Speaker 1: Welcome to the news show.
Speaker 2: Today, we're gonna make Nate riad a correction on his
Speaker 2: Wolf coverage. Then we're gonna get into a big change
Speaker 2: for game wardens in Pennsylvania. Randall is gonna explore people
Speaker 2: packing out their own poop. Call is here to talk
Speaker 2: about some big trouble with wetlands.
Speaker 1: And finally we're.
Speaker 2: Gonna hit a possible expansion to a controversial pheasant stocking
Speaker 2: program here in Montana.
Speaker 1: Well that we're on to the news. Okay, you might
Speaker 1: have noticed that Steve Ranella is not sitting in his seat.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, where, We don't know where he is.
Speaker 2: Actually, Steve is off doing a super cool filming project
Speaker 2: way up north, so he's gonna miss the next couple
Speaker 2: of shows. But he did send us a video to
Speaker 2: check in with us and let let us know what's
Speaker 2: going on up there, up there where he's at.
Speaker 1: You got that video, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Take a look.
Speaker 4: Okay, we have we have a we have a news
Speaker 4: flash from none of it.
Speaker 5: I'm here with dirt.
Speaker 4: And our friend Avery is cutting off. Can explain, but
Speaker 4: I'll explain what you're doing. But tell everybody the tell
Speaker 4: everybody the Inuit words.
Speaker 6: So I'm cutting up a lung wook or doo glic,
Speaker 6: which is normal. And this was called a couple of
Speaker 6: days ago in funding lit North Faffin.
Speaker 5: So now, but look at the skin on that thing.
Speaker 4: You would think that was like a made like a
Speaker 4: like a marble countertop. The skin on that thing, and
Speaker 4: you're cutting it. Sorry, but I just wanted to comment
Speaker 4: on the wildness of that skin.
Speaker 6: So now I'm just cutting off the fat the blubber
Speaker 6: because if you have too much you might get a
Speaker 6: stomach ache. Oh really yeah, and then I'm cubing it
Speaker 6: and I prefer to cut smaller. I find it tastes better.
Speaker 7: But everyone hunts their own perfect You're almost cutting through,
Speaker 7: so I'm.
Speaker 6: Just cutting the hard part.
Speaker 5: People different depths or do you mind telling everybody? Do
Speaker 5: you mind telling everbody what that is?
Speaker 3: This one's the skin and the blubber and that's just
Speaker 3: that's a frozen chunk of caribou which you just eat
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and they're cooking up. Can you go check off
Speaker 5: those sealed rips far these plans and that's what I
Speaker 5: could check.
Speaker 1: Wow, they got it all there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we're back.
Speaker 4: Oh, this is the only man in the planet who
Speaker 4: I have ever met who had a king eider for
Speaker 4: a pet.
Speaker 7: P.
Speaker 4: Now, yeah, that refers to it's it's dried arctic char,
Speaker 4: But that refers to how it's cute.
Speaker 3: Speaks Spanish the same way.
Speaker 5: Okay, So that doesn't mean that it's cut that way. Smoke.
Speaker 5: That's a big art charge that.
Speaker 4: And here and this is a crazy one right here.
Speaker 5: Get look at that. That's broccoli.
Speaker 8: See right there they have they walk down our our
Speaker 8: our host here, they can walk down and they run
Speaker 8: a net across that little bay, that little inlet right
Speaker 8: there and catch char out of the little gill net.
Speaker 5: We were down there last night and they had.
Speaker 8: Six char, which is that's the ones you have right
Speaker 8: from that from that net there.
Speaker 5: Okay, right dirt, let's go already try it? Already tried it.
Speaker 1: I haven't tried it.
Speaker 8: What is it?
Speaker 9: Narwal?
Speaker 3: Well there, it's not the most adventurous eater either.
Speaker 8: Yeah, really not expectant, but really good.
Speaker 5: It's good. Can I try just a pure chunk of
Speaker 5: that fat? How bad could it be?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Anybody ignoring the warnings of locals to not do it,
Speaker 2: he's gonna put his chance.
Speaker 5: I mean, what would be something bad? Would happened to be.
Speaker 6: Going to get a stomachache.
Speaker 10: Well, I can make sure that that is good, sounds
Speaker 10: better straight up?
Speaker 5: Try that man, hagu a little sliver, that's good.
Speaker 11: Dirt is gonna try just the pure fat, which I
Speaker 11: think is the is the good way to go.
Speaker 5: Narwhale whiskey was good. If it's better than that hot.
Speaker 11: Dog, what do you mind while we're making this news segment,
Speaker 11: if we try to blue a little piece of blue,
Speaker 11: this is breaking news.
Speaker 5: He's right, that is delicious.
Speaker 10: Dipping in.
Speaker 4: Well, no, but that's just like like melts, melts in
Speaker 4: the mouth.
Speaker 5: Chad was saying, it's it's good thought out man.
Speaker 1: I feel that.
Speaker 3: You like it.
Speaker 5: Look at that.
Speaker 3: Ball.
Speaker 5: You like the same cutting method? Do people like?
Speaker 4: Is it generally accepted that narwal is better, blooga is better?
Speaker 5: Or is it just up to you up to the person.
Speaker 7: Growing up, I love the beluga more than narwal, But
Speaker 7: now I prefer narmal more than.
Speaker 5: Because what happened.
Speaker 6: I like the taste.
Speaker 5: Better with normal.
Speaker 8: OK.
Speaker 7: For me, I like more because in my hometown we
Speaker 7: have deeper waters and we don't really get the lugas,
Speaker 7: so it's like different when you're used to Narwal like
Speaker 7: you become proud of it. It's like, oh, that's from
Speaker 7: our home. And so like last a few summers ago,
Speaker 7: they had a bunch of Belugas come into our bay,
Speaker 7: which is rare, and hunters caught them, but they were
Speaker 7: like of the meat, so they sent it all here
Speaker 7: because they're.
Speaker 5: Used to Narwal.
Speaker 6: It's just what they're used to.
Speaker 1: We're getting a whole dang meat eater episode.
Speaker 5: Here, big time.
Speaker 6: It's big.
Speaker 10: Yeah, if you're listening to this, you should just hop
Speaker 10: on YouTube and watch.
Speaker 12: It while you're driving.
Speaker 5: Are very good? Then, am I right?
Speaker 8: The blue to soft?
Speaker 6: Well, this one is softer because it's not an adult, so.
Speaker 5: There's variability from age. What are you working on that?
Speaker 4: This is.
Speaker 3: The hold up?
Speaker 7: So I'm just gonna light it to welcome you guys.
Speaker 3: And so this was our main.
Speaker 6: Source of heat and.
Speaker 2: Light.
Speaker 6: Also to dry the men's clothing.
Speaker 5: Oil.
Speaker 2: Yeah, traditionally it would be with steel oil or beluga
Speaker 2: you would.
Speaker 3: Render it down.
Speaker 6: And then.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so.
Speaker 13: Now we just use whatever oil is available because it's
Speaker 13: sea beer and.
Speaker 6: It's less stinky.
Speaker 14: Yeah, fladies and gentlemen, where that's the news flash from
Speaker 14: none of it And and can can you guys teach
Speaker 14: us how to say so long suckers or goodbye?
Speaker 3: And there's no real word for goodbye.
Speaker 6: There's like you see you later, like or you in
Speaker 6: the future, in.
Speaker 5: The future, all right, in the future. That's good.
Speaker 8: Okay, woman, this is a second and this is a
Speaker 8: long goodbye.
Speaker 5: It's a long goodbye. I was trying to understand, like
Speaker 5: I'm trying to understand how to say how to name
Speaker 5: the language.
Speaker 14: Yeah, okay, so to say goodbye and one more time
Speaker 14: to say goodbye, and the nook to.
Speaker 6: Goodbye was the one.
Speaker 1: Goodbye see you later. All right, there you go.
Speaker 2: There's the news from the Great White North, from from
Speaker 2: old Steve Vanilla.
Speaker 3: Cal Brody.
Speaker 1: You've been a dad for a couple of months. Now,
Speaker 1: what's that like? You got some advice for a soon
Speaker 1: to be dad? Nate over there?
Speaker 3: Oh, yes, you know. Today is a good day to
Speaker 3: do it because my morning started at three forty five
Speaker 3: my day. I'm well into my day from three forty
Speaker 3: five am. And my biggest so everybody's wealth and knowledge, right,
Speaker 3: and they're always like, oh yeah, here's all the things.
Speaker 2: But for baby stuff, I don't I can't remember any
Speaker 2: of them. Phil, can you remember any of the baby stuff?
Speaker 3: Oh? No, wiped it from my mind. My thing that
Speaker 3: nobody mentioned and I was not prepared for. But this
Speaker 3: is all like, well, of course that's the way it is. Stuff.
Speaker 3: But like I've run into many people who are like
Speaker 3: baby crazy right now and they're like, well, this is
Speaker 3: how it's going to be, and I'm like, oh, that's funny.
Speaker 3: The thing that you need to have, like just be
Speaker 3: mentally prepared for, Nate, is the fact that you are
Speaker 3: going to be fully consumed with this little parasite and
Speaker 3: it is demanding and you have very little grace as
Speaker 3: to when this thing needs what it needs, and you'll
Speaker 3: be consumed with like satiating those needs. There will be
Speaker 3: zero recognition of you whatsoever. So it's not like you're
Speaker 3: not being thanked. It's like you you're just a non
Speaker 3: You're just a thing that shows up and does the thing,
Speaker 3: and there is no recognition of you at all.
Speaker 10: Not at all by the wife, by the baby.
Speaker 3: There's no recognition of mom from the baby, right and
Speaker 3: and like we're full breastfeeding, so you would think that
Speaker 3: there would be like some recognition and there's just not.
Speaker 15: Like the kid does not and say like appreciate you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, imagine there's something going on in there that the
Speaker 2: baby is not capable of communicating as well.
Speaker 3: But I see, but there's no like they can't even
Speaker 3: hardly see, right. They're like not really, they're seeing like
Speaker 3: shapes and some colors and things, but they're not seeing it.
Speaker 1: They're not going to give you an odd dad, you're
Speaker 1: the man.
Speaker 3: And which, right, is like, oh, of course they're not
Speaker 3: going to do that, but like being able to be like,
Speaker 3: oh you would kind of be nice, right, And all
Speaker 3: the all the girls that are all like twitter painted
Speaker 3: with having babies, they're like, oh, well we read that
Speaker 3: there's this bond that's established. And I'm like, cool, you
Speaker 3: can't see it, you can't smell it, but if that
Speaker 3: book tells you it's there, you better hang on because
Speaker 3: this thing is gonna like.
Speaker 15: It's it's going to chew you up and spit you out.
Speaker 3: Yep. And then about nine days ago it was like
Speaker 3: almost like a call and response, like the kids like, oh,
Speaker 3: I'm tracking you, and here's a smile that is not
Speaker 3: related to the kid taking a poop and you're like, oh,
Speaker 3: I needed that.
