Speaker 1: Oh hey, everybody. Ben O'Brien here episode sixty five with
Speaker 1: the Hunting Collective coming at you. It's gonna include a
Speaker 1: message for me about Father's Day, and then uh, an
Speaker 1: interview with great and powerful Edward T. Nikins, the writer extraordinaire.
Speaker 1: But before we get to all that, we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about the Yetie Go Box. Now, the Yeti Go Box
Speaker 1: is badass. Uh. It's airtight, watertight. It's an awesome box
Speaker 1: to keep whatever is important to you. And I just
Speaker 1: got back from the bear Woods and we're camping out.
Speaker 1: My dad and I in public Lands are running around
Speaker 1: and I used the Go Box as my camp cook kid.
Speaker 1: I put my pots and pans in there. I put
Speaker 1: my Mountain House meals in there. I put all my seasonings,
Speaker 1: all my silverware, plates, bowls, all of that fit perfectly
Speaker 1: into the Go Box. And I want to keep that
Speaker 1: in there. Keep that in my truck no matter where
Speaker 1: I am, where I decided to camp or decided to
Speaker 1: roll around, always have that there. It's you know, jep Oil,
Speaker 1: Mountain House, everything in there in the Eddie Gobox, schip
Speaker 1: hit Eddie dot com. Pick that up, man, it's a
Speaker 1: great product. You're going to love it, and then we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about Federal Premium ammunition right now, Federal Premium
Speaker 1: dot com. There's a bunch of new things coming out
Speaker 1: from them, um, but particularly right now, we needed to go.
Speaker 1: We had a lot of feedback from you guys about
Speaker 1: Federal t S S turkey AMMO, because boy, did we
Speaker 1: kill some turkeys with that thing this year. I watched
Speaker 1: not only myself kill some birds, but you honest but
Speaker 1: tell us Stephen Ranella, um, Ryan Callahan, we were all
Speaker 1: we dropped a lot of turkeys with Federal TSS heavyweight
Speaker 1: this spring. And a lot of you guys have reacted
Speaker 1: to that and asked a few questions exactly. The one
Speaker 1: question was how far do you think you can shoot
Speaker 1: with this thing? Well, Man's I would say for sure.
Speaker 1: I mean I killed a bird out to past fifty yards. Um,
Speaker 1: I killed birds at forty and I killed him at
Speaker 1: ten and fifteen. And I know the other guys the
Speaker 1: same way. I am very comfortable at forty and fifty
Speaker 1: yards with Federal TSS ammunition. And so if you're you're
Speaker 1: looking for a very competent what I would refer to
Speaker 1: as a long range turkey gun. This is the one.
Speaker 1: This is the one that is Federal Heavyweight t s
Speaker 1: S at Federal Premium dot Com. All right, now we're
Speaker 1: gonna get to this podcast. You're gonna love it. Let's go.
Speaker 1: I guess I grew up on an older road, a
Speaker 1: pedal to the medal. I always did what I told
Speaker 1: until I found out that my brand new close a
Speaker 1: game second hand from the rich kids next door. And
Speaker 1: I grew up baths. I guess, like what I mean,
Speaker 1: they have a thousand things inside of my head I
Speaker 1: wish I ain't seen, and now I just wanted to
Speaker 1: real bad dream of being in lack. I'm coming about
Speaker 1: of the seams. But thank you, Jack Daniels. Hey, everybody,
Speaker 1: welcome to another episode the Hunt Collective. I'm been O'Brien.
Speaker 1: It's gonna air this one with Juleven getting down to
Speaker 1: it very season almost over here in Montana. One last
Speaker 1: shot at it this weekend, and we're getting getting into
Speaker 1: it at the time. I like to pull my bow
Speaker 1: out and shooting around. But today is is special podcasts
Speaker 1: for a lot of reasons. About they're always all uh,
Speaker 1: well I work called them, so they're all special me.
Speaker 1: But it's it's coming up on Father's Day. So in
Speaker 1: our opening segment, I have no guests. I just want
Speaker 1: to talk a little bit about my father, our story
Speaker 1: together and uh, the story of fathers in in the
Speaker 1: hunting culture. I mean, I think it's it's an important
Speaker 1: thing coming up on Father's Day, just to talk about that,
Speaker 1: and UM, I just want to tell you my story
Speaker 1: a little bit, and so hopefully he'll stick around for that.
Speaker 1: After that, we're gonna get into are one of my
Speaker 1: favorite writers of all time, the great and powerful Eddie Nikins.
Speaker 1: And Eddie Nickins is uh a writer for A Field, Stream, Garden,
Speaker 1: a Gun, and many other publications. I met with him
Speaker 1: in his home in North Carolina before. We did a
Speaker 1: talk together on hunting ethics, and Eddie is an extremely intelligent,
Speaker 1: thoughtful person man and just a good old Southern boy
Speaker 1: to his roots. We talked about his own raising of
Speaker 1: of kids outdoors and what he feels like that has
Speaker 1: done for them and for him, and so a great conversation.
Speaker 1: Please stick around for that here real real shortly, um,
Speaker 1: and thanks to Eddie for hanging with us. But before
Speaker 1: we get to that, I just want to talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about my dad. Because I just just got
Speaker 1: back from some three days in the back country with
Speaker 1: my dad hunting bears in Montana and also spending time
Speaker 1: with my son and my dad and my family altogether.
Speaker 1: And it strikes me that, you know, my dad and
Speaker 1: I were walking through the mountains and I said something
Speaker 1: to him was like, if you if I could transport
Speaker 1: ten years back in time as I am now and
Speaker 1: talk to myself ten years ago, my ten years ago
Speaker 1: self would not have would not believe Would I believe
Speaker 1: me if I told him where my life was today?
Speaker 1: In so many ways, living in Montana, you know, having
Speaker 1: a beautiful son and a wife, and having the job
Speaker 1: that I do, and being around the people that I'm around,
Speaker 1: it really has has been an incredible journey. And my
Speaker 1: dad just kind of said, you earned it, you know,
Speaker 1: you did it, And that got me to thinking a
Speaker 1: lot of things, but it got me to thinking about
Speaker 1: his role in all of it. No today, back then,
Speaker 1: I started thinking about when I was twelve years old
Speaker 1: and when I first started to desire to go hunting,
Speaker 1: and how he shepherded me along and and honestly, I
Speaker 1: don't remember the first moment that I thought I might
Speaker 1: want to go hunting. But I just remember always wanted
Speaker 1: to follow my dad, and it's something that he did. Now,
Speaker 1: he didn't do it in the early days of my life.
Speaker 1: He didn't do it as much because he was, like
Speaker 1: many fathers, drawn away from hunting to take care of
Speaker 1: his family, to work hard, to build something, to build
Speaker 1: a family. He was drawn away from that. So as
Speaker 1: a kid, I didn't get to see him running off
Speaker 1: to go hunting a bunch. He did some, But in fact,
Speaker 1: when I was born, my dad was hunting and he
Speaker 1: came back from I don't think of ten days in
Speaker 1: the wilderness, um running around, probably drinking beer, hunting deer,
Speaker 1: and went into the delivery room and they made him
Speaker 1: go stand in a little all closet like because he
Speaker 1: smelled so bad. They didn't want him in the delivery room.
Speaker 1: And so his what I was born, my dad was hunting.
Speaker 1: He was, but he was drawn away from it a
Speaker 1: little bit to take care of us, and and I
Speaker 1: was able to kind of bring him back into it
Speaker 1: with my own interests early on at you know, at
Speaker 1: the age of ten, eleven, twelve, but twelve years old.
Speaker 1: I remember being on this cold garage floor was October,
Speaker 1: being on this cold garage floor with my dad and
Speaker 1: our neighbor Bill Miller, and they were trying to determine
Speaker 1: at what position I could best hold this to forty three,
Speaker 1: the savage one ten and to forty three. I remember
Speaker 1: that like it was yesterday, and I remember going to
Speaker 1: the range and shooting that rifle. I remember my dad
Speaker 1: being stressed out about how I could hold it, and
Speaker 1: so he had shooting sticks and we were always messing
Speaker 1: around with those. I remember talking about safety. I remember,
Speaker 1: and these are all things I remember pretty vividly. When
Speaker 1: the rest of my life comes in flashes, this is
Speaker 1: vivid for me. Um. And at some level I knew
Speaker 1: I didn't know what I was getting into, but I
Speaker 1: knew that I would follow might be following my dad,
Speaker 1: and that was all that matter. And so the other
Speaker 1: thing I remember clearly is I had this orange Elmer
Speaker 1: Fudd hat with like fuzzy flapped ears, and I had
Speaker 1: a cover a pair of coveralls that if I was
Speaker 1: wearing them hunting today people would would laugh at me,
Speaker 1: but back then they were cool. Um. I remember, who
Speaker 1: knows what boots I was wearing, but I was wearing
Speaker 1: these coveralls and they were way too short, so my
Speaker 1: I think my ankles probably showed they were frayed on
Speaker 1: the edges. It was this old, dirty, mossy oak tree
Speaker 1: bark deal. My dad would pack sandwiches and toast chee
Speaker 1: peanut butter crackers in this little ruck sack, and we
Speaker 1: will go hunt this private land. My first ever experience
Speaker 1: with this was was um Maryland's Youth Hunting Day, which
Speaker 1: was a week before the opener on a Saturday. It
Speaker 1: was rightful, and I remember we lived in the suburbs
Speaker 1: and we had this frosted stone walk that would lead
Speaker 1: to the driveway, and across this frosted stone walk you
Speaker 1: could see my neighbor's house. And Bill would be going
Speaker 1: with us with a crew of other people. And I
Speaker 1: remember standing on this frosted walking. My dad would be
Speaker 1: in the kitchen making sandwiches, are getting getting things right here,
Speaker 1: and and looking over and with so much anticipation to
Speaker 1: see the garage door on my neighbor's house open, because
Speaker 1: there was. I was so heightened. I was so ready
Speaker 1: to go into something I had really no idea about.
Speaker 1: I never seen a deer die, I had never seen
Speaker 1: a deer gutted. I didn't really know what hunting them
Speaker 1: looked like or felt like. But I was going anyway
Speaker 1: because my first you know, I was old enough to
Speaker 1: understand it. My dad had talked me through it, but
Speaker 1: I didn't really know anything. So it was a different
Speaker 1: kind of excitement. It was a different kind of hunting,
Speaker 1: of course, following my dad and I remember, I remember
Speaker 1: walking into the woods the first day. I remember how
Speaker 1: it fell to be, you know, smaller than him and
Speaker 1: him feeling larger than life, and I just had key
Speaker 1: on his every move, what what he said, what he did,
Speaker 1: um how he felt. We didn't kill a deer that day?
