give your
Speaker 1: specific do you guys call it rank? What do you
Speaker 1: guys call it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we have ranks or title give me So I'm
Speaker 5: a game warden captain for Southwest Montana. There's eight captains
Speaker 5: that run different parts of the agency or different areas.
Speaker 5: So Southwest Montana's mine. We have game wardens, we have
Speaker 5: regional investigators, sergeants, captains, assistant chief chief Those are kind
Speaker 5: of all of our ranks spread out through the state.
Speaker 1: If there's seven regions, why is there eight?
Speaker 5: The eighth one is our investigative unit. I see, So
Speaker 5: there's a captain who kind of runs our investigative unit.
Speaker 5: So there's regional investigators, which are kind of like detectives
Speaker 5: that work in the region, and then we have an
Speaker 5: investigative squad up in Helen.
Speaker 1: And those detectives are playing some kind of like playing
Speaker 1: closed detective correct and they work on more longer term yep.
Speaker 5: So so longer term wildlife cases, commercial cases, those type
Speaker 5: of things. So we have field wardens are out there
Speaker 5: in the field in uniform, and then a plane closed
Speaker 5: kind of unit that helps out with stuff long term,
Speaker 5: takes over cases when they go multi county, multi district,
Speaker 5: across the state, maybe multi state, all those type of things.
Speaker 1: You know, you know what I wish we would have
Speaker 1: done know how to do this next time, we should
Speaker 1: do a thing. We've always talked about having call in capabilities.
Speaker 1: We should do a thing, ask a game work, we
Speaker 1: just have the line.
Speaker 3: I was thinking, we should have just solicited the whole
Speaker 3: office for questions and just did nothing but questions.
Speaker 1: Bunch, Yeah, like we keep joing like a bunch of people.
Speaker 1: Be like, so a friend of mine, hypothetically a friend
Speaker 1: of mine, yeah, you know, pulling into the parking lot
Speaker 1: seeing that game boarding truck, I bout backed out. I
Speaker 1: was like, oh that's right.
Speaker 6: Well how about how about how about our buddy, uh
Speaker 6: Stewart down there at Crooked Sky, remember who lives across
Speaker 6: the street.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh, we haven't talked about this. We did need
Speaker 1: to talk about this.
Speaker 6: About that, and then the other thing, which is our
Speaker 6: big trip.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The main thing is he's an outfitter. He's an outfitter
Speaker 1: and he literally is across the street.
Speaker 5: Did he choose that? Did he move the.
Speaker 6: Board and moved in? Yeah?
Speaker 4: So he says there's two ways looking at him.
Speaker 1: One you gotta keep on the up and or you're
Speaker 1: just hiding and playing sight and they'll just assume, Well,
Speaker 1: that guy over.
Speaker 5: There's no way so you guys could prescribe to keep
Speaker 5: your enemies close. Is that what you're telling me.
Speaker 4: When this but this happened to him, he did not
Speaker 4: pick the spot.
Speaker 1: We had a good laugh about it.
Speaker 8: When I was doing deal with Idaho fishing game a
Speaker 8: couple of years ago, they had a case study on
Speaker 8: using like over the counter trackers GPS trackers for the
Speaker 8: first time, and the these research things out on the
Speaker 8: prairie kept disappearing very expensive. Plus they were there doing
Speaker 8: I think sage grouse research maybe, and they put you know,
Speaker 8: like an Apple tracking device or you know, one of
Speaker 8: the over the counter little trackers that you can keep
Speaker 8: on your phone. And the warden who was in charge
Speaker 8: of this case was super annoyed with it because it
Speaker 8: would go off any anytime there was like a wrong
Speaker 8: wind on the prairie, you know, the piece of merchandise
Speaker 8: would shake and it would alert on his phone. And
Speaker 8: he started going out there and nothing would happen. And
Speaker 8: then sure enough, at like the very end of the season,
Speaker 8: like the onset of winter, the thing goes off on
Speaker 8: his phone and he's like, oh, that is right next
Speaker 8: to my house. And his next door neighbor was the
Speaker 8: person like the very rural part of Idaho, but like
Speaker 8: the third house up on the street is the person
Speaker 8: that this guy had spent like two years trying to catch.
Speaker 8: And they go and what it was. It was a
Speaker 8: solar powered hot fence units, but had had some other
Speaker 8: fancy stuff in there for the research dealing. This gentleman
Speaker 8: had decided they would be better served repurpose to run
Speaker 8: a hot fence around his chicken coop.
Speaker 1: Sure years ago, I was working on a story about
Speaker 1: livestock theft, a magazine feature about livestock theft, and I
Speaker 1: was with these wural crime investigators and when remember when
Speaker 1: scrap got super high, Like one of the times scrap
Speaker 1: met was super high.
Speaker 4: It was so bad.
Speaker 1: He said they would just go and throw tracking devices
Speaker 1: into irrigation pipe. Then just wait, because you just knew
Speaker 1: if you told a guy like, oh yeah, just stack
Speaker 1: a bunch of irrigation pipe by the road and we'll
Speaker 1: throw a sensor in there. Sure enough, it was because
Speaker 1: when it was hot, it was hot. On on. Then
Speaker 1: the Real Crime Task Force, Uh oh, another that we
Speaker 1: covered this years ago. Do you remember the guy that
Speaker 1: they had they were doing the turkey banding. They had
Speaker 1: turkeys with tracking devices on them, and then one day
Speaker 1: get a turkey, you know, going down the highway and
Speaker 1: he says, it winds up. They wind up tracking down
Speaker 1: his turkey and he's walking around and realizes that, hey,
Speaker 1: this turkey is hiding under a big pile of firewood.
Speaker 1: It was there. It was their dead turkey that some
Speaker 1: guy of us have realized they had the censor and
Speaker 1: somehow thought that like burying it in firewood would take
Speaker 1: care of the problem on.
Speaker 6: His own place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was on his place and he got scared
Speaker 1: and buried in an under a pile of fire would
Speaker 1: like that would like disturb the transmission of the signal
Speaker 1: or something. And there was another guy that rode in
Speaker 1: at the same time. I think they would have been
Speaker 1: the same turkey study. They found one of their turkeys.
Speaker 1: They tracked it to a hotel, and it was with
Speaker 1: a gentleman in a hotel.
Speaker 8: Uh, picked it up on fire like Craig's book or Craigslist.
Speaker 4: No, he had brought the turkey.
Speaker 8: No, you know how hotel?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: That's how conspiracy theories about. Like people that are like, oh,
Speaker 3: they got trackers and the animals all over the place.
Speaker 3: You hear like weird conspiracy theories about when people poach deer,
Speaker 3: like they know where you know.
Speaker 1: Oh, do you know there's a new one floating around
Speaker 1: out there right now that someone has asked me about.
Speaker 1: This is the best one. Yeah, that they're given. Uh.
Speaker 1: They're in order to get conservative rural people to take
Speaker 1: the vaccine. They're actually getting there putting the vaccine into
Speaker 1: deer and then you eat the deer meat.
Speaker 4: I'm like, that's mighty efficient.
Speaker 3: Get your protein in your vaccine.
Speaker 1: At the same it's a very efficient way to administer this.
Speaker 1: Buddy of mine text me like, hey, man, do you
Speaker 1: think this is true?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 1: Denver, Colorado Media your live tour, some of this is
Speaker 1: gonna be sold out by now, I think.
Speaker 4: Media Your live tour starts December six.
Speaker 6: Hold on, before you start this, do you have all
Speaker 6: your notes?
Speaker 1: This is gonna be the best one I do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I got it pulled up in front of you. This
Speaker 1: is gonna be a rousing one. What is meet that
Speaker 1: your live I'd ask, well, it's a bunch of things.
Speaker 1: One thing it is it starts out as a concert.
Speaker 1: So you go down and our very own Chester Floyd Chester,
Speaker 1: the Midwester, who has opened now for Trampled by Turtles.
Speaker 1: He's he's a famous musician. H Chester the Midwestern is
Speaker 1: gonna do a song and kick things off like he
Speaker 1: did at our. The last live show he did was
Speaker 1: in Billings. We just did a one off in Billings, Montana,
Speaker 1: and we just had the random idea to have Chester
Speaker 1: open the show. So Chess is gonna open the show.
Speaker 1: Lots of Chester concert tickets there. We're gonna have We're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about news, funny stuff, slide shows, trivia components.
Speaker 1: We have guests joining us. We just signed up another
Speaker 1: great guest for one of the shows coming up. So
Speaker 1: we got like Kevin. These are all people I have
Speaker 1: sort of texted with but we haven't finalized everything.
Speaker 8: But so hopefully they're listening.
Speaker 4: Kevin Murphy's gonna.
Speaker 1: Be joining us on some of the nights. Giannis You
Speaker 1: tell Us is there every night. Ryan Callahan's there, some
Speaker 1: of the Knights, Clay Newcome's there some of the night.
Speaker 1: We got some one off people. We got Darren Wolf,
Speaker 1: Jason Fisher, the you know, I talked to him. We
Speaker 1: haven't formalized it, but uh, we got weights and Fish
Speaker 1: Walleye tournament administrator. He's gonna join us in Cleveland, all
Speaker 1: kinds of stuff. I got buddies from back home. They're
Speaker 1: gonna join us on some of the our Michigan shows.
Speaker 1: So every night there's stuff, there's trivia components. We decided
Speaker 1: on this last night. It's gonna go like this. We're
Speaker 1: gonna have audience members selected to come up and play
Speaker 1: trivia and win stuff. So when you go there, if
Speaker 1: you we're gonna sell our new Trivia board game, which
Speaker 1: is available right now. You can go buy it right now.
Speaker 1: We're gonna sell our new trivia board game at the events.
Speaker 1: Select Trivia board games are gonna have a secret thing.
Speaker 1: If you get the Select Trivia Board Game with the
Speaker 1: secret thing, you come up on stage and then you
Speaker 1: got to win a casting contest, spinning round. We're gonna
Speaker 1: have multiple We're gonna have fly spinning, bait casting. But
Speaker 1: then thought it'd just be equal equipment.
Speaker 9: Yeah, not everyone can do all those spinning rod.
Speaker 1: No, No, you can take your pick accuracy contest. So you're
Speaker 1: gonna have a spinning rod. There'll be a light action
Speaker 1: spinning rod with a three eighths casting plug in.
Speaker 4: A galvanized washtub.
Speaker 9: Nice.
Speaker 4: The victor in.
Speaker 1: That will compete in trivia and they can use and
Speaker 1: you're gonna win stuff.
Speaker 4: It's gonna be a great night. All the VIP stuff
Speaker 4: is all gone.
Speaker 1: I believe.
Speaker 4: All the VIP tickets are all gone. But so it's
Speaker 4: gonna be a ton of fun.
Speaker 1: Denver, Colorado, on December sixth, Mission Ballroom. Have we done
Speaker 1: the Michigan ball Mission Ballroom?
Speaker 6: Yannie, Nothing I know.
Speaker 1: Of Folly Theater in Kansas City Capital Theater, and I
Speaker 1: say it so. Kansas City is December seventh, Capital Theater
Speaker 1: December nine. That means we need to find something entertaining
Speaker 1: somewhere between Kansas City and Davenport. On December eighth, e.
Speaker 8: Stillant season.
Speaker 9: I say, pheasants.
Speaker 1: Probably something entertaining. You know that our our most I
Speaker 1: don't want to say the names. I don't want everybody
Speaker 1: to go be talking to her. We have a recent
Speaker 1: hire here who's from a farm in Iowa. What goes
Speaker 1: on at that farm? Like shockingly unaware of what goes
Speaker 1: on out at the farm In terms of hunting.
Speaker 4: She was surprised.
Speaker 1: Some guys used to come from far away to hunt turks,
Speaker 1: but they haven't been there in years, but there's dudes
Speaker 1: that hunt pheasants out there. But she said her parents said,
Speaker 1: I don't care if you want to come out. Wait,
Speaker 1: who's I'm not telling it's gonna take it too long
Speaker 1: to figure it out, though.
Speaker 8: Yeah, because it's just a quick zip on over to Iowa.
Speaker 1: Well, they're like.
Speaker 8: The office, the no, the ranch, the property to hunt.
Speaker 1: Oh well, no, you have to talk to her yees. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: well I just gave the gender away. You're narrow. You're
Speaker 1: narrow right now, You're narrow this right down December did
Speaker 1: I Davenport, Iowa, December ninth, Kalamazoo, Michigan December tenth.
Speaker 6: Which is Dangaire sold out.
Speaker 1: To Detroit, Michigan, Royal Oak Music Theater December eleventh. That's
Speaker 1: gonna be a fun one. Cleveland, Ohio, Agora Theater December thirteenth.
Speaker 1: Means I'm gonna go visit my mom on December twelfth. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: Carnegie of Homestead Music Hall December fourteenth.
Speaker 6: Oh, can we maybe sneak in a little ice fishing?
Speaker 6: Or that be too early?
Speaker 1: That's it really depends on the climate, which doesn't It's
Speaker 1: not an ice angler's friend these days.
Speaker 3: He's a little too far south.
Speaker 1: Philadelphia, December fifteenth, Keswick Theater. Get your tickets to come
Speaker 1: on out. It'll be a very good time. Okay, I
Speaker 1: do that.
Speaker 9: Hang tight, they're gonna struggle to find something cool to
Speaker 9: do in Philadelphia. Why come on, there's just not a
Speaker 9: whole lot going on there.
Speaker 1: The other we'll do it in the other direction because
Speaker 1: Levi Morgan, the world's greatest archer, Like, categorically the world's
Speaker 1: best archer.
Speaker 4: Is joining us for the Pittsburgh Show.
Speaker 3: That's during Pennsylvania's rifle season. I'll let you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but he's a big bow hunter, so maybe we
Speaker 4: can squirrel hunt his place.
Speaker 3: Squirrel won't be open because it's rifle season. What small
Speaker 3: game is not open in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 4: Pennsylvania needs a new.
Speaker 3: I'm just letting you know. It's not like, don't yell
Speaker 3: at me.
Speaker 4: How could Pennsylvania justify that.
Speaker 1: They're like they're horrible, improving but horrible history on Sunday
Speaker 1: hunting and then you can't hunt squirrels during deer season.
Speaker 3: Dude, there's a lot of hunters in pennsil Yeah.
Speaker 10: I think it's just the amount of hunters in on
Speaker 10: game lands and public land at that point in time,
Speaker 10: just like people also out there squirrel hunting.
Speaker 9: It's just it muddies the waters, I think.
Speaker 3: Then it opens back up after Christmas.
Speaker 1: We get stories now and then of bow hunters who
Speaker 1: will have the audacity to come in.
Speaker 4: A cost.
Speaker 1: It might be a strong word. Does that imply something
Speaker 1: physical happened.
Speaker 3: Verbally cost to verbally a cost?
Speaker 1: I should look a look that up real quick.
Speaker 6: No, No, I'm I'm with Brody. I'm one hundred percent sure
Speaker 6: that you can just verb It does not have to
Speaker 6: be physical.
Speaker 1: Verbal to verbally a cost. Verbally a cost. Squirrel hunters
Speaker 1: as though their right and they have a greater right
Speaker 1: to be in the woods. Sure in this Philadelphia or
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania deal lends credence to that.
Speaker 3: No, No, Pennsylvania's got a real short rifle season.
Speaker 9: It's like two weeks anyways.
Speaker 6: Okay, who's smarter than me can tell me how to
Speaker 6: spell a cost? Accost to approach and speak to someone
Speaker 6: in an often challenging or aggressive way, is what Mariam said?
Speaker 3: Does that a lot steep a cost people a lot?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 1: Sure? But not scrollings man, they should that's a great definition.
Speaker 1: It is because it conforms the what.
Speaker 4: I thought it was, which makes it good.
Speaker 1: The meet at Or calendar. This year's calendar is out.
Speaker 1: It's called the Dirty Dozen. Go and check that out.
Speaker 1: We put a lot of work into that calendar. Not
Speaker 1: as much as normal, but a lot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's nice to change it up too.
Speaker 1: We'll go back to the old style next year. But
Speaker 1: like I said, this year's dirty doesen't. It's twelve months,
Speaker 1: so there's twelve seasons of meat Eater. It's twelve months
Speaker 1: in a year. Each month is a season.
Speaker 4: And guess what we did. January is the first season.
Speaker 3: A lot of cess pictures in there, a lot.
Speaker 1: Of Seth Morris photography in there. Check that out. The
Speaker 1: trivia board game is out. The only board game where
Speaker 1: conservation always wins. A dollar from every board game sold
Speaker 1: goes to conservation organizations. It's a great trivia board game.
Speaker 1: It's meant to be highly mobile. We kicked around different
Speaker 1: things with stupid boards and whatnot, but it's just the
Speaker 1: same setup we have. It comes with hundreds of question cards,
Speaker 1: comes a little mini dry erase boards, dry race markers.
Speaker 4: It's travel friendly.
Speaker 1: It's a great gift I have had and we still
Speaker 1: have one on our fishack. I have owned over the
Speaker 1: years the stupidest worst outdoor trivia games where they don't
Speaker 1: that the makers wouldn't understand the difference between objectivity and
Speaker 1: subjectivity and questions, meaning a question would be.
Speaker 4: Like what's the best deer cartridge?
Speaker 1: That's not trivia, that's like, that's an opinion game, which
Speaker 1: if there was a way to have an opinion game,
Speaker 1: I would be all in.
Speaker 3: Well, there's an opinion game on cartridges on the website.
Speaker 6: Right, but everybody knows it's a three to eight win.
Speaker 1: I'll give I want to.
Speaker 6: I think that we're going to see a lot get
Speaker 6: a lot. People said, should send us pictures of playing
Speaker 6: the new board game at deer Camp.
Speaker 3: Well, I was just going to ask if there's any
Speaker 3: prototypes around that we could take on the youth hunt.
Speaker 6: There are.
Speaker 1: I gave one away. I gave away a random I
Speaker 1: came on away to a random person. I said, don't
Speaker 1: show anybody that, but no one that works here because
Speaker 1: they'll get mad.
Speaker 3: That'd be fun with the kids.
Speaker 1: And then the guy probably runs and shows everybody, and
Speaker 1: then five people are going, did you get one of
Speaker 1: the board games? Waited like some guy out the parking lot.
Speaker 8: We were like, describe some guy more specific.
Speaker 4: Do you know Brody? I met at Brody last night?
Speaker 4: That beat your butt.
Speaker 1: Bad.
Speaker 3: I don't doubt it. He probably outweighed me by one
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty pounds more than that.
Speaker 6: No, he was two fifty, he said, it's one hundred.
Speaker 1: Last night we went down and we cooked dinner for
Speaker 1: the local football team, the ms U bobcast House.
Speaker 3: One two hundred and fifty hot dogs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of hot dogs.
Speaker 4: Thirty six gallons game chill, enough.
Speaker 3: For a court each, a big gulp of chili each,
Speaker 3: what each.
Speaker 8: Had a big gold is A good reminder is uh,
Speaker 8: they're kids. Oh, huge disparity, the disparity right between Like
Speaker 8: you're talking to one kid who just happens to be
Speaker 8: built like livestock animal. Uh, peach fuzz, peach fuzz, kind
Speaker 8: of like some acne and stuff going on. He's playing
Speaker 8: right next to a person who looks like he's been
Speaker 8: like supporting a family of four for a decade already, right, Like,
Speaker 8: and that's just what's so odd to me about that
Speaker 8: stage of athletics is like, here's somebody who's very physically gifted,
Speaker 8: and it will can continue to change dramatically.
Speaker 1: This time in this time right, No, they're still like
Speaker 1: and they're developing, and they're still playing at a very
Speaker 1: highly competitive level.
Speaker 8: And then right next to him, you're like, oh no,
Speaker 8: that is a fully developed human.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and cats are one of the best Division one
Speaker 3: Double A teams in the country.
Speaker 1: I was impressed by the poise and politeness. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I'll point I think that you think he like, yeah,
Speaker 1: disciplines on that level. We talked about like the little kids,
Speaker 1: but like just like very like just poised, and.
Speaker 3: I got the impression they got a respect for their
Speaker 3: coach and.
Speaker 8: And each other. I mean, they were all real. I
Speaker 8: was kind of mixing it up back in there, and
Speaker 8: they all seem to be real nice to each other too,
Speaker 8: and not like real cliquish, which is zero impressive to me.