Speaker 2: And and it's like it is there is a human
Speaker 2: in there.
Speaker 3: Exactly exactly because I'm fully like, never had anything against kids, right,
Speaker 3: but like the whole good thing. I'm like, I'm like,
Speaker 3: I'm just not impressed with the human child, right, I'm like,
Speaker 3: Antelope can get up and sprint in you know, twelve hours,
Speaker 3: Like like this thing is so helpless, helpless. Like the
Speaker 3: only thing that's got going for it is it is
Speaker 3: portable and packable. Like that's how we got to where
Speaker 3: we are today, is you can pick up, pick it
Speaker 3: up and.
Speaker 1: Run then anything like that.
Speaker 10: I had not read that yet.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that is that is the thing. You just
Speaker 3: need to be mentally prepared. Like there's a lot of
Speaker 3: like wonderful things about it, but just be prepared for
Speaker 3: the fact that.
Speaker 15: For the sheer ingratitude, yeah child.
Speaker 3: Yep, there is no recognition totally whatsoever. Yep, yep. Okay,
Speaker 3: And you're gonna be doing all this, you know, you'll
Speaker 3: you'll do whatever it takes to like sue that thing,
Speaker 3: and uh, you know, you get way down the no
Speaker 3: sleep trail and it's You're like, I'm putting in serious
Speaker 3: effort here and this thing is only going to respond
Speaker 3: negatively the next time it needs something, right, yeah, right,
Speaker 3: and then you get smiles and then eventually, you know,
Speaker 3: I think we'll get some laughs, which will be super cool.
Speaker 3: And we were just talking this morning that like, I'm
Speaker 3: really looking forward to this thing tasting real food.
Speaker 1: Yeah, man, I know it's cliche, but.
Speaker 2: Time flies, like I can't even like I can hardly
Speaker 2: like remember the details of the baby thing, but like
Speaker 2: now I got a couple of hunting buddies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and pretty soon those.
Speaker 2: Hunting buddies will be off to college. Sad man goes fast.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, So I mean I'm looking forward to like
Speaker 3: the teaching. Yeah moment. I think it's fantastic to have
Speaker 3: a puppy at the exact same time, which everybody's like, oh,
Speaker 3: you guys are stupid, blah blah blah blah blah. Well,
Speaker 3: the puppy is instant gratification, right. You get that puppy home,
Speaker 3: you feed it one time, and it is like, oh
Speaker 3: my god, I love you. You're the best thing ever.
Speaker 3: You teach the puppy, it's like, oh, this is great.
Speaker 3: And then there's the baby and you're.
Speaker 15: Like staring at you dead glassy eyes.
Speaker 3: One day this will pay off. So it's instant gratification
Speaker 3: next to long long term payout.
Speaker 1: That's it.
Speaker 10: That's it's like diversifying. Yes, exactly, exactly, that's great advice,
Speaker 10: A hot take.
Speaker 12: I like it.
Speaker 2: I knew cow would have a unique situation. All Right,
Speaker 2: it's time to move on to your news.
Speaker 1: There we go.
Speaker 3: I like that sound pigeon flying into a bar.
Speaker 12: That's what I was so, I was going for the
Speaker 12: jail door just clanks.
Speaker 2: Your news brought to you by these here banished suppressors.
Speaker 2: Know we talked a little bit about these in the
Speaker 2: last show. Maybe these things speaking of kids, like, these
Speaker 2: things are awesome if you've got if you've got some
Speaker 2: youngsters shooting big game rifles, the noise, the recoil reduction,
Speaker 2: it's it just makes life a lot easier, uh.
Speaker 1: For kids shooting shooting a big game rifles.
Speaker 2: So another reason to get one, Nate, you've got some uh,
Speaker 2: you've got some explaining to.
Speaker 1: Do on your discoverage.
Speaker 10: I do, uh, Phil, if you don't mind pulling up
Speaker 10: that chart for our listeners. What we're looking at is
Speaker 10: the Dunning Krueger effect or Dunning Krueger curve, And on
Speaker 10: the y axis, you've got confidence from low to high
Speaker 10: and on the right axis or the X axis, you've
Speaker 10: got competence from knowing nothing to a guru. And essentially
Speaker 10: what this curve is showing is that when you first
Speaker 10: start learning about something, you have extremely high confidence. You
Speaker 10: think you know what you're talking about, but you actually don't.
Speaker 10: And then you reach this peak, which labeled here is
Speaker 10: the peak of Mount Stupid, when you realize you don't
Speaker 10: actually know anything, and you go down that curve to
Speaker 10: the Valley of Despair and you realize, I don't know
Speaker 10: anything about this situation, and I'm going to try to learn.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: Are we talking about you here?
Speaker 3: Yes, I am on this curve.
Speaker 1: Are you where are you at?
Speaker 10: I would say, based on the listener emails we got
Speaker 10: on my Wolf coverage, I'm slowly cresting the peak of
Speaker 10: Mount Stupid, and I'm realizing I don't know anything about
Speaker 10: this topic.
Speaker 12: I think you're in the Valley of Despair.
Speaker 10: Yes, I entered the Valley of Despair over the last
Speaker 10: couple of days.
Speaker 1: So not even climbing out of it, just.
Speaker 10: Starting to climb, and it's a tall mount. And so
Speaker 10: we got a bunch of emails. I think the best
Speaker 10: one was from Dave, and I'll read it out. Hello there,
Speaker 10: my name is Dave. My father and I were the
Speaker 10: first to have wolf depredations in Colorado. I enjoy listening
Speaker 10: to your podcast, and I believe you do a very
Speaker 10: good job of being as accurate as possible regarding your
Speaker 10: conversation about wolves frequently predating on cattle, where a quote
Speaker 10: credible source claims that the ranchers were baiting. John Smith
Speaker 10: not his real name.
Speaker 1: Let's be clear. He's talking about baiting wolves.
Speaker 10: And causing intentional conflict, is what I say.
Speaker 1: Say to get a depredation claim on yes, cattle.
Speaker 10: John Smith, not his real name, is who I assume
Speaker 10: your source is, as he's the one who started that rumor,
Speaker 10: did a site evaluation on the ranch that he accused
Speaker 10: of baiting prior to those accusations and said they were
Speaker 10: taking all necessary steps to avoid conflict. He later changed
Speaker 10: his opinion when he was unable to reduce conflict, as
Speaker 10: he was hired by the state to do so. I
Speaker 10: can say from personal experiences that with that individual that
Speaker 10: he was only interested in getting us to stop talking
Speaker 10: to the press and not so much about conflict mitigation.
Speaker 10: I will admit he was handed an impossible task, but
Speaker 10: he handled the failure poorly. Furthermore, the Copper Creek pack
Speaker 10: showed a much larger interest in cattle than other packs
Speaker 10: in the state. They continue to do so when they
Speaker 10: were moved to another part of the state. Unless your
Speaker 10: stance is that the ranchers are only baiting this past
Speaker 10: everywhere they go and not other packs, it's fair to
Speaker 10: assume some packs have developed a preference to livestock. Thank
Speaker 10: you for reading this and for your and despite my
Speaker 10: disagreement with the statement, please keep up the good work
Speaker 10: over there. Met Eatter, I think this is a great note.
Speaker 2: All I got to explain disagreement with this statement. What's
Speaker 2: he disagreeing.
Speaker 10: He's disagreeing with the fact that I said that that
Speaker 10: certain wolf packs do not seem to develop a taste
Speaker 10: for cattle. All I know is that the Copper Creek pack,
Speaker 10: which was brought from Oregon, killed cows in Oregon, and
Speaker 10: they killed cows in Colorado, and that's all I know
Speaker 10: about that.
Speaker 1: That's kind of a correction and a kind of an apology.
Speaker 1: But I don't know.
Speaker 3: I do. I think the curve your graph there is important,
Speaker 3: right because there's people who will cling to mount stupid
Speaker 3: and work their butts off to justify they're once previously
Speaker 3: confident position, instead of going down into despair and digging
Speaker 3: out through enlightenment and then adjusting their position and saying, hey,
Speaker 3: here's what I know now.
Speaker 2: Which and and you're beginning the journey towards the plateau sustainability.
Speaker 10: It's so dude, I have no idea what's going on
Speaker 10: with wolves. I'll keep working.
Speaker 13: On no matter what they eat cows, no matter what
Speaker 13: we talk about on this podcast, I always know that
Speaker 13: there's someone out there who knows way more about it
Speaker 13: than me, and I probably sound dumb unless we're talking
Speaker 13: about things like.
Speaker 3: Guns, what you personally did last night.
Speaker 15: Yes, what happened to me in the bathroom last night.
Speaker 1: We try to do our best.
Speaker 2: We're going to make some mistakes. We'll do our best
Speaker 2: to correct them. And if we need to, you know,
Speaker 2: take a dive down into despair and then climb back out,
Speaker 2: will do it.
Speaker 12: And just so no one gets the wrong idea.
Speaker 13: There was a momentary scare last night when I thought
Speaker 13: I might be the latest victim of taco bells line.
Speaker 1: We're gonna get to that.
Speaker 12: Yeah, we'll go to spoiler spoilers.
Speaker 13: I just didn't want I didn't want to be too.
Speaker 3: Thanks for writing in.
Speaker 10: Appreciate the great corrections and keep them brief. You're more
Speaker 10: likely to get aired if they're brief.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like this, This next one's pretty short.
Speaker 2: So uh, we've got we've got someone who he's got
Speaker 2: some concerns about hunting and c w c w D zones,
Speaker 2: which is there's not many places that aren't cw D
Speaker 2: zones these days, he writes. My family does all of
Speaker 2: our own butchering and processing. That's great, and over the
Speaker 2: years we've invested a lot of time, money, and effort
Speaker 2: in becoming efficient hunters and processors. Between the cost of
Speaker 2: a lease, equipment, fuel, processing supply, and the added risk
Speaker 2: of cw D, I've started asking myself whether hunting is
Speaker 2: still the most practical and economical way to.
Speaker 1: Fill the freezer Financially.
Speaker 2: It almost seems like it would be cheaper to buy
Speaker 2: quality meat from a local butcher. So here's my question,
Speaker 2: how would you approach hunting economically if you lived in
Speaker 2: an area where CWD is an endemic, meaning it's like
Speaker 2: high prevalence rates you got to get if you kill
Speaker 2: a deer get it tested. There's a decent chance that's
Speaker 2: going to come back positive for CWD. Would you start
Speaker 2: traveling to hunting areas with lower CWD prevalence even if
Speaker 2: it means spending more on fuel and time? And at
Speaker 2: what point does traveling become the more economical option, both
Speaker 2: financially and in terms of confidence that the meat you're
Speaker 2: bringing home will actually fill the freezer that comes from
Speaker 2: Kyle God, if.
Speaker 3: You're hunting economically, you're doing something different than I've ever don.
Speaker 1: Y honest or someone actually did this came up.