Speaker 1: It was. There was a lot of follies And hopefully
Speaker 1: I'll have him on the podcast and maybe Bill Miller
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about those follies one day because they're
Speaker 1: pretty funny and I'm so glad to have I'm glad
Speaker 1: to have some of those memories. But it was like
Speaker 1: those things that established my love of hunting. And I
Speaker 1: think maybe later down the road, when I've done other
Speaker 1: things didn't hunting, my dad has discovered some different things
Speaker 1: as well. So it's a nice it's a nice spin
Speaker 1: and it's a nice flip of the coin to have
Speaker 1: to be able to bring him along this week in
Speaker 1: Montana showing show him some of the things I've learned
Speaker 1: over the years after I left the nest as it were,
Speaker 1: ran around and did a bunch of things, and bring
Speaker 1: him back and show him some of the things that
Speaker 1: I've learned because I wasn't wouldn't be here without him.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be anywhere without him. You know, my mother
Speaker 1: and the rest of our family, but particularly in Honeygo
Speaker 1: wouldn't be here without him. He spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time showing me things, and it's still showing me things today.
Speaker 1: And we won't hunt together for the rest of our days,
Speaker 1: but the days that we've hunted together, the time we
Speaker 1: have spent together um has introduced me to something that
Speaker 1: is that has changed my life. So so thank you
Speaker 1: to my dad and to everybody else else out there
Speaker 1: listening that has had that experience. I'm sure you feel
Speaker 1: the same way, and I would encourage you just to
Speaker 1: take some time on Father's Day to express that. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm expressing it through podcast for him because my dad,
Speaker 1: I'm sure we'll listen to this, but but I express
Speaker 1: that to your your people, whoever it is that took
Speaker 1: you hunting. If it isn't your dad, whoever was that
Speaker 1: that took you hunting, um and allowed you to kind
Speaker 1: of see the world in the way a hunter might
Speaker 1: see it. And I guess i'll close just in in general.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a lot of people out there that
Speaker 1: that didn't get the chance to hunt with their dads
Speaker 1: for whatever reason like I have. Maybe you're an adult
Speaker 1: onset hunter. Maybe you just got into it. Maybe your
Speaker 1: dad just didn't didn't love it, and you and you
Speaker 1: somehow found it. I met a lot of people that
Speaker 1: have that story. UM, have that story and so continue
Speaker 1: to pass it on. I don't think it's got to
Speaker 1: be a father and a son. It could be a
Speaker 1: mentor and a mentee. It could be anything. We talked
Speaker 1: about that a lot on this podcast, and I feel
Speaker 1: that strongly that just just taking somebody out you can
Speaker 1: stoke their passion. Maybe they won't be into it, but
Speaker 1: you could maybe stoke something that my dad stoked inside
Speaker 1: of me to help me along. And UM, I get
Speaker 1: pretty emotional back because it's changed my life. Hunting has
Speaker 1: changed my life in a lot of ways, personally, professionally,
Speaker 1: and on and on we go. So Um, thanks to
Speaker 1: my dad. Thanks to all the dads out there for
Speaker 1: doing what you do. Um, for for taking someone hunting.
Speaker 1: It means a lot. It means a lot a lot
Speaker 1: to me. And so I'll stop blabbering on. But I
Speaker 1: just wanted to to address Father's Day and my dad.
Speaker 1: Freaking love your dad. I love you so much. You're awesome.
Speaker 1: All Right, we're gonna get into the interview portion of
Speaker 1: this show, and like I said, it's a great man.
Speaker 1: His name is Edward T. Nikins, and we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about a lot of things. So I'm gonna transport you
Speaker 1: over to Raley, North Carolina for a conversation with Eddie T. Nikens.
Speaker 1: Enjoy I ard, all is good man? How in your layer? Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is the International Headquarters. Whatever happens happens here. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure how much of it is value, but this
Speaker 1: is where it gets done. You know, I feel it
Speaker 1: should be dirtier. Well, this is pretty neat and tidy
Speaker 1: in here. It's real. It's real good, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: it's got you got folders with labels on them. I
Speaker 1: mean I've got folders, I've got stocks of looming deadlines. Um,
Speaker 1: I have a post it notepad here that'll explain the
Speaker 1: relative neatness. It says, one story at a time. This
Speaker 1: is a new leaf that I turned over on Monday.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the new tricks. Yeah, we're a weekend
Speaker 1: on that. Talk to me in a few days. We'll
Speaker 1: check back in. That's a good that's a good reason.
Speaker 1: Guest appearance number two. What else i'd say on your
Speaker 1: posting notes? There anything? Uh? Sorry? At times? More of
Speaker 1: a you know, it's an ideology, Yeah, you know, it's
Speaker 1: sort of I've got this this sort of long term
Speaker 1: project I've been thinking about. I'm calling it an honest
Speaker 1: shrimp man. I love shrimp, and I eat a Polish shrimp,
Speaker 1: and I want to eat shrimp feeling pretty good about it.
Speaker 1: You gonna eat shrimp one way or the other, but
Speaker 1: I want to eat shrimp healthy conscience. Yeah. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: they're living here in North Carolina, especially in Raleigh. We're
Speaker 1: sort of coastly oriented. I got a little place, and
Speaker 1: I mean a little place down at the coast, and um,
Speaker 1: so we start thinking about those things of sustainable sourced seafood.
Speaker 1: Uh see, yeah, shrimp man, we had a pole of shrimp.
Speaker 1: I find it. Yeah, I finally in my life. You know,
Speaker 1: I didn't grow I grew up in western Maryland, which
Speaker 1: you know people think of Maryland, they think of crabs
Speaker 1: in in the chesapike game. We were nowhere near that.
Speaker 1: Um well, it was east west Virginia, you know. We
Speaker 1: that's where That's where I grew up. And so you
Speaker 1: know the furst. You move around the world, you start
Speaker 1: to see other you said, think the coastal areas. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've heard oyster farms, shrimp, all the resources that are
Speaker 1: on the coast of this country are important to think of.
Speaker 1: And as a hunter, I'm kind of drawing to those
Speaker 1: things from my hunting a big game, small game, whatever, Right,
Speaker 1: you start to think of things as a resource. I
Speaker 1: guess that's what I'm saying. And we've got that here.
Speaker 1: I mean the salt water resource on the coast and
Speaker 1: North Carolina with all the seafood. I mean, what's so
Speaker 1: amazing is how how close and personal it is. So
Speaker 1: you just pulled up here. I mean, if we you
Speaker 1: walk up in my front door and you take a right,
Speaker 1: and you drive two and a half hours and you're
Speaker 1: on the longest stretch of uninhabited coastline in Eastern America.
Speaker 1: You turn left and get three hours and three and
Speaker 1: a half hours. You know, you're standing on top the
Speaker 1: highest mountain east of the Mississippi. So when you think
Speaker 1: about what places like this have in the South where
Speaker 1: we sort of straddle these worlds between mountains and coast,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a mind bogging. The opportunity is is
Speaker 1: just phenomenal, and it's a great it's a great place
Speaker 1: to be. Yeah. Now, as a as a ardent advocate
Speaker 1: of the east Eastern seaboard or just the eastern side
Speaker 1: of the country, as we were talking about before they record,
Speaker 1: a lot of people put it on me as a
Speaker 1: member of Meat Eat to keep it, keep it even
Speaker 1: to continually slip in those Eastern sensibilities to our western
Speaker 1: Bozeman offices. We have a few Midwesterners in there, but nobody,
Speaker 1: nobody is strictly from the East until we hired Anton
Speaker 1: Locata And now he's bringing a little uh that New
Speaker 1: York flavor, Pennsylvania flavor to the conversation. So we're getting
Speaker 1: it covered. But but that is something that we think about.
Speaker 1: It the sensibility. I grew up much and the same
Speaker 1: as you're talking about. We lived in western Maryland. But
Speaker 1: we could take an hour and a half tribe and
Speaker 1: be at the bay um blue crabs and oysters and
Speaker 1: sea ducks and ducks and geese like you wouldn't believe. Um.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, we we understood that there there's not
Speaker 1: a lot of places where you can have those two
Speaker 1: environments in such a short, you know, span of driving.
Speaker 1: You know, I think here a lot of sportsmen tend
Speaker 1: to be specialists in generalizing, right or or generalists and specializing.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how that how that would work, but
Speaker 1: you know we do. We do so much. I mean
Speaker 1: from Labor Day until March we can hunt. You know,
Speaker 1: we have a huge long deer season from early September
Speaker 1: all the way uh to January. So I do think
Speaker 1: I do think people tend to live live that lifestyle
Speaker 1: year round, no doubt. But I think this East West thing,
Speaker 1: you know, we we see that in in conservation activism
Speaker 1: and politics, UM and advocacy. We see it in terms
Speaker 1: of I mean, there is sort of the schism east
Speaker 1: and east and west, you know, but but from the
Speaker 1: eastern perspective, I mean the way the way that I
Speaker 1: put it is is the West is critical to every
Speaker 1: hunter and angler in North America, whether you whether you
Speaker 1: involve yourself in Western hunting, or whether it's this sort
Speaker 1: of aspirational idea. Right, you know all of the old
Speaker 1: Remington's calendars, the old Winchester calendars, you know, it's this
Speaker 1: these big scenes of hunter versus moose or elk or bear.
Speaker 1: You don't see a lot of scrapping with squirrels and
Speaker 1: woodcock on those old count Yeah. Yeah, So I think
Speaker 1: it's important from an aspirational perspective. But I think Eastern
Speaker 1: US hunters, uh, I still think we're sort of coming
Speaker 1: into our own in terms of telling our own narrative
Speaker 1: and telling and telling that story and not feeling like
Speaker 1: it's always got to be the story of Eastern Eastern
Speaker 1: hunters moving west. Well, and you think of about the Southeastern,
Speaker 1: you know, you ready for gardening gun. You've written a
Speaker 1: lot about things that are happening in the cultural significance
Speaker 1: in the Southeast. When I think of the Southeast, I
Speaker 1: think of that culture, right, this real distinct, real flavorful
Speaker 1: culture that's aspirational. For that reason, it's not aspirational because
Speaker 1: the big peaks that you might go in or or
Speaker 1: we think of like bio diversity of game for hunters,
Speaker 1: it's the culture that kind of wins through. That's why
Speaker 1: I feel that, you know, a lot of your reality
Speaker 1: TV shows are based in Louisiana because there's such a
Speaker 1: rich culture that you can dig into there. Um. And
Speaker 1: in the West, the visual can sometimes be as aspirational
Speaker 1: as anything, no doubt. And you know, and that that
Speaker 1: idea of sort of solo hunting in the West, you know,
Speaker 1: putting yourself against the elements, putting yourself against that that
Speaker 1: big game animal um, I think is fabulous um. And
Speaker 1: we certainly have that. We certainly have that in the East.