Speaker 4: I was the only one that won.
Speaker 1: Uh. We each had me and Yanni and Calich had
Speaker 1: to do a compete in a physical feat not you know,
Speaker 1: not surprisingly, not surprisingly, I was the only one that
Speaker 1: was able to best my opponent.
Speaker 3: Did you compete against him? I have a lot of
Speaker 3: water the water guy or something.
Speaker 6: I'm not gonna acknowledge some details, but I have a
Speaker 6: lot of respect for Giannis's physical capabilities.
Speaker 8: But when the kid stood up to go against Giannis,
Speaker 8: it was just very clear that it was not gonna.
Speaker 1: That was a dude named Brody. This guy floats, yeah,
Speaker 1: floats through the air. The vertical jump unbelievable.
Speaker 6: Well, but I would expect that from like a skinnier
Speaker 6: wide receiver type, you know where you're like, oh, you
Speaker 6: might have played basketball too, but this dude is a
Speaker 6: defensive end. You know, our our two hundred and fifty
Speaker 6: pounds and yeah, like my my jump to get on
Speaker 6: that box has a lot to do with how high
Speaker 6: I can get my feet up, right, Like I got
Speaker 6: to get up in the air and just lift my
Speaker 6: feet up.
Speaker 4: In the same possible He took off exactly when you.
Speaker 6: Jump, there's like the jump and then you actually watch
Speaker 6: the actual part of I guess the vertical propulsion. Just
Speaker 6: floated six inches.
Speaker 1: It was funny too, is even like I'm not dogging
Speaker 1: at you because you did good, but when you maxed out,
Speaker 1: he was still like coming down on the match. He
Speaker 1: was approaching the mat from he was approaching the platform
Speaker 1: from above, like as.
Speaker 6: The dropped yeah, he had an easy six to ten
Speaker 6: inches to go until he was gonna max. It was
Speaker 6: funny because every we want to push him to the max,
Speaker 6: but the coach is, like.
Speaker 1: I did that.
Speaker 6: We don't need to get anybody injured today. This is
Speaker 6: fun enough.
Speaker 8: That was neat though.
Speaker 1: What I what I did for my tournament is I
Speaker 1: did a lot of pre research and I asked around
Speaker 1: what position is least likely to be able to do
Speaker 1: a lot of pull ups? And I kept getting the
Speaker 1: same answer, no.
Speaker 4: Like nose, like the guys that.
Speaker 8: Offensive line defense.
Speaker 1: And everybody said, I wouldn't talk to the to the
Speaker 1: guys that are you know, the three hundred plus guys.
Speaker 4: So I took on one of them and pull.
Speaker 6: Ups, and honestly, you only invested him by one. And
Speaker 6: I was surprised. I mean that kild put up almost
Speaker 6: ten pull ups with I mean, think about it, you
Speaker 6: only got to pull up one hundred and forty pounds.
Speaker 6: He's pulling up three hundred pounds. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh, But did I did best him? He used a
Speaker 1: different grip. I noticed I did the traditional he did
Speaker 1: the like. I don't know.
Speaker 8: I think it's because he had so much bulk in
Speaker 8: his arms. And shoulders. He was pretty limited to where
Speaker 8: he could grab the bar Steve.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I wonder if I could do more
Speaker 1: or less of that.
Speaker 6: Great well, so probably averages out he did like he did,
Speaker 6: like shooting, like he was shooting pistols.
Speaker 1: Shooting two pistols straight users at home.
Speaker 6: Yeah, which is the thing we do a lot is
Speaker 6: two pistols straight up in the sky.
Speaker 8: I start my morning.
Speaker 1: Okay, got handed over to Brody for a newsflash. This
Speaker 1: is Brody's favorite subject. Back to Colorado, Brody's favorite subject,
Speaker 1: his favorite two subjects come together.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Colorado and wolves.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 6: Oh, I'm waiting.
Speaker 3: Well on the second one.
Speaker 6: On the wolves, I don't know.
Speaker 3: We got a.
Speaker 6: Gaither way.
Speaker 3: We touched on this.
Speaker 6: A Colorado.
Speaker 4: It's a Colorado two for Colorado.
Speaker 3: A couple of years ago or whenever, had a ballot
Speaker 3: initiative to reintroduce wolves that it passed, and the Governor
Speaker 3: of Colorado kind of mandated that they would have wolves
Speaker 3: on the ground in Colorado by December of twenty three.
Speaker 4: No, you're aware that it's Colorado.
Speaker 3: It's Colorado Wrecking Mountain, So Colorado. A month from when
Speaker 3: this podcast airs, like there were supposed to have been
Speaker 3: wolves on the ground in Colorado. The problem is they
Speaker 3: can't get wolves anywhere.
Speaker 4: Can we can? We introduced the other wrinkle. But there
Speaker 4: are wolves, Yeah.
Speaker 3: There exactly.
Speaker 8: Yeah, not only are there wolves, but there's wolves that
Speaker 8: are reproducing within the state of Colorado, which Colorada.
Speaker 4: Yeah that's not true, that's not certain.
Speaker 3: Well, some of them got killed because they were wandering
Speaker 3: back and forth from Colorado to Wyoming.
Speaker 4: Got killed in Wyoming.
Speaker 3: Yeah, as soon as they crossed the border capal.
Speaker 4: By Colorado's with out of state.
Speaker 3: I don't know, I don't know, but yeah, there are
Speaker 3: wolves that made their way in naturally.
Speaker 6: But doesn't matter.
Speaker 3: They're still going to reintroduce them, but they just don't
Speaker 3: have any Montana, Wyoming, Idahol, we're all like a hard no,
Speaker 3: They're like, we're not going to help you put more
Speaker 3: wolves on the ground because of what I mean, it
Speaker 3: could be a political thing, like like demographically politically, those
Speaker 3: three states are much different from Colorado's and.
Speaker 1: Minst Wyoming saying no and Oregon saying no. Field very
Speaker 1: different to me.
Speaker 3: Sure, I like the Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho, like I
Speaker 3: think are just like we're just not interested not participating. Yes,
Speaker 3: Oregon hasn't really given a reason why. Washington is like, man,
Speaker 3: we're kind of interested, but it's just not the right
Speaker 3: time because the best time to trap wolves is later
Speaker 3: in the winter. So if we're going to help you,
Speaker 3: you're not getting these wolves until later, and then you'll
Speaker 3: have to introduce them in your state later. So right
Speaker 3: now it's not looking great, like there's no way they're
Speaker 3: going to get them on the ground in a month.
Speaker 4: Let me crystal ball this for you. This is not
Speaker 4: an issue.
Speaker 3: What do you mean it's not an issue though, them.
Speaker 1: Not getting wolves is not like actually a long term problem.
Speaker 4: No, No, they'll get know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: I just know.
Speaker 3: I think they'll get them from Washington eventually, but it's
Speaker 3: just not going to happen on the timeline they want.
Speaker 1: It's an interesting wrinkle, yeah, but this is not like
Speaker 1: this is.
Speaker 3: You don't think it's mildly interesting that for months they
Speaker 3: haven't been like they're like, we want wolves and nobody's
Speaker 3: given them to them.
Speaker 1: It would become more interesting to me if someone from
Speaker 1: each of these states who made that decision would say
Speaker 1: why I made that decision.
Speaker 3: I mean from MFWP just said, we are not interested
Speaker 3: in participating in this process cause I don't know, you'll
Speaker 3: have to infer. I think it's because they don't want
Speaker 3: to be held responsible for putting more wolves on the ground.
Speaker 3: Like when Colorado's wolf population explodes five years from now
Speaker 3: and they're like, where did these wolves come from? And
Speaker 3: they're like, why the hell did you get those.
Speaker 6: Super wolves from Montana?
Speaker 3: Yeah, and Canada is not even on the It was
Speaker 3: never even an option.
Speaker 4: Why is Canada not an option?
Speaker 3: I don't know. Maybe they don't want those big bad
Speaker 3: super wolves.
Speaker 6: Well about an option to who to Colorado?
Speaker 3: They haven't even like Canada is not playing ball in Colorado, hasn't.
Speaker 1: Went Minnesota, Wisconsin, in Michigan.
Speaker 3: Because of the far maybe because of the different type
Speaker 3: what type of wolf?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 3: Those wolves don't know what elk are, don't know what
Speaker 3: mountains are. Maybe it's like got something to do with that.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 9: I feel like they'd figured it out pretty quick.
Speaker 4: Here's my take. It's unchanging.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 4: I like I think that all the animals.
Speaker 1: That are from somewhere should be able to be there,
Speaker 1: but they should be I just really lean towards state management.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, we'll see what happens eventually, maybe they will
Speaker 3: be managed by the state. Okay, guys, we just wanted
Speaker 3: to give you a quick update since there was a
Speaker 3: lag time between when this podcast was recorded and when
Speaker 3: it's going to air, and in that time, it turns
Speaker 3: out that Colorado found a source for wolves, which is
Speaker 3: a state of Oregon which has agreed to supply ten
Speaker 3: wolves to Colorado that will then be reintroduced in Colorado.
Speaker 3: It looks like they're probably in the process right now
Speaker 3: of capturing those wolves and then they'll bring them to Colorado,
Speaker 3: check them for disease, injury, stuff like that, throw a
Speaker 3: radio collar on them, let them acclimate, and then they're
Speaker 3: going to plan on reintroducing those wolves around veil Asspen
Speaker 3: gunn Us In. They're not being too specific about the
Speaker 3: area they're going to release them in, but it's gonna happen,
Speaker 3: and we just wanted to keep you guys updated that
Speaker 3: there had been a change in what we had just
Speaker 3: talked about.
Speaker 4: Moving on, This one's serious.
Speaker 3: This one is serious. It's the reason we're talking about
Speaker 3: it because it's another kind of ballot box example of
Speaker 3: wildlife management.
Speaker 1: I think this one's more This in my mind, is
Speaker 1: more serious than the other issues.
Speaker 3: Oh for sure, especially if if you're a hunter. The
Speaker 3: kind of the same group of people that probably may
Speaker 3: have been involved in getting wolves back in Colorado or
Speaker 3: who knows, maybe I'm maybe that's not correct.
Speaker 1: Anyway, it's the people from the Whole Foods parking lot.
Speaker 3: Yes, and they tend to travel these they travel around
Speaker 3: the West.
Speaker 4: That's where these signatures get collected.
Speaker 3: Yes, they travel around the West a.
Speaker 4: Lot, farmers markets, Whole Foods parking lots.
Speaker 3: There's now a proposal, well it's not a proposal, it's
Speaker 3: it's in the works. They're they're getting signatures and they're
Speaker 3: hoping to get enough signatures to get a ban of
Speaker 3: mountain lion and bobcat hunting. Get that on the ballot
Speaker 3: in Colorado and they'll get I think they need like
Speaker 3: roughly one hundred and twenty four thousand signatures. Yeah, which
Speaker 3: is like not a problem.
Speaker 4: It's going on. Listen, it's gonna be on unless there's
Speaker 4: some issue. It's going to be on the ballot.
Speaker 3: It will be And Colorado is now like the kind
Speaker 3: of place where people got to pay attention because it
Speaker 3: could like it could get banned in Colorado.
Speaker 1: Like these ballad initias. I mean, ballad initiais cut both
Speaker 1: ways right, like right to hunt and fish stuff. I
Speaker 1: don't know, I don't know if one of those. Yeah,
Speaker 1: those have come to ballad initis and baald initias don't
Speaker 1: always win. Like when they try to do a ballad,
Speaker 1: what it is is basically like it's special interest groups.
Speaker 1: They don't even mean that in a negative way, because
Speaker 1: you have special interest groups on both sides.
Speaker 4: A special interest.
Speaker 1: Group will want to bypass the normal channels of lawmaking,
Speaker 1: in this case, bypass how wildlife gets normally managed.
Speaker 6: Often probably because they've already tried numerous times to go
Speaker 6: through the legislative process and it hasn't.
Speaker 1: Worked, And they go, well, I'm going to take it
Speaker 1: to the voters yep. And then you in order to
Speaker 1: get it on the ballot, has to enjoy a certain
Speaker 1: level of popular support. So you write a really cock
Speaker 1: eyed because you can't write the ballot cock eyed, but
Speaker 1: you can write the petition cock eye. Sure, so you
Speaker 1: write a cock eyed petition with all kinds of like
Speaker 1: trigger words and stuff like that.
Speaker 8: Signs or in a case like this, it's just gonna
Speaker 8: be too fuzzy slightly spotted kittens, doowe eyed mountain lion kittens?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 8: Sure, saying do you think people can kill me?
Speaker 6: They've gone, So are you going to go as far
Speaker 6: as to say, like what they're how they're actually the
Speaker 6: trophy and then the animals that are included under this
Speaker 6: trophy hunting ban, you can go ahead, Well, they're they're
Speaker 6: they've listed in they're going to try to ban all
Speaker 6: trophy hunting. And then they're what they're what they're doing
Speaker 6: with their messaging is they're defining what trophy hunting is
Speaker 6: by saying that it's mountain lions, bobcats, and links. Yeah, anyways,
Speaker 6: exact it's a federally protected species.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 6: But again, like what you're saying is in this initial messaging,
Speaker 6: the petition, the propaganda, they don't you don't have to
Speaker 6: talk in fast.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: They did the same thing in Arizona with jaguars, Like
Speaker 3: they added jaguars onto the list.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because it tricks people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that way, some dude going in there to get
Speaker 1: some dude going in there to get his uh, you know,
Speaker 1: his his hamburger and his Sabbi P's and his hamburger
Speaker 1: at whole foods. I imagine you probably get a lot
Speaker 1: of you know, what's the place that does like the
Speaker 1: old timey posters, they sell a lot of junk food.
Speaker 4: Trader Joe's.
Speaker 1: You probably get a lot of signatures outside of Trader Joe's.
Speaker 1: So anyways, you're going there and someone's like, oh my,
Speaker 1: you know, goodness, good lord, they're gonna hunt jaguars. I
Speaker 1: better sign this petition, not knowing that that's an impossibility. Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And and there the trophy huntings are saying, well,
Speaker 6: you got You're only out there killing it for its
Speaker 6: hide or for its head, or for this trophy, so
Speaker 6: you can you.
Speaker 4: Know, get what about cash money?
Speaker 1: I don't.
Speaker 6: I don't know if that's in the in the wording,
Speaker 6: but uh again that's illegal, like in the state of
Speaker 6: Colorado that meat has to be processed for human consumption
Speaker 6: on what on a mountain lion?
Speaker 1: Yeah it does.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so they got a salvage requirement.
Speaker 3: I don't think I'm bobcast, but lions for sure.
Speaker 1: I like that.
Speaker 4: I like those I like those rules.
Speaker 3: But yeah, Colorado like has a history of this, like
Speaker 3: going back to the nineties. That's how they lost trapping
Speaker 3: trapping leg holding killed spring bear spring bear hound bear
Speaker 3: like and now it was eighty years ago. Like, the
Speaker 3: demographics in that state have changed a lot in thirty years.
Speaker 3: So you know, it doesn't take a whole lot of
Speaker 3: voters in Denver and Boulder and Fort Collins to kind
Speaker 3: of skew how the vote goes statewide. You know, like
Speaker 3: if if this was proposed in Wyoming, would be dead
Speaker 3: on arrival.
Speaker 4: I remember someone with the trapping thing.
Speaker 1: Someone remember someone saying the minute the population of the
Speaker 1: greater Denver area surpassed the population of the state, trapping
Speaker 1: was gone. Yeah, yeah, I know that wouldn't surprise city slickers. Yep.
Speaker 3: So they're back at it again in Colorado.
Speaker 1: But you guys can beat if you're in Colorado, you
Speaker 1: can beat this. They beat it in Maine. They beat
Speaker 1: the bear band in band in Maine. In Montana, we
Speaker 1: soundly beated a public land trapping band on the ballot
Speaker 1: seventy percent.
Speaker 3: The same thing in Arizona got beat. Yeah, within the
Speaker 3: last couple of years.
Speaker 1: But in the end, when when in the future, in
Speaker 1: one hundred years, when hunting is largely done in California,
Speaker 1: not even one hundred years, twenty five years, when hunting
Speaker 1: is done in California, done in Washington, done in Colorado.
Speaker 1: It'll be because of the it'll because of ballots, and
Speaker 1: then you'll have then it'll it'll be like a different
Speaker 1: land will be completely different vigilanti landscape. Can we talk
Speaker 1: about this with the game warden?
Speaker 6: Do we talk? Can we talk a little bit about
Speaker 6: like what what we can do about this?
Speaker 1: Yeah? But can I first tell you, well, yeah, you
Speaker 1: talk about that. Then I want to talk about a
Speaker 1: correlation I've found with the.
Speaker 4: Let's soon throw this out there.
Speaker 1: I have found it's your podcast, Go ahead, there's a
Speaker 1: correlation between the state's readiness to embrace legal weed. There
Speaker 1: we discussed show a state's readiness to embrace legal weed
Speaker 1: and its readiness to ban hunting practices.
Speaker 5: It is not true.
Speaker 1: We need to We need a very strong correlation. We
Speaker 1: need to ask of the Mississippi.
Speaker 10: You know that weeds legal in Montana, right, but it
Speaker 10: was slow to embrace it state.
Speaker 1: It's quick, No, Steve, you've time in Alaska, right, That's
Speaker 1: what I told.
Speaker 3: That's because that's where I grew up.
Speaker 5: And you know, my parents had a greenhouse for vegetablesuse
Speaker 5: for other.
Speaker 3: Vative get a list of the states and make a
Speaker 3: real comparison.
Speaker 6: Of Spencer's statistics. People that help them out with the
Speaker 6: stats for the trivia. Well, I'm hoping right now they're
Speaker 6: already working on this to to come back and make
Speaker 6: not to show you correlation.
Speaker 1: You want to know two things I was wrong about
Speaker 1: that I was convinced I was right about I was
Speaker 1: wrong only two, So there I was. I thought that
Speaker 1: conservatives were less likely to believe in ghosts. In fact,
Speaker 1: they're more likely to believe in ghosts. I thought that
Speaker 1: conservatives were less likely to have gluten intolerance, but in
Speaker 1: fact it's like a statistical walk.
Speaker 3: That one is strange to me, very the gluten thing.
Speaker 1: And I think that people because here's my theory, hunters
Speaker 1: don't mind hiding the book. It's a big part of
Speaker 1: hunt it, so they don't mind sneaking off in the
Speaker 1: bushes to to you know, indulge, moving on.
Speaker 4: Go on, it's a half baked know what you can do?
Speaker 8: Part is is the takeaway here Gang pasion.
Speaker 1: Probably cut all that out because the more I think
Speaker 1: about it, I might not be right.
Speaker 6: Okay, looking at that point, uh yeah, and this, uh,
Speaker 6: there's a lot to be to be said here, but
Speaker 6: it I think if it's left only up to the
Speaker 6: people that participate in hound hunting in Colorado, uh, it's
Speaker 6: it's a lost battle now, right, Like everybody's gonna have
Speaker 6: to chip in. And to me, I think the best
Speaker 6: way that we can do it is we you can't
Speaker 6: shrug off or or be flippant in conversations with non hunters.
Speaker 6: The same way that the the opposition is now swaying
Speaker 6: that middle eighty percent that's going to decide this vote
Speaker 6: in their direction. We have to be out there talking
Speaker 6: and messaging and talking to people about that it's not
Speaker 6: trophy hunting and all the good things that are associated
Speaker 6: with this thing that they're trying to take away, and
Speaker 6: explain to them about the rules and regulations that go
Speaker 6: into it, you know, explain to them that the meat
Speaker 6: has to be uh, you know, prepared for human consumption,
Speaker 6: et cetera, et cetera. And I think once if you can,
Speaker 6: I always tell the story I've told it multiple times
Speaker 6: on this podcast about my aunt, who very liberal, very hippie.
Speaker 6: She chants every morning with her windows open.
Speaker 5: I mean, she just.
Speaker 6: She'll rather pot person. She's not a pot smoker, but
Speaker 6: she would rather escort ants out of her kitchen then
Speaker 6: stomp on them.
Speaker 9: Right.