Speaker 2: This economically like sustainably hunting thing came up in a
Speaker 2: recent episode. I think it might have been Honest was
Speaker 2: covering something. But basically, like the only way you're gonna
Speaker 2: like like save money or break even is by hunting
Speaker 2: in your backyard right like like hardly any driving, processing
Speaker 2: your own meat like this guy's doing so that's kind of.
Speaker 12: Like not investing in new gear.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of like.
Speaker 2: The whole like saving money thing, as much as much
Speaker 2: as it gets talked about, it's not really a thing.
Speaker 1: It's just like you're choosing.
Speaker 2: To eat wild game over domestic meat is basically what
Speaker 2: it comes to.
Speaker 3: I think the other thing too, right, is like this
Speaker 3: is my entertainment dollar, like that we had an offline
Speaker 3: conversation about things the lady wants to do for entertainment,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, well, that's not where my entertainment dollar goes, right.
Speaker 3: It also goes into hunting. Yeah, as does my mental
Speaker 3: health dollar, my physical fitness.
Speaker 2: Some people spend money on going to the beach or
Speaker 2: disney World or whatever. We spend a little money on
Speaker 2: going hunt. Like I get the like the debate over
Speaker 2: like should I even bother?
Speaker 1: Because of CWD.
Speaker 2: There are some areas where like you know, in Doug
Speaker 2: Dern's zone of Wisconsin, like your rolling dice if you
Speaker 2: shoot a deer right, and it can start to feel
Speaker 2: frustrating when you get that test result back and it's
Speaker 2: positive and you can't eat the thing. You got to
Speaker 2: make a choice, like if it's worth it to you
Speaker 2: or not. I would hate to see people like deciding
Speaker 2: just to hang it up because of chronic wasting disease.
Speaker 1: We've got it here in the valley.
Speaker 2: It's it's maybe not as high prevalence as some areas,
Speaker 2: but it's concerning. You know, I shoot deer here. It's
Speaker 2: a it's actually a very cheap economical way for me
Speaker 2: to kill a couple of those close to home.
Speaker 1: I get them tested. I've been lucky and haven't had
Speaker 1: any positive results, and I'm gonna keep doing it.
Speaker 2: Like, I don't know if you've got anything more for
Speaker 2: this guy. Like, I just think it's it's like a
Speaker 2: reality for hunters that all hunters get, like kind of got.
Speaker 1: To confront how they're gonna approach it these days.
Speaker 13: Yeah, And I think there's not really enough if we're
Speaker 13: actually running the numbers and trying to figure out if
Speaker 13: it makes sense financially to travel more two areas with
Speaker 13: lower prevalence. Does that mean driving an hour or does
Speaker 13: that mean driving.
Speaker 1: Five hours exactly.
Speaker 12: There's not really.
Speaker 13: Anything to go on there, but I guess, like, and
Speaker 13: also the comparative rates of infection in those two places, Yeah,
Speaker 13: do you have a one in three chance if you
Speaker 13: drive an hour or one?
Speaker 12: You know it's but I don't know.
Speaker 13: I I think, like your larger point that you'd hate
Speaker 13: to see people hang it up because they're frustrated by
Speaker 13: not being able to eat what they kill. That's that
Speaker 13: is just the reality of where we are right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it might people might not like it, but
Speaker 2: you are kind of still helping out by shooting deer
Speaker 2: that are CWD.
Speaker 3: Tags and licenses.
Speaker 12: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Cal, you made a good point that maybe
Speaker 2: what wouldn't be here or it wouldn't be quite as
Speaker 2: bad if.
Speaker 3: If people were actually out there harvesting dose.
Speaker 13: Yeah, it's not going to get any better if people
Speaker 13: who live in the high CWD areas all decide.
Speaker 12: To heart hunt.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 12: Outside of those area you're.
Speaker 2: Just gonna get higher and higher prevalence rate. So I
Speaker 2: don't know if we answered this guy's questions or not
Speaker 2: keep hunting.
Speaker 3: Keep keep hunting. Yeah, and yeah, I mean i'd be
Speaker 3: great if Doug published all of his data because I
Speaker 3: think they're at like an eighty percent prevalence rate. So
Speaker 3: it's like, yeah, it's I mean, you are far more
Speaker 3: likely to kill a deer with c to BE'D even
Speaker 3: not yep, yep, but they are are still getting uh,
Speaker 3: non positive deer out there, and the population in Richland
Speaker 3: County or.
Speaker 1: Is I think that's it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, like does not seem to be going.
Speaker 2: Down right, So there you go, Kyle, Uh, keep shooting
Speaker 2: those deer.
Speaker 1: Thanks beating those deer all right, We're ready for the news.
Speaker 1: That's it. That's all you got filmed.
Speaker 12: What happened at the end?
Speaker 9: I got eaten by some sort of animal, presumably a
Speaker 9: cat of some kind.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the dude doing doing morrise code. We don't
Speaker 3: know what happened to him, A mystery.
Speaker 15: He probably died forty years ago.
Speaker 2: All right, we're gonna talk about this big Pennsylvania Supreme
Speaker 2: Court decision that rejects opened the opens field doctrine for
Speaker 2: game wardens. Okay, before I get into that, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: explain open fields in the Fourth Amendment real quick for
Speaker 2: people who aren't familiar.
Speaker 1: Uh, we've talked about.
Speaker 2: Open fields before, but I'll give you the quick rundown.
Speaker 2: It's an open fields doctrine is a legal principle established
Speaker 2: by the US Supreme Court that allows law enforcement officers
Speaker 2: to enter and search privately owned open land without.
Speaker 1: A search warrant.
Speaker 2: Applies to fields for its pastures, and undeveloped land, even
Speaker 2: if the property is posted with a no trespassing sign.
Speaker 2: It does not apply to a home's courtlage, meaning the
Speaker 2: mediate area surrounding a residence, like outbuildings things like that.
Speaker 2: They remain protected by the Fourth Amendment. The Fourth Amendment
Speaker 2: protects people from unfair and unreasonable searches and seizures by
Speaker 2: the government. It also states that, with certain exceptions, police
Speaker 2: need a warrant to search or search your property or
Speaker 2: take take things. So Pennsylvania got rid of it recently.
Speaker 2: There's a lawsuit. And before we get into that, game
Speaker 2: wardens and states that operate under the open fields doctrine,
Speaker 2: they typically have more leeway. They operate with more leeway
Speaker 2: than other law enforcement personnel might. That's like open to interpretation,
Speaker 2: but it's I think that's a generally like correct statement.
Speaker 2: If you think I'm wrong, you can write in about it,
Speaker 2: or these guys will correct me if I'm wrong. Basically,
Speaker 2: what it means is like, let's say a game wardens
Speaker 2: driving down a country road thirty minutes before shooting light.
Speaker 2: Here's some gunshots before or after legal shooting light. Here's
Speaker 2: some gunshots. Sounds like a rattat tat kind of shotgun
Speaker 2: shooting thing.
Speaker 1: Waterfowl seasons open. He knows there's a pond next to
Speaker 1: a cornfield on this piece of.
Speaker 2: Property he's driving by. He could then walk in there
Speaker 2: and see what's going on. Correct, Like is that fair
Speaker 2: to say.
Speaker 3: Just from the sound, I thought it wasn't. I thought
Speaker 3: they had to see stuff going on. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 3: tough one.
Speaker 2: Anyway, Maybe I've already screwed this up, but okay, let's say, well.
Speaker 3: So the thing that I know to absolutely be true
Speaker 3: is if your state operates with the open fields doctrine,
Speaker 3: it's still up to your game agency or and law
Speaker 3: enforcement agency to say how that's going to be interpreted
Speaker 3: in your state. And so there are states that have
Speaker 3: a more liberal interpretation of how they're going to operate.
Speaker 3: And then you know the crazy thing like Idaho just
Speaker 3: open fields and they had a very narrow Yeah, it's
Speaker 3: like unless it is like egregious in your face, that
Speaker 3: law enforcement officer is not going to walk across the
Speaker 3: property without Yeah, we'll talk a little more about that.
Speaker 13: But not to not to yep, further confused things. But
Speaker 13: I've often heard when examples are given about open fields,
Speaker 13: I've often heard the sound of a gunshot as.
Speaker 15: Being no no, sort of no no, like being.
Speaker 13: The instigating fast That's what I've heard. That's I would
Speaker 13: agree with you that that's.
Speaker 2: Another example might be like game wardens driving down the road,
Speaker 2: sees a deer hanging in a garage deer seasons not open, yes,
Speaker 2: something like that, yep.
Speaker 3: Or a bull elk in the case of Montana, sure yep.
Speaker 13: Yeah, he doesn't need to go to a judge and
Speaker 13: get a search warrant to go investigate that.
Speaker 2: Now, before we get into this Pennsylvania thing, I want
Speaker 2: to make something really clear and covering this story where like,
Speaker 2: in no way trying to portray game wardens or conservation
Speaker 2: officers as the enemy, because they're they're not.
Speaker 1: They're doing a vitally.
Speaker 2: Important job protecting people in wildlife, and they're also performing difficult,
Speaker 2: sometimes dangerous law enforcement duties like catching poachers that are
Speaker 2: stealing wildlife from you and me. And I'm willing to
Speaker 2: go way out on the limb to say that, Like
Speaker 2: when it comes to like private property rights, most game
Speaker 2: wardens in most places like Buy Necessity have worked really
Speaker 2: hard to cultivate a good working relationship with the private
Speaker 2: landowners in the area they patrol. Like it's just like
Speaker 2: they're not operating in a way where they're going to
Speaker 2: have these antagonistic relationships with landowners.
Speaker 1: It's just going to make their job impossible. So I
Speaker 1: just want to.
Speaker 2: Like get that out there first before we get into
Speaker 2: the particulars of this case. We'll get into the the
Speaker 2: actual case and then get into the like the pros
Speaker 2: and cons of it after I talk about what happened
Speaker 2: in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision just this month game
Speaker 2: wardens was must generally obtain a warrant before entering posted,
Speaker 2: private posted private property. A Supreme Court decision rejected the
Speaker 2: open fields doctrine. The federal open fields doctrine still exists
Speaker 2: under the US Constitution, but in Pennsylvania it was a
Speaker 2: seven zero Supreme Court decision Punksatani Hunting Club Incorporated versus
Speaker 2: Pennsylvania Game Commission, So it significantly spans private property protections
Speaker 2: in the state of Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: The court ruled.
Speaker 2: Officers again must generally obtain a search warrant before entering
Speaker 2: clearly posted, fence gated, or otherwise marked private property to
Speaker 2: investigate wildlife violations. The decision overturns Pennsylvania Supreme Courts two
Speaker 2: thousand and seven ruling Commonwealth versus Russo, which had allowed
Speaker 2: game wardens to enter open.
Speaker 1: Fields on private land without a warrant.
