Speaker 1: This is me eat your podcast coming at you shirtless,
Speaker 1: severely bug bitten in my case, underwear listening un podcast.
Speaker 1: You can't predict anything presented by First Light creating proven
Speaker 1: versatile hunting apparel from Marino bass layers to technical outer
Speaker 1: where for every hunt, First Light go farther, stay longer. Everybody.
Speaker 1: We're coming from downtown Haley, Idaho, the first time I've
Speaker 1: ever in the new First Light store. We're not we
Speaker 1: if you haven't picked up on this in the past,
Speaker 1: we will record and then and then we usually recording
Speaker 1: and Lee released the episode like some time later that
Speaker 1: at Krin's whim. So we find ourselves in one of
Speaker 1: these issues where there's like, um, there's our reality and
Speaker 1: your reality, and our reality is not open yet, but
Speaker 1: their reality, everybody who thought the show was live, your
Speaker 1: dreams have just been crushed, and their reality it's open.
Speaker 1: My wife's been trying to explain it, to make my
Speaker 1: wife's hip on this new idea about how no one's
Speaker 1: actually right or wrong, um, because explain it. She's trying
Speaker 1: to explain it. Something he has something to do with
Speaker 1: how big the cosmos is. And there's a lot of
Speaker 1: ways of looking at stuff around the cosmos, you know.
Speaker 1: So she's telling me that all the things that we're
Speaker 1: adamant about are just like um, like we're adamant about stuff,
Speaker 1: but it's just like this little teeny like imagine you
Speaker 1: have like dust in the air, right and the sun
Speaker 1: shining on it. Your ideas are just one of the
Speaker 1: many little places where light hits the dust. Like yeah,
Speaker 1: because it doesn't work. Yeah, if you weren't gonna say stupid,
Speaker 1: I was, because it doesn't work for real life. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: well maybe noon isn't noon somewhere else, but for here,
Speaker 1: it's like you just got to accept that it's noon
Speaker 1: or one thirty. That's a terrible example for today's sean
Speaker 1: because it's actually tomorrow. We were at What's funny is
Speaker 1: we were She's she's laying us all out on me.
Speaker 1: We were up at this little this little in holding
Speaker 1: we have. It's like this little five acre in holding,
Speaker 1: and my body has the one next to mine, and
Speaker 1: on his place is this old probably like I don't know, man,
Speaker 1: like a giant water tank. In the past, some was
Speaker 1: gonna bottle some spring water up there. So there's like
Speaker 1: this giant water tank and we'll climb up on the
Speaker 1: water tank and you can watch for trout down in
Speaker 1: this beaver pond, but the water tanks yellow. And I'm
Speaker 1: standing on the water tank with my boy, debating with
Speaker 1: my boy whether or not like I'm gonna haul the
Speaker 1: water to anc out of there and make a hog
Speaker 1: roster out of it, to which he thinks, Um, it's
Speaker 1: a good place to stand and look off of. And meanwhile,
Speaker 1: not even we're like having an argument about the water tank,
Speaker 1: and she's not even paying enough attention to us, and
Speaker 1: she's laying this thing, I mean about our our things
Speaker 1: are nothing. Wow, that's all. Yeah, And so I told her,
Speaker 1: But where does that leave you. I'm not gonna run
Speaker 1: around acting like I don't think what I think because
Speaker 1: it's like a little dust particle. Yeah, No, you gotta
Speaker 1: go through it like it's all logical and rational. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just one of those ideas. It doesn't have any
Speaker 1: I like it, but it doesn't. It just doesn't change
Speaker 1: anything for me. Yeah, if you're reduce your octane, I
Speaker 1: think it is a touch. She might be man, take
Speaker 1: the edge off. She could use a little reduction. If
Speaker 1: your idea was a flash of light, you could in theory,
Speaker 1: look at that flash of light through the James Webb
Speaker 1: telescope like thirty years later and identify that thought out
Speaker 1: in the cosmos. Yeah, I'll be like, I'm still right.
Speaker 1: It was still right. Uh. What's going on right now?
Speaker 1: But not for you, for us and our reality and
Speaker 1: our on our dust particle is the first Light hoot
Speaker 1: Nanny has taken place right now? Who wants to explain that?
Speaker 1: Which you guys feels best equipped? Three? We have three
Speaker 1: first Light representatives. Yeah, I could take that one, bridget.
Speaker 1: This is Kevin Harland Kevin Harley. Um. Yeah, So we
Speaker 1: run on the show like twice, three times, four times,
Speaker 1: I think, just a couple, I think, yeah, Um yeah.
Speaker 1: We run this thing called the Hooting Nanny every year.
Speaker 1: It's it's simply like an ambassador summit right where we
Speaker 1: get everybody together preseason, go through a bunch of gear, um,
Speaker 1: talk about the future, and and just really kind of
Speaker 1: celebrate what I think is a pretty remarkable thing. We've
Speaker 1: got a great group of people, um from all of
Speaker 1: our companies and outside our companies, uh, talking about gear
Speaker 1: and kind of getting set for the year head and
Speaker 1: you know we're right in it right now. I mean
Speaker 1: Antelopes season open yesterday here right for um, so we're
Speaker 1: in it and uh, we got everybody up from all
Speaker 1: over the country and um sharing some be heres and
Speaker 1: some good food and some good conversation and kind of
Speaker 1: leading into the season here. Okay, who wants to explain
Speaker 1: what direct consumer means? Ford? Why did you? Why did
Speaker 1: you put that on me? How you've been here the longest?
Speaker 1: That's true. Direct consumer means we sell clothing directly to consumers.
Speaker 1: To elaborate, I'm totally different than that. That's like a
Speaker 1: big guest particle that's hard to deny its existence. No, practically,
Speaker 1: it means we don't have retailers. You can't go to
Speaker 1: our tree shopping buy First Light apparel. You gotta go
Speaker 1: to our website wwww at first slight dot com is
Speaker 1: the only place to get it. Cutting out the middleman
Speaker 1: exactly except now, except now there's a wrinkle in your
Speaker 1: dust particle. Except we've introduced the middleman because now there's
Speaker 1: a wrinkle in the dust particle because now First Light
Speaker 1: has its own store. Indeed, we're it and right here,
Speaker 1: and it is. It's beautiful, owned and operated by First Light.
Speaker 1: But that's why we're in downtown Haley. You can come
Speaker 1: to the First Light. The first thing I thought coming
Speaker 1: in here, it's like, you know, I know about everything,
Speaker 1: but like to see it all. I'm like, holy col
Speaker 1: there's a lot of stuff. Yeah, Karin was just saying,
Speaker 1: you know, when you look at a digital catalog on
Speaker 1: the website, you know there's a lot of stuff there.
Speaker 1: But yeah, spreading it out on hangers and end caps
Speaker 1: and on tables, it's it's impressive to see it kind
Speaker 1: of fully merchandized. Me and o'cal we're reminiscent about um.
Speaker 1: Kel was the first besides the two founders. Kel, we'll
Speaker 1: speak to it. Kel. Oh yeah, boy, but jillion years ago, Um,
Speaker 1: when when the Cosmos was still forming. That's your opinion.
Speaker 1: It's just like your opinion, man. Uh yeah, as the
Speaker 1: first uh employees. So they're the two founder Scott Robinson,
Speaker 1: Kenton Caruth and uh and myself and oh yeah, tow
Speaker 1: Terry Camper trailer down here to catch him that I
Speaker 1: was using to work and guide and kind of live
Speaker 1: out of at the time and put it in the
Speaker 1: garage at the third office space that First Light had
Speaker 1: and we all worked right above it and then at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, I'd go for like a
Speaker 1: light jog and then wind up back at my terry
Speaker 1: camper trailer and go to bed. Yeah. I just I
Speaker 1: want to restate that Cal lived in a camper in
Speaker 1: our office for six months. Six months. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: Scott got real He was very annoyed with the presence
Speaker 1: of the camper because it wasn't like hip and cool. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then he would get even more annoyed whenever anybody
Speaker 1: would come in the office because to a person, everybody
Speaker 1: would be like, holy cow, sweet Camper'd be like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, you gotta get that thing out of here. Um,
Speaker 1: you know I had to. I had to uh yeah,
Speaker 1: go through this gap in the fence that's not there anymore,
Speaker 1: and and shower at the Y m c A or
Speaker 1: over at h our buddy bricks off Icue. And other
Speaker 1: than that, things were pretty easy peasy. But you know,
Speaker 1: things grew and Casey Hawks was was actually it was
Speaker 1: Ross Copperman and then Casey Hawks um and yeah. So
Speaker 1: you know it was just like this slow incremental growth
Speaker 1: of kind of getting over these humps and um, very experimental, right.
Speaker 1: It was like, okay, if this word year works out,
Speaker 1: then like if we do another year exactly, yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it was like that like that for a long time.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I would start out with just marino wool
Speaker 1: base layers and the like I kind of joke, it
Speaker 1: was like the forward model of like anything you want,
Speaker 1: as long as you want it in black, and it
Speaker 1: was just black Marino wool. And then but like the
Speaker 1: secret sauce was the fact that that really Kenton, through
Speaker 1: a bunch of research and tying people together, um, through
Speaker 1: the power of the Internet, figured out how to print
Speaker 1: on marino intricate patterns. Like there were people out there
Speaker 1: who are putting like very basic logos on marino wool,
Speaker 1: but nobody could figure out how to make something like
Speaker 1: intricate that wouldn't like bleed or eventually wash out or
Speaker 1: feel like real crap on your skin. So like keep
Speaker 1: that nice soft marino woolf feel still breathe, but have
Speaker 1: for instance, a camouflage pattern on on there. So um,
Speaker 1: that was a huge thing. And and the sales pitch
Speaker 1: at the time was like, well you've heard a smart wool.
Speaker 1: We're like the smart wool the hunting world. And it
Speaker 1: was hilarious because I would literally once a year get
Speaker 1: a phone call from Smart Wool Boulder, Colorado saying like, hey,
Speaker 1: you guys make all sorts of stuff and camouflage. How
Speaker 1: do you guys do that? Oh? And I'd be like
Speaker 1: what now. They'd be like, yeah, can you tell us
Speaker 1: how you And I'm like, well, you know, we kind
Speaker 1: of compete against each other, so I you know, I
Speaker 1: don't think I'm gonna do that, and they're like no, no,
Speaker 1: no, no no, no, you guys are hunters, Like, yeah, you
Speaker 1: guys aren't in the in the in the outdoor space.
Speaker 1: And it was just a like a weird thing. So
Speaker 1: you could have asked them, what are you trying to
Speaker 1: hide from? We? Uh, we were punching out of our
Speaker 1: weight class, is the thing. So like we were getting
Speaker 1: a lot of attention, real small company and then um yeah,
Speaker 1: just that slow incremental growth and then eventually, um you
Speaker 1: know right, I mean right when you came along. Stephen
Speaker 1: Ronnella came along through a couple of different channels, which
Speaker 1: was really funny. Um is when we were actively working
Speaker 1: on outerwear, and outerwear was like totally against the business model.
Speaker 1: It was supposed to be this nice, tidy business of
Speaker 1: Marino wool base layers and that's it follow like the
Speaker 1: smart wool or ice breaker model, but strictly in the
Speaker 1: hunting space. And we learned that we were so limited
Speaker 1: in regards to our marketing, budget wise and otherwise because
Speaker 1: people couldn't always see your basse layer and so all
Speaker 1: sorts of people were the stuff, but nobody could see it.
Speaker 1: And if you can't see somebody wearing it, it's like
Speaker 1: a tree falls in the woods type of thing or
Speaker 1: is anybody right type of thing. Reality. Yeah, And so
Speaker 1: that was a huge part of the push, like breaking
Speaker 1: that business model, um, you know for the first time,
Speaker 1: then uh to get in into outerwear because it allowed
Speaker 1: us to say, like, see, you can see it, like
Speaker 1: people are wearing this stuff and and it's really good
Speaker 1: and um yeah, just kind of snowballed from there. And
Speaker 1: then obviously Steve you uh got headn't started wearing the
Speaker 1: stuff and and we gotta start making more and addressing
Speaker 1: more needs, you know. And I feel like that's always
Speaker 1: been the backbone of the brand, is versatility for sure,
Speaker 1: like tackling a giant temperature range with you know, relatively
Speaker 1: simple garments, um, and then trying to address the issue first, right,
Speaker 1: not address the marketplace, but address the issue that occurs
Speaker 1: on the mountain, right. So it's like, well, I stink, well,
Speaker 1: Marina wills not stinky. What else can we do on
Speaker 1: the in the outerwear world that would mitigate smell as well?