Speaker 6: She's really like one with with all living things. She
Speaker 6: was not into hunting and not a supporter of hunting,
Speaker 6: maybe even anti hunter until I became of the age
Speaker 6: and old enough to and she knew that I got
Speaker 6: that far into it, and we would have conversations and
Speaker 6: I would explain to her what hunting was to me,
Speaker 6: how I did it, how I went about it, and
Speaker 6: that completely flipped her. And I can guarantee you right now,
Speaker 6: if she's in a room of people and there's someone
Speaker 6: talking bad about hunting, she will step in and on
Speaker 6: our behalf speak positively about hunting and say that that
Speaker 6: what that person is saying might not be exactly true
Speaker 6: and you might want to look into it farther. And
Speaker 6: that just comes from having conversations.
Speaker 3: So I think you gotta like have that same conversation
Speaker 3: around like hound hunting and lines with some hunters too,
Speaker 3: because they're hunters who are like, well, it's not really fair,
Speaker 3: you know. You see that a lot yep.
Speaker 1: From Yeah, and I remember what the public land trapping
Speaker 1: thing here. I heard from multiple people who were upland
Speaker 1: bird hunters right who were pro trap band. They thought
Speaker 1: it was beneficial to them, and uh, and just not
Speaker 1: seeing the big picture about like do you honestly think
Speaker 1: you're you're immune from this if you dogs? Yeah, chase
Speaker 1: down birds.
Speaker 3: Yeah it's weird.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, what does that sound familiar too?
Speaker 6: Yeah? It's like yeah, and it and it's funny because
Speaker 6: people love dogs most of the time, right, Like everybody
Speaker 6: loves dogs. But I spoke with a game warn yesterday
Speaker 6: from Colorado off the record, and he's like, look, even
Speaker 6: in our agency, there's people that you know in their
Speaker 6: game warns and you'll be able to speak to this
Speaker 6: to how it is set up here. But there's they
Speaker 6: really they split it up between I think like education, research,
Speaker 6: and law enforcement, their game warns do all three that
Speaker 6: you know what they have to do. And so to
Speaker 6: what he was saying is like it even if you
Speaker 6: don't think it's ethically or personally, you don't believe that,
Speaker 6: you know, hunting lions with hounds.
Speaker 5: Is the right thing to do.
Speaker 6: It is a tool in the game management officers or
Speaker 6: warden's toolbox, and when you take it away, it limits
Speaker 6: how they can you know, manage it, right, And I
Speaker 6: mean it just compounds because now that they don't have
Speaker 6: that tool, those animals still have to be managed. They're
Speaker 6: still going to have to be dealt with. And he's like,
Speaker 6: you know what's worse getting you know, killed by a
Speaker 6: person out there hunting, or when you get caught in
Speaker 6: a live trap and then some person walks up to
Speaker 6: you and that. And he's like, they're always thrashing around
Speaker 6: in that live trap right before we have to, you know,
Speaker 6: put one in their head. Or sometimes it's so wild
Speaker 6: they have to actually dart them first and then euthanize them,
Speaker 6: which he said, which is a bummer because I can't
Speaker 6: then donate the meat the meat is drugged up, right,
Speaker 6: But it's uh, you know, I think that people are
Speaker 6: easily swayed here because they think it's gonna be better
Speaker 6: for the animals somehow, but it never is. It's never
Speaker 6: gonna be better for these animals when they can't be
Speaker 6: hunted and the hunting can't be used as the manager.
Speaker 1: There's still gonna be a bunch of lethal control, more
Speaker 1: onlines than bobcasts. But for sure, the thing I would
Speaker 1: point out is we're talking about stable We're talking about stable,
Speaker 1: regulated wildlife populations.
Speaker 5: And It's definitely true. Agencies use hunting as a management tool,
Speaker 5: so whether the harvest is trapping or hunting, it's a
Speaker 5: huge part of the management tool to manage the population,
Speaker 5: to deal with conflicts and things. And if, as as
Speaker 5: Yanni said, if you take that tool away, then that
Speaker 5: burden usually goes onto the agency, and so a lot
Speaker 5: more you'll see a lot more agency removals if hunting
Speaker 5: isn't an option.
Speaker 8: Now, how do you feel qualified to weigh in on
Speaker 8: something like that, Adam.
Speaker 5: Well, I've been a game warden for a while, a
Speaker 5: dozen years or so, and in charge of a lot
Speaker 5: of management decisions in southwest Montana.
Speaker 1: So let's back up to how you got in the biz,
Speaker 1: How I got.
Speaker 5: In the business? How far back you want to go?
Speaker 4: Born in Fairbanks, correct.
Speaker 5: Born in Fairbanks, Alaska, So you know, you know, as
Speaker 5: a kid, scale is different than an adult. And so
Speaker 5: we lived on what my dad called a homestead outside
Speaker 5: of Fairbanks, Alaska, no running water, no electricity for a
Speaker 5: good part of my life, and I felt I was
Speaker 5: way back in the bush. And we went into town
Speaker 5: once once a week for church, laundry, groceries, maybe the
Speaker 5: Sizzler or something like that, you know, in town, go
Speaker 5: out to the restaurant. But since going back there, it's
Speaker 5: not as far out as I remember.
Speaker 1: It may be a way out there just I remember, well,
Speaker 1: town might have crept up on it a little bit.
Speaker 5: It's very true, you know, in the you know, roads
Speaker 5: in Alaska have varying degrees of reliability or condition. And
Speaker 5: Dad drove an old nineteen fifties pickup and I just
Speaker 5: remember always falling asleep on the way into town and
Speaker 5: just thinking that town is brutal. But being back up
Speaker 5: there recently, it's a pretty quick drive into town. So, yeah,
Speaker 5: I grew up in rural Alaska, in the heart of
Speaker 5: the state.
Speaker 1: Was it something that your dad your dad trap but
Speaker 1: wouldn't didn't eat game or something.
Speaker 5: He did do some trapping. He was huge into furs
Speaker 5: and just making things out of first. He just just
Speaker 5: loved doing stuff with his hands and being able to
Speaker 5: make things from scratch. You know, he definitely viewed that
Speaker 5: man was he was here to kind of be the
Speaker 5: shepherd of wildlife or the shepherd of the natural world
Speaker 5: and resources. You know, we had fur hats and all
Speaker 5: sorts of stuff that he'd make. But he was a
Speaker 5: staunch vegetarian. Regally, he did not eat meat. You know,
Speaker 5: every once in a while he'd eat some wild game
Speaker 5: that someone brought over and stuff, but he didn't hunt. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: One of our most common protein sources was a was
Speaker 5: a soy based hot dog called a linket. I don't
Speaker 5: know if you've ever seen those. Most stores have them.
Speaker 5: It's in the canned food section. I mean, just it.
Speaker 5: I don't I don't know how he ate him now.
Speaker 5: I don't really care for him, but as a kid,
Speaker 5: just just just absolutely loved him, and that was a
Speaker 5: common snack or protein.
Speaker 6: So did he trap the stuff that he used to
Speaker 6: make the.
Speaker 5: It's it's a mix, yeah, yeah, something, But he never
Speaker 5: would consume no, the meat from what he trapped. Nope,
Speaker 5: didn't consume any meat. You know, just hated go into
Speaker 5: restaurants with them because there was always some sort of
Speaker 5: battle with the server over them not having good vegetarian
Speaker 5: dish options. Is this my meat or my meal going
Speaker 5: to be cooked on the same pan that you know
Speaker 5: that guy's getting a steak one. My mom would later
Speaker 5: tell me stories of her sneaking off to McDonald's in
Speaker 5: town because she wanted meat like to consume meat. You know,
Speaker 5: she's definitely a person who likes her steak bloody rare.
Speaker 5: But she was married to my dad or with my dad,
Speaker 5: who was a staunch vegetarian. Hey, you know, there's lots
Speaker 5: of things. I asked my dad on why he believed
Speaker 5: the things he did and never really explained him really
Speaker 5: well to me. So I can only guess. But you know,
Speaker 5: he'd eat fish though, but not not red meat. Definitely, No,
Speaker 5: he's not. Yeah, I passed away a couple of years ago.
Speaker 1: So yeah, So at what ages you go in the
Speaker 1: law enforcement direction?
Speaker 5: Uh so, early twenties. So mom remarried. She married a
Speaker 5: guy worked on the pipeline up there, my stepdad who
Speaker 5: I called my dad, who really had a huge hand
Speaker 5: in raising me. He's a big game hunter in Alaska.
Speaker 5: We relocated later on to the midwest of Minnesota in
Speaker 5: my teenage years and because the pipeline work or what
Speaker 5: he was up in Alaska for pipeline whe He's from
Speaker 5: the midwest, North Dakota, Minnesota, ranching family and such. Moved
Speaker 5: up there with his brother for pipeline work and such,
Speaker 5: and then met my mom. They they had a couple
Speaker 5: of kids, My my brothers who were half brothers, but
Speaker 5: I called my brothers and uh, they decided to move
Speaker 5: closer to his family moved to the Midwest. So I
Speaker 5: went to high school and in Minnesota went to college
Speaker 5: there too, really struggling with what I wanted to do
Speaker 5: for a profession. You know. I think my two dreams
Speaker 5: as a kid was either to get paid to snowmobile
Speaker 5: or get paid to play with legos. I think those
Speaker 5: were the two things that I just always dreamed of
Speaker 5: doing as a kid.
Speaker 11: And uh.
Speaker 5: Came out to Bozeman or West Yellowstone actually for snowmobill
Speaker 5: vacation with my with my dad and grandpa and a
Speaker 5: few other friends in high school. And I remember seeing
Speaker 5: a Snowollville drive by that said law enforcement on it,
Speaker 5: and that was like.
Speaker 3: Way to go to crab.
Speaker 5: I could get paid to Snowmoville, know, and so I
Speaker 5: started thinking about it, but it took me a while
Speaker 5: to achieve that goal. Went to college, struggled, changed majors
Speaker 5: multiple times.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: My first semester at MSU, I think I had a
Speaker 5: point seventy five GPA because I was skiing and fishing
Speaker 5: too much and just doing other things that that's like
Speaker 5: you think there was a w.
Speaker 1: W D and an F.
Speaker 5: Maybe that's hard to recover from.
Speaker 3: You want to start good and then then it's harder
Speaker 3: to knock it down.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so and uh, you know, like I said, change
Speaker 5: majors a bunch, And eventually I took a justice studies
Speaker 5: class in college and I got an A. I went
Speaker 5: to class, I was engaged. I got an A and
Speaker 5: I thought, maybe there's something to this. Maybe that because
Speaker 5: I'm into this, you know subject, maybe this is a
Speaker 5: good profession for me. And that's some advice I give
Speaker 5: everybody who's struggling with with what what to pursue as
Speaker 5: a career. You know, I spent yesterday at MSU talking
Speaker 5: to a lot of perspective students and such and and
Speaker 5: just start exploring different subjects, and when you find one,
Speaker 5: all of a sudden, that becomes easy. You don't make
Speaker 5: excuses on whether or not you're going to class. You
Speaker 5: retain the information without studying too hard. Maybe that's a
Speaker 5: subject for you to pursue. And for me, criminal justice
Speaker 5: was the first one. I never finished college early on,
Speaker 5: just got frustrated. I was living in Minneapolis at the time,
Speaker 5: going to school there. At the University of Minnesota, really
Speaker 5: struggling with living in Saint Paul, Minneapolis and just being
Speaker 5: in a big city. And one day I just kind
Speaker 5: of sat down and said to myself, if I could
Speaker 5: go anywhere and do anything, what would I do, And
Speaker 5: was move back to Montana where the outdoor stuff that
Speaker 5: I really loved was. So I wrote myself a written
Speaker 5: contract because I toyed with going into the military too,
Speaker 5: for direction, I wrote myself a written contract that said,
Speaker 5: you'll move to Montana, you'll get a job in law
Speaker 5: enforce within two years, or you'll join the Marines. And
Speaker 5: I pinned that up on the wall and.
Speaker 4: That was my plan, and you signed it, witnessed it.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, So moved to Montana. The first law enforcement
Speaker 5: job I got was in a detention center. So worked
Speaker 5: as a detention officer there for just under a year.
Speaker 1: Oh was that tough man.
Speaker 5: It was different, pretty eye opening to societal problems and
Speaker 5: just people in general. You know, a wide variety of
Speaker 5: people that get arrested. You know, people make mistakes and
Speaker 5: people have bad intentions. So I was young, I was
Speaker 5: twenty one years old, you know, pretty green to the
Speaker 5: world and experience. It was eye opening, but it did
Speaker 5: further my interest in law enforcement. So a year into that,
Speaker 5: I got hired with a municipal police department. Worked there
Speaker 5: for seven years, did all sorts of things from drug
Speaker 5: task force work to traffic unit that was yep, that
Speaker 5: was here in Montana, and then just a couple things
Speaker 5: started piling on. I never finished college, wanted to finish
Speaker 5: that didn't have a job where I got paid to
Speaker 5: snowmobill like I originally thought. You know, conservation was still
Speaker 5: really important to me, and I just city life was good,
Speaker 5: but I really wanted to just be outside, and so
Speaker 5: went back to school. I was married then both my
Speaker 5: wife and I went back to school together. She carried
Speaker 5: me through calculus and a couple other classes. She's definitely
Speaker 5: got the brains of the two of us. And then
Speaker 5: started working some conservation jobs while in college. So I
Speaker 5: worked for the US Fish Wildlife Service doing upland game
Speaker 5: bird and waterfowl restoration work. Really ok, yeah, in the
Speaker 5: midwest of Minnesota, because we'd moved back to Minnesota to
Speaker 5: go back to school, mostly because we had kids, and
Speaker 5: my parents were there and said they'd help if we
Speaker 5: want to go back to school.
Speaker 1: So it was nice to have that safety net.
Speaker 5: And yeah, then I worked as a wetland specialist for
Speaker 5: the NRCS delineating and classifying wetlands in South Dakota and
Speaker 5: just kept wanting to get back to Montana.
Speaker 1: That had to have been a semi contentious gig.
Speaker 5: It was, so you know, the wetland job you're talking.
Speaker 1: About, Yeah, I mean when you got to go out
Speaker 1: and break the news definitely to someone who's like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm going to drain all that.
Speaker 5: That's exactly was my role. So so you had agriculture
Speaker 5: producers at a time when corn and soybean prices were
Speaker 5: really high, but it was also wet, and so they're
Speaker 5: looking at putting more acreage into production. So they want
Speaker 5: to tile everything, tile, drain, and so there's an application
Speaker 5: process of regulatory process, and so myself and others would
Speaker 5: go out and we'd we'd classify the wetlands by looking
Speaker 5: at historical data, aerial photography. We'd determine the hydrology, the
Speaker 5: soil type.
Speaker 1: We would uh the vegetation regime too, right.
Speaker 5: Yep, catalog the hydrophobic and hydrophilic plants, the invertebrates, and
Speaker 5: then there's a whole process that kind of take in
Speaker 5: all those circumstances into it gives you a determination of
Speaker 5: what kind of wetland it is. And then it then
Speaker 5: whatever rules or what they may be allowed to do
Speaker 5: with it, drain it, til it or maybe leave it alone.
Speaker 5: They can't touch it.
Speaker 1: I was on a property recently and they had that
Speaker 1: work had just been done. Yeah, and I'm surprised how
Speaker 1: like NAT's ass it was. I mean they had things
Speaker 1: size at his table, like contours, not things. It's not individuals,
Speaker 1: but the contour of the wetland was very precise.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, yeah. We used trimbles and rchis to go
Speaker 5: out there by hand when we do the inspection.
Speaker 8: And because you want to get like a cross section
Speaker 8: strata layer and then you can see like how long
Speaker 8: this has been a wetland yep, and the changes that
Speaker 8: it's gone through.
Speaker 1: And well imagine people want to argue about it too,
Speaker 1: and they're gonna be like shit, right yesterday when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, that was a you know, dry as
Speaker 1: a desert.
Speaker 5: Well, and that's why the historical stuff came into effect.
Speaker 5: You know, you'll go back through decades of aerial photography
Speaker 5: and compare that to weather data to see, you know,
Speaker 5: if it was wet, you know, if it was still
Speaker 5: wet and dry years.
Speaker 1: And such like. Oh that's good.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was a really interesting job. Really loved it.
Speaker 1: And then uh am I overblowing the contentious aspect of
Speaker 1: it was more Was it more cooperative?
Speaker 5: It was more cooperative for sure. I mean there was
Speaker 5: definitely instances where disagreements occurred, you know, where where a
Speaker 5: producer might uh challenge the determination. You know, sometimes it
Speaker 5: got overturned, sometimes it didn't. But it was a collaborative
Speaker 5: effort between us and the producer.
Speaker 1: We hunted on it. We had hunting permission in Michigan's
Speaker 1: Upper Peninsula in a guy's place. Man, he got a
Speaker 1: bunch of trouble for draining and something he wasn't supposed
Speaker 1: to drain once and his name was Herb for something.
Speaker 1: We always called him Herb beside. But it wasn't even
Speaker 1: nervous that he just drained it. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, and you know, so that was that job
Speaker 5: led to the job I have now. So I started
Speaker 5: to miss law enforcement. You know, you guys were talking
Speaker 5: about the respectful, tight knit group of the football team
Speaker 5: you were interacting with last night. You know, I missed
Speaker 5: that brotherhood that law enforcement had, that group of people
Speaker 5: who are literally willing to sacrifice themselves for each other
Speaker 5: and and experience a lot of uh stress together. And
Speaker 5: when you experience stress together, you build bonds. You know,
Speaker 5: you guys probably have experienced it out in the field.
Speaker 5: The hunt goes perfectly correct, it's fun. But the ones
Speaker 5: that are really memorable the ones that go to crap
Speaker 5: basically and you you persevere and you you get through it.
Speaker 5: I missed that bond, missed that group of people, uh
Speaker 5: missed the law enforcement asset of public service, but wanted
Speaker 5: to stay in conservation and came out to Montana became
Speaker 5: a game warden here.
Speaker 1: Is that pretty competitive at the time?
Speaker 9: It is? It still is?
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, we we definitely get a decent amount
Speaker 5: of applicants, but we have vacancies every year, so we're
Speaker 5: always hiring. From what I've seen, people stay longer in
Speaker 5: this profession than maybe some other law enforcement profession.
Speaker 1: So is the flow does the flow normally go that
Speaker 1: people are in police work and go into game warden
Speaker 1: or is it like a two way two way door
Speaker 1: or I've seen it go way you like, it's a
Speaker 1: goal from game warning to be like, man, I'm just
Speaker 1: going back and straight up, like highway patrol or whatever.
Speaker 5: Yeah, part of law enforcement is it's really hard to
Speaker 5: do to understand what it is until you're in it.
Speaker 1: And you know.
Speaker 5: Another piece of advice I give for people trying to
Speaker 5: figure out their career and they come to me and say,
Speaker 5: I want to be a game warden. I tell them
Speaker 5: we'll get a degree and whatever. Your second choice is,
Speaker 5: get a degree in in don't get degree in criminal justice.
Speaker 5: You know, maybe get a degree in wildlife management. You're
Speaker 5: really interested in conservation. That way, if the law enforcement
Speaker 5: side doesn't work out for you, you have a backup
Speaker 5: plan and you're not now I have to go back
Speaker 5: to school because you don't know if it's a good
Speaker 5: fit for you until you try it. And we have
Speaker 5: a decent amount of people wash out of training programs,
Speaker 5: and we have a lot of people who just decide,
Speaker 5: I just I just don't like this. I don't like
Speaker 5: being a referee for people's recreation and fun out there,
Speaker 5: and they decide to go into something else.
Speaker 8: That's interesting. Is that how a lot of people see it?
Speaker 8: Or is that Adam Pankraft's original.
Speaker 5: You know, my kids play a lot of high school sports,
Speaker 5: and I have a lot of empathy for the referees
Speaker 5: out there because I see connections for what they do
Speaker 5: to me. You're in the public eye, you're correcting people's
Speaker 5: fun and sometimes the correction and message you have.
Speaker 4: And rules you're deliver, you're a buzzkiller exactly, you know.
Speaker 5: So I have a lot of empathy for them, And
Speaker 5: I've asked a lot of people come to me who
Speaker 5: know sports, like, have you ever looked at a refereen
Speaker 5: and thought that looks like a cool job. If they
Speaker 5: say no, maybe my job isn't the right one for you.