Speaker 2: Now, the case background is there's a couple of hunting
Speaker 2: clubs in Pennsylvania, the Punkstani Hunting Club and the pitch
Speaker 2: Pine Hunting Club that challenged the Game Commission's authority to
Speaker 2: enter posted lands.
Speaker 1: There's some history here.
Speaker 2: The clubs alleged that Pennsylvania Game warns entered their posted
Speaker 2: private posted property dozens of times over several years without
Speaker 2: permission or a search warrant. According to court filings, they
Speaker 2: hid in camouflage on club property, conducted surveillance with binoculars,
Speaker 2: installed trail cameras on the club's land without without the
Speaker 2: owner's knowledge or consent. Now this is this is like
Speaker 2: more recent happenings. This all goes back to a twenty
Speaker 2: thirteen incident after a game warden confronted a member of
Speaker 2: the pitch Pine Hunting Club over allegedly feeding bears. The
Speaker 2: member later learned that the officer had been secretly observing
Speaker 2: activity activity on the club's property for several days. No
Speaker 2: citation was issued, but the club members objected to you know,
Speaker 2: the the activity that was going on since twenty thirteen,
Speaker 2: Game Commission officers entered the club's posted private property fifteen
Speaker 2: to twenty two times. I'm not sure about the why
Speaker 2: there's a number that that number is not exact. I'm
Speaker 2: sure if you got into the details of the court
Speaker 2: case you'd understand.
Speaker 1: Why it's not exact.
Speaker 2: But enough times that they viewed it as a major problem,
Speaker 2: again without consent a warrant or probable cause. During some
Speaker 2: of those entries, game warden Mark Gritzer issued citations to
Speaker 2: individual hunters or club members for alleged violations of the
Speaker 2: game Code. This Supreme Court opinion doesn't specify how many
Speaker 2: citations were issued, or whether people were convicted or anything
Speaker 2: like that. The club's lawsuit was not an appeal of
Speaker 2: those those violations or citations. It just it's trying to
Speaker 2: get Their goal was to get a declaration that the
Speaker 2: Game Commission can't just like come onto their property whenever
Speaker 2: they want. So obviously they they they won the argument.
Speaker 2: Pennsylvania Supreme Court ultimately agreed that the state constitution. State
Speaker 2: constitution provides greater privacy protections than the federal Open Fields
Speaker 2: Doctrine and requires warrants. So that's that's where we're at
Speaker 2: right now. What wardens can still do, uh, they can
Speaker 2: still enter unposted, unmarked private land without a warrant. In
Speaker 2: some circums stances, observe violations occurring in plane view from
Speaker 2: lawful locations, rely on recognized exceptions to the warrant requirements
Speaker 2: such as consent or exigent circumstances. So that explains like
Speaker 2: how they can still get on private property, like yeah.
Speaker 3: There's like an emergency, yeah, sitution situation, so like they're
Speaker 3: they're compelled to go help in a medical situation that
Speaker 3: they observe or you know, an active crime obs from
Speaker 3: the county road YEP.
Speaker 2: So, largest expansion of private property rights in Pennsylvania wildlife
Speaker 2: law in decades. It's going to require, uh, some adjustment
Speaker 2: for how game wardens and conservation officers do their work
Speaker 2: investigating suspected hunting and wildlife violations, and it could influence
Speaker 2: similar legal challenges in other states. Supporters of the decision
Speaker 2: like are generally like very much in favor of Fourth
Speaker 2: Amendment constitutional private property and privacy rights.
Speaker 1: That's basically what it comes down to.
Speaker 2: Getting rid of opens fields treats conservation officers more like
Speaker 2: other law enforcement officers that when conducting searches. So it's
Speaker 2: like there's a Fourth Amendment rights argument the people that
Speaker 2: are supporting the decision. Critics say the ruling can make
Speaker 2: it a lot more difficult for game wardens to do
Speaker 2: their job. Requiring warrants slows things down, especially in remote
Speaker 2: areas where a game warden knows there's a violation going on,
Speaker 2: he's trying to investigate it, but he can't, so he's
Speaker 2: got to drive all the way back into town and
Speaker 2: track down the district attorney, a judge, get a warm
Speaker 2: go back, and by the time he's gone back, you know,
Speaker 2: any evidence of a crime or or the actual crime
Speaker 2: is just like.
Speaker 1: Not happening by the time they get back.
Speaker 2: So that's that's what critics argue, you know, for the
Speaker 2: open fields doctrine. I did some research on other states.
Speaker 2: I kind of like, I didn't I guess I thought
Speaker 2: this was almost like a.
Speaker 1: First time thing with Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2: But there are at least nine to ten other states
Speaker 2: that have rejected the open fields doctrine. Mississippi, Montana, New York, Oregon, Idaho, Tennessee, Vermont, Washington, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: South Dakota.
Speaker 2: They recognize and operate under open fields with very strict
Speaker 2: limits on what the conservation officers can actually do and
Speaker 2: cal you kind of alluded to that.
Speaker 1: And that's the way it is in Idaho to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it was prior to this. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: that's like what was interesting about I mean the other
Speaker 3: interesting thing that the new Court decisions are all being litigated
Speaker 3: pro bono by Institute for Justice. I would really I
Speaker 3: don't And this is something that I don't understand, is
Speaker 3: what's their stake in this?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 10: Actually I spoke with that that litigator. Okay, he reached
Speaker 10: out after he saw Ste's video and he is purely
Speaker 10: a Fourth Amendment guy like this, it just happens to
Speaker 10: be the game wardens are at the crosshairs of this thing.
Speaker 10: And he's like, if there was a if there's a
Speaker 10: DA agent who was using open fields doctrine to do
Speaker 10: something with a drug bust, I would litigate that because
Speaker 10: I think the Fourth Amendments so important and who doesn't
Speaker 10: have a bone to pick with hunters or game warnings.
Speaker 10: These are just the situations that are arising.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 10: So he was the one who litigated rain waters in Tennessee.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, and there are yeah, there's all sorts of instances, right,
Speaker 3: It's kind of like when we talk about individual animals.
Speaker 3: I named this mountain lion, So it's really important and
Speaker 3: now it's emblematic of the entire population. Yeah, there's certain
Speaker 3: instances where I think most people would all agree like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, that is a gross overstep of authority
Speaker 3: and abuse of power. But the other thing that we
Speaker 3: have to balance this is it is all public wildlife.
Speaker 3: And just like a super quick story Idaho, that one
Speaker 3: was brutal for me because it is such. It is
Speaker 3: the most serious migratory state I have ever hunted. Like
Speaker 3: you see, you're like, oh my god, this is what
Speaker 3: a migration looks like. Yeah, and you know, a state
Speaker 3: known for big, awesome mule deer. One time I got
Speaker 3: permission to hunt on this place. The guy's like, oh,
Speaker 3: you like mule deer. Look in the shop and there's
Speaker 3: this row of dusty almost forgotten, truly giant muley racks
Speaker 3: like like things today that would just blow blow people's mind.
Speaker 3: And it was, you know, generations, and they were like,
Speaker 3: nobody knows about them. It is safe to say nobody
Speaker 3: knows about them. There's a whole Robbie Denning's book on
Speaker 3: like big Bucks Idaho that these things aren't in there, right,
Speaker 3: But it's because.
Speaker 1: This rack your blood boiling. I bet this ranch.
Speaker 3: Is in and I was hunting birds right this rash,
Speaker 3: this ranch is in like when it was the heavy
Speaker 3: snows forever. This is where all the big bucks end up.
Speaker 3: And it is feasible with the state of mule deer
Speaker 3: and muldier genetics right now, that if you had bad actors, yep,
Speaker 3: they could, they could literally eliminate the ability for those
Speaker 3: types of g is to be passed on.
Speaker 2: Or at least make some serious bucks killing bucks like allowing.
Speaker 3: Oh you know what I mean, Yeah, I mean that
Speaker 3: that too. But if it's like, you know, and I
Speaker 3: was hunting turkeys onto place this year, just for instance.
Speaker 3: It was awesome. It's huge, and I was driving out
Speaker 3: and you know, it's like calving season during turkey season,
Speaker 3: so all the ranch activities on one place. Nobody's on
Speaker 3: the whole rest of the ranch. And I was like, God,
Speaker 3: you could just live out here and nobody know about it.
Speaker 3: And sure enough, I get stopped on the way out,
Speaker 3: They're like, what are you doing. I was like, I
Speaker 3: was hunting turkeys. They're like, oh, okay, great, didn't know.
Speaker 3: I was like, yeah, Like you get lost back there, right,
Speaker 3: So there are many instances where this isn't just like
Speaker 3: a crazy theory, right, And part of law enforcement on
Speaker 3: the landscape is wildlife management, which is a public So
Speaker 3: if it is not your buddy at Western Justice or
Speaker 3: Institute for Justice, right, this isn't a solve for anything.
Speaker 3: In my mind, this is like ripping open this can
Speaker 3: of worms, and we need the ability to regulate the
Speaker 3: take and management of public wildlife. It is a public
Speaker 3: resource in the United States. Yeah, so if this isn't
Speaker 3: the answer, what is it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that that's the question.
Speaker 2: Is enforcement becomes kind of impossible in certain situations.
Speaker 6: And.
Speaker 1: Like part of the the Like this kind of gets
Speaker 1: away from what we're talking about, but part.
Speaker 2: Of the the effectiveness of game wardens is is knowing
Speaker 2: they could just show up at any time, knowing that
Speaker 2: maybe they won't show up, but knowing that they could
Speaker 2: be glass and you from a county road and you're.
Speaker 1: Two miles up the hillside or whatever.
Speaker 2: Like, knowing that they're out there doing their job like
Speaker 2: makes them effective even when they're not around.
Speaker 3: It's part of the deterrent puzzle. Yes, high or whatever.
Speaker 2: If you're you know, completely hidden from view on private property. Look,
Speaker 2: most hunters aren't bad actors, but there are bad actors
Speaker 2: out there who would take advantage.
Speaker 1: Of this situation, I feel like unfortunately.
Speaker 10: I think one other piece he raised that was interesting
Speaker 10: is the difference between state and federal enforcement. Sure like
Speaker 10: because of the supremacy clause the Constitution, the Fourth Amendment,
Speaker 10: when when federal officers are enforcing federal statutes, they can
Speaker 10: still use open fields throughout the US, but state officers
Speaker 10: cannot unless they're cross deputized. And that is another thing
Speaker 10: that's going to get real muddy here now.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And there are situations where hunters would have to
Speaker 2: deal with with federal officers for sure, on wildlife refugees
Speaker 2: and things like that, but uh, private land, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure how that would play out.
Speaker 1: So there you go.
Speaker 2: I think if I had a crystal ball like Steve would,
Speaker 2: I would say probably more states are gonna go this
Speaker 2: direction if I if I had to make a prediction.
Speaker 1: So we're done with that crap. Let's move on to
Speaker 1: Randall's crap.
Speaker 15: Thanks Brody.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 13: I came across this story and I just couldn't look away.
