WEBVTT - Ep. 58: Poaching - Our Relationship with the Law 0:00:00.080 --> 0:00:08.800 Ye were jack late rabbits, which is illegal, but never 0:00:09.080 --> 0:00:12.360 a dear. There was a code, there were laws you 0:00:12.480 --> 0:00:16.880 would not break. This episode of the Bear Grease podcast 0:00:17.040 --> 0:00:20.760 will be an expose on two men in the outdoor 0:00:20.800 --> 0:00:23.440 industry that you may have heard of. I don't like 0:00:23.600 --> 0:00:27.400 to air people's dirty laundry, but we gained access to 0:00:27.440 --> 0:00:32.120 these hunters and you may know them, maybe even respect them, 0:00:32.159 --> 0:00:36.080 and their stories will shock you. Who I'm talking about 0:00:36.560 --> 0:00:41.839 is me and Steve Rannella. We had a candid conversation 0:00:42.080 --> 0:00:45.120 about the way we were raised, our history with game laws, 0:00:45.400 --> 0:00:48.839 and a few of our regrets. The intent is to 0:00:48.880 --> 0:00:51.960 have some honest dialogue, giving us a data point to 0:00:52.120 --> 0:00:56.480 understand our cultural history as modern hunters that will allow 0:00:56.600 --> 0:01:00.280 us to dictate where we're going. We'll also tell to 0:01:00.320 --> 0:01:04.360 Austin Booth, he's a lawyer, a former marine, and now 0:01:04.520 --> 0:01:07.399 the director of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. I 0:01:07.480 --> 0:01:11.000 want to understand the philosophy of wildlife law enforcement in 0:01:11.040 --> 0:01:15.160 two and the status of poaching. Will also pick up 0:01:15.200 --> 0:01:18.400 two foundational components of the North American model of wildlife 0:01:18.480 --> 0:01:22.199 conservation that we all should know. And if you want 0:01:22.319 --> 0:01:26.880 the dirt on me and Ranella. I'm certain you're not 0:01:27.000 --> 0:01:30.040 gonna want to miss this one. That tipping point where 0:01:30.080 --> 0:01:35.240 you go from consumption to conservation necessitates you looking at 0:01:35.360 --> 0:01:39.160 poaching as a horrible thing that detracts from the resource. 0:01:47.760 --> 0:01:50.400 My name is Clay Nukelem, and this is the Bear 0:01:50.480 --> 0:01:55.440 Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search 0:01:55.520 --> 0:01:59.080 for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the 0:01:59.240 --> 0:02:03.360 story of Americans who lived their lives close to the land. 0:02:04.040 --> 0:02:09.560 Presented by f HF Gear, American made purpose built hunting 0:02:09.639 --> 0:02:13.160 and fishing gear. It's designed to be as rugged as 0:02:13.200 --> 0:02:26.320 the places we explore. I was raised around. Let me 0:02:26.320 --> 0:02:29.880 put to you this way. Any of the hunters and angers, 0:02:29.919 --> 0:02:31.560 any of the outdoors when I was raised around, and 0:02:31.560 --> 0:02:34.680 I was raised around many of them, any of them 0:02:34.880 --> 0:02:39.120 would have like and if an undercover agent had embedded 0:02:39.160 --> 0:02:41.840 with them for a week or two or a month, 0:02:42.600 --> 0:02:45.280 any of them would have racked up a bunch of 0:02:45.360 --> 0:02:50.680 violations that would sound really bad. I didn't grow up 0:02:50.720 --> 0:02:55.120 around anyone that didn't break game laws. I'm not kidding you, 0:02:55.360 --> 0:02:57.400 like anyone that was serious about hunting and fishing that 0:02:57.400 --> 0:02:59.480 didn't break game laws. Because there was the ones you 0:02:59.520 --> 0:03:01.440 paid attend mentioned too, And there's the one that no 0:03:01.480 --> 0:03:03.440 one paid attention to. And in fact, I now know 0:03:03.600 --> 0:03:05.880 there's a lot of them that we had no idea 0:03:06.000 --> 0:03:11.160 that was a law. That was Steve runnella of meat eater. 