Speaker 5: It depends.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 5: That's not all we do, but it's a part. And
Speaker 5: you have to have that ability to be able to
Speaker 5: go into a group of people at a phishing access
Speaker 5: site and tell them what you're doing is illegal.
Speaker 1: You have to stop.
Speaker 5: And you might get oh, it's not being a buzzkiller.
Speaker 5: You know, you're ruining our fund. But the rules are
Speaker 5: there for a reason for safety or for conservation and
Speaker 5: protection of habitat.
Speaker 1: So this is a tricky one. This is gonna be
Speaker 1: a tricky for you to answer. You don't need to
Speaker 1: spend too much time on it. But uh, We've got
Speaker 1: a lot of ton of things I want to ask
Speaker 1: you about. There has been how do you handle when
Speaker 1: there's rules Like, there's certain rules, imagine they're just like
Speaker 1: seems so concrete and if that rule wasn't in place,
Speaker 1: the whole system would collapse. Okay, But there's gotta be
Speaker 1: a the rules where you might look and be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know it is confusing, sure it and you don't
Speaker 1: need to say which ones or it is poorly written
Speaker 1: or I really can't articulate to you the why this
Speaker 1: is the that way? Yeah? Is it hard to jump
Speaker 1: into that mindset of having it be that I'm not here.
Speaker 1: I'm not like an arbiter. I'm not here to do
Speaker 1: value judgments. I'm here to be like, this is my code, sure,
Speaker 1: and I enforce this code and I and it's not
Speaker 1: my I don't need to morally wrestle with you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah what I'm up against here?
Speaker 5: No, I know what you're talking about. I mean there's
Speaker 5: rules that are pretty black and white. I mean, anybody
Speaker 5: who's grown up around fishing knows you have to have
Speaker 5: affiicient license. It's just it's just a general rule. It
Speaker 5: doesn't matter what state you go to, and so I
Speaker 5: have little patience for people's excuse of I didn't know
Speaker 5: I need a fishing license. There's just nowhere in the
Speaker 5: United States that you don't need a fishing license. Obviously
Speaker 5: there's age groups or groups that maybe don't need them,
Speaker 5: from from the elderly to the young, but everyone needs
Speaker 5: efficient license, and so the excuse of I didn't know
Speaker 5: doesn't hold weight with me. And there's a general acceptance
Speaker 5: of ignorance of the laws, not a defense. But you know,
Speaker 5: as we create laws and regulations, sometimes we don't know
Speaker 5: the effects of them until we try and implement them.
Speaker 5: And our job and enforcement is to implement and enforce
Speaker 5: the laws. You know, if your three branches of government,
Speaker 5: Legislature creates law, the courts interpret them, and the executive branch,
Speaker 5: which we're part of, enforces them or implements them, so
Speaker 5: that implementation, you know, you'll have decision makers up on
Speaker 5: high that'll give us a law or give us priorities,
Speaker 5: and we'll implement them. But part of my role as
Speaker 5: an administrator is to send up feedback back up the
Speaker 5: chain of how that implementation went, how the enforcement went,
Speaker 5: where their issues, where we were running into problems in
Speaker 5: the courts where the courts are interpret it different than
Speaker 5: the maybe legislative intent, and so sometimes we use that
Speaker 5: implementation to clarify laws. That's why you may see laws
Speaker 5: change over time.
Speaker 1: Oh, because you just keep running into trouble every time
Speaker 1: you go to prosc someone tries to prosecute and they
Speaker 1: run into trouble.
Speaker 5: A loophole is found, or it's ambiguous. You know, if
Speaker 5: we run into issues where the general public just is
Speaker 5: confused or our own staff, you know, that's a good feedback.
Speaker 5: If our own staff game wardens are confused what the
Speaker 5: role is in this, that's a good sign the public
Speaker 5: is too, and we'll try and fix that, you know,
Speaker 5: as soon as we can. Sometimes the government process is slow,
Speaker 5: but we have a lot of other tools and enforcement
Speaker 5: ticket is the last thing we want to do or
Speaker 5: take someone to jail.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: Officers have discretion, and the way we look at discretion
Speaker 5: is what kind of action do we need to take
Speaker 5: to change behavior? If me just walking up to you
Speaker 5: and reminding you, hey, put your dog on a leash
Speaker 5: in a state park is good enough, and you do it,
Speaker 5: and you comply and we never have to talk again.
Speaker 5: Then there's no reason for a ticket. But if I
Speaker 5: tell you that and then you give me the finger
Speaker 5: and walk up off and start, you know, play and
Speaker 5: catch with your dog. Now we're gonna have to step
Speaker 5: up to a higher level of enforcement. And and most
Speaker 5: people are complying. Most people takes is the game warning
Speaker 5: driving by, and everybody's like, oh game wards on, and
Speaker 5: now everybody's you know, behaving, And so a lot of
Speaker 5: a lot of our efforts are just being out there,
Speaker 5: interacting with people and being present. And for the most part,
Speaker 5: people don't need roles and laws because they're good. They're
Speaker 5: good members of society and they want.
Speaker 1: To do the right thing. You get in the time
Speaker 1: i've known you, you get I don't want to say, wrangled.
Speaker 1: And this part of your job, you get involved in
Speaker 1: animal tax Yeah, and here because of the nature where
Speaker 1: you are, you get involved in like serious animal tacks.
Speaker 8: Get involved from a law enforcement point of view, not
Speaker 8: like you step out of the office.
Speaker 1: Oh now you're getting attacked by animals. The owner's an
Speaker 1: animal tag, it's it's under your purview.
Speaker 5: Sure, I've been charged by a few things, but I've
Speaker 5: never been injured by an animal yet. But yeah, so
Speaker 5: you know wildlife human attacks. Every state has some sort
Speaker 5: of process or role to play in that when it
Speaker 5: comes to wildlife management. And in Montana, you know, say
Speaker 5: a grizzly bear gets into a conflict and causes an
Speaker 5: injury or death of a human, local law enforcement is
Speaker 5: there and responsible to so the local sheriff's department, maybe
Speaker 5: the land management agency. So we have a lot of
Speaker 5: federal lands in Montana, so forest Service.
Speaker 1: Well, I want to back itself as people will understand that.
Speaker 1: So let's say that a let's say that a hunter
Speaker 1: National Forest Land YEP in the state of Montana gets
Speaker 1: killed by a grizzly bear. Correct, walk through how that
Speaker 1: pie is divided up.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's there's a lot going up there is. There's
Speaker 5: a lot of agencies with a lot of responsibility. So
Speaker 5: for one, the most important thing for us is human
Speaker 5: safe public safety. So when there is an incident like that,
Speaker 5: we're going to respond with an effort to stop whatever
Speaker 5: danger is happening and make sure no one, you know,
Speaker 5: anybody injured gets the medical attention they need and then
Speaker 5: to stop any further public safety issue. That's the priority
Speaker 5: of everybody, doesn't matter what jurisdiction, what patch you're wearing
Speaker 5: on your shoulders. That's the first priority is to stop
Speaker 5: whatever bad thing is happening.
Speaker 1: Yeh in this case meaning like assessed whether this is
Speaker 1: correct going to happen like a second time someone walks
Speaker 1: into this area, Yeah, exactly, So that could.
Speaker 5: Be closing an area until we figure out what happens.
Speaker 5: So that could be a management action on the animal,
Speaker 5: all those type of things. And so the jurisdictions, you know,
Speaker 5: if it happened on US four Service land, their law
Speaker 5: enforcement divisions jurisdiction over their property rules and regulations. The
Speaker 5: state of Montana has jurisdiction over wild animals in Montana,
Speaker 5: grizzy bears. There's some nuance because they're federally protected. The
Speaker 5: US Fish Wildlife Service still has general management authority, but
Speaker 5: there's an MoU sign between them and Fish Wildlife and
Speaker 5: parks that where we do a lot of on the
Speaker 5: ground stuff, but the over memoryanum of understanding or memorandum
Speaker 5: of agreement m aay.
Speaker 3: So they basically sign off managing that situation to you.
Speaker 3: They're not like wait till we get there.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So over some overarching decisions would would be handled by
Speaker 5: the US Fish Wildlife Service. Let's say we capture a
Speaker 5: live grizzly bear that maybe we're suspected to be responsible
Speaker 5: for the incident. The US Fish Wildlife Service would be
Speaker 5: heavily involved in the decision making on.
Speaker 4: That the what to do with that bear and that
Speaker 4: barrel exactly exactly.
Speaker 10: So so like if you if a bear kills someone,
Speaker 10: you determined like you need to you need to kill
Speaker 10: that bear, you have to run that past Fish and
Speaker 10: Wildlife first, correct, Yeah, it can't make that decision.
Speaker 5: It depends on the situation there. There could be an
Speaker 5: instance right on the ground where a person could well.
Speaker 1: You've had that happy where you went to an attack
Speaker 1: site and the bear is still hanging out, correct, yep, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so then you don't need to like call someone.
Speaker 5: No, no, there's you know, any person you know, which
Speaker 5: includes law enforcement, has the right to defend themselves. I see,
Speaker 5: And there's decision making on the ground that can occur
Speaker 5: where this animal is still a threat, its behavior is predatory,
Speaker 5: or someone's in danger and we have to make a
Speaker 5: management decision or defend life, you know right there in there.
Speaker 1: I got, Yeah, that's that's like you said, Like any
Speaker 1: person right you're in a situation then which would be.
Speaker 5: Correct applicable to anyone correct. Anybody has the right to
Speaker 5: defend themselves from danger. And then the other big part
Speaker 5: of the jurisdictional thing is is when you have a
Speaker 5: human that's injured or deceased, the sheriff's department or the
Speaker 5: corner has jurisdiction over that investigation the unintended death of
Speaker 5: a human or injury to humans. So there's a huge
Speaker 5: collaborative effort between federal law enforcement if they're the land
Speaker 5: Manager or the US Fish Wildlife Service with grizzly bears
Speaker 5: Montana Fish Wildlife in parks, and then local law enforcement,
Speaker 5: which sometimes could involve city, county, highway patrol whoever is
Speaker 5: basically available. You know, our role as game wardens in
Speaker 5: the state of Montana is to investigate that scene in
Speaker 5: one confirm if an animal was present or responsible, so
Speaker 5: it could be reported as an animal attack. But unless
Speaker 5: we have a dead grizzly bear right there, you know,
Speaker 5: in the middle of the attack, we don't know for sure.
Speaker 5: And so it's looking at DNA evidence, looking at surrounding evidents,
Speaker 5: looking for caches or bear dens tracks, injury assessment, all
Speaker 5: those type of things to determine if an animal is involved,
Speaker 5: determined species of that animal, and then look at behavior
Speaker 5: also our best interpretation of was it acting defensively, was
Speaker 5: it acting predatorily? Is it diseased or something it's just
Speaker 5: acting out of its nature totally something wrong. And then
Speaker 5: the thing is that management decision. What do we need
Speaker 5: to do for management on the situation of whatever animals responsible.
Speaker 5: Do we leave it alone, do we haze it, do
Speaker 5: we capture it, do we euthanize it? Or you know,
Speaker 5: thinking about location. Is in a remote location or is
Speaker 5: it right in the middle of town. If the behavior
Speaker 5: was defensive, it's it's unlikely it's going to happen again soon.
Speaker 5: If it's predatory and they've identified humans as a food source,
Speaker 5: there's a current human threat. Or if the animals habituated,
Speaker 5: you know, it's lost its fear of humans, identified humans
Speaker 5: as a food source as in garbage and those things,
Speaker 5: then that's a problem.
Speaker 1: Also, I don't have an opinion on as meaning I
Speaker 1: see both sides of it. But it surprises me that
Speaker 1: you could have a It surprises me that you could
Speaker 1: have a grizzly kill a person, and the decision might
Speaker 1: be made to let the bear walk or is that
Speaker 1: not really the right way of expressing it.
Speaker 5: And that's yeah. If there's a lot of factors in that,
Speaker 5: and like I said, remoteness and behavior one of them.
Speaker 5: There's also whether or not we think we can get
Speaker 5: the right bear.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that I imagine is a big issue, right, Like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: time has gone by in move in our experience.
Speaker 5: You know, I don't know what the percentage is, but
Speaker 5: ninety plus percentage of these incidents that we have with
Speaker 5: predatory animals that attack a human, it's defensive in nature.
Speaker 5: The animal is scared to death, hits the person in
Speaker 5: a defensive modus. I don't know what this is. It's
Speaker 5: a threat to me. I'm gonna smack it around and
Speaker 5: let it know I'm tougher than it, and then it
Speaker 5: runs for the hills. It's really rare that we go
Speaker 5: into one of these attack singes and the bear or
Speaker 5: whatever it is is still there. And so the likelihood
Speaker 5: that we get the right bear it's pretty low. You know.
Speaker 5: We'll do aerial searches, we'll make sure it's gone from
Speaker 5: the area. We'll do ground searches. Sometimes we use houndsmen,
Speaker 5: we set traps all those type of things. It doesn't
Speaker 5: mean we're going to euthanize it, but we're making sure
Speaker 5: the bear has moved on.
Speaker 1: And but rolling through the helicopter and going into a
Speaker 1: bunch of bears down isn't like you're.
Speaker 5: No, we don't want to and we don't we wouldn't
Speaker 5: want to euthanize you know, ten bears trying to get one.
Speaker 3: That's that's that's how like as far as for the
Speaker 3: amount of months grizzlies are out walking around whatever, April
Speaker 3: to December, say, like, is there just a huge I
Speaker 3: imagine when September hits, it's just like not many incidents
Speaker 3: and then spike and then it falls off, like yeah
Speaker 3: in November or something.
Speaker 5: Definitely, the fall seems to be the highest density of attacks.
Speaker 5: And a lot of that has to do with just
Speaker 5: hunters being in the field, being in places that there
Speaker 5: isn't a lot of people.
Speaker 3: You know, and fresh meat laying around.
Speaker 5: That's part of it too. But you know, people displace
Speaker 5: wild animals. So you know, in our area, go to
Speaker 5: any trail that is really popular, Lava Lake, Highlight, all
Speaker 5: those places, not a whole lot of wildlife around. That's
Speaker 5: because the amount of people. Mountain bikers, dog walkers, cars,
Speaker 5: all those things displace animals, and so where do hunters go.
Speaker 5: They go where the higher density of animals are going
Speaker 5: to be. Higher density of ungulates means higher density of predators.
Speaker 5: There's less people displacing them. And what kind of behavior
Speaker 5: they're displaying. They're not making a lot of noise.
Speaker 3: You make a noise like a cow exactly.
Speaker 1: And you try to keep the wind to your face.
Speaker 12: And so, I mean, it just makes sense that you
Speaker 12: increase that type of human behavior out in the field,
Speaker 12: you're going to increase the interactions with wildlife.
Speaker 1: So you know, we in terms of wildlife, that's the objective. Well,
Speaker 1: like you're trying to increase the interactions with the wildlife.
Speaker 5: Bozeman Montana is prime grizzybear habitat. But how many grizzlebear
Speaker 5: attacks do we have on mainstream Boson none? Because of
Speaker 5: the high insity of humans that are displacing grizzly bears.
Speaker 5: They just aren't around this area because we get in
Speaker 5: their way. They're afraid of us in a way, and
Speaker 5: it's just just not a good place for them to be.
Speaker 1: And even if they even if they did want to
Speaker 1: be the likelihood that they're going to get in trouble
Speaker 1: and die from getting hit by a car, from getting
Speaker 1: in trouble, from getting into garbage, whatever. It's like if
Speaker 1: they wanted to be, it's still tough for them. Yeah.
Speaker 6: Absolutely, But we have some that I don't know if
Speaker 6: they live full time, but they certainly skirt with with
Speaker 6: town boundaries.
Speaker 5: And particularly as this town grows, you know that that
Speaker 5: urban to wild land's interface grows or gets more complicated.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Do there's a house. It's like they backpack the
Speaker 1: parts that house that you can see from anywhere in town,
Speaker 1: halfway up the bridgers.
Speaker 9: Is that the one that reflects the sun off?
Speaker 1: Oh no, he's man, He said to his realer, Like,
Speaker 1: I want you to find the most conspicuous spot you
Speaker 1: can find in all of town. Then I'd like you
Speaker 1: to find the most conspicuous material, and I want you
Speaker 1: to backpack all that material up to that spot.
Speaker 3: Helicopter so I can build a radars and the builders
Speaker 3: like you.
Speaker 8: Looking at a lot of people, and you're gonna have
Speaker 8: a good view of the airfield.
Speaker 5: Is that all right?
Speaker 4: What is the perfect Is it a house?
Speaker 10: We heard three forks and the sun's hitting something. Yeah, something,
Speaker 10: what you're talking about, there's something halfway up the bridges.
Speaker 9: It's like glowing. It's not a rapt.
Speaker 8: Along with people displacing wildlife, there's plenty of folks that
Speaker 8: are moving into that urban wildlife interface too, that make
Speaker 8: an effort to attract wildlife.
Speaker 5: Sure, uh, you know, wildlife is one of Montana's greatest resources.
Speaker 5: So a lot of people visit here and move here
Speaker 5: because of those wild resources. I did, Yeah, exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: You know, it's something.
Speaker 8: Lazy about it, just lazy about it.
Speaker 5: And so the I can understand the appeal of the
Speaker 5: thought of buying a little mountain place and being able
Speaker 5: to look out your window and see bears and elk
Speaker 5: frolicking in your yard. And to Yanni's point, there's there
Speaker 5: there's still plenty of wildlife around this town and the
Speaker 5: towns that are closer to higher animal density. So think
Speaker 5: about towns closer to Yellowstone National Park West Yellowstone Gardener.
Speaker 5: They deal with grizz of bears going down main Street
Speaker 5: all the time. In those towns, less people, but also
Speaker 5: they're in the heart of high density wildlife areas. That
Speaker 5: change that's occurring around here definitely is increasing conflict as
Speaker 5: we are seeing more people move into the area, more
Speaker 5: people displace wildlife, more habitat being developed, and more people
Speaker 5: moving into that interface zone. You're seeing definitely conflicts on
Speaker 5: the rise and more bears. Sure, yeah, yeah for doing great.
Speaker 3: Like you said, you've been a game more than for
Speaker 3: twelve years and you hear all the time like, oh,
Speaker 3: every year it's more grizzly attacks. Like is do you
Speaker 3: feel that's the case or is it just like there's
Speaker 3: more exposure to the attacks and the media, or is
Speaker 3: it like actually an increasing number of attacks?
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 5: So my understanding from talking to our bear specialists and
Speaker 5: seeing their data is that the attack rate, if you
Speaker 5: compare it to population at the same time of the
Speaker 5: animal and population of humans, it's remaining steady. So the
Speaker 5: frequency is going up, but so is the bear population
Speaker 5: and human population. So it's not like it's just spiking.
Speaker 1: Crazy as have changed their habits. No, it's just that
Speaker 1: there's more of them and there's more people for them
Speaker 1: to attack.
Speaker 5: Correct, And why do people move to this area.
Speaker 4: Get attacked by a bear?
Speaker 5: Well to go outside, you know, I mean it's crazy
Speaker 5: the amount of people that are citizens of this state
Speaker 5: that either hunt and fish or just recorate period out
Speaker 5: in the woods. I mean, we see it around this area.
Speaker 5: Explosion is huge. People typically vacation here, not for the
Speaker 5: cultural amenities of the town, which has amazing ones, but
Speaker 5: it's because they want to see the outdoors and the
Speaker 5: wild resources we have.
Speaker 1: So let's move to Ottery.
Speaker 9: Wow.
Speaker 6: Oh, come on, while we're on that's what I want
Speaker 6: to hear. It's going to be good, I promise. But
Speaker 6: this follow up question I think is good to While
Speaker 6: we're on grizzly bears, there seems to be in our
Speaker 6: community in attitude. Every time you see a post about
Speaker 6: another grizzly bear attack, it's like, it's because we need
Speaker 6: a gold day grizzly bear season, and if we start
Speaker 6: shooting the bears, it'll cure all of our grizzly bear problems.
Speaker 6: Your attitude opinion about.
Speaker 1: That, you're asking me?
Speaker 7: Uh?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean Montana has a plan where we would
Speaker 5: like to retain or take back grizzly bear management kind of. Yeah,
Speaker 5: go for it.
Speaker 4: The FEDS would like you to do it.
Speaker 5: Oh, there's there's an agreement there for sure.