Speaker 1: Or um, boy, I sweat like crazy? What can we
Speaker 1: do to mitigate um, you know, uh, enhanced breathability, mitigate
Speaker 1: all that moisture loss in your garments, keep you dry
Speaker 1: when the tamps drop. Stuff like that, address address the
Speaker 1: issues staying warm if you do get wet, climbing into
Speaker 1: your sleeping bag at night and being like, oh that
Speaker 1: feels good, I feel like a clammy ass mess yeah,
Speaker 1: or you know, spending a ton of energy. And that's
Speaker 1: something that we learned, certainly, like working with a lot
Speaker 1: of folks in the military space is just how important
Speaker 1: it is to actually be comfortable. And it was a
Speaker 1: really interesting like dual conversation that was going on at
Speaker 1: the time because we're like talking to lots of lots
Speaker 1: of folks in the military world that we're talking about
Speaker 1: comfort and at the same time the hunting world was
Speaker 1: like talking about being tough. But on military side, they
Speaker 1: were like, boy, you can get a lot more done
Speaker 1: if you know you're taken care of, like you're not
Speaker 1: wasting a bunch of energy combating all these feelings of boy,
Speaker 1: am I actually gonna make it through tonight? Like boy,
Speaker 1: it's sure, Cole boy, I'm sure, wet boy. All this
Speaker 1: stuff chaffing me. You know. So once you address that
Speaker 1: that comfort and find like those those prime ranges for UM, breatheability,
Speaker 1: moisture wicking um, insulation weight weight to insulation ratio, so
Speaker 1: you're not carrying around a bunch of superfluous layers UM,
Speaker 1: then you can really start performing beyond what you thought
Speaker 1: you were capable of, because now your brain is like
Speaker 1: free and easy to just concentrate on the task at hand.
Speaker 1: And it grew on a sheep. And it grew on
Speaker 1: a sheep. Yep, yep. The last the extremes right, so
Speaker 1: like very cold nighttime temps, very hot daytime temps. And uh,
Speaker 1: an animal that isn't capable of changing its clothes. Oh,
Speaker 1: I love that sales pitch. It's so good on the tridge,
Speaker 1: you know, on the consumer show floor, you're like, well,
Speaker 1: just think about a sheep. Can it take its jacket off?
Speaker 1: Showed me the sheep that takes its own jacket off.
Speaker 1: They start pulling out their credit cards. Cal what I'm hearing?
Speaker 1: What what I'm hearing is that there should be a
Speaker 1: bronze statue of you in this store. I mean like
Speaker 1: they could use it like a mannequin. Oh oh boy,
Speaker 1: we still need to sell thanks. You know, they got
Speaker 1: to keep the lights on clay Um. But yeah, you
Speaker 1: know it. It was really wild and it was cool too.
Speaker 1: It was really like a work environment that was so
Speaker 1: kind of hectic and busy that there wasn't time to
Speaker 1: kind of like look outside of our our own little
Speaker 1: world for a long time. So there wasn't a whole
Speaker 1: lot of like, what's what are other companies doing? It
Speaker 1: was going off of really like personal experience and the
Speaker 1: knowledge that we could only build in very small increments,
Speaker 1: And it was like the whole we need here's our
Speaker 1: need list that far exceeds what we can build year
Speaker 1: to year. So what we build has got to be
Speaker 1: really good and it's got to address the most needs
Speaker 1: out of the gate. Uh. And I think that was
Speaker 1: a super super healthy foundation to have, like very scrappy
Speaker 1: um and Uh. We spent a lot of time like
Speaker 1: toiling and testing over you know what that next garment
Speaker 1: is going to be because this could be our last year, right,
Speaker 1: So M clear what all you've been up to? Well?
Speaker 1: Been been traveling a lot for Burgarase. It really excited
Speaker 1: about some of the series and different stuff that we're
Speaker 1: gonna be doing. Been That's mainly what I've done this summer.
Speaker 1: Travel one for Burgrease. We try to do in person
Speaker 1: interviews with every every podcast we do, So I'll travel
Speaker 1: and go meet somebody, talked to him for a couple
Speaker 1: of hours. Man, if the sixty something episodes we've made,
Speaker 1: I've done like three zoom interviews. Oh you'll lose something, man,
Speaker 1: It's it's I feel like it's really important. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: got uh someone who's Texas is to me today. But
Speaker 1: but but Karan has been reading up on it too.
Speaker 1: You're about this dude that those Broilty sent it to us.
Speaker 1: You know when you go to a phishing access site
Speaker 1: and they got the like what they call a vault toilet, right,
Speaker 1: so a picture like a like a phishing access john.
Speaker 1: So there's a there's a thing called the vault toilet, right.
Speaker 1: It just looks like an outhouse. But you're going and
Speaker 1: it's got a tank underneath it, and they'll have all
Speaker 1: the signs being like, hey, man, don't throw weird stuff
Speaker 1: down here, because we can't it's hard to pump. And
Speaker 1: and Montana fish Way Parks they have a very like
Speaker 1: their vault toilets are are sort of branded. You just
Speaker 1: no one when you see. One story came out about
Speaker 1: a guy they tracked him down. A guy in southwest
Speaker 1: Montana who dropped his phone down in the vault toilet.
Speaker 1: So he strips down, Oh my gosh, gets the toilet
Speaker 1: seat off there, and gets down in there. Everybody can't
Speaker 1: get back out, you know. It's and he's got the
Speaker 1: door locked, the handle off, you know, one of the crew.
Speaker 1: He couldn't get out of the whole. He's stuck in
Speaker 1: the vault. You know. One of the craziest parts of
Speaker 1: that story, though, is that he can't get out, but
Speaker 1: somehow they managed to get a camp chair down in
Speaker 1: which makes me think the reason he couldn't get out
Speaker 1: because he couldn't lift himself out, not because he was
Speaker 1: wedged otherwise. How else did they get the camp chair
Speaker 1: down there? He was down too far to get a grip,
Speaker 1: so they had the damn it. They had to break
Speaker 1: into the toilet passers by. He spent three hours in there. First,
Speaker 1: it was like that it was an overnight adventure. He
Speaker 1: spent three hours in there. It must have hailed a
Speaker 1: passer by. That's a surprise. If the passer by, uh,
Speaker 1: he's still. The weirdest thing is he didn't get his
Speaker 1: phone back. Well that once you finally get down there,
Speaker 1: I mean, how much digging are you really gonna do?
Speaker 1: My daddy's telling me a story. Well, let me return, Like,
Speaker 1: where do you hold if he ditched all of his clothes,
Speaker 1: where does he hold onto the phone in order to
Speaker 1: climb out? Right? You can't put it in your mouth
Speaker 1: at that point. I don't think this guy thought that
Speaker 1: through that much. But if he finds the phone, he
Speaker 1: can call somebody or well, he's probably I don't, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I'd I'd like if Crint had not mirophone job,
Speaker 1: he printed her job, he'd be sitting here right now
Speaker 1: as he climbs down into the vault toilet, spends three
Speaker 1: hours down in there with his clothes off, apparently hails
Speaker 1: the passer by. The passer by damages something to get
Speaker 1: get into Wait, wait, wait, can I stop you Steve
Speaker 1: the passer by? Was he going knocked on the door.
Speaker 1: It'll try to investigate if I'll find him. Please don't,
Speaker 1: please don't use this right now. Um. So the pictures
Speaker 1: came out and like the Montana fishing game, like they
Speaker 1: recognized their own pit toilet. Not only that, they recognize
Speaker 1: what access point it was at. So someone was able
Speaker 1: to track the fellow down, um to rescue him. It
Speaker 1: was on the Big Hole River. To rescue him, they
Speaker 1: passed the lawn chair down to him. He was able
Speaker 1: to stand on the lawn chair and then get a
Speaker 1: grip on the lip and pull himself out. So you're
Speaker 1: somebody came out of there without the phone. I hate
Speaker 1: to see this to say this because I love Montana
Speaker 1: and Butte Montana a lot. But I'm assuming the dudes
Speaker 1: from Beaute Big Hole River. That's yeah, that's beauty, beaut
Speaker 1: America's fishing river. I gotta ask, what, like, what shots
Speaker 1: you gotta go get after that kind of probably appetitus,
Speaker 1: all kinds of stuff you probably want to you'd probably
Speaker 1: wanna what is it happy? And that's kind of they
Speaker 1: don't vaccinate you for happy. I can't remember I don't know,
Speaker 1: but Samonilla E Cole Eyes all in there, brothers down
Speaker 1: there eating and stuff. Man, I mean, but uh, we'd
Speaker 1: like to find him. I mean he likes to fish apparently.
Speaker 1: I'd love to have him on the show and not
Speaker 1: to goof on him, not to go I mean, what
Speaker 1: do you want to know from this guy? Well? Why
Speaker 1: he why he didn't find the phone? So you know,
Speaker 1: like what was going through his mind? You're not as
Speaker 1: worried about when he was out of the toilet and
Speaker 1: the thought process that got him down There would be
Speaker 1: three areas I'd explore. I'd explore, Uh, four areas I'd explore, Um,
Speaker 1: how did I'm guessing it's obvious how it got down there?
Speaker 1: Is there anything unexpected about how the phone got down there? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that'd be interesting to Um you're making a call right like,
Speaker 1: you're like you're gonna do this or not do this?
Speaker 1: So what's at stake? Why the sense of urgency? Um?
Speaker 1: And certain decisions around that? What was the cleanup plan?
Speaker 1: Right like that? What were those three hours? Like what
Speaker 1: kind of thoughts went through your head? And then the
Speaker 1: fourth area I'd exploring in the interview would be, um,
Speaker 1: where's the phone. Know why it's pertinent is every time
Speaker 1: you use one of these government buildings as we call them,
Speaker 1: there's that sign that says, don't throw X, Y and
Speaker 1: Z down the toilet. It's extremely hard to get out.
Speaker 1: And every time you read that you have to take
Speaker 1: that mental journey of boy would be gross to be
Speaker 1: down there? Like what would it take? Um, But there's
Speaker 1: a possibility like what if this dude from Beaute is
Speaker 1: in like waste management, right and he's just like not,
Speaker 1: He's like, I've done a lot worse for a couple
Speaker 1: of hundred bucks type of thing. If we put this
Speaker 1: episode together, you would be a good guest to have
Speaker 1: on as well, be Kevin Murphy who worked in waste management.
Speaker 1: So like we got the guy, got the guy, we
Speaker 1: get someone from the phone company, We get Kevin Murphy
Speaker 1: about like what you know, like what could be down
Speaker 1: in there? Um, I have a vindication and in a
Speaker 1: major craction, me and Cal have a major correction to
Speaker 1: make um the vindication. Remember we covered we we talked
Speaker 1: extensively in Callahan. You were there, were talking extensively about
Speaker 1: the actor Nick Offerman's writing an article about UH bullying
Speaker 1: an aggression on this podcast, his perceived him thinking that
Speaker 1: that like that like coming from the host of the podcast,
Speaker 1: came from a um like a background of bullying and aggression,
Speaker 1: for having for having pointed out my feeling that Henry,
Speaker 1: the late Henry David Throw was a candy ass. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then we were trying to think of who was it,
Speaker 1: who was the gut because he says I jumped down
Speaker 1: a guest throat, and you said, I think the guest
Speaker 1: was Brent West from High Peaks Alliance from me. So
Speaker 1: Brent West wrote in so here, So now we've heard
Speaker 1: from the person that I was aggressively bullying Brent West.