Speaker 13: There was a coverage of a dissertation that was just
Speaker 13: completed at Penn State by a doctoral researcher named Jack
Speaker 13: Edleson or Adelson, and they they looked at public This
Speaker 13: this dissertation was touted as perhaps the most in depth
Speaker 13: coverage of public study of public land pooping habits.
Speaker 12: And I didn't need to know any more at that point.
Speaker 12: I knew it needed to be sure hooked.
Speaker 13: Yeah, So what this study encompassed was the researcher went
Speaker 13: to three different sites. Most of the coverage in the
Speaker 13: press has focused on what they did at Colorado. At
Speaker 13: Mount Albert, which is one of the fourteen ers. I
Speaker 13: believe it's the tallest.
Speaker 1: Super busy close to Denver. Gets a lot of trap.
Speaker 12: Yeah, it gets.
Speaker 13: It gets fifteen to twenty thousand hikers a year, and
Speaker 13: it's an eight hour round trip with no bathroom once
Speaker 13: you leave the trailhead.
Speaker 15: So obviously, how do people survive?
Speaker 13: Well, that's I mean, people survive, but they also duke
Speaker 13: along the way. In fact, what eleven percent of the
Speaker 13: people that were contacted during this study, which involved reaching
Speaker 13: out to people at the trailhead, asking them about their
Speaker 13: hike and I'll get to this in a minute, encouraging
Speaker 13: them to adopt new habits when it comes to pooping
Speaker 13: in the wild eleven percent of the people they contacted
Speaker 13: reported defecating during their hike.
Speaker 12: That's a lot of that's a lot of feasts.
Speaker 13: Yeah, and so what the what the focus of this was.
Speaker 13: Was there trying to encourage people or understand how receptive
Speaker 13: people would be to packing out their own waste. We're
Speaker 13: all familiar with the doggy doodoo bag and humans, you
Speaker 13: don't necessarily use that. Use what's called a wag bag.
Speaker 13: And here's where I learned something very new to myself.
Speaker 3: She's a little overlap with new dad advice. Do we
Speaker 3: do use the dog poop bags for the kid poop diapers?
Speaker 12: Do you know what a wag bag would? It's an acronym.
Speaker 3: It's way big.
Speaker 12: Do you know what I stand for?
Speaker 10: I used them back in the past life, and I
Speaker 10: don't know what they stand for.
Speaker 13: I'd never I always thought it was like a slang term.
Speaker 13: It's a waste aggregation and gelling bag.
Speaker 1: Huh oh powder in there.
Speaker 12: Yeah, it's a.
Speaker 13: Little puncture resistant bag that usually has a gelling powder
Speaker 13: with end resistance and theoretically puncture resistant that the purpose
Speaker 13: of the jelling powder is to neutralize odor. And then
Speaker 13: it's you can use this just throw it in the trash.
Speaker 13: So long story short, there's a lot of people duking
Speaker 13: on on Mount Albert and this researcher set up at
Speaker 13: the trailhead and they gave out wag bags to people
Speaker 13: and they tracked who used it. They asked people, They
Speaker 13: asked hikers what would get what would get them to
Speaker 13: use wag bags because and this was especially I think
Speaker 13: prominent during COVID, was the amount of there's certain parts
Speaker 13: of our public lands that are just so heavily trafficked
Speaker 13: that it's inescapable that there's going to be you know,
Speaker 13: it's like you go to some place around Bozman and
Speaker 13: it's covered in dogshit. Like there's places like Mount Elbert
Speaker 13: where it's it's also an escapable Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean you come across places where there's just toilet
Speaker 2: paper scattered all over the ground.
Speaker 12: Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 13: So, so what they found was that people were actually
Speaker 13: very receptive to using wag bags. The big thing was
Speaker 13: cost and how hard it was to get your hands
Speaker 13: on a wag bag. So eighty percent of hikers said
Speaker 13: they would try a free wag bag. They said it
Speaker 13: was easy, they said, And so essentially they provided people
Speaker 13: with wag bags, and they had a receptacle at the trailhead,
Speaker 13: and people adopted this, I think surprisingly well.
Speaker 1: So they just had like a kiosk where you could
Speaker 1: just grab one before you.
Speaker 13: Exactly, yeah, exactly, And the other The other thing that's
Speaker 13: interesting about this is that.
Speaker 12: Putting in a vault toilet at.
Speaker 13: A trailhead is huge, Like, it's a huge expense, and
Speaker 13: there's obviously maintenance and up keep required with that. But
Speaker 13: if you can provide people with wag bags at a
Speaker 13: trailhead and a receptacle to dispose of them, there's probably
Speaker 13: gonna be a lot less toilet paper scattered around that
Speaker 13: trailhead if it's a toiletless trailhead, and there's gonna be
Speaker 13: a lot less toilet paper and.
Speaker 12: Crap along the trail. So you know, it's not it's this.
Speaker 3: This isn't a I would say that's a trend though,
Speaker 3: right Like most if you give people a reasonable option,
Speaker 3: there's going to be a high adaptation rate because most
Speaker 3: people just don't know, they haven't taken the time to
Speaker 3: figure it out, right yeah, or it's just out of
Speaker 3: the realm of things that they think about, right.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I can see like I can see it
Speaker 2: being promising and I can see it working.
Speaker 1: Like back when I was guiding, we used to use
Speaker 1: a couple of really busy.
Speaker 2: Rams on on the Colorado River and they were on BLM,
Speaker 2: like there's campgrounds and and like it was developed sites
Speaker 2: and the BLM took the trash cans away as soon
Speaker 2: as they did that. There was no never any trash
Speaker 2: laying around.
Speaker 1: At those sites.
Speaker 2: So I could see like a similar thing if you'd
Speaker 2: get rid of the vault toilets and they give the
Speaker 2: maybe give the the wag bags away, that it would
Speaker 2: work better as far as like large scale use without
Speaker 2: having access to that free kios, I'm not I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I mean the dog poop equivalent, right, Like
Speaker 3: why isn't the adaptation rate higher?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Right?
Speaker 3: Like I was at a local boat launch throwing for
Speaker 3: the dog the other day and she took off with
Speaker 3: the with the bumper into the woods and then came
Speaker 3: back without it and did that reached even Yeah? And
Speaker 3: I'm like, where the hell is the thing. This is
Speaker 3: the puppy, you know, And I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 3: the poop per per square foot yeah here is oh yeah, horrifying.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 13: And I guess you know, this is one of those
Speaker 13: things where the fact that there's a dissertation, I feel
Speaker 13: like there's often when something like this makes the news,
Speaker 13: there's people laughing like, Oh, you can get a doctorate
Speaker 13: for studying poop, but you need this data in this
Speaker 13: research to get agencies or nonprofits or whatever to spend
Speaker 13: money to try this out, because what the data shows
Speaker 13: is that the assumption that hikers won't do this, Yeah,
Speaker 13: that assumption is wrong, and it's great. Great making an
Speaker 13: incremental change in the way that people impact public lands
Speaker 13: is going to add up in the long run.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2: I think there's like I think there's also like just
Speaker 2: a lack of awareness, especially on the part of you know,
Speaker 2: I don't want to put hikers in the crossair, but
Speaker 2: like kind of day hikers that don't spend a lot
Speaker 2: of a lot of you know, as much time outside
Speaker 2: as us. Let's say, just like a lack of awareness
Speaker 2: that that's even an option. You know, maybe a lack
Speaker 2: of awareness that you should if you do, if you
Speaker 2: wag bags, aren't an option that you should get one hundred.
Speaker 1: Yards or more off the trail and bury it. Just
Speaker 1: you know, I think it's kind of like, oh, I
Speaker 1: got to go, so I'm gonna go.
Speaker 13: You know, we're just just even just pack out, like
Speaker 13: bury it and pack out the paper.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 12: That's one thing I've been doing a lot more.
Speaker 13: Yeah, is I always have like my day snacks in
Speaker 13: a big gallon baggie, dump all my snacks, my pack,
Speaker 13: stuff all that paper in there, and then forget about
Speaker 13: it and leave your pack in the bed of your
Speaker 13: truck for four days and then open it up the
Speaker 13: next time you need to go out and you realize
Speaker 13: that there's multiple day old feast smear on all that,
Speaker 13: on all that cotton.
Speaker 12: Now, so back to you, brody, back to me.
Speaker 2: Actually, actually we're moving on to cal and wetlands, aren't we.
Speaker 3: All right?
Speaker 16: This is good timing because I I'm down to just
Speaker 16: a handful of fatty ducks in the freezer and we
Speaker 16: had two widgeon and two teal last night, and.
Speaker 3: My god, just so good, so good. The US Fish
Speaker 3: and Wildlife Service has opened a fourteen day public comment
Speaker 3: period on a Request for Information that's r f I
Speaker 3: government speak about drain tile setbacks. Drain tile is a
Speaker 3: chunk of PVC with holes in it. You put it
Speaker 3: sub surface, and it expedites the drainage of water. And
Speaker 3: you can do this on large landscapes and drain whole
Speaker 3: wetlands if you wanted to.
Speaker 2: If you're let's say a developer and you want to
Speaker 2: build some stuff, but there's a there's a pesky wetlands
Speaker 2: in the way, this is how you might.
Speaker 3: This is This would be a tool that you could
Speaker 3: use if you are a farmer that doesn't like to
Speaker 3: make turns around things and loves those straight lines, which
Speaker 3: is the efficiency of farming argument. This would be a
Speaker 3: tool that you could have in your quiver. And we
Speaker 3: have some visuals here, Phil, would you mind pulling up
Speaker 3: the topographic map so it doesn't look like much on
Speaker 3: the map here, So uh, there's there's your wetland obviously
Speaker 3: in the middle. This is very emblematic of the prairie
Speaker 3: pothole region. This is the snapshot of South Dakota, and
Speaker 3: this is like retreating glacier country. So there's a bunch
Speaker 3: of little holes out there. A lot of those holes
Speaker 3: sometimes got deeper because the bison would use them to wallow,
Speaker 3: and those fill up with rain intermittently and they boom
Speaker 3: with life because little grass grasses and stuff.
Speaker 1: This is like the breeding duck factory of North America.
Speaker 3: It is the breeding duck factory. And then it is
Speaker 3: how these fledgling ducks get all their little invertebrates to
Speaker 3: become big ducks that I shoot and snort retrieves. It's
Speaker 3: a circle of life thing, right. But it's the intermittent
Speaker 3: nature of these things, the thing that means that they
Speaker 3: they're dry, sometimes they're wet sometimes often multiple times throughout
Speaker 3: the year. That give people the idea that they don't matter,
Speaker 3: but that in fact is how disease issues are mitigated
Speaker 3: naturally bacteria, and you get these little bumper crops of
Speaker 3: zoplankton and phytoplankton that create the invert invertebrates. And then
Speaker 3: the birds.
Speaker 1: And way more like important, way beyond just waterfowl.