Speaker 4: No, I'm just wanting people to this I'm not.
Speaker 1: I'm not speaking as I'm not speaking as anam pancrats.
Speaker 1: I'm not speaking as warden pancrats. This is the point
Speaker 1: I like to clarify to people. All the time, the
Speaker 1: the federal agency that is in charge of taking care
Speaker 1: of grizzly bears, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, they
Speaker 1: are the ones. They are the ones that propose delisting.
Speaker 1: This gets lost all the time. They say, of all
Speaker 1: the danger species they administer, they say, when it's time.
Speaker 4: They have said.
Speaker 1: Multiple times for thirteen years or it's been, they've been,
Speaker 1: they hit, they have said, hey, heads up, it's time.
Speaker 1: It's it's them saying this, So go on. I just
Speaker 1: want to make sure that listeners at home understand this
Speaker 1: isn't someone going and being like, give me that, give
Speaker 1: me that. It's like the US Fish and Wildlife Service
Speaker 1: has said it is time now for us to hand
Speaker 1: over management of the grizzly bear. Yeah, in this and
Speaker 1: then outside litigants block them from doing what they're trying
Speaker 1: to do. This is not a tug of war, right now,
Speaker 1: go back to I just want to make sure people
Speaker 1: understand this because this is not widely understood.
Speaker 9: Well.
Speaker 5: Thinking about Yanni's question. You know, fish, Wildlife and parks
Speaker 5: and other state agencies utilize hunting as a management tool.
Speaker 5: That's real critical to the North American model and to
Speaker 5: the way that we manage populations here, and so not
Speaker 5: having that tool for grizzy bear, it's just one less
Speaker 5: option for us to use. The future is going to
Speaker 5: be really slow on any grizzly bear state managed grizzly bear.
Speaker 5: You're not going to see wide open general tag hunting
Speaker 5: on grizzly bears anytime probably in our lifetime.
Speaker 1: Anytime, I mean less like also, and everybody dies. That's
Speaker 1: so most people die.
Speaker 5: Maybe you know, if a season ever occurred, it's going
Speaker 5: to be extremely limited. And and for those who are saying,
Speaker 5: you know, we need to put the fear of man
Speaker 5: back into these bears, that's very unlikely that that is
Speaker 5: going to result from one to three super tags out there.
Speaker 3: It just just isn't you know, can you explain, like
Speaker 3: people may not know what super tags are and the
Speaker 3: fact that if there was a hunting season, there's only
Speaker 3: ever going to be a few bears.
Speaker 5: That would yeah, more than likely. You know, if the
Speaker 5: state gains back management, it's gonna be limited. Any sort
Speaker 5: of hunt isn't gonna happen right away, and if it,
Speaker 5: if and when it ever does, it's gonna be very
Speaker 5: limited to a handful of tags, one or two statewide.
Speaker 1: Might guess, Yeah, I'd like to remind people what we
Speaker 1: kind of got a glimpse of how it would go
Speaker 1: some years ago when delisting came close. Wyoming was gonna
Speaker 1: do twenty. They were going to issue twenty tags, and
Speaker 1: they have the bulk of the you know the way
Speaker 1: it's cut up, They have the bulk of the bears
Speaker 1: in the Greater Yellstone ecosystem, which was gonna get delisted.
Speaker 1: Had they done the Northern Continental divide, it might have
Speaker 1: played out differently. But the way they were looking at
Speaker 1: delisting the Greater Yellstone area, Idaho was gonna do a tag.
Speaker 1: I think it's one. Was it one?
Speaker 8: I applied for that because I was I was a resident.
Speaker 8: It was only open to residents in the state Idaho.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Montana abstained.
Speaker 1: Montana was gonna sit it out. Wyoming was gonna do twenty.
Speaker 1: So on in Wyholming one in Idaho zero. Now that
Speaker 1: wasn't northern kindall like it might have played out differently
Speaker 1: because northern continentill divide. They're the states sitting on over
Speaker 1: one thousand there. But just to give you a sense
Speaker 1: of how limited it was going to be, it was
Speaker 1: going to be so limited that it was going to
Speaker 1: be none. Yeah that was just first year. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was first year, and that was at that time, not
Speaker 1: this time. Yeah, the plan.
Speaker 5: You know, I'm not part of writing the plan. I'll
Speaker 5: help implement it and such, but it's going to be
Speaker 5: very limited. The big thing is making sure the state
Speaker 5: and the citizens of the state have tools to deal
Speaker 5: with conflict, tools to deal with management decisions. So, you know,
Speaker 5: grizzy bear populations are expanding, they're moving into areas they
Speaker 5: occupied a long time ago, but they haven't been for
Speaker 5: one hundred plus years, and so so towns, landowners, ag
Speaker 5: producers are dealing with a new conflict they're not used
Speaker 5: to dealing with. And so what they want is tools.
Speaker 5: They want answers from the state management agency, from the
Speaker 5: local bear specialists, from the game or what can I
Speaker 5: do when this animal is in my front yard and
Speaker 5: I'm just trying to take the kids to school. What
Speaker 5: can I do when this animal is killing my livestock?
Speaker 5: You know all those type of things, how do we
Speaker 5: respond to it? And the agency's opinion always has been
Speaker 5: through state management is the best way to achieve those
Speaker 5: goals or to be able to have the most amount
Speaker 5: of tools in the toolbox to deal with those conflicts.
Speaker 8: Well, I think, you know, it's very interesting and I
Speaker 8: haven't looked at the exact numbers in a while, but
Speaker 8: if you look at like the black bear population and
Speaker 8: we have a black bear season and the increase year
Speaker 8: over year of conflict black bears that are are killed
Speaker 8: by not hunters, right by state or federal employees at
Speaker 8: one agency or another, that's a very telling trend, very
Speaker 8: telling number to me. Right.
Speaker 4: It's like I meaning, here, you have spring season, fall season.
Speaker 8: You can run them with dogs.
Speaker 4: It still got bears coming through the green door.
Speaker 9: Yep.
Speaker 5: It's a primary tool for us. So when our game
Speaker 5: wardens are responding or our bear specialists responding to a
Speaker 5: black bear conflict, for instance, around this area and it's
Speaker 5: you know, out of city limits in an area that
Speaker 5: hunting is currently open or will be soon or something
Speaker 5: in the future, and and it's safe, that's one of
Speaker 5: the first options or first solutions they present to the
Speaker 5: homeownered landowners, Can we get a bear hunter out here,
Speaker 5: because we would much rather a hunter harvest that than
Speaker 5: we harvest it ourselves.
Speaker 8: And as for a lot of different reasons, right.
Speaker 5: Many different reasons. Yeah, absolutely, I never get any phone calls.
Speaker 6: Well that I spoke to yesterday said the absolute worst
Speaker 6: part of his job, and he believes many of his
Speaker 6: colleagues feel the same way, is to have to euthanize animals.
Speaker 9: Absolutely. You know.
Speaker 5: The first time I killed an animal on duty, and
Speaker 5: the first actual time was accidental. So I was doing
Speaker 5: wetland work over in Minnesota, and I was driving a
Speaker 5: side by side across the prairie to do some some
Speaker 5: restoration work, and I drove over a nesting duck. Just
Speaker 5: didn't see it there, drove over it and upset me
Speaker 5: so much because here I am out here trying to
Speaker 5: manage these save them, whatever you want to call it,
Speaker 5: you know, and I just drove over one and it
Speaker 5: was just this just moment for me, of just And
Speaker 5: I was with a with a couple of high school
Speaker 5: kids and a crew who are working with me, and
Speaker 5: I had them stand up in the four side by
Speaker 5: side and their job now was to scout for ducks,
Speaker 5: we don't run over anymore because it's just totally disheartening
Speaker 5: for me. And it's the same thing here when we
Speaker 5: have to euthanize one, a lot of empathy for that animal.
Speaker 5: We put a lot of effort, a lot of blood, sweat,
Speaker 5: and tears into too managing these species, caring for them,
Speaker 5: ensuring they're here for a long time. The last thing
Speaker 5: we want to do is killing. There's times we have
Speaker 5: to because of the conflict, but usually that conflict's preventable.
Speaker 5: Usually that conflict has a lot to do with humans.
Speaker 5: Sometimes it doesn't. There's surprising counters like we talked about
Speaker 5: out in the woods, where you just humans and bears
Speaker 5: or humans and whatever animal occupied the same space and
Speaker 5: there's a fight over that space. It's really nobody's fault
Speaker 5: at that point. The bears defending it space and maybe
Speaker 5: you're defending it's your space. And those conflicts will always
Speaker 5: be there. But the preventable ones of keeping attractants clean,
Speaker 5: you know, not having fruiting trees in your yard, not
Speaker 5: having bird feeders, keeping your trash locked up until just
Speaker 5: before trash pickup occurs, all those type of things are
Speaker 5: huge that will prevent a lot of these management removals
Speaker 5: of species like bears.
Speaker 8: Yeah, when I was working with the Grizzly team in Idaho,
Speaker 8: which is like one of the coolest things I've ever
Speaker 8: done and will probably ever do. To Yanni's point, like
Speaker 8: he had this story about there's a bear getting very
Speaker 8: familiar with the particular campground. They had gone in into
Speaker 8: the campground, very popular one outside of Island Park, Idaho,
Speaker 8: and which is part of the g YE and had
Speaker 8: gone to every single campsite, said hey, there's a grizzly bear.
Speaker 8: You guys got to keep your trash locked up. This,
Speaker 8: you know, very sophisticated established campground with bear proof containers
Speaker 8: for storage and then bear proof garbage cans for disposal,
Speaker 8: And one particular campsite left all their watermelon out, very
Speaker 8: identifiable food. The bear came in got that was basically
Speaker 8: camped out on the edge of the campground.
Speaker 6: These two.
Speaker 8: Folks, who are absolute grizzly bear professionals and very invested
Speaker 8: in in grizzly bears, like, we had to shoot that
Speaker 8: grizzly bear. And when I took it upon myself to
Speaker 8: then inform the campers at that campsite that the reason
Speaker 8: that we had to shoot that grizzly bear was because
Speaker 8: they couldn't bring it upon themselves to take their watermelon
Speaker 8: thirty five yards to the garbage and put it away.
Speaker 8: They informed me that we had ruined their family vacation, right,
Speaker 8: And this is like it's the animal, really, I mean,
Speaker 8: it is the animal in North America. Like it is
Speaker 8: the thing that's referenced. It's a species that everybody's in
Speaker 8: awe of in one way or another. We're just at
Speaker 8: the talking back with the football players last night. I
Speaker 8: was talking with a bunch of them, you know. I
Speaker 8: was like, you know, there's still a large population of
Speaker 8: hunters in Montana, Wyoming, Idaho that they plan their hunts
Speaker 8: way around grizzly bears, Like, oh, this is a known
Speaker 8: grizzly bear area, We're not going to attempt to hunt there,
Speaker 8: fish there, or even apply for tags there.
Speaker 1: Good.
Speaker 8: And I'm like, we're you know, but there's plenty of
Speaker 8: people who don't think that way too. So that's why
Speaker 8: we were talking about displacing animals. Like a lot more
Speaker 8: people recreate in in bear territory, but.
Speaker 1: Let's move to dotter tags. So have an otter tack
Speaker 1: and You're like, this isn't going to become a normal problem,
Speaker 1: but it gets a lot of public attention.
Speaker 5: It does, and it's it's rare but more common than
Speaker 5: you think, right in a way. You know, the statistics
Speaker 5: change every year. But when I look at the reports
Speaker 5: of human animal attacks, the top three species in southwest
Speaker 5: Montana for just incidents reported to my staff, grizzly bears
Speaker 5: number one. What's number two?
Speaker 1: Black bears?
Speaker 5: Black bears, moose most is number two. Typically in most years,
Speaker 5: otters is number three. It doesn't mean there's dozens or
Speaker 5: hundreds of them, but just on average, there's a handful
Speaker 5: a couple every year. You know, usually usually we run
Speaker 5: into around ten grizzly incidents in this area. Depends changes
Speaker 5: every year that causes some sort of human injury or
Speaker 5: conflict or something like that. You know, a handful three
Speaker 5: four moose incidents where a moose stomps on somebody or
Speaker 5: kick somebody, and then you know one to three otter
Speaker 5: attacks probably every year.
Speaker 1: I know Anchorage has some had some real odd conflict,
Speaker 1: like some ters.
Speaker 4: Took over at park.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you know, and there was those hoters that were
Speaker 6: taking over that surf break somewhere on the West coast California.
Speaker 1: Sorry.
Speaker 8: Yeah, so they're getting they're like getting up on people's
Speaker 8: surfboards and.
Speaker 9: Oh yeah, man, hotter gang violence these days.
Speaker 4: Just yeah, So you did a lot of interviews about then.
Speaker 3: Oh that's all that happened.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the emergency alert systems.
Speaker 9: Of course it happened.
Speaker 5: Hey, I left my cell phone in the truck and
Speaker 5: it was going to be a distraction in here.
Speaker 9: Well they really did that.
Speaker 1: I remember reading that being that seems like a weird idea.
Speaker 3: It works, Yeah, that should be the noise when an
Speaker 3: otter's coming out.
Speaker 13: So there was an otter attack, and you got it
Speaker 13: was became a national news story, the last one, did
Speaker 13: you know, Uh, that's the first time I've seen an
Speaker 13: otter attack for US come national news.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean interviews with the Washington Post, La Times,
Speaker 5: It did an interview with Fox News Live and such.
Speaker 5: It was a pretty severe one.
Speaker 4: So what caught hold?
Speaker 1: Why did that grab the national attention the way it did?
Speaker 5: I think because of what you what you were kind
Speaker 5: of getting at is is the perceived rarity of the
Speaker 5: event and then the severity of the injuries. And you know,
Speaker 5: so I have an aunt who believes it's a conspiracy
Speaker 5: against otters. She believes that that we're making up all
Speaker 5: these otter attacks because how could such a cute, cuddly
Speaker 5: animal do such.
Speaker 4: She thinks you're trying to villainize.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, for sure. And when I send her articles
Speaker 5: or a time we post a warning at a phishing
Speaker 5: exisite about an aggressive hotter, she just thinks it's all alive,
Speaker 5: because there's no way that Honors could ever do such.
Speaker 1: Well, what do you have to gain from villainizings is
Speaker 1: what I'm trying to figure out.
Speaker 8: Well, this is how I would do it. Okay, it
Speaker 8: is so dangerous that you can't have people floating and
Speaker 8: inner tubes or doing non angling activities like that. In fact,
Speaker 8: they can't use the boat ramps. They can't stand in
Speaker 8: the middle of the boat ramp while you're trying to
Speaker 8: back raft in.
Speaker 4: He's going to scare everybody away and then have the
Speaker 4: river all to himself.
Speaker 5: So, like we talked about humans displaced wildlife, and you know,
Speaker 5: we have a section of a river, the Lower Madison
Speaker 5: here that has a tuber hatch every every every summer when.
Speaker 1: Somewhere because that was not even sort of a thing.
Speaker 5: It word of mouth, you know, companies coming in and
Speaker 5: cater into it, big business or like that was.
Speaker 4: I mean, I always try to tell my kids when
Speaker 4: I'm driving along, I'm like, this just was not a thing.
Speaker 6: I don't but didn't you do that growing up in Michigan.
Speaker 1: Explain it?
Speaker 4: It's big in the East. So yeah, so I was recent.
Speaker 1: I just had this conversation my kids. I'm like, there's
Speaker 1: certain things that like when I moved to Montana nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety six, there.
Speaker 4: Were certain things that were not part of the culture
Speaker 4: ice fishing.
Speaker 1: They were woefully behind in ice fishing technology from a
Speaker 1: Midwest perspective, was like, they just don't know about it,
Speaker 1: and they did not know about tubin. They did not know.
Speaker 1: It had not occurred to Montanans that you would float
Speaker 1: down a river in a tube.
Speaker 4: But where I grew up, you'd skip school to do that.
Speaker 4: I mean it was baked into the culture.
Speaker 1: Tube yep. And you could rig your.
Speaker 4: Cooler in.
Speaker 3: The rivers, like a lot of the rivers kind of
Speaker 3: off limits to tubin, right, You'd just be doing pinball down.
Speaker 4: White water, drag your ass done and ever and.
Speaker 3: Do you get to ten miles and never hit a rock.
Speaker 5: Or the water temperatures really cold makes it uncomfortable exactly too.
Speaker 1: And where I grew up, I mean in August, and
Speaker 1: it's just like being in your bathtub.
Speaker 5: Well, the reason I bring it up as high concentration
Speaker 5: of tubers on that section of the river, which means
Speaker 5: low density of river otters, which means very few incidents
Speaker 5: of attacks. And where we see the attacks happen is
Speaker 5: when tubers decide the Lower Madison's too full and they
Speaker 5: go to other remote strections of rivers to get away
Speaker 5: from people. Less density of humans, higher chance that they
Speaker 5: that they might have an encounter with with an hoter.
Speaker 4: What do you think the otter's deal is again, I think.
Speaker 5: It's very similar to what we talked about before. Human
Speaker 5: and wildlife occupy trying to occupy the same space.
Speaker 4: Is there always pops involved?
Speaker 5: There can be, but it could be a food source,
Speaker 5: it could be you know, a den, it could be
Speaker 5: just a territorial attack. But it's it's humans and wildlife
Speaker 5: occupying the same space and the wildlife is saying this
Speaker 5: is my this is my area, Get out of it.
Speaker 1: And what moves does an otter use? What are they
Speaker 1: doing when they're.
Speaker 5: You know, when they're attacking.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like what is their sort of attack pattern?
Speaker 5: Well, I've never seen one happen myself. I've only helped
Speaker 5: clean up the mess afterwards. And thinking of otters are
Speaker 5: their predators? You know they got sharp claws, sharp teeth.
Speaker 8: Of the river.
Speaker 6: Well absolutely, listen.
Speaker 4: I would never ever.
Speaker 1: I was like, I believe that you don't want to
Speaker 1: fight any animal that has no legs, Like, you're not
Speaker 1: gonna grab grab my leg? Now, are you're doing any good?
Speaker 1: Like yeah, he's like no leg, holding him by the
Speaker 1: leg and lifting him up, he's just gonna be like
Speaker 1: mauling your arm and face.
Speaker 5: And how vulnerable are we in the water. That's not
Speaker 5: what our bodies.
Speaker 3: Someone's sitting in is not impressive. And someone like standing
Speaker 3: up walking down the trail, you know.
Speaker 6: I mean, do you remember when we saw the to
Speaker 6: see otters mating in Southeast Alaska on that trip? Oh
Speaker 6: never mind, you saw them just doing their thing. You
Speaker 6: definitely don't want to get in a scrap with them,
Speaker 6: right because they're.
Speaker 1: Just the agility.
Speaker 10: Yeah, yeah, oh we saw this year we saw like
Speaker 10: thirty sea otters all together. It's like just just thinking
Speaker 10: about it's like if those things want to come over
Speaker 10: here and tussle, like thirty.
Speaker 5: Of them them.
Speaker 4: No, but they're primarily biting, correct.
Speaker 5: So the last one, you know, it just chance encounter.
Speaker 5: The ladies that were floating down the river weren't doing
Speaker 5: anything wrong. They're just floating down the river. They occupied
Speaker 5: the outer space. They you know from their description one
Speaker 5: to two otters. They're not sure, but the way they
Speaker 5: were attacking multiple people that made them think there was
Speaker 5: more than one otter. Typically they're attacking the tube itself,
Speaker 5: or legs and buttocks that are suspended in the water
Speaker 5: when you're in a tube. In this particular incident, one
Speaker 5: of the females fell off the tube or jumped off
Speaker 5: the tube, and I she was swimming, the came up
Speaker 5: and attacked her face. Now that her face is down
Speaker 5: on the water, and that's what caused the severity of
Speaker 5: the injuries.
Speaker 1: And uh, while swimming.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and she she got to the other side of
Speaker 5: the river. Her two friends got to the she she
Speaker 5: went to the remote side of the river where the
Speaker 5: two friends went to the highwayside. They called nine one one.