Speaker 1: Brent what says what I don't think of froman understands
Speaker 1: what I think he's mistaken for bullying and aggression is
Speaker 1: a thing called ritual opposition, and he sent me an
Speaker 1: article about ritual opposition. Ritual opposition is basically what you're
Speaker 1: doing when you dig with your friends all the time.
Speaker 1: M then if you're like dog on your friends or
Speaker 1: give your friends a hard time, you're engaging in ritual opposition.
Speaker 1: And it's argued that ritual opposition is the same as
Speaker 1: hugging somebody, that it's like a necessary. It's a necessary
Speaker 1: component of how people embrace those that they that they're
Speaker 1: fond of, dog on them, like dogging on each other.
Speaker 1: It's the sanguage version of your Michigan hello, he sent me?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, that's why I like I greet people
Speaker 1: by giving him the finger. Ye, what's up? It's it could.
Speaker 1: It's also potentially cultural steve, the way that you manage
Speaker 1: people like inside of like a podcast or relationships. I
Speaker 1: really think it is. I gotta tell a story Bear
Speaker 1: Hunting Magazine. I owned Bear Hunting Magazine for years and
Speaker 1: one time I had a guy called me from the
Speaker 1: Northeast and he was upset about something and he was
Speaker 1: just like pretty much yelling at me, and I pulled
Speaker 1: the classic Southern just like I'm so sorry, blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: really soft with him, and that even made him more mad.
Speaker 1: And what I learned was when the guys from the
Speaker 1: Northeast called, we're upset about something, you came back at
Speaker 1: him hot and they you got the problem solved real quick.
Speaker 1: See what I'm saying, Fighting fire with fire? Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean it was it was. I feel like it
Speaker 1: was a cultural It's a cultural misunderstanding how to get
Speaker 1: a problem solved, and I think Steve, I think our
Speaker 1: friend Steve runs into that and you can get offer
Speaker 1: Himan a little break here if if you'd like and
Speaker 1: say that, like maybe you know, uh, it's a secondary
Speaker 1: type of appreciation people have for you when they learn
Speaker 1: your opposition tactics. Well, it even goes on in this
Speaker 1: article that that the guests sent me is um the
Speaker 1: it says, uh, it's common for men to use fighting
Speaker 1: as a way to explore ideas. I write the article,
Speaker 1: I uh, we should say High Peaks Alliance, Brent. They're
Speaker 1: just completed a big bridge project on a very popular
Speaker 1: hiking trail up there. Um, so if you're traveling the
Speaker 1: main big Main Woods, you should check out High Peaks Alliance.
Speaker 1: They do a bunch of great work. And um, I
Speaker 1: kind of personally want to thank Offerman. Nick Offerman for
Speaker 1: introducing a real soft spot for him. Well, what I
Speaker 1: have a soft pot for is that line of um
Speaker 1: where the throw appreciators point out that he often hiked
Speaker 1: in wet shoes. No, he he likes. So he was
Speaker 1: pointing out like just how tough Throw was and he
Speaker 1: would hike long ways sometimes with wet feet, And I
Speaker 1: get I've gotten a lot had little use for people
Speaker 1: that couldn't keep up, which I think is mean and
Speaker 1: ship as I pointed out on a previous episode, but
Speaker 1: think he's a bully. I've gotten a lot of appreciation
Speaker 1: just thinking about that line. When somebody's kind of posturing up,
Speaker 1: you know, I think to myself, I bet that guy
Speaker 1: even hikes and with wet feet. That's how tough they
Speaker 1: I bet he has little use for those who can't
Speaker 1: keep up. Um, here's a letter you don't want to
Speaker 1: get calls speaking to you now too. This is you
Speaker 1: and me. I would like to advise you that your
Speaker 1: recent podcast episode was full of wrong and for nation.
Speaker 1: And he goes on to lay it out, and it's
Speaker 1: this is like a bad This is one of the
Speaker 1: worst corrections we've ever had to do. So I'll skip ahead.
Speaker 1: You say you are from Michigan and an outdoorsman, but
Speaker 1: I am disappointed in your lack of knowledge, he points out.
Speaker 1: So we're talking about the Camp Grailing expansion. It's not
Speaker 1: in the up. We kept saying the up. It's in
Speaker 1: the northern Lower Peninsula. H So that was air, right,
Speaker 1: that was the air. But the other error is he
Speaker 1: He goes on to talk about a lot of ways
Speaker 1: in which he and and other outdoorsmen have through the
Speaker 1: years really had a hard time with the presence of
Speaker 1: the guard camp there. In cites these examples of people
Speaker 1: doing exercises and being soldiers doing exercises and not being
Speaker 1: where they're supposed to be, conflicts on rivers, on and on,
Speaker 1: and he says, they say they're not going to to
Speaker 1: do this and that, but they're already fixing to do
Speaker 1: these activities that they say aren't going to happen on
Speaker 1: this expanded land. But we're referring to is camp Camp
Speaker 1: Grailing is looking to double its size. So I think
Speaker 1: it sits at around a hundred fifty thousand acres and
Speaker 1: they're wanting to add a hundreds of thousand acres of
Speaker 1: surrounding state land. What they're trying to do is there
Speaker 1: trying to gain access to surrounding state land. I will
Speaker 1: uh this is the best part of doing corrections though,
Speaker 1: as everybody gets to learn about the issue twice, which
Speaker 1: makes it doubly valuable. But but he uh is very
Speaker 1: incredulous of what is they're saying is going to happen.
Speaker 1: And and part here's what part of what is feeding
Speaker 1: this issue. So the camp is looking to double the
Speaker 1: size of the area they can use for training exercises.
Speaker 1: So they're gonna they're gonna expand their ability to train
Speaker 1: out onto like some hundred fifty thousand acres of state land,
Speaker 1: and it would result in no one's arguing this point.
Speaker 1: It results and temporary closures when they're doing exercises. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they think, you know, like cause for great concern,
Speaker 1: right if their track record up to date isn't stellar,
Speaker 1: that an expansion would be caused for concern for sure. Uh,
Speaker 1: here's where some of the confusions coming from with people
Speaker 1: trying to suss out what's going to go on if
Speaker 1: this expansion takes place. So the military spokesman said, National
Speaker 1: Guard spokesman comes in and says there would be no
Speaker 1: new trails built for tanks, no bombing or shooting, no
Speaker 1: new buildings or fences. But then they go on to
Speaker 1: point out that they're setting up firing points, which they're
Speaker 1: setting up artillery areas on the new land that will
Speaker 1: be used to fire into existing areas. So you're sort
Speaker 1: of like, oh, there's no new infrastructure, but there's new
Speaker 1: in structure and it's creating a fair bit of anxiety
Speaker 1: among people about this expansion. Yeah, part of the thing
Speaker 1: people don't like about bombings is the big banging noise
Speaker 1: there happens to be one on both fans, right, So
Speaker 1: so he's mad. The guy that wrote in is mad
Speaker 1: at me. He says, like a lot of people around
Speaker 1: here have lost respect for you now, which is that
Speaker 1: that's a bummer. Uh, he says. What he's mad about
Speaker 1: me is not that I'm fenced sitting on the issue. Remember,
Speaker 1: I was like the whole point is I was saying, like,
Speaker 1: here's one of those areas where I have a hard
Speaker 1: time making in my mind. So I'm sort of like,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm weighing this idea between um that it
Speaker 1: is not a habitat loss because it's not a subdivision
Speaker 1: or right. It's giving soldiers access to forest to train
Speaker 1: on forest land, and you appreciate a strong military, and
Speaker 1: so I weigh that, and I way that it's not
Speaker 1: leading to a net loss and wildlife habitat. It just
Speaker 1: winds up being an access issue at the expense of
Speaker 1: hunters and anglers in support of military training. So I'm
Speaker 1: sitting where, you know, I'm a little torn, But he's like,
Speaker 1: I'm not mad at if you're being torn about. I'm
Speaker 1: just mad at if for having your facts all wrong. Sure, sure,
Speaker 1: he said, it's a hundred fifty anchor expansion. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: the camp has been the camp had the camp originally
Speaker 1: had a land grant. Then they've done these series of
Speaker 1: state leases, and this individual, I don't want to I
Speaker 1: don't want to go through them all because I might
Speaker 1: make the same mistake again and not fact check out everything.
Speaker 1: But this individual goals to like a whole litany of issues,
Speaker 1: even things that have made the local T news TV news.
Speaker 1: We're saying, just recently, there's a group of soldiers who
Speaker 1: went down the Mannistee River on a raft with a
Speaker 1: machine gun at the front on the area they weren't
Speaker 1: supposed to be. It even made the local TV news.
Speaker 1: UM many many incidents over the years. So thanks for writing,
Speaker 1: and it's good stuff. And and for clarification, it's not
Speaker 1: it's on the upper Lower Peninsula, the northern Lower peninsul
Speaker 1: he points out, it's the you know, like tip of
Speaker 1: the mitten fread Bear country. Oh yeah, uh, here's not
Speaker 1: everything that comes up. We're we're recently discussing what it's
Speaker 1: like to to spearfish in fifteen thousand feet of water
Speaker 1: where you're just occupying the surface lens and we're amusing about, um,
Speaker 1: there's stuff at the bottom, there's stuff at the top.
Speaker 1: But how boring would it be if you were in
Speaker 1: fifteen thousand feet of water and went and hung out
Speaker 1: nine thousand feet down? Who's home? And the answer is
Speaker 1: nobody for for the for the most part, like there's
Speaker 1: not something that specifically lives at that. There's stuff that
Speaker 1: will touch it a sperm way, ill you can get
Speaker 1: down to eight or nine. But yeah, you're in a
Speaker 1: you're you're in the area. But it but it brings
Speaker 1: up that we're talking about there's still you know, the
Speaker 1: deep deep's gonna top with this new thing they found. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so in the deep, deep, deep deep, in the deep
Speaker 1: deep deep, deep, deep and forward. What what we're talking
Speaker 1: about is that layer at which sunlight ceases to penetrate
Speaker 1: and in that zone there is essentially no life that
Speaker 1: that hangs out there that we're aware of yet, which
Speaker 1: is like bases its operation there. Right, Well, what are
Speaker 1: life wise? What size life are we talking? There's gonna
Speaker 1: be something like big stuff you might catch. There's something
Speaker 1: but life transitions something they'll chase some maps to uh
Speaker 1: like it's stuff that is waiting for things to fall
Speaker 1: to the to the to the very very bottom. Um.
Speaker 1: And there is a type of snail that was discovered
Speaker 1: and the fun name is a pegul in snail because
Speaker 1: it's got these it looks like a pangulans like you know,
Speaker 1: scaled armor on its foot, but it's it's part of
Speaker 1: this family of armor footed snails and it's a great
Speaker 1: example of it would be called like an extreme o file.
Speaker 1: So it hangs out in an area that is what
Speaker 1: every other form of life would consider not hospitable. You
Speaker 1: can't can't live there because the temps exceed like five degrees.
Speaker 1: There's sulfuric acid, there's all these gases um. It is
Speaker 1: an extreme place. Hence extremo file and h This little
Speaker 1: snail with the iron the iron foot is really really
Speaker 1: bizarre because how it eats is it holds a chemical
Speaker 1: compound in its throat and by basically breathing in the
Speaker 1: toxic water around it, that chemical compound reacts with it
Speaker 1: and it's able to extract it's nutrients from you know
Speaker 1: whatever spits out of that compound and then slide your
Speaker 1: tongued on that snails throat. But it's just like life.
Speaker 1: I've never heard of anything that. That's how it exists. Right,
Speaker 1: it's amazing and five degrees fahrenheit. Wait, why is it
Speaker 1: so hot? Yeah? What temp down there? Does? Do you
Speaker 1: start getting close enough? Right like that you're in thin
Speaker 1: parts of the crust where water starts getting warmer again?
Speaker 1: Well that's like beyond warm. Yeah, right, but at what
Speaker 1: point is it like waters? Not thirty four degrees? Now
Speaker 1: it's sixty again, seventy again, you know, like getting warmer?