Speaker 1: But I think a little bit of lost a little
Speaker 1: bit in the conversation or those hunters specifically who enjoy
Speaker 1: the social aspects, you know. I mean, I'm I'm a
Speaker 1: member of a of a hunting club, like a lot
Speaker 1: of folks in this part of the world. You know,
Speaker 1: we hunt public lands. But you know, I'm a member
Speaker 1: of a hunting club. I drive fifty minutes east and
Speaker 1: I've got thirty seven acres in a camp and swamps
Speaker 1: and fields and woods and people that I love being
Speaker 1: outdoors with. And you're a lot of our members they
Speaker 1: probably don't step foot on public lands ever. But they're
Speaker 1: a part of this conversation too. They're they're part of
Speaker 1: this conservation movement as well. And I think you're right, Ben,
Speaker 1: I think we've got to figure out a way to
Speaker 1: to dovetail these in and celebrate the differences, but you
Speaker 1: know a lot of commonalities as well. Yeah, And it's
Speaker 1: it's hard I think in this this day and age
Speaker 1: in our media space. You know this well that like
Speaker 1: the aspirational in the digital space for sure, the aspirational.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's hard to set beside each other like
Speaker 1: a bugling bull elk coming down a ridge and you know,
Speaker 1: whitetail walking on a fence row, a six point white
Speaker 1: walking out of South Carolina fence round, you know something
Speaker 1: like that. It's hard to put those two deside each other.
Speaker 1: But we have to find ways to do that. Like
Speaker 1: I said, I think I think there are certainly in
Speaker 1: roads to to just making sure we're seeing all this perspective,
Speaker 1: as hard as that is to do. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: think setting them beside each other maybe the maybe the challenge,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, these are each pursuits that are
Speaker 1: worthy of their own merits um and so I do think,
Speaker 1: I do think we have to be careful in this industry,
Speaker 1: whether it's whether it's media, whether it's advertising, whether it's marketing,
Speaker 1: that we we can't forget that that a not everyone
Speaker 1: is a back country archer, being not everybody really wants
Speaker 1: to be a back country archer. You know, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of folks just as soon, you know, follow
Speaker 1: their fish dog through the fall woods chasing squirrels, but
Speaker 1: they've got as much a connection to our heritage as
Speaker 1: any other hunter. Yeah, I think that the I've been
Speaker 1: guilty of this a lot of thinking of some of
Speaker 1: those heritages and his cultures is like Bubba culture less
Speaker 1: intellectual than my culture, or less intellectual in the way
Speaker 1: that I, you know, put my pursuits out there, the
Speaker 1: way that I think of hunting, And that's some bullshit,
Speaker 1: Like it's it's just is. I mean, the the the
Speaker 1: way that our hunting is connected to the whatever you'll
Speaker 1: define as Bubba culture, that's as inherent as somebody out
Speaker 1: west who grew up on a ranch. I mean, it
Speaker 1: just is you know, Bubba Bubba's aren't defined by their
Speaker 1: driver's licenses, their their addresses, right. I do think that
Speaker 1: this growing interest in intellectualizing our pursuits is going to
Speaker 1: make all the boats rise in this tide. And I'm
Speaker 1: thrilled to hear and to read and and to be
Speaker 1: a small part of that conversation of some deep thinking
Speaker 1: about what it means to be to be a hunter
Speaker 1: and an angler in American society today. Because you know
Speaker 1: a lot of the early deep thinkers, you know, we
Speaker 1: hold up Aldo Leopold, you know, as as the patriarch
Speaker 1: of this. You know, while he cut his teeth, well
Speaker 1: he cut his teeth actually in the Midwest long before
Speaker 1: he went he went out west, um, and when he
Speaker 1: he didn't write much of his Western work until he
Speaker 1: was back on his farm, um in the Midwest. So
Speaker 1: it's an exciting time to be around to think about
Speaker 1: what our sports, what our pursuits, you're gonna look like
Speaker 1: in the next thirty fifty years, because in the last
Speaker 1: twenty or thirty fifty years then we didn't have these
Speaker 1: kinds of conversations. And so I'm excited about that. That's
Speaker 1: a little nerve wracking too, to think about the pressures,
Speaker 1: there's no doubt, but it's it's fun and it's exciting,
Speaker 1: and it's a positive that we're all kind of grappling
Speaker 1: with this. Yeah, and I think you said it right.
Speaker 1: It's a conversation, right, I saw. I so often get
Speaker 1: people that will say, like, you didn't debate that guy
Speaker 1: hard enough for you didn't. Well, we talked about a
Speaker 1: lot of contentious issues on the show, and I purposefully,
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, I'm insane. Like if I see something
Speaker 1: I think it's fraught with you know, entanglements and some
Speaker 1: perils of our modern ways of thinking, I run towards
Speaker 1: it and try to figure it out. That puts me
Speaker 1: in a lot of crappy situations. But I think it
Speaker 1: also elevates that we can have these conversations. We can have,
Speaker 1: you know, we can take an issue that we didn't
Speaker 1: my like my dad's generation didn't think about or didn't
Speaker 1: vocalize if they were thinking about it, um, and have
Speaker 1: that outright and and say this, you know, baiting or
Speaker 1: you know whatever. You could just pick any of any
Speaker 1: many subjects. Um, let's say we can have this conversation.
Speaker 1: And it's the fact that we have the conversation that
Speaker 1: will help us get down the road in ten, fifteen,
Speaker 1: twenty years just to a comfortable place. If we ever
Speaker 1: get there. But it's the openness that and especially now
Speaker 1: as so much emphasis is going towards our three and
Speaker 1: bringing on new hunters and new kinds of hunters, which
Speaker 1: I fully support, and that's fabulous and I'm and I'm
Speaker 1: thrilled to see some success in that. But you know,
Speaker 1: we exist within this ecosystem of heritage in history, and
Speaker 1: you and I can think about sporting ethics and it's
Speaker 1: just sort of second nature, right. We think about not crossing,
Speaker 1: and this is an ethical thing, but not crossing offense
Speaker 1: with a gun in your hand. You know, we don't
Speaker 1: even never occurs to us to deal with those kinds
Speaker 1: of issues. You know, when you and I were coming up,
Speaker 1: I mean I remember that the little cartoons of the
Speaker 1: Ten Commandments of guns very yeah, you know, I remember
Speaker 1: black and white ILOs and the first one was, you know,
Speaker 1: was muzzle control. Don't point your gun at anything you
Speaker 1: don't intend to shoot. Right. Well, I want to sound
Speaker 1: like kids today, but kids today are raised from the
Speaker 1: age of insanely young to point a gun and shoot
Speaker 1: at the TV screen at the video games. I'm not
Speaker 1: to go down that route, but but I'm fully convinced
Speaker 1: that we're seeing that ramifications. Now we're bringing in these
Speaker 1: new hunters and we need them, we want them, but
Speaker 1: they don't have a little bit of a d n
Speaker 1: A of what it means ethically and responsibility um to
Speaker 1: be a part of this tribe. Yeah, and there's like
Speaker 1: a I always think about it. I've been thinking lately
Speaker 1: about baselines, Like where when I came into hunting, what
Speaker 1: was the baseline of expectation for me or for anyone
Speaker 1: around me? Like how we set that baseline? How do
Speaker 1: we shift it? Move it up? I mean, we'd like
Speaker 1: to always be moving forward, but that baseline is safer
Speaker 1: and more responsible and more ethical, more thoughtful, more intelligent,
Speaker 1: all the all the things you'd want to be as
Speaker 1: a human or a hunter or whatever. But I think
Speaker 1: about the baseline of or say, kind of at the
Speaker 1: peak of growth of hunting, where we were, where our
Speaker 1: baseline for what's acceptament? And then where we are now
Speaker 1: and where we might be when my son is is
Speaker 1: twenty five or you know, in twenty some years, when
Speaker 1: he's that's where he is. So I wonder about that
Speaker 1: baseline where how do you how have you seen it change?
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's a certainly always changing. It's just
Speaker 1: a perspective thing. But there there is a perceived baseline there.
Speaker 1: I mean I think there is a perceived baseline. I
Speaker 1: think it was it was just sort of the coin
Speaker 1: of the realm when we were growing up. You know,
Speaker 1: if you hunted, if you fished, you were handed down
Speaker 1: these traditions, and so there was a bit of an
Speaker 1: indoctrination process from your elders. Right. So so the challenge
Speaker 1: that we face today, and the opportunity as well, is
Speaker 1: when that in doctor nation phase is taken out of equation,
Speaker 1: you know, what do we do? You know, I see
Speaker 1: this at our hunting club down east, right. So my
Speaker 1: son is just getting ready to turn twenty. So when
Speaker 1: we joined that club, there were probably four or five
Speaker 1: members there, parents and kids, and they came into hunting.
Speaker 1: The dads had never hunted in their life. I never
Speaker 1: thought they would hunt, could have cared less about learning
Speaker 1: how to hunt, but their sons wanted it so badly
Speaker 1: that what that how what happened is is they were
Speaker 1: willing to learn to help their son reach their passion
Speaker 1: or their or their daughter reach their passion. And so
Speaker 1: what we're seeing is younger generations reaching up and pulling
Speaker 1: older generations into our tradition. It's a d eighty degree
Speaker 1: flip from what you and I saw. And so that's
Speaker 1: an enormous opportunity and I think it's a fleeting opportunity
Speaker 1: and one who really need to take advantage of right now.
Speaker 1: But it also is the challenge of when we've got now,
Speaker 1: we've got young hunters and old hunters, and neither one
Speaker 1: of them really understand, right they don't really understand through
Speaker 1: no fault to their own with the North American model
Speaker 1: of wildlife conservation is they shared it and grow up,
Speaker 1: you know, looking at the Ten Commandments of gun safety cartoons, um,
Speaker 1: the block of fur fishing game magazine. So that's that's
Speaker 1: the plate we have set in front of us, right
Speaker 1: And I think that's why when we talk about making
Speaker 1: sure we've we've thought through and presented all the perspectives east, west, north, whatever,
Speaker 1: that's important because people are gonna Hunting is such a
Speaker 1: culturally varied thing that we do. It's impossible to line
Speaker 1: it up for somebody say this is what it is,
Speaker 1: because they're always going to run into something they didn't
Speaker 1: that was outside their pur view when they learned whether
Speaker 1: they're forty five when they learned, or their ten when
Speaker 1: they learned, They're always going to run into something. And
Speaker 1: that's why you know, we're gonna um do a little
Speaker 1: talk later on for the b h A group here
Speaker 1: and Raleigh, and a lot of it will be about that,
Speaker 1: Like we're there is no way that you can go
Speaker 1: hunting and not be faced with some sort of like
Speaker 1: internal crisis. Yeah, whether there's someone with you or you're
Speaker 1: by yourself, whatever, you get to make a decision of
Speaker 1: do I do this thing or not? And it's got
Speaker 1: fairly grave circule stances attached to it. And a lot
Speaker 1: of those decisions are being made a bit in a
Speaker 1: vacuum right now, or maybe they weren't um in earlier
Speaker 1: generations where there was just sort of the more more
Speaker 1: context I guess, um. But again, I'm just I am
Speaker 1: stoked that these kinds of conversation is the one you
Speaker 1: and I are having right now, when we're gonna have
Speaker 1: later um at this at this ethics forum. They're they're
Speaker 1: just they're taking place more and more often. But I'd
Speaker 1: like to I'd like to see within the industry and
Speaker 1: effort to to to reach out to some of the
Speaker 1: two clubs organizations and and help them understand why we
Speaker 1: don't want to necessarily codify sporting ethics for everyone. This
Speaker 1: is a This is a conversation that needs to take place,
Speaker 1: and needs to take place more than you know, the
Speaker 1: few minutes you're gonna get in a hunter education course. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's it. And just to frame it up for
Speaker 1: folks somehow, like at least try to set it up
Speaker 1: in a way that like, here is how you can
Speaker 1: make your decisions if you're wondering maybe a good way
Speaker 1: to get from from Oh I have a bow in
Speaker 1: my hand. Oh there's a deer too. I'm sending an arrow.