0:03:11.760 --> 0:03:15.000 He and I are about to give an expose of 0:03:15.040 --> 0:03:18.440 our lives, because if you're new to hunting, it might 0:03:18.480 --> 0:03:21.520 be hard to understand where we as a culture have 0:03:21.639 --> 0:03:24.600 come from. Let me restate that all this talk of 0:03:24.680 --> 0:03:29.360 breaking game laws isn't a celebration, a justification or a stunt, 0:03:29.680 --> 0:03:33.440 but rather a crisp look into reality for the purpose 0:03:33.560 --> 0:03:37.200 of getting it right in the future, in modern times, 0:03:37.240 --> 0:03:40.640 for us to protect this immensely valuable wildlife resource we 0:03:40.680 --> 0:03:43.760 have on this continent. It helps if we're just honest 0:03:43.800 --> 0:03:47.960 with ourselves. This next clip is from the Bear Grease Render, 0:03:48.200 --> 0:03:51.760 and it's my father Gary Nucom talking about his experience 0:03:51.800 --> 0:03:54.200 of stepping into the big game hunting world at the 0:03:54.200 --> 0:03:59.640 age of twenty six in the mid nineteen seventies. And 0:03:59.680 --> 0:04:03.400 so I was introduced to bow hunting and I immediately 0:04:03.480 --> 0:04:06.160 fell in love with it, and I got the watching 0:04:06.280 --> 0:04:12.040 people and I saw nobody. Now take this literal, I'm 0:04:12.080 --> 0:04:16.240 telling you, like I saw it. I knew nobody that 0:04:16.360 --> 0:04:18.919 wouldn't kill an illegal, dear, and I'm like, in a 0:04:19.000 --> 0:04:22.359 state of shock, I'm not gonna do that. I didn't 0:04:22.400 --> 0:04:24.599 have uncles that taught me that. I didn't have a 0:04:24.680 --> 0:04:27.080 dad that taught me that. Now, if you run up 0:04:27.080 --> 0:04:32.080 against Josh and he's a city boy out enjoying hunting, 0:04:32.160 --> 0:04:33.880 you know, two or three times a year, now, he's 0:04:33.880 --> 0:04:36.720 not gonna kill anything illegal. He read the regulations and 0:04:36.760 --> 0:04:40.599 just did what it said. Yeah, but the die hard hunters, 0:04:40.880 --> 0:04:44.839 I'm telling you from my perspective, you gotta keep that 0:04:44.920 --> 0:04:49.920 in mind. My perspective, they all killed illegal stuff. So 0:04:49.960 --> 0:04:52.400 where do you draw the line. I killed one person, 0:04:53.600 --> 0:04:58.880 I killed fifty people. I mean, you're killing stuff. It's illegal, 0:04:59.200 --> 0:05:03.000 And where is it bad. It's bad with one, it's 0:05:03.040 --> 0:05:06.960 bad with ten, it's bad with thirty. The prevalence of 0:05:07.080 --> 0:05:10.360 wanton violation of the law in the past is remarkable, 0:05:10.560 --> 0:05:13.520 But I feel like we've turned a corner of all 0:05:13.600 --> 0:05:17.240 the laws. Wildlife laws are tough to enforce because hunting 0:05:17.400 --> 0:05:22.359 is done in secluded places, often alone, and animals don't 0:05:22.400 --> 0:05:26.440 speak English. They can't tell on us. There are various 0:05:26.560 --> 0:05:30.960 gradients of poaching, and all are bad. There are serial 0:05:31.120 --> 0:05:33.960 poachers that leave the house with the intent to break 0:05:34.000 --> 0:05:36.680 the law. There are those who are typically law about him, 0:05:36.720 --> 0:05:40.800 but they make the odd exception to egregiously break the law. 0:05:41.240 --> 0:05:45.320 There are opportunistic law breakers who violate out of convenience 0:05:45.680 --> 0:05:48.680 or to take advantage of a unique situation. There are 0:05:48.720 --> 0:05:51.760 those who are simply ignorant of the law. And then 0:05:51.839 --> 0:05:54.279 there are people that flat out and make a mistake 0:05:54.520 --> 0:05:58.000 or misjudgment in the field. But if laws are broken, 0:05:58.320 --> 0:06:02.200 the intent or the context really doesn't matter. No one 0:06:02.360 --> 0:06:06.520 has an excuse. I'm still on the search for understanding 0:06:06.520 --> 0:06:10.080 our functional ideologies around game laws. In the last couple 0:06:10.080 --> 0:06:13.279 of episodes, we've talked with game wardens, undercover agents, and 0:06:13.360 --> 0:06:17.599 hunters trying to nail down our collective doctrine, and doctrine 0:06:17.640 --> 0:06:19.919 isn't what we say with our mouths, is what we 0:06:19.960 --> 0:06:24.040 actually do. Most people would tell you that their law abiding, 0:06:24.279 --> 0:06:27.000 but when you really dig in, you might find places 0:06:27.000 --> 0:06:29.680 where they don't always hold to the letter of the law, 0:06:30.000 --> 0:06:33.800 or more commonly, where in the past they didn't. And 0:06:33.839 --> 0:06:37.080 sometimes people just mess up. And the more time you 0:06:37.200 --> 0:06:40.080 spent in the woods, the greater chance that's would happened 0:06:40.080 --> 0:06:43.080 to you. We forget we didn't know, we justify it 0:06:43.200 --> 0:06:45.800 this one time, or we just flat ignore a law 0:06:45.880 --> 0:06:49.520 because we think breaking it won't hurt anyone or the resource. 