Speaker 1: Are you looking for a banana belt down there? But
Speaker 1: that's where you got a deep drop. What's crazy about
Speaker 1: the snail too, is so it's got this like scaled
Speaker 1: armored foot and they thought it was protective. Did you
Speaker 1: get into this? Yeah, they thought it was protective because
Speaker 1: of course it looks like armor, right, um, And I
Speaker 1: guess in a sense it is protective, but it's like
Speaker 1: a reactionary. It protects against itself. It basically like you
Speaker 1: could call it the druel that is the byproduct of
Speaker 1: its feeding comes out, and it would and it contains
Speaker 1: sulfur which is um, a very common compound in how
Speaker 1: you kill snails in the garden. Um. And in order
Speaker 1: to protect itself against this sulfur that comes out to
Speaker 1: protect it from its own breath, from its own breath,
Speaker 1: it's grown these uh kind of iron plates on its foot.
Speaker 1: How are we talking here? God, it looked fairly big.
Speaker 1: That's a great, great question about fifty cent piece. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: But it's like we know so much about the world
Speaker 1: and we know nothing about it. Like there's these whole
Speaker 1: host communities that are based in these super specific um
Speaker 1: little climates at the very very bottom and crushing depths
Speaker 1: that we're just discovering right now, and and uh yeah,
Speaker 1: I just think, like what what what could we harness
Speaker 1: that for in a good way? My kid recently asked
Speaker 1: me how many animals that there are we don't know about?
Speaker 1: And that's account had accounts, you don't know about them? Right.
Speaker 1: You gotta wonder what if Spencer starts running out of
Speaker 1: pardon my plate things, if he could go on a
Speaker 1: little season season five, we asked deep, Yeah, we've tried
Speaker 1: the nasty sea ducks, so let's start trying sulfur filled snails.
Speaker 1: Giant clamps, there's all sorts of stuff down there the vent.
Speaker 1: Here's no one for you callahan uh anti venom. A
Speaker 1: person wants to revisit your experience when your dog got
Speaker 1: zapped by a rattlesnake. Yep. So the question is he's
Speaker 1: gonna be hunting Sharpie's in Montana this fall. He's nervous
Speaker 1: about snakes. Hasn't encountered him, he says, he hears the
Speaker 1: anti venom is a waste of time and money. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's you know, unfortunately, like this is a part of
Speaker 1: veterinary medicine, where yet you're gonna have a bunch of
Speaker 1: folks that agree with you and a bunch of folks
Speaker 1: that go like, yeah, but it's your dog. Um, So
Speaker 1: there's no anti venom? Is this cocktail of venoms from
Speaker 1: common snakes? For instance, the one that we used on
Speaker 1: Snorret doesn't even contain the venom from the Great Bay
Speaker 1: Sin rattlesnake which she was bit by. Um. But she
Speaker 1: had an incredibly positive reaction to the anti venom, And
Speaker 1: I'm very glad that we used it, and we used
Speaker 1: it at a time at which most people, even like
Speaker 1: the pro anti venom people would be like yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not gonna help, so it's late basically in the process
Speaker 1: earlier the better is the golden rule. Uh, and we
Speaker 1: used it at the twenty three hour mark, I think
Speaker 1: mark almost instantaneous positive results. So UM. I had been
Speaker 1: on the phone with several vet friends of mine, UM
Speaker 1: when I did get cell service, and they all said,
Speaker 1: you know, like they weren't there witnessing the situation. They weren't.
Speaker 1: They were definitely like listening to me, but also going
Speaker 1: off of their past experience of you know, in j role,
Speaker 1: labradors do not die from rattle snake bites in general, right, Um,
Speaker 1: don't you know the dog is gonna be very uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: don't worry about anti venim Um, she'll make it. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not gonna be pleasant, but she'll make it. And
Speaker 1: they're saying that body mass wise because I always heard
Speaker 1: the smaller dogs more likely to die from rattle snakes
Speaker 1: or poisonous snakes in general, larger dogs better off. I
Speaker 1: think that that's definitely a rule. But it's just like
Speaker 1: dogs are face level with snakes, you know, from the
Speaker 1: beginning of time, and they're just built to handle that
Speaker 1: stuff way better than we are. And I brought up
Speaker 1: this case from a human that had been bitten in
Speaker 1: the same region and he ended up spending like three
Speaker 1: months in the hospital and I think lost at least
Speaker 1: a portion of his leg. And I was like, well,
Speaker 1: what about this guy, big, big football player type guy.
Speaker 1: And the straight up was like people are sissies compared
Speaker 1: to dogs, Like he's not a fair comparison. Do you
Speaker 1: know that hunting guy in Arizona Lee Hop You ever
Speaker 1: met him? I have not? No, no, Well yeah, but
Speaker 1: I mean, first of all, that guy knows his biz.
Speaker 1: If you ever in the hunting guide business in Arizona
Speaker 1: need a hunting guide, that guy knows his situation real well, yeah,
Speaker 1: he got zapped by one spent time in the hospital.
Speaker 1: He's like, it's like you say, most dogs don't of
Speaker 1: the people that get bit by rattlesnake don't die. I
Speaker 1: would have thought it'd be so much higher than that.
Speaker 1: Not say that again, of people that get bit by
Speaker 1: a rattlestone do not die. But have y'all have y'all
Speaker 1: heard me talk about my friend Fred Lally that's been
Speaker 1: bit like twenty He can't he doesn't even know how
Speaker 1: many times he's been bit by venomous snakes. He was
Speaker 1: on that he was a snake handler. He's been bit
Speaker 1: by king cobra's, uh, multiple type rattles all the rattlesnakes
Speaker 1: in North America. Yeah, and uh a couple of venomous
Speaker 1: snakes from Asia, and uh he likes it all he does.
Speaker 1: He take anti ven him resistance. Fred Lally. He's eighty
Speaker 1: one years old. He's missing a big section of his hand,
Speaker 1: and uh he he would not go to the hospital
Speaker 1: for a for a common snake bite, for a king
Speaker 1: cobra or something. He probably would, but wild, I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't even want to. I appreciate you sharing that,
Speaker 1: but what but but tell me more like, well, I
Speaker 1: just we're just talking about annam him and he he
Speaker 1: doesn't he most of his snake bites. He never went
Speaker 1: to the hospital. Yeah, it was just cool. I just
Speaker 1: have a friend a bit twenty times, that's all. I
Speaker 1: had a friend by a rattlesnake and he went to
Speaker 1: the hospital, but they didn't have the anti venom so
Speaker 1: they put him on a helicopter and flew him to
Speaker 1: another town. And he went up with a nine thousand
Speaker 1: dollar bill for the helicopter flight. Uninsured. Did they give
Speaker 1: him the anti venom or did they billings and hit
Speaker 1: him with the anti venom? And he said the real
Speaker 1: stinger was a nine thousand dollar helicopter ride. I haven't
Speaker 1: talked about it with him in a long time, but
Speaker 1: he was pointing out way back then that he was
Speaker 1: still trying to like sort that whole thing out all
Speaker 1: the money he owed for that. I uh, yeah, But
Speaker 1: to stick with the anti venom um, I you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's your dog. You gotta make make the decision.
Speaker 1: And you can see how they are reacting to the
Speaker 1: bite um. I think snort either is has a strong
Speaker 1: reaction to rattlesnake venom or she got a lot of venom.
Speaker 1: And the thing that you will always come to no
Speaker 1: matter how many vets you talk too is they do
Speaker 1: not know how much venom is administered. Like it could
Speaker 1: be a dry bite quote unquote dry bite where there
Speaker 1: is very very little to zero venom injected by the snake,
Speaker 1: or it could be a crazy huge amount and it's
Speaker 1: just like an unknown Well always heard along those lines.
Speaker 1: With snakes, the babies are more dangerous because they can't
Speaker 1: moderate the amount of venom they deliver. I have no
Speaker 1: idea if that's real, but I've heard that pretty consistently
Speaker 1: through the years. Yeah, I've heard that too, and I
Speaker 1: know I think there is a study that's kind of
Speaker 1: gone through that, and I think I probably I shouldn't
Speaker 1: even comment. I think there is something to that, but
Speaker 1: it's like not as as black and White would wish
Speaker 1: it would be. Yeah, Kel, I want to get into one. UM.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you've been following it, it's it's
Speaker 1: tough one to get into the the hunting closures in Alaska.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like you have to do like an
Speaker 1: eight hour special on the same but we're gonna do
Speaker 1: We're gonna it's not gonna We're not gonna do that. No,
Speaker 1: we we need need to find some experts though, because
Speaker 1: I think you do you want to summarize this, summarize,
Speaker 1: but I'm just trying to think of where to begin
Speaker 1: with the with with one of the Russians were came
Speaker 1: to Alaska. So oh my god, enough people that like
Speaker 1: I I like, we we covered another version of this before,
Speaker 1: but I want I want to get into this. This
Speaker 1: news item from Alaska UM a kind of troubling news thing,
Speaker 1: A troubling thing that keeps happening in Alaska. So I
Speaker 1: have often um, I have often explained how I am
Speaker 1: very supportive of federal land management agencies. Like there's the
Speaker 1: thing the Feds do well. I think the FEDS do
Speaker 1: land management well. Um uh, they with with you know,
Speaker 1: all the land management agencies. We have the National Park Service.
Speaker 1: I don't hang out them that stuff much, but it's there.
Speaker 1: Bureau Land Management hang out a lout their USDA National
Speaker 1: forest Lands hang out a lot there. National Wildlife refuge
Speaker 1: National wildlife refugees kind of Bureau of Reclamation. Yeah, um yeah,
Speaker 1: they have some of the most. The Bureau Reclamation, as
Speaker 1: we now know, has the most some of the most
Speaker 1: know not some has the most visited public lands in
Speaker 1: the country. Is that because of like reservoirs, Yeah, they
Speaker 1: have that. They have the most visited piece of public
Speaker 1: federal public land in the country to administered by the
Speaker 1: Bureau of They are no, I think they have the
Speaker 1: most visitors. It makes total Lake of the Ozarks Missouri
Speaker 1: like places like that, amazing pit toilets. What makes what
Speaker 1: makes federal land like ladder to get out the one
Speaker 1: we're talking about, we carved early Yeah, we covered a
Speaker 1: state pit toilet earlier, and happens in there. There's no ladder,
Speaker 1: don't even put a line free to grab. So what
Speaker 1: was one might be like, well, why would the Feds
Speaker 1: be good at land management? The Feds are good at
Speaker 1: land management because they're um, they're more immune to the
Speaker 1: to they're immune to some of the whims that take
Speaker 1: over at the state level, and they have a different
Speaker 1: financial structure. So we have well funded federal land management
Speaker 1: agencies and they can manage lands. They can manage public
Speaker 1: lands and perpetuity. What happens at the state level, Oftentimes
Speaker 1: the states have a lot of pressure to monetize land, right,
Speaker 1: So many times states will have state land and it's
Speaker 1: in the constitution that the state land be be monetized,
Speaker 1: not long term, but short term monetized for short term game. Right. Um,
Speaker 1: you might have states that have state land and then
Speaker 1: it's such that you can't spend the night on the
Speaker 1: state land or you need a special permit utiliz as
Speaker 1: the state land or the state land gets leased out
Speaker 1: for livestock grazing, which means then that the public has
Speaker 1: no access to it. Conversely, the Bureau Land Management land
Speaker 1: leases livestock grazing on a chunk of land that doesn't
Speaker 1: affect the public's ability to hunt on camp on use
Speaker 1: the land. UM. The multi use doctrine that the you know,
Speaker 1: the multi use doctrine with um Our National Forest is
Speaker 1: like it's like a beautiful doctrine where they're saying, we
Speaker 1: have this land, we're managing it for many uses, some
Speaker 1: of its wildlife habitats, some of its timber extraction. Uh.
Speaker 1: We have pieces of land that they've managed for well
Speaker 1: in excessive a hundred years. Uh. A lot of wonderful
Speaker 1: land management comes out of there. But I don't think
Speaker 1: that the Feds do a very Their talents expire when
Speaker 1: it comes to wildlife management. That's my personal opinion, with
Speaker 1: the excess option of things that are legitimately like like
Speaker 1: things that are on the Endangered Species you know, the
Speaker 1: things that are listening on the Endangered Species Act that
Speaker 1: are legitimately endangered. UM. There are some great federal protections
Speaker 1: to help recover those things. But when it comes to
Speaker 1: the management of fish and game species that is a
Speaker 1: state game state, they do it best. That's my preface.