Speaker 1: Like how do you get you know, from A to
Speaker 1: B two B to see it on on down the road?
Speaker 1: Like I never had that. I made a lot of
Speaker 1: crappy decisions because I didn't never have it. So if
Speaker 1: we could somehow provide it the folks, I think that
Speaker 1: would be you know, beneficial. But how do we do it?
Speaker 1: What's the way to do it? Well? I mean, I
Speaker 1: think it comes from strong mentors, you know, in folks
Speaker 1: stepping up and stepping out. Um, but it's tough. It's
Speaker 1: tough to look at your buddy and go, really, yeah,
Speaker 1: fifty yards shot two or fifty yards shot? Hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy five yards shot and it's the only shot you're
Speaker 1: gonna take all year long with a rifle. You getting
Speaker 1: picked up from last year? What are you thinking? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're that's so, that's a hundred percent. I had We
Speaker 1: had a guy come up at BJ and say, my buddies,
Speaker 1: I'm hunting with my buddy. He's a bit of a like,
Speaker 1: he just wants to he's doing it for the Graham
Speaker 1: and he is. I'm uncomfortab hunting with him just because
Speaker 1: of the way that I see that he acts and
Speaker 1: kind of the results of his actions. And my first
Speaker 1: reaction is like, well then just just don't go with
Speaker 1: him anymore. Um, he said, wasn't my best friend? I said, well,
Speaker 1: you're in the you're one of the only folks in
Speaker 1: a situation to set this ship straight. But it ain't
Speaker 1: gonna be comfortable at all. Um, but you're one of
Speaker 1: the only folks I could probably go through like you're
Speaker 1: one of my best friends and you're acting like this
Speaker 1: isn't the way to go. Um, that's tough, man. Nobody
Speaker 1: wants to nanny another fun or and I don't want
Speaker 1: to if everybody came up to me and said, hey,
Speaker 1: we're like, get peace, get out of here. Man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have a podcast, you know, many people. There's only
Speaker 1: a thousand of us standing in this room of a
Speaker 1: thousand people. But it's tough, you know. I don't hesitate
Speaker 1: ever to tell someone when they've pointed their gun muzzle
Speaker 1: at me. Hunt right, I've made that decision long ago.
Speaker 1: Just say hey, you know, I just want you to
Speaker 1: know what you did. And let's you know, because I'm
Speaker 1: I'm sure I've done it, done it to others, and
Speaker 1: I want people to point it out to me. Although
Speaker 1: I try to think that I'm always aware of moz,
Speaker 1: so it's it's not a far step to go to
Speaker 1: the next level and go, okay, when I see behaviors that,
Speaker 1: let's don't say they're questionable. Let's let's certainly don't say
Speaker 1: they're wrong, but they demand thoughtful reflection. How do you
Speaker 1: how do you approach that? You know that the hunters
Speaker 1: who who I mean? And I hear it all the time.
Speaker 1: Oh it's two d yards shy. I just thought give
Speaker 1: it a crack, you know, and I missed, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a much higher chance that you actually wounded that
Speaker 1: dear than you ever missed that dear, and so thinking
Speaker 1: of it in those terms may help. But it is
Speaker 1: tough to wag that finger and go, we need to
Speaker 1: do it my way, right, That's what we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about tonight. But it is a tough sea. It's tough.
Speaker 1: I you know, I get I think I personally get
Speaker 1: it a lot or people. So how who are you
Speaker 1: to talk about that? I said, I'm no, I'm nobody.
Speaker 1: I literally am nobody. But I would I would like
Speaker 1: to think that that just by bringing it up and
Speaker 1: allowing you the opportunity to disagree with me on these things,
Speaker 1: that we're starting some some sort of new dialogue as
Speaker 1: to how we get to the endpoint Like who am I?
Speaker 1: I'm I'm just the guy bringing it up. You know,
Speaker 1: hopefully more folks want to continue to bring it up
Speaker 1: in their circles. But I think to your point, if
Speaker 1: you're the guy in the group that is kind of
Speaker 1: the arbiter of some of these situations and you're seeing
Speaker 1: and respected as that, you then internalize that and become
Speaker 1: more ethically yourself. I feel like you have to. You're
Speaker 1: thinking of well, if I'm going to be the guy
Speaker 1: who's saying watch your muzzle, I better damn well watch
Speaker 1: my muzzle. Um, and I'm in the woods, so I
Speaker 1: think it. There's there's a kind of a dual effect
Speaker 1: to having that position. And this is a bit of
Speaker 1: a modern construct as well, because we're all hesitant to
Speaker 1: hurt anyone's feelings and to be considered. You know, they
Speaker 1: know it all, you know, back in the day, you know,
Speaker 1: the deer camps of your you know, old old old
Speaker 1: Ben didn't mind a bit busting your chops if if,
Speaker 1: if you did something that that was untoward. And so
Speaker 1: maybe there's a little bit of that as well. But
Speaker 1: it's a matter of framing this in a modern way,
Speaker 1: like we're all we all understand through social media and
Speaker 1: everything else, that hunting is under a brighter spotlight, and
Speaker 1: so it's on its incumbents on all of us, you me,
Speaker 1: as experienced as we are, to look at how we
Speaker 1: approached this and some of the decisions we've made and
Speaker 1: just ask ourselves, is there a way to improve, Is
Speaker 1: there a way to is there a way to have
Speaker 1: a more thoughtful approach to hunting and fishing? Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: I mean I had high situation turkey hunting here not
Speaker 1: long ago, where I had a brain new shotgun that
Speaker 1: was came from weather Be Incorporated. That's a sponsor alert.
Speaker 1: That's uh, the new A ten I that's that they
Speaker 1: gave me to use as a fantastic shotgun. These just
Speaker 1: pull a star. That's industry talk, guys before we get
Speaker 1: free stuff. Um well, I had it and I just
Speaker 1: didn't take the time to put a sling on it.
Speaker 1: And then as I'm walking around with another person in
Speaker 1: the woods, I realized without a sling, there's all these
Speaker 1: other ways to hold a shotgun that that caused a
Speaker 1: lot of muzzle control issues. And as I'm walking around
Speaker 1: with it in my hand, just holding a kind of
Speaker 1: horizontal to the comparallel to the ground. As I'm walking,
Speaker 1: I realized, somebody walks in front of me, I'm immediately
Speaker 1: doing that. So if I hold it against my shoulder,
Speaker 1: if somebody's behind me to the left, especially if you're
Speaker 1: in you know, out in the west where people are
Speaker 1: different elevations, you're walking nick kind of whether you're hunting partners.
Speaker 1: So I realized, like, hey, if I had a sling,
Speaker 1: I kind of know this thing stable. I know where
Speaker 1: the barrel is pointed. So sometimes I just realized walking
Speaker 1: around I was still, you know what, I feel safe
Speaker 1: with my muzzle. But I just feel like, oh, that's
Speaker 1: one little step that I can do to make sure
Speaker 1: that I don't have eight different ways to carry this
Speaker 1: shotgun that are comfortable on long totes. So you know.
Speaker 1: And actually, in the last hunt I did this year,
Speaker 1: I just carried I don't even load it. I just
Speaker 1: carried it with the action open because I'm like, it's
Speaker 1: just there's too many variables here. I'm just not gonna
Speaker 1: do it. Um. And truthfully, these are these are almost
Speaker 1: the easy questions, right, I mean they're they're the ones
Speaker 1: that are fraggt because we're talking about guns safe to hear.
Speaker 1: But when we move into the real ethical conundrums of
Speaker 1: of the aesthetics of the hunt versus the ethics of
Speaker 1: the hunt, um, it's it's thorny, stoney ground, Yeah it is.
Speaker 1: And it's I'm I've been inheartened by people's people listen
Speaker 1: to this thing. Every week. I often bring up some
Speaker 1: of the same issues with different people, and that's I
Speaker 1: think that's the idea is to collect perspectives from around
Speaker 1: the country of people that are various expertises and skill
Speaker 1: levels of of what it really means to them, Like
Speaker 1: what what is this to to someone sitting in North
Speaker 1: Carolina as opposed to someone sitting in Texas as opposed
Speaker 1: to I Mean, there's such a tapestry of perspective that
Speaker 1: you can go pick from. And if you can really
Speaker 1: understand that that you and I go hunting, there might
Speaker 1: be some things that I do, do you think are unsafe?
Speaker 1: Have been doing my whole life, and they're they're folks
Speaker 1: out west that just that's just what you do. Um,
Speaker 1: So it's good to just have that in your mind
Speaker 1: and just try to try to judge a situation rather
Speaker 1: than just you know, always bring your own perspectives to it.
Speaker 1: That certainly helped me. And even like I said, even
Speaker 1: this year, I've I just realized a few things are like, Okay,
Speaker 1: each year I'm gonna learn something, hopefully learn many things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we can't approach this thinking that we got it all
Speaker 1: all figured out. I Mean, every new technology brings another
Speaker 1: ethical quandary, and that's like there's never there's never been
Speaker 1: a time we're like we've been able to hunt. It's
Speaker 1: it's never been undisturbed, it's never been unmoved or always
Speaker 1: moving it well, and it seems like we're always moving
Speaker 1: it forward. Some of us like to move it back
Speaker 1: when we take a recurve bell or a self boll out,
Speaker 1: we were trying to move it back to where it was.
Speaker 1: But that baseline is always shifting around always technology does
Speaker 1: it are in personal feelings towards what we're doing to it.