0:06:50.200 --> 0:06:52.720 I think we've got to be honest with our worst 0:06:52.760 --> 0:06:56.360 selves if we'll ever live consistently in our best selves. 0:06:56.880 --> 0:06:59.800 I hope these stories will fortify a culture of putting 0:06:59.800 --> 0:07:03.880 the resource first. Breaking the law is an easy thing, 0:07:04.520 --> 0:07:09.600 and here is an example. Once during muzzleloader season, I 0:07:09.640 --> 0:07:12.720 was walking to my deer stand in the pre dawn darkness, 0:07:12.760 --> 0:07:15.080 and I planned to put on my hunter orange vest 0:07:15.160 --> 0:07:17.840 in the tree. You see, I got dressed at the tree, 0:07:17.880 --> 0:07:20.280 trying to do all the sink control stuff on the 0:07:20.320 --> 0:07:23.520 way in, I dropped my orange vest on the ground 0:07:23.680 --> 0:07:26.520 and didn't realize that until I was twenty five ft high. 0:07:26.840 --> 0:07:29.560 The orange was like way back towards the truck. I 0:07:29.600 --> 0:07:32.920 was on private land with no other hunters, and I 0:07:32.960 --> 0:07:36.600 was bow hunting during musloader season. I continued to hunt 0:07:36.600 --> 0:07:39.280 with just my orange hat, which didn't meet the square 0:07:39.320 --> 0:07:43.560 inch orange minimum, and that morning I proceeded to kill 0:07:43.680 --> 0:07:47.960 one of the largest bucks of my life with my bow. Technically, 0:07:48.000 --> 0:07:51.000 I was in violation of the law and my poacher. 0:07:51.840 --> 0:07:55.400 By the law, yes, but by every rational thanking human 0:07:55.440 --> 0:07:58.960 on planet Earth, I don't think so. It would have 0:07:58.960 --> 0:08:01.040 been more dangerous to all out of the tree and 0:08:01.080 --> 0:08:03.200 walk to get the orange at daylight than it would 0:08:03.200 --> 0:08:06.000 have been to stay in the tree and walk out midday. 0:08:06.120 --> 0:08:08.120 Have you ever left your tree stand up longer than 0:08:08.160 --> 0:08:10.360 you were supposed to on public land? Have you ever 0:08:10.400 --> 0:08:12.600 gone fishing for the first time of the spring, only 0:08:12.680 --> 0:08:16.040 to realize you didn't auto renew your fishing license. Have 0:08:16.120 --> 0:08:18.880 you ever dipped your toe across a fence boundary that 0:08:18.920 --> 0:08:21.640 you didn't have written permission to access. Have you ever 0:08:21.800 --> 0:08:24.680 party hunted as a water fowler, which is basically a 0:08:24.760 --> 0:08:27.320 group working to get the collective limit of everyone on 0:08:27.360 --> 0:08:31.120 the hunt. Have you ever wasted meat? My intent and 0:08:31.200 --> 0:08:35.079 asking these questions isn't to soften our ideas about the law, 0:08:35.400 --> 0:08:39.080 but rather to strengthen them, and ultimately I hope this 0:08:39.160 --> 0:08:44.760 conversation makes us be introspective about ourselves. That being said, 0:08:44.920 --> 0:08:47.800 and I'll stand by this statement. I don't have a 0:08:47.920 --> 0:08:52.079 history of intentionally breaking game laws. I've dedicated an incredible 0:08:52.120 --> 0:08:55.040 amount of energy to the point of paranoia to not 0:08:55.200 --> 0:08:57.960 break them even before I was in the outdoor industry. 