Speaker 1: You take objections ay of that, Okay, it would be
Speaker 1: you know there's exceptions to everything you ask. I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: migratory birds, and that's a wrinkle because no state gets
Speaker 1: to manage it on their own right. And let's explain
Speaker 1: why they. Why do you? Why does the feds? Okay,
Speaker 1: let let's look at this for ment. Sean has brought
Speaker 1: up the great exception ducks and geese. So migratory waterfalls
Speaker 1: managed at the federal and state level. I because they
Speaker 1: move from state to state, So you can't have one state,
Speaker 1: say let's say Louisiana, Texas, from now on, we're gonna
Speaker 1: have it be that ducks are always open and there's
Speaker 1: no bag limit. It's our wildlife right, which would completely
Speaker 1: screw everybody else. So you're boning everybody else on the flyaway.
Speaker 1: So in that case, there's federal oversight. Well, I'll point
Speaker 1: out another great example halib it because like on the Pacific,
Speaker 1: so on our Pacific coast, halibut move around. Halibut are
Speaker 1: managed not just at the federal, state, state, federal, international level,
Speaker 1: because we have treaties, same way we have WATERFALLO treaties
Speaker 1: with Mexico, we have treaties with Canada about how we
Speaker 1: manage our halibut. So you're right, there are cases. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's like it's not a clear cut and dry
Speaker 1: case with migratory birds because you don't know what it it.
Speaker 1: It doesn't even exist that there would ever be like
Speaker 1: a state management versus federal management. Nothing compared, there's no comparison,
Speaker 1: no control. Yeah, this is all just a preamble to
Speaker 1: try I'm just trying to lay a little ground. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: for what's going on in Alaska. In Alaska, you have
Speaker 1: these federal subsistence boards. Okay, so let me give you.
Speaker 1: I'll give you like a little tidbit about Alaska that
Speaker 1: isn't gonna um that doesn't actually have anything to do
Speaker 1: with what I'm talking about, but it's just interesting Alaska,
Speaker 1: Like at the highest levels when it comes to the
Speaker 1: allocation of natural resources like fish and game resources in Alaska,
Speaker 1: at the highest level, when it comes to allocation, they
Speaker 1: look at it like tiered use, okay, top tier use
Speaker 1: of subsistence, right, so that the subsistence user group and
Speaker 1: subsistence has nothing to do with your income, Like like
Speaker 1: to be a subsistence user in Alaska for the most part,
Speaker 1: has nothing to do you could be you know, uh,
Speaker 1: uh uh tells his name doesn't want to buy Twitter.
Speaker 1: Elon Musk could move to Cassan, Alaska. He could move
Speaker 1: to wherever Arctic circles. But Elon Musk could move to
Speaker 1: certain Alaskan like zip codes and he would become a
Speaker 1: subsistence user based on his location. Okay, so it's not
Speaker 1: doled out by need, It's doled out by location. M
Speaker 1: Those subsistence users are always like gonna get they they
Speaker 1: eat first, next is the next. It eats first is commercial. Okay,
Speaker 1: so subsistence, commercial, recreational eats last in Alaska. Um, that's
Speaker 1: just like a high level view on resources. I didn't
Speaker 1: know that commercial commercial trump. If someone's gonna give up,
Speaker 1: if something's getting paired down and someone's gonna give up,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be recreation. So would be recreational. Well but
Speaker 1: what I mean the type of hunting we would do it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: very Yeah you're the low, like like we're the lowest
Speaker 1: of the low. Yeah, we're non resident. You're like nonresident recreational,
Speaker 1: which people are like, dude, everything is luxury resident. It's
Speaker 1: like no one cares. Just to be clear here, there
Speaker 1: are in state recreational users, right and the way it
Speaker 1: typically like subsistence is defined is by typically if you
Speaker 1: have to travel some amount of distance, like you're not
Speaker 1: a subsistence user, which is something that's been been fought
Speaker 1: over greatly and even that's crazy. So for example, we're
Speaker 1: just getting hug. Yeah, I feel like I want to
Speaker 1: argue about this before we can get into and I
Speaker 1: haven't gotten to the point. But let me tell you.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you another interesting wrinkle. Okay. Let's say, uh,
Speaker 1: let's say you're a federal you're federally qualified subsistence user. Okay,
Speaker 1: So let's say you live in southeast Alaska and you're
Speaker 1: a federally qualified subsistence user. You can set a thirty
Speaker 1: hook longline for halibate. Okay, just based off your zip
Speaker 1: code if you're qualified federal subsistency, So based on your where,
Speaker 1: based on where exactly you live, right, you might qualify
Speaker 1: to set a thirty hook long line for haliban which
Speaker 1: are federally regulated. Okay. Now, if you live an anchorage,
Speaker 1: but you go to this area where you're allowed to
Speaker 1: set this thirty this thirty hook longline, you're not allowed
Speaker 1: to because you're not a federal subsistence user. However, if
Speaker 1: you live in downtown, you could live in a mansion
Speaker 1: in downtown Anchorage in travel to a place that has
Speaker 1: state subsistence regulations, and then you can fish under state subsistence.
Speaker 1: So you can go and role play as a state
Speaker 1: subsistence user. So if you're an anchorage and you travel
Speaker 1: to an area and let's say Prince Wales Island, you
Speaker 1: live in Anchorage, you go to Prince Wales Island, you
Speaker 1: may not set a thirty hook skate they're a thirty
Speaker 1: hook longline for halibit, because that's a federal, federally regulated
Speaker 1: species and you're not federal subsistence. You can, however, set
Speaker 1: a one hundred hook sable fish long line because even
Speaker 1: though you can't do it where you live an anchorage,
Speaker 1: you are now acting as a subsistence user where you are.
Speaker 1: But if you catch a halibit on your longline, you
Speaker 1: must let it go. Hmm, let me give you another one.
Speaker 1: You are, you live in a mansion and anchorage, You
Speaker 1: go to Prince of Wales Island, and you drop your
Speaker 1: rod and reel down. You are allowed zero yellow eye
Speaker 1: rock fish and one other species of nonplagic rock fish
Speaker 1: per day. If you leave your rod at home and
Speaker 1: go out with a hand line. You go to the
Speaker 1: same spot, same bait, same hook, with a hand line.
Speaker 1: There is no limit to how many non plagic rock
Speaker 1: fish you can have because you're using subsistence tactics. So
Speaker 1: two things A I'm confused, yeah, oh yeah. B I subsist.
Speaker 1: I feel like when I go shooting ELK, I'm subsisting
Speaker 1: off the l I'm not gonna buy me. But you
Speaker 1: can't get into like imagine the world, Like I support
Speaker 1: all of this. I want to point out like imagine
Speaker 1: that you had to um, if you're a rural resident
Speaker 1: in Alaska, you don't need to go prove how bad
Speaker 1: you need it. It's just where you live and and
Speaker 1: and here's the you go back to statehood. A wrinkle
Speaker 1: with Alaska, even like accepting stayhod or wanting statehood, was
Speaker 1: the ability like historically, socially, culturally, like we are people
Speaker 1: who live off the land, and they need to be
Speaker 1: able to be that people in rural areas in Alaska
Speaker 1: can have a way to live off the land. How
Speaker 1: it came to be that you can go to an
Speaker 1: area that you don't live in vacation there and use
Speaker 1: local subsistence strategies that you have to ask someone else
Speaker 1: how that ever came to be a thing. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Is there any to get into the ah? I don't
Speaker 1: believe it. With like a heavy pause, I need to
Speaker 1: think it over. So your main is the main thing
Speaker 1: in life that I think about. Is there anywhere even
Speaker 1: close in the US with a stringent and complex of
Speaker 1: game laws. No, there's nothing, even because they're they're managing
Speaker 1: like a dozen big game animals they have, like think
Speaker 1: how big they I mean it's different fish, they got
Speaker 1: a mountain range beside of California. It's like they're they're
Speaker 1: managing all those big game animals, managing a huge commercial industry.
Speaker 1: You have subsistence people, you have Native Alaskan villages where
Speaker 1: people have historically lived off the land. It's like it's
Speaker 1: it's well, there's twenty seven game management units which are
Speaker 1: divided and then divided again. It's it's complex incredibly and
Speaker 1: they do and I feel that they generally. I feel
Speaker 1: the State of Alaska like I feel the State of Alaska.
Speaker 1: Jonging does like a phenomenal job sorting out all this complexity,
Speaker 1: all these user groups, and you know, their wolves are
Speaker 1: not on the endangered species list. They're grizzlies aren't on
Speaker 1: the endangered species list. They have an intact regime of megafauna.
Speaker 1: Mm hm. They got good salmon runs, could be like,
Speaker 1: well they got lucky. Okay, they haven't blown it, but
Speaker 1: now we need to talk about what's oh that are
Speaker 1: not doing so well. But we're not there yet. Okay.
Speaker 1: There's a thing that happened in the Western Arctic around
Speaker 1: the Western Arctic Cariboo heard and this is very contentious.
Speaker 1: So these are places like I've been to and hunted
Speaker 1: places in the Brooks Range that a few years back,
Speaker 1: and we covered this a few years back. Um, the
Speaker 1: Federal Subsistence Board came in an over road what the
Speaker 1: state wanted to do with their wildlife management plan, and
Speaker 1: they made this thing where non local, so not not
Speaker 1: even subsistence users from other places. They made a thing
Speaker 1: where they took this huge quadrant basically like a quadrant
Speaker 1: of Alaska, the northwest quadrant of Alaska, and closed it
Speaker 1: to non made it illegal for non locals to hunt
Speaker 1: caribou in some of the you know, remotest like mathematically
Speaker 1: remotest parts of the North American landscape. Um. It was
Speaker 1: cited as being like resource conflict okay, because there was
Speaker 1: competition for resource near villages between locals and non locals,
Speaker 1: and how do you feel about how that might sound.
Speaker 1: It was not what the state wanted, and the state
Speaker 1: felt that there's no reason to even argue that that's necessary.
Speaker 1: This thinking has now spread. There's an area so everything
Speaker 1: west of the Saga is a hard river to pronounce,
Speaker 1: and I've canoed down and whatnot. The Saga the nerk
Speaker 1: talk river folks called the sag Um some of the
Speaker 1: only not the only, one of few places that you
Speaker 1: can go and one of the few places you can
Speaker 1: go in Alaska and uh hunt doll sheep and really
Speaker 1: good doll sheep country from the road system. There's a
Speaker 1: handful of spots. It's hard. People do it every year.
Speaker 1: It's it's hard, but this is this is one of
Speaker 1: those spots. Um. They've had some brutal years on sheet
Speaker 1: sheep numbers a way down now. The Western Interior Alaska
Speaker 1: Subsistence Regional Advisory Council just managed to close doll sheep
Speaker 1: hunting for all users on one point million acres of land,
Speaker 1: against the recommendation of the state. How many acres one
Speaker 1: point eight million, one eight million acres of land and Steve,
Speaker 1: that board does that? Where does that sit in sort
Speaker 1: of the federal hierarchy? Is that US fishing wildlife? Is
Speaker 1: that like a or is that its own whole thing?
Speaker 1: It's part of the Federal Subsistence Board is a federal
Speaker 1: subsistence board based in Alaska and like made up of
Speaker 1: people making decisions that are Alaskans or are they sitting?
Speaker 1: The federal board rep resents federal subsistence. You federally designated
Speaker 1: subsistence users in Alaska to local board. They're broken out
Speaker 1: into regions. But in this case you have the state
Speaker 1: biologists saying, because because here's the rink with doll sheet management,
Speaker 1: it's a full courl. These areas have a full curl restriction.