Speaker 5: A highway patrolman showed up first. Uh, this highway patrolman
Speaker 5: jumped in the river, swam the length of the river
Speaker 5: with aggressive otters in the river, and provided first aid
Speaker 5: to the severely injured gallon the other side while the
Speaker 5: helicopter was called. And we you know, we were the
Speaker 5: last ones on scene. By the time we got their
Speaker 5: deputy sheriffs, the highway patrolman and EMS staff had kind
Speaker 5: of taken care of this situation and provided the life
Speaker 5: saving attention.
Speaker 3: Was there any concern with rabies?
Speaker 5: There there can be depending on the behavior. You know,
Speaker 5: there has been incidents where we've attempted to trap and
Speaker 5: test them.
Speaker 1: We did not in this one.
Speaker 8: I was going to ask, is there an expectation to
Speaker 8: treat that aggressive river otter like you would aggressive grizzly bear?
Speaker 8: I want that trapped or.
Speaker 5: Well, again, it depends on behavior. If we if it's
Speaker 5: you know, if it's abnormal behavior, then yes we're gonna
Speaker 5: we're gonna probably take a hands on management action against it.
Speaker 5: But if it's normal behavior, which wild animals like otters
Speaker 5: protecting their territory is normal, we may not.
Speaker 1: So did you guys pull a DNA sample off that otter? No,
Speaker 1: we did not on that one, So you can't even
Speaker 1: compare them in the lineup later.
Speaker 8: There are so many good T shirt designs going through
Speaker 8: my head right now.
Speaker 6: Already sent an email to hunt I'm ahead of you.
Speaker 4: Can we move on from otters?
Speaker 1: You go for it?
Speaker 4: Tell me about uh, tell me about when when when
Speaker 4: you catch?
Speaker 1: When that wild game meet has made its way into
Speaker 1: the commercial market. Sure, what walk me through how you
Speaker 1: see that and what how does that happen and what's
Speaker 1: that wind up looking like?
Speaker 5: I think it's important to talk about why that's illegal first,
Speaker 5: or a little bit about the history. You know, you
Speaker 5: guys have talked a lot about market hunting and the
Speaker 5: history of that and what it did to wildlife in
Speaker 5: North America. I think that's one piece of the puzzle,
Speaker 5: but it's an important piece. You know, as the West
Speaker 5: was being settled, agriculture wasn't heavily established in the West,
Speaker 5: and so you have people coming out here for to
Speaker 5: harvest fur bears and other wild game for exploration, for
Speaker 5: settlement as part of the Homestead Act, and also for
Speaker 5: gold extraction and exploration all those type of things, and
Speaker 5: agriculture kind of was a step behind, you know, and
Speaker 5: so there's a lot of people moving into there a
Speaker 5: lot more people than there was before. You know, obviously
Speaker 5: there was indigenous tribes here living in a sustainable nature
Speaker 5: manner on the landscape. But as the Western culture moved west,
Speaker 5: you know, there a food source was needed for all
Speaker 5: these people, and wildlife was easily identified in the beginning
Speaker 5: as it was abundant as a resource, and for different reasons,
Speaker 5: some of it was harvested through market hunting, some of
Speaker 5: it was just just subsistence. You know, a huge amount
Speaker 5: of subsistence hunting occurred in Montana and other Western states
Speaker 5: as gold panters and trappers and others were establishing themselves
Speaker 5: out here or agriculture was getting established. That led to
Speaker 5: a severe decimation of wildlife. You know, you're talking by
Speaker 5: the late eighteen hundreds, there was hardly hardly anything left
Speaker 5: in Montana. Elks.
Speaker 1: Interesting irony is a I pointed this out on this
Speaker 1: project we're working on about commercial hunters, is that the
Speaker 1: Boone and Crocket Club takes its name from two commercial hunters. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but the first order of business for the Boon and
Speaker 1: Crockett Club was going after the commercial sale of gaminget Sure.
Speaker 5: It's like a weird, absolutely sort.
Speaker 1: Of conflict built within the name.
Speaker 5: I imagine two commercial hunters had a good perspective. I
Speaker 5: mean they saw that their industry or livelihood was dying,
Speaker 5: you know, as just game became more scarce.
Speaker 8: Well, it's definitely like the story for commercial waterfowl hunters
Speaker 8: were the ones who were like, do you know that
Speaker 8: there's no birds left?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 4: They pointed that out right.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 8: But I think also it is a livelihood lifestyle thing too,
Speaker 8: where it's like we've been living this life for so long,
Speaker 8: you know, it's like we got to figure out how
Speaker 8: to make sure that it sticks around, because I can't imagine,
Speaker 8: you know, going back to school and getting a desk
Speaker 8: job after running my punt gun every night for the
Speaker 8: last five years.
Speaker 5: Do you think about the the first Western settlers to
Speaker 5: come to Montana and just the abundance that was here,
Speaker 5: you know. I back in college took a class where
Speaker 5: we just read the loosen Clerk Journals for a whole semester,
Speaker 5: every single page, and I was really stuck by a
Speaker 5: description at Pompey's Pillar east of Billings on the Yellowstone River,
Speaker 5: where they described standing on that pillar and seeing the
Speaker 5: abundance of herds of elk, buffalo, and wolves just just
Speaker 5: surrounded by them as they were looking out on the
Speaker 5: short grass prairie that surrounded that river valley. You can
Speaker 5: go and visit that site now, and that day's journal
Speaker 5: from I think July of eighteen o five, eighteen oh
Speaker 5: six somewhere around there is etched on Pompey's pillar. And
Speaker 5: when you read that and then look around and see
Speaker 5: the change in the landscape, you're not gonna see any elk,
Speaker 5: You're not going to see any wolves for sure, and
Speaker 5: you won't see buffalo unless they're ranch buffalo. The landscape
Speaker 5: dramatically changed quickly in one hundred years, and our agency Fish,
Speaker 5: Wildlife and parks and the statutes and rules that govern it,
Speaker 5: and that also led to this great resurgence of wildlife.
Speaker 5: We're in reaction to basically that loss of wildlife and
Speaker 5: set a lot of groundwork for the work that we
Speaker 5: do now to include investigating commercial harvest of wildlife and such.
Speaker 5: You know, a quick history of wildlife law. You know,
Speaker 5: eighteen late eighteen sixties is when the first kind of
Speaker 5: wildlife law was enacted in Montana. He had early nineteen
Speaker 5: hundreds of the Lacy Act, the Pittman Robertson Act and such.
Speaker 5: But the history of conservation law and regulation in Montana
Speaker 5: starts with decimation, then laws created in response, and then
Speaker 5: enforcement of those law. So if you think about the
Speaker 5: history of the agency, it started with one game warden
Speaker 5: and some fishing game laws, and then slowly more game
Speaker 5: wardens were added. Game wardeners who patrolled an area of
Speaker 5: like eighteen thousand square miles alone by themselves, but there
Speaker 5: was no wildlife staff. There was no management. You know,
Speaker 5: the local university MSU didn't start their wildlife management program
Speaker 5: until the nineteen thirties, So you had this span of
Speaker 5: thirty years where the way we managed wildlife was just
Speaker 5: law and enforcement, and then without a Leopold and others,
Speaker 5: it switched to more of a management habitat restoration. And
Speaker 5: through that, all this trial and air, those seven pillars
Speaker 5: of tenants of the North American model were developed, not
Speaker 5: because one person wrote them down like the ten Commandments,
Speaker 5: you know, up on high on a piece of slavistone,
Speaker 5: but through trial and air figuring out what worked. And
Speaker 5: one of those tenants is elimination of unregulated commercial harvest
Speaker 5: commercial markets. And why I say unregulated is there's still
Speaker 5: commercial markets for public resources right. There's there's you know,
Speaker 5: ore and oil extraction that occurs on public lands. There's
Speaker 5: timber harvest, and there's also a huge fisheries industry in
Speaker 5: many states that has a commercial aspect to it.
Speaker 1: Can sell wild mushrooms, you can sell elk antlers, you
Speaker 1: can sell kiowa.
Speaker 5: Hid There still is a role firehood. Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 5: There's there's all sorts of public resources that still can
Speaker 5: be extracted commercially and sold commercially. But there's there's resources
Speaker 5: that we've identified that can't sustain a commercial market, and
Speaker 5: large wildlife ungulates and such as one of them that
Speaker 5: it's pretty universal. You know, there's there's game farms that
Speaker 5: have developed to meet that demand of people who don't hunt,
Speaker 5: that do want to eat elk and buffalo and other
Speaker 5: things that that they can't go out and hunt themselves.
Speaker 5: But for wild resources, that elimination of commercial markets was
Speaker 5: really key to allowing the restoration to occur. I don't
Speaker 5: know what the future holds. Maybe we get to a
Speaker 5: point where hunting participation is so low and wildlife populations
Speaker 5: are so abundant, you could see commercial markets come back
Speaker 5: in a certain state. But right now, for where we are.
Speaker 5: It's just just not feasible.
Speaker 1: When I've tried to express this to people, like as
Speaker 1: many deer as we seem to have, but then you
Speaker 1: try to express like the frailty of deer would be
Speaker 1: that if every American put a deer in their freezer tomorrow,
Speaker 1: we'd have a a two hundred and sixty million deer deficit. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's just it's not They're not there.
Speaker 5: I think something really important to remember is is the
Speaker 5: green revolution in agriculture has helped save wildlife in a
Speaker 5: way because we've found other food sources. You know, one
Speaker 5: hundred and fifty years ago, when in Montana the primary
Speaker 5: food source for protein at least was wild life with
Speaker 5: a population, a human population, you know, a tenth or
Speaker 5: less of what it is now, it wasn't sustainable, totally white.
Speaker 1: They ate them. Yeah, you're right, they ate them into oblivion.
Speaker 1: I mean, even just having like the gold mining towns.
Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely, yeah, you know, and obviously there was there's
Speaker 5: other things. They were harvested for fur and things like that.
Speaker 5: There was predators killed just because they were viewed as pets.
Speaker 5: There's you know, and there's lots of other things that
Speaker 5: occurred from the use of pesticides, the habitat fragmentation, all
Speaker 5: those type of things to you know, the extraction of
Speaker 5: resources and the way it was done that changed habitats
Speaker 5: and healthy ecosystems. But a huge part of that impact
Speaker 5: was was commercial markets for meat or just people harvesting
Speaker 5: meat for food. You think about how poor, particularly the
Speaker 5: state was back then. People escaping the dust bowl, the
Speaker 5: Great Depression, you know, huge sections of drought again, agriculture
Speaker 5: markets not established. Another thing to think about is transportation.
Speaker 5: You know, a huge reason why we have cheap food
Speaker 5: now or I know food prices have gone up, is
Speaker 5: huge if increased efficiencies in transportation and how you know,
Speaker 5: we don't have to grow cabbage in the Gallaton Valley
Speaker 5: anymore sweet peas because we can get it somewhere else where.
Speaker 5: They can grow it more efficiently and it's cheap to
Speaker 5: ship it to us. That's changed a huge amount. And
Speaker 5: if you think about transportation roles back then, you know,
Speaker 5: how long did it take you to get from Missouri
Speaker 5: to Bozone, Montana? You know, a whole season, a whole summer,
Speaker 5: and probably three of your party, your six person party
Speaker 5: died along the way. You know, it's the old Oregon
Speaker 5: Trail game we all played in grade school. All those
Speaker 5: things have changed to allow us to now have vibrant populations,
Speaker 5: sustainable populations that also have an intrinsic value. You know,
Speaker 5: one hundred and fifty years ago, I very few people
Speaker 5: probably looked at wildlife. It's just appreciating that it was
Speaker 5: there and the beauty of it. It was looked at
Speaker 5: as a commodity, as something that either could be sold,
Speaker 5: embartered with or something that could feed my family make
Speaker 5: sure I didn't starve this year. And because we have
Speaker 5: all these developments in Western society and human culture, from
Speaker 5: transportation to agriculture, we can now take that item that
Speaker 5: was only viewed as just value commercially, and now it
Speaker 5: has value for leisure or just intrinsic value that exists.
Speaker 5: We talked about grizzybear conflicts and such, and every time
Speaker 5: we remove a species, or not a species, but remove
Speaker 5: an animal from the population, there's people that disagree with
Speaker 5: that decision, and a lot of them don't live here.
Speaker 5: A lot of calls and emails I get are from
Speaker 5: people from somewhere else that are upset we killed a grizzybear.
Speaker 5: Mountainline that was in conflict. Those people don't view that
Speaker 5: animal as a commercial commodity, but they have intrinsic.
Speaker 1: Value to it.
Speaker 5: They like the idea that it exists, just to know
Speaker 5: that this wild animal exists in this wild, amazing place,
Speaker 5: and that's something new in society that I don't think
Speaker 5: has really been here for a while. That's that's really
Speaker 5: led to a lot of the foundation of where we
Speaker 5: are in the success of wildlife conservation. But yeah, so
Speaker 5: getting back to commercial markets. So in Montana is in
Speaker 5: most states it's illegal to sell game meat. There are
Speaker 5: certain parts of animal that you can you can sell
Speaker 5: and trade in Montana. Now the rules are different for
Speaker 5: every state. In Montana, you could sell the hide, you
Speaker 5: could sell bones, you could sell antlers, but you can't
Speaker 5: sell or meet so commercially. So if you had a
Speaker 5: had a restaurant that was advertising come eat wild game meat,
Speaker 5: if it's truly wild, it.
Speaker 1: Would be legal.
Speaker 4: Is it ever as overt as that.
Speaker 5: It depends, it can be. We've seen some restaurants that
Speaker 5: have public menus, so if the group of us went
Speaker 5: in there, they'd give us the menu that's on their website.
Speaker 5: And then we've seen restaurants that have a private menu.
Speaker 1: Is that right.
Speaker 5: We have restaurants that sometimes have contracted with tour companies
Speaker 5: and such, and they may shut down for the day.
Speaker 5: Maybe you go there and they're closed, but it's filled
Speaker 5: with a lot of people, looks like a private party
Speaker 5: and there's a tour bus outside. They may be eating
Speaker 5: on a different menu. It depends on the restaurant. Every
Speaker 5: restaurant's different. But we've investigated restaurant.
Speaker 1: Slip me one of those menus.
Speaker 4: I mean, I just I just like to see like
Speaker 4: written down.
Speaker 1: Sure you've seen it written down, there's give me an
Speaker 1: example of what you've seen. I just want to know,
Speaker 1: Like you don't need exact word, but give me example
Speaker 1: of what you've seen, like actually written down on the menu.
Speaker 5: Wildfish is a really popular one. So wild trout.
Speaker 4: Yep, Wild trout yep, Local River yep.
Speaker 5: Exactly exactly. And we have had cases where we have
Speaker 5: where where we have you know, it's a it's a
Speaker 5: mix and how we get and start our investigations on
Speaker 5: these restaurants. Some of them is somebody sees that menu
Speaker 5: or has offered it and reports it to us. Some
Speaker 5: of it's written down, some of it's verbal, you know,
Speaker 5: but someone gets offered a dish they know or thinks
Speaker 5: is illegal and they call us. We've also run into
Speaker 5: instances where we catch people fishing or hunting out there
Speaker 5: that are attached to a restaurant. They're keeping large amount
Speaker 5: of over limits and once we dig into it, they're
Speaker 5: out there providing food for that restaurant.
Speaker 1: Got it. Uh, this is a long time.
Speaker 5: Ago, hypothetically, since passed.
Speaker 4: Seven years ago.
Speaker 1: I had a friend that was approached about a was
Speaker 1: approached about bear, a bear paw, and they misunderstood and
Speaker 1: they thought they wanted so they went and had a
Speaker 1: old they had an old bear rug and they brought
Speaker 1: them a claw off an old bear rug. And the
Speaker 1: restaurant tour was like, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 4: No, that's not what I meant.
Speaker 3: That's like, oh my goodness, that's what I mean.
Speaker 5: Bear pas soup is popular and a lot of Asian cultures. Yeah,
Speaker 5: you know, same with gold dishes or powders or ointments
Speaker 5: made with gold bladders. Those are probably the two most
Speaker 5: popular trafficked items for bears. There's also a market for
Speaker 5: bear meat for sure, and there's legitimate places you can
Speaker 5: get bear meat you know a recent case we had
Speaker 5: there are well, yeah, in some states you can you
Speaker 5: can legitimately raise raise bears. So one case we had
Speaker 5: in a local restaurant.
Speaker 4: Again and someone's commercially raising bears in the US as.
Speaker 5: Far as I know, I don't remember what state this
Speaker 5: one was from, but we had a case that was
Speaker 5: referred to US where a USDA inspector or it was
Speaker 5: a Health and Human Services inspector went to do their
Speaker 5: inspection of the kitchen and found packaged meat that was
Speaker 5: labeled bear and reported to US. And as we digged
Speaker 5: around that bear meat had come from a legitimate source,
Speaker 5: which kind of shocked us at the time too. You know,
Speaker 5: in other countries there's definitely markets for it. Bare bile
Speaker 5: is a huge industry in some other countries, and there
Speaker 5: really sickening bear bile farms.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my kids told me about that and showed me
Speaker 1: a thing about it. Where does it stand right now?
Speaker 1: This is one of the more confusing things I found
Speaker 1: in terms of trying to stop the commercial market. Is
Speaker 1: for a while it was you'll know this better than me.
Speaker 1: But for a while it was that that you if
Speaker 1: you killed a black bear, so you legally kill black
Speaker 1: bear and you basically you have this like contract where
Speaker 1: you tag it. It's it becomes your property and it's
Speaker 1: transferred from to your personal possession. But you couldn't have
Speaker 1: You couldn't possess the gallbladder from the bear.
Speaker 4: Is that correct?
Speaker 5: Not in Montana? So you can possess it, you just
Speaker 5: can't commercially sell it.
Speaker 1: So you haven't heard it, like I feel like there's
Speaker 1: someplace you like you Okay, so you could you could
Speaker 1: have your own and do with it what you will. Correct,
Speaker 1: And I could give it to a buddy of mine
Speaker 1: if he wanted it. Okay, you cannot cannot sell it? Yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 3: And then I got a Montana question. It's not about bears,
Speaker 3: since rabbits and squirrels aren't game animals. Could I set
Speaker 3: up a rabbit and squirrel taco stand and not be
Speaker 3: breaking the whole?
Speaker 9: Yes, so.
Speaker 5: I would not have any regulatory authority over it. You
Speaker 5: would not from But there I imagine there are other
Speaker 5: agencies that do you.
Speaker 1: I think I think that that's when it becomes the
Speaker 1: USDA's big Oh yeah, because they got USDs. Is not
Speaker 1: because you're selling uninspected meat?
Speaker 3: Gotcha?
Speaker 9: Good idea though, what if you do get inspected?
Speaker 1: What will they?
Speaker 4: So, so let me tell you this.
Speaker 1: Years ago, I was going through a fact checking process
Speaker 1: with a magazine and I pointed out that it's illegal
Speaker 1: to it's illegal to sell dog meat in America. The
Speaker 1: fact checkers like, show me where how that where? That's true?
Speaker 1: And the want of beings it's only illegal in two states.
Speaker 1: It was illegal at that time. It was illegal to
Speaker 1: sell dog meat by state law in New York, and
Speaker 1: it was illegal to sell dog meat in California. So
Speaker 1: they're like, well, why isn't it for sale everywhere? They won't.
Speaker 1: USDA is not going to inspect it, and state inspectors
Speaker 1: won't inspect it. And they say that they don't have
Speaker 1: any they don't have any sort of like inspection rules
Speaker 1: on it. So if you wanted to bring it into
Speaker 1: the supply chain, they don't have it, Like.
Speaker 4: What are they even looking for?
Speaker 1: So if you somehow petitioned the USDA successfully to establish
Speaker 1: dog inspection criteria and at that time in forty eight states,
Speaker 1: no one would be breaking a law. And and and
Speaker 1: I and I even looked at this, it'd be like
Speaker 1: that you could feasibly somehow you got it inspected. You
Speaker 1: could walk into a grocery store and ever be a
Speaker 1: pack of ground dog beat and it's not like actually
Speaker 1: breaking a law, and.
Speaker 5: Then the next legislative session it'll.
Speaker 1: Be yeah, that's yeah, well that's what. That's what in
Speaker 1: my in my research spots is the reason it had
Speaker 1: turned up in New York California is because it had
Speaker 1: become an issue, and it had become an issue and
Speaker 1: someone had overcome whatever like inspection hurdles. So it might
Speaker 1: be that you you know, and I don't know at
Speaker 1: what point and uh production, I don't know what point
Speaker 1: in industry. I know that I remember ten years ago
Speaker 1: when I was invested in this subject. The the bike
Speaker 1: an industry was an obstacle to its growth was inspection, right,
Speaker 1: like getting their goods inspected for interstate travel.