Speaker 1: That's we're all it's always moving, it's moving underneath us
Speaker 1: as we go. Um. And that's something that I've I've
Speaker 1: certainly come to know and learn. It's like it's if
Speaker 1: you if you think it's all like you're you're going
Speaker 1: to be the center point of the activity, you're wrong
Speaker 1: and you're always going to be either moving with it
Speaker 1: or against it. Yeah, and what the it is is important, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, I do think in this this modern period
Speaker 1: where there's so much emphasis on of self actualization and
Speaker 1: you're doing the right thing for you and don't worry
Speaker 1: about if it's the right thing for anyone else, and
Speaker 1: I think I think some of that can creep into
Speaker 1: sporting ethics as well. That I'm making this decision because
Speaker 1: it's right for me at this particular point in time,
Speaker 1: and none of these externalities really entering the equation. Well,
Speaker 1: I applaud that sort of individualistic streak. You know, the
Speaker 1: heritage of sporting ethics does not. There's not in when
Speaker 1: you look at Aldo Leopold's writing, and some of his
Speaker 1: quotes are are the ones that are that are used
Speaker 1: to sort of underscore this notion of you now you
Speaker 1: are alone, your behavior when you are alone? Is is
Speaker 1: that the defining aspect of sporting ethics? But but in
Speaker 1: his later writings he went on to really sort of
Speaker 1: evolve that perspective that that ethics only exist in a
Speaker 1: in a community of other perspectives. Um and I think
Speaker 1: I think we're definitely seeing that these days and the
Speaker 1: ramifications of that in our in our passion right there
Speaker 1: only wordy when compared to one another, like it's it's
Speaker 1: this thing I'm doing is okay for me, and you're
Speaker 1: doing it over here, and there's a hundred other people
Speaker 1: that are appalled by it. Like that's only that comparison
Speaker 1: is important, right, It's important for all of us to understand,
Speaker 1: you know. That's that's where he gets sticky at at
Speaker 1: somebody email me email in the other day about you know,
Speaker 1: is the discussion that I've been having muddying the waters?
Speaker 1: Like is this the presentation of is it legal or illegal? Well,
Speaker 1: if it's if it's legal, it's a different conversation. If
Speaker 1: it's made have been made to be illegal, you just
Speaker 1: don't do it. That's how this works. We've kind of
Speaker 1: we have a social contract that says, right, we've construct
Speaker 1: a way to act that the illegal is by default
Speaker 1: un ethical now and then and that's where it's like, well,
Speaker 1: that's muddy in the waters. That's not always true. As
Speaker 1: look this this we've already we've already admitted this conversation
Speaker 1: to be almost impossibly entangled. Let's not let's not entangle
Speaker 1: it further by. We're looking at state by state laws
Speaker 1: and seeing if if we feel in the modern sense,
Speaker 1: they're ethical. We we just let's I understand that that
Speaker 1: is a reality. Let's leave it off the table for now.
Speaker 1: So there's just there's you know, folks that would want
Speaker 1: to work on the edges. But there's so much like
Speaker 1: this conversation that's kind of like right down the middle,
Speaker 1: like what the hell are you doing? How are people
Speaker 1: reacting to it, and at the end of the day
Speaker 1: you feel comfortable with what you've done. You know, and
Speaker 1: and feel feel that it's good and right, and a
Speaker 1: lot of the stuff, Like I tell my kids, you know,
Speaker 1: if you if you do a decent job of bringing
Speaker 1: up your children, they get to the age to where
Speaker 1: the discussion isn't what was the right way to behave
Speaker 1: and what was the wrong way to behave? I mean
Speaker 1: we at some point the discussion is what did you choose?
Speaker 1: Which road did you go down? And why? You know,
Speaker 1: a lot of these things, even with the hunting, I
Speaker 1: think if people understood the broader context, a lot of
Speaker 1: these real sticky issues. You know, it's shooting at long ranges,
Speaker 1: which is which is not an issue at all if
Speaker 1: you have the skills to do it. Um. But a
Speaker 1: lot of these things will sort of go by the
Speaker 1: waist or we'll we'll handle them, um in a meaningful
Speaker 1: way with a little bit more discussion and understanding UM.
Speaker 1: Because you know, most of the time, when you're an adult,
Speaker 1: it's not a matter of knowing what's right and wrong right,
Speaker 1: it's it's having the guts and gumption to choose the
Speaker 1: right thing when you really, really, really I want to
Speaker 1: shoot that bucket fo Yeah, and then when it becomes
Speaker 1: something different than what it really is, it's just a
Speaker 1: living breathing thing that you intend to like. It's a
Speaker 1: really it's we we talked about it in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways. It's a resource, it's this, it's that, But
Speaker 1: it's really when it comes down to, it's a living
Speaker 1: breathing being standing across from you somewhere. And I know
Speaker 1: you agree with me on this. You know, I don't harvest.
Speaker 1: I mean, I kill animals, you know, I think there's
Speaker 1: a level of honesty. And you've talked about this. We
Speaker 1: don't need necessarily go down that road, but I do
Speaker 1: think that helps us understand the sort of level of responsibility. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think if we can get to We've had
Speaker 1: I've had a lot of these same conversations around women
Speaker 1: and hunting, around you know, how we speak about how
Speaker 1: what we call ourselves sportsmen's sports, women's sports, people, Like,
Speaker 1: a lot of people are all spun up on this
Speaker 1: right now, what we call ourselves, you know, what's the
Speaker 1: proper name to call our community? Um, it's all I
Speaker 1: think it's a good point to say, it's all about
Speaker 1: kind of getting to what what's really I think the
Speaker 1: greatest society expects us to be honest with them, but
Speaker 1: what we're doing and I and we you and I
Speaker 1: both know like say, not to be labor, but that
Speaker 1: the harvest thing came from a re like I'm a
Speaker 1: remark kidding of what we're doing, not you know, not
Speaker 1: a real sense of being truly honest with what what
Speaker 1: we're pursuing. And so I say, let's move this conversation
Speaker 1: as a as an industry into helping people understand why
Speaker 1: we do this and what we're doing so we can
Speaker 1: be honest and say we're taking a life to give life.
Speaker 1: And this is why, Um, I've never have you ever
Speaker 1: had you know, I've become the the guy at the
Speaker 1: dinner party that if there's a vegan there, they set
Speaker 1: him by me, or like you know, I'm always hey,
Speaker 1: this guy's a hunter, tell him why, you know, to
Speaker 1: become the that guy, And um, I don't mind it.
Speaker 1: I like it. But at you know, at some level,
Speaker 1: that's that's where we are, Like we have all of
Speaker 1: us have the opportunity to some of us more than others,
Speaker 1: you know, tell that story and and it seem like
Speaker 1: mental masturbation to be having these conversations over and over
Speaker 1: and over again. But each time you do it, you
Speaker 1: just like sharpening a knife. Like when someone asked you
Speaker 1: a very tough but obvious question, you should you should
Speaker 1: have a very simple answer for it. You know, why
Speaker 1: do you kill things? O? Um, eating him? But why
Speaker 1: do you go off for ten days? And like why
Speaker 1: are you so that there's this like cascade of questions
Speaker 1: that someone who doesn't understand what you're doing could ask,
Speaker 1: could answer you or ask you. And I think your
Speaker 1: answers inform how much you've really thought about it. I
Speaker 1: think a lot of us, me included, for a lot
Speaker 1: of years, didn't really think about it all that much
Speaker 1: and weren't ever asked to think about it all that
Speaker 1: much because for a lot of us, it was just
Speaker 1: what a lot of other people did. There. We're raising
Speaker 1: kids in the city. So we're here in Raleigh, UM,
Speaker 1: a pretty big city. Yeah, we should set it up.
Speaker 1: You have a son and a daughter, uh, Jack and Markey.
Speaker 1: My son is about it turned twenty. My daughter Marky Man,
Speaker 1: I'm going to get this right. She's twenty. She's about
Speaker 1: to turn twenty three. Um, all of them here in
Speaker 1: the next in the next month, Yeah, and so and
Speaker 1: and Markey is not hunt and Jack is like deep
Speaker 1: in hunting and fishing. Jack is deep in hunting and fishing.
Speaker 1: Marky does not hunt. I took market hunting plenty when
Speaker 1: she was young. Um, and I've written about this. And
Speaker 1: she was totally enamored of the hole in the tree
Speaker 1: stand and watching. But you know she was gonna be
Speaker 1: watching at Bobcat hanging out on the log right. Um.
Speaker 1: And so it became pretty clear fairly early that hunting
Speaker 1: and fishing weren't her things. But since my whole family
Speaker 1: we camped and we backpacked and them and you can
Speaker 1: see him, it was just this whole environment is what
Speaker 1: they what they grew up in. She and I had
Speaker 1: this whole other life as a journalist, a sort of. Um.
Speaker 1: I'm a contribute editor for Audubon Magazine, and I've done
Speaker 1: a lot of work in Central America. For some reason,
Speaker 1: although I speak zero Spanish, for seven or eight years,
Speaker 1: I had a lot of work, uh in Central America
Speaker 1: for Audubon magazine. And so, whereas Jack was always going
Speaker 1: hunting and fishing with me, I hauled Marquis to the
Speaker 1: most god awful places in Costa Rica and Honduras and
Speaker 1: even north into northern Quebec and so and I firmly
Speaker 1: believed that she was able to enjoy that and appreciate
Speaker 1: that and make that a part of her life because
Speaker 1: she grew up sort of with the rigors of camping
Speaker 1: and with with with getting up early and going hunting.
Speaker 1: And I remember one of the few times when as parents,
Speaker 1: Julie and I would look at ourselves and we'd say
Speaker 1: we did a good thing was we were picking to
Speaker 1: go somewhere. I can't even remember where it was. Um,
Speaker 1: and Mark was upstairs. She was a little she was
Speaker 1: a little little slip of girl, and she hollered down
Speaker 1: from upstairs, Mommy, am I gonna pepee inside or outside?
Speaker 1: That's all she needed to know to pick. She could
Speaker 1: sleep in a tent, she could sleep in a hotel room. Um.
Speaker 1: They were like, yes, we did something right. Um. It
Speaker 1: wasn't long after that that Jack Hollard down asking if
Speaker 1: he could take his hatchet to Sunday school. And that
Speaker 1: was one of the times we worked at each other
Speaker 1: thought and we still we still got a little work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's I grew up in a house like that.
Speaker 1: My brother never never got into hunting, and I did,
Speaker 1: of course, And you know, you you look back at
Speaker 1: that and him and I an you know, kind of
Speaker 1: the same guy, and just except for that, it's it's hilarious,
Speaker 1: kind of hilariously similar things we're interested in. And just
Speaker 1: like the diverged it that I would guess that it's
Speaker 1: just he by the time my dad really took me
Speaker 1: when I was twelve or thirteen, But by the time
Speaker 1: my brother would have got into it as well, he
Speaker 1: was into other of things. This is like just never
Speaker 1: happened for him. If we could, if if we could
Speaker 1: go back in time, knowing what I know now, I'd
Speaker 1: be like, hey, man, you really need to come along,
Speaker 1: like you really need to be a part of this,
Speaker 1: because you're gonna be You're missing something. But at that time,
Speaker 1: it was just I did this and he did. He
Speaker 1: did sports and girls and I did hunting and girls.
Speaker 1: When I can get to it, that that's what it was. You.
Speaker 1: So you don't really know those things the verge, don't.