Speaker 3: Yes, pollinators, all sorts of migratory birds that we don't
Speaker 3: consider huntable, and they're magnets for big game. Back when
Speaker 3: I was doing a lot of spot and stock mule
Speaker 3: the er hunting, these little intermint wetlands and most of
Speaker 3: these are under half an acre that we're talking about
Speaker 3: today are magnets for big bucks laying laying it out
Speaker 3: because they can see forever around them, and then Phil,
Speaker 3: let's slip over to the satellite image here, please, then
Speaker 3: you can see, oh my gosh, the real worldview is
Speaker 3: there's a lot more potential habitat out there than what's
Speaker 3: on the map. So there's different types of intermint wetlands
Speaker 3: and what we're coming down to and what they want.
Speaker 3: And this request for information is to weigh in on
Speaker 3: if there needs to be any changes, and the change
Speaker 3: would be converting US Fish and Wildlife Service wetland conservation
Speaker 3: easements to the language of possibly NRCS wetland conservation easements.
Speaker 3: And the reason that these two different definitions exist is
Speaker 3: not because of oh my god, government ineptitude. It's because
Speaker 3: you want to give people options out there. And the
Speaker 3: NRCS version you can put drain tile a lot closer,
Speaker 3: and if you flip back over to our topo map,
Speaker 3: you can see it's obviously a lot easier to affect
Speaker 3: some of these smaller wetlands than the bigger wetlands. So
Speaker 3: the closer you get with that drain tile, the faster
Speaker 3: that water moves out out and that's no longer an
Speaker 3: intermittent wetland.
Speaker 2: Does wotis or the clean water at come into play
Speaker 2: at all in this stuff, or no, well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a it's a big suit here because Lotus
Speaker 3: and the Clean Water Act of Bolsene revisions here that
Speaker 3: that helped grease the wheels with with some of this.
Speaker 3: The big thing for people to understand is, even with
Speaker 3: the the broader protections of the fringe in the your
Speaker 3: US Fish and Wildlife Service wetland conservation isma, your your
Speaker 3: farmer or your rancher out there has the ability to
Speaker 3: plant grass in there. They can hay it, they can
Speaker 3: graze cattle depending on what agreement you have. You can
Speaker 3: also do road crops in there if you if you
Speaker 3: want to, but you can't burn it or plow it under.
Speaker 3: And you know, so there's this tapestry of things that
Speaker 3: you can do, and you're paid upfront in a willing buyer,
Speaker 3: willing seller agreement, and everybody in this room has paid
Speaker 3: into it, even old Phil over there. So Phil, your
Speaker 3: duck stamp dollars go to conservation esments, wetland conservation easements,
Speaker 3: as do Pittman Robertson dollars. And if you've ever bought
Speaker 3: a state waterfowl stamp voluntarily, that's that's where this cash
Speaker 3: goes a lot of times too. So by converting this
Speaker 3: to a lesser i would say lesser requirement, we stand
Speaker 3: to lose hundreds of thousands of acres of intermittent wetlands
Speaker 3: that we've already paid for, and these are supposed to
Speaker 3: be perpetual. And we've lost somewhere in the neighborhood of
Speaker 3: about eighty percent of our wetlands throughout the Prairie Pothole
Speaker 3: region already. Montana has lost over thirty percent, Minnesota fifty percent,
Speaker 3: Wisconsin fifty percent, and then in the Dakotas it's somewhere
Speaker 3: in there between thirty and fifty percent of of preexisting wetlands.
Speaker 3: So this is a big deal. And if you like
Speaker 3: hunting ducks and you like biodiversity out there on the prairie,
Speaker 3: which by the way, is one of the biggest factors
Speaker 3: in having kids come back and work on the farm,
Speaker 3: is if there's actual pretty things to look at and
Speaker 3: it's not just a flat landscape, is biodiversity, then you
Speaker 3: got a couple of days left here to right in
Speaker 3: We have an action alert out at the Backcountry Hunters
Speaker 3: dot Org website Ducks Unlimited Delta Waterfowl. Will all give
Speaker 3: you the tools to just kind of click. We'll give
Speaker 3: you the language. You can make up your own mind
Speaker 3: on whether or not this is a good thing or
Speaker 3: a bad thing, and then you can really really easily
Speaker 3: weigh in to our buddy old Brian Neswick there at
Speaker 3: use US Fish and Wildlife Service.
Speaker 2: Speaking of Brian Nesbit, what like did the US Fish
Speaker 2: and Wildlife Service just kind of come up on this
Speaker 2: on their own? Like where did the impetus for this
Speaker 2: come from? Who did it come from?
Speaker 3: Well, that is a great question, Brody, because many people
Speaker 3: have asked, Hey, cal I've read this and read this,
Speaker 3: and I can't see the problem that they're trying to
Speaker 3: fix because it seems like there's a lot of options
Speaker 3: out there, including whether or not you would enter into
Speaker 3: one of these agreements at all is a choice that
Speaker 3: you can make. And there's there's drain tile companies out
Speaker 3: there that are pushing this pretty heavy. There's been some
Speaker 3: some statements and some media out there as to why
Speaker 3: this is a good thing and it's it's coming from
Speaker 3: that industry.
Speaker 2: Is there any congressman, senators, et cetera attached to.
Speaker 1: That this at all or.
Speaker 3: Yet John Thune in North Dakota, who is also the
Speaker 3: I want to say Speaker of the House. That's not right,
Speaker 3: he is the Senate. Yeah, Majority Senatority leader. Thank you,
Speaker 3: there you go.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So landowners who sold these months agreed not to drain,
Speaker 3: burn level or fill wetlands, but are otherwise able to work, farm,
Speaker 3: hay and graze any that dry up or drain naturally.
Speaker 3: In addition, some some good neighbor policies were adapted I
Speaker 3: think back in twenty twenty four to address this idea
Speaker 3: that you might be unfairly prosecuted if you adhere to
Speaker 3: the guidelines and you install drain tile outside of the
Speaker 3: fringe under either your NRCS or US Fish and Wildlife
Speaker 3: Service contract, and you do it to the letter of
Speaker 3: the law. It's called safe harbor. That you are protected
Speaker 3: if there's for whatever reason that thing drains anyway, just
Speaker 3: basically giving the nod to the farmer saying like, you're
Speaker 3: not a geomarphologist a hydrologist, you're a farmer, and mistakes
Speaker 3: can be made. So it's a big one and a
Speaker 3: big question that we're asking around back country hunters and
Speaker 3: anglers a lot these days is Oh my god, what
Speaker 3: is the impact and what happens to the back country
Speaker 3: if the front country goes away? Yep, And this is
Speaker 3: a good way to make the rent country go away.
Speaker 3: So you're on X, has all these intermnt wetlands out there,
Speaker 3: look at the TAPO layer and then just do some
Speaker 3: driving around and you can do it very easily in
Speaker 3: the next seven days. Do some driving around and go, Okay,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna go see this thing on the map. And
Speaker 3: it is wild how much of the time you pull
Speaker 3: up and you're like, oh, there is nothing there, so
Speaker 3: we save there. You're there at the wrong time of
Speaker 3: the year, or it's in production, or it just does
Speaker 3: not exist anymore.
Speaker 10: I might just I might have missed this or just
Speaker 10: don't understand because I don't know anything about farming and ranching.
Speaker 10: But what's the what's the advantage of moving those drain
Speaker 10: tiles closer? Like that just makes more like arable land exactly. Yeah, yep, yeah,
Speaker 10: it's something that you don't have to drive slightly around. Again,
Speaker 10: most of these things everybody thinks. So like these big
Speaker 10: wetland complexes, which are very important too, oftentimes for different
Speaker 10: reasons and different species of of huntable waterfowl. But it's
Speaker 10: these little tiny pockets and puddles and one of the
Speaker 10: coolest things like in Montana because we have, you know,
Speaker 10: a lot of really shallow wetlands and when those rains
Speaker 10: come through, it is so cool in the spring to
Speaker 10: see lots and lots of pintail, lots of blueing and
Speaker 10: green wing tea.
Speaker 2: I was just gonna say, when I was trained for
Speaker 2: the marathon in May, I was doing a lot of running,
Speaker 2: you know, north of town, out in that farm country here,
Speaker 2: and all those little puddles and seeps and stuff like
Speaker 2: full of nesting teal like cinnamon teal, which you don't.
Speaker 3: Have the cinnamon teal, yes exactly.
Speaker 2: Y it was super cool and just these tiny little spots,
Speaker 2: like you're talking.
Speaker 3: And you get to see behavior that you don't see
Speaker 3: during hunting seas, which is really really neat. So yeah,
Speaker 3: just quick recap. Montana has lost between twenty seven and
Speaker 3: thirty three percent of its wetland South Dakota thirty five,
Speaker 3: North Dakota, fifty, Minnesota fifty, Iowa between ninety and ninety
Speaker 3: seven percent. Brutal yep, yep, yep. And you know this
Speaker 3: is one of the things that is like keystone into
Speaker 3: the recovery of waterfowl and the ability for hunters to
Speaker 3: get back out in the field. Yeah, if you want
Speaker 3: to go back to the economics argument of hunting, you know,
Speaker 3: it's like one of the reasons that we got into
Speaker 3: this pit is developing nesting and resting habitat along the
Speaker 3: migration corridors, not understanding that everything's connected. Pre anti market
Speaker 3: hunting days, there would be state imposed waterfowl restrictions of
Speaker 3: one hundred birds a day, fifty birds a day. And
Speaker 3: you know, eventually we started connecting the dots and we
Speaker 3: came up with programs like this, and this WPA program
Speaker 3: didn't come in until nineteen fifty seven, right, and so
Speaker 3: we're not that far removed from getting our act together
Speaker 3: and then something like this comes down the pipe and
Speaker 3: you're like, well, wait a minute. We we just saw
Speaker 3: the good things start.
Speaker 2: To happen, not that far removed from both sides being
Speaker 2: into like fixing things and doing the right thing. For
Speaker 2: a while, it was cool for both sides to do it,
Speaker 2: not necessarily that way. Now you know what, Nate, you
Speaker 2: know what else you can shoot around wetlands.
Speaker 10: Peasants, big pheasant guys transition. That was good, so Montana pheasants.
Speaker 10: Before we get into that quick story, I like to
Speaker 10: tell people I'm an adult on set hunter. That's not
Speaker 10: totally true. My only hunting experience before the age of
Speaker 10: two twenty two was at Miller Ranch Game and Preserve
Speaker 10: right over the border in Spokane, Washington, which is a
Speaker 10: pheasant stocking operation. I was eleven ish I hadn't hunted before.