0:08:58.200 --> 0:09:00.560 I've never had a wild streak, and I grew up 0:09:00.559 --> 0:09:03.280 in a very law abiding family, which I'm proud of. 0:09:03.880 --> 0:09:07.360 But by sheer volume of exposure running around with the 0:09:07.400 --> 0:09:11.640 odd ruffian, being a dumb kid and just being human, 0:09:12.360 --> 0:09:18.000 I've made some mistakes. Here's Steve Ronnella describing the culture 0:09:18.280 --> 0:09:21.040 of how he grew up, like I used to be 0:09:21.080 --> 0:09:22.960 reluctant to talk about some of this stuff because of 0:09:23.200 --> 0:09:26.720 h like a fear of getting in trouble, like elements 0:09:26.760 --> 0:09:32.360 of hypocrisy. Whatever. Sure, we broke laws all the time. Okay, 0:09:32.840 --> 0:09:35.360 I could sit I could sit here and and just 0:09:35.600 --> 0:09:39.559 give you dozens of occurrences. Let me give you a 0:09:39.559 --> 0:09:43.440 cup for instances. In the spring the rivers had come up, 0:09:43.440 --> 0:09:45.880 and sometimes the rivers had come up so high that 0:09:45.920 --> 0:09:49.240 it would flood out the muskrats out of their bank dens. 0:09:49.440 --> 0:09:52.680 It wasn't muskrat season. You were not allowed to shoot 0:09:52.720 --> 0:09:55.280 muskrats in Michigan. You had to trap them. But we 0:09:55.320 --> 0:09:58.280 couldn't resist the temptation. We go out of twenty two 0:09:58.600 --> 0:10:01.319 and go out in the flooded swamp and get my 0:10:01.400 --> 0:10:03.440 scratch and just add him into the furs we sold 0:10:03.480 --> 0:10:06.400 the next year, okay, because who's gonna notice, like some 0:10:06.440 --> 0:10:08.680 twenty two holes and some of them. I remember in 0:10:08.800 --> 0:10:12.160 high school my buddy Eric Kern, he's no longer with us. 0:10:12.280 --> 0:10:14.440 A buddy Eric Kern would dip and smelt. He caught 0:10:14.440 --> 0:10:16.800 a steel head, not allowed to do that with a net, 0:10:17.160 --> 0:10:20.200 stuck it in his waiters and carried around in his 0:10:20.280 --> 0:10:22.040 waiters in the boot of his waiters for the night. 0:10:22.080 --> 0:10:25.040 I'm talking like a ten pound fish. Never in a 0:10:25.240 --> 0:10:26.960 million years, and we had to let that fish go. 0:10:27.920 --> 0:10:31.400 But there's some stuff we would never do. Would no way, 0:10:31.520 --> 0:10:37.400 no how jack light a deer. We were jack late rabbits, 0:10:37.679 --> 0:10:41.840 which is illegal, but never a deer. Wouldn't go over 0:10:41.880 --> 0:10:45.360 a bang limit. But you had to be fourteen to 0:10:45.480 --> 0:10:48.280 hunt with a rifle. I started hunting with a rifle 0:10:48.400 --> 0:10:51.840 when I was thirteen. I shot a dough. My mom 0:10:51.920 --> 0:10:54.000 came out and put her tag on it. I would 0:10:54.000 --> 0:10:57.280 have gone down. I would have gone down and told 0:10:57.320 --> 0:11:02.320 that story in school. It just it wasn't like you're 0:11:02.320 --> 0:11:04.680 being secret e. It was just it was like the 0:11:04.720 --> 0:11:08.679 attitude was how many deer are we allowed as a family? 0:11:09.120 --> 0:11:12.040 Tell us that and then and then just leave the 0:11:12.080 --> 0:11:15.760 rest to us. Right, And that's functionally the way they 0:11:15.800 --> 0:11:18.480 that it was enforced too, am I right? It was like, 0:11:18.800 --> 0:11:21.120 I don't know, I don't like we weren't checked by 0:11:21.160 --> 0:11:23.520 people just I could. I could go on and on 0:11:23.679 --> 0:11:25.720 like stuff that I'm the stuff that I'm ashamed about. 0:11:26.000 --> 0:11:29.360 And I'll point out my dad was, Like I mentioned, 0:11:29.400 --> 0:11:32.959 my dad was a veteran. His friends were veterans. These 0:11:32.960 --> 0:11:36.400 are people who fought in World War two. These people 0:11:36.679 --> 0:11:42.480 love their country, right, the most upstanding members of the community. Okay, 0:11:42.520 --> 0:11:45.040 One of the guys down the road of a veteran. Uh, 0:11:45.080 --> 0:11:48.640 he was a car salesman, mentored me all through growing up. 0:11:49.200 --> 0:11:51.240 He fit, He lived with his wife, and his wife died, 0:11:51.320 --> 0:11:53.319 and he fished all the time. Couldn't eat that many fish, 0:11:53.400 --> 0:11:55.360 but he fished. I remember some days he'd fish two 0:11:55.640 --> 0:11:57.240 d seventy days a year because he kept the track 