Speaker 1: You don't know. And you know, doing what I do
Speaker 1: for a living, you know, A hunted and fished just
Speaker 1: a lot, you know, and and I would hunt and
Speaker 1: fish for work, and I'd come home after an assignment,
Speaker 1: well that was work. I was ready to go hunting
Speaker 1: and fishing. Thankfully, I I'm married someone who understood you
Speaker 1: understood that. Um. But some of the best advice that Julie,
Speaker 1: my wife, ever gave me, and she had to give
Speaker 1: it to me a lot over the years, was to
Speaker 1: meet these kids where they were. You know, we want
Speaker 1: them to experience the world that we love, but but
Speaker 1: not everybody's wired for it. Um and And with Jack
Speaker 1: and I made some big mistakes with Jack early on
Speaker 1: hunting and fishing, no no question about it. Almost lost
Speaker 1: him to hunting early on. UM with but with Marquis,
Speaker 1: you know, what was important was getting her outside and
Speaker 1: having that father daughter relationship that even now is pretty rare,
Speaker 1: I think. And the fact that we ended up traveling
Speaker 1: so much together just her and I over the years
Speaker 1: has paid enormous enormous benefits UM in terms of our
Speaker 1: level of communication and our relationship. But but it was
Speaker 1: always I was always trying to get them to the
Speaker 1: next level of whatever I want to do, you know,
Speaker 1: and you gotta meet him where they are, to meet
Speaker 1: him where they are. Yeah, my son currently would be
Speaker 1: like dinosaurs, gonna meet him at dinosaurs, which we do.
Speaker 1: We do a lot, We do a lot of dinosaurs.
Speaker 1: But yeah, and I think that's good, great advice. Do
Speaker 1: you feel, and your kids are pretty close in asel,
Speaker 1: I say, three three years, do you feel that there
Speaker 1: was ever a time where you realize that they were
Speaker 1: that different that you you know that you had to
Speaker 1: handle one one way? I mean, you've kind of alluded
Speaker 1: to it, but do you remember making a conscious choice
Speaker 1: to kind of foster one's hunting and one's, uh more
Speaker 1: just love of out being outside. Yeah. I had my
Speaker 1: daughter and I had this thing called Daddy Daughter Deer
Speaker 1: Camp where we would go slum it up in a
Speaker 1: little mom and pop motel and and deer hunt at
Speaker 1: the at the least that I had was about it
Speaker 1: was about an hour away. It didn't have a honey
Speaker 1: camp on it, so we stayed at this little hotel.
Speaker 1: And I remember one day they were they were harvesting
Speaker 1: sweet potatoes in the field, and she was totally enamored
Speaker 1: of the whole process, and we must have come back
Speaker 1: with eighty pounds of sweet potatoes and never even I
Speaker 1: don't even think we hunted that morning, and I talked
Speaker 1: to her about this and said, you, Margie, you you're
Speaker 1: a whole lot more interested in hanging around, you know,
Speaker 1: with the with the potato farmers than you were and
Speaker 1: being in a tree stand. And and she started to
Speaker 1: help me realize that it just it just wasn't it
Speaker 1: just wasn't there. But but I was already doing so
Speaker 1: much hunting with Jack that I recognized, you know, I
Speaker 1: recognized that I needed to be proactive with my daughter.
Speaker 1: So that's when I started. Every every year since she
Speaker 1: was a little girl, she and I have traveled somewhere,
Speaker 1: just the two of us for four or five, six, seven,
Speaker 1: eight days, and that's that's that's been our thing. And
Speaker 1: so that's that's important. But I do remember with Jack,
Speaker 1: you know, I took him deer hunting when he was little,
Speaker 1: too little, for too long, you know, when deer hunting
Speaker 1: with a year old boring one night cold here was boring.
Speaker 1: It's just an exercise, and you know, sit down, don't move,
Speaker 1: shut up, don't scratch, don't don't don't don't don't, you know,
Speaker 1: And he didn't want to disappoint me. And I didn't
Speaker 1: learn about this until several years after all this, and
Speaker 1: he he just he got to where he just couldn't
Speaker 1: stand to go. But he wouldn't. He was not going
Speaker 1: to tell me no. So I took him duck hunting
Speaker 1: one time, and Ben, I remember, we were standing in
Speaker 1: the swamp and I looked over and he was doing this.
Speaker 1: He was moving his index finger almost imperceptibly to scratch
Speaker 1: his nose because he knew if he moved it fast,
Speaker 1: I'd be on him like I wasn't at tree stand right,
Speaker 1: And I said, you know, Jack, when you're duck hunting,
Speaker 1: you can scratch your chit chat, eat, eat a granola bar.
Speaker 1: And honestly, I just I saw the wait just lift
Speaker 1: off his shoulders, you know. And so when years to come,
Speaker 1: I have to say, you know, Jack, just because you
Speaker 1: can talk in a duck blind doesn't mean you have
Speaker 1: to always talk in a dug line. But ever since then,
Speaker 1: it was feathers for him. You know, he's still good
Speaker 1: deer hunting, and he's he may come back to it.
Speaker 1: He started to he started to make some noise about
Speaker 1: coming back to it. But from then on it was
Speaker 1: birds and shotguns and shooting. You like to shoot. Squirrels
Speaker 1: were good too, but yeah, you've got to figure out,
Speaker 1: you know what trips the trigger. That's good insight too.
Speaker 1: It's like you you wonder if it's the chicken or
Speaker 1: the egg? Are you are you out there doing things
Speaker 1: to find it? Or you know, is the is the
Speaker 1: opposite true? You know? How do you know it's Is
Speaker 1: it always there and you're just trying to get out
Speaker 1: of get everything else out of the way to get
Speaker 1: get it. I wonder that about I haven't, I guess
Speaker 1: a generalist mentality. I just love doing it all. I don't.
Speaker 1: I haven't found any one thing. I could probably rank them. Um,
Speaker 1: turkey hunting currently is like the thing, but I wouldn't
Speaker 1: if you suddenly said, hey, I gotta here's a duck
Speaker 1: boat and a bunch of decoys and somebody to teach
Speaker 1: you how to call like a champion. Be just as
Speaker 1: into that as anything else. So I've always I feel
Speaker 1: like I'm lucky that way. But there's some people that
Speaker 1: are just you know, doing that chicken or the egg dance,
Speaker 1: you know. And I figured out early enough that what
Speaker 1: I wanted them to leave the woods with was the
Speaker 1: feeling that God, that was amazing, that was so much fun.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to go back. And if that meant
Speaker 1: the squirrel hunt was over in three minutes after a
Speaker 1: legal shooting light and we spent the rest of the
Speaker 1: morning shooting sickamore balls in the creek, then that's what
Speaker 1: it meant. Um. But yeah, you know, I minute doing
Speaker 1: what I do. I'm I'm terribly goal oriented, and that's
Speaker 1: a terrible way to bring up kids. I'm I'm super
Speaker 1: thankful that I learned that earlier. I'm super thankful I
Speaker 1: had a wife that helped me learned that. One thing
Speaker 1: I I learned from well I learned it from multiple people,
Speaker 1: but I learned from my dad's. Like he my dad
Speaker 1: wasn't really let's say, like you know, gear oriented. You know,
Speaker 1: he had a lot of I mean, he is a
Speaker 1: guy that kind of knew the natural world ends and out, birds, trees, whatever, um,
Speaker 1: but just you know, didn't really ever change his oil.
Speaker 1: But I had a neighbor who was kind of a
Speaker 1: little bit the opposite, didn't really know, you know, I
Speaker 1: didn't know trees, birds, whatever. He was. He was all
Speaker 1: kind of you know, get your hands dirty. So I
Speaker 1: had my dad very much let me go with him
Speaker 1: to go change my oil. To do certain certain things.
Speaker 1: I think my dad recognized like what he could bring,
Speaker 1: and I think I remember later on, I'll tell his
Speaker 1: story just to make my parents proud. I gotta Early
Speaker 1: on in my driving career, I got what they call
Speaker 1: it like h d y kind of thing. It wasn't
Speaker 1: even to do. I think it was just had a
Speaker 1: beer in the car and I wasn't old enough to
Speaker 1: have one. So I had to go to a class
Speaker 1: and would like so I didn't get in trouble, one
Speaker 1: of those like scared straight type class. And so I
Speaker 1: went there and my dad was said with me. They
Speaker 1: were interviewing me about kind of like my influences were
Speaker 1: good and bad. And I remember my dad saying, they saying,
Speaker 1: you know, other than your father, is there an influence
Speaker 1: positive influence in your life that you would call a mentor,
Speaker 1: Like yeah, man, Bill Miller's my neighbors. This is I
Speaker 1: remember like looking at my dad and then looking at
Speaker 1: me like, yeah, you understand that. You know this other
Speaker 1: influences is important? Did you gotta have that for your kids?
Speaker 1: Are like if you didn't, do you wish you did?
Speaker 1: Like how how did that go for them? With their life?
Speaker 1: Have other influenced other influences. Um, that's an interesting question
Speaker 1: because they didn't have a lot of other influences in
Speaker 1: terms of the outdoors. My father died when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, so they didn't really have that sort of grandfather, uncles, aunts,
Speaker 1: other family members. Um. So in terms of bringing them
Speaker 1: up with a with a love of the outdoors, it
Speaker 1: was it was Julie and I. I mean, because Julie
Speaker 1: loves the loves to camp, loves to hike. I used
Speaker 1: to love to backpack, um. And we were constantly taking
Speaker 1: the kids out. I mean that's what you know when
Speaker 1: you when you look at a family's budget, you can
Speaker 1: kind of figure out what they what they think is important. Right,
Speaker 1: how much of their mortgages going to their house payment,
Speaker 1: how much of it is going to their car payment.
Speaker 1: And we love to travel. That's where we spend our
Speaker 1: family money on, you know, and we were very intentional
Speaker 1: about that. Um. And so I think I think that
Speaker 1: probably had as much of an influence on then these others.
Speaker 1: I lament the fact that that my kids didn't have
Speaker 1: the older generation in front of them, and frankly, Julie
Speaker 1: and I probably overcompensated in ways because they because they
Speaker 1: didn't have that, but they they seem to have turned
Speaker 1: out okay. Right now, they're on the boat at Cape
Speaker 1: Lookout maybe maybe coming back. And I hadn't gotten a
Speaker 1: I hadn't got a note from the coach guard. The answer,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking we did something okay, but they're still there's
Speaker 1: still time for that to go south. Oh, we've been
Speaker 1: looking at it, like looking at I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's been intentional here lately, Ronnella and I and you're honestly,
Speaker 1: it was kind of triggered by Steve asking one one
Speaker 1: live podcast we did. Steve asked question like what did
Speaker 1: your dad teach you and hunting that you carry with you?
Speaker 1: And we all answered kind of I think, well like
Speaker 1: the pat answer, and we all had something because our
Speaker 1: dads are all very involved in our and our upbringing
Speaker 1: out doors. And then the next couple weeks later, we're
Speaker 1: at a show and he asked, what did your mom
Speaker 1: do all right? Somebody written in like, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: is that only the father here? Like a non hunch
Speaker 1: of right in, Like I don't understand why you never
Speaker 1: talked about any other influences or at least you focus
Speaker 1: so heavy on on that that the influences of your father,
Speaker 1: and we started to then answer, like, what did your
Speaker 1: mother they're doing All of us were kind of uh uh,
Speaker 1: and then we I could just see I was looking
Speaker 1: at the other guys up there, and I could see
Speaker 1: that like things were sparkling in their heads that they've
Speaker 1: never thought of before. And it was interesting to me
Speaker 1: to just kind of think about those influences. How, you know,
Speaker 1: how do you, either consciously or unconsciously, were shaped by them?