Speaker 10: I asked my grandpa, who had if he'd take me hunting,
Speaker 10: and that's what we chose to do. And as an
Speaker 10: eleven year old without any hunting background, I really didn't
Speaker 10: understand what was going on. I didn't understand stocking wild
Speaker 10: birds pen raised. But even so it felt a little
Speaker 10: off to me, like I saw the guy drive out
Speaker 10: with birds in his ATV. Sure he told us when
Speaker 10: we were getting close to birds. We did get to
Speaker 10: see some cool dog work and we did end up
Speaker 10: shooting some of those birds, but it just it felt
Speaker 10: weird as an eleven year old, But I was with
Speaker 10: my grandpa and I didn't really know what's going on,
Speaker 10: so didn't say anything. But I hate to admit it,
Speaker 10: we didn't even end up eating those birds.
Speaker 3: I don't know what happened to him.
Speaker 10: I think they got eaten by some freezer somewhere. And
Speaker 10: after that whole experience, it took me eleven more years
Speaker 10: to try hunting again. So it's fair to say this
Speaker 10: didn't exactly light my fire, which is why an article
Speaker 10: by Jordan Hansen at the Daily Montana caught my eye
Speaker 10: as Montana FWP seeks permission to increase pheasant stocking by
Speaker 10: over four hundred percent, all in the name of young
Speaker 10: hunter recruitment. So brief history on pheasant stocking in Montana.
Speaker 10: In nineteen thirty, the Warm Springs Pheasant Farm opens and
Speaker 10: that's over near Deer Lodge here here in southeast or sorry,
Speaker 10: southwest Montana, and the intent was specifically to bolster pheasant populations.
Speaker 10: I don't know what was going on at the time.
Speaker 10: The information is not very clear, but.
Speaker 2: That's back when they thought stocking would gotcha, and you
Speaker 2: know they quickly learned that it doesn't help wild populations.
Speaker 3: Well, there has to be an overlap of management, right,
Speaker 3: There's got to be predator management, there's got to be
Speaker 3: habitat management and a stocking program in order for those
Speaker 3: birds to have enough time to adapt and even then
Speaker 3: the mortality rate is like staggeringly high.
Speaker 10: Oh we'll get into it, yes please, And so at
Speaker 10: its peak that operation, again which was the intent was
Speaker 10: population stocking, was fifteen thousand birds annually. So that runs
Speaker 10: for fifty two years. And although we might have learned
Speaker 10: the lesson quickly, it took them fifty two years to
Speaker 10: turn it off. That pheasant farm closes, which was it
Speaker 10: released about a total of four hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 10: birds over the fifty year life, which again is about
Speaker 10: fifty two or fifteen thousand annually, and it was cited
Speaker 10: to be too expensive, very inefficient, and that FWP themselves
Speaker 10: found that habitat improvement was a far better use of
Speaker 10: funds for some stuff we're going to go into. Nineteen
Speaker 10: eighty seven, they codify the habitat improvement in the Upland
Speaker 10: Bird Game Enhancement Program, which we'll call UGBIP, which is
Speaker 10: one point five million dollars specifically for habitat for Upland birds,
Speaker 10: and that's through cost share projects where you have a
Speaker 10: rancher plant, a shelter belt, or habitat leases and a
Speaker 10: few other a few other habitat improvement options. If you
Speaker 10: guys know anything more about those habitat improvements, that'd be great.
Speaker 10: But that's all I found, as like quoted by f
Speaker 10: WP is yeah.
Speaker 3: And then I mean, then there's some federal's that's where
Speaker 3: your hip comes in just now under NRCS habitat improvement projects.
Speaker 10: So fast forward to twenty twenty one, and we're going
Speaker 10: to take a quick detour to the commercial or I
Speaker 10: shouldn't say commercial, the prison system.
Speaker 3: I guess we could lump in CRP two yep, which
Speaker 3: is more of a resting thing but does provide a
Speaker 3: lot of habitat.
Speaker 10: Go ahead, sorry, but fast forward twenty twenty one and
Speaker 10: we'll take a detour to the prisons. And that year
Speaker 10: a thirty year commercial contract with dairy Gold ends. Basically
Speaker 10: Costco stopped buying prison milk, if you want to call
Speaker 10: it that. But the Deer Lodge Penitentiary had a large
Speaker 10: dairy herd that they used for that. Inmates ran and
Speaker 10: they created a bunch of milk, and then dairy Gold
Speaker 10: bought that and then sold it to Costco. But the
Speaker 10: cancelation of that resulted in a one million budget deficit
Speaker 10: for the prison system. Why is that important? You ask, Well,
Speaker 10: That same year, right after that cancelation, the Montana legislature
Speaker 10: passes House Bill six three seven, which authorizes funny enough
Speaker 10: one million dollars annually for farm raised pheasants with the
Speaker 10: stated goal of young hunter recruitment. Those farm raised pheasants
Speaker 10: would be raised by the same inmates that were just
Speaker 10: milking cows for dairy gold. The specifics of that legislation
Speaker 10: is that half the licensed dollars, or half of that
Speaker 10: one million dollars, would be license dollars and half would
Speaker 10: be matching Pittman Robertson funds, which was made eligible by
Speaker 10: the twenty nineteen R three expansion to Pittman Robertson. Those
Speaker 10: pheasants that are raised would be planted primarily before the
Speaker 10: youth opener and the only they were only allowed to
Speaker 10: release on state land, no federal or private. Do you
Speaker 10: guys have any experience do that youth season in the
Speaker 10: stock pheasants?
Speaker 2: Not with the youth season, but I feel like I've
Speaker 2: definitely run into some of those stock birds, some like
Speaker 2: fishing actors.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's why I've heard. What's that like, Phil?
Speaker 12: They run under your tires.
Speaker 3: Phil had an amazing shot on a stocked bird. He
Speaker 3: really did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he did it take us back. Oh.
Speaker 9: I think I told you when I was at your
Speaker 9: house the other day, Randall, that like, I haven't gun
Speaker 9: hunting a lot, but most of it's been with Cal,
Speaker 9: and my experiences have been wonderful and that was one
Speaker 9: of them. Yeah, I don't really have a lot of memories.
Speaker 9: I'm glad Cal remembers it because I I felt good
Speaker 9: about the shot, So it was it was a great shot,
Speaker 9: the second time I had shot a shotgun in my life.
Speaker 9: But I mean that is right there, second time he
Speaker 9: shot a shotgun in his life. Got to see some
Speaker 9: some great dog work. The area that we were in
Speaker 9: has like really wonderful habitat.
Speaker 12: And clearly it lit a fire under your film.
Speaker 10: Yeah, it really really activated a hunter back there.
Speaker 3: And you know, I got to go home with with
Speaker 3: some pheasants. We we helped clean them and and get
Speaker 3: them ready to roll and through some some recipe suggestions
Speaker 3: out of them. And I think that really is like
Speaker 3: the R three argument.
Speaker 2: That's the R three argument. But I would argue the
Speaker 2: pheasant was only a small.
Speaker 1: Part of that. You were the larger part.
Speaker 12: Yeah, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So here's the the Idaho runs this in a
Speaker 3: in a different way where it's like the hunter has
Speaker 3: the choice to opt in, and it's basically a state
Speaker 3: match for outside funding to run this R three program
Speaker 3: where these are the areas the WMAs where're going to
Speaker 3: release birds and if you want to hunt pheasants here,
Speaker 3: you have to buy this stamp YEP and they're I
Speaker 3: love the way that they put it because they will
Speaker 3: often say like this programs for young kids and old
Speaker 3: dogs or old dogs and young kids type of thing,
Speaker 3: And I think that's a better way of doing it
Speaker 3: because you also, as we covered in the wetland Conservation easements,
Speaker 3: you get all these other benefits from good habitat, right
Speaker 3: that aren't going to disappear.
Speaker 1: Then let's get to that and circle back to so
Speaker 1: so Nate can finish up this.
Speaker 10: Yeah, we'll finish up the history here. So that that
Speaker 10: was in twenty twenty one when they authorized that. Concurrent
Speaker 10: to this UGGBEP, the Habitat program is still running, but
Speaker 10: in twenty twenty three, f WP themselves asked to eliminate
Speaker 10: a provision that five percent of UGBEP funds were held
Speaker 10: for private land stocking of pen raised birds, mainly because
Speaker 10: there was no interest from landowners in stocking those pen
Speaker 10: raised birds. So it's like it's kind of you they're
Speaker 10: talking about of both sides of their mouth right now,
Speaker 10: because ultimately what the request is is to increase the
Speaker 10: the stocking locations from just state land to federal and private.
Speaker 1: And increasing the number of words.
Speaker 10: See that's that's what's interesting is in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 10: so twenty twenty one to twenty twenty five, there is
Speaker 10: about two point five million dollars that go into the program.
Speaker 10: So instead of that one million per year that's authorized,
Speaker 10: only about five hundred thousand, or half of the allocated
Speaker 10: funds went into the program. That resulted in ten thousand
Speaker 10: pen raised birds being released per year. And so the
Speaker 10: question that they're kind of raising through this is we're
Speaker 10: not limited by the number of pheasants that we can produce.
Speaker 10: We're not limited by the dollar amount at this point,
Speaker 10: we're limited by the amount of the land that we
Speaker 10: can put it on. And so we're then we're now
Speaker 10: we're asking to go out there and put it on
Speaker 10: private and federal land so that we can fill ostensibly
Speaker 10: to have more hunter recruitment, but really what it seems
Speaker 10: to be like, is to fill that entire one million
Speaker 10: dollar budget shortfall that the prison has.
Speaker 1: Sure, and it ain't hard to do.
Speaker 2: I'm no mathematician, but five hundred k budget and you
Speaker 2: kick out ten thousand pen raised birds, that's fifty bucks
Speaker 2: a bird.
Speaker 10: Fifty bucks a bird, which we'll talk about. So I
Speaker 10: want to give them benefit of doubt. And I called
Speaker 10: FWP Greg Lemon over. There is great And what he
Speaker 10: clarified is this isn't a request for additional money, and
Speaker 10: it's been reported on is we're requesting an increase from
Speaker 10: ten thousand to fifty thousand birds. That's not actually what's
Speaker 10: the changes. The change is where those birds can go.
Speaker 10: And so I asked them, is there going to be
Speaker 10: some sort of quid pro quill where if we put
Speaker 10: state funded birds on private land, is that can result
Speaker 10: in more access? Because that sounds like a great deal
Speaker 10: for me, at least a silver lining. And he said
Speaker 10: that is the intent, but they're not in conversations with
Speaker 10: any specific landowners at this point.
Speaker 3: Not a great track record today.
Speaker 1: What about stocking those suckers on federal land?
Speaker 12: Federal land?
Speaker 10: He didn't adjust specifically, He just said that's part of
Speaker 10: the request, but it I then called a few senators
Speaker 10: who had written a local or state senators who had
Speaker 10: written a letter against this, and they just find it
Speaker 10: unlikely that the four point five million acres of state
Speaker 10: grassland we have is not suitable enough for even fifty
Speaker 10: thousand pheasants.
Speaker 3: It's like, what, why.
Speaker 10: Do we need to go get more land? Like what's
Speaker 10: going on here? And that's an open question. I don't
Speaker 10: know what the decision is or the decision making process, Okay.