Speaker 1: A rama is gonna hit full curl till he's eight
Speaker 1: nine years old. He's gonna die when he's eleven. So
Speaker 1: they've had some bad winners that really hampered cheap. The
Speaker 1: state is saying, our management plan, it doesn't matter like
Speaker 1: they're killing about like in one of these areas, when
Speaker 1: of these archery areas they're killing about five mature rams
Speaker 1: a year. A lot of people get to try. It's
Speaker 1: very little success rates, but they're killing about five rams
Speaker 1: a year. They don't even have a fresh survey. It's
Speaker 1: it's like it's anecdotal what people are seeing. They're seeing
Speaker 1: they had some rough winners. Sheep numbers are down. The
Speaker 1: state whose job it is to do this kind of thing,
Speaker 1: is saying there's like sheep numbers are down. Hunting mature
Speaker 1: rams is not going to affect sheep populations. We're not
Speaker 1: killing you's, we're not killing lambs. You're killing mature animals
Speaker 1: that are that are arguably at the end of their life.
Speaker 1: It has no impact. But then the FED comes in
Speaker 1: and says, like, no more sheep hunting on one point
Speaker 1: eight million acres of land. Screw your professional perspective through said,
Speaker 1: and what's their impetus, what's their motivation? Like if if
Speaker 1: we were to try to speculate or they say why
Speaker 1: someone feels, well, like there was some bad winners, sheep
Speaker 1: numbers are down, and someone feels that somehow or another,
Speaker 1: not killing mature rams five adult rams is going to
Speaker 1: help rebound sheep numbers that state biologists feel, and not
Speaker 1: just that the Wild Sheep Foundation is against this, like
Speaker 1: everybody's coming out against this, and it's just this alarming trend.
Speaker 1: Is this alarming trend of of you have a fashional
Speaker 1: agency that has a like an amazing track record of
Speaker 1: managing big game and imagining a disparate bit a use
Speaker 1: a disparate user group who now, like outside of any
Speaker 1: kind of scientific reasoning or any kind of scientific understanding,
Speaker 1: people are just sort of like coming in and making
Speaker 1: these like extremely arbitrary massive closures shutting out hunter like
Speaker 1: shutting out hunters on areas like like almost on a whim.
Speaker 1: It's like whimsical. Uh I I. So the survey that
Speaker 1: the data is based on is a two thousand twelve survey. Um,
Speaker 1: there's twenty five per cent of of that two thousand
Speaker 1: twelve number left in the current population, is what what
Speaker 1: they're saying. So it's like it is an alarming drop
Speaker 1: population wise since two thousand twelve. UM. When I first
Speaker 1: heard of the closure, my gut reaction is like, oh,
Speaker 1: that finally happened because at places like Sheep Show, I've
Speaker 1: had conversations without fitters who have told me, you know,
Speaker 1: eventually this is going to get shut down because something
Speaker 1: is going on with the sheep population now very anecdotal,
Speaker 1: but i'll hit some added wrinkles. Well, let me let
Speaker 1: me finish this. So then when I got around to
Speaker 1: reading about this after my gut reaction of I was
Speaker 1: actually quite surprised to get the state that the state was.
Speaker 1: I assumed that, oh, yeah, that thing is finally happening
Speaker 1: that I had heard about years ago at this point,
Speaker 1: and so I was pretty surprised that the state of
Speaker 1: Aliaska was not in support of UM. But the it
Speaker 1: sounds like there's a gap in the current data. Well,
Speaker 1: here's why it's a little here's why it's a little
Speaker 1: unfair to lump it in with the caribou, like the
Speaker 1: caribou moose stuff in in the in the Western Brooks Range.
Speaker 1: It becomes a little bit unfair because, uh there, it's
Speaker 1: like it's being closed to non local users. Here they're
Speaker 1: closing it even to subsistence users because people can hunt
Speaker 1: sheep on like like local federal subsistence people can hunt
Speaker 1: sheep outside of the full full curl restriction. So if
Speaker 1: you were really trying to stop harvest, you might go
Speaker 1: in and say, okay, we're gonna stop harvest. The federal
Speaker 1: subsistence users are gonna stop harvest because they can shoot
Speaker 1: using lambs, or we're gonna change their regulations around the
Speaker 1: state is the state their use of non their non
Speaker 1: subsistence hunters who have a full curl restriction shouldn't be
Speaker 1: getting rolled into this. But it's like, well, if everyone's
Speaker 1: gonna take a hit, if someone has to take a hit,
Speaker 1: everyone will take a hit. Yeah. Yeah, it's uh kind
Speaker 1: of akin to I don't know what pops to mind.
Speaker 1: Is like sage grouse right where it's like, we know
Speaker 1: the girls are getting beat up from a bunch of
Speaker 1: different factors, but we also know that hunting isn't one
Speaker 1: of those factors. Like he doesn't factory into like the
Speaker 1: long term viability of these populations, um, and we need
Speaker 1: hunting around in order to a gain data, be keep
Speaker 1: some public interest on on this bird because eventually we're
Speaker 1: gonna need to get a bunch of support to help
Speaker 1: this thing out and figure out the fact that's kind
Speaker 1: of like one of my big access to the grind
Speaker 1: right now is the death spiral of sage grouse participation. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh you know what's funny I felt, uh the one
Speaker 1: concerted effort I made to hunt stage grouse, and we
Speaker 1: did an episode about it. It was right when they
Speaker 1: everybody was still celebrating the they came up with these
Speaker 1: great comp mises in the in the in sage brush country,
Speaker 1: some sage brush see you know, areas of whelming northern Colorado,
Speaker 1: portions of Idaho. They came up with all these great compromises.
Speaker 1: They had this stellar sage Gross recovery plan put together.
Speaker 1: The Secretary of Interior at that was that Sally Jewel
Speaker 1: at the time. She was when it was completed. It
Speaker 1: was her um. They announced that ees A protection is
Speaker 1: not warranted, and it was kind of like ees A
Speaker 1: protection is not warranted because y'all have put together an
Speaker 1: adequate plan to avert disaster. A huge Kumbaya moment, huge,
Speaker 1: everybody was excited, and it was it was sort of
Speaker 1: like the they were rewarding the plan by not doing it,
Speaker 1: and then they just, I mean, uh, elements of the
Speaker 1: Trump administration just like wholeheartedly ditched the plan. To just
Speaker 1: ditched the plan. But in those sort of like halcyon
Speaker 1: days of thinking that the plan was in place, I
Speaker 1: went and hunted sage gross and felt weird doing it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I actually went back and watched that episode at some
Speaker 1: point in the last year two during sad obsession with
Speaker 1: sage grouse, and I remember being like, oh man, that
Speaker 1: sounds great. No, that didn't happen, but it felt weird,
Speaker 1: Like a minute ago they were going to declare it
Speaker 1: an endangered species, but now that they didn't, we're gonna
Speaker 1: go hunt for them. Like how do you explain that
Speaker 1: to a five year old? But it was funny because
Speaker 1: so many people in the sage grouse recovery world, we're
Speaker 1: welcoming and encouraging hunting because they're like, we want public
Speaker 1: participation in the resource, and it's it's a negligible harvest,
Speaker 1: like the hunter harvest doesn't matter. What matters is the habitat, loss, fence, strikes,
Speaker 1: all these other things. Um, but it did feel funny. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't want to reil the conversation. I can talk
Speaker 1: about stage grauss a lot, but sheep felt weird cheap.
Speaker 1: But with sheep, sure, you'd like, okay, sheep numbers way
Speaker 1: down the whatever, does it feel funny to go hunt
Speaker 1: a full curl ram in that area? I'd be like,
Speaker 1: it doesn't like that full curl ram doesn't matter. The
Speaker 1: biologist to tell you to shoot him. It doesn't matter. Well,
Speaker 1: quick question. When you said subsistence, subsistence and sheep don't
Speaker 1: go together. In my head, you need to go. You
Speaker 1: need to go read uh Stephenson's My Life with the Eskimo.
Speaker 1: So they're killing a lot of sheep. Somebody's killing a
Speaker 1: lot of sheeps. I mean historical. I mean people. Have
Speaker 1: you ever read Osborne Russell's Journal of a Trapper? I have,
Speaker 1: but that's mountain sheep in at It's interesting because the
Speaker 1: one spot in that book he talks about when they're
Speaker 1: living off bison, they got where they couldn't find any
Speaker 1: and decided to go win your way up hind the mountains. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they could hunt big horns. You know. I kind
Speaker 1: of got a piece of that. Recently. I was tickled.
Speaker 1: We did a buddy of mine got married on the
Speaker 1: main Salmon River and we did a week long trip
Speaker 1: and we saw in x as many sheep as we
Speaker 1: saw deer, and I was like, holy shit, it's like
Speaker 1: in the good old day. It was awesome when he
Speaker 1: used to see four or fide. We didn't see that
Speaker 1: many at all, But but funny like that was a
Speaker 1: super stable and common food source for people who weren't
Speaker 1: quote unquote in sheep shape. It was like, oh, I
Speaker 1: gotta go get some food for you don't know they
Speaker 1: were in sheep shape. It was like cookie going out
Speaker 1: to slide some meat underneath the tar. You know, really
Speaker 1: didn't have ergonomic boots with like really nice insuls. In
Speaker 1: My Life True In My Life with the Eskimo, which
Speaker 1: is written in the early nine hundreds, he talks about
Speaker 1: Native Alaskans who live in the high country, the Brooks Range.
Speaker 1: All their clothes are white, all their blankets are white,
Speaker 1: that they live off sheep. That is badass. Well, it's
Speaker 1: kind of the sheep eaters in Central very similar people there.
Speaker 1: There's folks were definitely sheep shape seasonally and otherwise would
Speaker 1: just be doll sheep specialists. So there's there's definitely a
Speaker 1: subsistence component to it. It's just and you know, no
Speaker 1: matter what you feel like like being a guy that
Speaker 1: doesn't live in Alaska, I'm like a tourist there. You know,
Speaker 1: we we have a shack there, but we're not anything
Speaker 1: but anything but locals. I'm like a person that loves
Speaker 1: the place and I kind of recognize where's my business,
Speaker 1: not my business. It's not my business, and it's carpetbagging. However,
Speaker 1: it's alarming. It's alarming because it's a broad It's like
Speaker 1: I just hate to see people's I hate to see
Speaker 1: people's hunting and fishing privileges stripped away, especially when the agency,
Speaker 1: like when a trusted agency manager is saying this is unnecessary. Well,
Speaker 1: it definitely feels a little grizzly bearish to me from
Speaker 1: the Northern Rockies. There's a little bit of a we
Speaker 1: don't know anything about the I'm sorry for we don't
Speaker 1: know anything about the the motivations of the actual people
Speaker 1: that made this decision. I mean that when they getting pressure,
Speaker 1: it was their political pressure. Was that we don't know
Speaker 1: that for every decision that's that's like on the docket,
Speaker 1: there's like a public comment period, right, so like I
Speaker 1: guess their constituents, for lack of of a better word,
Speaker 1: can call him and you know, kind of give their
Speaker 1: opinion on the matter. Um, but as we think they
Speaker 1: made this decision based on that, that's that would be
Speaker 1: the whole right, I mean, that's the way the system
Speaker 1: is supposed to like the each member of that board
Speaker 1: is supposed to be representing not just their own thoughts.
Speaker 1: But you know, people are people. So remember that Depeche
Speaker 1: Mode song. People people go yeah, but you know it
Speaker 1: hurts right when they use broad strokes. I guess, I
Speaker 1: guess what I'm getting at. It's like some of the
Speaker 1: some of the grizzly bear stuff in British Columbia, and
Speaker 1: you see different places where for sure, like an anti
Speaker 1: hunting agenda or some agenda outside of the conservation management space.
Speaker 1: It's like it's pushing people to make decisions. This is
Speaker 1: probably not that. So yeah, so that's a great point.
Speaker 1: I'll touch that real quick. The decision not to hunt
Speaker 1: doves in Michigan is nothing to do with biology. It's
Speaker 1: social talleans for killing a symbol of peace. Okay, so
Speaker 1: it was advertised as like a dove is a symbol
Speaker 1: of peace. How can we allow hunting of a symbol
Speaker 1: of peace in this state? And people voted it down
Speaker 1: many years ago. Nothing to do with nothing to do
Speaker 1: with dove populations. You can't doves in Michigan, but they're delicious.