Speaker 1: You know? Yeah, my mother was the great enabler um
Speaker 1: since I didn't have a father that took me hunting
Speaker 1: and fishing, and she knew how absorbed I was in
Speaker 1: this world, even though I had no one in my
Speaker 1: family who hunted, no one in my life experience who hunted.
Speaker 1: I didn't know a hunter um. And when my dad died,
Speaker 1: I was thirteen, and even by the end, I mean,
Speaker 1: I subscribe to field and stream and outdoor life and
Speaker 1: fur fishing game and all that stuff. You know, I
Speaker 1: had a I had a pola pine straw in the
Speaker 1: backyard and a and a bow. You know. The kids
Speaker 1: going to football practice would holler out at me, nature boy,
Speaker 1: because I'd be back there shooting yeah, yeah, yeah, So
Speaker 1: I mean, honestly, Ben, I remember I remember driving to
Speaker 1: the mountains as a kid, and and I was laying
Speaker 1: down in the back of our en seventy three Pinto
Speaker 1: station wagon, of course, with no seatbelts, and and I
Speaker 1: saw out of the window a big field and a
Speaker 1: little speck of blaze orange in a tree, and it
Speaker 1: was a deer hunter. And I absolutely remember asking myself,
Speaker 1: would I ever get to go hunting? Was there was
Speaker 1: there any path in my life that would that would
Speaker 1: lead me to that? And and there wasn't. There wasn't
Speaker 1: until my father passed away and a friend at church
Speaker 1: did what we all tell each other we need to do.
Speaker 1: He took a kid hunting. And his great credit Keith,
Speaker 1: Keith Gleason, he didn't take a kid hunting, this kid
Speaker 1: hunting on Saturday and get me all hopped up and
Speaker 1: then walk out of my life. From the first time
Speaker 1: we went squirrel hunting in October of nineteen seventy four
Speaker 1: until I graduated from college, he took me. We went
Speaker 1: every Saturday of the season, and so it was one
Speaker 1: of those few times where you could point to a
Speaker 1: moment when your life just takes a dramatic, dramatic change.
Speaker 1: And so my mom, to speak to your question, she
Speaker 1: was the one who allowed me to do all the
Speaker 1: stuff that she was super uncomfortable with. You know. I mean,
Speaker 1: I was a snake freak like so many of us,
Speaker 1: you know, grew up on this creek, and I would
Speaker 1: She would let me hibernate my snakes and pillow cases,
Speaker 1: knotted pillowcases in the refrigerator's vegetable cristal. God, bless her soul,
Speaker 1: she would. She knew how badly I wanted this. And
Speaker 1: so I think even today, I think that's probably as
Speaker 1: much a part of my success, be that as it
Speaker 1: may as anything is. There's a lot of mornings when
Speaker 1: I wake up and I just I'm just amazed at
Speaker 1: what I'm doing. Um, And I want other people to
Speaker 1: realize that their love of hunting and fishing is you know,
Speaker 1: these sports are imperiled from outside forces, whether they're economic,
Speaker 1: or whether they're social, whether they're cultural. And if we
Speaker 1: don't figure out a way to address those challenges, this
Speaker 1: is this is gonna slip away when we talk about
Speaker 1: it as a community, I feel like and it's when
Speaker 1: you tell a story like that to me, it's it's
Speaker 1: sobering and it's a little bit emotional to think of.
Speaker 1: We always talk about our three and we like we've
Speaker 1: made up these the fancy little things, but like we
Speaker 1: really just talk about affecting someone's life, not just just
Speaker 1: the day that they're with you or And that's the
Speaker 1: reason I do what I do. I think because I've
Speaker 1: identified this in enriching thing like this, Oh, look at
Speaker 1: this thing no one really knows about. They don't really
Speaker 1: know about the way I know now about it, and
Speaker 1: it's shrinking. For fox sake, what that makes no sense
Speaker 1: to me? And so it's engendered in me this like
Speaker 1: one willingness to fight, but also one willingness to appreciate
Speaker 1: what that what's currently here, because it is shrinking and
Speaker 1: by any measure, you know, almost all measures. So it's
Speaker 1: just a it's a sobering thought that that you're a
Speaker 1: part of something that has been so enriching to your
Speaker 1: life and others lives, and people have given their time
Speaker 1: to kind of change your path and you can do
Speaker 1: that for other people. It's just like the spider web
Speaker 1: of experiences that we're all together in, but that that's
Speaker 1: closing in on us. A little bit and so. And
Speaker 1: I think part of the success and that is celebrating
Speaker 1: all of the different ways that we choose to involve
Speaker 1: ourselves in this in this passion of hunting. You know
Speaker 1: that that one is not better than the other, that
Speaker 1: one is not more elevated. That I mean coast coast
Speaker 1: to coast, north to south. Those those feelings at sunrise, Um,
Speaker 1: I think they're the same in a salt marsh as
Speaker 1: a rocky mountain ridge line. You know, the heart, the
Speaker 1: heart can only beat so fast and so deep, and
Speaker 1: those moments like that, we mix it out no matter
Speaker 1: where we're standing. Yeah, And I think that that's why
Speaker 1: we were drawn to these people that are able to
Speaker 1: codify the ideas and like you know, Aldo and and
Speaker 1: Teddy Roosevelt and and all these writers you know, and
Speaker 1: I would put even yourself and guys like Steve Rinella
Speaker 1: and all these other writers and people that are able
Speaker 1: to take these ideas that we share an articulating in
Speaker 1: such a way that one making relatable, but to make
Speaker 1: you realize that's how I'm feeling, Holy Ship, that's how
Speaker 1: I'm feeling. Yeah, yep, that's it. And then once you've
Speaker 1: shared that with someone and it's it's it's beyond measure,
Speaker 1: I feel like. And that's and as lucky as I
Speaker 1: feel to be a hunter, I feel equally blessed to
Speaker 1: write about hunting, because I mean, I do think that's
Speaker 1: been I hate the call that a stick, but I've
Speaker 1: done a lot of writing about, you know, the cultural
Speaker 1: response to hunting, that personal response, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: I I love to write stories that are just great
Speaker 1: stories of human character, and they happen to be told
Speaker 1: through the medium of the hunting and fishing. Um. But
Speaker 1: there's there's there's something about this pursuit that is is
Speaker 1: transcendent in a way that that other quote unquote sports
Speaker 1: I don't I don't think can be. And then again,
Speaker 1: I was a kid that the football players called niture
Speaker 1: boy and the buck. What do I did that? Well,
Speaker 1: if you would have kept that and trademarked it could
Speaker 1: have been a wrestler now. But I think that's it's true. Um.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of people you like the author
Speaker 1: Michael poland It wrote the book I'm Know Where's the
Speaker 1: Lemmter talked about it in his book. He said hunting
Speaker 1: is so incredibly different from the inside than it than
Speaker 1: it is from the outside. I mean, this is it's
Speaker 1: just this incredible core that no one gets to see
Speaker 1: because it's so hard to see it. I mean it's
Speaker 1: like a you know, it's it's it's almost invisible unless
Speaker 1: you're there doing it, you know, because it's there's so
Speaker 1: many ways to see it that don't seem productive. And
Speaker 1: you know, you imagine society and everyone that doesn't hunt
Speaker 1: is just asking the question is this good for all
Speaker 1: of us? Is this good for everything? It is this
Speaker 1: good for what society and the way we think about
Speaker 1: animals and our interaction and our motivations are we good?
Speaker 1: Is this good? And we're like, yeah, fucking really good.
Speaker 1: But it's hard. I mean we've struggled to articulate that.
Speaker 1: I feel like, you know, over time, huh is it good?
Speaker 1: We could say? Am I playing a role in it
Speaker 1: being good? You know? So that's sort of the question
Speaker 1: as well. I Mean, we don't want to saddle people
Speaker 1: with all this philosophical baggage. You know, you just want
Speaker 1: to go hunt, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 1: But that's I keep coming back to that because I've
Speaker 1: I've argued this a lot of people and sometimes I
Speaker 1: would step back from because I don't want to be
Speaker 1: that guy, right, the guy in the room going like,
Speaker 1: don't you guys want to think a little deeper. This
Speaker 1: is a douchey thing to say sometimes oftentimes, but I
Speaker 1: also want to say, like, in our little community here
Speaker 1: of people, if if you would tell me that half
Speaker 1: or more want to just go out and have fun,
Speaker 1: I would say, that's that's that's fine. Whatever number of
Speaker 1: us just feel that it's this is in their nature
Speaker 1: and they're gonna do it. They're gonna have a good
Speaker 1: time and that's what they get from it. I'm totally
Speaker 1: fine with that. I would argue that there needs to
Speaker 1: be a percentage of on the other side, that's that's
Speaker 1: answering these tough questions and having you know, sometimes these
Speaker 1: endless conversations around some of the more intricate parts of it.
Speaker 1: So when someone asks you have somebody to send them to,
Speaker 1: you know, and I think there's a that percentage of
Speaker 1: people or the or the ones that I think are
Speaker 1: the ones that are almost ridgelines and then there's swamp
Speaker 1: bottoms just feeling totally blessed by this moment. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: if it's guys like it's guys like you and other
Speaker 1: people have had on this podcast, like if if Honey
Speaker 1: was a representative government, Like who would we elect? Because
Speaker 1: we have to elect someone to explain our the ship
Speaker 1: we do to other people, Like we have to elect
Speaker 1: a body to allow us to just go and have
Speaker 1: fun and elect the body of people to talk about
Speaker 1: it and think about it and reason it outside of
Speaker 1: this science and biology that goes on the state game
Speaker 1: agency level in the federal or whatever, just just as
Speaker 1: a theory and philosophy. I think that's that's how I
Speaker 1: look at it. There's got to be some people out
Speaker 1: there that are doing that, you know, and like exploring
Speaker 1: the human elements of hunting and things like that that
Speaker 1: just a little bit deeper than most people want to
Speaker 1: go with it. Well, you know, at the at the
Speaker 1: dawn of our modern civilization or or or at our
Speaker 1: our modern culture, people sat around and tunics and sandals
Speaker 1: and thought about what it means, what it means to
Speaker 1: be human, and what it means to engage in society,
Speaker 1: and what good government means. So, I mean, I I
Speaker 1: think it's a fine thing to sit around in our
Speaker 1: flip flop flannel shirts and think about what does it
Speaker 1: mean to be a taker of life? Yeah, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the question. Yeah. I think it's that conversation like we'll
Speaker 1: never get there or never you'll never be like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, you know what, guys, I hadn't thought of
Speaker 1: it this way, but here it is. But you can
Speaker 1: certainly continue to explore it. And that's another part of
Speaker 1: I think how hunting community has grown and how we
Speaker 1: talk to each other. The willingness that people that are
Speaker 1: going to come to rally and sit and listen to
Speaker 1: us kind of have this conversation on a on a
Speaker 1: wonderful evening where they could be doing anything else. I
Speaker 1: think is is just evidence of the elevation of the
Speaker 1: willingness to have that conversation. And that's it's a pretty
Speaker 1: huge win in my my estimation. It's a it's a
Speaker 1: pretty good time. This may be the time, you know,
Speaker 1: like we I think we just being self critical. We
Speaker 1: can always throw stones at it. But I think I've
Speaker 1: quickly seen when I first came in the industry and
Speaker 1: social media really got going, it was not there was
Speaker 1: some really bad stuff happening, and over the last four
Speaker 1: five years, maybe I'm in a bubble. I think we're
Speaker 1: all in our like self contained internet bubble for reasons
Speaker 1: of in our controlling, outside of our control. But I
Speaker 1: you see, like you see the through lines of people
Speaker 1: that are really thinking hard, you know, in a way
Speaker 1: that they communicate, and so that's you see it and
Speaker 1: see a lot. That's that's you know that you would
Speaker 1: like to think in the groups like pH and I
Speaker 1: was just with with Fosberk from TRCP, He's like to
Speaker 1: think that that that that's all Like the fact that
Speaker 1: somebody's willing to put their money down and join one
Speaker 1: of those is signifies that that's really really truly going on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think with the growth of these organizations, people
Speaker 1: are recognizing the threats that we have, the opportunities that
Speaker 1: we have, and that hey, and this tribe is big.