Speaker 3: I mean timing here is not great. With like drought
Speaker 3: conditions across the West, We're probably going to see open
Speaker 3: grazing on our state WMAs again this year, like reducing
Speaker 3: that habitat. That's if if we don't get more more
Speaker 3: rain here in August.
Speaker 2: There's that And is there evidence that this results in
Speaker 2: youth hunting?
Speaker 10: Yep, So that's what I asked the FWP spokesman. I said, well,
Speaker 10: if this is a whole you know, youth hunter recruitment,
Speaker 10: how are we measuring that? Are there stats that have
Speaker 10: brought have borne this out? Is there a great hunter recruitment?
Speaker 10: And he said that they're they're diligently trying to get
Speaker 10: better stats. But there's not a vehicle in places.
Speaker 3: I mean since that twenty nineteen and the everybody was
Speaker 3: screaming about R three, R three, R three are three
Speaker 3: R three And obviously there's a lot of people who
Speaker 3: scream about AR three today. But it is a failure.
Speaker 3: It just is a failure. Like R three is just
Speaker 3: not as it is, as like a federal driven program
Speaker 3: to the states is just not the thing that is
Speaker 3: producing more hunters having this type of opportunity. I know
Speaker 3: several people Ronnie Bank being won, He's like, if it
Speaker 3: weren't for pen raise pheasants, I wouldn't be a bird hunt.
Speaker 2: I mean that's the way it was when I was
Speaker 2: growing up in Pennsylvania. But you can you can say
Speaker 2: that all you want. He didn't grow up in Montana.
Speaker 2: Montana has wild birds, and they got quite a few
Speaker 2: of them.
Speaker 3: Okay, so here's the wild bird argument, right, and this
Speaker 3: is this is South Dakota, who is like, yeah a pinnacle. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And if South like South Dakota would be like the
Speaker 3: most aggressive lover at the bar because they solicit hunters like.
Speaker 1: No other state I've ever seen.
Speaker 3: Their argument to releasing pen raise birds is after that
Speaker 3: first week of the season. Most people, if they're having
Speaker 3: success out there, they're knocking down pen raise birds and
Speaker 3: it takes the pressure off of those wild birds that
Speaker 3: are going to winter over and have successful broods. And
Speaker 3: that's why they have their program of like supplementation, right,
Speaker 3: and so they you know, you have those preserved licenses
Speaker 3: out there where the private landowners are releasing tons and
Speaker 3: tons of birds, and that's what the idea is, like,
Speaker 3: there's tons of suitable habitat, and so the birds they're
Speaker 3: they're planning on the pen raise birds to die.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like we know they're gonna get killed, so
Speaker 2: we're protecting.
Speaker 1: The wild birds kind of thing.
Speaker 3: When you go out with a bunch of new hunters
Speaker 3: and they slam their truck doors and you're watching birds
Speaker 3: fly out the end, you're like, well, there go the
Speaker 3: wild birds. Yeah, and the ones that.
Speaker 1: Went right there. I kind of look at.
Speaker 2: It, you know, I obviously there's there's some decent arguments
Speaker 2: for both sides, but I kind of in Montana, I
Speaker 2: look at it the way I look at how mya
Speaker 2: decided to manage wild trout. So fifty odd years ago,
Speaker 2: Montana made the decision that if there's an established wild
Speaker 2: trout population in a river or a stream, We're not
Speaker 2: going to stalk. There's no reason to stock trout in
Speaker 2: those streams, right Like, you have a self sustaining wild population,
Speaker 2: leave it alone, let its do its thing.
Speaker 1: Like we may stock like.
Speaker 2: Lakes for put and take fisheries, but for wild trout
Speaker 2: populations that are self sustaining, leave them alone.
Speaker 1: That's kind of where I'm at with this pheasant thing,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 3: With the exception of improving habitat.
Speaker 10: Well, that's like, yeah, And I think I think generally
Speaker 10: like I'm not anti stocking. I just I think that
Speaker 10: this program could use some tweaking when you get into
Speaker 10: the the issues with pheasant stocking kind of across the board,
Speaker 10: but also here specifically, some stats from pheasants forever is
Speaker 10: that forty percent die within a week, seventy five percent
Speaker 10: die with an a month, and ninety five percent die
Speaker 10: before the spring. And so you you know, your your
Speaker 10: comments about shooting the pen raise birds, those those stand.
Speaker 10: But then when you get in the deal for the
Speaker 10: actual taxpayer and the tradeoff versus habitat improvement, we are paying,
Speaker 10: like the between Pittman and Robertson and License sales fifty
Speaker 10: dollars a pheasant. Five hundred thousand dollars a year at
Speaker 10: ten thousand pheasants is fifty dollars a pheasant.
Speaker 2: I you can go buy like a fifteen pound organic
Speaker 2: turkey for fifty bucks.
Speaker 10: You can go to a pheasant farm. You can go
Speaker 10: to Miller ranch and buy one for forty five bucks
Speaker 10: if you want.
Speaker 3: And I do there there was there's one really good
Speaker 3: study out there, and that's where they talk about like,
Speaker 3: here's what happens if you just stock pheasants. Here's what
Speaker 3: happens if you stock pheasants and do like a heavy
Speaker 3: predator management program. Here's what happens if you do the
Speaker 3: full management you know. And I, yeah, I think there's
Speaker 3: a significant die off of birds regardles us in the
Speaker 3: first thirty six hours.
Speaker 2: But isn't it also fair to say that if you've
Speaker 2: got good habitat, like you're already good habitat already in
Speaker 2: some ways mitigates the impact of predators on wild besant populations.
Speaker 1: Yes, right, yep, it's kind of doing some of the
Speaker 1: predator management work for you.
Speaker 3: Yep. Yeah, And you know I've joked many many times, right,
Speaker 3: if if a Montana. Pheasant knew about South Dakota or
Speaker 3: Kansas Iowa state. Yeah, they just wouldn't be here, ye,
Speaker 3: because the like Kansas. What Kansas does on on their
Speaker 3: WMA properties, I can't remember what their acronym is is unreal.
Speaker 3: There's there's holdover food crops that they plant. There's all
Speaker 3: sorts of stuff and it is gorgeous.
Speaker 1: To be fair, there are some wildlife management areas in
Speaker 1: my Tanna and fishing access sites in Montana where there's
Speaker 1: fantastic habitat.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they're pumping in the cash. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: but we could certainly see a lot more of it
Speaker 3: because there's there's some places.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And that's the thing.
Speaker 2: It's like, do you want to play the instant gratification
Speaker 2: game with that what is it two point five million?
Speaker 10: Yeah, I mean it's one million a year?
Speaker 2: One okay, the instant gratification game with one million? Or
Speaker 2: do you want to play the long game with that
Speaker 2: one million and do what cal suggests and invest in habitat?
Speaker 3: Yep?
Speaker 10: And I think that's just just to hit the kind
Speaker 10: of the pro to give it a fair shake, the
Speaker 10: pro stockers, the youth hunter activation, I mean just in
Speaker 10: the room. You know we had we had Phil, not
Speaker 10: a youth hunter, but shot a pheasant that's probably stocked.
Speaker 10: The inmate skills program. That's not pointless. You know, that's
Speaker 10: a valuable thing that can that can increase quality of
Speaker 10: life for people there is a prison budget deficit and
Speaker 10: feeling that is a good thing. I think you should
Speaker 10: go to the g All Fund and ask for it
Speaker 10: that way. But this is a method. And then also
Speaker 10: like those that farm is compliant with all of USDA's
Speaker 10: health health like the USDA's Natural Poultry Improvement Plan. They
Speaker 10: they have very strict testing, they have very strict protocols,
Speaker 10: they go above and beyond, and so there is a
Speaker 10: disease risk for sure, but they're doing what they can
Speaker 10: to mitigate it. And so it's not like this is
Speaker 10: just a flippant program where if they're going to release
Speaker 10: bird flu into the local pheasant population. I think we've
Speaker 10: kind of talked about the anti but you know, habitat
Speaker 10: improvement instead of I'm not sure it's a zero sum game,
Speaker 10: but if I could put those million dollars that are
Speaker 10: currently going towards stocking into habitat, I think every hunter
Speaker 10: would take that every day of the week.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because it's like the byproduct is like big white tails,
Speaker 3: big mule deer. Sure, sure, it's not just.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you can keep cranking out you can keep
Speaker 2: cranking out stocked pheasants as long as you want and
Speaker 2: spending that money, but like you can't keep cranking out
Speaker 2: good habitat right, Like there's only so much land out there,
Speaker 2: so you know, you can pay for stock pheasants or
Speaker 2: you can pay for land that'll be around for the
Speaker 2: next generation.
Speaker 1: It's kind of the way I look at it.
Speaker 10: Yeah, And I think ultimately there's there's like decent bones here.
Speaker 10: I think the intent could be good And to your
Speaker 10: comment about Idaho CaAl that that might be a good
Speaker 10: tweak to this program. I just think as it's being
Speaker 10: currently executed, it's not very well thought out.
Speaker 3: But the cool.
Speaker 10: Thing was just this is kind of my first experience
Speaker 10: with like local government and calling my you know, you're
Speaker 10: always telling people to call your local senator. And Pat Flowers,
Speaker 10: my my represent or, my senator here in Belgrade, had
Speaker 10: his phone number online.
Speaker 3: I texted him.
Speaker 10: He called me right back and gave me his two
Speaker 10: cents on it. Greg Lemon at FWP, he called me
Speaker 10: right back and gave me their their take on it,
Speaker 10: and it was super helpful. So go do the same
Speaker 10: thing in this case. Public comments open July first, August nineteenth,
Speaker 10: so have at it.
Speaker 2: Heck, yeah, nice work, Nate, Randall. You're gonna be hosted
Speaker 2: next week. Yes, Steve's gonna be out for a couple
Speaker 2: more weeks.
Speaker 13: You're hosting, Yes, I am hosting the news show next week.
Speaker 12: I think we have you.
Speaker 1: Got any juicy like Teasershow.
Speaker 12: I haven't given any thought to what I'm gonna do?
Speaker 1: Actually, and send Randall an idea for what we.
Speaker 13: Yeah, yeah, no, that's coming up. Very exciting, very exciting.
Speaker 13: I wish I were up where Steve is right now,
Speaker 13: having the adventure of a lifetime. But we must carry
Speaker 13: on in his absence, and so rest assured that we'll
Speaker 13: do our level best to give you once again another
Speaker 13: great news show.
Speaker 8: Hey.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Steve will be making an appearance, correct, Nate,
Speaker 2: He's gonna He's gonna cover the Grizzly management thing that's
Speaker 2: going on where the fans would like to hand over
Speaker 2: management of Grizzlies to the States. Steve is gonna weigh
Speaker 2: in on that via video for our next show, so
Speaker 2: tune in for that.
Speaker 15: Thanks a lot, guys, Nice job, Brod.