0:11:57.280 --> 0:11:59.440 of it a notepad. How many fish can you eat? 0:12:00.080 --> 0:12:04.040 Sold his fish? He would encourage me to go sell 0:12:04.120 --> 0:12:07.720 my fish to the illegal outfit that he sold his 0:12:07.760 --> 0:12:10.640 fish too in a restaurant. No, it's a fish dealer, 0:12:10.880 --> 0:12:14.520 fish a fish market. And he would even advise me 0:12:14.720 --> 0:12:19.000 on how to negotiate the deals. Do you understand these 0:12:19.040 --> 0:12:23.520 are not people that would have identified as poachers. I 0:12:23.559 --> 0:12:27.240 don't know why. Oh, moving fish around, dumping them into 0:12:27.240 --> 0:12:29.760 all their lakes and stuff like you name it, man like, 0:12:30.080 --> 0:12:33.079 it was just everywhere. But there's certain lines you there was, 0:12:33.120 --> 0:12:34.800 like lines you didn't cross. I remember. I don't want 0:12:34.800 --> 0:12:37.240 to name the guy's names. I'm friendly with his kid. 0:12:37.840 --> 0:12:40.480 The guy shot way more wood ducks than he was 0:12:40.520 --> 0:12:44.280 allowed one time and did a very sloppy job of 0:12:44.440 --> 0:12:48.160 cleaning them and just breasted some wood ducks and dumped 0:12:48.200 --> 0:12:50.960 him out in the woods. And we found them and 0:12:51.080 --> 0:12:54.040 told our old man about these wood ducks that weren't cleaned. 0:12:54.440 --> 0:12:56.520 And my old man went over there and confronted the 0:12:56.520 --> 0:13:02.080 guy that, well, something you you not do, waste the game, 0:13:02.920 --> 0:13:06.000 don't do that. But he would do all my only way. 0:13:06.040 --> 0:13:09.359 I would do all manners, stuff you weren't supposed to do. Yeah, 0:13:09.400 --> 0:13:11.520 but it was like a spirit of the law leader 0:13:11.600 --> 0:13:16.560 the law. I really appreciate Steve opening up about his past. 0:13:17.160 --> 0:13:19.880 It takes some guts to do that, and his intent 0:13:20.120 --> 0:13:23.280 is just to be honest. He nor I have nothing 0:13:23.320 --> 0:13:25.839 to hide. I have no doubt that people who have 0:13:25.920 --> 0:13:28.920 been involved in hunting and fishing their entire lives, and 0:13:29.040 --> 0:13:32.520 if they've seen a few winters can relate. I know 0:13:32.679 --> 0:13:36.720 I can. And at the end of this podcast, I'm 0:13:36.760 --> 0:13:41.760 going to tell you my darkest secret. It's really not 0:13:41.800 --> 0:13:48.360 a secret. But here's Steve on ethics. It's a relationship 0:13:48.400 --> 0:13:50.840 with the game laws. It's hard to understand. I'll point 0:13:50.840 --> 0:13:52.760 out to people. Now, people we have all these conversations 0:13:52.760 --> 0:13:55.120 about hunting ethics. I'm like, man, here's a here's a 0:13:55.160 --> 0:13:59.720 good way to get of the way. There follow laws. 0:14:00.679 --> 0:14:03.400 We've codified our ethics in this country to large measure, 0:14:03.960 --> 0:14:07.079 they changed their time at any given time. Are ethics 0:14:07.320 --> 0:14:10.079 are mostly codified by law. If you want to be be 0:14:10.120 --> 0:14:12.920 an ethical hunter, that typically means don't break the laws. 0:14:14.280 --> 0:14:17.560 But my God, really loose with the laws growing up, 0:14:17.559 --> 0:14:19.280 and I was two because I was brought up that way, 0:14:19.320 --> 0:14:24.080 I had to later realize out of getting on board 0:14:24.080 --> 0:14:27.960 with the program, okay, getting on board with the game 0:14:28.000 --> 0:14:31.800 management program that we're on in this country, the journey 0:14:31.800 --> 0:14:35.280 we're on with conservation, the journey around with game management, 0:14:35.400 --> 0:14:38.400 like getting on board with that, and also, quite simply 0:14:38.440 --> 0:14:41.600 and frankly, when I was in my twenties out of 0:14:41.640 --> 0:14:43.800 fear of being in trouble. Yeah, then will I'll be 0:14:43.880 --> 0:14:47.320 in trouble. Cleaned up our act. I got the scared 0:14:47.360 --> 0:14:49.440 out of me by game word one time, who I 0:14:49.480 --> 0:14:52.120 knew was on to me about something, and that scared 0:14:52.200 --> 0:14:55.240 me pretty straight. You don't want to tell that story, Well, 0:14:55.760 --> 0:14:57.560 I really don't tell what he asked me. Let me 0:14:57.560 --> 0:14:59.640 tell you what he asked me. You weren't allowed to 0:14:59.680 --> 0:15:02.640 use airs where I lived on land for land animals. 