Speaker 1: Couldn't sur forever in Iowa, I don't think you can still.
Speaker 1: But another example be grizzly bears in the northern in
Speaker 1: the Northern Rocky ecosystem. It's not a biological thing, it's
Speaker 1: a social thing. Like people, they can't stomach the idea
Speaker 1: of killing the bears has nothing to do with the
Speaker 1: number of them or the viability the population in this case,
Speaker 1: the stuff in the wet in the in the Western
Speaker 1: Brooks Range with the caribou moose. It's about wanting to
Speaker 1: protect my own And you have people who you have
Speaker 1: local on the ground, individuals who have a mechanism by
Speaker 1: which they can keep a resource for themselves and not
Speaker 1: have competition from other people coming in and disturbing that,
Speaker 1: and they utilize the mechanism. It's like, I don't think
Speaker 1: that they would come and tell you it's anything, but
Speaker 1: it's anything but like a selfish desire. And then when we,
Speaker 1: you know, initially talked about the cariboo closures, we we
Speaker 1: tackled that right, and it's like, how it's like, if
Speaker 1: you had the ability to uh close down your favorite
Speaker 1: hunting unit to just just the folks in your community
Speaker 1: in order to relieve the pressure from nonresidents or folks
Speaker 1: outside of that county, would you you know, yeah, your name, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like let's say you have let's say, yeah, let's say
Speaker 1: they have a river access you have a river access site,
Speaker 1: and there's competent and there's conflict between floaters and fishers.
Speaker 1: So tubers, mom's taking their kids swimming, um, people who
Speaker 1: just talk loud. Yeah, those people moms taking their kids
Speaker 1: swimming versus mom taking their kids fishing. And they and
Speaker 1: they all get in a fight. And then and then
Speaker 1: some ages come says, Okay, the only way you can
Speaker 1: use this river access site as if you're fishing. Done deal, No, no,
Speaker 1: no talking. Half the people are gonna be like sweet, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm just gonna be quiet about it. Yeah. When
Speaker 1: I came into the brand new first Light store, I
Speaker 1: couldn't help. But notice I couldn't helping those large display
Speaker 1: right off the bat, first rack in, first racking of
Speaker 1: an unusual assortment first Light waterfowl first, some other whole
Speaker 1: build up. Who wants who want to talk about that?
Speaker 1: You don't like that build up? Tell us Sean or
Speaker 1: whoever who wants to talk about this. Sean is the
Speaker 1: most legitimate duck hunter here and that should start with
Speaker 1: passion from Shahn's Dark Report. Do you get emails about
Speaker 1: Sean's Dark report. Uh, some emails, probably more Instagram messages,
Speaker 1: but corrections or helpful stuff. UM. Yeah, usually just like
Speaker 1: kind of added on things like you know, here's something
Speaker 1: else I want you to do a duck report about
Speaker 1: A lot of that, A lot of like you should
Speaker 1: do a duck report on this. Um back to the
Speaker 1: rack when you first come in the store. Um, we're
Speaker 1: working on have been working on for quite some time.
Speaker 1: Something that. Another thing I've been getting all the Instagram
Speaker 1: messages about, real tight lipped about is uh new First
Speaker 1: Light waiters they coming, which is by far the product
Speaker 1: I'm most stoked on and most pumped about. Like our
Speaker 1: launched this year First Light waterfowl stuff was fun and
Speaker 1: cool and all good stuff. But you know, there's a
Speaker 1: reason that my Instagram messages and emails were flooded with
Speaker 1: So are you guys gonna do waiters? When are the
Speaker 1: waiters coming? Tell me about waiters? Are there waiters? I
Speaker 1: don't see you in waiters. But we've been keeping it
Speaker 1: even from a non you know, a non pretty tight yeah,
Speaker 1: trying to even I'm getting emails about that and no
Speaker 1: one knows who I know Instagram lest forward, Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean just hey, so trying to buy waiters this summer.
Speaker 1: I know you're not gonna tell me, but should I
Speaker 1: buy waiters this summer? And I'm like like, wink, you're right,
Speaker 1: I don't blink. If first lights coming out with waiters,
Speaker 1: like summer is a hot time for waiter, buy him.
Speaker 1: So let's layout, like what what is the full? What?
Speaker 1: What is the full waterfowl? Like what all is available currently? Yeah? So?
Speaker 1: And and why like why the timeline? You know, well,
Speaker 1: I mean what we have out right now is a
Speaker 1: smattering of existing for slight products that makes sense as
Speaker 1: waterfowl products with additional design pieces heavy smattering. Yeah yeah, yeah, okay, fair,
Speaker 1: But like we have right all the first slight wool
Speaker 1: that makes sense as waterfowl gear. And then in addition
Speaker 1: to that, like we have the refuge collection and the
Speaker 1: ground control pack and the LZ and things that are
Speaker 1: waterfowl specific and designed for water fowlers. But um, you know,
Speaker 1: of course one of the things that all water fowlers
Speaker 1: use and need is waiters. But waiters are they are
Speaker 1: probably the most demanding product. Like they are the thing
Speaker 1: that's hardest to get right and takes the most time
Speaker 1: to get right. And I mean you're expecting something to
Speaker 1: work both as a like beating through the brush, breaking
Speaker 1: through sticks and ice, and also being impenetrable and waterproof. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for long periods time, more than a day. There's a
Speaker 1: bit of a bit of a unicorn. Yeah. It reminds
Speaker 1: me back in the day when I first started working
Speaker 1: at First Light, working the phones. I used to get
Speaker 1: to callings like I'm looking for Jack. It's insulated, it's waterproof,
Speaker 1: it's breathable, and it makes you invisible. Like my response
Speaker 1: would be like, if you can make that jacket, I
Speaker 1: will buy it. I'm not Superman. We don't currently stock it, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: but it's true. With waiters, it's similar. You kind of
Speaker 1: needed to do damn near everything. I think what deals
Speaker 1: more death the waiters and anything on that well, barbedware, fences,
Speaker 1: beaver hard beavers are on waiters, man, they're excellent pungee
Speaker 1: pitch little pungee stick an ice man like that is
Speaker 1: like just kicking ice for hard right at the top
Speaker 1: of the boot, especially when you're in that shop, like
Speaker 1: their shin that stuff where you're using your shin to
Speaker 1: chunk up ice and that that is a cool thing
Speaker 1: about these bad boys, right, These are not your No, no,
Speaker 1: these waiters are. They're the real deal. They're serious. And
Speaker 1: you put beaver proof on the label, I flip. They
Speaker 1: think that'd mean attacked by a beaver. We could just
Speaker 1: make a sweet little logo to put on the outside
Speaker 1: beaver chewed stickproof, just angry beaver. When I was I
Speaker 1: used to have this uh Chevy pick up and we
Speaker 1: put uh we I ripped the exhaust out and put
Speaker 1: cherry bombs on it, as one does, and just straight
Speaker 1: pipes out the back and didn't cut the straight left
Speaker 1: the straight pipes a little too long. And I one
Speaker 1: time on the UH so I'd be like messing around,
Speaker 1: reaching into the back of the truck, trapping with my
Speaker 1: waiters on in and out, in and out and out.
Speaker 1: And I remember standing there and smelling something and burned
Speaker 1: a hole through. Burned a hole through the right leg
Speaker 1: of the waiter right above the knee on that straight pipe,
Speaker 1: and then later the day that day, the same day,
Speaker 1: burned a hole through the other waiter on the left pipe.
Speaker 1: I've burned matching like matching round exhaust pipe hole. I
Speaker 1: have done that, not on a pipe, but on sunflower heaters,
Speaker 1: on those real cold days where you like, I gotta
Speaker 1: get as warm as I can and you hug that
Speaker 1: sunflower heater in the blind just little too close. But
Speaker 1: these these waiters are you know, I not. It's like
Speaker 1: it's just a thing. It's a fact that I got.
Speaker 1: I don't know how I destroy waiters in the way
Speaker 1: I do, but last year I think I was on
Speaker 1: my six pair of waiters. By the end of the season.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, man, do you get you spend
Speaker 1: more time returning waiters then you do in your waiters.
Speaker 1: Something you need to get yourself a patch, kid man.
Speaker 1: I used to like I used to be going through
Speaker 1: a muskrat trap and season were waiters and that, And
Speaker 1: I will say, like, when you're on the road as
Speaker 1: much as I was, it was just like those ones leaked.
Speaker 1: Now move on to the next set. And by the
Speaker 1: last duck hunt of the year, I made clay where
Speaker 1: where holy waiters. He's like, these waiters leaked because I'm
Speaker 1: already wet, dude, this is the last thing I had left.
Speaker 1: I only had one pair of waiters. He was gonna
Speaker 1: take care of me. We were gonna we were gonna hunt.
Speaker 1: And he was like, man, I got I got some
Speaker 1: sweet waiters, I mean Sean, Sean, we were from duck
Speaker 1: Lore and Challenge fair Like, I gotta be clear here,
Speaker 1: these are not for slight waiters, right, We're filming duck Lore,
Speaker 1: and so I had to be wearing waiters on duck
Speaker 1: Lore that weren't first light waiters because we weren't showing
Speaker 1: them yet. But on all the nonm yeah, the camera
Speaker 1: guys got to wear like the best waiters. I was
Speaker 1: super jealous because I'm wearing these huge, baggy waiters that leaked,
Speaker 1: and then the camera guys were wearing the first light
Speaker 1: waters sleek that kind of pisses me awful. Hey, so
Speaker 1: you're you're you're tiptoeing around that these are these are
Speaker 1: designed to be super tough and now and and so
Speaker 1: when I was with Sean, I I don't I didn't
Speaker 1: know much about waterfowl hunting, and I just like in private,
Speaker 1: so this is this is a look into our private conversation.
Speaker 1: In private, I was like, tell me the truth. Are
Speaker 1: these waiters any good? And I mean, Sean was kind
Speaker 1: of upset about just life in general, so I was
Speaker 1: waiting for him to just be like, man, they're okay.
Speaker 1: The first lights. You know, this is after my boat
Speaker 1: broke down again, and and he he gave a glowing
Speaker 1: review and said, these things are gonna like change the
Speaker 1: waterfowl market. Really yeah, well in private. What we're missing
Speaker 1: here right now is is the pitch the pockets. Are
Speaker 1: they zippered? These aren't ship proof waiters? Do they have
Speaker 1: do they not have boots attached to him? What are they? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can tell us anything. I think we just leave it,
Speaker 1: leave it with. We had I think eleven guys on
Speaker 1: that testing trip in Arkansas. I mean we were really
Speaker 1: we were getting reps on these and I mean was
Speaker 1: there I wore them all year off camera or had
Speaker 1: camera guys wearing them all year off camera. But but
Speaker 1: we circled up at that camp or after that camp
Speaker 1: in Arkansas, and I I'm pretty sure all eleven guys
Speaker 1: said it was the best waiter that ever wore. And
Speaker 1: I did have critiques, to be fair, It's not like
Speaker 1: they came out of It's not like I was like, yeah, job, everybody,
Speaker 1: these are perfect waiters. But we we made some changes
Speaker 1: over the summer. Yeah, out all right where they need
Speaker 1: to be. I think, yeah, here's my waiter ship in
Speaker 1: the store with that. So we used to fish the St.
Speaker 1: Mary's River, which separates uh Um, Michigan's Upper peninsula. I'm
Speaker 1: positive allegedly it's not the northern Lower Peninsula. So when
Speaker 1: if you imagine Lake Superior, Lake Superior sits what it
Speaker 1: is twenty three feet higher than uh Lake spireces three
Speaker 1: ft higher than here On. So there's the Sioux Falls,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot the Sioux Locks goes around the
Speaker 1: Sioux Falls, so the iron ore boats and stuff can
Speaker 1: come and go. But anyways, where it's spills, it's it's
Speaker 1: some feet higher, goes through the Sioux Falls. There's this
Speaker 1: river called the sat Mareious River, which is basically not
Speaker 1: basically it is. It's Lake Superior draining into Lake here
Speaker 1: On Um. And this river's wide, wide wide. You and
Speaker 1: me ran it in a boat together, yep. Pre nine
Speaker 1: eleven Um. You could just buy a book of bridge
Speaker 1: passes two bucks apiece and you would go over and
Speaker 1: the people, the coustoms, people just get to know you.