Speaker 1: You go to that b h A rendezvous, you go
Speaker 1: to some of these big meetings, and you looked around
Speaker 1: and that's that's that's the response. We hear a lot.
Speaker 1: I found my people. Oh yeah, right, we're at the ronde.
Speaker 1: Even you and I must I must have heard that, wow,
Speaker 1: three dozen times, I don't know how many times. Many times. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So it's I mean, that's that's strong medicine. But you know,
Speaker 1: let's also not get away from the fact that it's
Speaker 1: a it's a hoot. Put stump around into swamp, have
Speaker 1: a gun and be able to engage in this. But
Speaker 1: it's fun. That's fun, like any freedom in free either
Speaker 1: and said, well, it's it's great. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: I think being able to go and do that and
Speaker 1: then in the quiet times we're not doing that. I
Speaker 1: have these conversations and then go out and let them
Speaker 1: inform and go back and forth from that's great, man,
Speaker 1: I love doing it. Uh, there's a lot of people
Speaker 1: listen to this, I think love love to hear it.
Speaker 1: I'm assuming so a lot you know, a lot of good,
Speaker 1: good reviews over the time. But I really I do.
Speaker 1: I do believe that this this conversation, however, you know
Speaker 1: organic our conversation here has been it's a little sobering
Speaker 1: to me to think of the point from it that
Speaker 1: I'll probably take forward with needs to think of how
Speaker 1: just you didn't have a father around, somebody in your
Speaker 1: life picked up, picked you up and took the time
Speaker 1: and change your life and then and then cascading on
Speaker 1: change the lives of your children and probably their children
Speaker 1: and on and on and on we go. It's like
Speaker 1: just one you had the desire, somebody saw it and
Speaker 1: jumped on it and helps you. But that's the power
Speaker 1: of this sport man. You know you feel it, and
Speaker 1: I feel it. Everybody listening feels it. Um, I mean it.
Speaker 1: I mean these are these are life changing experiences in
Speaker 1: life affecting experiences we have. You can spend your Saturday
Speaker 1: watching Tom Brady, or you could spend your Saturday like
Speaker 1: taking somebody else man and chain and possibly hopefully changing
Speaker 1: the way that they see the world change in their
Speaker 1: life's who's Tom Brady? I'm not just see what's this
Speaker 1: oil change? And thank you were talking about I don't
Speaker 1: got time. I got time for that. Well, thank you, Edward. Um.
Speaker 1: I appreciate what you do. And you can find your
Speaker 1: working lots and lots of places. It would be hard
Speaker 1: not to find it, I feel. Uh. You can find
Speaker 1: it at field and stream, you can find a garden
Speaker 1: and gun. You can find it an Audubon, like where
Speaker 1: else do you magazine and Men's Journal and Shooting Sportsman
Speaker 1: and yeah, I look at that big polar over there.
Speaker 1: You know this is a part of my job. Nobody
Speaker 1: wants to hear about is the sitting here and right
Speaker 1: right right, but hard to complain this podcast is taken
Speaker 1: to a lot of people. I try to do them
Speaker 1: inside of people's personal space, and like this is, uh
Speaker 1: the neatest I've interviewed a lot of writers. Imagine like
Speaker 1: how Harry I didn't get to go to his officer.
Speaker 1: I imagine like he just he just his a head
Speaker 1: poking out of papers. All right, that's my that's my
Speaker 1: imagination there, Andrew mc keene, he's the same way a
Speaker 1: bunch of other folks we've had on It's just like
Speaker 1: it just seems the writer's mind seems to be too
Speaker 1: cluttered to have time to clean shut up. But you
Speaker 1: have you have done it, sir, Well, it depends on
Speaker 1: what I'm what I'm working on. Um right now, I'm
Speaker 1: working on my column for Field and Stream, which was
Speaker 1: due at some point in the recent past. Sorry guys, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so uh so yeah, so that's more of an essay thing,
Speaker 1: so I'm not covered up with notes. But yeah, there's
Speaker 1: other times when it's a it's it's a mess. It's
Speaker 1: all one story at a time. Folks. Remember that has Eddie.
Speaker 1: Eddie has always said at least for the last week.
Speaker 1: One story at a time, One story at a time.
Speaker 1: Thanks man. Alright, buddy, that's it. That's all another episode
Speaker 1: of the podcast in the Books, thanks to Eddie T. Nikins.
Speaker 1: Oh thanks to all your dad's out there here as
Speaker 1: we run up to Father's Day, So do something nice
Speaker 1: for your dad. Do something nice every day, but do
Speaker 1: something especially nice for Father's Day. Before we get any further.
Speaker 1: Th HC at the Mediator dot com. Th h C
Speaker 1: at the mediator dot com. That is where I want
Speaker 1: you to write me all your emails. Uh there, they've
Speaker 1: been flooding in here lately. Uh, to the to the program.
Speaker 1: In fact, you know, ten to fifteen a day rolling
Speaker 1: in so so it's really cool to see um everything
Speaker 1: from Colonel Tom Kelly two Ethics to Texas to anything
Speaker 1: you can think of that to the Devil Makes Three,
Speaker 1: the song that a lot of you love and a
Speaker 1: lot of you hate. It's been great to read all
Speaker 1: the I am reading them and respond to them as
Speaker 1: soon as I possibly can. But thank you for writing in.
Speaker 1: Continue to send those audio clips to th HC at
Speaker 1: the meeteator dot com. Send us the audio clips and
Speaker 1: we'll play them at the end of each show. We
Speaker 1: need them from you. They're fun for me to listen
Speaker 1: to and fun for for the rest of the audience.
Speaker 1: A lot of people have been commenting about how they
Speaker 1: love it, um and again, we're gonna continue to crank
Speaker 1: those out for you. What else, what else? What else
Speaker 1: we got? You know, it's it's almost too close to
Speaker 1: Father's Day, but you know this will come. You'll have
Speaker 1: a few days after this airs. If you want a
Speaker 1: good Father's Day gift to go to the meat eator
Speaker 1: dot com click on store. There's a lot of th
Speaker 1: HC gear there. There's hoodies, there's pro Nuance, anti bullshit
Speaker 1: t shirts, there is our Aldo Freaking louispold t. There's
Speaker 1: a bunch of stuff there that you can check out,
Speaker 1: and then once you're there, then you can buy all
Speaker 1: kinds of other things meat Eater, Metator mugs, metior hats,
Speaker 1: meet eat or Tease. We just came out with a
Speaker 1: new broadhead t that Steven Ronell himself came up with.
Speaker 1: It's pretty badass. To check it out at the meat
Speaker 1: eater dot com click on shop and you're gonna see
Speaker 1: it all there. That's great, trust me, So without further ado.
Speaker 1: We're gonna get you too a couple of reader voicemails,
Speaker 1: as we'll call him, and then we're gonna get you
Speaker 1: to old number seven. Enjoy Man. That Stephen Ronnella really
Speaker 1: came off as a high brow kind of guy throwing
Speaker 1: all our Game of Thrones love under the bus like that.
Speaker 1: I guess he doesn't have time for that, but I'll
Speaker 1: get over it. They say, never really get to know
Speaker 1: your heroes or you'll be let down. Thanks Ben for
Speaker 1: keeping it real for us Game of Thrones fans and
Speaker 1: UH to finish off the thought Sportsman's Alliance doing God's work.
Speaker 1: I wish I could support them more right now. Thanks
Speaker 1: for continuing to bring those guys on. I really get
Speaker 1: kind of uncomfortable talking about ethics because it's such a
Speaker 1: moving target for anyone in any place, whether it's ranching,
Speaker 1: pet ownership, hunting, fishing tournaments. It's a tough thing to define.
Speaker 1: Thanks for at least talking about it and the platform
Speaker 1: that you guys put forth. See Hello Ben and the
Speaker 1: guys at Hunting Collective. This is Armando Basulto. I'm from
Speaker 1: western North Carolina, out here in the Smoky Mountain part
Speaker 1: of North Carolina, big fan of the show and it've
Speaker 1: enjoined the last couple of episodes. UM, wondering if maybe
Speaker 1: on an upcoming episode you might touch a little bit
Speaker 1: more on trapping. Um, you guys touched a little bit
Speaker 1: on it when you were discussing the North American model
Speaker 1: of UH wildlife and you touched a little bit on it.
Speaker 1: But um, currently trapping is really under attack in so
Speaker 1: many states. UM. You know, it tends to be easily
Speaker 1: targeted because even some hunters don't understand it. Um. It's
Speaker 1: kind of low hanging fruit target for uh Ani hunters
Speaker 1: and people kind of work against UM hunting and conservation. So, UM,
Speaker 1: I'm a hunter, but I'm also a trapper. I'm teaching
Speaker 1: my boys how to trap, and UH, I know even
Speaker 1: I have some difficulties sometimes getting people to understand UH
Speaker 1: trapping as part of a wildlife management and as a
Speaker 1: real tool. So anyway, hoping you guys can discuss it
Speaker 1: on an upcoming episode, UM, and keep up the great work.
Speaker 1: Thanks guys. Tennessee who whiskey got the dragon heaven and
Speaker 1: uh and just stopped it looks good to me. They're
Speaker 1: gonna have to depumpit to the vardy Oh on the fire,
Speaker 1: Red dragging in the fire, dh on the fy d
Speaker 1: dragging in heaven.