0:15:03.320 --> 0:15:05.920 He asked me if I had been setting snares. I 0:15:06.000 --> 0:15:09.840 told him no. He then went through over a hundred 0:15:09.920 --> 0:15:12.320 traps in the back of my truck looking for one 0:15:12.360 --> 0:15:14.920 that didn't have a tag on it. He didn't like 0:15:15.000 --> 0:15:17.240 check one. He was like, I'm gonna looked at his 0:15:17.280 --> 0:15:20.080 bundle and I'm gonna find a not tag trap and 0:15:20.120 --> 0:15:22.200 I'm gonna give you a citation. And you didn't find 0:15:22.200 --> 0:15:25.080 a not tag trap, to my surprise and his because 0:15:25.080 --> 0:15:28.000 they just fall off sometimes. But I knew that guy 0:15:28.040 --> 0:15:32.640 knew something I've done. Uh, you know that kind of 0:15:32.720 --> 0:15:36.560 scared straight on that stuff. I had a fur buyer 0:15:37.000 --> 0:15:40.840 who would push snares on you catch more game license 0:15:40.920 --> 0:15:42.440 fur buyer. He's like, hey, why don't you take some 0:15:42.520 --> 0:15:47.400 of these bringing stuff in right, just pervasive, And there's 0:15:47.400 --> 0:15:49.760 no way you wouldn't. There's no way you don't like 0:15:49.840 --> 0:15:51.320 knowing where you grew up and how you grew up. 0:15:51.320 --> 0:15:53.880 There's no way you didn't have all those same experiences. Yeah, 0:15:53.960 --> 0:15:57.800 you know, I had an interesting, interesting experience in that 0:15:57.880 --> 0:16:02.440 my dad was Gary Nucom who he he did? He 0:16:02.440 --> 0:16:04.360 He always says he didn't grow up in a hunting family, 0:16:04.360 --> 0:16:05.840 and I don't like it when he says that, because 0:16:05.840 --> 0:16:09.040 he did. My grandfather was a big quail hunter and 0:16:09.120 --> 0:16:11.560 bird dog trainer. What he means to say is he 0:16:11.560 --> 0:16:14.640 didn't grow up in a big game hunting family, which 0:16:14.640 --> 0:16:16.760 he didn't, and so he was kind of a first 0:16:17.160 --> 0:16:19.840 He he learned how to bow hunt on his own 0:16:20.080 --> 0:16:23.920 and did all this stuff, and man, he was pretty 0:16:23.960 --> 0:16:27.360 straight laced and kind of came into the hunting space 0:16:27.760 --> 0:16:32.120 and realized that he was the only guy around that 0:16:32.200 --> 0:16:35.360 was actually trying to obey game laws. And he just 0:16:35.400 --> 0:16:38.960 had just kind of the right mix of following the 0:16:39.080 --> 0:16:42.000 rules and he was he was a banker. He was 0:16:42.040 --> 0:16:44.440 in the community that he felt like he needed to 0:16:44.480 --> 0:16:47.760 be an upstanding citizen in which was good and man, 0:16:48.160 --> 0:16:51.760 we came out of the shoot with a very I mean, 0:16:51.800 --> 0:16:53.800 I wasn't afraid the game warden. I was afraid of 0:16:53.840 --> 0:16:57.200 my dad. So it's kind of a different story. And 0:16:57.240 --> 0:17:01.320 so I never wantingly bro game loss, even though I 0:17:01.400 --> 0:17:04.480 did just because I was a dumb kid. You know, 0:17:04.720 --> 0:17:07.200 a couple of times in coon hunting while we were 0:17:07.240 --> 0:17:13.879 coon hunting, twice deer were killed on coon hunts. M M. 0:17:14.640 --> 0:17:18.879 Steve said, well, here's the full story. I've never in 0:17:18.960 --> 0:17:22.040 my life set out to kill a deer illegally. Ever, 0:17:22.800 --> 0:17:26.680 but one night deep in the winter when I was seventeen, 0:17:27.119 --> 0:17:30.440 we were on a coon hunt. I saw the glowing 0:17:30.560 --> 0:17:33.840 eyes of an erect eared critter that hovered about twenty 0:17:33.840 --> 0:17:37.119 inches off the ground. I immediately whispered to my buddy 0:17:37.119 --> 0:17:42.320 with the twenty two rifle Kyo, shoot that