Speaker 9: Like Texas is they're inspecting animals, yep.
Speaker 1: But a lot of that stuff can't leave Texas, okay,
Speaker 1: you know, so they'll have there's certain commercial there's certain
Speaker 1: legitimately wild game resources like hogs nil guy that can
Speaker 1: be inspected in Texas, but they're not suitable for interstate gotcha.
Speaker 1: So they're they're all consumed in state and and there
Speaker 1: the state has done like what we're talking about, the
Speaker 1: state has built up capability and complied with demand of
Speaker 1: an industry that's like, hey, we have this resource, we'd
Speaker 1: like to fit you to. You know, we're petitioning you
Speaker 1: to figure out how to inspect it. But very it
Speaker 1: can be very expensive for the producer because you need
Speaker 1: to pay the inspector. Ye, so that hasn't happened with
Speaker 1: squirrels and rabbits.
Speaker 3: I'm just trying to think about my retirement.
Speaker 1: So you let's say, let's say Brody starts his squirrel
Speaker 1: and rabbit place up and all of a sudden, he's
Speaker 1: down there at there, what's that place?
Speaker 5: That gravel parking lot.
Speaker 1: Brody's down there's like Brody's Wild Squirrel Tacos. And you're
Speaker 1: driving by and you see that. You think to yourself,
Speaker 1: that's not my problem, but.
Speaker 5: It could become. So, you know, it depends on how
Speaker 5: successful his business is and what impact they would have
Speaker 5: to the squirrel and rabbit population. So right now those
Speaker 5: species are unregulated. You know, you can hunt them twenty
Speaker 5: four seven three sixty five without a license with no
Speaker 5: bag limit right now because demand is so low, exactly, But.
Speaker 6: If you that's the reason.
Speaker 5: I thought.
Speaker 6: The reason is because they were non natives and they're classified.
Speaker 1: Kind squirrels, oh, cottontail, rabbits, badgers, there's non nature fox.
Speaker 6: Okay, now I didn't You didn't mention.
Speaker 4: All those you could be thought pine squirrels or not.
Speaker 6: Now no, I thought that fox squirrel. So think about
Speaker 6: Oh he's.
Speaker 4: Having a pine squirrel.
Speaker 3: Oh, fox squirrels too.
Speaker 5: So so to your point, like, we may have a
Speaker 5: fishing regulation on a body of water where unlimited take
Speaker 5: of say northerns or something like that, that doesn't mean
Speaker 5: they're there and there's a huge population. That's what sometimes
Speaker 5: the public thinks. That's because we don't want them there.
Speaker 5: And so yeah, harvest as many as you want. The
Speaker 5: non regulation, it just kind of depends, Uh, it's whether
Speaker 5: or not the public value is it and what the
Speaker 5: interest is you guys keep pushing squirrel hunting here is
Speaker 5: a great pastime. Eventually squirrel harvest is going to increase. Right,
Speaker 5: it's all the people, you know, and and maybe we
Speaker 5: might have to regulate it. Typically, you know, laws aren't
Speaker 5: created to anticipate a problem. It happens, but rarely it's
Speaker 5: usually in response to a problem.
Speaker 4: And so someone pointed out to be the inherent lag.
Speaker 1: Oh, there is, for sure, there's a problematic lag where
Speaker 1: especially with technological issues. Some almost pointed out that like
Speaker 1: technologies are adopted quicker than the legislation can address them,
Speaker 1: which creates conflicts.
Speaker 5: Sometimes they try and get ahead, but it's I think
Speaker 5: it's hard to justify or garner support for a law
Speaker 5: that is addressing a problem that isn't there or isn't
Speaker 5: you know, as prolificit as we as we think it is.
Speaker 5: So government definitely in that way is slow to respond.
Speaker 5: And there's a process. Our legislature only meets every two years,
Speaker 5: you know, it takes building support and and how it
Speaker 5: kind of works is typically the legislature makes a law,
Speaker 5: but it's not it's not very descriptive or it's not
Speaker 5: very specific. It's saying we we a lot of times
Speaker 5: it's we authorize this executive branch department to regulate this thing.
Speaker 5: They need to make rules on how to regulate. So
Speaker 5: then the Wildlife Commission will create those rules and then
Speaker 5: we'll implement new laws and then it'll change based on
Speaker 5: how that implementation went. So that lag or time it
Speaker 5: takes to implement or regulate something can take multiple years Earl.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's like a fine tuning and it gets
Speaker 1: frustrated people. I remember the first time it was long
Speaker 1: long ago, the first time two way communications, it was
Speaker 1: very blanket and it would have basically been that. I
Speaker 1: remember one of the arguments was I could be hunting
Speaker 1: with my eighty year old father and I can't put
Speaker 1: him in his blind and give him a walkie talkie
Speaker 1: to let me know if he's having a heart attack.
Speaker 1: And then the next year, right, they tweak it and
Speaker 1: then eventually hit on a spot that everyone can agree with.
Speaker 1: I think that some people look at those and they
Speaker 1: get mad, sure, and don't look at those as hey,
Speaker 1: we're figuring this thing out and kind of fine tuning
Speaker 1: what we mean. Similar thing with trail cams, like Montana
Speaker 1: no mention of trail cams. Then it was I think
Speaker 1: it went no trail cams. Then it came back and clarified,
Speaker 1: sell you their trail cams, right, and then people get like, well,
Speaker 1: by god, make up your mind, and you kind of
Speaker 1: like we're trying, we're trying to make up your mind
Speaker 1: and figure out where the technology is going, how people
Speaker 1: are using them, and we'll hopefully hit on a thing
Speaker 1: that's livable for everybody.
Speaker 5: And we don't want to change the rules every year.
Speaker 5: I mean, I, as a recreations hunter, don't want the
Speaker 5: rules to change every because I get confused and it
Speaker 5: takes time to get updated on those and educated. And
Speaker 5: so those decisions where regulations are changed or tweaked, there's
Speaker 5: a lot of discussion and planning that involves attorneys, game managers,
Speaker 5: wildlife commission, legislatures, all those you know involved in the
Speaker 5: decision making process, and there's a lot of feedback loop.
Speaker 5: Most regulation changes that we implement, unless it's something just
Speaker 5: a clarification, there's a whole public scoping effort that goes
Speaker 5: behind it too, where we get the public's opinion if
Speaker 5: we were to make this illegal, if we were to
Speaker 5: put in this regulation, how would it impact you. What's
Speaker 5: your opinions on it? Do you support it?
Speaker 1: Do you not?
Speaker 5: Should we tweak it? That's a huge part of the
Speaker 5: process also, But like I said, our jobs to implement it,
Speaker 5: enforce it, and sometimes the feedback we get or the
Speaker 5: implementation goes sideways or it needs some tweaking, we send
Speaker 5: that back up and then and then laws can be
Speaker 5: changed or adjusted based on that.
Speaker 1: You know, it bummed me out to see I'm curious
Speaker 1: how had implications for you out in the field. The
Speaker 1: state relaxed its salvage requirements, its game meet salvage requirements
Speaker 1: on what well they went from. So it used to
Speaker 1: be like bird a mallard size or bigger, you had
Speaker 1: to retain legs and wings, teal whatever however they spelled
Speaker 1: it out, but basically, if you killed a canon the
Speaker 1: goose at a time a few years ago, you had
Speaker 1: to keep the wing in the leg. I think they
Speaker 1: brought everything to breast, right, I think it was.
Speaker 8: I thought it was just a leg and thigh.
Speaker 1: Leg and thigh. If it was a duck size or bigger,
Speaker 1: it was skeel size or bigger. I think it was.
Speaker 4: It was like I kind of liked the precision of it.
Speaker 1: Was that a thing.
Speaker 8: And specified like rib meat and neck meat?
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 8: And that was an interesting one too, because I was
Speaker 8: living in Idaho at the time, and they all of
Speaker 8: a sudden you weren't required to keep rib meat or
Speaker 8: neck meat. And then I started on a deer.
Speaker 3: Yeah me, neck met duck be tough.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's some salvage requirements like there there was there
Speaker 1: was hunting units in Alaska. There's a salvage requirement on
Speaker 1: the liver, and there's a salvage requirement on you couldn't
Speaker 1: bone your meat in the field. Well, remember you just
Speaker 1: did something to destroy your microphone. He broke it.
Speaker 3: I remember when we were in Alaska one time, because
Speaker 3: you have to salvage rib me on caribou. Whatever you said,
Speaker 3: they'll often fly. When they're flying, they'll look down at
Speaker 3: the carcass to see if that rib meat has been stripped.
Speaker 1: Well, I this is a long time ago, hypothetically. I
Speaker 1: used to hunt with the dude named Chuck. And Chuck
Speaker 1: had once had a job out on the Alaska Peninsula,
Speaker 1: just a young kid. He didn't know what the hell
Speaker 1: was going on, and he encountered folk whose practice was
Speaker 1: to make it the carcass look good from the air, right,
Speaker 1: because that bomb the top side real good, so that
Speaker 1: from the air it looked like they had been cleaned up,
Speaker 1: and then fling everything off. And the outfitter was like,
Speaker 1: just get make it look real good up there and
Speaker 1: just fling it in the bushes, and then if someone
Speaker 1: flies over, it looks like someone pulled the rib meat
Speaker 1: off it. Oh.
Speaker 8: I worked under an outfitter in New Mexico who one
Speaker 8: time showed up to help pack an elk out, which
Speaker 8: he was not happy about, and I had to ask
Speaker 8: him to just stop trying to bone the elk. And
Speaker 8: he explained to me two or three times the exact
Speaker 8: AH cuts that need to be taken in order to
Speaker 8: make it legal, like, no, you need to take the
Speaker 8: loin that, like basically, why are you taking all of
Speaker 8: this ship? Yeah, and was very frustrated that he thought
Speaker 8: at some point that would end up on his back.
Speaker 8: It was not.
Speaker 6: It was horrible.
Speaker 1: Did that did that rule change? Have any real im vacations?
Speaker 1: Like was that a thing you would encounter a lot
Speaker 1: in the field arguing with people about well you're supposed
Speaker 1: to take the leg on that one, but not the
Speaker 1: leg on that one? Or was it kind of a
Speaker 1: non point for you?
Speaker 5: I mean, it wasn't a huge issue, but definitely cases
Speaker 5: where we'd find, you know, dozens of of whatever bird
Speaker 5: dumped in in a dumpster and only breasted out. It's
Speaker 5: really common, you know, and thighs not being taken or something.
Speaker 4: And at a point in time that would have been
Speaker 4: been your problem.
Speaker 1: Sure, absolutely, you know, yeah, I want to talk about
Speaker 1: in for a minute. Uh, this isn't even entrapment. We
Speaker 1: had a guy right in. So do you think about
Speaker 1: a game warden in Arkansas as your colleague or is
Speaker 1: that too far away?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 1: Sure, okay, sure, yeah, I mean we got a guy
Speaker 1: right And this is just his version of the story.
Speaker 5: Everyone has a story like this.
Speaker 1: Of his version of the story is here he is.
Speaker 1: This isn't entrapment. I don't know what it is. Here's
Speaker 1: his version of story. I don't know who the hell
Speaker 1: this guy is. He's cleaning a duck talking to a
Speaker 1: game warden. Let's just say this is true. He's cleaning
Speaker 1: a duck, talking to a game warder, and he gets
Speaker 1: to a part in his duck cleaning process where he's
Speaker 1: committing an illegal act because he needs to leave a
Speaker 1: fully feathered head or a fully feathered wing attached to
Speaker 1: the carcass until he gets it to its final place,
Speaker 1: to his abode.
Speaker 4: So the warden watches him.
Speaker 1: Remove the wing and head and then says, ha, gotcha, Now,
Speaker 1: how would you handle a situation like that?
Speaker 4: Would you have said do you feel personally? You would
Speaker 4: have said, you know, the minute you do.
Speaker 5: That, it's hard to Monday morning quarterback in a situation
Speaker 5: like this, I'm not well, so.
Speaker 4: You don't want to sell this game warning you don't
Speaker 4: even know.
Speaker 5: Well, there's a lot of thoughts. One. Every situation has
Speaker 5: a lot of nuance in detail and every what happened? Well,
Speaker 5: how long?
Speaker 3: How much you told him what this guy said?
Speaker 5: Did he grab that burden just snap it right in
Speaker 5: front of him?
Speaker 12: Or was he being meticulous and careful in the morning,
Speaker 12: was watching him for twenty minutes clean this thing like
Speaker 12: now I'm going to.
Speaker 5: Remove that exactly?
Speaker 6: What was he watching the prior hour or two hours
Speaker 6: or days about the group of hunters?
Speaker 9: You know?
Speaker 5: So it makes me I have had a conversation with
Speaker 5: my son a lot lately as he complains about referees
Speaker 5: in football or teachers that now don't allow him to
Speaker 5: eat in class when he always used to be able
Speaker 5: to And and I tell him, which I tell is,
Speaker 5: don't take my inaction or the person of authorities in
Speaker 5: action as permission. Don't don't take just because the police
Speaker 5: officer didn't pull you over that one time or didn't
Speaker 5: give you a ticket last time, meaning now you have
Speaker 5: permission to do this thing forever it But people get
Speaker 5: in this rut. Well like last time I did it
Speaker 5: and the cop didn't do anything exactly. You guys never
Speaker 5: seem to care about this rule in the past, you
Speaker 5: know all the time, you know, you never cared that
Speaker 5: we camped in this spot. Well, you know, now we're
Speaker 5: priorities changed and we're addressing it because it's becoming a
Speaker 5: huge issue. But but in that instance, you know, again,
Speaker 5: I don't know the circumstance, how quick the interaction happened.
Speaker 5: It's definitely not entrapment. I mean, entrapment is something.
Speaker 4: I have question, but it's not like I just have
Speaker 4: a philosophical question.
Speaker 5: There's there's you know, I I have walked up on
Speaker 5: plenty of people that are gutting animals or tagging in
Speaker 5: the middle of tagging animals. The last thing I do
Speaker 5: is check someone's license while they're just getting ready to shoot.
Speaker 5: Like I f Yannis sitting in the bushes. I drive by,
Speaker 5: he's ready to shoot a mule deer. I'm not going
Speaker 5: to run out there and wave my hands say stop
Speaker 5: before you shoot that, show me your license. I want
Speaker 5: to make sure you're legal. Sit there, I'm going to
Speaker 5: let them harvest the animal. I'm going to let them
Speaker 5: do all the dragon work, so, you know, because I
Speaker 5: don't want to help with that, right kidding, you know.
Speaker 5: Let him get all that done, and then I'm going
Speaker 5: to make sure it's tagged, and then I'm going to
Speaker 5: go over there and check his animal. And sometimes there
Speaker 5: may be issues, and sometimes based on the situation, we
Speaker 5: may educate warn guide them through the process. I can
Speaker 5: recall driving by on a state section and watching a
Speaker 5: guy kill a cow elk, walking out there, realizing this
Speaker 5: was a nineteen year old kid that I just had
Speaker 5: in a hunter education a couple weeks before, and he
Speaker 5: was totally overwhelmed by himself. He was just freaking out, sweating.
Speaker 5: He'd just driven by cow wellk happened to be running by,
Speaker 5: I mean, just luck, and now he didn't know what
Speaker 5: to do. He had the tag unvalidated stuff down the
Speaker 5: throat of the elk. He he'd had no clue how
Speaker 5: to gut it, you know, and I could have easily
Speaker 5: wrapped him up for a few minor violations, but I
Speaker 5: took the time to show him how to gut it,
Speaker 5: held the legs, made him do the cutting, and then.
Speaker 3: That's way more valuable than ticketing, and then he never
Speaker 3: would have hunted again.
Speaker 5: Right, But it depends on the situation. I mean, if
Speaker 5: if your caller is a seasoned veteran who's been hunting
Speaker 5: for twenty years and he knows the rules, he shouldn't
Speaker 5: have to be reminded. He shouldn't need that education from
Speaker 5: the warden. He should just be able to do the
Speaker 5: right thing. Especially when the warden's standing right in front
Speaker 5: of him. His brain should click and should go, man,
Speaker 5: warden's right here, I should probably do this right, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that.
Speaker 3: Build arkansons he had.
Speaker 8: He just hold out the hibachi and said, sir, you're
Speaker 8: ready for me, all right?
Speaker 5: So if he was going to cook it right in
Speaker 5: that instance, yeah.
Speaker 4: It just says this guy's right in the ticket He's like, well,
Speaker 4: I got a little something for you.
Speaker 3: He just raw right now.
Speaker 5: So I think favorite when I was all of them
Speaker 5: city police officer, I wrote hundreds of tickets a year.
Speaker 5: I mean absolutely hundreds, And the average game warning in
Speaker 5: Montana writes fifty to one hundred tickets.
Speaker 1: So I mean time it's used to it used to
Speaker 1: be good for fifteen hundred tickets a year.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you could easily as a traffic meant traffic right,
Speaker 5: because that's all you're doing. You're out of the call rotation.
Speaker 5: Your job is to write traffic tickets and force traffic law.
Speaker 5: And so you know, I had average ten twelve tickets
Speaker 5: a shift, a ten hour shift. You multiply it out.
Speaker 5: There's some vacations and training in there, but could easily
Speaker 5: go over a thousand tickets a year, Game Waring, I
Speaker 5: think the most I've ever written is around one hundred.
Speaker 5: You know, most of our guys averaged less than that.
Speaker 5: Huge amount of education that occurs, huge amount of mentorship
Speaker 5: that occurs warnings out there. It's just we're not out
Speaker 5: there to jam people up. We're out there to get
Speaker 5: you to do the right thing. A good day for
Speaker 5: us is a day where we don't write any tickets,
Speaker 5: because that means everybody around us was doing the right thing.
Speaker 5: I'd love for an instance where my job becomes obsolete.
Speaker 5: That would be amazing for society, that law enforcement is
Speaker 5: no longer needed because.
Speaker 1: They're going far out as long as there.
Speaker 4: Then I want to, Okay, one more thing I want
Speaker 4: to ask about.
Speaker 1: It's a.
Speaker 4: College year's named Eric Crawford. We discussed this one time.
Speaker 1: Idaho warden we were talking about we spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time talking about the robo deer, and he's got
Speaker 1: all these hilarious stories about robo deer. Sure, you know,
Speaker 1: including people who even when the warden shows up, he's
Speaker 1: still in disbelief that this is not an actual deer.
Speaker 1: But he had pointed out that they deliberately don't use
Speaker 1: They literally don't use trophy correct class animals.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's the same for us.
Speaker 4: I disagree.
Speaker 1: Why in the world is it okay for guy? Like,
Speaker 1: why not have it be a two hundred inch milder
Speaker 1: because then you really finding out what people are made of, true,
Speaker 1: because if not, you're just selecting meat hunters. You're just
Speaker 1: getting meat hunters in trouble.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's the idea everyone's going to be like.
Speaker 1: Nah, this is that's his thing was that everybody's gonna
Speaker 1: shoot at it if it's a two hundred in fielder,
Speaker 1: Come on, that's like you can't give up like that.
Speaker 5: Definitely, Usually we're targeting a specific violation, so it typically
Speaker 5: doesn't have to do with trophy harvest. It typically has
Speaker 5: to do with shooting from the road. Trespassing, shooting an
Speaker 5: animal that uh, the season may be closed. Maybe you
Speaker 5: know there's no cow hard anything convincing to me yet,
Speaker 5: ye and so so typically that's what we're targeting. We
Speaker 5: don't have point restrictions in Montana and of our districts
Speaker 5: and so you know, you know the thing we we
Speaker 5: have used in the before would be a spike, would
Speaker 5: be the closest thing to a trophy.
Speaker 4: You know that is just not that do what a
Speaker 4: giant bucket there and see what have does?
Speaker 3: Montana have a version of the thing. It's called the
Speaker 3: Samson law, like where if you poach an animal of
Speaker 3: a certain size, the consequences are great.
Speaker 5: Yep, absolutely absolutely so yeah, so there's trophy restitution built
Speaker 5: into our statute. You know, if you kill a trophy
Speaker 5: bull elk, it's eight thousand dollars and that's excluding the
Speaker 5: cost of whatever violation the ticket you wrote.