Speaker 1: I mean, we'd fish sometimes when I was going to
Speaker 1: school at Lake State, we would sometimes fish three four
Speaker 1: days a week. On the Canada side, you can keep
Speaker 1: more fish um, So we'd go over there. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: You catch board fish fishing the canvas side because you
Speaker 1: could access the rapids. So the u s side he
Speaker 1: had like a bunch of the locks you could go
Speaker 1: over and fish, sort of like a more natural riverscape
Speaker 1: come from the Canada sides. We'd cross all the time.
Speaker 1: And in the when the pink salmon ran in the fall,
Speaker 1: the water be pretty low, and if you were a
Speaker 1: bold waiter, so we would uh get cleats, you know
Speaker 1: quarters if you had like felt boots and then put
Speaker 1: some quarkers on them. We had me and my buddies,
Speaker 1: we had like routes that you could get way out
Speaker 1: into the river, and it'd be you'd cross here, and
Speaker 1: then you go up a hundred yards and go out,
Speaker 1: and then you go down two hundred yards and go
Speaker 1: out a little more, and then go got a cock
Speaker 1: eyed angle and and you'd wind up like way out
Speaker 1: there fish and fish that people didn't fish at. And
Speaker 1: one time we get way out there, and I don't
Speaker 1: want to say who it was, My buddy all of
Speaker 1: a sudden has the need he's got the gurgling number two.
Speaker 1: This is after a long night at the bar, and
Speaker 1: he's kind of in the situation of needing a way
Speaker 1: what to do, because now he's got an hour invested
Speaker 1: into getting out Like that serious of a walk to
Speaker 1: get out there, there was not. There was no joke.
Speaker 1: In fact, people would people that didn't get it with
Speaker 1: kind of like marvel at how one could get out there.
Speaker 1: But well, you know, you figure out how to get
Speaker 1: out there. It was just a dicey walk. So he
Speaker 1: had to shout his waiters, there's nothing else you can do,
Speaker 1: and just kept fishing through it. He fished through the
Speaker 1: whole thing. That takes strong man, that takes this waiter
Speaker 1: farts thing, you know, and you take your way that
Speaker 1: a new level fish through the whole thing, gets back
Speaker 1: to our house and drives back with us this belt
Speaker 1: on there it gets back, goes up and into the shower. Yeah,
Speaker 1: smart guy takes his waiters off. Did he keep those waiters.
Speaker 1: I'm sure he did, because that's that's nothing that What
Speaker 1: got me thinking about that. What got me think about
Speaker 1: that is back when none of you, like you know,
Speaker 1: growing up, not having any kind of money, you'd be
Speaker 1: like you look at your waiters like how you look
Speaker 1: at your car. Some hap your waiters you'd be like
Speaker 1: how how will I ever recover? You know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Like like life would end if you broke your ain rod?
Speaker 1: Mm Like well, like when your waiters went, dude, you
Speaker 1: were done, You're gonna go buy another pair? No, which
Speaker 1: is a testament to why, Like I do think that
Speaker 1: there's a lot of waiters out there right now that
Speaker 1: are pretty pricey and the quality has just gone to crap.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a there is a brand of waiters
Speaker 1: where in the last two years, I quite literally the
Speaker 1: first week of using them just to seem pops and
Speaker 1: start leaking, like has nothing to do with a puncture
Speaker 1: or anything like that. And you know that's always the
Speaker 1: that's the most common thing that fails on a waiter anyway, Right,
Speaker 1: it's the seems they just bad seems bad work, bad
Speaker 1: tape job, and you get that leaking in the crotch. Right,
Speaker 1: We've all had it where you all of a sudden
Speaker 1: there's a day where now you're just pants are wet
Speaker 1: right in the crotch for no reason, had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with you chatting in your waiters and had everything
Speaker 1: had everything to do with just crappy waiters. And we
Speaker 1: went into this conversation early as a team looking at
Speaker 1: trying to solve the major problems that Sean's just describing, right,
Speaker 1: So the first thing out of mind is, let's make
Speaker 1: these the most durable thing that has ever been introduced
Speaker 1: to the to the waterfowl world. And that's kind of
Speaker 1: what that was our I would say, like our lunch
Speaker 1: are going forward, like how can we break these in
Speaker 1: showcase that you know, this iteration didn't work, Let's move
Speaker 1: on to the next thing, and pretty pretty proud of them.
Speaker 1: And the other thing about them for all the guys
Speaker 1: down in Clay's Country that wear waiters every hunt is
Speaker 1: they'll come into timber camera, which is a fancy new detail,
Speaker 1: a new timber camera that we can't talk about that.
Speaker 1: We'll leave it at that. It's can we say we
Speaker 1: could say it's sweet? It's sweet? Yeah? How long you
Speaker 1: were you spent developing until you like got it to
Speaker 1: where you want? Because this is like a long time coming,
Speaker 1: right Oh yeah yeah, two and a half years. Um,
Speaker 1: I forget I mean type I feel like it was
Speaker 1: like eleven point six or something iteration type of being
Speaker 1: our current waterfowl camera that we dropped this summer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've been screwing around with the waiters myself for well
Speaker 1: over a year, Yeah, just me, and it's yeah, it's
Speaker 1: been longer than that. And I think what's interesting to
Speaker 1: realize too is like waiters don't just like come as waiters, right,
Speaker 1: there's like material selection and all these things where we
Speaker 1: spend time touching, feeling, trying to break UM and Logan Williamson,
Speaker 1: our our waterfowl product manager, has been in it for
Speaker 1: you know, two plus years, you know. Oh, and it's
Speaker 1: worth saying we've got a pretty sweet partner lined out
Speaker 1: that's those things together. Yeah, you want to mention that one,
Speaker 1: you do that they're Kevin. Yeah. So we've been working
Speaker 1: with a company called The Cross, which I'm sure you're
Speaker 1: familiar with, little little company over in western Oregon. UM
Speaker 1: who is uh as a company obviously not uh new
Speaker 1: to the game of of rubber boot development and things
Speaker 1: like that. So UM, without saying too much, the construction
Speaker 1: and sort of the development of this UM specific boot
Speaker 1: for these waiters is uh far and away the best
Speaker 1: thing I've put my footage. It's not even like it's
Speaker 1: not even in the same realm. It's like we're talking
Speaker 1: like new materials, new construction, a different way of looking
Speaker 1: at a different way of looking at breatheability, like the
Speaker 1: whole bit, just the ability to like going to room
Speaker 1: and say, like what is impossible and how can we
Speaker 1: make it? For days on end last year like buy
Speaker 1: design on purpose, stood in the water, you know, thirty
Speaker 1: five degree water for seven eight hours straight with no
Speaker 1: way to get your foot elevated and out of cold
Speaker 1: icy water like skimmed over water. And you know, because
Speaker 1: of my own poor layering decisions, end up with a
Speaker 1: cold core, cold thighs, but warm feet which just doesn't
Speaker 1: shockingly warm feet like that was a big takeaway from that.
Speaker 1: That's that's one of the whole thing. But the waiter
Speaker 1: is that boot, that's great. One's drop date. We can't
Speaker 1: be that. It'll be available in about a year at
Speaker 1: some point. But what you can do right now watch
Speaker 1: this transition. But what you can do right now is
Speaker 1: come down to Haley, Idaho and come to the new
Speaker 1: First Light store. Check it out one and only on
Speaker 1: the planet. It's really cool in here. I tell them
Speaker 1: that they need a duck that Sean killed hanging in here.
Speaker 1: You know, I've never I've never got a duck mounted
Speaker 1: taxi so stuffed stuff, so you should get the first
Speaker 1: one put in here. Uh, we're in wrap it up.
Speaker 1: We're gonna do trivia. How do you guys feel about it? Trivia?
Speaker 1: Or have you ever listened to the one of the
Speaker 1: shows I've been practicing up? Do you feel like you're
Speaker 1: gonna win or lose? Definitely not gonna win, but I'll
Speaker 1: hang in there. Have you been practice just cheating? Encyclopedia
Speaker 1: ty Edson after he came on and played with us,
Speaker 1: and he's a strong player. His the guys that weren't
Speaker 1: call him the blue collar scholar. I was shocked at
Speaker 1: the Turnpike thing, like y'all didn't know what Turnpike truebors were.
Speaker 1: There's like two of you that shocked me on the
Speaker 1: I think that was Yeah Ray while Hubbard Yeah you know,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, Waylon Jannings absolutely were trying to make this
Speaker 1: generational right now. No, I'm just saying I just like Turnpike.
Speaker 1: It was said by the first light crew that they
Speaker 1: would think Ford is good. So now for you know,
Speaker 1: when I when I don't know something and someone points
Speaker 1: out that I don't know what, they kind of want
Speaker 1: to tease me about it. I always reminded there's probably
Speaker 1: a lot of things I know that they don't know
Speaker 1: that is so mature. Got him, got him back? Do
Speaker 1: you even really know? I don't want to name him all,
Speaker 1: but there's probably a lot of Hold on, Steve, do
Speaker 1: you actually come back, actually tell me your favorite topics.
Speaker 1: I'll come up with the set here. Do you actually
Speaker 1: know it? Or is it just your perception of a
Speaker 1: dust particle? Yeah? Like the sun coming through bright and
Speaker 1: clear to me? Can I just interceed quickly? My gut
Speaker 1: reaction throughout your whole description of that philosophy about not
Speaker 1: understanding anything about life just makes me think of their
Speaker 1: nihilist Donnie. Oh yeah, it is. That's what I was
Speaker 1: thinking almost the first five minutes the other day. I
Speaker 1: was this is the honestly got the last time I
Speaker 1: say the hard day is Seth and Chester, who are
Speaker 1: frequently on the show, both happen to have Hawaiian shirts on,
Speaker 1: and I informed them, where were you in Hawaii? Or yeah, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: well you know we wanted to get them. We wanted
Speaker 1: to get them hats and said howilly, So they had
Speaker 1: their Hawaiian shirts on, and I was trying to explain
Speaker 1: to them about the what the Boogaloo movement. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like a nihilistic it's like a it's like a
Speaker 1: remember nihilist, it's like a nihilistic uh militia group. What's yeah,
Speaker 1: what are they called again? Boo yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: The world's good. They wear Hawaiian shirts, and I I
Speaker 1: would think when I saw these guys, I was like,
Speaker 1: I think you guys are like here from the Boogleoo movement.
Speaker 1: I have no idea what I was talking about. I
Speaker 1: think that got the old chest. You're feeling a little
Speaker 1: self conscious because later on in the day, do you
Speaker 1: remember this he came up to Steve and I and
Speaker 1: he said, you know, um, some local guys uh kind
Speaker 1: of gave me the stink guy. And I think it's
Speaker 1: because of my Hawaiian shirt. Like that dude in Hawaiian,
Speaker 1: you must be like gestures like legitimately one of the
Speaker 1: nicest people on the planet. Time Like, alright, So check
Speaker 1: out the First Light store come through hay the Idaho
Speaker 1: if you're if you're passing through, check it out. UM
Speaker 1: stay tuned for these super waiters coming soon. Full line
Speaker 1: of waterfowl apparel, um anything else that's good how big
Speaker 1: lighters with the first Light logo on there. If you're
Speaker 1: a smoker, or to someone who likes to start campfires,
Speaker 1: come by and get a genuine about an outdoors oriented
Speaker 1: person always likes to be prepared. You know what those
Speaker 1: are called, right? You gotta got a lighter in one pocket,
Speaker 1: and I still call him cigarette lighters. I can't think
Speaker 1: of what else to call them. Well, these are called
Speaker 1: first lighters. I can't. I can't take credit for that.
Speaker 1: That already happens. Well, I bet I've come up with
Speaker 1: a lot of good things, all right. Thanks a lot
Speaker 1: to fet