thing. Within seconds, 0:17:42.400 --> 0:17:45.639 a shot was fired and the glowing eyes went out. 0:17:46.280 --> 0:17:50.000 Upon retrieval, it wasn't a coyote at all. It turns 0:17:50.000 --> 0:17:53.640 out it was a bedded doe deer, and it wasn't 0:17:53.680 --> 0:17:56.159 even legal to shoot a cowde at night, but I 0:17:56.240 --> 0:17:59.480 didn't know that. Rather than calling the game warden, which 0:17:59.480 --> 0:18:01.680 would have been the right thing, to do, calling old 0:18:01.760 --> 0:18:04.520 Jimmy Martin. We stuffed the deer in our dog box 0:18:04.600 --> 0:18:08.199 and went home and skinned it. A second time, I 0:18:08.280 --> 0:18:11.399 was hunting with someone older than me on his land, 0:18:11.760 --> 0:18:14.320 and again I think I was seventeen. We saw a 0:18:14.359 --> 0:18:16.920 pair of eyes on the hill and I said, there's 0:18:16.960 --> 0:18:19.280 one of your cows. He said, that's not a cow, 0:18:19.320 --> 0:18:22.159 that's a deer. I said, no, you're wrong, that's one 0:18:22.160 --> 0:18:24.720 of your cows. He proceeded to pull out his twenty 0:18:24.720 --> 0:18:28.800 two pistol, take aim, and dropped the animal from over 0:18:28.920 --> 0:18:32.199 seventy five yards away. We walked up there and he 0:18:32.280 --> 0:18:35.160 was right, it was a deer. He loaded the deer 0:18:35.200 --> 0:18:38.119 in the truck, drove to some dude's house that needed 0:18:38.160 --> 0:18:42.080 some meat, and no questions were ever asked. He dropped 0:18:42.080 --> 0:18:45.840 the deer off. Since that time, I become more adept 0:18:45.880 --> 0:18:49.680 at identifying animals by glowing eyes. I'm ashamed of these 0:18:49.720 --> 0:18:54.840 things and learned a lot from them. Here's Steve Man. 0:18:54.880 --> 0:18:58.160 It's hard to explain. Yeah, yeah, but there were there 0:18:58.280 --> 0:19:01.520 was a code. There were alas you would not break. 0:19:01.680 --> 0:19:04.520 I like, I don't know any of all the violating 0:19:04.560 --> 0:19:08.160 I've talked about. I don't know anyone in my family's 0:19:08.200 --> 0:19:10.879 social circle that ever shot a deer of the spotlight, 0:19:11.280 --> 0:19:15.200 or that ever shot a deer out of season, that 0:19:15.240 --> 0:19:22.119 would have been break. You would not do that. I 0:19:22.200 --> 0:19:26.040 don't know why. I want to introduce you to the 0:19:26.080 --> 0:19:29.080 director of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. He's been 0:19:29.200 --> 0:19:32.919 on the Bear Grease podcast before. His name is Austin Booth. 0:19:33.359 --> 0:19:37.240 He's a former marine, a lawyer, a pilot, and at 0:19:37.240 --> 0:19:39.359 the ripe age of thirty five, he's one of the 0:19:39.400 --> 0:19:43.640 youngest directors in the agency's history, and he's making some 0:19:43.760 --> 0:19:48.480 good waves in our state. Austin is also a lifelong hunter. 0:19:48.920 --> 0:19:51.200 Over the next twenty minutes, I'm gonna ask him about 0:19:51.240 --> 0:19:54.639 the agency's philosophy of law enforcement, the status of poaching 0:19:54.640 --> 0:19:59.440 in the state, and the foundational ideology that regulates wildlife law. 0:20:00.119 --> 0:20:06.120 Here's Austin Booth, So what is the philosophy of law 0:20:06.200 --> 0:20:09.560 enforcement these days? And and how are we how are 0:20:09.560 --> 0:20:11.720 we going after people that are breaking the law. So 0:20:11.760 --> 0:20:13.960 there's a whole lot of people out there that wrongly 0:20:14.040 --> 0:20:17.680 believe that the Arkansas Gamon Fish Commission is just out 0:20:17.720 --> 0:20:21.159 there to write tickets. That's not true. It is written 0:20:21.200 --> 0:20:25.640 into Arkansas law that all the revenue that we generate 0:20:25.920 --> 0:20:29.879 from tickets goes into the county schools in which we 0:20:29.880 --> 0:20:33.560 write that ticket in, so we never see a single 0:20:33.640 --> 0:20:37.040 penny of that money. So there's no quota on apt 0:20:37.280 --> 0:20:39.800 to write a ticket. There's not Would you say that's 0:20:39.840 --> 