Speaker 4: So the state like where they're like, we got eight
Speaker 4: thousand bucks into that thing.
Speaker 5: Yep, that's kind of you know, when the legislature passed that,
Speaker 5: they looked at basically what it costs to replace the animal,
Speaker 5: what's the value to society, what it costs if we
Speaker 5: were to try and replace it. You know, the smallest
Speaker 5: thing would be like a fish ten dollars, and the
Speaker 5: highest is a big horn sheep was thirty thousand. Those
Speaker 5: amounts aren't automatic. The court would have to award it,
Speaker 5: and we rarely see those top dollars.
Speaker 1: But really, but I want to get back to this, Steve,
Speaker 1: I got to help me understand why not a huge buck?
Speaker 8: Just real quick. Way back when I was working construction
Speaker 8: in Missoula, my buddy and I go out hunting for
Speaker 8: the weekend. We'd already killed smelk during archery season, but
Speaker 8: we're driving out of this area and it's like, you know,
Speaker 8: kind of that November time frame where there's just there's
Speaker 8: a lot of people road hunting and we look up
Speaker 8: on the hillside and there's a spike bull spike bull
Speaker 8: elk sitting there like, oh, look at that, and barely
Speaker 8: touched the brakes. It just kind of kept going. The
Speaker 8: next day on the job site, one of the kind
Speaker 8: of general foreman type dudes is complaining loudly to everybody
Speaker 8: that he and his wife were out hunting.
Speaker 6: And swear she shout out a cow.
Speaker 8: Off the road out the window, and it was it
Speaker 8: was not as it seemed.
Speaker 5: No kid, Oh yeah, Steve, you've never gotten horn fever.
Speaker 4: But that's I'm saying, like, let's say I get horn fever,
Speaker 4: stick it to me.
Speaker 5: But then we're starting to target people who normally would
Speaker 5: do the right thing, and just in the moment you need,
Speaker 5: they make a bad decision. We're out there to get
Speaker 5: true poachers. We're not out there to make poachers out
Speaker 5: of people, or people into poachers.
Speaker 1: But in the New Testament about like Judas and stuff, Man,
Speaker 1: you gotta test like the true belie.
Speaker 5: All the time.
Speaker 3: You know, Steve, maybe they do use them, they're just not.
Speaker 1: He's being coy.
Speaker 8: Think you how many two hundred inch mule deer racks
Speaker 8: you'd have to replace every year people shooting? Have you
Speaker 8: have you tackled the open fields doctrine? I think that
Speaker 8: would be a great one.
Speaker 1: No, go ahead. I don't even know enough about it
Speaker 1: to ask.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, And then I got a final thing I want.
Speaker 1: To do that.
Speaker 8: The grand scope of things, right is wildlife belongs to
Speaker 8: all of us, right, and it's managed by the states
Speaker 8: in like a trust fashion for the public. Wildlife spends
Speaker 8: a lot of time on public ground. It spends a
Speaker 8: lot of time on private ground, it does not recognize
Speaker 8: the existence of a three strand barboy or fence that
Speaker 8: separates private from public. However, on private property, private property
Speaker 8: rights are such that the Montana is a different state.
Speaker 6: But the way.
Speaker 8: The law is interpreted in many areas is law enforcement
Speaker 8: can enter onto private property without the express permission of
Speaker 8: the landowner or the landowner's agent if they see illegal
Speaker 8: behavior or suspicious behavior in the open fields, okay, meaning
Speaker 8: something visible versus something they can't just like walk into
Speaker 8: your barn or your home without a warrant to do
Speaker 8: so signed by a judge.
Speaker 1: I mean he's driving down the road, he looks out
Speaker 1: in a in a picked cornfield and there's some guys
Speaker 1: with decoys set up, uh, and like they're blasting way
Speaker 1: before legal shoot light or after legal shooting light. You
Speaker 1: have you can go out there. You guys can't say, hey,
Speaker 1: your trespass and go get a search warrant? Right or whatever? Yes?
Speaker 5: Is that is?
Speaker 1: That?
Speaker 8: Was that close enough?
Speaker 5: Kind of So Montana still has plane view basically plane view,
Speaker 5: so as if something illegal is in plane view, we're
Speaker 5: in a place that we're allowed to be a public space,
Speaker 5: and we can plainly see without any search or manipulation.
Speaker 8: Like a county road yep.
Speaker 5: So think of you know, a traffic stop or something
Speaker 5: like that that a police officer does and they see
Speaker 5: contraband in the backseat of the car. They're in a
Speaker 5: public space. They have the authority to be there and
Speaker 5: stop that vehicle, and there's something in the car that's
Speaker 5: totally illegal, maybe a big kilo of cocaine. They could
Speaker 5: seize that in most areas without a search warrant. More
Speaker 5: than likely they're going to get a search warrant to
Speaker 5: protect them. And it's the same way with hunting and
Speaker 5: fishing rules. If we were to observe from a public place,
Speaker 5: we're allowed to be of true articuable violation occurring in
Speaker 5: front of us. We could enter stop that season to
Speaker 5: conduct a search of the property or anything. We'd have
Speaker 5: to sear sworn. Or if we just see someone harvest,
Speaker 5: say an antelope, on private property, we see no violation
Speaker 5: and we're in a public space. The thing you're thinking
Speaker 5: about is I couldn't enter that private property without permission
Speaker 5: just to check or regulate that hunter.
Speaker 1: You cannot, No, I would, because I would clearly see anything.
Speaker 5: I would have to see a violation or have permission
Speaker 5: to be on that.
Speaker 12: But if it was an analope season correct, a clear
Speaker 12: articulate violation, I could you know, an evolution like we're
Speaker 12: talking about, evolution of laws is is across the United States,
Speaker 12: game wardens in many states were giving basically an exigency
Speaker 12: clause to search and seizure.
Speaker 5: Think about the first eight game wardens in the state
Speaker 5: of Montana. Again, they lived up in a cabin in
Speaker 5: the middle of the woods. Transportation was was you know,
Speaker 5: uh not not very efficient at the time or whatever
Speaker 5: they had, so their access to the courts was pretty limited.
Speaker 5: And so if they're way up in the middle of
Speaker 5: the woods and the violation occurs, they were given the
Speaker 5: authority to search tents, coolers, all these things without a
Speaker 5: search warrant because one the evidence was perishable and two
Speaker 5: they didn't have good access to the courts and so
Speaker 5: they needed to be able to seize things on the spot. Well,
Speaker 5: technology has changed. You know, we have judges that are
Speaker 5: on call twenty four to seven. We can text and
Speaker 5: email them for search warrants and stuff. You know, our
Speaker 5: transportation we can easily get to the courts, get to
Speaker 5: our police stations or conservation stations very easily. And so
Speaker 5: as the technology has changed, the excuse or reason law
Speaker 5: enforcement uses to not get search warrants is diminished. And
Speaker 5: the courts have continually protected personal property at a higher value,
Speaker 5: particularly in the West in Montana, and so it's difficult
Speaker 5: for us to say, like, oh, we had to seize
Speaker 5: this thing because we couldn't get the search warrant because
Speaker 5: it's too inconvenient, because when it is pretty easy for
Speaker 5: us to get one, got it. And so in most
Speaker 5: cases now we're going to always defer to that search
Speaker 5: warrant to protect the integrity of the case so that
Speaker 5: there is no challenge to our search and seizures.
Speaker 8: It's a theme though that always comes up, right, it's
Speaker 8: does the regulation of a public resource wildlife stop at
Speaker 8: the private property boundary? And the answer is no, But
Speaker 8: how do you regulate that resource and then still respect
Speaker 8: all the other laws that are in place regarding private
Speaker 8: property and everything else.
Speaker 5: And we run into that, take enforcement out of it
Speaker 5: and talk about just general management, you know, to be
Speaker 5: able to do surveys or go and respond to issues
Speaker 5: on private property where wildlife exists, there can be contention
Speaker 5: there if the proper private property landowner is not going
Speaker 5: to allow permission. But for the most part, we work
Speaker 5: with landowners. We get that permission, you know, we let
Speaker 5: them know the work we're going to do, the legitimacy
Speaker 5: of it. But it can get in the way if
Speaker 5: you were to have a landowner that said no, no access,
Speaker 5: and now you have a population of wild animals that
Speaker 5: it's difficult to get to to manage.
Speaker 1: I want to close with a game and I'll go,
Speaker 1: and you go, and then anybody else wants to go
Speaker 1: and go. I'm gonna do a thing where I give
Speaker 1: you a tip as a game warden, and you give
Speaker 1: me a tip as a hunter angler. Okay, you already
Speaker 1: do this tip. So I'm speaking in broadly to the profession.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 1: I feel that you one of the reasons, like, like
Speaker 1: one of the things I appreciate about you as a person.
Speaker 1: I feel like you are a sort of like rooting
Speaker 1: for the people that you kind of you know that
Speaker 1: you're kind of rooting for people hunting and fishing. You're
Speaker 1: hoping they're having a good time, right, Yeah. And I
Speaker 1: feel that you are open to helping people interpret things,
Speaker 1: trying to help them be on the right side, right.
Speaker 1: I have had encounters where I just haven't felt that
Speaker 1: that was the case, and I appreciate that. I appreciate that, like, hey,
Speaker 1: heads up, or let me know if you have any questions,
Speaker 1: or you know that you're really good about public communication
Speaker 1: and clarifying and clarifying stuff. And I think that that's
Speaker 1: the thing that I know a lot of hunters and
Speaker 1: angers appreciate, is that to be in a spot where
Speaker 1: you know you when you run into a game board
Speaker 1: and you're gonna learn some things. You know, they might
Speaker 1: be like heads up. Like I remember Yanni had a
Speaker 1: guy one time say that hunter's orange you have is
Speaker 1: getting pretty old. I'm not going to give you a
Speaker 1: ticket right now, but if you wash that one more time,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call that knot hunter's orange.
Speaker 10: Right.
Speaker 4: And like, I think that those.
Speaker 1: Exchanges are really valuable for people where you sort of
Speaker 1: get like, oh, these guys are not like trying to
Speaker 1: you know, trying to throw me in jail man. They're
Speaker 1: trying to be like a good referee, you know. So
Speaker 1: now you give me a tip, not me personally, but
Speaker 1: give hunters a tip. Like when you're walking up, how
Speaker 1: do you know when you're gonna have a good interaction,
Speaker 1: and how do you know when it's just not going
Speaker 1: to go good.
Speaker 5: Well, a good place to start is golden rule. Okay,
Speaker 5: you know, treat others if you want to be treated,
Speaker 5: you know, and that goes for us and the hunters.
Speaker 5: So we should walk up and treat people with respect,
Speaker 5: and they need to do the same, you know. I
Speaker 5: think it's real important for everyone in society to have
Speaker 5: an outward mindset to think of to be able to
Speaker 5: put yourself in the other shoes and understand their perspective,
Speaker 5: that you know the position they're in, and give them
Speaker 5: almost the benefit the doubt until there is no reason
Speaker 5: to you know. I have a lot of faith in
Speaker 5: my fellow man, a lot of faith in humanity that
Speaker 5: most of us are trying to do the right thing.
Speaker 5: So that's how I approach those interactions with hunters. I'd
Speaker 5: like hunters, anglers, the general public to approach us the
Speaker 5: same way. There's a lot of stories of people in
Speaker 5: authority doing bad things, but when you take the percentage
Speaker 5: of those compared to the percentage that are doing good
Speaker 5: staying out of the headlines, it's the same as any
Speaker 5: other industry there's bad doctors, there's bad lawyers, there's bad
Speaker 5: school teachers, there's bad humans. But most of us are
Speaker 5: doing the right thing and just trying to go day
Speaker 5: by day and do our jobs and make the world
Speaker 5: a better place. And that's what most law enforcer are doing.
Speaker 5: But so if we walk up and you start giving
Speaker 5: us a hard time or treating us with disrespect, it's
Speaker 5: it's gonna go bad for you. We're gonna switch immediately
Speaker 5: from education to paying close attention everything that's going on
Speaker 5: with it.
Speaker 1: And personal safety factors.
Speaker 4: Well absolutely, Oh hey here's six guys. They all got guns.
Speaker 1: See they're doing so.
Speaker 5: I just hey, we're all human. Treat each other with respect.
Speaker 5: That's that's huge, you know. Yeah, that's that's one tip.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, Zimby got any more tips for him?
Speaker 3: I think he does a pretty good job.
Speaker 5: Sure, tell me, tell me what I'm doing wrong and nothing.
Speaker 1: Nothing. I just really, like I said, I love those
Speaker 1: h and I'm not you know, it's not it's not
Speaker 1: a leniency thing. It's just I guess I'm maybe more
Speaker 1: than some. I like the I like the feedback and
Speaker 1: the If Steve was.
Speaker 3: A game Ward, he would be a hard he would
Speaker 3: just be like I just man, I'm like, how old
Speaker 3: are you again?
Speaker 1: Sure you're not thirteen?
Speaker 5: Well, And as we talked about, there's been an evolution.
Speaker 5: You know, there's a starting of our profession to be
Speaker 5: very based on rules and enforcement. That's the way you know,
Speaker 5: wildlife conservation started. And now it's more on management. And
Speaker 5: there's also a huge education and mentorship part of it.
Speaker 5: And you know, I think the reason why we have
Speaker 5: such high compliance is because of that relationship we've built,
Speaker 5: that trust, that mentorship, and again that value that's been
Speaker 5: established or ingrained in society of we value this resource.
Speaker 5: It's a public resource, which means it's mine. I don't
Speaker 5: want to disrespect it. I own it. I don't want
Speaker 5: to break my own stuff, and I get really upset
Speaker 5: and protective when other people break my stuff. You know,
Speaker 5: we don't view wildlife as the government's thing. As soon
Speaker 5: as it becomes the governments, plenty of people are willing
Speaker 5: to destroy it. Look at for service signs out there
Speaker 5: all around the property. You know, they just have no
Speaker 5: respect for it. But if you start thinking about those
Speaker 5: for service signs as your own. If I shoot it,
Speaker 5: my tax dollars have to replace it, you might be
Speaker 5: a little bit more protective of it, you know, And
Speaker 5: that's same with wildlife. Every time someone poaches, they're taking
Speaker 5: an opportunity away from everyone at this table and everyone
Speaker 5: who enjoys wildlife, whether or not you're a hunter or
Speaker 5: just a wildlife watcher. And as long as we can
Speaker 5: keep that attitude instill it, I think we'll have very
Speaker 5: high compliance in our wildlife roles.
Speaker 1: Right. Well, my mess is to all the listeners out
Speaker 1: there is one man, there's a lot of information available.
Speaker 1: It's good to find out ahead of time information. When
Speaker 1: I was a kid, we did not do much of it.
Speaker 1: I remember being periodically shocked when someone says, you know,
Speaker 1: that's actually illegal, right all the time? Man? Yeah, So
Speaker 1: I think finding stuff out and not being afraid to
Speaker 1: ask que I don't think you should call them up personally,
Speaker 1: but just ask questions.
Speaker 5: Yeah. You know, the last big thing that I wanted
Speaker 5: to mention here is a plug for public participation in
Speaker 5: the enforcement of wildlife laws. So you know, every state
Speaker 5: has some sort of crime stoppers program where basically there's hotlines.
Speaker 5: Since tip hotlines set up for various crimes, drug dealings,
Speaker 5: wildlife poaching, all those type of things across the United
Speaker 5: States and more likely across the world, there's very few
Speaker 5: game wardens for how big this state is, and for
Speaker 5: how big most other states are, and how many hunters
Speaker 5: anglers are, and how much wildlife there is out there.
Speaker 5: Each game ward in Montana Patrol is a district on
Speaker 5: average of two thousand square miles. They can't keep an
Speaker 5: eye in everything, and so it takes public participation for
Speaker 5: us to be successful. And like we just mentioned, you know,
Speaker 5: you as the public, own this wildlife resource. The government doesn't,
Speaker 5: the elected officials don't, the agency doesn't. You own them,
Speaker 5: so take a hand in protecting it. What we need
Speaker 5: is good tips. We need public participation, people standing up
Speaker 5: when they see something wrong, they see appoaching happening, that
Speaker 5: call us and give us the information. In Montana, we
Speaker 5: have a program. We call it the Tipmont Program, Turn
Speaker 5: In Poachers Montana. It's a one eight hundred number, one
Speaker 5: eight hundred tip Mont Tipmont.
Speaker 1: Is that a pretty valuable tool for you guys?
Speaker 5: Absolutely absolutely. It's not a as you just mentioned, call
Speaker 5: and ask a question on a regulation line. It's not
Speaker 5: aligned to call and get your your bobcat tagged. But
Speaker 5: it's aligned to report tips that can be anonymous if
Speaker 5: you want on wildlife poaching, wildlife crimes that are current.
Speaker 5: It could be the restaurants, commercialization, could be someone taking
Speaker 5: a trophy animal at a district, all sorts of things
Speaker 5: you could report to us. You can remain anonymous. You
Speaker 5: can also be eligible for cash rewards if if there's
Speaker 5: a conviction or an arrest that occurs with that case.
Speaker 5: Some other states, interesting enough, like Utah are actually starting
Speaker 5: to award tags for turning in poachers. So in Utah, yeah,
Speaker 5: you can. You can turn in a poacher on whatever,
Speaker 5: an elk or sheep tag and as long as it's
Speaker 5: biologically sustainable and the department supports it, you could skip
Speaker 5: the cash reward and get a limited draw tag for
Speaker 5: your reward for that area for whatever species.
Speaker 3: Way to get a tag that's going to perk the
Speaker 3: people up.
Speaker 5: Man. Wow, it doesn't exist in Montana right now, but
Speaker 5: we have cash rewards. And two again, it's just it's
Speaker 5: doing the right thing.
Speaker 8: That kind of brings up like, is it entrapment if
Speaker 8: it's all civilians? Well, you know, to put that big
Speaker 8: buck out in Steve's yard, So.
Speaker 5: I think about I don't have the exact quote in
Speaker 5: my head, but Aldo Leopold wrote about how you know,
Speaker 5: hunting and fishing is a sport in a way where
Speaker 5: you are your own referee. You know, when you're playing
Speaker 5: football or basketball, there's a referee walking around following you,
Speaker 5: calling a penalty on you every time you do it.
Speaker 5: We don't have that in hunting and fishing. We have
Speaker 5: to hold ourselves accountable and those around us to do
Speaker 5: it the right way, to protect it for the long term,
Speaker 5: into limit abuse. And also we talked about what is regulation?
Speaker 5: Where do laws come from? Problems? So the more we
Speaker 5: can do the right thing ethically sustainable, the less violent,
Speaker 5: less rules will be created that will interfere with our
Speaker 5: enjoyment of this resource.
Speaker 1: Gotcha, don't push everything to this.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, yeah, yeah, just do it the right way. Help
Speaker 5: us out. But give us a call if you know
Speaker 5: some poaching that's a current in the area. Please, We
Speaker 5: really need those tips and we make some amazing cases
Speaker 5: based on citizen evolvement.
Speaker 1: Well, thanks for coming on, man.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, we are going to start that ask game warding up.
Speaker 1: It's people live, call in see how it goes.
Speaker 5: Well, I'm sure I could get western. Thank you very much,
Speaker 5: Thank you, Thanks Adam.
Speaker 8: This appt outro song was sent in by podcast listener
Speaker 8: Peter Block.
Speaker 3: I'm with Fish and Game. Be careful where you aim.
Speaker 6: Don't shoot a dear that's team.
Speaker 3: Don't try to.
Speaker 14: Shift the blame. We'll find out your name. We've got
Speaker 14: four attracks, m their planes. Don't bring your family, shame
Speaker 14: the police, bothers.
Speaker 11: Don't claim to fame. Don't claim that you were afraid.
Speaker 11: Don't miss with Fish and Game. Bye with Fish and Game.
Speaker 11: Don't fish with and sane. Don't make a bogus claim.
Speaker 11: We have helicopters and trucks with chains.
Speaker 14: Our officers are well trained osive like John Wayne.
Speaker 7: Don't bring the lawn. Find the bird you made. We
Speaker 7: have a reputation to maintain. Don't mess with me Shan Gay,
Speaker 7: don't mess with me.
Speaker 6: Should game. Don't mess with me should Game