0:20:43.439 common for state agencies outside of Arkansas? I know of 0:20:43.480 --> 0:20:47.440 a handful of other states. There's probably more, but it's 0:20:47.560 --> 0:20:52.080 intuitive to see that a government agency having a monetary 0:20:52.320 --> 0:20:56.160 incentive to write tickets is probably a bad thing. So 0:20:56.480 --> 0:20:58.920 we don't see any of that money. All right, Well, Austin, 0:20:58.960 --> 0:21:04.520 if y'all aren't there to self funder selves through regulations enforcement, 0:21:04.520 --> 0:21:09.160 how to y'all approach this? We enforce regulations for compliance 0:21:09.680 --> 0:21:13.160 at the Cadet graduation for the Cadeta of Wildlife Officers 0:21:13.200 --> 0:21:17.280 we graduated last year are Colonel Colonel Brad Young, outstanding 0:21:17.280 --> 0:21:20.960 American said, y'all are not here to write granny a 0:21:21.200 --> 0:21:25.720 ticket for being one day expired on her fishing license. 0:21:25.880 --> 0:21:28.480 Make sure she gets a new license. We're not focused 0:21:28.480 --> 0:21:32.639 on minor violations. We want to educate people and we 0:21:32.680 --> 0:21:36.320 want to enforce for compliance. Where we do get aggressive 0:21:36.640 --> 0:21:42.600 is on serious game violations. We issue more than thirty 0:21:42.600 --> 0:21:48.240 five hundred citations per year on average. We issue well 0:21:48.280 --> 0:21:53.359 over five thousand warnings per year on average. So we 0:21:53.400 --> 0:21:57.520 really try to focus the lion's share of our enforcement 0:21:57.560 --> 0:22:02.119 work on major violators because they do materially take away 0:22:02.200 --> 0:22:06.680 from the resource. We had a case this year where 0:22:06.720 --> 0:22:10.680 a gentleman had what he called a deer garden in 0:22:10.800 --> 0:22:14.200 his yard where he had harvested over forty bucks and 0:22:14.200 --> 0:22:17.480 and had the heads out there in the sun cleaning them. 0:22:17.720 --> 0:22:20.159 We had a case this year young man in his 0:22:20.359 --> 0:22:26.159 early twenties who acquired over thirteen hundred points. Now, to 0:22:26.320 --> 0:22:29.919 provide some context for that, you only have to have 0:22:30.040 --> 0:22:35.000 eighteen points to have your hunting license revoked. Uh. And 0:22:35.119 --> 0:22:40.120 so he accumulated an unimaginable amount of violations. And you 0:22:40.200 --> 0:22:43.000 can't tell me that that's not a taking from the 0:22:43.000 --> 0:22:49.800 polit resource. Thirty five hundred citations and five thousand warnings 0:22:49.800 --> 0:22:53.800 a year, those are big numbers. It's interesting to me 0:22:53.880 --> 0:22:57.280 that wardens aren't incentivized right tickets. I think that most 0:22:57.280 --> 0:22:59.560 of us wouldn't have guessed that. It kind of goes 0:22:59.600 --> 0:23:02.280 back to some of our past discussion about a fundamental 0:23:02.320 --> 0:23:06.000 mistrust of power. This helps us view law enforcement differently 0:23:06.320 --> 0:23:10.600 and realize that this misperception is probably coming from our side. 0:23:11.040 --> 0:23:13.919 I want to get Austin's opinion on the threat of 0:23:14.040 --> 0:23:18.959 poaching in the big picture. In the big scheme of 0:23:19.119 --> 0:23:23.600 threats to North American wildlife, are poachers at the top 0:23:23.640 --> 0:23:26.200 of that list. And it's not really apples to apples 0:23:26.200 --> 0:23:30.480 to compare like habitat loss, so it's not entirely apples 0:23:30.480 --> 0:23:33.200 to apples. But I guess I'm trying to understand how 0:23:33.200 --> 0:23:35.520 big a threat it is because I think sometimes we 0:23:35.560 --> 0:23:39.080 can live in a bubble, some of us, especially inside 0:23:39.119 --> 0:23:41.960 the guys that are real enthusiast inside the outdoor space. 0:23:42.520 --> 0:23:46.880 Like I said it before, the cool kids obey the laws, 0:23:46.920 --> 0:23:49.400 Like that's what that's the culture we're building, is that 0:23:49.480 --> 0:23:51.560 we want to obey laws. We want we're all on 0:23:51.600 --> 0:23:53.600